day of the (un)dead

[ironymaiden]

five questions from buhrger. if you didn't ask these of me, ask and you shall receive five from me, whereupon you post your answers with these instructions and perpetuate ad infinitem.

these are mostly off the top of my head:

• if you were to pick one pro sports team to cheer for other than the obvious one, which would it be, and why?
  
• what was the best thing about living in west seattle?
  
• what was the best thing about not having the 360?
  
• how many linuces have you played with now? what are the niftiest things about them?
  
• have you gotten around to reading the city and the city yet? if so, what did you think of it? if not, why not?

1. if you were to pick one pro sports team to cheer for other than the obvious one, which would it be, and why?


Seattle Storm, women's basketball. it's a speedy back-and-forth sport, i still get all verklempt when i see women play and girls loooking up to them, and the women's game is more about making plays than hotdogging. the team has embraced their youth and lesbian fanbases in equal measure. i've had fun at the few games i've attended, and writing this makes me feel guilty for not going more often.


2. what was the best thing about living in west seattle?


Easy Street Cafe. (on the website today: "Downloads don't come with fries.")

i love the Queen Anne Easy Street for music and related magazines, but West Seattle's is a record store/diner (i think the West Seattle store is the original, someone who has lived here longer can confirm). browse music while you wait for a seat, because on the weekends there's a hell of a line.

i want to hug Easy Street Cafe. every waitress is tattooed, the walls are covered in stickers and band posters, and the front of the cafe is a garage door that is open to the street on warm days. the food is cheap-for-Seattle and delicious. pretty much everyone eats there: construction workers, senior citizens, families, the waitstaff's punk rock pals. the coffee is good, the upholstery is torn and the tables are mismatched, but everything is clean and the service is incredibly pleasant.


3. what was the best thing about not having the 360?


i think i did more cooking and cleaning. i'm pleased with some of the cooking experiments and hope to continue them.


4. how many linuces have you played with now? what are the niftiest things about them?

i think the count is up to seven...and thus far i've only dealt with variants of Fedora and Debian/Ubuntu. since i don't have deep technical knowledge (yet), a lot of what has defined the experience is the window manager and bundle of software with each distribution. (i think i will move to something more like Arch or Gentoo eventually, but right now i like my training wheels.)

universally:
- i've grown to love multiple desktops and desktop switching. this is especially nice with Miss Bianca, where screen real estate is at such a premium.
- i also love the concept of software repositiories, and i find software updates to be painless and faster than mac or windows.

the desktop runs #!, which comes with conky. basically, conky can be hacked to draw all kinds of info directly onto the desktop. it doesn't use resources as heavily as widget programs and is almost infinitely customizable. i've dipped my toe into rewriting the xml for it, little things like changing fonts and colors. right now conky just reminds me of handy keyboard shortcuts and shows system info; my next project is to get it to display the weather.

man, i love the Openbox keyboard shortcuts. super+w, web browser. hey, i want to compose an lj post in a text editor, super+e. (the super key is the command or windows key, depending on your keyboard type.) command line, file manager, music, graphics, all at my fingertips. alt-f2 program name for anything i don't have a binding set for. (and making key bindings isn't too hard.) i'm faster and happier when my hands never leave the keyboard.


5. have you gotten around to reading the city and the city yet? if so, what did you think of it? if not, why not?

i started reading e_bourne's copy this summer, but at the time my brain wanted none of it. it seems i must be in a certain state to read Mieville. i do intend to try again.

Comments

[pedantka.livejournal.com]

This is my favourite meme ever, and it hasn't made the rounds in ages. So please give me questions!

[ironymaiden]

what will you finish first - the thesis or that baby sweater - and why?

now that you have an office, what not-writing-or-teaching-related personal thing(s) do you need to have there to make it your own?

if faced with the right job and a tolerable location, or a tolerable job and the right location, which would you choose? and is there an intolerable location?

tell me about FreeMind?

what happened to using poems as entry titles, and how did it start in the first place?

[samildanach.livejournal.com]

Questions, please! Responses may be delayed, pending availability.

[ironymaiden]

response delayed :)

what's the coolest thing you've learned in grad school so far?

what will you miss about your old apartment?

what do you love about the new house?

when did you first grow a beard, and what led you to do so?

what would you like to fill your spare time with once this school thing is over?