Good Playing, Mr.

This wordle was derived from entries made this June so far. You can make your own here (you must have Java enabled).

Have a look at the larger version; there are some pretty entertaining juxtapositions there.

HIJACKED!

I don't know if you'll ever read this, if you're trying to get here via wager.pascalesoleil.com. Sometime between midnight and 7 AM this morning my domain name, which was up for renewal today, seems to have been hijacked.

I am hoping and praying that I'll be able to get it back. It has become very dear to me over the last few years. I am feeling horribly distressed that it is at risk.

For the record: pascalesoleil.com BELONGS TO ME. I will fight for it tooth and nail.

[Update: It looks like we're back! Thank god. Fingers crossed.]

Anyone who cares...

...in the slightest bit about women in technology, and especially men who care about the participation and contributions of women in technology, should run (not walk) over to Dorothea Salo's post at CavLec on the topic.

I can speak from personal experience when I say that the way she describes this dynamic is 100% accurate.

My brothers, make yourselves heard!

Hallelujah and Praise the Lord!

I may be speaking too soon... but it looks as if Blogger has finally let me transition to the new version. Perhaps I'll be able to resume posting regularly.

If anyone is still out there.

Man, talk about a way to lose your audience.

Finally, for reasons that are totally unclear...

...Blogger is permitting me to post. Given the way things are going, it'll probably be just this once.

If you don't hear from me, that's what's up. Technical outtages. It's been REALLY frustrating, and it's a long story I'll spare you.

I'm going to Vegas tomorrow evening for a poker adventure. Hope I'll have tales to tell!

Still here

What with Blogger making it difficult for me to post, and with work and family stuff really reaching new levels of stress-inducement, I'm afraid I haven't had much opportunity to write. Things are still fairly grim, but I'm trying to tell myself that one day this particularly unpleasant stretch of time will be well and truly in the past.

What's most discouraging for me is that my creativity seems to be on extended holiday at a time when I need it the most. I feel like I'm running on fumes. I'm very demotivated, and all the tasks that face me seem pretty nasty.

I have to laugh at the thought that I've been making a feeble effort at dating. I'm SO not in the mood for that at this moment, and the thought of trying to "put my best self forward" is simply preposterous. I certainly wouldn't want to meet me right now.

Client Bitchslap

It wasn't the very best work I'd ever done, I knew that. It was an improvement on what was there before, though.

Still, I wasn't thrilled.
The client was very not happy.

I'm wondering why the hell I ever thought I could design my way out of a paper bag.
I'm in a bad, bad mood.

[Oh, and I'm still having intermittent problems with Blogger.]

Blogger Problem

I am bouncing around in Blogger limbo, between old version and new. Don't know if or when I'll be able to log in again. VERY FRUSTRATING.

In the meantime, if you comment and you don't see it published, or if i don't post for awhile, it's because I'm having technical diffculties.

[Update: Well, temporarily have access again. Goodness knows how long it'll last.]

Trying the switch to Blogger Beta again...

Be ready for a service interruption...

UPDATE: I sure wish Blogger would stop trying to get me to migrate every time I sign in. Because, NO, they then tell me, we CAN'T migrate you. For unknown reasons. Grr.

Get back to me when you get your shit together, Blogger.

Switching to Blogger Beta [NOT]

Fair warning: I'm moving this blog over to Blogger Beta.

I have no idea how buggy it is, or whether this will drive everything into complete chaos. I may disappear altogether, who knows. Talk about a leap of faith!

I'm not sure how long the process will take. Do let me know if you encounter any problems...

Update: NEVERMIND.

Thanks for your interest in the new Blogger in beta. An error has occurred that has prevented us from switching your account at this time. Our engineers have been notified of the issue, and your blogs and Blogger account should not be affected.

Oh well. Business as usual, then.

New treasure

From time to time, some new intrepid soul stumbles on my blog and is moved to comment, and I thereby get an introduction to another valuable perspective. Such is Brother Bartleby, upon whose blog I read:

On another note, Bro. Robert said something interesting during our noontime meal: "Many people believe that you must first somehow decide whether or not God exists before joining a religion, but the opposite is true. One becomes religious so as to make God present in one’s life. Whether or not God exists is a separate issue. The important point is to make him present and real, and thus inhabit the space where our true humanness emerges."

I will be following Brother Bartleby's writing with interest: where else am I going to get quotations from The Jesus Sutras?

If I were a betting woman...

...well, actually, I am. I play a lot of Texas Hold'em. So I have some idea of what constitutes a good wager, and what doesn't.

A bad wager puts at risk more than you can afford to lose. (What does it profit a woman to gain the whole world and lose her soul?) A bad wager risks a large sum against a proportionally small gain. Don't go all-in with your inheritance, for example, for a mess of pottage. That's a bad bet, right there.

A good wager risks a little for a similar or larger gain. A good wager only risks it all when the reward is commensurately great. Along those lines, I'm told that those who lose their lives will save them.

Many might consider it foolish to make a wager with incalculable odds. When one of the terms may either be ~ metaphorically speaking ~ either zero or infinity, there can be no rational solution to the equation. This is a strange kind of gambling.

But I chose to live, for now, "as if." I trust and hope that, whether or not my faith is rewarded in any clear-cut or concrete way, I will live a better life because of that choice. I may be wrong; if so, one day I'll remove my chips from the table and concede defeat. Until then I will be at play in the fields of the Lord, gamboling with the rest of God's fools.

On Monday I'm starting as a "special student" at Wesley Theological Seminary. I'm only taking two courses, "Orientation to Christian Theology" and "Art as Worship/Worship as Art." Because of chronic procrastination, most of the meat & potato courses were full up. That's okay, this is just a toe in the pond. I'm testing my temperature as much as the water's. We'll see how it goes.

So those of you coming here from both2and: beyond binary should know that this is going to be mostly about my academic and personal exploration of Christian life and community. No doubt the occasional cat picture or other off-topic item will pop up, but I expect it to be relatively tightly focused.

Thanks for visiting.