Mapping the Undiscovered Country

Who comments the most on my journal?

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 06:53:06 GMT

Total comments: 408

1	sorormystica	129
2	the_middle_one	18
3	samajh	17
4	gothic_coop	15
5	halaku	14
6	babalonyieh	14
7	masdevallia	13
8	regulus666	13
9	wendolen	11
10	matertiamat	10
11	lazuli93	10
12	thinxtoomuch	6
13	faerievixen2	6
14	uncleskull	6
15	samael_	5
16	argent93	5
17	qijm	5
18	trueheart	5
19	sebastian_lvx	4
20	lionserpent	4
21	vega_33	4
22	ashley_y	3
23	tzaddi_93	3
24	najalaise	3
25	intralimina	3
26	sirius23	3
27	rimrunner	3
28	fraterlsd	3
29	veleda	3
30	dizzy1	3
31	lordandrei	2
32	maxomai	2
33	silenceintruth	2
34	z111	2
35	devil_heart	2
36	jonah777	2
37	chris	2
38	carminerose	2
39	hydrolagus	2
40	i_dread	2
41	gallows_brother	2
42	vitriol120	2
43	suxdonut	2
44	inertiam	2
45	lefwyn	2
46	tyrsalvia	2
47	sarastro_us	2
48	lrdjester	2
49	djwudi	2
50	01flux	2
51	iamsquid	1
52	meerkat299	1
53	princesskickaxx	1
54	ogremarco	1
55	m7o7n7k	1
56	cadmus	1
57	solis93	1
58	jakerain	1
59	tedgill	1
60	thiebes	1
61	samemaha	1
62	ubscribeblog	1
63	angiebrat	1
64	shinysayyadina	1
65	silenceleigh	1
66	rmmcgrath	1
67	evathedefiler	1
68	phosphorella	1
69	juicey83	1
70	luna_piena	1
71	morinon	1
72	tristan_moore	1
73	amytimm	1
74	cpk	1
75	darkover	1
76	astrum_adamas	1
77	Anonymous	1

Generated by LJ Comment Stats.

I'll post real content eventually, but...

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 02:45:46 GMT

Book meme
* Grab the nearest book.
* Open the book to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post the text of the next two to five sentences in your journal along with these instructions.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.
* Tag five other people to do the same.

"Whether a firm chooses to complete projects within the traditional functional organization or through some form of matrix arrangement is only part of the story."

Project Management: The Managerial Process, by Clifford Gray & Erik Larson

Well, it was the closest... it was in front of me. :) Okay now, back to homework!

What I'm doing tomorrow (Come if you can!)

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 19:03:30 GMT

I'm playing hooky from school today - to work on homework I'm behind on. :) Tomorrow, however, I will be doing this (and then going to class):

Barack Obama in Seattle, WA

Join Barack Obama for a special Stand for Change Rally in Seattle, Washington on Friday, February 8th. The event will be free and open to the public.

Stand for Change Rally with Barack Obama

Key Arena
305 Harrison Street
Seattle, WA 98109

Friday, February 8, 2008
Doors Open: 11:00 a.m.

The event is free and open to the public, but an RSVP is encouraged.
RSVP at http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/seattle

For security reasons, do not bring bags. No signs or banners permitted.

still crazy busy

Sun, 16 Dec 2007 07:05:29 GMT

...but at least now it's just wedding stuff and not wedding AND school. I won't know what my grades are for another week or so, but I think I did pretty well.

The word I fell in love with this quarter is disambiguate: to establish a single semantic or grammatical interpretation for.

Excitement on Monday

Sun, 09 Dec 2007 18:13:24 GMT

One of the roads leading into my house washed out on Monday - big excitement! Now the roads to my house are all closed except for local traffic. A traffic crew for CNN from Burbank, CA, sat nearby all day and evening to broadcast from our location 5 or 6 times that day, even! :)

See my cellphone pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/grayautumnday/sets/72157603412580168/
See my cellphone video of the road crew peeling back the veneer of asphalt that was all that was left of the road (30 seconds):

Headline from yesterday's Seattle Times

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 20:13:18 GMT

U.S. "under widespread attack in cyberspace"
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004043740_cyberwar30.html

Good information to know, anyway.

