Ardath Rekha

So. The other day, a local station was shooting a news piece on campus right in my path to the bus stop, and I was recorded as I walked past because it was a live feed. So I snagged the segment from their website (I'm totally indistinct in it, just a random woman in a parka with a white hat and scarf) and saved it because hey, why not? Only just now, I was watching it and I noticed something a little odd about my walk. It's unexpected but kind of a relief.

I was walking so smoothly that you'd have thought I was doing a runway exercise with books on my head or something. Total Steadicam Walk there.

Now, I think I mentioned before that I've been having vertigo for a while now, and often I feel like I'm standing on the deck of a boat that's on mostly-calm waters (or, you know, a floating dock), where every movement just gets exaggerated a little. But I've really been nervous that actually the motion I'm feeling is me-- that I'm actually rocking a little and everybody's too polite to tell me. After seeing this video, I'm no longer worried about that.

Everybody else walking down the street is moving side-to-side as they walk. I'm not, because any kind of motion like that feels exaggerated to me. So instead I'm correcting for absolute balance -- or as absolute as is humanly possible -- and I'm doing it really well. So, whatever is going on (and I think it's an inner-ear infection but I still don't know for sure, because I haven't gotten into the health center yet; things are finally going to be settled down enough next week for me to get in there) I know for a fact that it hasn't compromised my motor functions. And really, that's what I was most worried about.

And now to sleep!

Right in the middle of posting a meme. It's going to look so faily when Plurk comes back up. *Headdesk*

So it was sometime in November when I had to wipe my hard drive and reinstall everything, and the semester had already turned into the Gauntlet Of Doom so I pretty much just put on the things I absolutely needed to get my work done. Today I finally got around to reinstalling Adobe CS4. (I have the "Master Collection.") This was mostly so I could install and configure a new image gallery on my website, specifically for holding all of the graphic designs I'm applying to my RPG journals here. That way I can kiss Photobucket and all of those sorts of places goodbye. I like hosting my own images and stuff, and it's not like I'm short on the webspace or bandwidth. So. New gallery installed. pandoricaguard has his journal all prettified, and I've done a few others, too. So that's feeling good.

For a little over a week now, I've been in a constant state of mild vertigo. So now that the holidays are past I think I'll see if Student Health Services has opened back up and if I can swing in there. My suspicion is a very mild inner ear infection (so mild that it's painless) because I just kind of feel like I'm sitting on a gently rocking boat. Movement feels a little exaggerated, too. There were a few times, a few days ago, when I'd actually get a little motion sick from it all, but that seems to have abated. So I might try to go in tomorrow if they can fit me in. It's funny -- my mom says something similar happened to her a bit more than a year ago, and lasted for several months before stopping as abruptly as it started. Weeeeird.

Next semester starts on the 17th. I might even have become well-rested by then. :)

So I’ve been making layouts and icons and stuff. Which is my way of mentally organizing myself to play on DW in a hopefully-more-active capacity from now on. I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that so many of the people I love to RP with most are moving their games here, and I hope more will do so in the future. So I’ve been arranging things in my newer and older accounts, to make myself as comfy as possible.

( Critiques are welcome… )

That is all.

Edit: Or not. They're finally working the way I want. Yay for me. I still hate the way they're nested to the point where it can become impossible to tell which one controls a very basic function. But I have successfully DIVved this journal into submission. (I hope.)

Anybody else unable to get LJ to load for them? Should we expect another DDOS sob story soon? (Personally, I'm starting to think all of the so-called DDOSes, other than the very first one that also affected Google and a few other sites, have been cover stories for times when they've broken their own pages.) At any rate, my browser can't connect. How about you guys?

ETA: Hahahahaha now things are finally, slowly loading. Maybe. LJ, you so crappy.

Therein is my question.

I think I have a new muse, albeit a somewhat smallish one. Henry from Red Riding Hood.

Those of you who know what kinds of male characters I tend to play are probably sitting there going "yeah, called that one." He's the type of male character I'm most drawn to -- the female characters I'm most drawn to are ones that people haven't generally seemed all that interested in playing with, but at the moment I've also been mulling the idea of creating either a River Song or a Sally Sparrow. For, you know, all of the copious time I spend playing online... *coughcoughcough*

But Henry might be fun to run somewhere. I'd probably want to set him a few years after the film's conclusion if I did play him, though. Must give it some thought. I just... really like him. I thought he was going to be the Gaston to Valerie's Belle, but he was nothing of the kind, and I ended up pretty much wanting to biff her for picking Peter over him. Heh.

And. Since I'm going to try to get my butt back in gear with Baedal, I must think of a good reason for Mike's protracted absence... one that will work if I have to put him on hiatus again during the coming semester. (I know for a fact that I'll have to during the Film Festival, but I have hopes that I might have some free time to devote to him during the rest of the semester.) One possible thought I've had is that since he's Navy and an accomplished sailor, maybe he got pulled into some kind of seafaring expedition and has only just returned. I must think on this over the holiday.

