Today was amazing and I must to bed.

Oct. 31st, 2025 01:37 am
vvalkyri: (Default)
[personal profile] vvalkyri
Oddly, as it turns out, the yellow QR code worked fine for at least one other person's phone, but we did get some of those printed with green instead.

We had a ridiculous amount of food come in given the short lead time* and the direct donations to Capital Area food bank alone had hit $15,000 by this evening and that campaign had only started Tuesday morning.

(This morning, about 48 hours after it was posted, it hit $10k. We did the math. That sounds like so much money doesn't it? SNAP serves 41 million people a month. $10k is 53 people worth. Or 3 seconds of the year. You'll hear that in the live stream below.)


Originally we had confirmed congressman Khanna, Beyer, and Raskin (who had literally a 17 min availability window) but then Khanna had to bail in the morning and Raskin had to bail near go time.

So the event speaking only really went for about half an hour and closed down and then Walkinshaw showed up like 10 min later so he ended up in the group photo op but wasn't on a live stream but I sent someone over to get some video with him I hope it happened.
Edit: he was interviewed by NBC4 and posted the group photo we invited him into over his protest of 'but I only just got here' on his Instagram (I do wish someone had gotten him a better one)


. MSN picked up Fox 5 DC's live stream of the shorter than expected but really good speaking segment . Which is especially good, because the person someone handed a phone to to live stream to Instagram was initially told hold it horizontal and was and then a bunch of people told him to hold it vertical so he changed it so the Instagram live stream is sideways.


Walkinshaw, a new rep from Virginia, didn't seem mad and was really nice and joined our group photo, the one guy in a suit surrounded by the rest of us in high vis, and holding one of the signs, too.

I noticed in some photos that someone posted on Blue sky that Beyer went and joined the crowd behind the speakers after he spoke.


I am especially happy about my part in making this happen.

I'm also pleased that I can see evidence of my process improvements, possibly in these Getty pictures and possibly in somebody else's I forget - things like I taped up a sign that was in amongst the food on one of the tables and it was my idea to use blue tape to identify the people who had just been introduced to the press as people willing to talk to them, and I was part of starting us sorting like with like from the beginning and as it came in.

David told me that anytime he mentioned me people told him how great I was.

It was just astonishing this came together so very quickly. I think the organizing chat started Monday evening. Thank goodness they were afraid that the weather wasn't good enough on Wednesday and moved it to today and thank goodness the weather suddenly got better today.

Long after everybody else was on their way out, a photographer for Somal News showed up. I cajoled the guy who started this to give her a quick snippet, and later this evening sent her some further pictures. I look forward to seeing the article. At one point she asked about what's the deal with fun food not ballrooms and I had to explain the whole Trump ballroom and a swing demolition and found this article which is kind of heartening


We then got back here, went to noise making, talked with some people there, went to all about burger and got chicken tenders (i think I managed to leave my whole soda there which is a little annoying, and boy howdy am I grateful that David was able to come and pick me up and help me get out this morning even though that was the afternoon because oh boy howdy was I scattered), and then I went inside the house and sat down on the floor for an hour making it rather look late to try and deliver something to Laurel but how to really nice conversation with Charles and Lisa for a while in establishing that and now sometimes it's 1:30 in the morning partly because I've continued looking at articles and finding pictures and stuff and stuff and stuff.


I really need to spend some time on life maintenance tomorrow.

I have zero idea what I'm going to do for halloween. There's a house dance I've been kind of meaning to go to in annandale, there's an Acro evening Jam in Columbia, and there's some movies outside and I don't know what to call it but it's sort of 4:00 on the beltway. I guess I have a couple options for clothing but I don't really have the energy.



*I think we sent five cars out split between the two food banks that were not Capital Area Food Bank. I keep kicking myself for not having thought to post to the big mutual Aid Facebook group or the welcome to DC Facebook group or my building link, but there were just so many moving parts and I thought of a little some of that and then didn't get to it in time. And who knows maybe walk in Shaw could have spoken if I had been a little faster at trying to track down additional speakers. But honestly, the food was basically there as bait for the media. If you're going to buy food yourself, that's much more for mutual Aid and community pantries - real food banks can buy food at the same prices grocery stores do; it's so much better to give them dollars to do so. Although yes there's a bunch of stuff that they're less likely to buy, like, say, multi packs of canned chicken from costco. And those that handle fresh at all that's entirely donations.
vvalkyri: (Default)
[personal profile] vvalkyri
It won't work, and I shall be sad after making a large version of your flyer that is all about resources for furloughed feds and then I try accessing the QR and the orange one works and the yellow one (unsurprisingly) does not.