Autumn

A Question of Trust, Part I

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 01:34:56 GMT

INFO 300 – J. Autumn Gray – Values-Added Information Systems

A Question of Trust: LiveJournal as a Value-Added Information System

Summary

Among many other advantages, LiveJournal's key value that sets it apart from other social networks and blogging sites is that it allows varying levels of trust by letting users define their own sub-groups of friends. The problem with this is that “friendship” has no clear definition on social networks such as LiveJournal, and there are no clear social norms guiding the complex decision as to whether or not one should friend another.

Background

Before the advent of blogging services such as Diary-X and LiveJournal, keeping up with friends’ blogs was inconvenient – readers regularly visited many different sites in order to keep up with new posts. When LiveJournal appeared in 1999, this changed; users of the same site could view all of their friends’ blog entries on one page, and one could “lock” entries to be viewed only by those one had listed as friends.

LiveJournal (called “LJ” for short) was started in March 1999 by a UW Computer Science major named Brad Fitzpatrick (“LiveJournal,” 2007). He originally developed LiveJournal as a means for him to keep in contact with his high school buddies (“Brad Fitzpatrick,” 2007). Today, LJ is available in many languages (see Table 1) and has many international communities. Communities range in themes from internet gaming and "fan fiction" to ice cream and writing children's novels. As an added value, the LJ engine is open source, and many other social networking groups in the United States (and other countries) use it - LiveJournal shares its successes with other groups. As of March, 2007, LJ ranked at the 11^th most popular social network in the United States (O’Hear, 2007), quite an accomplishment considering the ephemeral nature of social network popularity.

§ Belarusian

§ English and UK English

§ German

§ Dansk

§ Spanish

§ French

§ Italian

§ Russian

§ Ukrainian

§ Greek

§ Cantonese and Mandarin

§ Japanese

§ Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese

§ Esperanto

§ Hebrew

§ Nederlands

§ Magyar

§ Gaeilge

§ Íslenska

§ Suomi

§ Norsk and Norsk nynorsk

§ Svenska

§ Polski

§ Korean

§ Latviešu

§ Türkçe

§ Bahasa Melayu

§ Lietuvių

Table 1: Available languages for viewing LiveJournal

Basic Organization

The basic organization schema of LJ is by identity, blog entries, bulletin board posts, and feeds.

Identity (Profiles)
The primary organization of the site is by user profiles - profiles are searchable by username, region, e-mail, and IM pseudonym. Profiles are browsable by region, school, interest tags, shared friends, and by community membership. Profiles contain several optional pieces of metadata about people, such as their usernames, their names (real or pseudonymous), their icons, locations, e-mail addresses, web pages, IM pseudonyms, birthdays, bios, memories, interests, friends, mutual friends, and communities to which the users belong.

Blog (Journal Entries)
The basic focus of the LJ site overall is on journal entries; people's writings are the primary content of the site. LJ organizes entries chronologically, with the most recent first, but one can also jump to a particular year, month, date, or browse entries by tags. Entries contain several pieces of metadata to help organize and identify them: the icon associated with the post, whether one posts to one's journal or to one of the communities to which one belongs, the date, the subject of the post, tags, mood, location from which one posts, and the music one is playing while one posts. One can also decide whether or not to allow comments to one's post, and whether or not to moderate (“screen”) comments. Last, one can decide whether to make the post completely private, to share with one or more groups (trust levels) of friends, or to make it visible to everyone, even unregistered visitors.

Bulletin Board (Communities)
There is an abundance of communities on LJ. A community is a shared journal to which any member of the community may post an entry. Examples of common communities include communities for sharing recipes, communities for discussing topics related to information science, and communities for meeting new people on LJ.

Feed (Friends Pages)
The friends page is a feed of all of the most recent entries by those listed in one’s friends group, ordered chronologically with the most recent first. This page may be filtered by self-defined subgroups of friends.

Friendship

"Because social network sites do not provide physical walls for context, the context that users create is through their choice of Friends" (boyd, 2006).

