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By Rebecca, August 31, 2009 11:31 pm

I’m back in Chicago, after a few days in Colorado visiting my brother, and a few days in San Francisco visiting some cousins. I’ll post pictures and more thoughts over the next few days, but here are some quick summaries of fun stuff I did:

• Rock climbing! I’ve been climbing-wall-climbing before, but never actually I’m-on-a-mountain-climbing. It was lots of fun, and lots of scary, and lots of swearing, but I did it! (And I have pictures!)
• Caving! I’ve never been in a real, pitch-black, no-lights-except-our-headlamps cave before. It was scary and, ultimately, I didn’t go as deep as I think my brother was hoping I would. (I got a case of nerves after a section of having to crawl on our bellies, and said “I’d like to leave now, please, now.”) (No pictures of this, sadly. I was crazy muddy.)
• Touristing San Francisco! I wandered around on my own for a while on Friday, and got to see some touristy places. It was only a few hours, so I got kind of a whirlwind surface impression, but it’s a beautiful city. Why the hell do I live somewhere that regularly has sub-zero temperatures in the winter? (I have pictures of this, too.)
• Body boarding! Probably something any real body boarder would laugh at, but it was in the Pacific Ocean and it was still cold and scary, thankyouverymuch. (I have pictures of this, although they’re not great.)

Those are the most exciting things I did, but seeing my brother and my cousins, and playing with my four- and six-year-old little cousins, was a blast. I got to catch up with some family I really love, and don’t get to see enough.

And, although the vacation wasn’t relaxing, it was fun. I realized today, as I was traveling back to Chicago and thinking about all of the things that were stressing me before I left, that the vacation didn’t really remove any of my stressers, but it did successfully give me about a week of really not thinking about them too much.

On the whole? A very successful vacation.

I just need another vacation to recover from this one…

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By Rebecca, August 30, 2009 11:23 am

Ow!

I am sunburnt from yesterday at the beach, bruised and cut from rock climbing and caving earlier this week, tired from being woken at 7AM by two bouncing four- and six-year old girls, and having a great time. That said, I am quite ready to get back to Chicago tomorrow.

But I think I’m going to need a vacation to recover from my vacation…

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By Rebecca, August 28, 2009 10:20 am

I should have posted this before I left, but I’m out of town until this upcoming Monday, 9/31. I’ve been trying to respond to emails and comments, but haven’t been as timely as I usually like to be.

I spent a few days in Colorado, visiting my brother, and am now in San Francisco (well, just north of it) visiting some cousins. I’ll post more, and some pictures, sometime next week.

PS – AFK is an acronym for “Away From Keyboard”

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By Rebecca, August 22, 2009 2:36 am

Here’s the piece I presented earlier tonight. I’m still figuring out the best way to edit video on the Mac, so I may play around and re-upload a different version sometime tomorrow as I try to tweak settings to get a better-quality video clip. (Basically, it’s a question of which settings to use where while converting/exporting video. There are a lot of options, so I’m trying to determine what’s a reasonable set to use.)

Enjoy!

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By Rebecca, August 21, 2009 11:14 am

(Excuse me while I geek out.)

My friend managed to get me the G5 he’d been mentioning, and I’ve been having fun the last few weeks getting it up and running. I’m even getting used to keyboard shortcuts and some of Mac’s eccentricities. But last night I spent an hour fighting with it, and the battle reminded me of all the things I dislike about Apple.

I purchased a Sony HDR-CX12 last summer and, on the whole, have enjoyed using it. The video quality is solid, although I haven’t played with the high-def video. I know I’m not getting the most out of the camera by doing so, but I bought an HD camera more for future-proofing than to use it right now.

Likewise, I’ve been playing with Final Cut Pro on the Mac (thanks again to my friend) and enjoying that, too. I had experience using it in college and so it was nice to get off of a PC and back onto a more sophisticated media editing platform.

Except…

Except the CX12 shoots video in MPEG-2, a video format that isn’t super-common, but also isn’t particularly rare.

Macs won’t play MPEG-2 video.

Continue reading 'Incredibly Frustrating'»

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By Rebecca, August 20, 2009 11:48 pm

Twice in the last twenty-four hours I had an experience that really reminded me how awesome my friends are.

