In no particular order:

Get Eudora mail off the old computer
Start deleting moved files off the PC
Buy license for StoryMill before trial runs out (7 6 launches left)

updated 06/18/09

Books read in 2008

Once again, I'm keeping track of the books I read over the year. I won't be posting reviews unless something really fantastic comes along, but feel free to ask if you're curious about something.

( The books )

updated 07/08/09

Can I just say that I hate everyone who's going to San Diego Comic Con? Seriously. You all suck and I'm never speaking to you again.

Honestly, I'm insanely jealous, but if any of you are going, have a blast!

Still with the hate, though.

Moving on. I finished season 4.0 of BSG yesterday. I didn't expect to get through it this fast, but they kept sticking "to be continued" at the end of eps, and I don't have anything else to do, so I just kept thinking "one more ep..."

And the last half of the season's not out on DVD until the 28th! ARGH!

I know, I know, it's nothing to the huge 'midseason' wait everyone had who was actually caught up with the show and watching it as it aired, but still, this is insanely frustrating. I want- need -to know what happens. How we get from where we are now to the spoilers I was unfortunate enough to come across.

18 days. I'm seriously hoping that Harry Potter next weekend will distract me for a bit, 'cause I've gotten used to watching my BSG every day, and now I'm kind of lost. Watching extras and listening to episode commentary, which completely rocks, but it's not the same. I miss the sensation of moving forward, watching things unfold.

I could watch other stuff, but I'm in such a BSG frame of mind lately. Buffy's just not gonna cut it for a while, I need something else this good, and I don't think I have anything like that. So episode commentary it is. Plus probably a dozen or so reviewings of the eps I liked.

And fast-forward through some of the stuff that drove me nuts, like the Sam/Kara/Lee/Dee crap. I can see kinda what they were trying to do with that, but it just didn't... argh. The only one of them I really felt any sympathy for was Dee, and even she was a moron. I could almost feel sorry for Sam, too, but... nope. And the other two... oy.

And I was gonna ramble more about eps, but it's too fucking hot in here. Later...

In a word? Argh!

I'm not sleeping much lately. Went to bed around 4:00 or 5:00 this morning, and woke up around 9:30. And that's actually more sleep than I got the night before, or the night before that. It's really too bright in my room to sleep in the mornings, so if I wake up I usually stay awake. That's not new, but I'm going to strangle the 'new' neighbors. They've been here for a while, but I'm starting to think that the place next door has some Curse of Annoyance on it, because everyone who's ever lived there has driven us nuts.

They are getting better, though. The first people who lived there had loud fights and louder make up sex, both with the windows open. *facepalm*

We had various members of that family for a while- some kind of divorce/breakup, I think. Don't miss them- they also had bratty kids they never kept an eye on, and had this habit of slamming the side door to their garage so hard it rattled stuff on my desk (and not so incidentally scaring the CRAP out of me.)

The current renters? Fireworks. Little and not so little crackles and booms, on and off for the past week. I woke up this morning, and it's trash day, so at first I wasn't really annoyed. Then I realized that the garbage trucks don't make crackle/pop/BOOM noises.

The neighbors do. Middle of the day, middle of the night, whenever. And I know, tomorrow's the 4th and everybody always gets a little crazy around here with that this week. But seriously, people? Waking me up?

Just don't steal my fucking lightbulbs like the last morons did.

eta: Oh for fuck's sake! The idiots are fighting. I can hear them over my iPod. *facepalm*

I'm starting to remember why I don't take naps in the middle of the day. I woke up shaky- maybe because the phone rang and scared the crap out of me (stupid telemarketers) and my head's full of images from weird dreams. I think I was in a better headspace before I took the nap, except that I was exhausted. Staying up till 3:00AM and then waking up around 9 will do that, which is why I went back to bed. Tried staying up, as I was unfortunately pretty awake, but then I started to get tired again, so I thought, screw it, I'm going back to bed.