On LiveJournal, as on many other social networking sites, the word “friend” is both a noun and a verb - to "friend" someone is to add them to one's friends list, and a "friend" is someone who is on that list. Correspondingly, to “defriend” someone is to remove them from one's friends list. Adding another person as a friend for the most part indicates that there is a level of trust established with the person friended, and at least implies that there is some sort of connection between the two people. Friends show up on one’s aggregate “friends page” – a feed of chronologically-sorted journal entries that contains all of the posts made by one’s LJ friends (along with subscribed community posts and RSS feeds). Likewise, all journal entries that one posts to one’s own journal that are “locked” to “friends-only” are viewable by that friended person.

Unfortunately, however, the word “friend” has a plethora of meanings, some of them conflicting, in the world of social networks. David Fono and Kate Raynes-Goldie (2006) identified seven key meanings of the word “friend” on LiveJournal. These are:

Friendship for Content: A friend is someone whose journal provides desirable and relevant content. In this case, the friends list acts as an information filter: "By choosing friends according to the things they write about, a user can ensure that the friend page is always a source of relevant data” (Fono & Raynes-Goldie, 2006).
Friend as an Extension of Offline Friendship: A friend is someone to whom one would make announcements and invitations or “…as a way to asynchronously keep up to date with each other's lives” (Fono & Raynes-Goldie, 2006).
Common Membership in a LJ Community: A friend is someone with whom one shares common niche interests and with whom one discusses topics of shared interest.
Friend as an Expression of Trust: In this case, the friends list acts as an access control mechanism to control who is able to read one's journal entries.
Friendship as a Courtesy: On LJ, reciprocity of friendship is expected to some extent - not reciprocating can be seen as rude, even if the relationship is very weak. In some cases, it can be better to friend someone in order to avoid causing offense.
Friendship as a Declarative Statement: Friending someone indicates to others viewing one’s profile that there is at least some connection between oneself and the one friended or by whom one has been friended.
Friendship as Nothing: In this case, “…friending someone is merely a matter of adding another name to a list, and is by itself indicative of no relationship at all” (Fono & Raynes-Goldie, 2006).

These multiple meanings of the word “friendship” are a major cause for social tension as there are no social norms regarding whether or not to friend someone: “It is this reflexivity and multiplicity of meaning that causes most of the social anxiety, conflict, and misunderstanding on LiveJournal” (Fono & Raynes-Goldie, 2006). For many on LJ, friending someone means that one will read his or her journal and occasionally comment on those entries when one has something cogent to add. Because many users keep the majority of their posts “friends-only,” denying a person reciprocity in friendship limits that person’s access to one’s personal information. LJ friendship is different from most other social networks in that reciprocity is not required in establishing friendship, but some would rather reciprocate LJ friendship rather than deal with the social awkwardness that can arise from refusing mutuality.

Alternatively, friendship on LiveJournal and other social networking sites is what makes them so valuable. Friendship is the means by which social networks are formed and a sense of community created. “Friendship helps people write community into being in social network sites. Through these imagined egocentric communities, participants are able to express who they are and locate themselves culturally” (boyd, 2006). Additionally, friendship acts as a filter for information on the network. "On the level of personal journals, each individual user can be seen as a small filter among many, whose biases are essential to their contribution to LiveJournal. It is each user's biases, values and situation in life that act as information filters and thus determine the content of their journals” (Raynes-Goldie, 2004).

LiveJournal Adds Value

In preparing for this paper, I posted an entry asking what my friends value about LJ. Nearly everyone mentioned the ability to keep in contact with offline friends with whom one would otherwise not be able to keep in touch. The other responses varied:

· “I see it as the 6:00 news about the people I care about which is more important to me than the televised news, but I think it runs a little deeper than that as it gives a firsthand account." - regulus666

· "There are friends I don't see often--or friends that I see often, but not often enough. LJ helps keep me connected. It's also a good place to seek perspective on my own thoughts." - tzaddi_93