First, last night, I was talking with both of my roommates. We had one of those long, meandering conversations, and it came up that a girl we all knew in highschool was engaged. This was particularly noteworthy because she’d dated another girl in highschool for about a year, and explicitly identified herself as a lesbian at the time.

One of my roommates said something along the lines of, “So she was gay then, but is straight now.” I was about to speak up and point out that sexual identity doesn’t need to be so simple, that A) bi people exist, and B) there are other possibilities as well (that she only publicly identified as a lesbian but never really felt it, that she only now publicly identifies as straight but doesn’t really feel it, that she doesn’t identify with any mainstream sexuality, and so on).

But, before I could, my other roommate said almost exactly that.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m in a liberal group of friends to begin with. But there’s a big difference between being liberal-and-well-meaning-but-still-ignorant and absorbing all of the identity politics I sometimes feel like I spew. So it felt really good to hear one of my roommates speak up against making assumptions about identity and, on top of that, point out that sexuality doesn’t need to be a binary.

Continue reading 'I (Heart) My Friends'»

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By Rebecca, August 19, 2009 10:28 pm

I know I’m a little behind on when this started making the rounds, but it’s so very amazing. Thanks to Think Pink Radio for pointing it out.

PS – The answers are to inappropriate, invasive questions. Don’t worry.

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By Rebecca, August 18, 2009 11:24 pm

Think B4 You Speak is a recently launched campaign aiming to eradicate the use of ‘gay’ as a slur or an insult:

Penny Arcade makes a counter-argument (click for the original):

Continue reading 'That’s So Gay'»

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By Rebecca, August 17, 2009 11:47 pm

I realize I’ve never actually posted anything approaching a comments policy.

It’s not a widely-read blog. I never figured I’d need to.

Following some recent discussion, I figured it’d be worthwhile to issue a clarification of what I’ve already been doing.

So, without further ado, the Comments Policy for The Thang Blog:

Rule Zero: The final decider on whether any comment may be posted is Rebecca, Author of the Blog. Posting of comments are contingent of her capricious, subjective, and biased will.

Translation: It’s my damn blog. I make the rules.

Rule One: Being polite, on-topic, and respectful will increase the likelihood that your comment will be posted.

Translation: Play nice.

Rule Two: Being rude, off-topic, and disrespectful will increase the likelihood that your comment won’t be posted, and that you’ll be banned from future commenting.

Translation: Play nice.

Rule Three: If you think someone else is breaking Rules One and Two, let them (and Rebecca) know. It’s entirely possible they didn’t realize it and/or Rebecca didn’t notice. But let them know while continuing to play nice yourself.

Translation: People – myself included – aren’t perfect. I try to catch people being rude, off-topic, etc, but it’s possible I didn’t notice. It’s also possible I noticed but still allowed it, or noticed and didn’t think it was rude, off-topic, etc. See: Rule Zero.

Addendum: If you think Rebecca isn’t obeying her own rules, feel free to call her on it. She usually tries not to be rude or disrespectful, and is almost always willing to entertain honest dissent.

Translation: Let me know if I’m being a jerk. I really don’t like to be disrespectful or rude, and I’m usually quick to back up and apologize when I step on someone’s toes. But bear in mind Rule Zero: My definition of ‘jerk’ may differ from yours, or I may be OK with being a jerk in some specific instance. In either case, Rule Zero applies.

Comments (6)

By Rebecca, August 16, 2009 4:44 pm

Cedar over at Taking Up Too Much Space just weighed in on the whole cis debate, and summed things up pretty well:

I think it’s high time we admitted it: “Cis” IS an insult.

That’s right. Because by calling you cis, we’re calling you no better than a fucking tranny*, and THAT, my friends, is one of the worst insults we’ve got in US culture. We’re calling you no more real than us, and we’re not real. We’re calling you no more a woman than us, that you deserve no more respect than us, and in your eyes, that means tranny-alert.com, that means Ann Coulter jokes, that means it’s fine for the general public to post videos of your genitals all over the internet with big purple arrows and random fetishizing speculations, and fire you unless you show us photos of your genitals. It’s saying you can’t apply makeup. It’s insulting your penis size and your manhood. It’s saying that the only difference between us is that you think you’re better than us.

Meanwhile, I’ve been trying to have a conversation with Carolyn Ann at CaroLINES about the same topic. (Edit: Carolyn Ann told me to use masculine pronouns, so that’s been changed.)

Continue reading 'InCISting on labels'»