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[Poll/HowTo] Looking for a job/Know about a job? Hate your job? Know someone who does? Let me help!
I've already posted about this once to friends-only but I promised to do a public post on utilizing me as a means for helping you find a new job.

That being said, feel free to pass this around but do note that family and immediate friends will have to take first priority. I will do my best with everyone I can who has needs - I want to help as it is my nature.

So - the key to this? LinkedIn.
( So what about this LinkedIn and getting me a job? )
I think that covers everything. Go ahead, fill out the poll, and do feel free to spread the post around. Provided I don't get absolutely overwhelmed with responses, I will do what I can to help - just remember if you're serious, I do get distracted and can lose focus. Not staying in touch with me will make me think my services are not truly needed.

I will note a lot of this information is confidential and personal. That is why I set it up so only I can see the responses. I will understand if you choose not to fill those parts out. Feel free to email me off-journal via bkdelong@pobox.com with a subject of "bkdelong LiveJournal Job Survey details" if you'd like to include that information.

In my day job, we have a non-signature binding statement of confidentiality that everyone in the community subscribes to. I hold that same confidentiality to any information shared here unless I ask and receive your permission to share said information.

( The Job Poll )

Current Mood: focused

OKCupid Chat now works on GAIM/Pidgin

HUGE Kudos to Saturn2888 for getting OKCupid Chat to work via GAIM/Pidgin.

Apparently way old news as the latest version is from May 28 but I'm excited just the same as that's how I've met most of my friends in the Davis Square area.

I use the PortableApps version and just needed to download the .dll and .so file from Google Code, and put it in the \PortableApps\PidginPortable\App\Pidgin\plugins

So I'm guessing using the C:\Program Files\Pidgin\plugins folder will work as well.

Then restart Pidgin

Go to: Accounts > Manage Accounts > Add

Select "OkCupid" from the pulldown

Enter your username and password; choose to save your password if you want. Local alias is for if you, say, have two accounts and want to use an alias for each connection.

Then you can add anyone you can see online as a "Buddy".

Buddies > Add Buddy

Choose the right OkCupid connection from the pulldown.

Type in your "saved profile" or current online user's username in their "Buddy's Username", and you can alias it.... like Buddy's-RealName - OKC - OKCID (since it will be appearing with the rest of your Pidgin IDs) in "(Optional) Alias". Finally choose a group with the pulldown and choose "Add".

Voila....start chatting with your new friends and beau's-to-be.

Yay!

Current Mood: geek-cited

PMRP Presents: War of the Worlds @ The Somerville Theater this Halloween

THE POST-MERIDIAN RADIO PLAYERS
are pleased to announce their

2009 Halloween Staged Radio Show!

( In celebration of their fifth year performing live radio drama in the Boston area, they're putting on something very special: )

Administrative, Staff and Technical Positions

( We are looking to fill the following positions: )

If you are interested in any of these positions, or have questions about them, please send e-mail to info@pmrp.org.

Audition Announcements will follow in a couple weeks. Stay tuned!

Current Mood: pleased
Current Music: Lex Concord and the Minutemen

[Filk] In Memorium - Kodakrome Filk
Apparently Kodak is now discontinuing manufacturing and distribution of Kodachrome film. A sad day but a nice tribute.

Courtesy of a post by

derspatchel from last week, my own quick, random cold-induced tribute to the famous Paul Simon song "Kodachrome" - we still have our Cameraphonochromes:

Cameraphonochrome
[to the tune of "Kodachrome" by Paul Simon¹]

They give us those annoying T-talkers
They give us the freaky hands-free seeming-stalkers
Makes you think all the world's a crazy place, Oh yeah
I got a iPhone gadget
But love to take a photograph
So mama don't take my cameraphone away
So mama don't take my cameraphone away
So mama don't take my cameraphone away

----------

"Cameraphonochrome" by B.K. DeLong is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at bkdelong.livejournal.com.

¹Paul Simon. (1973). "Kodachrome". There Goes Rhymin' Simon) [Record]. New York: Columbia Records.

