It’s official, princessleia.com and wallaceandgromit.net have been moved off of our home connection and onto a server over at Phenominet.

I still have shaman.princessleia.com on the home connection because I want Michael to have easy access to it, and 13thHour.net is still at home. But it’ll be a great relief to our connection to have my big sites off of it. Now I won’t have to worry about making my websites slow when I’m using the connection for other things. Michael won’t have to worry about a zillion hits to my sites making his radio show skip. And I won’t have to bug Michael every time I need something changed or fixed in the configuration of my websites.

All good things!

The move went well, only a few typos of mine causing havoc ;) I haven’t found anything completely broken yet. Thanks to everyone (especially and his mad skillz) who helped me out so I can get comfy in the new space, it’s made the move so much easier.

In other good news (yay more good news!), Michael and I decided this past weekend that we needed to get away. We’ve taken time off from work to go out of town 3 times this year, 2 of these were for memorial services. This is no good. We need some time to recharge and not feel weighed down with family obligations and how we “really should be fixing/cleaning $household_thing instead of sitting around the house.”

Since Michael has time off between Christmas and New Years, we figured that’d be the best time to sneak away for a few days, so I put in my request for the entire week between Christmas and New Years off (3 work days, we already get the 26th and 30th off) – and my request was granted! What will our getaway be? A B&B on the seacoast? A snuggly trip to a friend’s farmhouse in Maine? A roadtrip to a mountainous B&B in Maryland? We haven’t decided yet. But whatever it is, I want relaxation time, delicious food, bubble baths, fireplaces and snuggling. No concrete plans. No family.

Today Caligula is 2 years old! *snuggles kitty*

My how he’s grown %D

[lj-cut]10:27:35 <lost1> are you busy today? I’ll take you to philcon if you need to get out/away
10:27:56 <pleia2> hmm, that’s very tempting, what time are you going?

I hadn’t really put any thought into going. On Wednesday waltman and mentioned it, but I mostly filtered it out because my hobby focus lately has been more on spirituality and computers than scifi and gaming. In fact, I’ve put the latter two on the back burner and turned that burner off, so much time lately has been consumed with the former.

So I headed over to ‘s place and then she drove us down to Philly for Philcon 2005.

And now I have a confession to make: I’d never been to a Scifi Convention.

So today was my first experience. was my guide through the booths and rooms where all the stuff was going on, but we pretty much split up when it came to the panels/talks we wanted to hear.

First I went to Imagine No Religion, which was described as “Will we ever live in a truly post-religious future or will people continually come up with something new?” That sounded interesting, and one of tne of the panelists was David Silverman of NoGodBlog.com. The talk seemed to be more an evaluation of current belief systems and disagreements between the various panelists than a discussion of the future. Slightly disappointing since I’ve already gone through the “journey to find god” or whatever and I’m quite familiar with everything they talked about. On the bright side it was nice to see David Silverman.

Next I went to Attack of the Superbugs, which was described as “No, not the six-legged or even eight-legged kind, but the even nastier ones you can’t see: viruses, megapathogens, flesh-eating bacteria… We feel we’ve stomped out many of the old, terrible plagues, but could they be back in a new and improved form? Is the overuse of antibiotics just leading to our own eventual downfall?” This sounded interesting too. Unfortunately it turns out I knew too much about this too! The talk was not at all enlightening, simply confirming stuff I already knew. I enjoyed it though.

Then I went down to SETI on the Web: Two Alternative Strategies, which is described as “Paul “Dr. SETI” Shuch will update us on the latest developments and possibilities in the ongoing Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.” – Neat! This was fun! Dr. H. Paul Shuch is the Executive Director of SETI, and his talk outlined the history of SETI (some of which I actually didn’t know). Then he discussed Invitation to ETI and told some amusing stories about that. He even got out his guitar and played some songs about SETI (more info about songs here). Ah, good times. The audience was pretty small and I got to meet him briefly after the talk *glee*

After this I met up with in a wrap up meeting for the con, then we went to dinner.

I had a great day %D[/lj-cut]

After the utter laziness that characterized Friday, Michael and I got around to doing some cleaning yesterday.

