Monthly Archive for July, 2007

Biking to Denmark

Published on July 31, 2007 in Bike Trips, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, ResidentHipster, Travel and Xena the Dog. 0 Comments

Tommorrow morning ‘les, Xena, a friend from the conservatory named Kendra, and I will leave Den Haag via bike heading towards Utrecht. The plan is to head east until with hit Copenhagen. This trip should take a couple of weeks. We’re slow and Denmark is far away from here. I’m guessing that it is going to take around 5 days to reach the border and then another 10 to get through Germany and into Denmark.

We’ll be taking the train back.

So assuming that we really do end up biking the whole trip instead of cheating and taking a train for parts of it, I’ll be offline until the middle of the month.

‘les, however, will have a tiny pocket computer handy wherever there’s wifi. So while I won’t be checking my email, ‘les will. Please to email les (celesteh at gmail dot com) if you need to reach me with news.

Mom, I’m looking at you.

Have a good couple of weeks. Don’t get arrested or anything.

Bah.

Published on July 30, 2007 in DailyGrind, Politics, ResidentHipster and USA. 0 Comments

I just read a rather depressing Washington Post article about differences in how men and women are percived when they try to ask for better salaries.

Their study, which was coauthored by Carnegie Mellon researcher Lei Lai, found that men and women get very different responses when they initiate negotiations. Although it may well be true that women often hurt themselves by not trying to negotiate, this study found that women’s reluctance was based on an entirely reasonable and accurate view of how they were likely to be treated if they did. Both men and women were more likely to subtly penalize women who asked for more — the perception was that women who asked for more were “less nice”.

“What we found across all the studies is men were always less willing to work with a woman who had attempted to negotiate than with a woman who did not,” Bowles said. “They always preferred to work with a woman who stayed mum. But it made no difference to the men whether a guy had chosen to negotiate or not.”

I like that last line quoted. If you’re a dude and you ask for more money, getting told no is the worst that will happen to you. The dude you work for isn’t going to think badly of you for asking. Not so much for women.

Man, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. You can’t get more money unless you demand more, but if you actually go ahead and ask for it you’re likely to not only be told no but be seen as uppity for even asking not matter how qualified you are. This is on top of the fact that women get offered less money to begin with a lot of the time.

Arg!

Published on July 24, 2007 in Crafty, DailyGrind and ResidentHipster. 1 Comment

So I’m working on knitting my second sweater. This is my second or third project involving cables. It’s a plain sweater with a single, braided cable going up the left side on the front. I’ve completed the back and I’m almost done with the front. And now I’ve run into a problem.

The cable I’m using is not all that complicated, but the twist switches every other row. I’ve been pretty good about keeping track of which twist I’m on, except for one that I just noticed. It’s maybe 10 or so rows back and I’m torn about whether or not to rip out all those rows or just continue on and forget about it. I’m inclined to rip everything out, but I just had to rip about like 60 rows because I messed up the armhole decreases and I’m sort of loathe to do all that work a second time. But it’s in a sort of noticeable spot, right on my upper chest. If it was closer to my hip I’d just let it go. Of course, if it was closer to my hip I’d have only just started knitting the damn thing so I wouldn’t be so annoyed. Arg!

I’m generally pretty easy-going about my knitting. I really like that handmade things look handmade. Almost all my hand-knits look like hand-knits – chunky yarns, unusual patterns. I’m happy with the fact that some of my stitches are going to be a bit uneven, some of my stitches are going to be twisted here and there. If I wanted something that looked machine-perfect I’d just buy things from a store.

But man, messing up this cable is bugging me.

‘les thought I was crazy when I pointed out my mistake. I had to actually point at the exact bit of cable that was done incorrectly. I guess it’s really not that noticeable. I think I’m just going to move on. I want this thing done! I still have both arms to work on and I have to rip out 10 inches of work in the back because I also messed up the armhole decreases there.

I sort of have purling. I think I may try to avoid knitting stockinette stitch flat in the future. Knit in the round or nothing!

(I would have posted a photo of the messed part of the sweater, but it’s surprisingly hard to take a non-horrible photo of knit items. It’s too dark in my apartment, I need a desk lap or something.)

