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Monthly Archives: September 2008

Twitter Updates for 2008-09-30

Posted on September 30, 2008 by Linus Posted in Uncategorized .
  • I’m wondering why the market insists on being weird and why Clay Aiken’s obvious nature is so newsworthy. #
  • Playing with TwitterRoo so I don’t have to log into the website. Makes this far more easier and annoying 🙂 Aren’t you excited! #
  • TarotByArwen needs to share more of her followers 😛 #
  • Hrmm.. well, we’ll see how “Twitter Tools” works are creating a post for me on my blog. #
  • @TarotByArwen Perhaps to help others find their path?It is actually far more important than people realize. Plus you give nice hugs. 🙂 #
  • @TarotByArwen LOL.. if we go, it’ll have to be next summer. Her work schedule is more intense than mine! :s #
  • @TarotByArwen Thanks and added 🙂 #
  • @problogger I have avoided the facebook option but might do it soon. Thanks for the idear 😉 #
  • testing twitter on facebook.. *ping ping* is this thing on? #

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Remembering Ruby

Posted on September 30, 2008 by Linus Posted in hate crimes, LGBTQ, transgender .

People really don’t get it, do they? I read about Ruby’s body found in the Sacramento River yesterday and I was shocked by the following quote (it seems to be newsfeed article):

The man has been identified as Fernando Molina, 22. Investigators have learned Molina was in the process of transitioning from a man to a woman. He was known as “Ruby” to family and friends and frequented the Watt Avenue and Auburn Boulevard corridors as well as downtown Sacramento.

**SHE**, you dumb fucks! It was a woman. And using a term like “frequents” make it sound dirty. She may have been a sex worker but that doesn’t make her any less of a person. Treat her with respect as the human being she was. It’s horrible that she ended up in the river. And I won’t be surprised if people forget as the rest of society will treat her as less than a person because she was in the process of transitioning. As time goes on, I’m finding I’m getting more and more angry when I read stuff like this. I’m starting to see more and more why it’s so critical that society sees us in the terms and on the terms we want to be seen.

And I can see why it’s important for many to be stealth. But I wonder if so many weren’t stealth and society were forced to face the fact that there are many of us around, if things would be different. Would Ruby still be here rather than treated as less-than something? Hopefully the police will find the person who did this and citizens will be outraged. I doubt it but one can hope.

Ruby Molina, you won’t be forgotten. And you will be remember for the beautiful woman you are.

I think we need to recognize the beautiful women and men before these tragedies happen, not after.

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Tags: hate crime, LGBTQ, MTF, transgender .

Vegan Recipes: Spicy Seitan Wings and “Chicken” Seitan

Posted on September 30, 2008 by Linus Posted in recipes, vegan stuff .

In an effort to make the kitchen more interesting, I’ve been experimenting with various seitan recipes. Seitan is turning out to be easier to make than I thought. And even tastier than I expected. My previous seitan experiment was ok but rather bland. Yesterday’s experiments turned out better than I expected and today I had an even better surprise.

First I started with this chicken seitan recipe. I found that as I was making it, I couldn’t help but think of when I used to eat chicken. Today, I wouldn’t be able to stomach it (physically, mentally and ethically) but I now began to realize where the taste really came from: the herbs added and how it was cooked. If you really want to get down into it, chicken is a bland flesh to eat so you have to season it. The same can be said of seitan. Once I had prepared the seitan, I took out about a third of the recipe and let the rest cool in the pot, marinating further in the seitan broth. It’s interesting how this recipe uses kelp to “salt” the seitan, an nice alternative in my opinion.

I then did the Spicy Seitan Wings as per this recipe. Now, I have a huge sweet tooth and often find spicy meals too much. My taste buds tend to be overly sensitive and aware of spices. This mixture was actually ok and we used a plain hummus as a dip for the “wings” and fresh cut tomatoes. I also had a Corona (a vegan beer!) on the side, in addition to my usual water. It was really good. Texture wise it wasn’t too rubbery and actually had a good sensation to it. After dinner, I took about a third of the remaining seitan and put it into a container with the left over spicy sauce, shaking it vigorously to ensure that all pieces got a good coating. I figured marinating overnight in the sauce will add further flavouring to the seitan the next day. How right I was.

This morning, as a late breakfast/early lunch, I took some romaine lettuce, topped it with some diced tomatoes and a bit of Goddess Dressing. I took some of the spicy marinated seitan (about 3-4 strips) and sliced and then diced them. I then sauted and cooked them for about 5-8 minutes before adding them as a topping to the salad I had made. It was perfect. The balance of the creamy (vegan) dressing with the fresh, cold veggies against the spicy hot seitan was perfect.

