the roundup

Now that Dreamwidth has been around for a while, I'm wondering how people are feeling about the whole multiple journals thing after having had time to live with both options. So, a quick poll!

Poll #2236 DW vs. LJ
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 28

Do you have a...

I consider __ to be my primary journal

I find "comment consolidation at DW" requests to be...

I find "crossposted, with X comments on DW" messages

BTW, I still have 8 DW invites if there's anyone who wants one!

Having birthday breakfast with my girls this morning, my 10 year old jokingly asked me if I felt old. I told her that I don't, mostly (even though the years do seem to pick up speed these days!) but one thing that always brings me up short in a funny way, is sharing favorite movies of my youth with her and having to pause the DVD to explain things / ideas I took for granted growing up that are no longer in common use. Stuff like:

Phone booths (Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure)
Me: "Before there were cell phones there used to be public coin-operated pay phones. And for privacy and noise reduction, there were these little, like...closets on street corners and in lobbies of big buildings where you'd actually get in and close the door to use the phone." Daughter: "There were phone booths on the streets in New York?"
Me: "Right on the sidewalk." Daughter gives 'things were weird in the old days, Mom' eyebrow quirk. I sigh and hit play. (I can't remember which movie required an explanation of rotary dial phones. :g:)

the Soviet Union / the Cold War (War Games) She's pretty interested in computers and has a natural inclination toward speculative fiction (and stories of kid-empowerment), so I thought she'd get a kick out of War Games. What I'd forgotten was a) how dark this movie actually is and b) that the whole opening scene in the missile silo with the guy who couldn't turn the key would necessitate a pause button hit of 1/2 an hour to explain the geopolitics of the Reagan era. Old skool modems, and pre-Internet networked computing took a while too. :g:

"Hip" pop culture references of the 80's (Back to the Future movies, Gremlins, many others. Thankfully, I'm not going to even try to tackle the oeuvre of John Hughes for a couple more years.)  Half the jokes in Back to the Future needed to be explained (Pepsi Free, anyone?) The big gremlin freakout at the end of Gremlins fared better, largely, I think because most of the jokes were visual puns, with the gremlins wearing sparkly Michael Jackson gloves or sporting peroxide blonde Billy Idol mohawks -- kidlet was able to laugh at the costumes even without 'getting' each reference.

Boom boxes (first encountered, I think, in Superman - which also had phone booth humor!)
Me: "Uh, yeah. Before there were iPods people used to carry around these really big radio/cassette players and blast music loudly in public." 
Daughter: "Weird." Pause. "What's a cassette?" 

Standalone arcade games (The Last Starfighter) This only required a quick pause, as she was already primed by the phone booth discussion for the idea of improbably large coin-operated devices simply plopped down in stores and public spaces. :g: 

Heh. I love introducing those movies to her, even if it means enduring the odd dinosaur moment. As for the birthday, I'm mostly planning to spend it quietly, reading and catching up. Maybe try to do a little writing. I wasn't around yesterday to wish my almost-birthday twin maverick4oz a very Happy Birthday too. And ooh, look! Thank you cheights for the yummy hot cocoa on my profile page -- the perfect accompaniment to my (hopefully) "cozy day" ahead.
 

I hope the holiday season and New Year have been lovely for everyone. My internet access has been spotty to say the least, so I will have lots and lots to catch up on when I get home next week. Meanwhile, stuff happened (I wrote things!) and (awesome) gifts were received!

For sga_santa  I wrote for dossier :

In the Small Hours
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Summary: Rodney had never been so glad he'd blown off work in his life.

This is the first story I'd written in a year, so to say I felt rusty would be an understatement. I really can't thank trillingstar and ozsaur enough for the frantic chat hand-holding sessions while I was also desperately trying to finish up some A03 work and get ready for my trip.

As my gift story, I received the warm, wonderful, and super happy-making Everything We Need Here (Dex/Sheppard, McKay/Keller, Teyla/Kannan) by telesilla which really just hit all the right notes.


Now for Yuletide! I wrote for Jalyn:

The Question
Fandom: Flashpoint
Summary: Jules was used to the question – practically everyone she knew had asked her at one point or another. She just didn't expect to hear it from the guy waving a 9mm in the middle of a Wal-Mart parking lot, surrounded by her team, dozens of spectators, and what felt like half the metro police.

Very mild Jules/Sam. I loved having the opportunity to think about Jules this way. Huge thanks to keiko-kirin for friendly Yuletide beta. :-)

I received the incredibly fabulous Subtle Salvation by Abyssinia -- my Aliens - Ripley/Hicks story at last!! I've asked for this story for years and I finally got it and I couldn't possibly be more pleased by what she came up with.

I wrote two little stories for oz_magi too but they're still anonymous. The fact that I managed to cough up four holiday stories, after a year of zilch, nada, nothink? That felt pretty good. And I'm just salivating at the thought of the zillions of stories that will be waiting for me to read once I get home. (I've only been able to read my own gifties -- everything else awaits!) Alas, my internet time here is just about up. I will not torture my poor northern compadres with tales of the weather in St. Martin because I'm not evil like that. ;-) Hope all is well for everyone!

So, tomorrow is the big day when the Archive of Our Own (or A03 as we sometimes call it to save typing :g:) is finally going into Open Beta!

As some of you know, I've been a staffer on the Accessibility, Design & Technology (AD&T) committee, and a coder working on building the Archive for the last year (and either I like it, or I'm crazy (or both) because I've signed on for another term :g:) More than anything, I'm really psyched that all of fandom at large is finally going to get to see and use this product of incredible hard work and dedication from a truly amazing group of women. The level of collaboration and selflessness involved in bringing this project to life has been absolutely inspirational to me, and I want to raise a tall frosty mug to everyone who's worked on the AO3 and the OTW as a whole. Cheers!

As to the nitty gritty of Open Beta, details are here. You will probably see the odd invitation floating around today, but please don't think you need to know somebody in order to get an account. You don't! There is a totally first come, first serve queue where you will be able to add your email address tomorrow, and batches of invitations will be going out from that list as fast as the server can safely absorb new accounts. This aspect of how Open Beta is being run is important to me - if there was one thing I felt a little weird about how Dreamwidth went public, it was the slight awkwardness of having to ask someone for an invitation. I guess that's my moment of shy lurker solidarity even though I know I have friends I could ask. :g:

Anyway! I'm excited! And I can't wait to see everyone over there. ♥