· "I initially had a blog, but I had no idea how many people were reading it or if they gave a damn. I moved over to LJ years ago, and I haven't looked back… The downside is that I tend to self-edit more and only present a certain slice of my life. That tendency is less prominent when you don't know that anyone is actually reading what you write." – lionserpent

· "...it's levels of privacy that keep me here... I wouldn't want to only publish to the entire web, or just to myself- I love the levels of options. It allows me to write to different audiences, and with different levels of sharing." – samajh

It is the variation of trust levels mentioned by user “samajh” that is the main thing that sets LJ apart from other blogging and social networking sites. LJ allows the definition of sub-groups, “filters,” for the friends list. It is possible to define any number of filters, and each filter has its own individual list of friends that are included. When making a journal entry post, one can specify to which friends filters that post will be visible, and one can view a filtered friends page as well, so that one need not read every post made by every friend if one does not desire to do so.

A Question of Trust, Part II

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 01:33:56 GMT

Main Functions and Features

In addition to the trust levels on friendship, LiveJournal has many features which add value to the blogging function of the site. With the journal function, one is able to post to any journal or community to which one belongs, and one can choose different (self-defined uploaded) user icons based on one’s preference for each entry. There are several pieces of metadata attached to each journal entry: the subject line, tags, what mood one is in, the location from which one posts, and the music to which one listens while posting. Last, one can decide whether or not to allow others to add comments to one’s journal entry, and whether or not those comments will be visible to others. Journal entries can be written in rich text format or in HTML. One can insert images and embed media from other sites. It is possible to post via web interface, IM, telephone, or text message. As part of the trust level feature, one can "lock" posts to be viewable only by oneself or by one of the filters. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1: Posting a Journal Entry

Figure 2 shows what the finished journal entry looks like as it appears on one’s journal page.

Figure 2: Reading Journal Entries

LJ lists all journal entries in reverse chronological order, allowing a user to read the most recent posts first. Furthermore, one can see a calendar view of entries to select entries posted on specific dates. However, most users do not read individual journal pages, instead reading journal entries made by their friends on the aggregated feed of friends’ journal entries called the “friends page,” which can also include RSS, XML, and Atom feeds. (See Figure 3.)

Figure 3: Reading the Friends Page

Friending someone usually indicates that one will read that person’s journal and occasionally comment. Figure 4 shows what options are available when posting a comment on a friend’s journal, and Figure 5 displays what comments look like when reading a journal entry page. One neat feature regarding comments is that it is possible to have all comments made to one’s journal entries e-mailed to oneself, so as to not need to regularly visit one’s own journal in order to read comments that have been made on one’s posts.

Figure 4: Posting a Comment

Figure 5: Reading Comments

There are many different kinds of metadata provided by the profile function of the site. Each profile contains, at the least, the username, name (real or pseudonymous), a summary “bio” of oneself, “memories” (saved journal entry bookmarks organized by tags), schools attended, and a list of users that one has friended. Through the profile page, one can add the user as a friend, send a note, send an e-mail, add items to one’s “to-do” list, search through the user’s entries for key words, and set notifications as to when the profile is changed. (See Figure 6.) Optionally, one can allow other users to send instant messages and cell phone text messages through one’s profile.

Figure 6: Viewing a Member’s Profile

It is possible to search for other user profiles by region, search for people or communities based on interests, and there are advanced search options such as searching by age, shared school histories, or shared friends.

As well as the main functions of journal entries, friends pages, and profiles, there are several other features that LJ provides. One can create communities based on a defined list of interests that others can join (either freely or by moderated membership) and post entries to (either freely or through moderation). The "Scrapbook" allows one to store images in named galleries, but also allows one to define tags for each picture so that pics can be viewed via tag galleries as well. There are many pre-made themes for one's own journal and for reading others' journal entries on one's Friends Page, and those themes can be completely customized for color, background image, orientation of entries and navigation bars. There are a number of downloadable clients for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux that allow full-featured editing and posting of entries, both online and offline, export tools for exporting and archiving entries one month at a time (saves as XML file), the ability to authenticate one’s account with PGP or GPG keys, and the site can be set to send reminders of upcoming friends' birthdays.

