Author: Erica Firment

Erica Olsen Firment is an omnivorous mammal of the genus Ailurus, having an endothermic physiology and a long, furry tail. Erica's range extends to both deciduous and coniferous forests, and can often be found working on software user interfaces and creating information architectures in Silicon Valley.
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Recent goings-on, presented in rhyming couplets

1. An identity crisis might ensue,
Skipping the SLA meeting for a workshop on XHTML2.
*Sorry SLA. You’re great and all, but semantic, accessible, device-independent webpages whoop your ass.

2. A morning dogwalk at six.
Instead of eating the cat, he just licks.
* Dogfriend Odin has been staying with us. He thinks the cat is veeeery innnnteresting.

3. While lining the attic with insulation,
Five thousand spiders in formation.
* Bravely, I battled on.

4. Attempting to recall possessive case,
I call the hotel in Spain. Hablas Ingles?
* I apparently suffer from Fear Of Spanish. Que Oy.

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I’m going to see London! I’m going to see France!

britmusm.png

I’m going to London! And Spain! (not France – that was just to make the title funny) There’s a nifty-looking XHTML2/Xforms workshop in northern Spain next month, and we’re going! To Spain! And London! For two weeks!

I love mixing vacation with geeking!

If anyone wants to meet me in London and spend a few dozen hours drooling on the British Museum’s documents room, let me know. I’m making a beeline for the handwritten Jayne Eyre manuscript, and I’m not leaving until I achieve enlightenment. Or at least a higher state of consciousness. Or a sore butt. Whichever comes first.

Chris is also going to a Neilsen Norman Group workshop, hence the London stopover. I’ll just be sponging off the hotel room and bopping around for five days trying to drink as many IPAs as I can wrap my head around.

More on all of this later. Right now, I’m going home to celebrate by putting up some storm windows and raking leaves.

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Serenity

serenity.jpgGet thee to Serenity. It required some monumental orchestration, but we got there Saturday and spent the rest of the evening saying things like "Woah" and "Damn".

Go. Go now. Then go again. Then buy the Firefly dvds in case you haven’t already. Ogod this was a cool movie. What are you doing sitting there? Look up film times!

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Speaking of sloth…

Sloth woodcut

Here’s some baby sloths. (thanks Kafkaesque)

These sloths remind me of the time I went to a residence hall library program with my friend Ryan “Galaxor Nebulon” Hughes. (Hi Ryan! Where the hell are ya?)

They had brought in a bunch of rainforest animals to the residence hall to, I dunno, promote reading or something. There were a bunch of snakes and fuzzy things, a scorpion, and a two-toed sloth. At the end of the program, the audience was invited to come up and pet the animals. Ryan decided that he should pet the sloth. Ryan HAD to pet the sloth.

I kind of lost track of Ryan after he went up to the sloth, and when I found him again he was bleeding. Ryan had been bitten by the sloth.

As you know, the sloth is the Slowest Mammal in the World. It is known for moving only 5 or 6 feet a minute. Yet here was Ryan, bleeding. “It looked so cute”, Ryan said. “When I saw it open it’s mouth, I thought, oh! it’s going to do something even cuter! I didn’t know it was going to BITE me!”

I believe to this day Ryan has a scar. From sloth.

Let this be a lesson to you.

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Puppies and kitties are the antidote for midday sloth

Puppies and kitties rescued from New Orleans will make your day. I went to the humane society today on my lunch break to pet the cats because of these photos. Now I’m scraping cathair off of my sweater with scotch tape.

In other news, Chris and I will be gracing Ann Arbor with our presence next Thursday through Sunday for the annual School of Information CIC Thingamajig. We’re driving straight to Earthen Jar and are not coming out until they run out of that lovely cauliflower-and-curry thing. If you are in Ann Arbor, I want to see you. That means you Alexandra. And you Mihir. And you, whoever else is in town that I don’t know about.

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Rescue Helicopters grounded for Bush Photo-op

Bush Turkey.jpg Bob Byler’s brother was flying a rescue helicopter in New Orleans last week. He tells stories of tearing the roofs off of houses, and airlifting people out of their submerged houses. However, for several hours he and his fellow emergency helicopter pilots were forced to stop their flights.

The President was in town. There is a well-established (and wise) security procedure that calls for a 50 mile no-fly zone around the President wherever he happens to be. However, during Friday’s presidential mission of mercy, this rule was responsible for the delay of life-saving rescue flights.

As the flood waters rose, flight crews were grounded so that Mr. Bush, showing his usual good judgment, could sympathize with the newly second-homeless Trent Lott, survey the damage, and pose for photos in front of hastily-assembled and later absent rescue equipment. I’m certain this was all a great comfort to the people drowning in their attics, waiting for rescue crews that never arrived.

Were their lives, too, a noble sacrifice for the causes of freedom and democracy, or has this administration endangered more Americans for the cause of the photo-op?