Morgan Nametbd

Requesting help from those that can, via GoFundMe

2015-06-24T19:36:31Z

Permission to share granted (and welcomed!):

http://www.gofundme.com/xsh3e8

About me: I'm a 30ish disabled (severe arthritis, I'm on Cimzia amongst other meds) genderqueer sysadmin in the Olympia area.

So over the last few months, I broke up with my wife, and ended up moving out of the house that we were renting (from her in-laws). Nothing major, just the usual moving stress and breakup stress. We get along well.

I moved into a new apartment in downtown Olympia with my roommate Boo, who is going to college at nearby SPSCC. The commute from the new apartment to the college is negligible at best.

Fast forward a bit; I ended up losing my job through some boneheaded mistakes of my own. While I'm not trying to excuse the mistakes I made, I have a feeling that the medication I was on for the dental surgery (I had all my remaining top teeth yanked and replaced with a denture) and the medical marijuana I've been smoking for my arthritis pain helped contribute to that... lowering inhibitions and helping me forget key details I should have kept in mind, especially with the emotional rollercoaster I was on. It's still my responsibility the way things turned out, but there are reasons, even if they aren't excuses.

I'm going to be relocating, and living with a lovely transwoman. However, I still haven't gotten stuff from my old employer like my termination paperwork (which means no SNAP/food stamps until that comes through) and shipping containers so I can mail back the company property that I have (laptop, desk phone, mobile phone, router).

The new apartment also includes a $500 pet deposit (on top of a $300 roommate deposit), and I really can't function without my support kitty Ras. (She's not legally a therapy pet, but serves as one in many ways for me.) Any assistance with that would be greatly appreciated, further assistance will help me with a bigger buffer while I wait on SNAP and look for jobs and keep paying for my medications.

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Git with an alternate SSH key…

2013-08-05T04:24:54Z

So I use BitBucket.org both for my day job, and also for managing my private Git repos. (Since BB is free for personal private repo use, whereas GitHub charges for that…)

However, when I go to push to BitBucket for my personal use, I need to make sure that my SSH keys for work aren’t loaded. This has resulted in me doing things like “ssh-add -D” to wipe out all the keys in my ssh agent, then manually loading my personal key for git use. Then when I start work again, I have to reload my other keys. Rather annoying.

I came across a solution here: git admin: An alias for running git commands as a privileged SSH identity

However, it didn’t work for me. Took a bit to figure out why, but it came full circle back to the use of ssh-agent– even though I was properly specifying my SSH identity file, the keys from my ssh-agent were being seen first. All I had to do was to disable the use of ssh-agent inside of the ssh-as.sh script, like so:

#!/bin/bash
set -e
set -u
 
unset SSH_AUTH_SOCK
ssh -i $SSH_KEYFILE $@

That did the trick for me. Hope that helps someone else out there as well!

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[Tech] Running the cacti cookbook under Ubuntu

2013-07-03T06:46:53Z

So something I’ve been loving lately as I dive into the world of DevOps is the large community that Opscode has built up around Chef. While Puppet and Chef aim towards solving the same problem, and have many similarities in thought towards solutions (and many differences, of course), one of the swaying factors for many people like myself is the community. Puppet mostly gave me the tools to reinvent the wheel for my infrastructure; Chef gives me the tools to make a wheel and a shop full of free wheels already made. Sometimes you need to do a bit of work to make it fit, but sometimes you can just hook it up and go. That’s an invaluable thing in today’s fast paced IT world.

My “itch” to scratch of today was Cacti. I’ve been having some problems with the local Comcast connection, and the temperature has been rising here in the PNW, and as a result my mind has returned towards getting my local network monitoring set back up. And indeed, this is a great chance to set up a local testbed for Chef work unrelated to my day job. So I got Nagios and rsyslog bootstrapped with Chef here at home yesterday and worked on Cacti today.

(I got a little derailed when I found out that for some reason my Linux box’s swap partition had an incorrect entry in /etc/fstab. After fixing that, I got an error when trying to turn swap back on:
swapon: /dev/sda5: read swap header failed: Invalid argument
This article pointed me to the solution:
mkswap /dev/sda5; swapon -a
That recreated the swap header and then I was able to enable it and have a stable system again.)

