Welcome to Gaia! ::

Current Status:_
Mood: Better
Location: Village
Destination: Village
Music: "Heard it Through the Grapevine," Creedence Clearwater Revival
Theme: "Beautiful Day", U2 -Lyrics-


//Newsblog:
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Previous Entries ::

// I don't know where to start, frankly...
It's been a while since i touched the blog. I guess that's okay... not like i have to keep anybody updated. Nobody'll ever... No, can't think that way.
They got me good this time. I had a bad episode a few days ago... really bad. Made a mess of Gaius' appartment. I think it really shook the guy up... Hard to type now. Never thought i'd be making 'typing one-handed' jokes, but this is insane.
I'm not getting turned into a lizard, by the way. Noooo, no reptiles today, kthxbai. They're not... I'm... Nrrrrgh. Not even an animal. Damn them. I mean, it'd be one thing to not be a mammal, or not even a vertebrate. BUT COME ON! gonk It's some... some freaky kinda.. ugh. Can't talk about it. Pardon me while i go pluck leaves...

// Damn. That's all i can say. I mean... Gaius, he came past the appartment, and he wasn't feelin' so good, and I invited him up.... and Damn. His neck, it totally exploded like one of those... those.. like.. snake in a can things. I swear. And his feet... they're all long and freaky now. The whole thing was freaky. He seems to be okay... i mean, not okay with it, but... he's gonna survive.
I guess we just all gotta hang in there... gotta help everybody hang in there.
Workin' on some plans. Dunno what'll come of it. More later.

// Been neglecting the blog lately. I guess being in this crazy place is either bad for my self-journaling, or good for my 'get the hell outside and do something'. Not having the internet is having an effect, i think... good lord, what i wouldn't do just for a quick click on Google. Or youtube. I wanna... i want my input... I'm so cut off here, it's making my brain itch. Maybe that's just those freaky green lizard veins or whatever. Gaius says they must be mutating me into a reptile. Joy. Not if i have anything to say about it.

// Ugh. Too much candycorn...
Heh, well, the party was great last night... met some great guys and gals (Reminds me, i should catch up on those Dr. Who episodes mrgreen ), had fun playin' some festive games. I haven't bobbed for apples in years, and man did that Alec shark kid look funny wrapped up as a toilet paper mummy. I think i drank a bit too much cider, too. sweatdrop Wasn't so bad, for a halloween on a mad scientists' island. But.. i still get the feeling there's something weird going on. Everybody seems spooked. Maybe i missed something while i was... uh.. indisposed. I should ask 'em about it.

// Something... Something happened. I'm still not sure what. I'm kinda spooked, but... I think they got me with the mutation thinger. I... I mean.. ugh. My hair... it's gone. All gone. I don't wanna talk about it yet. >_< In other news, had a great zombie movie marathon with Marshall.

// I've been surviving the island... so far. <_< This place is a madhouse. Mutant people... animal people, i guess... they're everywhere. Everybody's all sorts of freaky in every flavor of the rainbow. I've got to get out of here before i go crazy... unless this is all me being insane anyway, in which case, tell the Wizard i want my ruby slippers ASAP.

// Well.... dammit. scream I feel like crap this morning. Mostly because i'm STILL HERE and the forking island is STILL HERE and aw crapinahat i dont wanna be here. >_< Funny to say about a tropical island paradise, eh? Well.... yeah. But when you find out it's actually a twisted genetics experiment? YEAH. >_> Someone call a cab for me.

// Well, slept the entire afternoon away, but I'm gonna get some looking around done before i head to the cafeteria - wherever that is - and get some dinner. Gots me some explorin' to do, conquistador style, yo. Seems like they don't have a wireless connection out this far from the big office buildings, but maybe i just need some other kind of access port. If i'm lucky, they'll at least have a LAN out here i can connect to. Probably getting behind on my email and Sno-Cone webcomics. Not that the comic's updated in, like, a month. >:b

// Flew in a couple hours ago and got aquainted with the site i'll be working at. Really kinda primitive-looking, except for The Big Offices. I'm sure it'll be more to look at once they get the rest of the resort up. The crazy white-haired guy gave me a vaccination for some hell-arse kinda nasty African virus going around. In better news, they gave me until Monday to chill around the living center here and get adjusted. I'll have me a lookaround once i'm done unpacking, but i've got some jetlag to answer to first. ~__~