I don't know, really. I'll be glad to get this over with, but I'm not really in the mood to go to the doc's. Tired, grumpy... I'll probably feel better if I eat something, since I just realized I haven't yet today, but honestly, right now it's jut too freaking much. This had better go smoothly, and they'd better not jerk me around again, I swear. Mood I'm in right now, I'd slap that stupid twit at the front desk across the face. This is not, in fact, a good idea, despite how much it appeals to me.

I just keep telling myself it'll be fine, the doc I'm supposed to see will be there, we'll get somewhere with this... but if that doesn't happen... *sigh* No more Ms. Nice Patient, you know? Because if being nice and polite and "yes, doctor" doesn't get me anyplace, then it's time for "I really am as old as that chart says I am, and I have really seen that many doctors for that many medical conditions. And we're done playing around now."

Assertive!Patient mode is sometimes necessary, that's all. And no slapping stupid fuckwit receptionists, no matter how much they deserve it.

I'm in a weird mood today. I go back to the allergist's tomorrow, and even though I'm not looking forward to it, part of me wishes it was today, on the general principal of "let's get it the hell over with." Last time I was supposed to see their food allergy guy, who wasn't there even though he was scheduled to work that day... Argh, it's just too much to explain over again. Here's the backstory.

So far the upshot seems to be that nobody else wants to run the food allergy skin tests, that they want this other guy to do it. Which is fine, if he's there. And I know it was only one appointment he wasn't there for, and that he could very well have a good reason for it, family emergency or whatever. But as first impressions go, being "the guy who didn't show up" kind of sucks. I'm starting to lose my patience with these people, and I swear, if that guy isn't there again tomorrow...

Somebody needs to run the tests. Somebody needs to diagnose me with something. Do I have asthma, food allergies, both? I'm sure it's very interesting academically, but I've already more that met my quota of sitting around in doctors' offices, waiting for them to figure out what the hell is wrong with me this time.

I'll take so much, and then I won't take anymore. I'm rapidly approaching that point. Something will get done tomorrow. If I have to take the gloves off a bit, then that's what I'm going to do. Because I've really, really had it.

Anyway, tonight I'm getting my hair cut, and it's so fucking hot, I'm thinking of just having her French braid it when she's done and leaving it in until after I see the doc tomorrow. Last time I had my hair in a ponytail, and it was really hard to keep it totally off my back while they were having fun with patch testing. Plus, again, it's hot.

I'd really rather not go out at all, but I do need the haircut, so...

Most of you guys know I'm horribly behind on BSG. I've been watching DVDs with my cat, trying to catch up- no, really. Sam likes BSG. She hears the music for the studio logo start up, and she's almost always right there to curl up in my lap. I think she likes watching all the people running back and forth, and the fighter scenes seem to be a particular fave. (Is my cat stalking Starbuck's Viper? Prolly.)

Anyway, I'm only getting through an ep or two a day, sometimes more. I'd like to see more, faster, but I'd forgotten that this is a show you have to process. So I watch a bit, and I let it percolate. And sometimes I have to pause and shout at Tigh or roll my eyes at Baltar, or Gods know, comment to my cat.

GODS I love this show.

But now I'm fishing around for icons, and plotting fic, because I'm just cross-wired that way, skirting icon spoilers, which is a bit difficult when your current OTP is Adama/Roslin... and it occurs to me that this show is going to make me cry. Again.

Today's ep, "Final Cut", s2, which brings the number of Cylons I'm supposed to know about in the fleet to... 4? And that's if you count Doral and Leoben. Or, you know, five, if we count the Number Six in Baltar's head. (Does she count? Do we count head!Six?) So technically I'm still missing 4 out of the 8 Sharon told Baltar about.

Overall Cylon spoiler count- pretty damn close to 12. I know characters we haven't even met yet who are Cylons. *sigh*

I'm trying to come to terms with this the way I did with the Babylon 5 spoilers. Even going in knowing as much as I did, knowing wasn't the same as seeing, and some of it, I swear I forgot, like the Sheridan/Delenn stuff in "In The Beginning." Maybe 'cause we didn't see Sheridan for like a year, and I was always more of a Sinclair fan anyway, but... I digress.

