everything’s a-ok

Tuesday, 16 September, 2008 at 7:01 pm

I’m a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad blogger. I know. This is the first entry this month, and last month I posted only twice? It would seem like I don’t have much to say, wouldn’t it?

But I do have stuff to say! I have three topics I can write about at the moment. But I am too lazy to do so. Or maybe I’ve psyched myself up too much.

I don’t really like writing, as I’ve said many times before, and I guess it’s still the same. There’s no research involved, no grade hanging over my head, and yet I still don’t enjoy writing.

Oh, I have opinions. I like to share those opinions. But after I’ve done so, or maybe while I’m in the process of writing, I tire out. I don’t want to think of beginnings, and endings, and middles, and how to transition between everything! Which is ridiculous, because I’ve written persuasive essays since 8th grade, I should be very near a pro at BSing at writing, right? All that thinking poops me out. (As they say, GrC students don’t really do anything, ha. ha. ha…)

It’s much easier if I’m just relating events that happened (like my Disneyland entry, I churned that out in a couple hours), but then who wants to read about the boring things that go on in my life?

Right now I’m thinking of an entry about this letter I got from the White House (my family was very worried when I came home from work one day, “What did you get in the mail?”) which outlined something or other that our dear leader George W. Bush did to further the cause of saving our oceans! (“What could he possibly do?” you say? Just wait, I’ll write about it eventually.)

I’ve been planning to write that entry since August 13. I’d probably write it this moment, if I weren’t writing about something else entirely. What’s keeping me from writing is that it involves Bush, and the environment, and my feelings on both.

As I said, I’m opinionated, but when I’m really passionate about something my mind tends to move ahead of logical reasoning and I tend to write gibberish, or something close to it. So I feel like I’m just posting some weird rambling incoherent fanatical entry that people will pass by. (What people? Not like I get many visitors to this blog, other than spammers…)

If writing about what I’ve experienced and about what I think are out, then what the heck else is there for me to update with? I’ve toyed with the idea before but gave it up because I wasn’t sure how much disk space or bandwidth I was willing to give up. Now, though, I’m desperate enough to try it. I’m going to start up a photoblog! Well, technically. It’ll just be a feed from Flickr linked on my blog. Or maybe I’ll write short entries on my blog and link to the Flickr image. I’m not sure exactly how I’m going to do this.

(I’ve already got over 1000 entries on this blog, and my .sql file is over 4 megs, so I’m sort of finicky about posting short little quips on this baby, but I think I’ll have to get over that. Or maybe I’ll go back and forth. Post larger entries on blog, leave smaller ones on the Flickr feed.)

What really sucks though is that my camera is currently getting repaired so I won’t have it for about 2 weeks or so. (That’s another entry I want to write.) I’ll have to make do with some photos I’ve taken over the years, I guess.

new layout—third try

Sunday, 17 August, 2008 at 11:23 pm

Yes, new layout. Bahaha. Take three on the jester and monk theme. Am questioning right now the three column headers (“side”, “blog”, and “currently”), the huuge type size in the domain title, and well, the whole thing looks a bit silly to me. Buuut … it is too late to do anything now.

I have a whole week of work to look forward to, and I still have not written that post on my Disneyland trip. Things are beginning to leak out of my memory!

Also, did not have much of a weekend. Yesterday was spent on cars (repairs, not buying) and today was spent on a cat (again, fixing, not getting a new one). Ah well.

I think my life would go better if I had more sleep. But then I’d lead a life of not doing much but sleeping and working … bah.

the earth moved for us

Wednesday, 13 August, 2008 at 8:51 pm

I know I am about two weeks late in posting this, but at least I am posting?

All right, August 29 there was an earthquake somewhere around Chino Hills? 5.4, according to the USGS page on the quake. I’d heard numbers from 5.8 to 5.2, but I guess it’s settled down to 5.4 finally. Felt all the way to southern San Diego county (because it’s sandy there).

Where was I? With my family and Noelle’s family (sans her dad) in Anaheim, standing outside our hotel, just starting our 3-day vacation to Disneyland. Bwahahar!

Yes, we live in Southern California, what the heck do we need three days at Disneyland for? Well my brother, the one who recently has really fallen in love with Disney, never really went to Disneyland when he was a kid. Whereas I went quite often with my Girl Scout troop with our cookie sales money, and thusly got sick of it. (Mum said that it was much more crowded in the 90s, aka the Eisner years.) But now that my brother is working full-time, he has money to drag us all to Disneyland. *grin*

We didn’t just go on most of the rides there, but we looked through stores, caught some shows, and just generally took in the Disney atmosphere.

But before we got to that, we experienced an earthquake! This was the first time for everyone (I think?) that we felt an earthquake while outside. We were standing on the sidewalk, just talking about I have no idea what, when I felt this weird boom underneath my feet.

For a second I thought we were standing on a metal plate over some electrical works or something. But no, it was solid concrete on solid ground next to solid asphalt on solid ground. I automatically asked, “What was that?” and then the ground started moving sideways. :o I put my hand on my dad’s shoulder because I thought I might fall over, or maybe it was just for security, haha.

My mom asked, “Is that an earthquake?” and my dad said yeah, look at the windows of the hotel rattling. Then we noticed some hotel guests on the first floor standing outside their room.

Then it was all over, and everyone talked about what they thought and blah blah blah. Hidek and my dad tried using their cell phones, but they didn’t work. :( Worked about an hour later though.

All in all, best ride of the day! (This entry is very long and Mythbusters is on in a short while anyway, so … hopefully I’ll write up our Disneyland trip. :x)

less zippy laptop

Wednesday, 23 July, 2008 at 1:28 am

Quicky post … right.

Finished upgrading Win XP and drivers and such on my laptop, then re-installed all the programs and copied back most of my files. Interesting note: most of the programs I installed, I downloaded free online. Only three were on CD (Paint Shop Pro 6, yes, Photoshop 7, and my Canon camera things).

For a day or two after the fresh install I had a really hard time connecting to the internet. I could access the computer network, but not the internet. X( I’ve had problems with my laptop network card (external, yes my laptop is that old) and XP SP2 before. I downloaded a new driver that time, but I don’t know how I fixed it this time. Apparently some weird mix of installing and uninstalling some drivers I downloaded from Dell made things click. *blink*

Now my speed never reads as fast as 54 mbps, it’s about half that speed or less, but then again I never really trusted the high number before. Just because the card can go that fast doesn’t mean it is.

The only other problem I have is, for some reason my laptop doesn’t like to come back from standby. Whenever I try to wake it up, everything runs slower than molasses if it were a hundred years old. At first I thought it was my wireless card driver or something, because that’s happened before, with that whole SP2 fiasco, but my laptop runs fine from startup.

Then I thought it was Photoshop, because it’s been running slow recently (can’t remember what settings I had it at before), but a third time proved that theory false. Now I’m wondering if it’s Firefox that’s the cause, but I’m too scared to try it out, and I can’t remember if I had Firefox open the very first time…

End result? I’ve got 4.92 gigs of free space on my harddrive, less than before, but I’ve also got most all my music on this laptop now. XD That folder went from about 3.5 gigs to a bit over 12 gigs. I also sacrificed my pet pictures—they’re currently only on my external harddrive (must remember to copy them to my desktop…*worry*)—I don’t normally do anything with them anyway. That saved me three gigs.

(Oh, of course, my startup time is about the same as it was before, perhaps a mite faster, but not really noticeable. Firefox (still on 2) also has gone back to opening fairly slowly, but what can ya do?)

All in all, I am one happy puppy. Or should I say kitty? We don’t have a dog at the moment. :(