This is my life

intoabar is live! :D :D :D :D I love this challenge SO MUCH!!!! Everyone should play! Simple breakdown: you pick a character to walk into a bar pub establishment PLACE (yes, "bar" is very loosely interpreted), and then you pick up to 4 fandoms that you could also write, and sabinetzin does some dice-rolling magic, and picks the character that your character meets in the PLACE! You make some kind of fanwork, and oh MAN - the list is so big now! Look at this!

- a story of at least 500 words
- a complete piece of art of a reasonable size (manips and graphics yes, banners and icon sets no)
- a vid of at least forty-five seconds
- a podfic, the text/script of which must be written specifically for this challenge, five minutes long OR five hundred words
- a comic that is at least one page and/or six panels
- any combination of these things
- something else you get mod approval for (MACARONI CASTLE. I'M JUST SAYING.)

Oh, you guys, this is SO MUCH FUN. Don't you want to come play? I've signed up already (and done this three times before: Spencer Reid walks into a bar and meets Hardison!, Jake Jensen walks into a Harry Potter premiere and meets Duff from Ace of Cakes!, and Charlie Bradbury walks into a Voice audition and meets CeeLo Green!) and won't you come join me?

Random adulting for the day: looking at my 401k portfolio (completely random chance, deleting old email and found my benefits dashboard link, a few clicks and voila), I thought maybe I should look at the diversification, blah blah, went through the tools they had, considered retirement age for me and my wife, blah blah, and when it came up with my recommendation? IT WAS EXACTLY WHAT I'D ALREADY SIGNED UP FOR.

I feel a little ridiculously proud of this fact.

Also: ( Cut for brief mention of death and perceptions of aging relating to work and self-worth. )

So, the OTW is having its drive and it ends today! I always seem to be swamped when the March drive comes up and forget to post. I'm terrible at speechifying about the OTW anyway, so I suggest reading kass's fairytale history of the OTW instead, and then going here to donate if you like.

gblvr, wolfshark, and telesilla are each donating $1 per drabble written for the atlantisbigbang drabble tree by March 31 (that's tomorrow, folks). Author signups end tomorrow too, I think. ETA: Ack, did not mean to indicate that those lovely people are donating to OTW! They're donating to Doctors Without Borders. I just couldn't find the group when I was rounding up links (I was going to put help_japan, but I didn't think that was right, so I didn't indicate who). So now you know, sorry if that was confusing. /ETA

Other interesting things found out and about on my dwircle:

denise talks about paying down technical debt.

skieswideopen has opened sga_guide which is an alternative guide to SGA (meaning alternative to the many excellent McShep guides already out there). I'm really excited about this, guys. I am thinking about signing up to do Radek/Ronon. And I have to say I'm more than a little surprised that no one has yet signed up to take Lorne/Zelenka or, last time I looked, Lorne/Parrish. Thank goodness someone has signed up to do Teyla/Elizabeth (havocthecat, I think). And there are a ton of others signed up to do pages, so I'm super excited. I wish it wasn't on LJ as I don't go there very often (if at all anymore), but it's still a great project, so I'm happy to support it. They're also trying to encourage mirroring on Fanlore, so that makes me a happy camper too, as I am growing more and more fond of wikis.

rydra_wong posts an excellent roundup of thought-provoking links I've read and had thoughts provoked about this week.

remix_goes_wild is live, and guys, this is a BRILLIANT idea. There are twenty-some types of remixing, there will be a list of authors giving blanket permission and/or you can use your own work, and it's all low-stress, low-key, and other low- things. Take a look, seriously, this is the remix I have always wanted.

eruthros has posted a bunch of fandom secrets done by our favorite characters! I do not know a lot of these, but I had fun overlaying SGA characters on almost all of them. >:)

monanotlisa linked to this gorgeous photo shoot of the amazing Jasika Nicole. Wow, does she have the most gorgeous eyes I have ever seen.

queerlygen is in the middle of flashfic challenge #5: Family (biological or chosen), which hits a huge narrative kink of mine, so please write me lots of stories for it!

cesperanza points to The Plight of the Straight Male Gamer on the Geek Feminism blog. Made me grin from ear to ear.

soleta sent me this askjfhskladjfhskldafh vid of twin babies having a conversation. It's clearly a conversation, I think (feel free to disagree, but I think you'll see what I mean), and I'm pretty sure it's about socks.

BALTIMOREANS! Check out the Baltimore Food Coop, thanks to spillingvelvet for that link.

Also, I have a co-worker who has a final the night she was supposed to be at an MCR concert. She's looking to sell her ticket. I don't have more details than that, but if anyone's interested, let me know and I'll ask.