And because I am nuts this way, I'm tempted to app a Cylon Centurion in theatrical_muse. Something along the lines of Bugs & Daffy, or Bob the Shadow Ship...

I really need to get a life. :)

Yes indeedy, I have. Goes like this: I've been having a problem off and on with my DSL lately, in that it keeps crapping out on me for a few hours, then coming back. It did it once Wednesday afternoon, and again today. I spent almost half an hour on the phone with my ISP, most of it involving long pauses and "hold on, let me check this" or "just a second, ma'am." Long story short- the line's okay on their end, I don't feel like going out and checking the outside line here at the house (it'll be fine too), and since they already replaced one blowed-up modem for me, I have to pay for the next one. I can get a refurbished one, which'd be cheaper, but still.

So I told the guy I'd think about it, and call them back later. And I thought about it, and thought about it- and while I was thinking, I thought, hell, let's give the poor modem a break. Turned off the surge protector, thereby cutting power to everything on the desk, modem included.

Spent a few hours cleaning out crap in the office/spare room. Come back, fiddle around with computer. See red internet light. Swear, shut down laptop.

See red internet light turn GREEN. Reach over, feel top of modem. Modem is nice and cool. Modem was HOT when it was not working. Hmm. Hmm.

Modem stops working in the afternoon, when it's hot. Starts working again when it's cooler. And it's always hot in my room- I keep the door closed so Sam won't come in and play with my power cables.

Hmm. I think the modem might be getting a chill pad of some kind, 'cause I can't afford to keep replacing these things. Besides, I like this modem, it's cute and shiny.

It's funny, for someone with a visual impairment I'm being driven really freaking crazy by the fact that I don't have a graphics program on the Mac. Haven't had one since I got the thing in January. I have some really basic things that came with it, all of which suck, and a few demos I've downloaded, which suck only a little bit less.

One of the things I didn't think of when I decided to get the Mac instead of another PC was that they don't make Paint Shop Pro for Mac. *sigh* I miss PSP. To the point where I actually booted up the Gateway the other night and messed around with some graphics. Of course, when I got the images back to the Mac (a complex file transer system involving a USB cable, my old iPod, and a lot of crossed fingers and swear words) I found out I need to resize the damn thing. Which naturally I can't do on the Mac, because I went ahead and added text to the image. I can resize the base photomanip, no problem, but it'll fuck up the text but good.

*headdesk*

I realized recently that I haven't done anything with urbandruid.net in.... um, a very, very long time. I have the redesign projects started, but they've been stalled because I kind of need a graphics program to get anything done.

So I'm downloading a Photoshop trial, and I hate to say this, but I feel like I'm on dial-up again. It's been going for at least half an hour, is at 17%, and is estimated to take another 1 hour, 31 minutes and 21 seconds. On DSL! I realize it's a big file (1,012.84 MB) but still, this is ridiculious. This damn thing had better work, that's all I can say. If it doesn't...

It really has been driving me nuts, not being able to mess around with manips or make icons or other random stuff like that. And I have no idea where I'm going with this post really, except that I'm bored, I still have almost an hour and a half to go, and I felt like ranting about this. So there you go.

I went to bed at 4:30 this morning. I woke up at 9:30. Why? Because some asshole rang my doorbell, then pounded on the door to make SURE I woke up. I went to make sure they were gone, then grabbed the flyer they left stuck in the door.

"How will you survive the Apocalypse?"

Jehovah's Witnesses. They're so lucky I didn't answer the door. I get cranky when people wake me up.

I couldn't get back to sleep, so I'll try to grab a nap later.

*sigh*

Okay, so here's the semi-condensed version of the story. I may not have mentioned this before, it seeming to be too much to try and explain when I was supposed to be busy getting ready for school, but I've been having these weird reactions to foods for the past... uhm, year or two? And by weird reactions think: "Oh shit, is that anaphylaxis?" We've been pretty sure it's a food allergy, and I kept meaning to bug my doctor about it, but for a while it was only a kind of minor reaction, so I kept putting it off. Then last month I had to go chat about prescription refills, and I thought hey, as long as I'm here, let's have that talk about the allergies.