There was already a cookbook for Cacti, but it looks like it was designed for Redhat package names and file paths. I spent some time stepping through things and making it work with Ubuntu. For the most part, it was a matter of taking some hard-coded settings, replacing them with attributes, and setting the default values for those attributes to be the same as the old hard-coded values. This allows me to then override them locally, and anyone else already using the cookbook will see no change. I did add a few platform-specific checks, for things like the Ubuntu package names.

In all likelihood, anyone running a Debian system can probably change the spots I added Ubuntu support and extend them for Debian support as well (since most of the core Ubuntu packages either come from or get merged upstream into Debian). However, I don’t have a Debian test environment yet, so I didn’t want to make assumptions. It’s on the list of things to get up and running in a VM… CentOS, Oracle Linux, and Debian.

Here’s the role that I ended up with, when all was said and done. In my case, this server is only available over the internal network, so I didn’t need SSL support.

{
  "name": "cacti-server",
  "description": "Role to configure Cacti server.",
  "json_class": "Chef::Role",
  "chef_type": "role",
  "default_attributes": {
  },
  "override_attributes": {
    "cacti": {
      "user": "www-data",
      "group": "www-data",
      "cron_minute": "*",
      "apache2": {
        "conf_dir": "/etc/apache2/conf.d",
        "doc_root": "/var/www",
        "ssl": {
          "force": false,
          "enabled": false
        }
      }
    }
  },
  "run_list": [
    "recipe[cacti::server]",
    "recipe[cacti::spine]"
  ],
  "env_run_lists": {
  }
}

I sent over a pull request to get the changes merged in, but until then feel free to grab the cookbook from github (note that you’ll want the ubuntu branch). If you’re using Berkshelf, you can add this to your Berksfile:

cookbook 'cacti', github: 'stormerider/chef-cacti', branch: 'ubuntu'

I hope this helps someone else!

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[Public] Reading this year...

2013-06-30T03:42:54Z

So, I've been doing a lot of reading this year. I'm tracking my progress over on Goodreads, as part of the 2013 Reading Challenge. For those that haven't known me long, until sometime last year, I had actually gotten to the point that I had actually stopped reading completely. Between my eyeglasses prescription being horribly out of date, and my arthritis in my hands making it physically painful to hold a mass market book (nevermind the hardcover monstrosities that I love so dearly)... I just couldn't do it anymore.

Some lovely friends of ours from Romance Divas (a site that elialshadowpine and I help admin at) ended up sending us a Nook Color out of the blue as a thank you for all that we had done. I'd been considering getting one, but at the time I was still a contractor at Livemocha and dealing with insurance (and Drake *sigh*), so I didn't think I'd be able to afford it anytime soon.

It made a huge, huge difference in our lives. We rapidly prioritized getting elialshadowpine one of her own, so we didn't end up squabbling over them (which I'm ashamed to admit did happen initially. I was still on / recovering from the prednisone at the time, I believe).

This year I wanted to read even more, so I set a goal of 250 books. So far, I've gotten 158 down.. which sounds a bit more impressive than it actually is, as a bunch of those have been comics, novellas, and short stories. To give you a better idea, let me show you some graphs from Goodreads:

( cut for images )

As you can see, there's a significant discrepancy. Lately I've actually been reading on an iPad 3 which I have on loan from my work, which is working out really nicely with the size and weight (and it can handle streaming video, where the Nook Color kind of choked on that). That's been a big bonus for getting into comics, because the added screen real-estate makes a big difference (especially on PDFs).

I've really been loving the BN store, it's really easy to pick books up at 2am without needing to leave the house. There have been a few incidents of "I dont remember buying $50 worth of books last night, but I was on Ambien", but not really many... and elialshadowpine's done the same thing once or twice, so I don't feel bad. The Seattle Public Library has an amazing digital selection as well (including of digital comics, too, which is all kinds of awesome!), and since I have a job in Seattle I have a card through there and the local Timberland library (which doesn't have nearly the same kind of selection, but occasionally comes in handy). I've ended up reading a LOT of books borrowed from SPL, and I'm really grateful for them.