Flyer with description of resources in a document avail by orange qr code. The qr code for  submitting more is yellow, and does not work.  Neither has a url mentioned. Provider org not listed.
I'd offered to print a bunch on the way up to the food drive/rally, and I guess the really important part is that people can access the resource list, but the fact that the submission QR doesn't work and there's no website at all on here (nor a mention of which org it's from, but it might not be from a specific org? there are SO many different resource compilation documents going around) makes me loath to make a bunch of these if maybe she'll have a chance to get me something less pretty and more functional. 

Also I had the bright idea to print an 8.5x11 one pager 'what are we on about?' as 11x17 and that seems to have created a SURPRISING amount of work, and my few minutes before bed turned into an hour. 

:sigh: 

I guess the good thing about having gone downstairs and done this is she'll see my message in the morning and maybe be able to get someone (it's not her design file) to fix it in time to still print them. 

I keep planning to try to get a movement started to push back on how what DC called making the Streatery program permanent is really just going to kill them.  And I desperately need to sleep.  


But my face is burning and I've got no idea what's going on with that at all. If I wake up sick I shall be very cross.  Especially since I'm the one bringing the tarps.

This was supposed to do the click to embiggen but it's being weird and i really want to sleep. 

Hm. this can't be a symptom of food poisoning can it? Last couple days have been a "eat the things what need eating"

So, um, it's a food drive rally?

Oct. 29th, 2025 09:25 pm
vvalkyri: (Default)
[personal profile] vvalkyri
And in a turn of dark hilarity, with only like 2 or 3 days of work on it we have so far 3 confirmed congresscritters but we've gotten nowhere finding anyone willing to speak who works in a food bank or mutual aid, who is receiving SNAP and looking at losing it, who is a fired or furloughed fed, or who is with USDA Food Nutrition Service.

But anyway. Yeah, 3-5 in front of USDA HQ on the Mall side near Smithsonian Metro, a rally (and food drive*) and we're sending the physical stuff to probably more the food bank in Arlington and the one in Gaithersburg** and we've raised over 5k in a day or two for Capital Area Food Bank and I feel guilty that I don't have a link that has links for all three.

I have no idea what I'm doing or wearing for Halloween.

I suppose I need to spend some more time trying to track down . . . something.

My phone died while I was in the library printing and I ended up talking with a lady for like 45 min after the library closed who plans to show up tomorrow (yay!) and who was telling me about things DC did to keep people from autofalling off medicaid when she was a case worker, and who also was telling me about some guy who was curing AIDS with herbs in the 80s; I went back to explaining PEPFAR and soft power somewhere in there. I think her name was Latisa. We also saw a desperately cute tiny dog.

I need way more sleep tonight.


*and yes we know generally it's best to just give $ to food banks and food pantries but hopefully the photographers will be really into the congresscritters helping load cars? (well actually I think they each have literally like 17 min windows of available time on site.)

** Manna food bank in Gaithersburg is desperate for additional volunteers the next few days:
"Manna Food Center in Maryland serves a significant federal workforce population. Because of the ongoing government shutdown, they are making emergency bags for furloughed federal workers in our area.
If you are available to volunteer for any of the shifts listed below, please contact Manna's Volunteer Coordinator, Kalandra Thompson, at 240.268.2520 x2520 or kalandra@mannafood.org
Volunteers are urgently needed for the following shifts:
· Thursday 10/30 9am – 12pm – 3 openings
· Thursday 10/30 9am – 12pm (Rescued Produce shift) – 8 openings
· Friday 10/31 from 12pm – 2pm (Frozen Meat Prep shift) – 9 openings
Manna Food Center Warehouse: 9311 Gaither Road, Gaithersburg, MD 20877

(no subject)

Oct. 29th, 2025 12:15 am
vvalkyri: (Default)
[personal profile] vvalkyri
I am utterly boggled that 13% of Americans get food delivered DAILY.

Atlantic article aboutThe Innovation That Threatens Restaurant Culture

In 2024, nearly three out of every four restaurant orders were not eaten in a restaurant, according to data provided to me by the National Restaurant Association, a trade group. The share of customers using delivery specifically, as opposed to picking up takeout or going to a drive-through, more than doubled from 2019 to 2024. In a recently released poll by the association, 41 percent of respondents said that delivery was “an essential part of their lifestyle.” For Millennials and Generation Z—the apex consumers of today, and of tomorrow too—it’s apparently even more essential: More than half of adults under 45 use delivery at least once a week, and 13 percent use it once a day. Five percent use it multiple times a day. But the delivery boom isn’t confined to young people or to urbanites: About one in eight Baby Boomers uses delivery once a week, and so does about one in five rural dwellers. We are a nation of order-inners. A world, really—earlier this year, DoorDash announced a deal to acquire the British delivery service Deliveroo for $3.86 billion; the new, combined company will have 50 million monthly active users, spread over more than 40 countries.


I very occasionally get pizza delivered.