Austria

Published on July 21, 2007 in Austria, Photo, PostsWithPictures, ResidentHipster, Travel and Xena the Dog. 0 Comments

I just realized that I should maybe post a little about our trip to Austria.

So as I think I’ve mentioned, we were in Austria last week and for the Eclectic Tech Carnival in Linz. It was loads of fun. This group of women are really amazing! The conference was geared towards helping women get an entrance into geeky, free software tools. Most of the people attending were activist-y types and artists, the people running it were just geeks. There were workshops about getting your own web server up and running out of your home, dumping your moldy old windows OS for a shiny Ubuntu installation, and making your own sex toys out of broken computer parts among other things.

Did I mention it was good times?

The whole atmosphere reminded me of my time at Mills. There were a bunch of interesting, creative women with a ton of different skills helping introduce each other to new things. Plus there was a lot of sitting around staring at your laptop and talking to people who were sitting in the same room with via chat.

And we went swimming in the Danube.

After the conference was over ‘les and I went to Vienna because neither of us had been before. A bunch of people at /etc were from Vienna so not only we were luck enough to get a place to crash, we also had a bunch of people showing us around.

The first couple of days that were were in Austria it was cloudy, drizzly and cold. Then all of the sudden the weather flipped to being sunny and oppressively hot. Hot days are awful but almost worth it for the really pleasant nights that follow them. Our first day in Vienna was like that. We spent the late afternoon eating diner and drinking beers in the courtyard of the queer resource center – Rosa Lila Villa (which you can spot from afar because not only is the building festooned with rainbow flags, but it’s also large and painted purple). Everyone who was in Vienna the day after the conference met up there so we had a good sized group of people sitting around chatting. After the sun went down we moved locations and spent the rest of the night hanging out in front of
Karlskirche, which is a beautiful domed church in the center of the city. There’s a reflection pool in front of it and locals hang out there when the weather is nice. There’s also a tiny stand right there with a full bar and lawn chairs for seating. We hung out until the tiny bar closed and then walked back to where we were staying, stopping to peek a space invader tile on the way.

The next day ‘les and I wondered around the touristy center of town. It was oppressively hot so we didn’t actually do a whole lot. We did manage to run through an art installation that grabbed words from online news sites and flashed them via a spray of water. I’ve never run through an artier shower.

Vienna seems like a really cool city. There’s a well established alternative scene there and it seems like there’s a lot going on. Plus Austria has the best pastries I’ve yet to experience outside of France. Also, schnitzel. What more could you want?

The day after that we took a train home. Vienna is the furthest east I’ve been in Europe. It’s even further east than Prague. It’s at least a 12 hour train ride from there to The Hague. Our train ride back was uneventful. Xena slept for the whole thing. I think she was exhausted from the days of walking around in all hat heat. The thing about having a dark colored dog on a train is that as long as she stays out of the aisles, none of the train conductors notice that she’s there. Whenever we show them our dog tickets, they get confused as to why we’re showing them an extra ticket. Although we didn’t do this, I think we could manage to sneak Xena on trains all across Europe without a problem.

So now we’re back from Austria. We’re still planning on taking another bike trip this summer. ‘les just applied to play at LadyFest in Berlin in August so we might be going back to Germany as well. It would be the third time that we’ve ben to Berlin this year, which is sort of awesome because I really like Berlin a lot. They understand the concept of Brunch there.

I got all my color film developed and have posted Austria photos to Flickr. Please to view.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Dorks

Published on July 20, 2007 in DailyGrind, Den Haag and ResidentHipster. 0 Comments

So the latest Harry Potter book comes out at midnight tonight. There are a few bookstores here in Den Haag that are having midnight purchasing events. The American Bookstore is having a dress-up party. The bookstore in the fancy mall thing is having some sort of event that will involve drinking champagne. Yesterday ‘les and I were talking about when this book comes out. I thought that it had already been released last week. We walked over to the bookstore to try to purchase it and discovered that it wasn’t out until tonight. So we signed up to get a copy at the champagne swilling fancy-pants bookstore. ‘les promises to dress as a Muggle for this very special event. I’ve read all the Harry Potter books in the series so far. I have yet to actually purchase one of these books. So I’ve decided that this one belongs to ‘les and I’m just borrowing it. Events like this always amuse me. What about geekiness and waiting in line for things to be released. Movies, books, phones, game consoles, we’ll wait for anything. I suppose the community aspect of it is the big draw. You’re excited but you’re non-geek friends won’t get it but, man, everyone in line totally understands. The latest movie is playing nearby the bookstore. I think we’re going to skip it for now, however. It’s a little too much Potter all at once, you know?

