I’m writing about my annual thought-experiment, so that some of you can play. I’m posting early so that the Canadians can also play on Canada Day.

Given the recent near-pass on the anti-flag-burning law, I’d like to propose the following: if you happen to see anyone wearing a flag or “USA” or anything like that over the next few days — ask them where said garment or accessory was made. (In my experience, they don’t know. I’ve never seen one actually worn that was made in the US, fwiw.)

Personally, I’m far more tired of people wearing “patriotic” gear made in some sweatshop in a third world country than I ever could be of people burning the flag. It’s faux national pride, and I think it’s time we called attention to it.

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It’s funny how you can feel a great sense of loss when someone dies that you’ve never met — and I wonder, given the number of conventions I’ve been to, how it came to be that I’d never met him. Some of my favorite books were published by Baen.

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My story, “A Sword Called Rhonda,” was published in the popular Chicks in Chainmail series from Baen books. Unfortunately, Jim’s had a stroke. While we’re all pulling for him, strokes are very serious things, especially when they leave someone in a coma for days like Jim has. Having seen my late husband in a coma from a stroke, I have at least some sense of what everyone’s going through, though grief is very personal.

From the update Patrick Nielsen Hayden forwarded, it sounds like it is Very Bad News.

So, in the spirit of Esther Friesner (the Chicks editor), we definitely want the prayers and hamster wheels spinning on this.

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Well, I missed it (busy doing things I couldn’t move in time), but I thought I’d see who used which plugins for Railsday, just to see if there were any cool new ones.
Here’s the list. (deleted because outdated)
I got it by checking out the source for all the projects and trawling through the vendor/plugins directories.

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Well, Woodworking Online is a blog about Woodworking, and the WoodNet forum thread of the week happens to be the one I started about issues with the wooden plane I made.

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Yesterday, I went up to the city to spend time at Geoffrey Grosenbach’s Rails workshop, offered by Carson Workshops. While I was already better-versed in Rails than most anyone there, there’s always things you pick up from other people, and it was an excellent recharger for the mental batteries.

I highly recommend anyone new to Rails go to the workshop when possible.

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Been fighting one off for nearly a week. Need more sleep.

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As Rick would say, “Conceptual humour at its finest.”

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I was working on a shaker oval box this weekend when the work slipped, and the knife I was using to define the swallowtails turned, cutting a 3/4″ gash on my left index finger.

I’m very fortunate: one of the guys drove me to the ER (thanks Tom), and I’ll be able to finish my boxes another day (thanks John). Surgeon says I only cut the skin and nothing critical, so five stitches later, I was ready to go home.

I’ve got a splint until Tuesday, which has halved my typing speed, but the splint will keep the wound from opening back up (the injury’s pretty close to a joint).

I blame it all on still being exhausted from the move and less aware than I could have been. I thought I was safe, but I was wrong.

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1) Colored packing tape to color-code various rooms. Way easier to see than reading some scribble that may not be legible. Obviously, this may be less useful if you have color blindness.

2) If you have a lot of books, actually buy some boxes of the same size. They will pack much tighter until you unpack them.

3) A suitcase with essentials for a day or two is a wonderful thing. Even though you know where your underwear is, it may not be accessible.

4) Don’t expect to keep track of anything. If it’s important, pack it in a given place and move it first (then don’t put anything in front of that place).

5) Exhaustion is a fact of life, so plan for some post-move downtime. Every one of us has been physically stretched to our endurance limits. I managed to wrench my good hip.

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