Current Mood: blue
Current Music: Kodachrome by Paul Simon

URGENT: Project Freebird, The Iranian Elections and Farsi Translators Needed
I received this request from a friend of mine on Facebook tonight in the OSINT community:

"URGENT REQUEST: Project FREEBIRD has been acquiring data at a much faster rate then expected. In order to make this informative to those that do not speak Farsi we need translators. Background checks will be required. If you have information contact myself or recruiter@science-advisors.com. FRIENDS PLEASE REPOST THIS TO YOUR WALLS!"

So I asked for a little more information for those who would obviously ask the questions:

Project FREEBIRD is the open source code name for a project to translate documents, videos and other items into English for us in a large collaborative web effort to tell the world of the events leading up to, and following the Iranian election.

This is a little similar to my efforts through The Interdictor Project (TIP) regarding taking scanner frequencies of EMS, Police, Fire, Municipality, Military & NGO streamed online during natural disasters, monitor them for salient bits of information and pass it on via various methods of Net-based communication.

Except this project seems to have a whole lot of heavy hitters in the ex-law enforcement, military and intelligence community interested in it.

Current Mood: focused

[REQ] Crowdsourcing card for my anniversary gift - flying her best friend up from FL as a surprise
OK, so I am finishing up some things for work and was wondering if I could get a little help finishing up my anniversary present for my wife.

Long story short:

* She has very few friends - those who are, she's quite close to.

* Her closest used to live in London and she hasn't seen her since I flew her out as a Valentine's Day gift in 2006.

* So I'm flying her friend & son up tomm. from Florida where they recently moved back to for Sat- Mon.

----------

My wife does not like "surprises". She has been at a two day, all-day meeting for the iLabs Consortium she is putting together. Tonight, to alert her to the gift, I am trying to put together a series of cards in this order:

1 Card from kids with 7 tickets to BOS Museum of Science for Sat - DONE
2 Card with gift certificate to favorite Indian Restaurant - DONE
3 Card with 2 certs for non-cheesy, 90s style (were at Northeastern in 90s) girls-night out plus babysitter - NEED HELP HERE
4 Card with DTP/well-designed, old school flight itinerary for friend's flights - NEED HELP HERE (this will include pic of friends)

So basically, I'm looking for someone who can find me a good template for 3 and 4 or even design one if willing....and then suggest what cardstock or Avery paper I should ask for when I run it to Staples/Kinkos tonight.

Any other ideas to make her excited are certainly welcome. I'll be getting her something small and tin, traditional of course. :) But I think the plane tickets and her best friend will be surprise enough.

I'm hoping to get this set to print by 3pm.

I plan on delivering it to her tonight when she gets home about 9pm.

Any help I get I will return with a Quid Pro Quo (I always use that term wrong) - because I do believe in karmic return of favors.

Current Mood: nervous

Makes the world a better place...
If there is one person or more on your friends list who makes your world a better place just because they exist and who you would not have met (in real life or not) without the internet, then post this same sentence in your journal.

ETA: I have to call out

lediva on this. There are so many of you who help keep me sane and I love so much but I would not know anyone in Davis Square if it weren't for her. It goes like this:

lediva →

secondshift →

bscf →

pmrp →

theatreatfirst →

arisia

This goes back to me harping on managing one's PROFESSIONAL network. Clearly ones social network can be just important to some people as well in who they meet.

Current Mood: content

BioFilk: "Why Does My Brain Fry?"
Being someone who focuses heavily on intuition and emotion/empathy, it keeps occuring to me that I need to find a better way to communicate to some of the sensers and thinkers about mental health issues - even those that may be struggling from them.

Our brains are chemicals, hormones, neurons, and all sorts of other biochemical neurology wrapped up in the ball of gray goo. The meds many of us are put on to combat the minor imbalances that can cause sometimes intense changes in mood, personality, and emotion are at best a crap shoot by many of the pharmaceutical companies.

That's an over-generalization, of course, but from the perspective of just how little we still know about how each nanometer of the human brain functions.

Overtime, I found this little bit of Bio-Filk forming in my head and while I did talk with some of my science friends about whether it makes scientific sense, I'm always open for modification.

