ELEVENTH IN LINE |
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 About This Blog A blog about my life, universe, etc. At any given time you might find something endlessly interesting or just me ruminating on something else, which no one (not even myself) finds interesting. That's the way blogs go, I suppose. Anyway, I was eleventh in line, and you weren't. Hah! About Me Name: Sarah Age: 26 Residence: Columbus, OH Religion: LDS Political Score: 5.00/-2.15 Job: Temp @ JPMorgan Chase College: Ohio State University Majors: Political Science, International Studies High School: Home Educated Hobbies: Reading, standing in line for things, writing, research Resume: HotJobs Email: lloannna@gmail.com About My Family My mom is a lawyer in Pickerington; my stepdad and dad are computer guys, and my stepmom (who works with my dad) is an engineer. My sisters are, in order of age, a photographer, an artist, and a person too young to have her own website. My brothers are, in order of age, living up north, and again, a person too young to have a website. At some point soon I'll be collecting links for my aunts, uncle, and cousins. ^_^ Message Services (Please see the notes below the Comment Policy before sending me a message) AIM: lloannna ICQ: 29395930 Yahoo: lloannna My CafePress Designs Even More CafePress Designs Star Wars: Episode 3 Line (Hollywood) My Star Wars Line page   NaNoWriMo 2007: My Novel: Cipere Lumen  NaNoWriMo 2006: My Novel: The Manatee Conspiracy  NaNoWriMo 2005: My Novel: Beyond the Cliffs of Kefira   NaNoWriMo 2004: My Novel: sul Okyar tir taTz'ileea  Worthy Causes Fight the INDUCE Act LDS Foundation - Humanitarian Projects Starlight Children's Foundation    Sponsored Links 
Fun With Social Commentary  Useful Stuff Work Around Internet Censorship (Chinese) Work Around Internet Censorship (English) Atom Feed OR...   Scripture of the Moment 2 Nephi 2:27 Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself. Quote of the Moment William Penn Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders, than from the arguments of its opposers. Scripture/Quote Archive Link of the Moment Oisre Old Links of the Moment A Beaten Path - Travel Reviews One Trilogy to Rule Them All Let the Hobbit Happen Honored Duo of Readers Join My Army 20 Questions Jackie of Inder, Lead Extraordinaire Friendster Fun With Randomness Learn Something Random BlogSpotter Random LJ Images Leon's Random Generators MathCom's Random Number Generator Page Other Stuff I Like KBYU TV KZION - Listen Now My Websites My LiveJournal The SarahFinder My Homepage My (Funny) Harry Potter Fanfiction My (Romantic) Harry Potter Fanfiction My Yahoo! Profile My EZBoard Profile The Rest of the Line Laura's DeviantArt Page Other Stuff 
 Archives November 2002 | December 2002 | January 2003 | February 2003 | March 2003 | April 2003 | May 2003 | June 2003 | July 2003 | August 2003 | September 2003 | October 2003 | December 2003 | March 2004 | April 2004 | May 2004 | June 2004 | July 2004 | August 2004 | September 2004 | October 2004 | November 2004 | December 2004 | January 2005 | February 2005 | March 2005 | April 2005 | May 2005 | June 2005 | July 2005 | August 2005 | September 2005 | October 2005 | November 2005 | December 2005 | January 2006 | March 2006 | April 2006 | July 2006 | November 2006 | January 2007 | March 2007 | April 2007 | June 2007 | July 2007 | October 2007 | November 2007 | December 2007 | January 2008 | Important Info  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed herein are not attributable to my employer, Blogger, Google, those who link to me, or anyone other than the author (as indicated). Comments of visitors are the responsibility of the invididuals posting. No responsibility is taken for the content of materials linked to from this site. Any questions relating to the administration of this site or its content should be directed to Sarah Marie Parker-Allen, at lloannna@gmail.com. BLAP Statement: -- If I mention something that's been published and is still available on the Internet, I will link to it. Well, if I know it's there, anyway. -- Once I've posted something, I will not make substantive changes to the body of the post. Any changes will be noted with an "EDIT" tag at the bottom of the post in question, or will be noted in a subsequent post. Typos, stylistic errors, and link updates will occur, without time limit (though if it's been a while, I'll let you know). If I really really regret a post, it's likely I'll post about cats or something for a while in pennance. You've been warned. -- If I find something through the efforts of another blogger (in fact, of anyone I can link to), I'll credit them with a link (the style of such a link is pretty much up to my mood, so don't expect consistency in that area). -- My comment policy is listed below. Comment Policy I like comments, and I'll keep them activated. HOWEVER, if you want to start a flamewar, go somewhere else. If you want to get me to start arguing with you about Ohio State vs. Michigan, whether Mormons are Christian, how stupid being spoiler free is, or pretty much anything else inflamatory (inflamatory is in the eye of me in this case -- if you don't trust my judgement, too bad), go somewhere else. All links to pornography, all instances of vulgar language, and anything else I don't think is appropriate for my sisters, brother, neice, and nephew to see (ages 1-18), or quite frankly appropriate for ME to see, will be edited as I see fit (probably with links to something else, or alternate words, or what have you). All spam comments, including blatant off-topic self-promotion, will be deleted. If you've been banned, feel free to email me; if you're uncivil, please know that I'm interested in finding out exactly how many people I can add to my killfile without bringing my processer speed to zero, and