★ Oh man, where did winter break even GO? Didn't it just start? I thought I had a month. How is it that classes start on Tuesday? Meh. -_-

★ Unfortunately, I didn't get NEARLY as much done over the break as I would've liked. But the upside here is that SOME things actually got accomplished- as opposed to summer break when absolutely nothing got done. I slowed down a lot on the reading, but I'm almost through The Son of Neptune (well, okay, almost may be a stretch, but I'm a little more than halfway through it. XD). I cleaned my desk- including getting rid of the old piece of shit PC I still had hanging around (I forgot how heavy monitors are, JFC)- and can actually use it now. A PLACE TO DO WORK, YAY. I've been poking at fic, though unfortunately it's been scattered among a few different places so I don't really have anything to show for it. XD But still, any kind of writing is good.

★ Current goals for what little remains of the break: carve out a steady path to the closet. Keep the desk reasonably clean. Finish through The Mark of Athena. Finish at least one fic for posting (not necessarily that I'll get it posted before Tuesday, just to have something ready to go). I should probably clean out my backpack, and I'd also like to get my books before the start of the semester. Eh, I think that's more than enough for four days. XD

★ As I said to Ai in a comment recently- honestly, not having real internet isn't as bad as I'd feared. My phone is a surprisingly decent substitute for a lot of internet-related things. I can keep up with things for the most part (though I do occasionally miss posts here and there, so if there's something important you want to make sure I see, you might want to poke at me juuuuuust in case). Comments and entries in DW/LJ are a giant pain in the ass, so I'm trying to not do those so much. In the worst case scenario that I can't do something, I can always wait until I have access to wi-fi. It's actually been pretty okay.

Anyway, this is looking pretty long here, so I'll shut up now. I'll be around, in any event.

☁ Turned in BG. Managed to pull off two fics, somehow, I don't even know how that happened. It was originally all part of the same idea, sort of, but... eh, it's complicated. Anyway. I was Vanessa and wrote two Hikaru and Waya fics- one pointless gen and the other smut. *shrug* I was terribly obvious and didn't bother to hide it. I was hoping that the pairing would throw people off at least a little, but uh, I guess not. XD Guessing didn't turn out too bad, though! 5 out of a possible 8, which is my best showing BY FAR- I have been known to get zero right, after all. Of course, if I'd actually looked a little more closely at some of the hints posted later on, I would've realized that a couple of my guesses were obviously wrong, but whatever. XD

☁ Somehow got talked into trying Naruto again, but of course I was only 7 eps into it to begin with and that was ages ago, so I just started it over. It's. I dunno. Kind of obnoxious. I can see why I didn't really feel a push to continue it before.

☁ The book cataloging is getting ridiculous. I've been taking a break, so there's still everything on my bookshelf at this point plus what's in the closet and whatever else I find that I'm not seeing right now- but the manga should be done, anyway, minus the first 13 of Hikago. I'm up to a total of 174 books and not even close to done (we won't even discuss how much of that is manga). I think I have a problem, you guys. XD Also recently I had decided to try and organize my ebook folder, because that's a huge clusterfuck, and all I can really say about that is... holy GOD, why did I do that to myself? I don't even know how it got like that.

☁ Money stuff for school is mostly taken care of, I'm waiting for the last grant form to go through, but it's nothing that's a huge deal right this split second. Like I can pay my bill and stuff without it, anyway. Re: school stuff, now all I have to do is get my certificate of residence (I'd like to do that tomorrow, tbh), pay my bill (by the 15th, but would like to do it next week to get it done and over with), get my books, and figure out exactly where my classes are and how tight I'm pushing my transport time on a couple. So that's coming along nicely.

☁ As far as RL circumstances... not a lot has changed, for good or for bad, at this point. I've been taking a bit of a hiatus on the cleaning because I've basically felt like shit the last week (yay for being female- not), plus being distracted with other things, see next cloud bullet, but I'm hoping to get back on track in the next couple of days.

☁ So remember how my laptop was overheating and I wasn't sure if it was the heat or something else? It was something else. -_- After some investigation, I discovered that the fan was no longer working. I'm not comfortable taking apart the laptop, since I can't get to the fan without pulling apart the ENTIRE thing (which is stupid but whatever), and it's not worth paying Best Buy $200 bucks to put a new fan in a four year old laptop, soooooo as much as I didn't want to spend the money and didn't want Windows 8... I didn't have a whole lot of choice in the matter. I bought a new one. XD I have named it Phoenix. :3 It was less than the previous one, under 400 before tax, so that wasn't bad. I've been super good about money over the summer, so I'm not going to beat myself up over spending the money or anything. Specs wise, I just wanted something that was at least as good as what I already had for relatively cheap, which was actually more difficult than you might think? Go figure. Sooooo I have another Toshiba- because fuck, I beat Haru all to hell and it still lasted four years, and above all else I did not want a Lenovo (very bad previous experience with IBM, and Kelly having to replace her Lenovo laptop TWICE since March does not help my opinion of them. I told her not to get a damn Lenovo. But nooooo, she didn't want to listen to me. Pfft.) Anyway. I still hate Windows 8, but I knew that already. Classic Shell makes it bearable, fyi if anybody on the flist ends up having to deal with this OS, though I still keep triggering stuff to pop up by accident. Grrr. The keyboard is pissing me off, at least until I get used to it. So there are minor frustrations with it, but that's true of any new device, especially with something like a laptop. Mostly I love it. It does what I need it to do (including connecting to the internet without a problem, which I was nervous about after the netbook), zips along speedily, and so far has handled everything I've thrown at it with grace. (It IS worth noting, though, that the "max temp" on Phoenix is significantly lower than it was on Haru- Haru's was 212, on Phoenix it's 194. Go figure.)