She said it could be a number of things, and sent me for blood tests. We decided to run the blood tests for respiratory allergies while we were at it. So I went for the blood tests, and they came back... normal. All of them. According to the lab I'm not allergic to grass, pollen, mold, pet dander, or any of the major foods they tested for.

I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on the food tests, since I don't think I am allergic to milk, eggs, peanuts, etc. But no allergies? Yeah, right.

So they referred me to an allergist. We have a couple big allergy clinics here in town, though I see them advertised so much I wondered about them a little, you know? But my regular doc's office hasn't steered me wrong yet with a referral, so I figured I'd give it a shot.

My first appointment was last week, and let me tell you how much fun it wasn't. I went in expecting to mostly talk about my food allergies, and the respiratory as a sideline, kind of "as long as I'm here..." But their main food allergy guy wasn't there, and they really wanted me to see him. I'm faceplaming at the idea of two allergists, but you know, whatever. What's one more specialist, really? So I agreed to come back and see the food allergy guy, and we proceeded with the exam. Doc checked my ears, nose, throat, the glands in my neck, tapped on my sinuses, and said, "I think you have a sinus infection."

*facepalm*

I do? ...Yeah, I do. See, here's the thing. I know I've been tired- okay, exhausted- since finals week. I've been tired, feeling really draggy, and haven't felt like doing anything. It's also been hellishly hot, and I always feel a bit like this when it's hot. And it's not that I disgree with the guy, because looking back on the last couple weeks, I really don't. If I think back I can see that yes, I was a little too tired, and yes, my sinuses did hurt more than they usually ought to, and yes, there were the headaches, and, and, and... I'm just kind of flabbergasted that I missed it. I think I would have figured it out eventually, in another couple days maybe, but I still felt kind of stupid. *headdesk*

After we had that little chat, I got to have some more fun with testing. They gave me a peak flow test- here, take a deep breath into this machine, blow it out as long as you can, then take another breath- and apparently the reading sucked. Color me shocked; I've never been really good at stuff like that. So they made sure I was doing it right- I wasn't- and tried again. Still not happy with the results. So I got five minutes on a Nebulizer, breathing in some slightly not so great tasting gas, then got to hang out for ten minutes while it kicked it, then another peak flow test. Better results, but still not great.

Next: Allergy skin tests. I was expecting this, and I was expecting it to suck, but.... wow. Just- wow. I'm trying to think of how to describe it... It wasn't the most uncomfortable medical procedure I've ever been through, but let's remember what I've been though. I think it actually might be the worst thing that wasn't done to my eyes. 90 skin tests, in groups of 5, which breaks down to something like 18 groups of 5 tests. Just little scratches really, from needles with a drop or two of some allergen on them. On my back. All over my back. Maybe if I wasn't so little it wouldn't have taken my whole back, but it did. Some hurt more than others; I remember the one on my lower spine being particularly bad. Some were just uncomfortable. Some started itching or burning right away, some took a while. I think one or two might've been minor itches, but most if not all of them were really bad.

The waiting after the tests was almost worse. There I was, wearing a one size fits nobody paper gown, lying on my stomach trying to both keep my ponytail off my back and keep the gown from gaping in places it shouldn't, for fifteen minutes that felt a hell of a lot longer. Itching like crazy and wishing I could scratch something, knowing that was a bad idea. Finally, someone came to read the test and wipe off the numbers they'd used to label the tests. Hell, at least they didn't draw a grid on my back, like some poor patient I saw on House once.

Shockingly, I am allergic to things. Grass and mold type things. Really? you say. I know, I know, it's very hard to take in. So nice to know those massively expensive blood tests worked, too... Anyway. After a sinus CT to confirm my infection (the whole time I'm seeing dollar signs flying out the window...) I finally got to escape. With a prescription for antibiotics, nose spray for the infection, and a sample of the asthma inhaler I've been using on and off since November. And the promise of more tests when I see the food allergy guy.