And really? I owe the fact that I can still enjoy reading to some amazing friends who surprised me more than I will ever be able to thank them enough for.

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[Gaming] Xbox 360 recommendations?

2013-06-30T01:35:43Z

So our housemate Grey (moonbeamdanser) has an Xbox360 downstairs, and I'm wondering what we should look into in terms of games. elialshadowpine and I are both prone to tendinitis, so games that require button mashing are not a good thing. The box is, last I knew, not connected to the network, but that's just a matter of digging up a long ethernet cable (it doesn't have a wifi receiver due to the cost, but the wired setup is viable at this point... it's just a matter of spoons to do it). We also don't have a current XBL subscription; we might pick one up if we find it useful.

Personally I like RPGs and adventure games. Multiplayer would be nice as well. We also have either Guitar Hero or RockBand, not sure which, but I think the guitar needs to be cleaned. Just not sure if I'm coordinated enough to do something like that. I don't believe that it has a Kinect bar.

Things with demos are a plus, so we can try them out and see if we like them. I know that Craigslist is a good source of cheap used games as well. I just haven't been sure what to look for in the first place.

Thankies!

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[Tech] Small, easy billing system for consultancy

2013-06-30T01:28:44Z

So, something I do is that I provide web hosting / tech consulting on the side for some friends of mine. Most of them are free, but a few of them are paying clients. Most of the people who do pay do so on a yearly basis, and with my memory, that leads me to often forgetting to invoice them. One client usually pays around tax return time, and just recently had a tech issue that he reached out to me on, and while we were talking he asked if he'd paid this year or not (he hadn't). While looking up whether he had, I realized that there was a whole year that I missed from him, a few years back-- obviously longer than I would like to bring up at this point.

I'm wondering if anyone knows of a simple, easy to use billing system that I could use for my small client base. I don't have the time or inclination to learn something like MS Money or Quickbooks or the like; I don't need anything nearly that complicated. Just something that can kick off on a monthly basis and send out invoices as needed. If I do it right, I can even have it do so for some of my free clients, with a discount applied; that way if they choose to toss me a donation towards hosting costs (as some have asked to do from time to time) they can, but they don't need to since the invoiced sum will be $0. Or one of the clients I have has offered to pay me, but I can't be their full-time on call person (my choice, spoons and all), but then I could invoice them when I do do things for them (updating WordPress and Invision Board mainly).

Operating system doesn't matter; I have Windows, Mac, and Linux available to me. Something web based or designed to run in the background (ie, not relying on me to remember to run it) on a scheduled basis would be preferable. If it can hook into Paypal to actually send the invoices, even better, since that's how I take payments.

Thanks for any suggestions.

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[Coding] Using my version of htop-osx

2013-06-28T00:58:17Z

I've been futzing with htop-osx in my spare time to add support for CPU temperature monitoring and fan speed... these are things I like to know when I'm using a laptop, and I figured other folks here might as well. If you use homebrew, just do: brew edit htop-osx and paste in the values from https://gist.github.com/stormerider/5804653 and then brew install htop-osx (or if you already have it installed, brew upgrade htop-osx).

Otherwise, you can clone the fork from https://github.com/stormerider/htop-osx.git and build it manually. Once you've done so, run htop and hit F2 to enter setup, navigate over to Available Meters, and add them to whichever column you want (left or right). I normally make htop suid anyways to be able to get full process details, so I'm not sure if that's required to probe the SMC keys for temperature/fan speed, but it's possible.

(Most folks will only have one fan; the newer MacBook Pros and the 27" iMacs only do, I believe the Airs as well. Older MBPs have two, like the loaner I used when getting my MBP repaired. Some Mac Pros-- the desktops pre-iMac integration-- have up to 4 fans. The code currently only displays 3 of them, the 4th being the PSU fan.)

( Cut for screenshot )

Image also on FB, so let me know if there are issues with it as well.