Lawsy, while writing this I remembered that I have two or three more barely/never used pups that I haven't imported from LJ yet. Must do that tonight.

Oh, and Merry Christmas, everybody. :) And/Or Happy Holidays.

Dear soy,

Yeah, well, fuck you, too.

No love,

A.

Dear body,

You realize, if you keep doing this, that there won't be anything left we can eat? Stop it already.

No love to you either,

A.

So, about every year or so -- sometimes half a year, sometimes two years, depending -- I have to essentially lobotomize my computer and rebuild it from scratch. Okay, okay, the poor thing is only a little over two years old, but you get the point. I'm now performing this particular act of cruelty for the third time. Ish. Possibly the fourth time but I think that was one of the other machines and not this one.

Anyway, there's just a certain point where a machine gets clogged and badly-behaved. Even though my antivirus software and Spybot S&D insist that things are just fine, there's just... this funny feeling like everything's clogged up. Programs misbehave. Boots go awry. That kind of stuff. And I decide that it's time for another lobotomy.

Now, I have something close to two terabytes of data associated with my computer, and several expensive and highly-secured programs installed on it, so this is not an easy feat or one to start on a whim. Somehow, though, the computer always seems to convince me it's on the brink of disaster and needs its lobotomy in the evening. It never seems to fail. So at 8:00-ish tonight, after being unable to get good enough download speeds to watch even a simple flash video (yeah, yeah, Matt Smith pretending to strip for charity, go ahead and judge me!) I rebooted and watched as my computer behaved in one bizarre fashion after another. "This isn't good," I said to myself, and began my preparations for surgery.

Those took another six hours.

At this point, I'm fully backed up and the computer has been lobotomized. Rebuilding the system has commenced. Downloading and installation of 101 updates to Vista is underway. That will be followed by installing new video drivers, checking for any further needed updates, and prepping the system for its upgrade to Windows 7. That will be followed by the installation of my custom security suite (or at least, my favorite security software packages for Windows 7) and then the reloading of my snazzy fancy software packages. Sometime during all of this, theoretically, I will even sleep. (Probably soon, really... these updates will undoubtedly take a few hours to get themselves applied.)

The kitten is grumping at me because I haven't come to bed, so I might nap while these 634.2 megs of updates are downloaded and installed, given that it should take a bit of time. She needs cuddles and I need to see the backs of my eyelids. The computer should behave itself for a while at this point. If not, I can always lobotomize it again and it won't even take all that long! Hee!

(Naturally this would happen on the weekend when I'm trying to work up a little powerpoint presentation... but I was going to need to run it from my netbook anyway, so this gives me a good excuse to play on the netbook instead of the desktop for a while.)

Oh and yes, graduate school is EATING MY HEAD and that's why I've barely been on here and haven't posted in like half a year. (On the plus side, my Middle Eastern Epic professor told me that the paper I turned in to him last week is publishable, once I've swapped out the "student-friendly" version of the Mesopotamian texts I was using for the harder-core translations. So very excited about that. :D It's a toss-up as to whether it'll end up in a journal on Middle Eastern Literature, or one on Feminist Theory, but he thinks it would be happily accepted by either. Hurrah!)

Okay. To bed! While 101 updates dance in my computer's head.

And I have a 4.0. I am feeling a mixture of delight and relief. With the health issues I had during the semester I was really worried that the one professor was going to deduct for attendance, but I guess my participation was strong enough on the days I was there that she didn't feel a need to. And. I was really worried that my literary theory prof was going to kill me over my final exam, because it was a take-home and when we turned them in, mine was, like, two to four times longer than anyone else's. If brevity is the soul of wit, I'm generally pretty witless. But. Apparently my answers were thorough, if lengthy. I really need to stop in her office to pick the papers up so I can read her comments.

What sucks is, both of the professors I had this semester were incredibly awesome, and next semester their classes occur at the same time. I want to just roll on both of them but I will have to only pick one. *sigh*

So I am thinking of apping into a game for the summer and hoping I have the stamina for it. The last week I've been having a slowly-developing flare and it's stealing my spoons liek whoa, but I think I will still try.

Oh and, yes, posting here again. Hi. :)

...of zombies?

Someone clearly had a lot of fun making that.

It's an arbitrary designation but approximately correct according to the vet, and chosen because it's a day with a lot of significance to me anyway. (Next year it'll be the twentieth anniversary of something very special.) So my little girl is now a one-year-old. I don't know if she'll always be this tiny but it seems like a good bet that she will.

She's sitting next to me at the moment; she loves the cable box because it's so warm and she's a perfect fit in the space.

(I would be at university at the moment were it not for the migraine I woke up with. It's partially cleared off but I still can't handle bright sunlight or loud noise yet, so I probably won't get there today. Gah.)

But HAPPY ELLIE DAY!

I'm not sure why my university has Columbus Day as a holiday, but it does, so I've had a relaxing three-day weekend (along with -- now that the University finally got its act together -- my first paycheck for the term). So, good times.