Yesterday, I was supposed to see the food allergy guy. He only works two days a week, and I made sure the appointment I made was for one of those days. But guess who wasn't there yesterday? *facepalm* I figured since I was already there, I might as well see whoever else felt like dealing with me. Wasn't real happy, though. The upshot? Enter Allergist #2 (naturally the guy I saw last week wasn't in the office, either.) Allergist #2 checks the peak flow. Doesn't like the peak flow. Cue Nebulizer. More peak flows. Still not happy. Allergist #2 actually comes in and watches me do the peak flow. Couple more times. Lots of frowns and "hmm"s.

Upshot? They think I have asthma. Asthma! He wanted to run the blood test to check for food allergies, but I explained I'd already had it. Naturally my doc's office sent the referral but not the test results, but I told Allergist #2 all the tests were negative. ALL of them. More frowns and a "Hmm." I left with more goodies- another fast-acting inhaler sample, a sample of a daily-use inhaler... and scripts for both.

Oh yeah, and in two weeks I'm supposed to see the food guy. (Allergist #3?) Did make them put down a note to call me if he's not gonna be in, so I can reschedule, but I really hope he's there. If you're only working two days a week, you know, working two days a week would be pretty cool. So in two weeks I fully expect a round of food allergy skin tests... and I hope a diagnosis.

My luck? It's probably "asthma, and btw, here's an Epi pen and a list of stuff you should never eat again." So far everybody has asked me if I carry an Epi pen, and frowned when I said no, so I expect to end up with one of those. *facepalm* I'm really still processing this, and I'm not sure it's totally sunk in yet.

I've been done with school for a week now, and have finally decompressed enough to start figuring out what I'm going to do over the summer. For the last week, mostly what I've been doing is reading crap books and watching season 1 of Battlestar Galactica. I've seen it, but it's been so long I figured I'd better just start over.

Thanks to the internet, I know more spoilers than I'd really have liked, but I'm trying to be philosophical about it. Like when I picked up on Babylon 5, I was so far behind the wave, and it was such a MAJOR show, it's hard to avoid hearing about the stuff "everybody" knows. I bought the catalogs for the two Propworx auctions of costumes and props from the show, knowing that's probably the closest I'll ever get to owning a real piece of the show (though there are these eBay auctions I'm watching...) Anyway I'm flipping through the catalogs with one eye closed (actually I do pretty much everything with one eye closed, or at least not really seeing); trying to appreciate the cool stuff.

Like so: "Ooh, Starbuck's dog tags. Those'd be awesome to own- Oh frak, WHOSE funeral clothes? Dammit!" Mostly I've stopped reading the descriptions.

I'd forgotten how much I love this show. I just fell too far behind when it was airing to even think about trying to watch.

So I know there's an LJ comm for Babylon 5 'virgins', anyone know anything about one for BSG? Also an icon comm where spoilers are usually pretty well marked?

I have half a thought of trying to write one of the characters in a prompt comm, licenseartistic by preference, but it'd be weird with so much canon that I don't know yet. I always feel like this when I'm catching up on a series- like I can't write fic until I have the whole picture. Ongoing shows that I'm up to date with, no problem.

I'm an odd person. I know this.

...On the other hand, catching up would give me a ongoing source of new material, so it'd be like I was watching the show when it was current. Hmm. Hmm. This bears thinking about, although I should probably get off my lazy ass and catch up poor Moody first. And then there's Jack and Irina still clamoring for attention in the back of my head (mostly Irina) and gods know who else will pop up out of the woodwork given half a chance.

Truth is, I haven't really written much of anything this past semester at all, unless you count drips and drabs bitching about classes and medical stuff here and in my notebooks, or the haphazard way I've been tossing together bits of Honor Harrington fic for my au100 claims.

I'm trying to remember if I even know how. :) And it's not helping that it's starting to get hot. Well, starting- yeah, it's been hot for a while, and I know I shouldn't bitch, because it's not even over 100 yet, but damn. For some reason the heat seems to be really dragging at me this summer. Or maybe that's the anemia, depression, stress, and sleep deprivation. Plus heat.

