Dawn's Journal

A blizzard? In MARCH? o_o

...I'm glad I don't have to work tomorrow.

Shiraha beat Gao. :D

( Background info, in case you care. )

Huh. It's been a while since I posted. x_x

Anyway, I survived my week in Hell, went back to school, finally found a job-- register monkey at a small chain superstore that's not Wal-Mart-- and bought a new bike.

You see, my new apartment is about two miles from the school, but there's a lovely bike path that starts right down the street and goes to the school. I started out riding my bike-- an old, somewhat rusty thing I got at a yard sale two summers ago.

About a month ago, the brake line for the rear tire snapped. I just now got enough money for its replacement, which is relatively nice. Still on the low end as bikes go, but even from my short test ride tonight it seems to be a lot faster-moving for the energy I put in, and I can reach the gear shift. The shift on the old one was down near my knee and stiff; I couldn't shift while riding. Unfortunately, the brakes are reversed from the ones on my old bike, and the first time I tried to stop I almost flipped because I squeezed the front brake handle. (Hopefully I remember if I have to stop suddenly instead of relying on instinct....)

(By the way, Nel is made of win and awesome. Also, I hope the anime throws in the monitor room scene before the filler instead of after....)

By the way, I'm going to Florida for a week. D:

Going through security was odd. I understand why it's needed-- paranoia is sometimes healthy, after all-- but it's annoying. (No, my shoes are not going to explode.) And I'm currently questioning my mother's decision to go with the cheapest possible airline (Skybus.) The planes are pretty, and the tickets were cheaper than driving, current gas prices considered, but how much maintenance can they put into the planes at that low a ticket price....?

My mother's friend's parents own a house in a retirement comminuty, but only live there during the winter, so we managed to rent it from them for Not Much At All. Unfortunately, there's two beds, and my sister's entitlement complex kicked in. Fortunately, the company we get cable internet from has free dialup on the road, and I think I got it set up correctly (in case there's no open Wifi in the retirement community.) Therefore, as long as the couch is within a few feet of the phone jack-- since my mother wouldn't let me bring my fifty-foot phone cable-- I should be set. :)

Slow, but set.

So I got up early to go to a local church's annual Giant Yard Sale of Doom!

It was actually underwhelming this year, but I did find something nifty. About five years ago, my father bought my mother a scanner for her birthday. However, once we upgraded to a computer with Windows XP we found that there were no XP drivers for the scanner. So, when I found a scanner for $5 at the yard sale that looked fairly modern and included all the cables and software, I went ahead and got it.

So I got home and plugged it in. It worked, so I pulled out the CD and started to install the software. I had just got the install program up when I heard a pop! like a balloon bursting and smelled something burning, and looked over to the scanner to see smoke pouring out of it, just like you see on some movies when computers go completely wrong.

The scanner, somehow, blew up. I'm not sure how, but I suspect from the caramelized scent that there might've been soda or something spilled on it before its donation. the one good thing, I suppose, is that it blew up quickly, instead of working for a while and exploding when I wasn't around, possibly burning down the house.

At least I got a USB cable (that, while short, seems to be in good condition) out of it?

About the time of the original Strikethrough, I started work on a new website, which Fran generously offered to host on her web space. (I used to have a web site on a wonderful host in high school, but it was hacked year ago, I lost the HTML in a hard drive crash, I no longer have the password to the website or access to the email I used back then, and the web site no longer hosts free sites nor provides support for the legacy free sites, assuming they've not stopped hosting them altogether in the past couple years. Even worse, the CD that had the rather useful, if sparse, HTML editor I used back then-- I think it was called Clarisworks Light-- has also been lost, and I can't find that program anywhere.)

I'd just forgotten how much -work- designing a web site-- even an extremely simple one-- is, especally since I have to learn a new program. I picked up NVU, which I'm pretty sure is open-source, and have been finding it pretty nice. This is why I dropped the web site, I suppose, and went to automated archives like FF.net and LJ.

Anyway, whenever I finish the site I'll link to it in my user info. I've signed up for both Insanejournal and Greatestjournal, but I can't get Semagic to cross-post and I think I'll just stick with IJ, for now. (I'll friend people on GJ and check my flist, at least.)

There are three reasons why I decided to leave. First of all, I think that Livejournal has handled both recent situations horribly. This is their server space, and they have the right to decide what content goes on it. However, they refuse to publish out clear guidelines for what is acceptable. If they did, I would have no problem with them banning people; it would just be nice to know what the guidelines are.

Secondly, there's the fact that they're calling the pictures that people were banned for pedophilia when they're clearly not. MedicineNet defines pedophilia as "...fantasies, urges or behaviors that involve illegal sexual activity with a prepubescent child or children (generally age 13 years or younger)." (Emphasis mine.) In other words, pedophiles aren't into teenagers, much less people who are pretty close, if not over, 18. Yes, the art involved subjects who might have been underage, but they were definitely post-pubescent. The problem is, LJ labels them as pedophiles and a lot of people automatically take LJ's side. But there is a difference between someone who draws a picture of a guy who could be anywhere from sixteen to twenty-two in what seems to be a consensual sexual encounter and someone who molests and abuses living children. No sane, thinking person should lump them in the same category.

Unfortunately, in moral panics sane, logical thinking is often the first thing to go.

