denise | (no subject)

I'm not a project leader, and not officially a volunteer, but I've been trying to help organize Open Beta parties. Info linked off this post. Not sure if you've seen it, but I'd be grateful if you could include relevant bits in the news post.

-- code updates (crossposter, site scheme options, new style, misc fixes)
-- advocacy reminder
-- invite codes
-- buglist

...I vote that you do the news update as a blues number: Woke up early this morning, had myself some CSS...whoa, I woke up early this morning, baby, the importer was a mess...still haven't got it figured out, no, no, no! Have to keep working on it I guess....

*waits for Amy to appear and beat me to death*

I hope to add something like four items, but want to finish the posts still. I'm going out for dinner and then will be working on them tonight :)

(but the blues-man makes me happy.)

Best Beloved went to investigate, and found out the university (which is right next door) was having a party, so hired a guy with a guitar to come sing the blues! He was good, too.

(Sorry about the delete & repost, forgot I was logged into my testing account. *g*)

(no worries)

I do love me some serendipity. How very wonderful to have a blues-man on a Saturday evening.

I love living in the city, man.

Not quite as awesome as when I was living in Manhattan, but that's because nothing can be as awesome as living in Manhattan. But downtown Baltimore is a nice second.

I've only ever lived in San Francisco, and in Oakland near Lake Merritt and downtown, which had their own awesomesauce. Manhattan both tempts and scares me. But Baltimore, which I learned to love through Homicide:Life on the Streets (even though I'm sure it by no means showed everything, how could it?) and Seattle are the US cities that tempt me most.

The little bits I've spent in London were thrilling, too.

I never much liked SF, but I think a lot of it was that I was always there under stressful circumstances. Seattle, on the other hand, I've visited a bunch of times, and I've often said it's the only west coast city I could ever stand living in. (I am so an East Coast girl it isn't even funny.)

Do you know I've never seen Homicide? I've heard it's really good, but Best Beloved and I watched the pilot a while back and neither one of us was really interested much by it, so we never bothered to keep going. I've heard it's a really accurate picture of certain elements of life here in B'more, but I don't know enough to say one way or the other. I think my favorite thing about B'more is how diverse it is, and how quickly things change -- there are people who say that B'more is a city of neighborhoods, which is true, but more than that, it's a city of streets. Things go street by street, and you'll have burned-out rowhouses being used as drug central, then walk two blocks and there'll be $500,000 townhouses and kids playing in the yard.

It's very bizarre. But it's the one major city on the northeastern seaboard that's actually affordable, cost-of-livingwise, and it's got such an awesome combination of southern and northern culture, and it has the worst baseball team ever but tickets are cheap and the stadium is gorgeous, and the people are awesome, and you can stand out on the street corner and see humanity in all its glory, and whenever i'm out in my wheelchair people hold doors for me and don't do that thing where they pretend I don't exist, and I love my crazy wacky city so much!

SF is an odd city. I've lived there off and on and it's always been odd. Cold, in some way that I can't describe in just a few words. Oakland could be so gorgeous, but it's like Los Angeles in that it's just too big geographically for the resources it actually has, though if each of the people who live there took care of their little bit it'd be so wonderful.

Homicide- how did that catch my attention? I don't remember, but somehow it did, and that drew me to look at Baltimore, and that's kept me interested. I like that, a city of streets, and now I've put it on my list of places to see in the US when I take my cross-country trip, and it's on my list of places to try and stay for longer than a night, so I can get the sense of it.

Oh, I love me some local baseball, winning team or not, and local people with good manners. You've done so much in this little exchange to make Baltimore even more real to me... can we keep in touch a bit about this, so that when I get my stuff together for that trip, I can pick your brain and experience a bit?

Absolutely! When you're going to be in the area, let me know; I'll give you a list of things to see (our pathetic-yet-plucky little zoo! the aquarium! the science center! hampden! fells point! charles village! the awesome free museum!) at the very least, and if the stars align properly and I've got enough oompfh, I'd be happy to take you out to dinner/for a bit of a tour.

Thank you!

It'll be a couple of years, yet- this year's big event is getting back to Europe again, which takes all my spoons and some fancy organizing to pull off. But this cross-country trip's been in my dreams for over 50 years, and I'm gonna pull it off one way or another.