LiveJournal as a Value-Added Service

In viewing the system through the eyes of Robert Taylor’s Value-Added processes, one can see that LJ is a highly valuable site to its members, which is why it commands such a high level of loyalty from its users. (See Table 2.) In this framework, LJ has very few disadvantages.

User Criteria	Interface (Values Added)	LiveJournal's System Processes
Ease of Use	Browsing	LJ allows viewing of friends' journal entries on one “Friends Page.”
	Formatting	LJ organizes journal items by date, making the most recent entries show up first on both journal pages and friends pages. It allows viewing of journal entries on a calendar page as well.
	Interfacing I (Mediation)	LJ has a comprehensive FAQ page, allowing browsing by category or searching by keyword.
	Interfacing II (Orientation)	LJ pages are laid out with the most-used functions along the top and left sides. Information on those menus changes based on the context of, and relevance to, the page.
	Ordering	LJ allows saving and browsing entries by date and by tags. Entries can be filtered by self-defined sub-groups of friends (trust levels). Entries (of one's own and of others) can also be saved in memory lists (organized by self-defined tags).
	Physical Accessibility	LJ's web interface is accessible by anyone with an internet connection. Additionally, some of the downloadable journaling clients allow offline drafts of journal entries that can be uploaded the next time one has internet access.
Noise Reduction	Access I (Item identification)	One can see a listing of a person’s friends, interests and communities to which a person belongs on his or her profile page, and so determine whether or not one wants to friend that person.
	Access II (Subject description)	Profiles are accessible by interest, community membership, and by friends. Entries are accessible by date, by tag, and by memory lists.
	Access III (Subject summary)	LJ allows portions of one's entries to be hidden behind “lj-cuts,” a feature that is used as a courtesy to hide long or more trivial information behind a link that can be expanded if a friend reading the journal wants to see further information about the cut material. Other than that, though, there is no effort to reduce the amount of noise on the friends page – one must read through every entry to get to the next, even if that entry is long and not relevant to the user.
	Linkage	LJ profiles contain lists of one's friends and of those by whom one has been friended, to what communities one belongs, and in which subjects one is interested.
	Precision	The aggregation of friends' posts on one’s friends page shows only those posts made by one’s friends. Additionally, one can filter the friends page by self-defined friend sub-groups.
	Selectivity	LJ does not have any discernible selective processes on the back end that limit posts. There are, however, avenues by which one can report objectionable (purely prurient or illegal) material for potential removal from the network, but only after it has been posted.
Quality	Accuracy	LJ’s network had some issues during its first two years, but (anecdotally) it is now highly accurate.
	Comprehensiveness	In most ways, fortunate or not, LJ is more focused on precision than comprehensivity.
	Currency	Chronological ordering of aggregate friends pages is according to the most recent first.
	Reliability	LJ has had very few outages in more than five years. When it was first expanding in 2000, it had several outages and traffic overloads that slowed the network down, causing the loss of entries typed during those times. However, since 2001, there have been very few large outages.
	Validity	Profiles and entries are all subjective, so there is no control over the validity of information.
Adaptability	Closeness to problem and Flexibility	LJ does a great job of paying attention to the feedback of users and adding functionality based on user requests.
	Simplicity	Despite the steady increase in the number of services that LJ provides, LJ maintains a logical organization for functions and organizes them along the top and left sides of the screen.
	Stimulatory	LJ’s communities stimulate thought and discussion about topics of shared interest.
Time-Saving	Response Speed	LJ's features are nearly all instantaneous.
Cost-Saving	Cost-saving	LJ's basic services are all free, however added services such as the picture scrapbook and a personalized e-mail address are available for $19.95 a year.