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[Public] Duke, the cuddle!cat

2013-06-28T00:49:32Z

In more cute news, Duke has really taken to being a cuddle cat with me. Most of the cats, if you put your arm around them (or worse, over them), they freak out or at least squirm away and zoom off. Him? He just shifts around until he gets comfortable, and starts motor-purring. I've taken to pulling one of my pillows down and putting it at an angle to the others so he can curl up on part of it while I rest my head against the part that angles against the other pillows, and nuzzle into his fur while he purrs away.

He also seems to like it if he has one of his paws over my arm as it's around him, so it usually ends up with my arm underneath his belly and between his front legs. Often with his head resting on my arm or hand. So precious to feel him plop his head down on me, and feel his breath against my skin.

I've taken to bringing him to bed when I go to try and sleep, and he's gotten so used to it that he often comes in when he hears the sleep music on the iPod and the AC turned on, jumping up on the bed and purring away.

I was reading on my iPad the other day (it looks like I'm sleeping in the picture, but just how tired I've been with this migraine and the angle the shot was taken and where I was looking) and cuddling him, and elialshadowpine came in and managed to grab a picture of him and me using the new Droid 4 that I got from work. Tossing under a cut since it's a large picture:

( cut for size, but cute cuddle cat beneath )

Let me know if you can't see it because Facebook makes you log in or something strange; I linked to their CDN so I think it should be fine even if you're logged out but I'm not 100% sure.

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[Health] Argle bargle

2013-06-28T00:38:27Z

So I found out why my neuro wasn't getting back to me... they were, the Asterisk (trixbox) phone system just wasn't emailing me the voicemails. Doh! Apparently when I set it up I used an old account that hasn't been active in 3 years but Comcast only pruned it out of their system somewhat recently-ish. Yeah... so much confusion entailed. Fixed that, now I'm going to add a Nagios monitor to actually *test* email delivery + reception on an automated basis, so I get notified if it gets fucked up again.

So, regarding the neuro... I have my appointment for Botox rescheduled (yes, it is a migraine treatment, because migraines are vasculomuscular spasms, and Botox helps freeze the muscles... that's my layperson understanding, at least). They also called in a 3 day course of prednisone to break the current 5-day migraine I've been dealing with. They said if I don't see an improvement after day 2 to call them and they'll go from there to see if I need to go to the ER or whatnot.

I have to say, I'm scared as hell to take the prednisone. I know the effect it had on my mind when I was on it for a year, and while I know that a 3 day course is not likely to have the same kind of effect (and certainly not the same extent, given how it gradually altered my personality)... I don't want to become that person again. EVER. It turned me into a raging asshole, nitpicking over everything, always needing to be right, dismissing everyone else, and turning all of my ASD symptoms/triggers up to beyond max.

While that helped make me realize (*after the fact*) what those problems are and how to cope with them better... I do NOT WANT TO BE LIKE THAT AGAIN. It nearly cost me my marriage with elialshadowpine. The only way I'm taking those pills is if she thinks it's the best thing, and I'm sure as hell not doing anything longer than three days. I don't trust it, and I don't trust myself not to become my evil!asshole self again while under the influence of it.

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[Public] Dreamwidth folks

2013-05-20T09:21:55Z

I'm going to prune folks whom are on my DreamWidth reading list and on my LiveJournal list. I'd really rather pay more attention to DW than LJ (especially with the tumblr-flist on the horizon), so if you're wondering why you've suddenly been unfriended, that's the reason why. I'm not pruning anyone else (that hasn't deleted their accounts, at least) this go around.

Thanks!

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Review for The Long Way Home by Jessica Scott

2013-03-18T02:57:23Z

I recently had the pleasure of getting a digital advance reading copy of The Long Way Home from Jessica Scott in exchange for a review. I’ve been following her writing career since she released Because of You, which I had bought at the time but hadn’t had a chance to read yet given the size of my TBR pile. She’s active on Facebook and I know a good number of the people she’s working with in her writing career, such as editor Sarah Frantz (whose website I host) and cover artist Shawntelle Madison (who is an active member of Romance Divas, a community of romance writers that I help administrate).