I'll take any sights and places you want to point out to me, and if it's even only to shake hands at the door, I'll be glad to meet you if you're up for it.

Blessings on your head, m'dear. This is a pleasure, meeting up here with the blues-man still playing in my thoughts.

Whereabouts were you in London, OOI? (I live in Bermondsey, east of London Bridge, although currently I'm over in Australia for a few months.)

Cities I've loved: London (born & brought up there, went back as an adult, so it is My City); New York (though wasn't there for long); SF (ditto); Sydney (where I'm living atm).

Oooh, Europe. Best Beloved and I went to Italy two years back -- I decided that if I was turning thirty, I was by God going to do it in a city where they're still using things that are a thousand years old as though they were just built yesterday -- and we totally loved it. I'm looking forward to being able to get some more travel in while I can still travel relatively easily (before my body finishes breaking down entirely, heh!)

I did a cross-country US tour about six, seven years back, and it was great. You simply must add Yellowstone National Park to your list if it isn't there already; it's gorgeous.

London was a bit of a gift, the first year, side effect of an unexpectedly lovely trip to attend my grandson's wedding in France in 2007. I went back last summer, and both times I stayed at The Generator near Russell Square because a friend I trusted recommended it. It was a good central location for what I needed, I got good treatment from staff and dorm-mates (kind of cute, really, considering I'm an old lady of 57 who books into mixed dorm rooms- I'd become the room 'auntie' and people would bring me tea and little presents from their days out. Very sweet!) and in 2007 the place was about 1/3 Gryffindors, Slytherins, Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs because it was "Harry Potter Book Weekend". Madness, wonderful to be surrounded by people in full regalia. The hostel was close enough to a lot of places either walking or by tube for me to get a lot of London in for such short stays, and I had the benefit of friends to help me know where I might like to go.

This summer I'm staying there on my way over (eventually to Germany) and a few blocks away at the Montana Excel on the way back. Each time I come to London I learn a tiny bit more of it, and each time it's like paying ahead into a savings account for my return.

[um. what's OOI? lol, netspeak question.]

Edited 2009-04-19 03:59 (UTC)

It was a lucky fluke, and wouldn't have happened but for LJ friends who knew things about traveling, who offered concrete help (places to stay, etc.) or both. It went so well and was so lovely I went back again last summer, and am going this summer.

I've been up and down the Left Coast off and on all my life, down to the tip of Baja and as far south as Tepic, Nayarit, up to Anchorage, and up and down 101 & 5 more than I can count. But my East/West travel's been limited to coming out from Indiana on the train when I was 4, and taking my son to Prescott for University in 1992. I've got me some exploring coming, and Yellowstone's on the list (especially after watching the History Channel show on it. If I hadn't gone into Nursing, Geology might have grabbed me!)

Not a volunteer but I was just going to ask if it was *good* blues. Glad to hear it was.

He was fabulous.

1. thank you for the invite!

2. How can I help with volunteering?

Welcome!

If you watch

dw_volunteers, we will be posting volunteering information there Real Soon Now, I Swear, As Soon As We Get Our Acts Together. :)

Did

getting_started hit news yet? I lose track of weeks.

Nope, not yet. (It's going in my invite emails, though.)

OOI = out of interest :)

I don't know that hotel (living in London = know v little about places to stay there!), but Russell Square's a nice area to be in, central, and near to the British Museum which is always a good thing.

I hope you have a lovely time in London this time! It's a fantastic city. Have you been down to the South Bank? Walking along there (past the Eye, & the Royal Festival Hall, & the Tate Modern, and down to London Bridge) is one of my favourite things in London. If you're lucky & the tide's low enough there's even a little patch of slightly grey beach at Festival Pier ;) (you can walk on it but I wouldn't recommend sunbathing!)

"Name our Style" challenge and pre-announcement about submitting stylesheets.

Call for Volunteers in regard to styles documentation people!

You've already mentioned Transmogrified in your list. And maybe just a highlight on the community in general? We want people watching and commenting there. (Otherwise, the
Transmogrified! And notes on the style overhaul. and the Core2 Release Candidate! are probably the ones that are most important to regular users.)

I assume it's okay for me to leave for you to translate this into newsletter communication goodness? Let me know if I should do this better <3

The Generator's an 800 bed hostel- mad, but very well run in my limited experience.