Oddest moment this weekend: the elderberry pie that my mother bought at the Apple Butter Festival in Burton. It has no elderberries in it. You know the gelatinous stuff that fruit is generally suspended in? Which is usually flavored with pureed fruit but is kinda-sorta just a custard on its own? That's all that was inside the pie. No berries suspended in it. It was so weird and insanely over-sweetened as a result. Tasty, I guess but... really, really weird. Neither one of us is particularly inclined to have another slice. Where are small children when you need them?

Combination Squee/cry moment: I went down to my storage place to pay the rent on my unit (where all of my excess stuff is stored until I'm in a place of my own) and there was a kitten in the office. She's probably about eight weeks old, sweet as can be, and has a club foot. She rolled on a chair and splayed out so I could rub her tummy, and made biscuits in the air while I did. Then she let me pick her up and lay quietly on her back in the palm of my hand while I rubbed her tummy some more and gave her kisses. Her left hind foot is so weird-looking, and she can't walk on it.

So God bless the guys who run the storage place, because they let cats have free roaming privileges throughout the building (which is also why none of us ever have to worry about mice in the units, w00t!) and they've declared her an indoor kitty from now on, so that she'll have soft things to walk on and ready access to food and help. She essentially functions like a three-legged cat already, and seems pretty contented (not to mention adorable and affectionate and and and... *sniffle!*) so I hope to see her again when I go back to make the next payment at the beginning of December. I'll have to resist the urge to stop in more frequently than that, LOL!

Ellie: She and the other cats are still in standoff mode -- she and Maia swat at each other through the crack under my door. For Maia it's a wonderful, fun game; for Ellie it's srs bzns. She snarls and growls at Maia the whole time she's pouncing her paws. But I've seen Maia on the other side, with a great big :D look on her face. Silly cat. Inka refuses to have anything to do with any of this, although periodically she and Ellie will stare at each other from twenty feet apart and give each other O_O looks. Ellie is currently trying to break into one of my drawers -- the time she got into my underwear drawer was pretty hilarious but I have to keep them shut if I want wearable clothes. She's still a barfcat, but she's taken to running for her litter box whenever she feels it coming, which I definitely appreciate. I've switched her to a different food and I have probiotics on order, so hopefully we'll get her tummy settled soon.

Tomorrow it's back to the grind, woo hoo, but it's been a nice lazy weekend. I get another in a month, for Veteran's Day. That one might even be a day off for other people; I forget.

Oh, and I wrote another chunk of the Big Damn Project this weekend. Huzzah!

I get it. Silly Season is upon us. You're all hoping for cushy government jobs that'll keep you from pounding the pavement with the rest of us. Maybe your belly is full of fire or paranoia or idealism or whatever else is part of your platform.

But here's a tip: do not fucking call me.

Want to send me literature in the mail? Fine, whatever, most of it's going straight into the recycle bin anyway. Save a tree and just do your TV ads (not that I watch much commercial TV, suckas). But stay the fuck off my phone.

Because I'm on the Do-Not-Call Registry for a reason bitches.

If you think you're somehow above that, and that your dreams of political greatness are more important than my expectations of privacy, don't think I won't remember that when it's time to cast my vote.

If you think that you can duck around me and prevent me from screening your call by blocking your name? I'm remembering that, too. Now you're the SPAMdidate. So I'm listening exactly long enough to hear which name I should cross off the voting list.

Seriously, if you want me to vote for you, don't call. Sit back, behave yourself, and let your opponents sabotage themselves by calling. Not that it's the only issue you need to see my way to get my vote, but it's the only one you're going to tell me about. The rest I'm perfectly capable of researching on my own, so just... back the hell off. Go kiss some babies, glad some hands, wave from cabooses, pose for pictures, all that good stuff.

But stay the fuck off my phone.

Probably not voting for you,

Me

Has anybody made a layout on Dreamwidth that's not a fugly piece of shite?

I swear, all I want is the 3-column layout I've been using on LJ and IJ. That's all I want. It's not that difficult or fancy, but somehow every single layout on DW insists on fucking that up, superimposing a huge title over my header images, and doing other incredibly annoying crap that I can't override because DW insisted on making things just different enough that the overrides that used to work... don't.

I am not a happy person. I'd like to bring over my LJ and IJ RP accounts but the pages at the moment are frankly atrociously unreadable. Has anybody fixed this? Or are we stuck with a bunch of layouts that look like MySpace threw up on everything?

Edit: I've found work-arounds to most of my complaints, thank goodness... and might try my hand at turning some of them into their own styles ...when I have more copious amounts of free time than I do right now.

...is the Friday before Labor Day, when the air show pilots arrive in town and rehearse for the show by charging around in the airspace over campus. It's awesome to watch. Of course, part of it is I have a real thing for flyboys. And part of it is just that it's so graceful and delightful and if I could fly, I'd want to do all of those tricks, too.

I don't have classes for more than an hour. So I've got a nice window spot staked out on the third floor of the Main Classroom building, with a great view of the lake... and I'm just going to sit here and watch them play in the sky.

Awesome.