I have to say that I don’t typically read non-fiction books pretty much ever, with the exception of writing reference books or technical reference books. I never was one for the many biographies that my parents had me read while I was being home schooled, and since I’ve been on my own, I’ve never had a lack of fiction books to occupy my time. Quite the opposite; I’ve had a huge lack of time compared to the mounds of books in my long TBR pile (somewhere around 400 books at this point according to GoodReads).

( Read more... )

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Creating and managing secure passwords

2013-02-11T23:53:17Z

If you’re like me, you probably have dozens of accounts on various different websites. Hopefully that also means you have dozens of passwords, right? Using one password is one of the quickest ways to have your entire digital life go up in flames, because most sites will track your account by your email address (which is often used as your username, or can be used to find your username), and this can quickly become a series of cascading failures. Attackers will leapfrog from one system to another, and if they get access to your email account itself, then it’s usually game over with how most password reset forms work. For a very scary account of how bad things like this can be, check out this article here covering what happened to a Wired reporter.

But who can keep track of multiple passwords in their head in a truly secure fashion? I know I can’t. For a long time, I used a three-tier system: one quick and dirty password for sites I didn’t care about, another for sites that I used a lot, and then a few specific passwords for individual sites (like my email) that I wanted to keep ultra-secure. But as time wore on, I realized that some of the sites that I considered disposable became anything but, and human nature (read: laziness ) meant that I wasn’t “reclassifying” them with a newer tier of password security.

( Enter: KeePass )

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Comics Help Requests

2012-09-30T02:43:23Z

Comic fans, I need some help. Most of the superhero comics I've seen either animated or live action (Smallville, Lois & Clark) or in the movies (and recent ones aside, most of the old movies were crap).

I'm specifically looking as to where to start with comics for (least stars is highest preference, since some of this I can get from more animated shows I haven't dug into yet):

* Captain America & Winter Soldier
* Hawkeye & Black Widow
* Maria Hill
* Green Arrow (love him on Smallville and Young Justice, looking forward to Arrow)
* Supergirl / Kara-el
* Huntress & Artemis
* The Invisible Woman / Sue Storm? (F4)
* Black Canary
* Zatanna & her dad / Dr Fate
** Iron man
** Azazel
** Black Panther & Storm
** Beast
** Miss Martian / Megan More
*** Superman
*** Batman

Crossover I'm most interested in is the Avengers/Xmen Superhuman Registration Act.

I know that im probably a prime target for DC's New 52, which would introduce me to all the origin stories I'm curious about, but I've heard so many bad things about it. Is it bad because of the lack of important characters who aren't white/hetero-normative, or because the writing itself reflects badly in the social justice angles? Because if its the former, then I think ill just curse the administration while supporting the good writers of good characters and hope that the label expands to be more inclusive in the future.

That said, I could stand to spend more time in Marvel-verse anyways...

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This? This I have to share.

2012-09-03T17:07:46Z

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/03/sports/girl-is-pioneer-at-quarterback-for-florida-high-school.html?_r=1&smid=fb-share

(NYT article, may require registration to view, but worked fine without for me.)

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[Health] Eye exam

2012-08-02T13:13:37Z

Reposting an aggregate of Facebook posts from last night since I know a bunch of people on DW/LJ don't have me on Facebook... Also, gives me the chance to add Wiki article links.

So, back from the optometrist. Long appointment, eyes still dilated so I have my text size at crazy levels to type this.

a) I have small cataracts. They have either just started forming, or have always been there and simply been missed before. Something to keep an eye on.

b) My right eye, which has always sucked and was lazy as a child, is apparently lazy once more. Not much they can do about it; it's really only something they can correct as a child. Joy. [Clarification: I had eye surgery to correct my amblyopia when I was 2 1/2 years old. It just never got up to par with my left eye, and now it's gone lazy again because my left eye is more predominant.]

c) My prescription from 2008? Horribly, horribly out of date. For the last decade plus, I've had minor tweaks and twiddles to my prescription. This is MAJOR. I'm a full _diopter_ off on each lens (overcorrecting on one lens and undercorrecting on the other). They think this could be causing some of my migraines. The lady I was speaking to went as far as to say "Want to take my glasses home? They'd probably do you more good than yours would." Ouch.