Why Does My Brain Fry?
[to the tune of Why Does the Sun Shine? (The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas) by They Might Be Giants¹]

The Brain is a mass of chemical morass
A right ol' biochem circus
Where a slight, im-balance
Of Mono-a-mines
Can cause pan-ic, de-pres-sion and sad-ness

But you have friends
Who give you love and let you know you win.
But what's hap-pen-ing when they show they care your brain floods with
ser-a-ton-in!

------

Why does my brain fry? by B.K. DeLong is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at bkdelong.livejournal.com.

¹They Might Be Giants. (1993). Why Does the Sun Shine? (The Sun Is a Mass of Incandescent Gas). Why Does the Sun Shine? (EP) [CD]. New York: Elektra.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Why Does the Sun Shine? by TMBG

PSA: I am on DreamWidth

bkdelong like everywhere else.

Will let people know if and when I have invite codes.

Dreamwidth Questions
Quickies:

1. Anyone know how to mass find your LJ friends on Dreamwidth? So I imported...is there a way to tell if someone from LJ imported their account to DW? Or if someone who is a mutual friend on LJ is on DW? Obviously the latter establishes the mutual trust needed to allow DW to expose that info.

2. Can anyone find the "post by email" info on Dreamwidth? That's how I'm able to do my Twitter posting behind a Locked Post rather than in the open. I'd rather keep that locked. I'm looking for the email address and any code, plus the DW codes to put in the email similar to the LJ codes.

Out of Phase
First, thanks to all for the warm birthday wishes. I must apologize to many right now. Work is in Chaos Mode so I'm working flat out in prep for our New York Forum, May 12-13 at The Roosevelt Hotel. Oh wait- yeah, next friggin week. I have a virus on my home laptop for the first time ever and it will be faster to run an malware scrubber script rather than re-install. But I'm not there yet.

I'm hoping there will be a Juxtaposition and it will all come together but I wish I were just magically Bearing an Hourglass that would let me stop things and give me a breather for a bit.

Ah, to just be the Man from Mundania.....

Hopefully things will get back to normal soon but this week will be rough. I appreciate any emails sent, messages on FB, and any DMs on Twitter as any replies as IMs, Twitter @ replies and other such touchpoints may get lost in the ether.

Current Mood: overwhelmed

Where to buy belt buckles in Dwntwn BOS or retail?
So I need to get three 1" and three 1.5" silver rectangular belt buckles with beveled edges by tonight. It's for a project.

Think...uh...straightjacket as that's what I will need by the time I am done.

I was going to take lunch and hit the Boston/Camberville area to do so.

I work in Govt Center and Windsor Button looks like a possibility. But they need to be within pretty close walking distance of the primary Green Line stops, Red Line, or Orange Line.

Alternatively, I could hit up a Michaels or ACMoore or JoAnnes Fabric stores when I get home this evening but then I have to trek out to Carlisle from Salem to work on said project so I'm hoping to gather the supplies at lunch.

Advice and suggestions appreciated.

Please feel free to repost or retweet.

Pictures will be taken of said project as it is the first time I will have ever worn such an outfit.

Thanks in advance!

RIP GeoCities: Your Contribution to the Harry Potter Fandom
So, as many know, The Leaky Cauldron blog was started by Kevin C Murphy on July 5, 2000 thanks to encouragement of his friend Matt Kingston.

"7/5/00 - Per Matt's suggestion, I've gone ahead and (quickly) thrown together The Leaky Cauldron, a weblog dedicated to the further film and book adventures of Harry Potter. Check it out and, if you'd like to become a contributor, drop me a line."

Kevin was using Blogger at the time and his site was on Geocities before it moved to his own domain.

It took a little research once I heard news that Yahoo! had decided to kill the GeoCities site off to determine the first URL to The Leaky Cauldron, before I moved it over to my personal site at http://www.brain-stream.com and then to http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org (where it resides today -yes, you can blame me for the dashes and full words).

That URL was:

http://www.geocities.com/kevincmurphy/potterblog.html

An original placeholder of the site still exists at Kevin's domain forwarding people over to the main site.

So there's another piece of Potter Fandom History for those who didn't know.

