Below are the most recent 7 friends' journal entries.

Monday, November 9th, 2009
hnpcc	9:33p	Tear down the wall! Weird the discussions being sparked about the fall of the Berlin wall. I mentioned that it was the (metaphorical) fall and was asked why, didn't it come down? Well, no, not even with enthusiastic use of crowbars. It was still in place 4 months later when I visited East and West Berlin. Went through Checkpoint Charlie, the whole rigmarole. Everyone was a lot friendlier at that point by all accounts - my travelling companion spoke German and chatted to all sorts of people from little old ladies to students to policemen to passersby (the last one was when we were lost and trying to get back to Checkpoint Charlie to get out again before it closed). In some respects I find it hard to believe that something so solid just isn't there at all any more. Then there's the "yeah the wall came down.. but who cares" train of thought. Which is generally from people who can't remember it to be honest. Everyone I share an office with in fact. Not to make me feel old or anything. Such a huge change across Middle Europe. Across the world in fact, as the Eastern Bloc fell away and old certainties vanished. Wars started. Governments fell. New countries emerged blinking into daylight again. And all because the Soviet Union made it clear it wouldn't invade if the Eastern Bloc moved away from communism. Amazing. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
hnpcc	5:39p	Yay! Finished! Handed in! Managed to get my references down to one page by a combination of deleting and Times New Roman pt 10! Think I'm still 300 or so words over! Hoping the lecturer can't count! Down from 1800 words over - again, judicious use of tables. I love tables, they're so helpful. And now all I have to do is enrol in subjects for next semester and hope I've passed. Yay! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
hnpcc	12:36p	heh My proposed study budget is now $6.4 million, not including the cost of the drugs. I think I may have wildly over-budgeted. Having patients spread across three states possibly didn't help. Edit: I decided I had too many staff and cut the most expensive ones by two thirds. Down to $5.57 million. Heh. (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009
hnpcc	1:28p	Babylon 5 I did live through the 1990s. Somehow I managed to do it while only seeing 2 episodes total (one of which was the pilot) of Babylon 5. While being heavily involved in a science fiction club. A media science fiction club. Yeah I don't know how either. ( Read more ) (Comment on this)
Sunday, November 1st, 2009
hnpcc	9:56a	totally culturally irrelevant and a day late but whatever. My LiveJournal Trick-or-Treat Haul hnpcc goes trick-or-treating, dressed up as bushranger. 17catherines tricks you! You get a block of wood. ang_grrr gives you 17 light blue tropical-flavoured gummy worms. barrington gives you 5 tan coconut-flavoured gummy bats. brisingamen tricks you! You lose 9 pieces of candy! bugshaw gives you 1 orange blueberry-flavoured pieces of bubblegum. dalmeny tricks you! You get a block of wood. davesangel gives you 17 dark blue blueberry-flavoured jawbreakers. dhd1 gives you 11 milky white spearmint-flavoured wafers. dmw gives you 19 red-orange root beer-flavoured gummy bats. hawkida gives you 10 softly glowing licorice-flavoured nuggets. hnpcc ends up with 71 pieces of candy, a block of wood, and a block of wood. Go trick-or-treating! Username: Another fun meme brought to you by rfreebern. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, October 30th, 2009
lj_maintenance [ dwell ]	5:17p	Network Maintenance - Saturday, October 31, 2009 at 04:00-05:00 GMT/UTC EDIT: If you're reading this, our maintenance is OVER! The problem was not found on our equipment, which means we'll have to work with our ISP to fix this small problem -- which also means another maintenance window in the future -- but at least we have eliminated our side. Thank you everyone, and a special shout out to rekoil for giving me a great suggestion AND also the opportunity to feel like I've just called in to a local radio station. Have a great day, night or afternoon wherever you may be. --- Hi everyone, sorry for the late notice but I'm going to have to do some testing on 1 of our 4 internet circuits TONIGHT; Friday night or Saturday morning depending on which time zone you're in. Most of us shouldn't notice any impact, though there may be some slowness or lag when I switch traffic on to our other ISP circuits and then another hit when I stop the tests. If a page won't load or times out, try hitting refresh 1 or 2 times and it should load then. If it doesn't work at all... trust me, I'll be typing really really really fast to try to undo whatever I just did. Hopefully you'll have some Halloween candy (if you're in the USA and celebrate that kind of thing) nearby to take away the bitterness of a small site outage. :( Here's the handy-dandy Website That I Always Use to get a feel for when the maintenance will start in your area. Our site traffic historically dips on Friday afternoons until Saturday morning which is why we tend to pick this time for maintenance work. ( tech details ) status.livejournal.org will, of course be updated before and after the maintenance window. Or else marta will get mad at me. :D bt (50 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, October 29th, 2009
hnpcc	3:39p	Linky things What the Timor Sea oil spill would look like if it were off the Queensland coast. It amazes me how little publicity this spill has gotten, it's freaking enormous. Alcohol worse than Ecstasy said UK Drugs Tsar. OK, first off the UK has a Drugs Tsar?!? Isn't that illegal? Second off, slightly more seriously - I'm not not sure ranking drugs in this way is that helpful, although I certainly think highlighting that alcohol is (a) a drug and (b) harmful in excess (and the knock on effects aren't great either). Third off - less seriously again - now I want to know whether LSD, cannabis and ecstasy are confounders for all diseases, or whether that's just smoking. ;-) Also, what exactly is his definition of 'harm'? Just curious now. Republican National Committee fan apparently doesn't understand how the internet works. Like, everyone can see you. This is a level of hate that really leaves me grasping for words. I hadn't actually heard of the miscegenation laws until a couple of years ago when I read Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. It shocked me then that they were still in place in the time period the book was set in (1956), let alone as late as they actually were (1967 in the US; 1984 in South Africa). It shocked me that they existed at all, actually. But not as much as the doctored picture a 'fan' put up on the RNC facebook page. That's a level of hate and fear that I really just don't get. (1 Comment |Comment on this)