Table 2: Analysis of LiveJournal using Taylor’s Value-Added Framework

The Problems of LiveJournal

Despite all of the features and services that LJ provides, there is still a level of social conflict (called “drama”) that the friends feature causes. The binary choice of “friend” or “not friend” does not allow for any ambiguity in the levels of trust one shows another. danah boyd states the case succinctly: "For many, the category of friend carries an aura of exclusivity and intimacy unlike the categories acquaintance or contact, which suggest familiarity but not closeness” (2006). When people on LJ obey offline social norms, and friend only those people in whom one shows at least a nominal level of affection or trust, others may see them as rude or isolationist. This is offset by the friends filters that allow one to control whose entries one views and by whom one’s entries can be read, but the list of one’s friends is clear for all to see, and the definition of LJ friendship is still complex and confusing. One solution for this would be to establish two new categories of relationship in addition to friendship: acquaintance and contact. This would better display accurate indications of the relationship, so as to not appear to have endorsed someone that one only knows casually.

Another disadvantage is that the search function is very limited, allowing a search only by keyword in the entry. However, it does not allow searching of entries that are locked to others but viewable by the user. This limits the access to past material. For a site geared specifically toward making the archiving of and access to personal and friends’ journals easy, it seems that LiveJournal has quite a way to go.

Last, in the area of noise reduction, no effort has been made to reduce the amount of noise on the friends page. One must read through every entry to get to the next, even if that entry is long and not relevant to the user. One way to resolve this is allowing the friends page to be collapsed down to user names and subject lines, and allow one to choose which journal entries to expand and read.

Conclusion

Overall, however, the value of what LiveJournal can do far outweighs what it cannot do. The primary value of consumers is the price of the service: “The user’s primary criterion in judging the usefulness of the system is cost savings – savings in time, dollars, energy, and so forth” (Taylor, 1986). LiveJournal is free for all, and has additional features that add value for paid members; membership comes at a very reasonable price.

The ability to even have trust levels at all is more than most social networking sites provide. LiveJournal comes closer to expressing the type of friendships that exist in the “real world” than do other social networking sites, which is important as social networking has become an extension of our social selves. "Social network sites are not digital spaces disconnected from other social venues -- it is a modeling of one aspect of participants' social worlds and that model is evaluated in other social contexts." (boyd 2006)

Kate Raynes-Goldie argues that "...a user's set of biases are used to bring order to the informational chaos by excluding some types of information and including others. These personal connections bring relevance to information that would otherwise be irrelevant" (2004). What she does not say is that it is the different levels of trust that LiveJournal provides, that allows us to control access to information in both directions: the channel that we open about ourselves, the channels that we choose to absorb, and to which we respond. This allows us to share information about ourselves, to balance privacy and the need for self-disclosure.

References

boyd,danah. (2006). “Friends, friendsters, and top 8: Writing community into being on social network sites.” First Monday, 11(12), http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_12/boyd/index.html. Retrieved November 10, 2007, from http://firstmonday.org.

“Brad Fitzpatrick.” (2007, November 9). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved November 10, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Brad_Fitzpatrick&oldid=170400761.

Fono, David, & Raynes-Goldie, Kate. (2006). “Hyperfriends and Beyond: Friendship and Social Norms on LiveJournal.” M. Consalvo & C. Haythornthwaite (Eds.), Internet Research Annual Volume 4: Selected Papers from the Association of Internet Researchers Conference. New York: Peter Lang.

“LiveJournal.” (2007, November 3). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved November 10, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=LiveJournal&oldid=169003834.

O’Hear, Steve. (March 15, 2007). “Social network traffic up 11.5 percent; MySpace still dominates.” Message posted to http://blogs.zdnet.com/social/?p=114. Retrieved November 11, 2007, from http://blogs.zdnet.com/.

Raynes-Goldie, Kate. (2004). “Pulling sense out of today’s informational chaos: LiveJournal as a site of knowledge creation and sharing.” First Monday, 9(12), http://firstmonday.org.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/issues/issue9_12/raynes/index.html. Retrieved November 10, 2007, from http://firstmonday.org.

Taylor, Robert S. (1986). “Chapter 4: The Value-Added Model” in “Value Added Processes in Information Systems.” Stamford, CT: Ablex Publishing. pp. 48-71.

Cleaned up my friends list...

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 09:31:37 GMT

...took off people who didn't have me friended back. I'm not offended or anything like that that people don't have me friended; for the most part, I only friend people I know in real life.