don't mind using your address in my experiments. I reserve the right to delete and/or ban anyone I want. If you need to say it that badly, go get your own blog. They're free, you know. A Note About Chatting and Emails I'm not what you would call an extremely social or extraverted person. As a matter of fact, I tend to test 100% introvert on Myer-Briggs and other personality profile tests. Therefore, please be aware that most of the time, if I don't already know you (either in person or through weeks/months/years of email contact) the chances are I won't be very talkative if you IM me. I like having a long time to consider what I say, and that goes double for what I say to total strangers. Please don't think me scary, rude, hateful, or even just someone in a perpetual bad mood, if chat efforts are unsuccessful. Quite frankly, it's probably better for you to go find someone else to chat with, unless you have something significant to say. And if it's that important, you should probably email me. Which reminds me to let you know now that if you do choose to email me, it might be days, weeks, months, years, or never before I email you back. It takes a lot of energy for me to come up with replies to random inquiries from strangers, and most of the time there's something I'd rather be doing instead. Your understanding is appreciated. I'm not saying don't try, I'm just saying -- have minimal expectations, okay? Thanks. Oh, and if you DO know me, don't treat this statement as an excellent excuse not to talk to me. You know who you are.  
 Credits and Such |
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
A POLICY CLARIFICATION... Seems to be in order. Therefore, let me make it explicitly, unquestionably clear: 1. It does not matter how flattering you are, I will not break the law for you. 2. It does not matter how pathetic you claim to be, I will not send you free stuff. 3. I tend not to answer emails that are annoying, pathetic, rude, or try to get me to do either of the above things, especially when they're from total strangers who've never sent me an email before. Ashish, you got the yearly exception. Everyone else, you can blame Ashish for having hopelessly lost you all the chance to have idiot begging emails read until 2005. Ashish, welcome to my killfile. 4. As a general piece of guidance, more than an actual policy, let me just say: if you're going to be dumb enough to beg me for something, please be cognizant of the fact that you are begging, and don't act like it's a given that I'm going to cooperate. Because, you know, chances are excellent, even under heroically great circumstances, that I won't. You're just showing yourself to be an idiot when you send me emails that expect I've already agreed to your request. . | 0 comments | Sunday, April 18, 2004
Monday, April 12, 2004
Sunday, April 04, 2004
WE ARE NOT IMPRESSED... Thusfar with Mozilla (an alternate browser). It won't let me get rid of the dumb Mozilla Home button (my actual homepage button is small, hidden, and CAN be deleted), it tries to search google every time I type in a URL without putting "http://" first (and yes, I did check my options, and no, I don't have anything set that seems to ask it to do that, except that I told it to search Google instead of Mozilla.com), and it won't load the New Post title and edit window here at Blogger. I downloaded Mozilla to see if it would suffer the new post retention issue, and obviously, it thought I needed bigger problems than just that. SO annoying. . | 0 comments | THE ELUSIVE BALTIC AUDIENCE... Has, well, eluded me thusfar. Out of all of the visitors to my blog, only one recognizably came from a Baltic state, and that was the one state I know the least about (Estonia). Lithuania and Latvia, to say nothing of Kaliningrad, are completely absent from my tracking statistics. To which I say, how on earth could the Dutch possibly be beating you guys??? Have I not paid due homage to your tiny yet intriguing region in not one, not two, nor even three, but in fact at least FOUR major projects at school? Did I not adequately represent (yo) at my senior honors research fair? I even won money for that one, I might add. All I'm asking is for a little traffic, here, guys. To wit, I am going to begin a concentrated Baltic Campaign, to encourage people from the Baltic states to come to my blog. Details to come just as soon as I figure out what moves the Baltic web market. . | 0 comments | Thursday, April 01, 2004
SO WIL WHEATON'S BOOK WAS ILLUSTRATED... And yeah, I know, that sounds like a dumb thing to say. But to be honest, I was so pumped to actually have his book (I haunted the Mysterious Galaxy booth in San Diego for the better part of four hours, waiting for the books' arrival -- then ended out getting a pre-autographed one, which was annoying but inspired the birth of the Awesome Celebrity Autographs Geek Pride Shirt, so it's all good) that I sat during the in-between panels time and moments on the train and a late night at the hostel tearing through the prose -- and then I wanted to preserve the wholesome First Edition, Signed goodness of the copy I have that I prompty wrapped it in the purple plasticky bag it came with and stored it in an extra safe, bending-pages-isn't-possible spot in my luggage. Then there was the whole getting back to my life thing, the fear of getting fingerprints on the cover, and the horrific prospect of a bent spine to worry about, and then there was a move across the Orange Curtain of Doom (or whatever it's called) and... well, I've just not opened that bag since last July. Fast forward to today, when Wil posted another good review type message on his blog, and I said... "I don't remember anything about the illustrations except the cover; if my little sister Laura finds out about this she'll scream..." and went over