A great alternative to the usual.

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Tags: recipes, seitan, vegan .

Tell me something I didn’t know..

Posted on September 30, 2008 by Linus Posted in LGBTQ, Life .

Ok. I’ll admit it. I’ve never been fond of American Idol and the teeny-bopper singers that are produced from it. But the recent bru-ha-ha around Clay Aiken and him being gay just made me.. well.. 😐 I mean, come on. Every now and again there are some in the “fambly” that are just so flamin’, you can smell it miles away. And here was one. What killed me even more was the following comment made by one fan, so upset over it:

“This is really shocking news as I had no idea he was gay,” read a comment posted by “Sheridansq.” “And now I have to deal with this. I am not sure what to say to people who know I was a fan. … I didn’t go to work today and am not answering the telephone.”

Are you shitting me? Even at the height of my Thriller days, I never went to this extreme. I mean, I might like the music but what the man/woman does with their lives is their lives. And bully for them for enjoying life outside of being under the public eye. But seriously.

So what if he’s gay? This should be such a non-issue it’s not funny. Ok. There is the fact that he’ll be under constant scrutiny by the media, fans and haters alike. Being a gay father isn’t the easiest thing in anyone’s world. Heck, being a parent period is tough in this day and age. Shouldn’t his singing/dancing/song writing be more of prominence when it comes to his job than his “gayness”? And if it’s a question of parenting, seriously, he’s off on the right foot by being overly honest.

But it does make me wonder how much of this is just a ploy for attention when a career is lagging. It was stating the bleeding obvious but it does generate lots of excitement when the world has nothing better to do. I mean, financial crisis’ come and go, eh?

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Tags: Clay Aiken, entertainment, LGBTQ, media .

Twitter Updates for 2008-09-29

Posted on September 29, 2008 by Linus Posted in Uncategorized .
  • Quicky off to post office to let Revenue Canada they screwed up my return, then do groceries and then a series of conf calls. Whee. #
  • I’m playing with my twitter. Sounds kinda pre-verted, eh?? And I’m enjoying a nice Ashton VSG (see review here: http://linkbee.com/WJH) #

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Numbers are fun!

Posted on September 29, 2008 by Linus Posted in Uncategorized .

1. My husband and I divorced over religious differences. He thought he was God and I didn’t.

2. I don’t suffer from insanity; I enjoy every minute of it.

3. Some people are alive only because it’s illegal to kill them.

4. I used to have a handle on life, but it broke.

5. Don’t take life too seriously; no one gets out alive.

6. You’re just jealous because the voices only talk to me.

7. Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.

8. Earth is the insane asylum for the universe.

9. I’m not a complete idiot — Some parts are just missing.

10. Out of my mind. Back in five minutes.

11. NyQuil, the stuffy, sneezy, why-the-heck-is-the-room-spinning medicine.

12. God must love stupid people; He made so many.

13. The gene pool could use a little chlorine.

14. Consciousness: That annoying time between naps.

15. Ever stop to think, and forget to start again?

16. Being ‘over the hill’ is much better than being under it!

17. Wrinkled Was NOT One of the Things I Wanted to Be When I Grew up!

18. Procrastinate Now!

19. I Have a Degree in Liberal Arts; Do You Want Fries With That?

20. A hangover is the wrath of grapes.

21. A journey of a thousand miles must, begin with a cash advance.

23. He who dies with the most toys, is nonetheless dead.

24. A picture is worth a thousand words, but it uses up three thousand times the memory.

25. Ham and eggs…A day’s work for a chicken, a lifetime commitment for a pig.

26. The trouble with life is there’s no background music.

27. The original point and click interface was a Smith & Wesson.

28. I smile because I don’t know what the heck is going on.

29. What happened to 22 ?

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Rant du jour: Don’t call me “honey” and other things making me go “grrr”

Posted on September 29, 2008 by Linus Posted in Life .

Seriously. Even if I wasn’t a transgendered guy, why would someone refer to me as “honey”? It happened this morning while at the post office. I was putting together an envelope to send back a clarification note to Revenue Canada (I claim I’m owed $3,500 and they say I owe $4,200 — a bit of a difference of opinion, particularly in regards to the date of departure from Canada: they think it’s April 07 when it really was Dec 2007). Anyways, I wasn’t too impressed with the post office opening 15 minutes late — a consistent habit of theirs I should have remembered — but I was even less impressed when I got called “honey” by the male representative behind the glass. I’m sure he was trying to be polite but “honey” to me feels deragatory or something. Perhaps I was still overly annoyed at the fact that they were evidentally late (their receipt machine even matched up time with my cell phone so I know they were late).