Speaking of which, it's too damn hot in here to keep this up. More later, maybe.

ARGH!

It's the day of my biopsych final, and the stolen-credit-card-mess is the thing that wouldn't die. The bank in its infinite wisdom (later for them...) marked two charges that were legit as fraudulent. Even after I told them, IN WRITING, that said charges were okay. Which is just annoying, except for the fact that they were Paypal charges. Paypal, wanting to 'protect' me from these 'unauthorized transactions' has frozen my account TWICE in the past two days- once for each 'bogus' charge. With me so far? I talked to the bank on FRIDAY, and they put the charges back. Okay and dandy as far as they're concerned, but Paypal filed chargebacks to my poor harmless eBay sellers. Who would now, obviously, like their money. And I would like them to have it.

So what do I have to do? Print two affidavits, get them notarized, and fax them to Paypal. THEN (I hope) this crap will go away.

Did I mention that today is the day of my COMPREHENSIVE BIOPSYCH FINAL? And I really wasn't that stressed about finals week, because I got to skip the Women's Studies final (could have written the test myself anyway...) and the anthro one was a take-home test? But now, NOW I'm stressed. And pissed off. And annoyed.

And trying not to worry about it too much right now, because, hello, psych final. Which I'd like to pass. I'm not so much worried about it in terms of "OMG might not pass" but more like "argh this is a lot of material and I need to concentrate on it."

I'll be glad when it's over, as if that wasn't obvious.

Argh! I really hope this !@#$ing credit card thing isn't going to end up needing its own tag. Today I got a little package in the mail with my 'sample' of some dietary suppliment thingy, Acai Berry or some such nonsense. Enclosed is a packing slip that informs me I have 15 days to cancel this 'subscription' or I'll be chared $83 something- $94 with shipping! It also says there's a 30% 'restocking' fee if I return it.

We'll just see about that!

What creeps me out is that it came addressed to ME, at my house. Why would that be? Wouldn't whoever got ahold of my credit card number want the crap they bought sent to THEM?

On the plus side, good luck to those idiots with 'charging' me with anything else, since the bank closed the account yesterday.

I just feel like I'm losing my mind. I don't need this right now. Not that I ever need it, but...

So upset my hands are shaking. I think I'll go do something else for a while.

Argh! Argh, argh, argh!

I got this automated phone call from the fraud prevention department at my bank, and I figured, probably no big deal, because last time they were just being a little paranoid.

Turns out? Not so paranoid this time. There's a bunch of charges on there, weird stuff I sure as hell didn't do, mostly little but they were adding up. This woman at the bank was reading off charges to me and I'm going, "No, no, OMG WTF? No, no, okay that one's actually mine... that one too. No, no, OMG!" etc, etc. Long story short, they stopped payment on all that crap and closed the account. I'm to destroy my credit card and any of those 'courtesy checks' I happen to have. (Of those I have none, I always shred them when they show up.)

I suppose I'll go feed my now-useless credit card to the shredder in a bit, but right now I'm a little freaked out. I know it's obviously the best thing to do, closing the account, and I should get my new card in 7-10 days, but this is really inconvenient and annoying.

I'm ALWAYS careful of how I use my card online, and have never ever given the number out over the phone, and I use Paypal for all my eBay stuff, so I'm left wondering what online store I bought from lately got hacked. The bank, of course, isn't likely to tell me if they ever figure it out.

I'd meant to post something today, but this was not what I'd had in mind. And I wasn't having the best week before this. *headdesk*

Yes, I'm still alive. I've been doing pretty good, actually, just busy. I've had tests in two out of three classes in the last two weeks, and this week the third class hits me with an exam, too. The only one I was even sorta worried about was the one for Bio Psych, because it was all essay questions, I had to learn around 150 vocabulary terms, and writing the exam was about as hellish as it sounds like. Plus it took her forever to grade them- which I figured it would, but still, I was sweating that one a bit.

Professor posted grades over the weekend, finally. 98%. Hah!