The Montana I'm taking on faith from reviews on Booking.Com's website... the worst that can happen is, it doesn't live up and I don't come back there.

I was lucky enough in '07 to go up in the Eye- what a view! (but haven't done that whole walk- maybe this year) and last year to go by the boat to Greenwich, and to the Observatory. Saw a day of the Indian Dancing from the Ramayana at the British Library, and went by Friends House (I was raised in Quaker Meeting, though I'm not a member). I have made online friends who become RL friends who are incredibly generous with their time, showing me where they live, taking me to places they like.

Thanks for the recommendation! I'll give it a try- i'm not much of a sunbather anymore, anyway, but little strips of beach are still a fondness.

There's also some info on the wiki. If you're happy to learn programming, that would be great. A lot of the team hang out in IRC, so urgent requests for help tend to go there first.

dw_styles are also looking for volunteers, comments and ideas, I believe. If you can help any of the requests on

getting_started, that's also useful.

If you haven't already, you'll probably want to make sure that your mention of the crossposter links to the dw_maintenance post. There's a lot of useful information in there.

Yup, got that already, ta!

(I used it to crosspost my pride thread this morning. I ♥ you.)

*waves a shy hello* I'm so thrilled with my lottery account (!!!!!!) but figured you must be too swamped to get a post from every new member going "SQUEEEEEEEEEE!" But hey - if you're subscribed to every single one of us, I guess I can't be clogging your inbox much more by showing up and saying.....SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!

After a couple of hours tweaking color settings, I'm up and running with Transmogrified - I can't write CSS, but my journal shows what even a non-coder can do with a classic structure like Transmogrified a bit of subtlety and some colors :)

I wish for you must extra oxygen, some valerian tea and a small furry animal of the cat or dog variety to sit on your lap/at your feet and keep your blood pressure down in the coming days :) And thanks!

much extra oxygen, even *gah!*

Thank you, and welcome!

(I do actually have a cat sitting on the yarn bin next to me, staring at me. But he's not so much with the destressing; he's actually telling me that he's hungry. *G*)

:D See, he's helping you by being *grounding!* "Mom, those are spots of light on a screen. I'm three dimensional and hungry. Guess which matters more, eh?"

Kittehs are such sardonic links to reality :P

We have two, and the older one (my boy -- the other one is Best Beloved's through and through) is so talky. He likes to tell me about everything. And I'm never paying him enough attention!

I toootally hear you about Listening To The Cat! The kitty we are owned by is a Maine Coon and the talking & trilling never cease. Everything must be narrated - and if I don't *make eye contact* and *respond verbally* she's like a 5yo, "Mom.. mom.. MOM.. ARE YOU LISTENING? DID YOU HEAR MY GREAT STORY?"

They are here from an alternate dimension, the least we humans can do (they seem to imply) is actually pay attention :P

Oh yes! Mine's at least part Maine Coon, so he's got the exact same talky thing going on.

lolol - yes! chirpy cats ftw!

[rereads thread to giggle, notes more typos, rolls eyes Transmogrified a bit of subtlety and some colors :) = and some green colors :) I loffs all shades of greeen!]

You made my day.

Thank you for the invite. I'll watch for bugs!

Hi, I'd like to know how I can get an dreamwidth invite.

i just tried to get an invite code and even buy one and it won't let me. my email address is:

howyouloveme@gmail.com

could you help me figure this out?

We aren't yet open for business! Invite codes are being released to our closed beta testers. If you log in with your OpenID, there's a chance you'll be randomly selected to receive an invite code; otherwise, we'll open for business on April 30.

Thank you darling! The account is lovely!

We'll be opening for account creation on the evening of April 30.

(no subject)

no subject

my list

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Volunteering: How to get involved

no subject

no subject

thanks Denise and (crazy) DW team :)

Re: thanks Denise and (crazy) DW team :)

Re: thanks Denise and (crazy) DW team :)

Re: thanks Denise and (crazy) DW team :)

Re: thanks Denise and (crazy) DW team :)

Re: thanks Denise and (crazy) DW team :)

Re: thanks Denise and (crazy) DW team :)

Re: thanks Denise and (crazy) DW team :)

Re: thanks Denise and (crazy) DW team :)

Another thanks for the invite.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject