I am in the process of friends-locking this journal, so if you think you know me and think you should be on my friends list, please leave a comment in this entry with details on how I know you.  Comments will be screened, so please feel free to leave details.

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In case anyone is wondering why I'm a Christian who thinks homosexuality is okay, here's an excellent article using Biblical evidence for why modern homosexuality is not condemned in the Bible.

I'll leave this post unlocked so you can forward people to it.

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Quote of the Day

"I like living in a neighborhood where I can say, 'hey, Colin, go get a polearm' and he does." - etherial 

Current Mood: amused

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Sunshine!

Please tell me it's not an April Fool's Day Joke...

Current Mood: excited

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Ada Lovelace Day - Sophie Germain
For all my many friends, both on lj and not, who are mathematicians, scientists, engineers, or technologists of some flavor, I give you my entry for Ada Lovelace Day. 

Marie-Sophie Germain was born April 1, 1776 in Paris.  Her parents were successful middle class merchants, and encouraged the discussion of politics and philosophy as young Sophie was growing up during the French Revolution.  However, they were concerned when she turned to study of mathematics and tried to keep her from her studies, believing that such a subject was not for women.  When she persevered by studying under her covers at night with hidden candles for light, they relented. 

Germain was never able to obtain formal schooling in mathematics due to the policies of the day, but instead studied mathematics on her own.  She obtained lecture notes from friends, and began correspondences with a number of famous mathematicians of the day, including Lagrange, Legendre and Gauss.  While she was able to accomplish much this way, her lack of formal training may have caused some of her problems in receiving recognition. 

Germain began working in number theory, but soon turned to elasticity.  She was the only entrant for a prize offered by the Paris Academy of Sciences in 1811, but did not win.  The prize was offered again, two years later, and this time she received an honorable mention for the improvement in her work.  By 1815 she had found a solution and received the prize in spite of errors in the method and proof.  Here her lack of rigorous training may have led to the errors in question.  She tried for many years to correct her mistakes, but never did manage to obtain recognition for her work.  Others, building on her work, made great strides in elasticity.  Their names are listed at the base of the Eiffel Tower as their work led to its construction, but Germain is not among them.

Germain turned her attention back to number theory, and here she made great strides toward a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.  She proved the theorem for all primes less than 100 and for several special cases.  She also outlined a general strategy for proving the theorem.  This strategy, while not ultimately fruitful, laid groundwork for many other mathematicians' work on the theorem.  Most importantly, she proved the theorem for an infinite class of primes now called Germain primes. 

Germain was never able to attend a university and earn a degree, and passed away before receiving an honorary degree from the University of Göttingen.  She was supported by her family throughout her life, since at that time she could not obtain a professional position.  In spite of this she published a number of papers and was acknowledged for her contributions by a number of leading mathematicians.

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HELP!
Hi, this is Rosinavs' roommate doc_smiley,
Rosina and Etherial are panicking right now because they need 2 skeins of yarn to finish her wedding shawl.
We've just found out it's been discontinued and need help finding some ASAP.

For those of you into textiles and willing to help:
Royal Bamboo, Italian collection
Color 05
100% Bamboo
(Lot 16, I doubt this is important but I will put it here for completeness sake)
Plymouth Yarn company

R&E are leaving town this weekend, and so can't search themselves.

Please help us.
Thanks


Current Mood: Panic!

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Good God
www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/05/turkish-girl-buried-alive_n_450019.html

Current Mood: shocked

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Too many medical issues
You may recall me posting last week that my aunt and uncle were in a car accident and I found out about it on Facebook.  Other than a couple of phone calls to his kids, all my info on their recovery has been through Facebook.  My uncle went home earlier this week after surgery to repair a broken bone under his eye.  My cousin/godmother is taking care of him.  My aunt has had two surgeries, one this morning, to repair broken vertebrae.  Luckily she was not paralyzed by the fractures.  Her surgery today went well.  I have no idea when she'll be well enough to go home.  I have no idea if they will be well enough to come to my wedding.  It sounds like my uncle probably will be able to, but my aunt may not.  I hope he's willing to come without her.

In other news, many of you have seen me knitting baby hats and booties and freaking out about the fact that one of my first cousins, who is not much older than I, is a grandmother.  (She's not the first one to become a grandparent, but the others are so much older than I that it didn't freak me.)  In any case, her daughter has preeclampsia and is about to be induced.  Grandchild #2 will hopefully make an appearance soon.  (Grandchild #1 was born in October.  I found out on Facebook.)

I need to get knitting.

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A friend of mine from high school posted a link to this article on facebook.  It's a conservative case for gay marriage, and is very well thought and written.

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About the SnB
In answer to the various questions people have asked,

1. While this first instance is on a Monday, I am also open to Tuesdays as an option.  Please contact me (if you have not already) to let me know your day preference.  This event will not happen on the first Monday or first Tuesday of the month as I have other things happening on those days.  Wednesdays and Thursdays are right out.  Weekends are a little too volatile to schedule something regularly.

2. Yes, I can put this on the Camelot Reservations calendar and the Google calendar.  I will do so once I have dates for future instances of this.  If someone in Mosaic wants this to appear in any Mosaic internal calendars, that's fine.

3. Yes, I do have cats.  They do leave allergens, they are unlikely to make an appearance if there are many people here.  Please medicate accordingly.

4. No, I will not host this in a common house.  The entire reason for having something regularly scheduled in my house is so it gets cleaned more often.  Sorry if your allergies prevent you from coming.  My allergies need me to dust more often.

Any other questions?

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I'm pretty sure I've posted about this before, but what would you do if you had enough money to do anything you wanted?
( My answerCollapse )
I'd buy the house for sale across the street. I'd rent the current place out to doc_smiley . I'd buy as many of the houses in my neighborhood as they need me to buy and rent or resell them. I'd take a year and learn how to invest. Then I'd start a cycle where every year I spend 1/3 of it going back to school, 1/3 traveling, and 1/3 going to SCA events. The balance would vary from year to year, and some of the travel would be mixed in with SCA events, and some of the going to school would be mixed in with SCA events. Whether I spent fall or spring semester going to school would depend on the courses I want to take and when they are offered. I would spend as much time tutoring for charity during the semesters I'm going to school as I can fit in.

I'd want to take classes in statistics, combinatorics, modern physics, organic chemistry, history, painting, sculpture, and art history. Oh, and genetics.

I'd have a rocking wedding, and I'd fly in as many of my out of town friends and relatives as wanted to attend and pay for hotel rooms for them. I'd fly my nieces and nephew and younger cousins to come visit (and their parents, if their parents won't let them come visit alone) and haul them all over Boston to all the historical sites as well as to fun places for kids.

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Stuff I want to do with the house
This is a list of stuff I or my roommates want to do with the house.

( Cut for the uninterestedCollapse )

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Pattern/dressmaking advice
( Cut for those uninterestedCollapse )

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More accomplishments du jour
( What I accomplished after my last accomplishment post (I can cut it now!)Collapse )

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Accomplishments du jour
I need to start up the lists of things I accomplish each day again. The hard thing with being unemployed is that it's a summer that never ends. I really need to get things done and have no framework in which to get them done, which is hard for me. Thus I must make the framework.

Sorry for the lack of cut for this, lj won't let me use rich text and I forget the html tag for cuts. Skip reading if you're not interested in the mundania.

1. scooped litter box
2. did 1.5 loads of laundry (1.5 were done last night)
3. folded 2 of 3 loads (one was still in the dryer from last night).
4. put away 2 of 3 loads
5. paid bills
6. checked on storage unit payment - it's fine in spite of my credit card deciding to lower my limit to my current balance.
7. Said balance got a big payment to I'm nowhere near the limit.
8. helped my neighbor put up a shower caddy with my handy hacksaw, earning a beer for my troubles.

I think I need to add eating lunch to the list and thinking of what to make for dinner.

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Lists and things
So, since my neighbors are now the Heirs to the Crown,

1. They have chosen the reign of Henry VII, 1485-1509, as their inspiration for their reign and clothing.

2. 1485 is damn close the the nebulous time of my persona, 1460-1480.

3. I have no clothing yet for my persona.

4. I have no excuse any longer for having clothing for my persona.

5. I have this pattern for late 15th century clothing that I bought at GNE.

6. I have a good sized stash of linen and linen blend fabrics, if they're suitable.

7. My roommate has fake fur he may wish to unload.

8. I think I'll be making a dress in a time period vaguely suitable to my persona and the upcoming reign.

9. I'm going to need help. The most complicated things I've sewn so far are T-tunics with trim and contrasting facing and a sideless surcoat that required some serious mental geometry, but not very complicated sewing.

10. I'm terrible at handsewing. Funny, because I'm pretty good at embroidery. Hopefully I can machine sew most of it.


The next few lists are things I want under an lj cut, but I don't rememer the html code for them and my Very Old Computer seems to not want to allow me the option of rich text editing. Thus they will be in separate posts that will more easily allow people to skip over them.

I have a cat napping on either side of me.

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Based on the many posts occuring recently I have written the following letter to my elected state officials.  I have edited it slightly so that I can post it publicly.  Feel free to borrow all or some of the language herein to write to your own elected officials.  Also, since I'm making this public, feel free to send along a link to this post.  Since many of you live in MA, you can use this site to find your elected state officials.  You can also use it to find out where to vote next week.  If anyone wants to use other translations of the Bible, there are bunches available here.  By the way, also from reading the Bible, I don't think that homosexuality is immoral, but that's the subject of another post.


Greetings to my elected state public officials,
 
I vote.  Most of my friends vote.  One item many of us are concerned with right now is the fact that propositions banning gay marriage are on the ballot in several other states.  Because of this, many people are posting the following sentence in their blogs: "Copy this sentence into your LiveJournal if you're in a heterosexual marriage, and you don't want it "protected" by the bigots who think that gay marriage hurts it somehow."  Most of these people are residents of [state], some of these people are also residents of [city], and some of whom are in my precinct.  I hope they also write to you on this issue.

While I am not married, I may get married someday, and I am heterosexual.  I see no way that my marriage could be hurt by someone else's marriage.  What will sanctify my marriage is how my husband and I treat each other, not whether others are allowed to marry or not.  In addition, marriage confers many rights and privileges that should be available to all people, regardless of whom they wish to marry.  The virtue of the financial and legal benefits I will gain upon marriage will be lessened if they are not enjoyed by all couples. 
 
I am a Christian.  I also read the Bible, and when I read 1 Corinthians 5:12-13 (New International Version), it says "What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside."  From reading this, I believe that it is immoral for me to judge people who do not believe the same way I do by denying them rights because I disagree with their morals.  I also base my stance on passages such as Matthew 7:1-3, Luke 6:37-38, and Romans 2:1-3. 
 
For these reasons I ask you to make a stand for equal rights for all people, no matter what personal disagreement you have with them.

[Signature]

[Mailing Address]

Current Mood: determined

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RIP Patricia Sapko Zielinsky 1932-2008
I just got back from having a beer in the closest neighborhood bar.  Unfortunately, it wasn't for my birthday, it was in memory of my Aunt Patty.  She passed away this morning from lung cancer.  The reason I had a beer in a neighborhood bar in her memory was that she owned and operated a neighborhood bar for years.  This, of course, was back when women didn't own businesses, much less work outside the home, especially when they were married with six kids.  She had to rip a few men a new one in order to get them to do business with her, but she successfully took over the bar from my grandfather and ran it for decades until she decided to retire.  She was a fantastic cook, and still found time to cook for her kids, grandkids, and church bake sales, where her  signature baked goods commanded premium prices and went fast.  I'm not sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if my mother got the spaghetti sauce recipe that I'm making tonight from her.  I know for sure that we got our family lasagne recipe from her, a recipe that the Italians who worked with my uncle thought was better than their wives'.  My aunt ran a business full-time while still caring for a physically abusive husband and six children, one of whom has a mental disability because my aunt was abused while pregnant.  However, the regulars at the bar are the ones responsible for the fact that my cousin can now hold down a job.  When my aunt had an emergency and had to leave my cousin in charge of the bar, the regulars helped her total orders, make change, and operate the cash register.  After my uncle died, my aunt got engaged soon after to an old flame, but he passed away of a heart attack before they were married.  Afterwards my aunt found a boyfriend whom she dated but never married, as her remarriage would cause her to lose her first husband's pension, without which they would not be able to afford to live.  I'm sure I'll see my pseudo-uncle at the funeral on Saturday.  With him my aunt travelled all over the US after she retired.  

She never was able to go to college, she lived through abusive situations, but she accomplished remarkable things with what she had.  Patty Zielinsky deserves to rest in peace.  Please raise a glass for her (or a bottle or can, she wasn't fancy) at a neighborhood bar in her memory.

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With friends like these...
 So first I was addicted to the white jigsaw puzzles that rufinialinked to in her lj, and now I'm addicted to nonograms that etheriallinked to in a comment to one of my earlier posts.  So that I might share the addiction, here it is:

http://www.puzzle-nonograms.com/

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 Help please?

I am trying to install a new game on my computer, since I now have time to play.  (All grades turned in as of 2:30pm yesterday.)  Unfortunately, I cannot get the setup program to actually run.  Well, it seems to start to run, but no windows appear and nothing happens.  It does seem to appear in the list of processes, but never mazkes it to the list of tasks.  One time when I restarted the computer to try to get this to work, it had the setup appear on the bottom bar half a dozen times, or however many times I had tried to start it.  Any suggestions?  

In addition, my computer does not seem to want to talk to the internet now.  This is after multiple restarts and doing all the usual things that get it to talk to the internet when it's being recalcitrant.  Then, you may ask, how am I posting this?  Ah, the beauty of a work laptop.  If all else fails, I will install the game on this, but I really want it on my computer.  After all, the work computer will go back to them eventually.

I really don't want to buy a new computer yet.  I know, it's about that time, but I want to put it off some more if possible. 

EDIT: internet is working on my computer now, I forgot the tweak of turning the wireless modem off and on.  The setup still isn't working, so switching to work laptop for the attempt.

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