I don't think I've gotten anything delivered if I'm alone since early pandemic. Even during high pandemic I tended to go there to pick stuff up. And I learned early on to maybe search on grubhub or even use the menu on grubhub but actually call the restaurant. (I did that with New Big Wong the night all the restaurants shut down. Because they didn't have their whole menu up on the website. )

I don't remember when I last posted

Oct. 27th, 2025 12:37 am
vvalkyri: (Default)
[personal profile] vvalkyri
It's been a very full week.

It's been a bunch of time with a good friend. Had all my assumptions about another friend dashed later in the week, astonished that that person could be capable of such cruelty*.

Managed to be part of a support system.

Didn't manage to get to one of the parties I would have liked to get to Saturday night, but did reconnect with a social circle some of whom I hadn't seen in years.

I do wish I'd spent more time outdoors today, because I was in a tank top and leggings and more than warm enough in the afternoon before driving all the way to Acro and spending the rest of the nice time indoors.

I'm so tired.




* I really don't have energy to explain and this isn't the venue anyway but even before I knew any more than that divorce papers had been served I was floored by the cruelty of the timing.

Database maintenance

Oct. 25th, 2025 08:42 am
mark: A photo of Mark kneeling on top of the Taal Volcano in the Philippines. It was a long hike. (Default)
[staff profile] mark posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance

Good morning, afternoon, and evening!

We're doing some database and other light server maintenance this weekend (upgrading the version of MySQL we use in particular, but also probably doing some CDN work.)

I expect all of this to be pretty invisible except for some small "couple of minute" blips as we switch between machines, but there's a chance you will notice something untoward. I'll keep an eye on comments as per usual.

Ta for now!

vvalkyri: (Default)
[personal profile] vvalkyri
Anyway, this is a memory: mom took me to the glass flower museum in Boston. And I sort of think I returned there with Joe in 2001 but we were getting sick at the time.

https://open.substack.com/pub/kirkgordon/p/the-age-of-silicon-began-long-ago?

I suppose I should get back to sleep.

I have things I really want to go to today in Manassas and Elkridge and Capitol Heights and argh.

Double power double hour

Oct. 22nd, 2025 10:36 pm
sorcyress: Drawing of me as a pirate, standing in front of the Boston Citgo sign (Default)
[personal profile] sorcyress
Some things I managed to do this afternoon and evening:

Small breakdown after school. Missed a bunch of the all-district department meeting. I am _assured_ by my work bestie that I missed absolutely nothing, which is at least a little reassuring.

(It's been a hard couple weeks at work. I would like it if I felt that my bosses were on my team and trying to support me and mine. I would settle if they were at least able to proactively say "I recognize how hard this latest bullshit is to deal with, and appreciate that you're doing so")

Talked to work bestie for an hour. That was nice. Good discussion of art, of dreams, of movie-making of the value of the act of doing things as different from the value of those things existing later. Clayton is really fucking smart and I'm very happy to be friends with him and get to consume his perspective on things.

When he went off to make copies, I managed to persuade my brain that things would be better if I just did a bare-minimum todo list and fucked off home. Managed to leave the building by like 5:45, which is pretty damn good for "didn't start prep until after 5". Meant I biked home before the sun went down which was good.

Got home and had a Power Hour. Ate dinner. Had a more different second power hour. Forest successfully gamified me by being all "~ooo~ look at the special tree that you can only earn if you do 300 minutes of focused time between now and like five days from now" and having it actually be a very pretty tree. So I'm gonna try for that, which means lots of Power Hours in the next few days. That is...that is not a bad thing.

Some stuff I managed during POWER HOURS:

*Desk is cleaned off, like fully, which I think has not been true since like...well? before my surgery? I could actually _use the computer at my desk_ which is astonishing. We'll see how long it lasts.

*Unpacked from MD trip, got all the laundry downstairs, third load is in the washer now, first load is put away *and* it was the one that had the most hangy-laundry, jegus fuck, I'm proud of myself for that.

*Dishfairy. Nothing special there.

*Went out to the garage and learned I don't seem to own a protractor, which, uh, is throwing a wrench into at least one project I should be working on right now. That's fine, I'll swipe one from work, but also what the fuck.

*Also found a thing in the garage and did a thing in my room and am feeling quite a lot of feelings about it, so we're not gonna talk about that one more until I actually decide what to do with them. Practice being bad at things, probably. Engage with the act of doing things for the sake of the act rather than the sake of the things. All of that is fine, but I wish it didn't come with a side of a very particular insecurity/inadequacy that I fully recognize and I *think* is the same thing that made me write the shittiest LJ post I ever wrote on purpose (like sixteen years ago, apparently. It's less bad than it could be but also jegus _fuck_ Sor, you were goin' through it weren't you?)