d) New doc has a number of questions about my glaucoma / Pigmentary Dispersion Syndrome (PDS) diagnosis from when I was a child/teen. He doesn't see virtually any pigment on the cornea-- between "trace and 1", definitely not what he expected. It's also apparently not possible for the pigment molecules to filter out through the Canals of Schlemm; they're too big. They can get absorbed and broken down by the eye, but they shouldn't filter out; in people with PDS, even those who have gotten LPIs (laser peripheral iridotomies), they expect to see a lot more pigment build up.

Going to see if I can get my records from Dr. Moverman, the doc I saw back when I was living with my parents, who diagnosed me and performed the LPIs (which, everyone who has seen them has commented on what a clean job he did on them). The exact details of why he did them need to be sorted out, but they fixed the problem I had at the time and he did a phenomenal job, so that part isn't in question. Just whether he got the reasoning wrong, or I remember how he explained things wrong. Given how many years ago, I'm thinking (and hoping) the latter.

e) He was also unable to see where the pigment would have been worn off of the iris. He shone a light through the pupil and checked for light reflecting off of the back of the eye through spots in the iris, and found very minimal "transillumination"... also calling into question why the LPIs were done.

f) He's having me come back in a week to check my IOP (intraocular pressure) again, and to do a full visual field test to get a baseline (I just did a basic matrix test, apparently).

g) He also measured the width of my corneas, which is something I don't remember any other doctors doing (and it's something he's been doing for the last 15 years, so this is not new. Oh, did I mention he specializes in glaucoma? BONUS!). Apparently, I have thick corneas, and cornea thickness is not something that really varies with age. Average is something like 5.45 I think he said, mine were about 6.30. This is actually a good thing, because when they measure IOPs they actually press against the cornea; the thicker the cornea, the more they need to adjust the IOP value. So for me, an IOP of 20 actually means 16. (Granted my IOP of 60 as a teen is still CRAZY HIGH even corrected, but still... means my more recent readings are much more normal than I thought.)

All in all... I really like this doc. Think I'm going to keep him. Now I just need to see when I can find the money to get a new pair of glasses... and then endure the "fun" part-- adjusting to a new prescription. I fully expect that I'll have a _wicked_ headache for a few days with the new script once I get them...

Have to say, the cataract part scares the shit out of me, especially since Grandma Hill had them. One of my biggest fears after dealing with my eye issues as a kid was that I would go blind. And the doctor at Cambridge Health did a pretty comprehensive exam back in 2005-ish when they were checking to see if my optical issues could be causing my migraines, so I would be surprised if he missed them. Which if they weren't there then...

I had Dr Rouse write down the type of cataract for me (which I can't read at the moment, but I believe it is "anterior athrosclerosis"). He did comment on the fact that I'd been on prednisone, which can cause cataracts, but usually a specific form ("capsulary"?), and this isn't that. Could still have been from the prednisone, though, just not likely. [Update: "Anterior cortical sclerois". Close. :) No wiki link available yet, I need to do some research on this...]

They did an optical CT and my retina/optic nerve are great, so that's at least not a concern right now (previously it was, high IOPs can damage the optic nerve). But the idea of going blind is just my personal demon, given how much I've been fighting eye problems all my life.

Anyways, the important part to remember is that this is now something I know about and can work to correct the prescription issues, and monitor the cataracts, and get the old records from when my LPIs were done, and sort out the confusion around why they were done and what I need to monitor for the future. Forewarned is forearmed, and now I know I can't go a few years between eye appointments, and I shouldn't skimp and go to fucking Walmart to get my eyes checked out, I should have a real doctor look at them instead of an assembly-line rubber-stamper.