I dunno. I suspect there is more of a desire to maintain traditional roles here in the US than elsewhere. I have been finding more and more that this nation, for all it’s claims for being forward thinking and open-minded, has been less so in my experience. The factor that likely leads the way is how the nation developed from a basis of Puritan values to the modern day Christian evangelical views that we see today. The percentage of those that are truly open-minded seems small. Smaller still, in my humble opinion, are those that I would say are “true Christians”: those are, to me, people who respect the path that God has given to others.

Oh.. and as I write this, my only personal phone seems to be the central magnet for cold-calling computer run telemarketers. The so-called “Do Not Call List” is crap. I’ve put my phone number on it now for 3 months and still get these things. What’s the freakin’ point? And why isn’t their marketing team being a little more intelligent about this stuff? I’m getting calls about my “car warranty” expiring.

DUMB ASS, I do not drive, do not have a license and certainly don’t have a car.

GO AWAY.

Go far away, please.

Sigh.

Is it Tuesday yet?

2 Comments .
Tags: Life, rant .

It’s habit forming

Posted on September 28, 2008 by Linus Posted in Life, Uncategorized .

I’m finding I fall into doing specific things over and over again. Habits. They can be good or bad. We sometimes dress them up as “behaviours”, “rituals”, or other euphemisms but they are repeated tasks we do again and again because we like doing them. Even bad habits have some sense of comfort to them. Generally, my habits are:

1. check my various bookmarked sites over and over again — it almost feels OCD at times but sometimes little things pop up.

2. have a cigar a day. This habit will become more important as I develop my cigarnewbie.com site. More than anything, variety will be key but I do find it relaxing at times to sit back and enjoy.

3. Morning coffee or red bull or both. I’m usually a morning person but every now and again I desperately need that caffeine jolt.

4. sunflower seeds. Yes. I admit it. I have an oral fixation.

So what are you four main habits (good or bad)?

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Tags: Life, meme .

Pondering the life of transitioning and politics

Posted on September 27, 2008 by Linus Posted in Daily life, LGBTQ, Life, Politics, transgender, Traveling/Work .

So lots of things rattling around in my head this week. To start off with, I distinctly overheard some of my students comment on my “beard” (it’s barely a goatee but definitely visible and I’m still not fully passing). It was unnerving. But I do think they figured out quickly that I know my shit so beard or not they learned lots. This is a concern of mine. I kinda wished the company could keep me on online stuff for a while since that would make it easier to transition but I’ll have quite a few jaunts over to our NYC facility and at some point, will have to address it with them as the physical changes become more and more prominent. In fact, K commented recently about how much facial hair (mostly under my chin and below) is growing. It almost feels like it appeared overnight.

This is one of the bigger challenges to transitioning while on the job, particularly one that has a work visa hanging over. It introduces whole new challenges into the mix. I’d rather wait until I have my green card to change my name but I think I may have to do it in the new year as the changes are coming far faster than I had anticipated. It must be a gene thing that all the guys in my family, particularly on my mom’s side, be hairy everywhere but on top (male-patterned baldness is very evident but it’s ironic how hairy we are everywhere else — go figure, eh?). It isn’t going to stop me from being open about my choices but sometimes you have to know when to wage the battle. This past week was the first time that I felt I was in a hugely conservative room. It was rather surprising but it has to do with the environment I was in (major, major Fortune 500 company that has huge inter-office politics and maintains an “old boys network” it seems).

Anyways, I am glad the week is over and I get a chance to relax some. I’ve been working on a few blogs, writing more to get myself used to writing lots (I want to participate in the “Write a Novel in a Month” contest/writing thingy — it’s good practise and since writing is something I enjoy, it’ll be fun). I’ve been reading and watching the US political system and it’s still an interesting thing. Last night was the debate and I nearly laughed my ass off when I read the following from the NY Times:

But Mr. McCain’s talk of experience too often made him sound like a tinny echo of the 20th century. At one point, he talked about how Ronald Reagan’s “S.D.I.” helped end the cold war.

Bullshit. The Cold War, as someone who lived through it, was ended because communism, specifically USSR communism, ended. It wasn’t fear of SDI but economic woes and a changing climate. Let’s face it: they knew the economy that they had created wasn’t helping, there were more calls by citizens for free votes and they wanted to do what 99% of all people want to do: just live life, raise their family and enjoy it. Is it that hard to imagine? The US does many great things but it isn’t nor has it been the saviour of the rest of the world. If anything, it’s almost like that over-helpful relative that doesn’t know when to stop. Yes, it’s nice to receive that help but sometimes ya gotta let the rest of us do our own thing. I find it rather ironic that the US Republicans discourage big government at home and it’s involvement in day-to-day life of the average citizen but have no qualms of sticking it’s governmental nose into the activities of the day-to-day lives elsewhere.

