Brent's Journal

Karen Lee

Born in NC, high school in DC, college in NJ, now living in Northern VA. Spent a lot of time contra dancing before I got married. We have a dog (standard poodle), 3 2 3 2 cats, a gecko (often with breeding crickets) small rose boa (often with feeder mice), and a small catfish. I bicycle commute to work year round (but I drive take Metro when the weather's bad). No interest in competitive sports or celebrities. Have traveled abroad. Musical background includes school orchestras, choruses, and Renaissance festivals. I loathe tobacco products, and I don't trust Microsoft. (Sony is also high on my corporate-evil list after they knowingly cyber-assaulted their own customers (i.e. the people who were actually buying their product, not "ripping them off" by sharing) with root-kit-infected CDs in 2005. (And they violated the rights to other people's intellectual content in this insidious effort to deny their customers unfettered use of music they had paid for.)) I love ReplayTV, but I hope to go open-source soon with love even more our MythTV. I time-shift much of my radio listening too with Audio Hijack (MacOSX), enjoying programs streamed from anywhere on the planet.

•LJ Friends: I put journals on my Friends list if I find them interesting/entertaining/informative. I'm more likely to add people I've actually met, although about half the journals on my list belong to people I haven't met; many on my list are friends of friends – people who posted interesting comments to journals I was already reading. Since I'm chronically behind at reading LJ, I'm more likely to add low-volume journals.
If you find my journal interesting, don't bother asking about friending me; just do it. If my journal stops being interesting or you don't have the time for it, just drop it. I won't take offense. I've prepared a background tag thread as a shortcut for anyone who wants to get some sense of who I am – typical activities, societal viewpoints, etc.

•User Icons: I've been collecting images here (3500+ images! It's a big page). Many of these are my own photos; others are just things I've seen and liked. For the latter, I've tried to save links to the source and give attribution in the ALT= and TITLE= tags. It occurred to me that if I made the HTML for these convenient to grab, they'd be easy to use in my journal and in comments. I've done that here (again, 3500+ images – copy and paste). If you find pictures of yourself you are most welcome to use them. If other icons seem to say what you need, let them speak for you. (Most of my own photos have links to an on-line photo archive where you'll probably find the original.) Just please don't use a photo of someone else as your cyberspace personification without asking. If you like a picture I've grabbed from somewhere else, there's no need to credit me. (If you're on my Friends list, I'll probably notice it before long.) Please credit the original source, so other people who like it can find more pictures like it.
I don't have a default userpic because if you set one, there's no way to post an entry or comment without a userpic.





•Interests: ... we make it clear that interests listed should be evaluated within the context of “I like x”, “I’m in favor of x” or “I support x”. — Barak Berkowitz, Chairman and CEO Six Apart

If "Interests" is for things I like, where do I list "interests" I don't like? Things like, say, alcoholism, censorship, colonialism, commercials, depression, digital "rights" management, economic disparity, hypocrisy, ignorance, land-use policy, Microsoft, the "moral majority", overpopulation, politics, pollution, professional sports, (religious) intolerance, Republican policies, societal expectations, Sony, spam, theocracy, tobacco, voter apathy, waste? These are also interests, things that are of importance and concern to me. Language has value from consensus. LJ doesn't get to redefine words like "interests" to suit its purpose. And if I like something that is illegal (or merely abhorrent), should I be censored? (Then again, LJ has redefined "Friends", using it to define access rather than requiring enjoyment, acceptance, trust, intimacy, respect, mutual assistance, understanding, and spontaneity – those journals I might be reading more regularly (but that I could read all the same without listing them as "friends") and whose owners I might be granting additional access to my journal.)

•My Username: The syntonic Pythagorean comma is the difference (comma) between 2^7 and (3/2)^12 – two notes (tonic) that should be the same (syn) pitch musically. Octaves and fifths are perfect intervals, yet once around the circle of fifths they don't agree numerically. So much for perfection in life....

•Memes: Someone posted a complaint about memes, questionnaires, quizzes, etc. cluttering some people's journals. I could see the point, so I started putting those sorts of entries in a separate journal. Friend it if you like reading quiz memes.