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Time for a change…

2012-07-19T00:57:06Z

It’s been a rough set of years. I’ve been dealing with a lot of health issues, and I’ve gotten sicker and sicker. Between dealing with the pain and the side-effects of the pain meds, writing had to be mothballed, because I just couldn’t handle it. I was able to think logically, but thinking creatively was just beyond my capabilities. A lot has changed during these years; my health, my identity, my job, which coast I live on, and I’ve been feeling that a lot lately. I started on a new med a few months back that has helped me amazingly; I still deal with a lot of problems, but I’ve been able to pull full hours at the day job, and I’ve started brainstorming on my WIPs again, which is incredible… I had feared that my ability to write might get lost forever. I haven’t actually sat down and created new words yet, but I’m working on getting back up to speed on my WIP Blood of the Goddess.

As part of the identity changes, my wife and I recently discussed names. We’d been wanting to change our legal names for some time now, but we had some mis-communication around last names. We ended up choosing Blackthorne together just recently; it’s what we want to have as our legal last name. It’s going to be our family name. It’s also part of what I want to publish under. I bounced around ideas about domain names and pen names and such with the folks at RD and with Nonny and she suggested Jas Blackthorne, which really fits me. I’ve gone by Jas as an abbreviation for the character name I play in online games for years, and it’s a gender-neutral name. Gender-neutrality is important to me, because I self-identify as genderqueer at this point. This has taken a bit to come to grips with, and I’m still figuring out the details on that. So I’m moving away from the pen name Alan Morgan to Jas Blackthorne instead.

I had originally intended to use a female pen name when I got to publishing my romance / erotica. The more I thought about it over the years, the lest I liked that idea, however. Readers who find out that I’m male-bodied will feel duped, and that is a compelling reason to not go down that path. Some readers may feel duped that I’m using a gender-neutral pen name, but if you’re one of them, I’m sorry; gender-neutral is closer to the truth for me than male is. So I’m retiring Aeryn Morgan and re-posting a few bits of the content I had on that site up here.

I’m also going to be working on overhauling this site; it needs a face lift. The autumn leaves look pretty, but it’s time for something new, to better match the new identity.

The winds of change keep blowing…

Mirrored from Jas Blackthorne.

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[Health] 30 Things About My Invisible Illnesses

2011-12-28T04:40:00Z

So, I've been meaning to post this for a while, but finally found the spoons to do so today. It's health related, but I'm going to leave this unfiltered because it's got a lot of good/important info in it, if you're up to reading it.

( 30 Things About My Invisible Illnesses )

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[Unfiltered] Dreamwidth question?

2011-12-24T04:08:26Z

I'm seeing a bunch of my cross-posts stuck right now. I had "Disable Auto-Formatting" turned on, and I went to disable that for the last two posts, because they're walls of text. But they look fine in DW and are un-altered in LJ. I did more edits to the MUD post and it's still unchanged. I turned on notifications for cross-post success as well as failures, and did an edit, and see nothing.

Is there a page somewhere that I can check the status of the cross-post queue? I know you can check the import queue, but I'm not importing my journal. (And I dunno if xposting is affected by the import queue or not.)

Thanks, DWeamers. :)

Edit: Seems like they're going through now... probably just backed up for a bit with all the new people coming into DW. Also, I forgot that the auto-formatting setting can be set by xposting but will not update with an xpost, so I had to edit it manually on the LJ posts. But my question about seeing a status page for the queue still stands. :)

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[Unfiltered] Dreamwidth...

2011-12-24T01:13:22Z

If you migrate over to Dreamwidth and you're on my flist, can you let me know so I can friend you there and update my filters?

Thanks! Test.

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[Unfiltered] Tech buying recommendation request: cooling pad

2011-12-20T13:00:53Z

Question for folks... what do you recommend for a laptop cooling pad? I need to replace the one I have and I want to get a decent one, since I spend a lot of time on my laptop these days. I know to avoid Targus like the plague (since they die quickly for a LOT of people), but I'm not sure what to look for. Thoughts?

Edit: I should add that I have the Antec notebook cooler pad currently, and the problem is that the cord is removable so you can put it away inside this little compartment. However, it doesn't have a good connection so unless you wiggle it around it doesn't get power. This has gotten worse over time and I pretty much have to hold it in a certain (uncomfortable) position to get the fans running. The aluminum pad itself helps, but nowhere near as much as when the fans were running regularly.