Xena’s way too well traveled

Published on July 13, 2007 in Austria, Loire Valley Biking, ResidentHipster, Travel and Xena the Dog. 0 Comments

The workshops at this conference happen in two different buildings. They’re a ten to fifteen minute walk from one another. For the last few days, ‘les and I have been in the same building all day. When we’re in different rooms, one of us will look after Xena. We’ve been letting her off leash. She mostly stays in the room that whoever is looking after her is in, but she’ll sometimes walk between rooms.

Today I went to a workshop in a different building and left Xena with ‘les in the building that we’d been in for the last few days. As per usual, Xena was off leash. She sat near ‘les for a little while and then got up and wondered off.

Somehow she got it into her head that was she wanted to do was go outside. And up the street. All the way back to the school that we’ve been staying, which is about three blocks away. Across one very busy street.

She did this all by herself. She even managed to get inside the building, but then couldn’t manage to get back out of it. One of the other conference attendees found her waiting at the front door of the school. I guess she looked around for us and after figuring out that we weren’t in the school, took Xena back to the conference building with her.

‘les thinks that she was looking for me, since I was nowhere to be found in the conference building and she knew how to get back to the place that we were sleeping. I have no idea what the dog was thinking. I think she just likes wondering off sometimes.

Xena did something like this was while we were in France. We were camping in a big campground and ‘les fell asleep while Xena was off leash. I came back form the shower to find that Xena was missing. She’d taken off to parts unknown and only started to head back to our tent after we were yelling for her for ten minutes. That time she came rushing back like nothing had happened.

So We’ve been paranoid about Xena leaving the room all day today. Anytime she got near the doorway, we’d call her back. I kept bouncing up to look for her if she was sitting in a part of the room that I couldn’t see. If she did manage to walk away without us noticing, I’d go running after her. I feel bad making her stay on leash while inside, but man, she can be poorly behaved sometimes.

I’m a geeky jetsetter. Except without the jet.

Published on July 10, 2007 in Austria, ResidentHipster and Travel. 0 Comments

So I’m in Linz, Austria. ‘les is playing a gig in a day or two at this women’s hacker conference. We’ll be in Austria for about a week, I think.

Hot damn, Austria is far away from The Netherlands. We left Den Haag at 7:15 this morning and got into Austria at around 5:45 this evening.

I’m exhausted, but I did get to sleep on the train for a while.

This being a geeky conference, I’ll have wi-fi access all week. Good deal.

The creative commons license is fun

Published on July 9, 2007 in 4th, DailyGrind, Paris, Photo, ResidentHipster and Travel. 0 Comments

Hi Nicole,

I am delighted to let you know that your submitted photo
has been selected for inclusion in the newly released third
edition of our Schmap Paris Guide:

Musee des Arts es Metiers
http://www.schmap.com/paris/sights_2ndarrond/p=324259/i=324259_3.jpg

The Dutch are cool

Published on July 4, 2007 in Brkly, Netherlands and ResidentHipster. 0 Comments

The Scene: Amsterdam, somewhere in the Jordaan section. ‘les and I are waiting for our friend Nick to meet up with us so we can get some dinner.

A man walks with a little girl on pink roller-blades. She stops to pet Xena.

Man: So where are you guys from?

‘les: California. (We always say ‘California’ instead of ‘The US’. It seems more exact.)

Man: Oh! Where in California?

‘les: San Francisco.

Man: Ah. I used to live near there. In Berkeley, actually.

‘les: We’re actually from Berkeley!

Man: Oh cool. Is Peet’s coffee still there?

!!!

Me: Um. Yes. They’re all over the place.

Man: Oh. I remember the one on Rose Ave. this was like 25 years ago.

‘les: -Starts explaining about how Peet’s coffee totally changed the food culture in the Bay Area and how a whole neighborhood of gourmet stores and restaurants grew up around it.-

Man: Ok. Can you still get terrible American coffee?

Me: Heh. Sure. At diners….