to my bookcase (a gift from my friend Jackie, incidentally, who finally has a new armoir to re-equip her furniture supply...), and pulled the book out to take a look at the illustrations. I have to say I agree with the folks in Wil's review, in that the illustrations really are stories unto themselves. They take a somewhat liberal approach with the content of the chapters they accompany (each chapter gets an illustration, plus the cover, the title page, and the Acknowledgements section -- there's a bunch more illustrations, including a funny comic block, in the Star Trek chapter). The illustrator, Ben Claassen, has a quirky style that I think fits really well with Wil's (you can tell he knows more than I do about Wil and his family, from the "Ataris" shirt Wil wears in one picture to the "I Love My Geek" shirt his wife Anne is depicted in). There's a touch of surrealism (the tornado for the first chapter, the numbers on the ground for the second), but it's all based on pretty concrete representations of reality (I'm personally a fan of the final illustration, of an empty Star Trek TNG uniform, andthe title page pair of shoes with socks stuffed in them). Anyway, I think the illustrator really does deserve a lot of credit (after looking through them, I realized that the illustrations had made an impression the first time, I just didn't have a specific memory of it after eight months), and I also think his biography in the back of the book is better than Wil's author biography, if only because Ben's reminds me of the pools at the Disneyland Hotel... For the sake of keeping everyone informed on boring technological matters relating to my weblog, I'd also like to let you all know that this is the first attempt I'm making to exercise my apparent Trackback capabilities. I really have missed a lot of improvements to Blogger blogging in the last six months... . | 0 comments | WHY I MAY NEVER BE A LIBERTARIAN... I have to wonder, sometimes, if it'll ever be possible for me to exhibit the necessary ideological purity to ever feel like a legitimate member of a political party like the Libertarians'. Now, I know already the classic aphorisms (the aparent global favorite seeming to be about eleven opinions in a room of ten Libertarians) about big-L Libertarianism (I'm already confident of my small-l libertarian credentials, but at least some registered Democrats and Republicans and Greens and Socialists and Tax Freedom and Reform party members can claim credentials just like mine). That's not the issue; there's plenty of disagreement and lack of cohesion in the larger, more objectively successful political parties in the U.S.; the reason they're successful is mostly due to the fact that they're composed of coalitions of interests that are, in order to gain ground on certain shared issues and a few non-shared issues, willing to forfeit their ideal objectives on other issues. Part of the issue is that there's a unity of spirit apparent in many Libertarian party groups (including the Los Angeles one, from what I can tell) that I don't feel I can share. I'm ill-suited, I think, to political extremism even in it's (if you'll permit me the concept) mildest forms. Maybe it's growing up exposed to too many differing idealogies, or reading too much classical liberalism, but zealotry just rubs me the wrong way. I don't get any kind of a buzz from photos of Libertarian events where they stand around and burn copies of the Patriot Act; in addition to seeming silly and purposelessly uncouth, the action seems to needlessly reduce reasonable discussion over whether something does or does not infringe on civil liberties to reactionism. It doesn't do much more than produce a feeling of "woohoo, aren't we cool, we all agree with one another"ish nonsense, which is already irritating in gigantic fundraising events. It's just wasteful, decadent, and quite frankly reminds me too much of the stuff I read about the early development of other idealogically pure groups (like the Bloshevik/Communist Party in Russia, and later Communist movements elsewhere). Small groups of people are uniquely equipped to engage in real discussions about issues, to explore different viewpoints and solutions to problems, and to quite frankly raise the level of discourse about Important Stuff. Orgies of me-tooism are a shameful waste of potential. But it goes further than misguided "we're small, we're strange, and we're proud to be Correct at all costs" imagery that turns me off to the Libertarian party. I don't feel so idealogically motivated as to be wiling to unilaterally support the instant full legalization of marijuana, to open up the borders to anyone who feels like coming on by, etc. I worry about pragmatic "will this make my childrens' lives next to impossible" stuff, not to mention "will this allow someone who'd like nothing better than to ensure my children have no future, meet his goals" type stuff. I don't like every provision of the Patriot Act, I don't approve of knee-jerk security upgrades that don't make anyone safer but do infringe on civil liberties, and I can't stand losses of freedom by judicial or executive fiat. That doesn't mean that I always think government acts are a Bad Thing, that everyone should be released from prison, etc. And whether it's true or not, it seems like that kind of idealogical purity is a prerequsite to honest and full membership in the Libertarian Party. (and yes, the fact that it seems like a real professional future in the LP is next to impossible to achieve is a consideration -- but if I really wanted some kind of ecclesiastical career, I wouldn't let the whole "no paid clergy" thing keep me from following my beliefs and being Mormon) . | 0 comments | Because only so many people can be eleventh in line. 
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