It is very funny how "not gonna talk about that one" actually manifests, isn't it? ANYways, I think this might be the first time I've ever specifically tagged _exactly that feeling_ as _oh it goes with those moments_.

*Also I apparently have three separate versions of Vienna Teng's "The Tower", one of which I'd never listened to before (to be fair, it's from her live concert album Moment Always Vanishing, and I only quite recently obtained that one). The 2001 version showed up in shuffle and I said "yeah, that seems good to listen to" and _really_ liked some of the differences in musicality. And then I did the live Vienna/Alex Wong version and _holy shit_.

I got not quite halfway through before Gabriel _grabbed_ me and pushed me onto the dance floor. There are advantages to actually cleaning my room, having space to dance is one of the biggest. He and I danced to that one, and then I wrapped with the regular version and let Alis take her turn with me. It was really fucking good for me. Dancing is _really_ fucking good for me.

It's a good reminder that sometimes we can be our own love with intuition.

Hopefully tomorrow will also be good? That would be nice.

~Sor
MOOP!

AWS outage

Oct. 20th, 2025 10:11 am
alierak: (Default)
[personal profile] alierak posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance
DW is seeing some issues due to today's Amazon outage. For right now it looks like the site is loading, but it may be slow. Some of our processes like notifications and journal search don't appear to be running and can't be started due to rate limiting or capacity issues. DW could go down later if Amazon isn't able to improve things soon, but our services should return to normal when Amazon has cleared up the outage.

Edit: all services are running as of 16:12 CDT, but there is definitely still a backlog of notifications to get through.

Edit 2: and at 18:20 CDT everything's been running normally for about the last hour.

(no subject)

Oct. 19th, 2025 09:41 pm
sorcyress: Drawing of me as a pirate, standing in front of the Boston Citgo sign (Default)
[personal profile] sorcyress
Today I went to the Renaissance faire!

Yes, this means MD faire, _obviously_. I should maybe try out King Richard's again sometime, since I'm running on decade+ old memories, but honestly, nothing I've heard about it since has implied that I actually should try it out. So if I want to go to a rennfaire it means I pack a bag and get on the train and head down to Maryland!

I went with my mom, and my partner Tuesday, and also Tuesday's mom and sibling and sibling's-partner. We saw some shows! We ate some food off of sticks! I bought some pretty shiny things! It was a good time!

I have forgotten that I pretty deeply hate attending jousts, which is a shame. I enjoy the part where there are impressive feats of horsemanship. I really _really_ do not like the part where we are baying for the death of the competitors. Stage combat is neat and fun to watch from a technical and talent perspective! It feels...it feels pretty uncomfortable to be in the stands surrounded by people who do not seem to be appreciating this aspect of it and instead just want violence.

Also very loud and overstimulating. I would enjoy more being much further onto the edges of the crowd.

I was very happy to get a new coin necklace, and was excited by more designs than would fit on one coin, which feels hopeful for the future. I own five of them now! And also one of the new designs this year was _spider_ which feels amazing prescient for a year in which I'm increasingly using these as The One Official Jewelry I Wear Like From A Spellcraft And Ritual Perspective. Good to have a spider included!

I also bought matching fidget rings for me and Tuesday, because they're quite lovely. And two pairs of hairsticks! One set from Kathleen (although she herself wasn't present) at least in part as a reminder to go buy a bunch more from her through the internet. The other set is really nice maile flowers that I quite liked and obtained from a place near the jousting field. It's possible I shouldn't be left unsupervised for too long at faire, or I will find nice things to use to put up my hair :3

And the weather was perfect to wander around! Sitting was good, standing was good, there was nice breeze so I wasn't ever overdressed but I also wasn't chilly -I brought my gloves and didn't need them, and decided at the last minute to leave the midlevel cloak in the car (I wore the lightlevel and didn't even consider the heavy one)

We watched the Skum perform Othello, which was especially interesting because I don't actually know that one --got a much better idea now though! And later we watched Hilby the Skinny German Juggle Boy, who Tuesday and I saw when we came to faire together two years ago. He remains _extremely_ funny. I also saw a few swords get swallowed, and quite enjoyed some Piper Jones from afar.

And I stopped and had a nice conversation with Miss Nancy, and we saw Pepto in passing (with an amazing viking ship wagon for her kids), and I chatted a bit with the Beef Jerky Guy.

So it was overall very good! I am pleased to be home now though, which is to say, at Cameron and Jake's place in Bal'mer. Tonight I need to finish some sub plan stuff, so that tomorrow I get to stress-free ride a train back home. (I do like riding a train, except when they have two hour delays that start late enough that mom already kicked her friends out and started driving to the station to pick me up. Looking at you, way down.)

I hope your life is also good.

~Sor
MOOP!

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Clarence "Sparr" Risher

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