In Which: Four More Days, Injury-Prone, Temperature Prevarication, Nerd News.

Monday is almost over - the last Monday at my summer co-op job. After this week, I'm back at university. It's been a really long summer, and it's been a really short summer. I feel like it really wasn't summer at all, except for the bloody heat.
I have sat in an office chair, and I have run around fixing printers. I have imaged computers, and I have wiped computers. I have counted printer pages, and I have swept the floor. I have gotten frustrated with users and computers because Everything is Broken Forever, and I have had the Tech Aura^TM make things magically work (yes, that's a thing. Sort of. It's like the Force. If you have the Tech Aura, all you have to do is look at a computer and it just works).
But this time Friday, I'll be out of here. Feels weird, man.

I did my 5k run on Saturday, with my bestie.
Normally, 5k takes me about 45 minutes. Saturday's run took me 43ish, and that was after walking the last km.
The only reason I walked the last km was that my knees were killing me. Stabbing pain and stuff. My muscles would have been perfectly happy to do the whole damn run, and in (comparatively) very good time, but my joints, my stupid joints. I got across the finish line and then was so mad at my stupid freaking knees that I cried. The First Aid tent people gave me a tensor bandage for the worst knee, and some ice for both. I kept it wrapped all yesterday, and it's still giving me achyness today, so I've got it wrapped again.
Other than that, it was a fun run, in the dark with glowsticks and colourful clothing. So much NEON, my eyes hurt...
And there were two little girls, about 10 and 8, who ran it, and they were troopers. They passed me right at the end. I was vicariously proud of them.

Still trying to figure out the best combination of blankets/window/pajamas to go with the hammock - ideal temperature is hard when you overheat on top and freeze on the bottom. Other than that, I'm still liking it. Because hammock.

In Lizzi's Nerd News, some people on reddit have come up with an idea within the last day: to make a sort of "Usenet 2.0"/"P2Preddit". This was spawned from a thread on a post (on a wart on a frog on a bump on a log... whoops, sorry, got carried away there) on /r/linux about the 22nd anniversary of Linus Torvalds' Usenet post that "started it all".
Another reddit member said this about it:

"An updated usenet wouldn't be a bad thing definitely.
With what else is going on in the world, leaving mass information centralized in the hands of a few government-intertwined corporations probably isn't best for future generations - encryption is a requirement."

Sounds about ideal for my recent tinfoilhattedness. I've signed on to help if I can. Because hey, why not? Plus, if it leaves the ground, it's good to have projects under one's belt when looking for a job. Not that that's my primary motivation - I'm really just interested in the whole thing. So far the noises people are making are in the direction of PGP plus some kind of Web-of-Trust system. So yeah.

That's about it. Toodles.

In which I use Physics, and possess Insanity.

I am slightly insane.

I like being insane, so it's okay, but let me tell you all about my insanity.

I mentioned at the beginning of the month that I was thinking about making a hammock for sleepage. Well, I did it.
It went through a couple iterations, but I did end up sleeping in it last night.

I had to create a stand, because I didn't want to put holes in my walls (yay renting!), and I wanted a simple stand that didn't take too much work and could be dismantled without too much effort. I decided that the stand variously known as the TurtleDog or Tripod stand was the most practical. The second iteration regressed to the vanilla Turtlelady stand, because the Olddog variation collapsed on top of me (ow...).

Let me explain that last paragraph...
A contributor on hammockforums.net, known as Turtlelady, came up with a dual-tripod+suspended-crossbar stand made of bamboo.
The physics of this is that a tripod is very sturdy, and if one were to suspend something from the centre joint of a tripod, between the legs, this is a very stable place to hang. If you had one tripod and a bat-hammock (all corners hang from a single point, and yes, this is a thing), you'd be good to go.
However, an ordinary hammock (especially a loaded one) pulls inwards towards itself from either end, so even if you were to hang both ends of the hammock from two tripods, they would collapse because it's not a direct downward pull.
Hence the suspended crossbar.
Hang each end of the crossbar from the centre joints of the two tripods, and each end of the hammock from the ends of the crossbar. The crossbar takes the horizontal inward force from the loaded hammock, and the tripods take the vertical force. At that point it becomes very sturdy indeed.
Turtlelady's stand was based on the three poles in each tripod being lashed together with rope, and another rope farther down the legs to keep them from splaying out and collapsing downwards.
Another contributor known as Olddog made a variation on the Turtlelady stand, where the inside two legs of each tripod are screwed onto one half of a gate hinge, and the outside leg is on the other half of the hinge. Hence why it got called the TurtleDog stand - a little bit from each contributor. The Olddog version is little more industrial-looking, and (I thought) a little more sturdy.