And I just have to brag here, too, that I got 100% on my Womens' Studies test. Okay, I got 100 because there were three questions almost everyone missed, so she threw them out, but whatever. One girl who sits near me in class was not amused by this:

Her: What'd you get?
Me: *mumble* 100.
Her: Well, fuck you!

She said it in kind of an amused way, but still, I was like 'oO'...

Whatever.

I love it when teachers go over exams. "A lot of you missed this question..." Rosa Parks, people? Rosa Parks??? Swear to Gods. And even more of them missed the question about Mary Wollstonecraft, who I'd never heard of before this class either, but who our teacher must have said fifty times in the past month, was going to be on the exam.

So when she handed back the tests, she felt compelled to remind people that when she says stuff will be on the exam, it's going to, you know, be on the exam.

I love college. How the hell did these people find the classroom, anyway?

So that's Womens' Studies. I have an article review due tomorrow for that, which I guess means tonight I'm hooking up my printer, finally. Whee.

Psych is still my favorite class, even though it's also the one I have to spend the most time on. So many complicated processes... but it's all fascinating. Except for the longass chapter on neurobiology and neurochemistry, which came with 90 vocab terms... blech.

Anyway, today I have my anthro class, where we'll probably review for the exam. Then I get to cool my heels for another three hours (whee) and go fill out forms and take a test for the Census Bureau. I saw a sign posted last month they were coming to campus to recruit for temp jobs, starting at $11 an hour (!) so I signed up to take the test. Looked at the practice test online, and am hoping to swing some kind of filing/office clerk/phone-answering type gig.

Guess we'll see how it goes. It's gonna be a long day though.

Snagged from leviathanmuse

( RP meme )

Okay, so, first things first- I'm still WAY behind on Battlestar Galactica, by which I mean I've seen the miniseries and the first season. There was no way I was gonna catch up in time for the new eps, and I wasn't gonna try. So, just to be clear...

I DON'T WANNA KNOW WHO THE LAST FRAKKING CYLON IS, K?

Or, you know, anything else of a spoilery nature. I love this show, and I'd like to have stuff hit me the way it's supposed to, instead of reading it in someone's post. I've already had to try and forget old spoilers, especally of the "so and so's a Cylon" variety, so... yeah.

And that was maybe a little shouty, I apologize, but the SciFi channel is starting to drive me NUTS with their commercials, to the point where I mute the TV, close my eyes, cover my ears and sing "lalalala can't hear you" until Mom stops laughing at me long enough to tell me it's okay to look.

My flist is usually pretty good about this, I just like to reiterate this once in a while when the big fandom stuff comes along.

Righto, moving on.

I started back to school last week. Started with 12 units, am now down to 9. I really only did the 12 so I'd be set for financial aid for London, and since London fell through, I'm not in dire need of the full financial aid... Anyway, I'm down to Woman's Studies, Biological Psychology, and an Anthro class called Magic, Witchcraft, & Religion. The class I dropped was an intro to Photo. I might give it another shot some other semester, but I just can't deal right now. It's one of those 'back to basics' classes where I'd have to leave my digital camera at home unless it's an SLR (hah! not on my budget!) and I learned the hard way last week that our old Canon SLR has a screwed-up light meter, which would be okay if I could see the thing, because I could adjust for it. But since I can't read the bloody thing... Anyway, I dropped the class this morning and it's amazing how much better I feel.

I'm waiting for both Antrho and Woman's Studies to get past the basic intro stuff. Anthro in particular is annoying me a bit right now, because we have another week to two weeks of basic anthropology before we even get to dust off our textbook. But I think it's going to be good once it gets rolling. Same with Woman's Studies.

Not surprisingly, I LOVE my psych class. I could ramble on about it for a while but I think I might bore people.

Let's see, what else is going on? Oh... we found the kitten a new home at a shelter. He and Sam were NOT getting along- by which I mean that Sam was gonna kill the little guy. She's very much the alpha kitty, and let us know that she would prefer to remain an only kitty. Oh yeah, and the kitten? Hauled off and bit me hard enough to bruise on Christmas day. I just don't think he was well-socialized, wherever he was before he wandered over here. But he's young, he's cute, is fixed and has all his shots (thanks to us...) and purrs almost constantly. We like to think he has a nice new home by now.