If I removed you from the list and you'd like to stay on, please comment in this post (comments are invisible to anyone but you & me) or e-mail me to ask me to add you back.

Autumn

Our poor snake

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 17:10:21 GMT

...hasn't been able to eat this whole month,and she's been hungry the entire time. The one source we know of for live feeder mice has been out, and we can't find any place else that might have them. Anyone know of any place in the Seattle Metro area that might have them? We're willing to drive as far as Kent/Seatac (and maybe even Tacoma)/Redmond/Lynnwood (and maybe even Everett) to get her mice. Please let me know if you know of any leads?

Many thanks!

New pictures up on Flickr...

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 21:00:52 GMT

OTO:
2002 visit to Sekhet-Maat for Gnostic Mass Seminar
http://flickr.com/photos/grayautumnday/sets/72157600086775136/
2004 Horizon Lake Bronson Campout
http://flickr.com/photos/grayautumnday/sets/72157600071222304/

Friends:
2004Oct03 - Rebecca & Al's Wedding (previously posted on yahoo photos)
http://flickr.com/photos/grayautumnday/sets/72157600086751946/
2006 - Dr. Mike & Melissa's Wedding
http://flickr.com/photos/grayautumnday/sets/72157600071227716/
2006 - Burning Man
http://flickr.com/photos/grayautumnday/sets/72157600071075248/

Other
2007Mar23-Apr01 - Trip to Hawaii
http://flickr.com/photos/grayautumnday/sets/72157600049975437/
2007Mar18 - Anti-war Protest
http://flickr.com/photos/grayautumnday/sets/72157600050258138/

Still in school - taking Human Sexuality, Biology of the Pac NW, and Creative Writing this quarter. Have about 8 hours a day worth of homework, so needless to say I'm limiting my online time to homework. Have developed a fascination for local weeds, they're really interesting. Busy busy busy! Hope y'all are doing well...

Hugs,
Autumn

As promised...

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 02:54:56 GMT

How to set up text messaging to you from your friends on LJ

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 04:00:57 GMT

As mentioned to people lately:
The War of 1812 Song: http://youtube.com/watch?v=tRwiH18QwpU

New pix up on http://www.flickr.com/photos/grayautumnday/sets/, each with their own sets
-2007 January 28 Horizon Oasis Installation Event
-2007 January Weird Science Party Set-Up
-2001 Work pictures
-various years Family pictures

Not much interesting to post, not much going on in life but school. Had a nice v-day last night with Doug, have the place to myself tonight and am enjoying life. :)

New pix up on Flickr

Sat, 13 Jan 2007 18:44:09 GMT

http://flickr.com/photos/grayautumnday/

New sets:
Autumn Pictures
Kitties
New photos in Kitties - Fosters
My Artwork
Arty Farty Pictures
2001 Oloteas Beltaine
Friends - Sprynet - James's Party
Friends - Sprynet
Friends - School
Friends - Richard
Friends - OTO
Friends - Leilani

Autumn

Went through & cleaned out my non-mutual friends...

Sat, 01 Apr 2006 23:13:43 GMT

...so if we were mutually friended, you don't have anything to do with the cleanup. :)

I need to go post at autumngray again to remind peeps that I moved my journal a year or so ago. Some people told me that they just recently found out, time to make sure I pass on the word. :)

Still plugging away. :) Getting lots done, though. The things left to do are important but not quite as urgent as everything else I've done this last week. Like spending 3 hours saving another tooth yesterday (the UW dental school is great if you only have med coupons). Yay!

I just have to say, I am very grateful for hot running water. Showers are a blessing, I'm about to go take one right now.\

Does anyone know how to unfriend a person who has deleted their journal?

one thing before I get back to homework...

Sat, 18 Feb 2006 05:10:33 GMT

...so I spent a few minutes noodling about trying to not think about school for a few minutes, here's what I got:

http://www.cafepress.com/terraincognita

wherein I put the t-shirt I made.