Update: Life in Bullets
This is really sad that I have to resort to this. I want to do longer blog posts but I just spent the last few hours polishing up a report for work on Non-Compliance Exceptions Management....

So here's a brief summary of my awesome weekend:

Friday
Valentine's Lunch at "Top of the Hub" with kiekre where I proposed 11 years ago that night. Gift was a copy of "The Saint" the movie we saw next door after dinner the same night.

Birthday "Friday the 13th" party celebrating joyeous. Parking Fail. Parking Win. Several "Treehouse of Horrors", Beginning of really, really, bad 80s "Return of the Living Dead". Delicious Chocolate Banana Cake she made herself. (Note to self- get recipe. No one makes their own cake on their birthday.)

Surprise invite by hahathor and eclecticavatar to see "Chocolate" at the Somerville Theatre. OMG most awesome movie ever. Not to mention most lame single-line review ever - see what I mean about needing more time to really write good reviews? See this movie. It rocks!!!

Saturday

Sleeping in and a specially-made dinner & dessert - my Valentine's gift.

Cleaning the house, doing the laundry, washing dishes, cleaning the kitchen, collecting the trash, doing laundry.

Sunday

Out of sorts day...got up early and did weekly D&D run with wkdelong and had mini "Phineus & Ferb" marathon.

Tried to focus on work paper I just finished minutes ago.

Monday/Tuesday

Blurring together so far.

Meeting group of like-minded parents (slowly) as a result of a uh Valentine's Social Function. REALLY excited.

Finding a lot of my friends are down and need to talk - feeling really good about hopefully helping them through it, listening and talking with them.

Had ahf and caulay over for dinner! OK, so it was takeout but they managed to survive two kids, right before bed time, then bed time and then even stayed to chat! Socialization is beautiful thing.

Tomorrow is BeanSec but I've got kid duty. Really want to go given the announcement of net Forensics acquisition of High Tower assets and Trustwave acquisition of Mirage NAC technology. Anyone about to babysit an 11mo old and a 5yr old? ;) Nah, daddy's turn. Mom gets to go out to dinner.

Friday there may be some socializing before my brother arrives Fri night or Sat to work on our Eastern MA Data Center (e.g. the DNS, Web and Email servers in my son's bedroom closet including a presently non-working Ubuntu storage server.) And of course, Auntie and Uncle time with W and C and

harpnfiddle is even coming up!

Current Mood: exausted

The Facebook TOS Outrage - spread the word and educate
Deja vu all over again.

Please forgive the spelling/grammar etc as I'm doing this on the phone but if I wait to get these words out it will take too long.

The gist.

Facebook's Terms of Service now say something to the effect of as of Feb 4th if you close your account, we reserve the right to keep and use any content left on it forever.

It used to say we can use anything io until an expiration date.. This is the big change. I need to check this more thoroughly when I get home and will add in links.

I see a lot of posts similar to the fear of the Russian takeover of LJ. People leaving and deleting their accounts and planning to.

My point is this:

We as Facebook users made it what it is. We created and built the networks by inviting our friends, family and collegues. We built the content by posting notes, items, photos, videos and to walls. We populated the various apps and games with tons of information and, in many cases, built tons of apps using Facebook's proprietary. Platform.
We connected Facebook to our Livejournals, Flickr, Gmail, picasa, Mobile phones, Pandora, Last.FM, Twitter, LinkedIn and hundreds of other Web 2.0 accounts using apps. What about that data ?

For all intents and purposes, we made Facebook what it is. Can it no longer sustain itself in this economy on the ad model? Then say so. Do they need to charge a fee or find some means of funding usage? Then say so. Don't claim to own my intellectual property and memories due to a TOSs just because you want to lock me in for fear of gods know what.

To the people leaving, I understand. But I do suggest before you do, please take the time to write a well-thought out note to Facebook, Mark Zuckerburg and anyone else there telling them your reasons in great detail and, if comfortable, Post it in public for all to read. Include the phrase "Facebook doesn't own my Digital Lifestream" perhaps as a means of finding these posts.