I feel bad sometimes for having taken him to the shelter, but it really wasn't a good situation for any of us. I'd hardly realized how stressed all of us were- Me, Sam, Mom, and probably the kitten too- until he'd been gone a few days. We think Sam's mostly forgiven us, although she's still being really clingy with me. (That could just be because I started back to school, too, and thanks to Photo last week I didn't get home until 3:30 a few days. She hates that kind of thing.)

And, really randomly, I just wasted 15 or so minutes watching video ads for some WiFi connected rabbit the LJ ads were trying to sell me. It's called Nabazatag or something, and seems like the kind cute but useless thing you'd buy for a rich friend who already had every useful gadget known to humankind. $99!

Apparently there's actually a market for this thing. *facepalm*

So. This one's coming to you from Galen, my shiny new silver MacBook Pro laptop. he is very shiny and new, has a TON of memory, and I do mean a ton (~260 GB, and that's after I started loading software and all my music.)

I love this thing.

I have, however, learned several things I thought I'd share.

( Computer stuff )

In other news, I really should be in bed already, but I'm not actually all that tired. Probably has something to do with the phone waking me up at 9:00AM Wednesday. I decided that was too early, so I went back to bed, and got up at, um, quarter after 1:00. ...Yeah. I'm going to be hating life next week when I (ugh) start back to school. Which I don't really want to think about. I'm starting to get a little bored now and then, so probably starting back to classes is a good thing, but I swear, sometimes I hate winter break. I just get used to having time off, and they want me back.

Or maybe it's the fact I spend half my 'vacation' doing holiday stuff with my family, which sometimes isn't all that, ya know, relaxing?

And I so wanted to be in London this semester. Campus is going to seem pretty bleak when I head back, and I don't think that's helping my mood any.

Ah well. It's 3AM now, I suppose I ought to go at least try and sleep.

Actually, to be perfectly honest I'm not sure if it's Bill Gates I hate more right now, or those assholes at Gateway who make such shoddy computers in the first place. Because much as I hate Bill Gates, he didn't make the lemon that is my old laptop.

I have a new laptop, a shiny silver MacBook Pro, and I'm pretty sure his name is Galen. In the decade plus since I last owned a Mac, it's become possible for them to talk to each other, share files, and so on and so forth. So I didn't think I'd have much trouble getting my files off of Anna and over to Galen. I forgot that this is Anna, and she doesn't play well with others. Never has, but it's been getting worse lately, which is a good part of the reason I got a new 'puter for Christmas.

The CD drive still doesn't work- Anna doesn't think it exists at this point- so there goes one easy way to get my stuff from point A to point B.

I spent half of this afternoon and part of this evening trying to get some kind of ethernet magic happening between the laptops. No go. My suspicion is that either 1.) Anna's too old and Galen is sitting there going, "Is that a Pentium 4? I don't speak that!" or 2.) Anna is just too screwed up.

Anna doesn't network well. She barely hangs in there with the DSL modem, and needs a notebook card to go wireless. I've actually got one of those, but its software is on, you guessed it, a CD, so...

What I'm looking at (and I'm not looking forward to it at all) is maybe 2 or 3 GB of Word documents, HTML files, and assorted images, plus almost 10GB of music. Oh yeah, and all the email files. Gods only know how much memory we're talking about there. If I'm lucky I can get most of the music transferred to the Mac from the iPod itself. As for the rest...

I can FTP it all to urbandruid.net and download it that way, or I can try to email it to myself. Or, you know, use my tiny 250MB USB drive. And won't that be fun?

It's almost 1AM now, and I'm hoping that all of this will look better after I've had some sleep, but I honestly think it may be a case of same shit, different day.

On the plus side, I really do love my new laptop, and I got both DSL and my email to work on the first try. Something to be said for that, right? Right.