// Well, in other news the PIT has hired me out to some resort place to go over their network security. Sounds like a pretty swanky place, has it's own island. Or, it's going to be, once they get the facilities up and running. I could do worse than working on a tropical private resort for three weeks... mrgreen

"I'm two quarters and a heart down, and i don't want to forget how your voice sounds..." (dance, dance - fallout boy)

Background Check:
In the beginning...
Liamh’s family tended to move a lot, generally because both his father’s work as a charter pilot and his mother’s as a property manager demanded a degree of mobility. Inheriting his mother’s gregarious nature even at an early age, he never found it hard to make friends – yet because he was always ‘the new kid’, he always felt a step behind the rest. At the age of seven, his mother and father separated, and then divorced. The boy was never entirely sure why, but knew they hadn’t been seeing much of each other and had fought when they did. Devastated, Liamh became more soft spoken and withdrawn, but kept up his cheerful demeanor for his mother. He felt the weight of responsibility on his young shoulders to keep her from depression, and in time, they both could laugh again.

His mother married again when he was twelve, to a computer analyst, and settled down to a little more stable life. Looking to bond with the boy, his stepfather introduced him to computers, not expecting him to take to them so quickly – Liamh soon learned the basic workings and could code simple programs. To him, it was a toy that kept growing, with new puzzles and new challenges. His stepfather brought home various programs and old equipment to play with.

Before too long, two younger half-siblings were born, but Liamh had already found a way to escape the chaos of the new family... if he could just keep the twerps out of his room! However, he found that he quite liked the role of older brother, and was soon running around with them and telling them all sorts of preposterous brotherly lies that they, of course, believed with wide eyes.

And so it goes,
By high school, Liamh had embraced the way of the computer geek. He seemed to be able to transition easily between entertaining his friends and classmates by day and delving into the rapidly expanding world of the internet by night, neither of which benefited his schoolwork. Fortunately, he was bright enough to scrape by academically without trying too hard, a fact which exasperated his teachers and parents alike. In college, he studied computer sciences; here he put in his efforts and was able to shine – he received an offer of internship from an IT firm before he graduated, though he was fairly sure it was more because of his exploits in digital trespassing than his academic performance.

Working for Procyon Information Technologies was, at first, as boring as any internship ought to be – aside from the complimentary foosball – but once he was hired on fully he was put to work in earnest. After a while, they began flying him out to other sites to work on systems. He hadn’t flown since his father’s death - a piloting accident several years back - so he was justifiably nervous for a while, but promised himself he would face down each flight as a memory of his dad. And the shot of alcohol beforehand certainly helped the nerves. It became routine, after a while. Fly somewhere across the country, work for a few days or a week on something, fly back. Visit his family. Repeat in a few weeks. Once again, he found himself on the move a lot with little time for socializing, but the world wide web was never far away and he enjoyed the travel.

Yet, despite the new sights and good work, he still longed for new challenges, for testing himself against systems that weren’t part of a routine checkup. Feeling lethargic and unmotivated at work for months, he began spending his nights wandering aimlessly through cyberspace, delving into what systems he could find just for the contrariness of being where he wasn’t supposed to be. It seemed to sate his wanderlust, and he was able to throw himself back into his work, if a little sleep deprived.
It wasn’t long after that, that he received word from his superiors that a company had requested his services for a few weeks to set up some new system security – and the best part was, the site was on a safari-themed tropical resort island... Needless to say, he jumped at the chance.

The Island... [/ewanmcgregor]
He was a little surprised on arrival when he was informed that the setup of the systems was going to be delayed – possibly longer than the duration of his stay there, but they would put him up for free at the resort anyway until then. Not put out in the slightest, he wasn’t going to turn his nose up at a few weeks of completely paid vacation on a tropical island resort. Kick back on the beach, drink plenty of beverages with the little paper umbrellas in them, finally get a tan for once, watch the resort hosts in their safari-animal themed costumes. Yes, this was going to be a good vacation indeed...

Run Program: Kudzu
Today the Yard - Tomorrow, the World

The Kudzu Vine
Kudzu (Pueraria lobata), is one of about 20 species in the genus Pueraria in the pea family Fabaceae, subfamily Faboideae. It is native to southern Japan and southeast China in eastern Asia. The name comes from the Japanese word meaning vine. The other species of Pueraria occur in southeast Asia, further south.