Later in the day, Michael made reservations at General Lafayette Inn & Brewery – another brewery that we found in Lew Bryson’s Pennsylvania Breweries: 3rd Edition.

I looked up the website on Friday and was very excited to go, they brew a lambic!

Lafayette’s Bière de Framboises
Our most anticipated specialty brew is back. Sour, dry, wine-like Belgian-style Ale made with 460 pounds of whole raspberries and a lactic fermentation. Six months in the making, this bright red brew has a quenching finish. $6.00, served in a wine glass only. 7.0% ABV, 12 IBU

I was surprised at the high alcohol content, the Lindemans is only around 4%. We also thought that the IBU was sort of high, but apparently 11-23 is the standard range for a lambic.

We met up with Bob and Julie (a friend of Michael’s from work) around 6.

The lambic was great. Quite bitter compared to the raspberry lambic from Lindemans, but that’s great for me, since I think the Lindemans is too sweet ;) Gosh I love lambics, I need to talk Michael into helping me brew one this winter, there are some lambic recipes online, but not many people make them. I can become the Lambic Master!

Oh, the food at General Lafayette Inn & Brewery was great too. We enjoyed a nice cheese plate appetizer (cheese, meats, fruit…), then Michael got a steak and I got the salmon – amazing salmon, cooked perfectly. For dessert I enjoyed some of their chocolate mousse cake – yum yum! Couldn’t finish it all.

After dinner I was exhausted, I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep Friday night and it was really catching up to me. Michael wanted to try another beer after dinner, so we all headed to the bar for some drinks. I didn’t have more drinks, I kept my nose in a copy of the latest Ale Street News and tried not to fall asleep.

Today I don’t have plans, yay!

Oh, and it is somewhat exciting to note that a new irssi version was released today – along with a new website! Of course I won’t be upgrading until etch does, but the new website is nice to look at.

I didn’t end up doing much at all today:

– Finished Christmas Cards
– Caught up on reading journals and some email
– Read for a bit
– Played with the cat
– Helped Michael shovel the driveway
– Consumed hot chocolate and delicious chocolate coconut cookies that Michael made
– Took a nap

The house could use some cleaning, the laundry should be done, and so many other little things that I just didn’t do. For once, I don’t feel guilty about this.

You know what I love?

Snow.

You know what I love more?

Snow that closes the office!

SNOW DAY!!! YAY!!!

[lj-cut]

After all the talk yesterday about how they never close the office due to snow I didn’t expect this.

I called the Inclement Weather Hotline at work this morning when I got up at 6:15 – they claim to update this 2 hours before the office opens, and the office opens at 8:15. The message was “We are operating under normal business hours.” Sheesh – not even a delay? Is the snow just much worse at my house?

I had good intentions, I showered and dressed. Then looked outside and said “NO FUCKING WAY!” They hadn’t even plowed our street. I called the Weather Hotline again. This time it was: “You’ve reached $company, today is January 10th.” Eh? It’s BROKEN!

So I called back 10 minutes later, “Today is December 9th, 2005. Due to inclement weather, the office will be closed today.”

Gosh, what am I going to do with myself all day? %)[/lj-cut]

This morning around 5:30, Caligula meowed in my face. I got out of bed, gave him food and water and went back to bed. That cat sure has me trained well.

At 6 the alarm went off, I got up and turned it off.

The next time I woke up it was very bright out, I looked at the clock, 7:17. Eek!

This is why my bedtime is 10PM, I didn’t get home from the PLUG Meeting last night until about 12:30. But I’d say it was worth the sleep loss. Thank goodness for coffee.

I left work at the normal time, met in Conshohocken after getting slightly lost (because I’m so good at getting lost). I left my car in a business park and drove us down into the city.