Granted, I don't tend to write sexual content, nor are most of my favorite characters under 18. But what happens if the which hunters decide that anyone with fannish interests is a pedophile, or something similar?

My third problem (which, fortunately, I don't have to deal with directly) is the fact that they refuse to give any refunds, even to paying customers who were banned. I think this just seems unfair; they should at least give the paying customer a partial refund.

I'll stick around for the communities and friends who aren't transferring, but this really will be it for posting.

Welcome to my shiny new Insanejournal.

I'll have to weed my back posts and take out any that no longer function without the LJ under it. Ah, well.

Does anyone play Silkroad Online?

In other news, evil party is epic, w00t. (We went into a dungeon at levels 17 and 18, depending on the exact XP, and came out at 21.) It also seems like we might end up saving the world instead of nearly destroying it like we're supposed to. Heh.

I need to ask Kara-- the group's artist-- for a scan of a picture she drew of my character; I want an icon.

Went to see the touring production of "Wicked" last night. It was mostly awesome. We went to dinner at The Spaghetti Warehouse, a very good Itaian restaurant in an old warehouse/factory, beforehand, and my mother got us seats on the front row of the balcony. The view was perfect. The touring cast was excellent with one exception. Fiyero, it turns out, was played by the understudy's understudy. He wasn't horribly bad, but the rest of the cast, especally Elphaba and Glinda's actresses, were much better.

The soundtrack makes much more sense now. ;)

The difference between my parents and me:

Parents: We don't have room for all our books. We should get rid of some books.

Me: I'm out of room for books. I need another bookshelf, and room for one.

1. Learn to Drive
2. Go through my stuff. Get rid of a bunch of it. (I'm a pack rat, but I would like to move most of my stuff-- with the exception of off-season clothes, glass unicorns, and some of my books-- with me when I get my apartment in Newark. Because the apartment will be very small, this means I need to have a very big yard sale or something.)
3. Learn to drive
4. Learn to drive
5. Learn to drive

I wish I either had (a.) my liscense or (b.) an apartment in Newark. I miss air conditioning and my friends in Newark and playing D&D with said friends in Newark and being able to leave my room and/or make any noise at all after 9 PM. (If I do now, the floors creak too loudly and the dogs wake up, waking everyone else up.)

I wonder if I can move in with my aunt, at least part of the time?

(Atria, you're awesome, but it's just not the same....)

Last night, I went and played D&D before heading home today.

In the campaign we played, our characters are a group of rather misfit, yet effective villians working for an evil organization that's trying to Take Over The World. We were trying to get into a vault to get at a sword a party member was asked to retreive, and we ended up having to wait a day while our necromancer's undead burrowed a tunnel under the vault.

Most evil characters, given a day off, would rest or do arcane rituals or kidnap and sacrifice a few children.

Our party ended up playing Truth or Dare. It was like a slumber party, only not as innocent!

Hmm. It seems that Gin-sensei's lessons are pre-recorded. That, or the animators just forgot one very important little detail.

(Invisible cookie to anyone who can tell me how I know this. ;) )

I'm losing internets at about midnight tonight. There's something that needs fixed. D:!

Going on a camping trip tomorrow. Back Monday, I think.

Meme:

Name a character that I'm familar with and I'll tell you three (or more) facts about them from my own personal pseudocanon. (If you're not sure, ask me anyway and I'll tell you if I don't have a personal pseudocanon for him/her.)

So I was playing a table-top RPG earlier tonight. In it, I play a rather effimate half-unicorn bard. (He's effimate because the other players kept forgetting that I was playing a male character, so I just decided that he was rather bishounen. Then, later, I forgot I was playing a male character and inadvertently made him gay.) Anyway, the bard was traveling with about half the party; a fish-man barbarian and a ninja who is also not human. (I think he might be a kitsune.)The characters had been awake for over a day while escaping from what amounts to a zoo or freak show, so the DM had us roll to see if we could stay awake that long.

In this game, many things are decided by rolling a die with 20 sides and adding a bonus, which is based on both natural aptitude and training. A 20 is an automatic, stunning success, while a 1 is an automatic horrible failure. I rolled a 1, so my character fainted and faceplanted into the mud. It took the fish-man and the ninja eight tries to pick up and carry my character, who probably isn't all that heavy or big.

So they finally caught up with the rest of my party and they had to get over a 60-foot tall wall, with my character still unconscious. The party's mage had one teleport spell, so he teleported my character to the top of the wall. So he was at the top of the wall, still out like a light, and so the ninja tried to pick him up and carry him down the ladder.

He rolled, in sequence, 5, 2, 1 and dropped my character off the side of the wall. Fortunately, due to a prior adventure my character automatically floats when he falls (which the DM knew or else she wouldn't have let him fall off the side, since the fall would have killed him) and once he got down she had an NPC try to catch him. The NPC failed and dropped him, which woke him up.

DM: You wake up. Everything is black and your butt hurts.

Everyone else: *snerks*

DM: *realizes what she just said* ...from being dropped multiple times!

They finally, finally got the wireless internet in here, only five months late. I was happy because I thought I could finally play with my DS online. (Gotta trade 'em all?) But nooo, they're using some sort of authentication system that the DS doesn't support.

I'll have to install my wireless adapter and see if I can fiddle it online. Maybe it's just until they finish setting it up in all the rooms. If all else fails, I'll go home in a month and be putting a wireless router in my new apartment next fall....