It is a climbing, woody or semi-woody, perennial vine capable of reaching heights of 66-98 ft in trees, but also scrambles extensively over lower vegetation. The leaves are deciduous, alternate and compound, with a leaf stem 4–8 in long. The leaflets may be entire or deeply 2–3 lobed.

The flowers are borne in long panicles about 4–10 in long with about 30–80 individual blooms at nodes on the stems (see image). Each flower is about 0.4–0.6 in long, purple, highly fragrant. The flowers are copious nectar producers and are visited by many species of insects, including bees, butterflies and moths. Flowering occurs in late summer and is soon followed by production of brown, hairy, flattened, seed pods, each of which contains three to ten hard seeds.

Once established, kudzu plants grow rapidly, extending as much as 60 ft per season at a rate of about 12 in per day. This vigorous vine may extend 30–100 ft in length, with basal stems 1–4 in diameter. Kudzu roots are fleshy, with massive tap roots 4–8 in or more in diameter, 3–6 ft or more in length, and weighing as much as 180 kg. As many as thirty stems may grow from a single root crown.

Kudzu grows well under a wide range of conditions and in most soil types. Preferred habitats are forest edges, abandoned fields, roadsides, and disturbed areas, where sunlight is abundant. Kudzu grows best where winters do not drop below 5 °F, average summer temperatures are regularly above 80 °F, and annual rainfall is 40 in or more. In areas where winters drop below 5 °F, it will be killed to ground level, but the roots may send up new growth in the spring.

Kudzu is sometimes referred to as "the plant that ate the South", a reference to how kudzu's explosive growth has been most prolific in the southeastern United States due to nearly ideal growing conditions. Significant sums of money and effort are spent each growing season to prevent kudzu from taking over roads, bridges, power lines, and local vegetation.

Culinary
The non-woody parts of the plant are edible. The young leaves can be used for salad or cooked as a leaf vegetable; the flowers battered and fried (like squash flowers); and the starchy tuberous roots can be prepared as any root vegetable.
The starchy roots are ground into a fine powder and used for varieties of Wagashi and herbal medicines. When added to water and heated, kudzu powder becomes clear and adds stickiness to the food.

Medicinal
Studies have shown that kudzu can reduce both hangovers and alcohol cravings. The mechanism for this is not yet established, but it may have to do with both alcohol metabolism and the reward circuits in the brain.
Kudzu also contains a number of useful isoflavones, including an anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial agent, a cancer preventive, and an antileukemic agent. Kudzu root compounds can affect neurotransmitters (including serotonin, GABA, and glutamate) and it has shown value in treating migraine and cluster headache.
In traditional Chinese medicine kudzu is considered one of the 50 fundamental herbs.

History
The name Kudzu appeared first in Kojiki and Nihonshoki as a type of vine or Kazura used commonly by the people who lived in Kudzu, area around present-day Yoshino, Nara prefecture. It is unclear whether the name was taken from the people or the name of the plant was applied to the people. Kudzu has been in use for over 1300 years and it is speculated that it goes back even further. In the Nara and Heian era, records had been found that they were collected and sent as a part of tax. Even today, "Yoshino Kudzu" has the best image of kudzu powder yet. Kagoshima prefecture is the largest producer of kudzu products.

Kudzu was introduced from Japan into the United States in 1876 at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, where it was promoted as a forage crop and an ornamental plant. From 1935 to the early 1950s the Soil Conservation Service encouraged farmers in the South to plant kudzu to reduce soil erosion, and Franklin D. Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps planted it widely for many years. Kudzu was recognized as a pest weed by the United States Department of Agriculture in 1953, and was removed from its list of permissible cover plants.

Regions
Kudzu is now common throughout most of the southeastern United States, and has been found as far north as Pennsylvania, and as far south as Key West, Florida. It has also been found growing (rather inexplicably) in Clackamas County, Oregon in 2000 ([4]). In all, kudzu infests 20,000 to 30,000 square kilometres of land in the United States and costs around $500 million annually in lost cropland and control costs. It cannot tolerate extremely low freezing temperatures that bring the frost line down through its entire root system; however it does require some cold weather (a solid frost or freeze annually). Kudzu is also becoming a problem in northeastern Australia.