Love,
A

Kittens

Mon, 05 Sep 2005 17:21:11 GMT

I need help - it's kitten season, so there are tons of kittens looking for homes right now. If you know of someone in the greater Seattle area (or willing to travel to such for a day) who is thinking about getting kittens, can you have them take a look here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/grayautumnday/sets/870523/

Olivia & Albert are up for adoption right now *as a pair*. They are both very well behaved, house trained, very affectionate, playful, and mildly vocal. Olivia is the alpha of her litter, very intelligent. She loves playing with balls and chase toys. Albert likes playing, but loves sitting down for a long lap pet on the couch while we watch TV (he especially likes to nuzzle under chins). He's the runt of the litter, and the most mellow.

We just found out that Amadeus is a she, but she's the most exotically beautiful of the bunch - a creamy siamese lynx point with baby blue eyes. She and her brother Jumper will be available for adoption *as a pair* in a couple of weeks, after Amadeus has been spayed.

We're happy to arrange a time for folks to come visit the kittens and take a look. Olivia and Albert are going into the shelter today (http://www.animaltalkrescue.org/) so I'm heartbroken to see them go into a dog crate for however long it takes them to find a new home. Considering how full to the roof the shelter is with kittens right now, who knows how long that could be.

They all have their shots, flea treatments, have been wormed, are house trained, are well-behaved, happy, and smart.

Please, if you know anyone who wants kitten(s), can you pass on the word?

Thank you!
Autumn

Math Meme

Wed, 03 Aug 2005 23:26:24 GMT

Graph
You scored 63% abstraction, 51% shape, 50% quantity, and 41% structure!

You are a graph. Not a graph of a function or anything like that!
Rather, you are a collection of vertices and edges connecting some of
the vertices. You are flexible and can easily understand the
relationships among various types of things, and you classify this
information visually. You can think about high concepts and also
practical things.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 77% on abstraction
You scored higher than 55% on shape
You scored higher than 33% on quantity
You scored higher than 0% on structure

Link: The which math object are you? Test written by colakoala29 on Ok Cupid

For you other math freaks...

Wed, 13 Jul 2005 15:16:47 GMT

...who will probably already have this link, but I thought I'd pass it on to other baby math freaks like me...

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/

I love MathWorld... MathWorld is f*cking FUN!

Weird & Interesting:

Sat, 09 Jul 2005 18:12:50 GMT

http://www.phoons.com/ (It's work safe.)
I think I may have to do some phooning myself in the near future. (another excuse for taking pictures!)

Fri, 24 Jun 2005 18:48:56 GMT

I have user pix now. :)

Which is nice, because I paid for this account & the autumngray account up for the next couple of months at least.

Maybe I can actually start getting the other entries migrated, even. :)

Catchup

Sat, 05 Feb 2005 18:03:56 GMT

93!

So I have started Tae Kwon Do at a dojo near 96th & Aurora - it's a fantastically supportive community (the dojo is a NPO that also does outreach work at some of the poorer Seattle public schools), very kid-friendly, very open & welcoming. First class Thurs totally kicked my butt. Still sore, but heading to class again today. Since I'm on Disability & have a fixed income, the master of the dojo (who is a classmate of mine at school) is giving me some time to take classes while she figures out if she can use any of my skills in work trade.

School's still keeping me really busy. Found out that many of the cool programming classes (SQL, Perl) are not transferable - have to stick to Java programming classes in order to retain those credits when I transfer to UW. Found out that the program I want is actively recruiting though (Informatics) so that's a good thing.

Other than that, not much I can talk about here. Plenty going on, not much that is appropriate for an electronic medium though. :) Have lots of frustrations, but now I have a physical way to express some of them.

Hugs!

I'm changing my journal name...

Thu, 20 Jan 2005 01:08:03 GMT

...I will be migrating all my entries over the next who-knows-how-long over to sorormystica. Some of you will understand why I might want to change my username so as to be more net-anonymous. Since I've been referring new people I meet to lj as my main personal URL, I've decided to finally just go ahead & change my username.

It's a good excuse to back everything up. :)

So I'm not going to be posting new stuff under "autumngray" anymore. I'll be working on migrating the old entries over the next few months, I'll make a note when it's done.