Kettle meet pot.

Pot meet kettle.

Exciting, no?

They baffle me at times. I just want to shake them and go, “Uh.. hello?? Anyone home?” In my web searching this morning, I bounced around a variety of sites and hit upon “Lipstick of a Wing Nut” from The Nation. They have posted an op-ed piece about 10 questions they’d want to ask Palin. The last one is one I’ve always wanted to ask those that are on the far right. But I have to say, the 10 questions are certainly ones I’d love to hear answers to. Not the fluffy answers that the handlers will have her say but honest, concrete with substance answers. Novel concept I know. I leave you with the questions to ponder. Maybe God will show up and offer His insight one day. Now that’d be neat.

§ Suppose your 14-year-old daughter Willow is brutally raped in her bedroom by an intruder. She becomes pregnant and wants an abortion. Could you tell the parents of America why you think your child and their children should be forced by law to have their rapists’ babies?

§ You say you don’t believe global warming is man-made. Could you tell us what scientists you’ve spoken with or read who have led you to that conclusion? What do you think the 2,500 scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are getting wrong?

§ If you didn’t try to fire Wasilla librarian Mary Ellen Baker over her refusal to consider censoring books, why did you try to fire her?

§ What is the European Union, and how does it function?

§ Forty-seven million Americans lack health insurance. John Goodman, who has advised McCain on healthcare, has proposed redefining them as covered because, he says, anyone can get care at an ER. Do you agree with him?

§ What is the function of the Federal Reserve?

§ Cindy and John McCain say you have experience in foreign affairs because Alaska is next to Russia. When did you last speak with Prime Minister Putin, and what did you talk about?

§ Approximately how old is the earth? Five thousand years? 10,000? 5 billion?

§ You are a big fan of President Bush, so why didn’t you mention him even once in your convention speech?

§ McCain says cutting earmarks and waste will make up for revenues lost by making the tax cuts permanent. Experts say that won’t wash. Balancing the Bush tax cuts plus new ones proposed by McCain would most likely mean cutting Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security. Which would you cut?

§ You’re suing the federal government to have polar bears removed from the endangered species list, even as Alaska’s northern coastal ice is melting and falling into the sea. Can you explain the science behind your decision?

§ You’ve suggested that God approves of the Iraq War and the Alaska pipeline. How do you know?

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Tags: FTM, McCain, Palin, Politics, transition, US Politics, work .

Blogs can be treasure or junk..

Posted on September 26, 2008 by Linus Posted in Uncategorized .

So you may have been wondering what all this creation, ads and such is about. Well, I’ve realized that if I want to make my dreams a reality — have a family with K in a house of our choice — I’ll need more income than I get. Since geeking is what I do best, it seemed natural to tie in my cigar hobby and see if I can make a few bucks on the side with it. Ultimately, I’d like the blogs to be able to support themselves but if it can make more than that (and perhaps open the door for self-employment in the long run), that’s even better. I suspect the CigarNewbie site will do well on it’s own as I add more reviews, commentary, etc. to it over time, particularly when I compare it to the existing domains I own — msmittens.com and syrlinus.com.

As a lark I went to dnScoop.com, a site that values domains based on a variety of factors. I was rather surprised to see my two main existing domains valued, combined, over $8,000! It was impressive to me. A site I moderate is valued at over $230,000 and is only a year older. Granted it has a user base in the thousands so that helps. What really surprised me was that butch-femme.com was valued at just over half of the attributed value of msmittens.com, even though they are the same age (roughly). To me, the success of a site isn’t the monetary value but rather what I can give out as value to others and if they find it of help. If they do, then the site is a success. If not, it’s better to close doors. That’s what really surprised me about msmittens.com. I had been rather lazy with it lately and haven’t put up as many blog entries as I used to (although I will be working to change that and add more security/computer related articles to it).

I think it does show how one person’s treasure is another person’s junk. Either way, it’s all been a great learning experience to me as to how blog success can vary. This site has a varied audience and only has a limited few repeat regulars. The same goes for msmittens.com. And I really don’t mind. It does allow me to post what I feel comfortable with and how I want. That ability to have editorial control is rather crucial to me.

Anyways, it’ll be interesting to see where things are a year from now and how the cigarnewbie.com site fares at that point. Perhaps it will be a treasure. Then again..

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