But I also encourage you to stay. Spend the next few days educating your friends with intelligent articles and commentary on what Facebook is doing and why it is wrong. Encourage them to posy and diseminate this meme of information on why owning your digital lifestream (or whatever you want to call it) for the purposes of resale and reuse to anyone and everyone is wrong. Then encourage them to read the TOS themself and submit feedback to Facebook via the feedback link.

Since we built this several million strong network of contacts, we can also communicate to this Global Frequency and hope they too will demand recognition for what we created. We ackowledge the Facebook platform and architecture has presently won the social network war but that does not mean they own the civilian casualties and spoils.
If in the end change does not happen, Facebook does not change the TOS, join and show a firm, active and quick commitment to the Open Web Initiative, or show some other acknowledgement of their members' contribution only then, perhaps, would I suggest everyone backup what they can and leave to whatever enclaves they can find.

Facebook took no such pledge of "Do No Evil" and this never set any expectations of such.
One would hope they'd have a desire to set an example.

As you're spreading the word, keep in mind Facebook has a great many famous and powerful figures in acting, music, business, technology, and politics.

One point that occurred to me is that I wonder with President Obama utilizing YouTube to communicate to his employees and so heavily utilizing Facebook for his campaign, how he would feel about a company stating that they own any and all content of his citizens and constituents lives for reuse and resale at well whether they pot out through deletion or not.

What I fear is everything privacy locked. Does that mean Facebook owns all that as well?

I wonder what all those celebrities who brought their social network to Facebook think about that.

Spread the word and educate.

Current Mood: aggravated

Be my Valentinr for a few more hours
I've had such a rollercoaster week. I'll post soon about my awesome time last night and tomorrow about this evening with my dear sweet one. But everyone loves to have the little shoe box for little cards from friends and their anonymous admirers.

Get your own valentinr

Won't You Be Mine?

Current Mood: tired and content

Google Product ideas and Sync Google Maps Favorites with Google Maps Mobile
Since I've been playing with Google Latitude and frustratingly desiring additional features (such as, a checkbox option stating "if I am X ft near a Favorited location, consider me there" and "Sync up my Google Maps Favorites with my Google Maps Mobile Favorites". I was very happy to discover the Google Products Ideas forums. Pretty neat and I'll be using it more.

Current Mood: excited

PMRP's First Night 2009 Orpheum Show on WMBR at 4pm ET Today - http://www.wmbr.org
Thanks to

surrealestate's efforts, PMRP's First Night 2009 performance of "Red Shift: Interplanetary Do-Gooder" is going to get radio time!

"Countdown to Chaos", the special episode adapted from the series' pilot serial and performed at The Orpheum Theater as part of First Night Boston 2009, will air tomorrow (Thursday, February 5th) at 4pm on WMBR 88.1, MIT's radio station (http://www.wmbr.org).

DJ Mark Weaver, who is filling in for the 4-5pm timeslot at the station, will be airing the show.

You can hear the show over the air on 88.1 FM as well as online via their Audio Streams:

High: http://www.wmbr.org/WMBR_live_128.m3u

Medium: http://www.wmbr.org/WMBR_live_64.m3u

and

Low: http://www.wmbr.org/WMBR_live_24.m3u

So if you're in the area, be sure to tune in for "Countdown to Chaos!"

Current Mood: excited

Snow Day Mashup: Phone Call for Dr. Horrible - Bad Horse's Men: Your Findings??
Before I forget (OK, I don't have a snow day, I'm home working on a report transitioning many separate processes and workflows over to our SAS/CRM and doing all my other work), after Arisia I had put They Might Be Giants "Flood" onto my iPod Shuffle along with the "Dr. Horrible" soundtrack which has been there for ages. Besides the obvious juxtoposition of "Someone Keeps Moving My Chair" and the general theme of "Dr. Horrible" there are some interesting stories told with a TMBG song here, 2 Dr. Horrible songs there etc.

I HIGHLY encourage you do set this up in a playlist (I think I sorted by upload or release days) and report your findings or favorite final playlist order plus the reasoning behind such.

Meanwhile, I will continue to entertain myself.

Current Mood: bemused and curious
Current Music: Dr. Horrible/TMBG Flood Mashup (Phone Call for Dr. Horrible)