It seems I didn't get strong enough hinges, is the short version; I set it up for the first time last night, and everything went well for several hours, until the legs twisted around and bent the hinges and the whole lot came down, at about 9.15pm last night. I'm just glad nothing broke.

Of course I had already adjusted my bedroom to make room for this thing, including standing my mattress/boxspring up against the wall, and I, being the stubborn, do-it-all-by-my-own-fucking-self, pigheaded chick that I am, was determined that I would not put my bed back down for love nor money. No, the hammock and stand would do what I wanted, even if I was up til 11.00 to do it.

Happily, I had picked up a package of 100m or so of poly cord from Canadian Tire just in case (in case of what? I wasn't sure, but now I know!), so I dismantled the tripods and hinges and used the cord to lash the hell out of those poles. I also took the screws from the hinges and screwed down another piece of poly cord to keep the legs from splaying out too far.
I even tried to put my small knowledge of physics to use, and set up the two tripods to twist in opposite directions (because when you use lashing, the legs have to twist past each other in order to open up) so that both tripods won't overtwist in one direction and collapse, which is partially what happened with the hinges - I looked at them after they came down, and they'd both twisted the same way. It works in my head, I'm not sure if it's real physics or just Lizzi-brain-physics, but I'll go with it. Any real physicists want to chime in on this? For science!?

Anyways, after that, I got it set up with no more issues, all was well, and I slept in the damn thing, and I was even in bed a little early.

The only thing I didn't like was that it was a little colder than usual, so I didn't sleep as well as I could have, but I have an idea to fix that too. I'll see how it goes tonight.

So that's it. Toodles all.

Summer's almost over....

It's August already. I don't know where this summer has gone. I'll be back at university in a month. Way too fast, if you ask me - I really didn't get a summer this year. Ah well. Working life, I guess.

I've still been watching Supernatural - I'm now exactly halfway through Season 2. It makes me wish I could go "hunting" - taking care of ghosts and stuff that are hanging around being all malicious. I really like the show. Added bonus: Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles (Sam and Dean Winchester, in that order) are very very easy on the eyes. Mhm. Especially Jared. I mean, I'm not experiencing an actor-crush, at all... Really! (internal monologue: he's married, Lizzi - he's married, damnit!)
Although I almost can't take the show seriously since I saw W. Pender St. in "Chicago"... Most of their filming is in BC, especially Vancouver, but really.

I'm also (possibly foolishly) toying and/or experimenting with the idea of sleeping in a hammock on a regular basis - apparently it's the latest greatest best sleep thing you can do for yourself? Something about the zero-pressure-points resulting from not lying flat on a bed, makes for less tossing and turning or some such. I have no evidence to the contrary, so I figured, why the hell not? Can't hurt, anyways, and I've had terrible sleep for the last couple months, so it can't get any worse. So I'm currently sewing up a hammock from some nice thick circus-striped cotton I've got lying around (of course I have fabric lying around...!) and building a stand for it so I don't have to put holes in my (rented) walls. I may give up on the stand depending how it goes and just put holes anyways, cos they can, technically, be filled in after, but I'd prefer not to if I don't have to.

Damn, I'm turning into a freaking hippy - kombucha and kefir, toe shoes, no-'poo*, hammocks, organic and paleo food and other products, the list goes on. I blame you and your granola ways, mother mine!

*(shampoo free, for those who've never seen that phrase before.)

I also got my ears pierced again on Saturday. Funny story there. I was walking to the tattoo place to get them done, and stubbed my toe something fierce - and of course I was wearing open-toe sandals. So I'm bleeding all over my sandal and I walk in and ask to be pierced - and would they be able to give me something so I can bandage my toe? So they actually ended up bandaging my toe for me, and then I had my ears pierced right after. First aid from a tattoo shop. Who'd'a thunk it? Anyway, I now have a couple of secondary rings in my ears, so it's now two on each side. I'm really happy with how it looks.

Oh yes, and I'm doing a 5k run in Vancouver - the Radiant Run. It's for charity, and it's at night and full of glowsticks and brightly coloured clothing. I'm going with my friend Jessi. I've been tempted to get more Vibram toe shoes - and given the violently neon nature of most of their running shoes, this might be a good opportunity to splurge a little, since they would match the theme of the night...

Other than that, life as usual is life as usual - although for the next ten days I'll be housesitting for my friend with cats. Hoo boy. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate cats - I just don't like when their fur gets all over bloody well everywhere. Whoever invented lint rollers should have free beer for life.

As a final note, Don't Fear The Reaper is currently playing on the radio. It always makes me think of that SNL skit - but now it also makes me think of the episode "Faith" from Supernatural, the one with the tame Reaper that I was ranting about in my last post. They had the balls to play that song as part of the soundtrack, because Reaper. Hehehe. Anyways... (I'm totally NOT obsessed with that show...)

That's it, toodles all!