The talk was given by Mark Jason Dominus on Classic Unix Security Problems (slides here). Of the half dozen or so PLUG meetings I’ve ever attended this was the best. MJD is a great presenter, I already knew a lot about everything he was talking about (which surprised me, since I thought I was a total security n00b), but he made it very easy to pick up the things I didn’t get before the talk. And he’s funny, which always adds to a talk. I just wish the talk had been longer %)

After the talk, we all walked over to The Best House, the default “after PLUG meeting place.” I got to talk with a few people, met a co-worker of ‘s and we ended up staying until after 11 just chatting with Walt Mankowski (waltman) and Chris Fernley. It was a good night.

By the time I got home Michael was already in bed, Caligula was also sleeping somewhere, I didn’t bother looking for him, just brushed my teeth and went to bed.

I bought WallaceAndGromit.net back in 2002. The site replaced a section on princessleia.com about Wallace and Gromit, I just got the domain because I thought it was a great one and was surprised that it hadn’t been taken.

Really, I’m just a girl who made a fansite and happened to get a good domain, I wouldn’t have called myself an expert.

For a long time, I ran the only active Wallace and Gromit fansite on the web (I looked for others often). I guess that’s why people came to me when they had questions about Wallace and Gromit, and I did get some very amusing ones.

“On the DVD, during the opening of The Wrong Trousers, the commentary references something in the scene that is related to an older project. Were they referring to the pickle on the wall? Was the older project an Aardman project or just something Nick Park did?”

…the pickle?

Whenever I got emails like this I would laugh, but honestly try to answer the question. I saw it as “faking” being an expert. Certainly these people emailing knew more about Wallace and Gromit than I did, if they paid such close attention to pickles!

I also began to feel a sort of obligation to keep up with Wallace and Gromit news once my site started picking up more traffic. It was fun, and interesting, but certainly driven by a feeling of civic duty. I was constantly surprised when I was contacted by editors of real magazines and big websites who would tell me about recent Wallace and Gromit related stories in their publications.

Then, last week, I was contacted by a college student writing a paper for his school newspaper. He asked for a 100-200 word response to why I thought Wallace and Gromit had such popularity and staying power. With very little effort I threw together a 200 word reply.

That’s when I realized it, I really have become an expert!

Back when I was in middle and high school, there was a service that hooked students up with penpals in other countries. This was in the mid-90s, before I had “discovered” the internet, and being able to write letters to someone in another country was exotic and exciting!

I chose to get a penpal from England, for two reasons. 1) I know they’d speak English 2) I enjoyed English humor

I received my little slip of paper with the name and address of a girl in England after a few months, I still have this piece of paper. I wrote her a letter.

Through my moving and her name change we’ve managed to keep track of each other over the years, even if our letters end up being months apart. We’ve both grown up a lot since that time I was in high school, have watched our lives play out differently, she’s now married with 2 children.

And even though the internet has brought people from all over the world into my house (sometimes literally), my penpal Lucy has always held a special place in my heart. She’s one of the few people I still have contact with from my High School days. But until now she didn’t have internet access, so I still received wonderful paper letters every few months. On Tuesday I got an email.

Subject: Lucy wants to talk to you!

Luckily I opened it instead of deleting it, it was one of the invites to use MSN messenger and to add Lucy! She had a computer at home now and was online! This is exciting news, I’ll finally be able to talk to my old penpal in real time, last night was the first time I was able to do this and it was great.

But I can’t help but feel like an era is ending. I’d clung on to this wonderful old letter-writing form of communication, and it’s now obsolete. Do kids even have the old penpal programs anymore? Are they all brought up in a world today where talking to people on the other side of the planet is natural? I think these are wonderful advances in technology, and the way the world should be. But there is an intimacy to be gained from paper letters that electronic communications lack.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and came to a conclusion. Our paper communication does not have to end, but it can change. Now that we both have online journals we can read about our everyday lives, but perhaps there are things we’d like to continue discussing in paper letters. Certainly we can continue to send each other paper photos and cards.

In closing, welcome to the Internet Lucy! It’ll be quite a chance to get to know each other better.

I’m totally stealing this idea from .

Tomorrow I’m buying some Christmas cards and will begin sending them out later this week.

If you want one, drop me an email: Lyz@PrincessLeia.com

Please include:

Real Name (and online nick so I know who you are)
Address (including country)

Don’t be shy! I want to send out lots of cards!