I know I haven't been posting much on DW/LJ lately, but I've been really busy. Between the MUD, working on the Plex app for the Roku, the occasional item for Romance Divas, the occasional thing for my WoW guild, and work for Livemocha, I've been pretty busy. I'm trying to get a bit more organized, and I picked up a Pro membership to Remember the Milk to help out with that. I like it, but it seems like the sharing feature is kind of weak... when I share things with paul_zap it seems like he doesn't get an email notification that there's a task shared with him. And while it's great for me to manage my own tasks, it would really be better if it helped with managing tasks across the entire household as well.

I have more to post about, specifically with the MUD, but that will be a separate post under filter.

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[Unfiltered] Previous post was filtered...

2011-10-25T19:41:53Z

I just made a post to the sexuality / family filters. If you are not on them and would like to be, please leave a comment and I'll let you know if it's ok with me or if I'm not comfortable with it.

Thanks. I'll keep doing this for a bit while I get people properly settled into the various filters.

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[General] Health filter...

2011-09-22T21:00:21Z

I've made a couple of posts on the health filter lately. If you're not on it and want to be, please toss a comment here and I'll add you.

As a reminder, here's a list of my filters. Comment to be added on any of them that you want, and I'll do so (or let you know why not).

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[Unfiltered] Fall TV...

2011-09-14T15:42:28Z

So the Fall TV season is just around the corner (or in some cases, just starting). I feel a little weird about this this year-- normally I really look forward to it, but there's a lot of shows that I just don't know if I want to follow this year. Warning; spoilers will be mentioned in my explanations if you aren't current on the shows.

( Shows I'm definitely interested in: )

( Shows I'm unsure about: )

( New shows I'm going to give a try: )

One thing that I'm really happy about is that I'm seeing episodes from last Fall on CBS showing up on Amazon Unbox (like Hawaii 50). CBS has been off of Unbox for the last 2 or so years, so seeing them return there is quite welcome. I know they've been on iTunes, but I won't buy TV from iTunes until they change their re-download policy (I don't feel like tying up gigs of HD space on my computer because they have a download-once-only policy). Rentals are one thing (though I can't stream them to my TV, I can still watch them on my laptop or desktop) but purchases are another.

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[Unfiltered] Shopping for a new monitor...

2011-08-15T16:23:34Z

So, I've had my current monitor for 2 years. It's already had to be RMA'd once, and is in the process of being RMA'd again. It's a great monitor when it works, but I want a monitor that works reliably. 2 failures in 2 years is about 2 too many in my book.

The one I have right now is a Hannspree HF257H. It's a 25" monitor with 2 HDMI ports and 1 VGA port. It also has built-in speakers, but I never bother to use those. I lose the subwoofer if I do that ;)

I'm not looking to get this anytime soon; the warranty runs out in a year so I want to spend some time doing research and saving up before I make the jump.

Thanks for any recommendations.

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[Unfiltered] Signal Boost: Missing Woman

2011-08-12T05:00:27Z

Originally posted by jamileigh17 at Signal Boost: Missing woman

Boosting the signal, as this is Lacey's cousin, and she just heard about this today.... If anyone knows anything, you know what to do, and boost signals further if you feel it might help.

PONCHATOULA - Police are asking for your help in looking for 27-year-old Kristie Woods.

Kristie hasn't been seen or heard from in about two weeks. People close to her say this behavior isn't typical of Kristie.

Her last known address is 20395 Esterbrook Rd.

She is about 5'5", around 135 lbs., has hazel eyes and brown hair.

She also has a tattoo of her name on one of her legs and stars tattooed on her feet.

Anyone with information on Kristie Woods' whereabouts should contact Detective Dale Athmann at (985)902-2088.

Kristie Woods has been missing since July 16th! She is from Ponchatoula, Louisiana. She is 27 years old, Born Oct. 27, 1984. She has dark brown eyes, and dark brown hair. She has a tattoo on her upper right arm. She was last seen driving a silver Jeep Cherokee.

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