Reproduction
The spread of kudzu is mainly by vegetative expansion by runners and rhizomes and by vines that root at the nodes to form new plants. Kudzu will also spread by seeds, which are contained in pods and mature in the autumn. One or two viable seeds are produced per cluster of pods. These hard-coated seeds may not germinate for several years, which can result in the re-appearance of the species years after it was thought eradicated at a site.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudzu , edited.
Kudzu can also refer to the program of the same name in Fedora

Events Record:
Timeline//RP Compilation

Nothin' But Blue Skies: Liamh arrives on the Island in good order; meets Sabin Duvert, is injected, and gets aquainted with his duplex.

Entertainment Tonight!: Liamh wakes from his nap and goes to hang out in the entertainment room; encounters two other 'resort guests', Gaius and Marshall, enjoys some quality entertainment, and figures out that his life just won the cosmic lottery of SUCK.

Restless Night in Paradise: Liamh gets 'home' late and tries to sleep, but his brain has other ideas.

Rack 'Em Up: Liamh goes down to the rec center after a sleepless night for some meditational billiards therapy, and runs into Gallen.

Won't You be My Neighbor...?: Liamh gets a fit of musical cleaning madness; disturbs his recently changed downstairs neighbor, Seth.

Boldly Going... Where no Nerd Has Gone Before: A relaxing trip to the lake yields more than a tan for this geek - some peculiar conversation with a fascinating deer-girl, Emerwyn.

Drunken Calamari: Liamh, emboldened by his excursion to the lake, sets off for the beach bar and encounters Richard and his new tentacles.

Draining the Shock Away: Liamh lingers at the bar and meets a new aquisition to the island, Aislinn Derry, who's in dire need of a drink. Booze FTW! (in progress)

Encroaching Fears: Liamh spends a disturbing night wracked with bizzare nightmares; the morning heralds nothing good for him.

That Creeping Sensation: [Liamh hits 25%] Shaken from his dreams and feeling very out of sorts, Liamh calls up Marshall for some gaming to clear his mind... Moral of the story? Ravenous undead are the ultimate cure.

Halloween Bash: (Halloween Party Thread here) Liamh, in the wake of his first change, decides to get it out of his mind and attend the Halloween party. Food, conversation, and fun are had when he meets up with Alec, Kim, and Gallen.

What a Hangover!: [Gaius hits 50%] Liamh sees a groggy Gaius going past the duplex and offers him a drink; the manure hits the fan when Gaius finds out today is(n't) his lucky day.

Stalking the Elusive Caf Beast: Liamh drags himself down to the Caf after being holed up in his duplex, and forcibly acquaints himself with the one and only Osbourne Caldwell. (In progress)

Thanksgiving Food War: Liamh finds his Thanksgiving luncheon invaded by more than just rampaging live turkeys!

Liamh's Birthday Extravaganza!: What do you do when you're stranded on a mad scientist's island on your birthday? You eat cake! Liamh decides to throw himself a party.

Mission Impossible: Liamh and Aislinn make plans to raid the Caf for some important ingredients... (In Progress)

Results May Vary: [Liamh hits 50%] Liamh, feeling more than a little under the weather, stops by Gaius duplex to take his mind off things. What he didn't expect was to be taking his SKIN off things!

Ho Ho Ho... And a Bottle of Rum: Liamh wakes Christmas morning to some very interesting Christmas presents.

We Wish You a Hairy Christmas: Liamh goes down to the Caf on Christmas day for some edibles and runs into his friend Marshall and the fiesty Antony.

.........

The Deconstruction Site: Liamh wanders up to the site for the Islanders' Theater, and tries his hand at both construction and wrestling. Macho man!

Inventory:


Clothes:
Work clothes, swimtrunks, lounging around wear, pajamas, Going Out Wear, socks, boots, flipflops, clean underwear.

Laptop (with Sol-patch)
Ipod
Flash stick of Anime
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Well-hidden manga of Fruits Basket
Ultimate X-men comics 67-73
Miniature toolkit
Sharpie
$125.70
Small swiss-army knife
Sunblock
Action figure of Chewbacca

T-shirts:
"I don't believe in irony"
"There's no place like 127.0.0.1"
"Joss Whedon is my master now"
"Roll for Initiative"
"Insert Coin to Continue"
"It's only a flesh-wound."
"Pirate Ninja Cowboy"
... etc.

Notepad:

Yet to RP: Marshall, Gaius, Richard, Seth, Gallen