I think my favorite thing about it, though, is that it's a definite upgrade. I've said before that my laptop was hardly state of the art when I got it (and neither is this)- but you know that rating system Windows has? Old lappy was something like 3.3 or 3.5. This is 4.8. In both cases, the score is based off of the graphics card and everything else is AT LEAST a full point higher. When I turned on the Sims to double check that my saves would work, I was like, holy shit, they look like that? O_O It runs so much smoother now, without all the jerkiness and lag, and there's so much more detail. Like wow. Amazing.


Okay, I need to shut up and just post this already, so. Next time~!

Apparently "soon-ish" means a month later. Whoops. ^_^;

( Blah blah blah )

1. THE LAPPY HAS OFFICIALLY BEEN ORDERED. *\o\* *\o/* */o/* It's not the best laptop in the world, but unless it doesn't work at all, (*sob*) it's GOT to be better than what I have, you know? Maybe next time I'll save up more and splurge on a better system. But for now? This is GOLDEN, and $450 is more than enough to be spending. It's not the original one I had been looking at because wal-mart took that one off their site *grumblegrumble*, but this one I found on newegg is more or less the same thing AND it's 50 bucks cheaper. SCORE. That leaves me with more money to buy accessories- like a freaking USB mouse, since it doesn't have a PS/2 port.

2. Speaking of which- I'll need a name for the new computer. Suggestions, flist? :3 Something reliable oh god please. XD Also, keep in mind I have or have had in the past: Ed, Alphonse, Isumi, Kuwabara (baaaaad idea, that one XDDDD), Ochibi (surprisingly good tempered, actually), Oishi, Vivi, and possibly another that I'm just not thinking of at the moment. For various devices, obviously, not just computers. :D

3. I have managed to lose my DS. I wasn't worried at first, but now I'm seriously not finding it and I'm starting to freak out. D: It's got to be around here somewhere, though, seriously. WHERE ELSE DO I GO? XD

I'm beginning to think it's run off to the same place that my mp3 player disappeared to. Must be some kind of heaven for electronic devices. D: Come baaaaaaaaack!

4. Don't remember offhand if I mentioned, but we did actually get that Wii. It's neat. I haven't really done much with it yet, though, aside from downloading and playing a couple of old school games. Adventures of Lolo, FTW? ^_^;;;

5. Finally got around to finishing The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I say finally because I've been reading it off and on for several months now. Actually, recently Kelly saw me with it and made a comment which prompted the following conversation:
Kelly: You're STILL reading that?
Me: Meh, it hasn't really caught my attention yet.
Kelly: ...er... you're more than halfway through it.
Me: ................
Aaaaand that about sums up my stance on the book. It just never really captured me. There were a few things that had me giggling, none of which I can remember offhand, but overall... meh. I've never been big on sci-fi, and clearly this book is not an exception. Give me dragons over robots any day of the week, seriously.

Am now reading Czars by James P. Duffy and Vincent L. Ricci. Muuuch more interesting. I'm such a history geek. XD


On that note, I should probably go to bed. ^_^;;; Night all!

1. ...I just had to show my sister how to delete one's temporary files. Which means she hasn't been doing it all along. O_o Well damn. That would certainly contribute to the issues my computer has.

Also. Need to remember to back up Ochibi soon. Alphonse hasn't come out of his box since I got him and copied the entire contents of Ochibi onto him (which was the beginning of August, apparently.) O_o I will... most likely have to do a complete copy again. Which will take forever. Over 335GB worth of stuff, whut? <_<

2. I've broken the 1k mark for the bg fic. It's mostly pointless rambling, mind, but whatever. 1k is 1k, right? ^_^;;;

3. Cleaning off my desk is always something of an experience. The good news? I just found $25. The bad news? It's in Canadian. *pouts* I know it's there for a reason, but it's hard to remember that when I need the money, god damn it. (And actually, I should have another 20 around here somewhere...)

4. Just watched Eternal Summer. I'm... a little mixed on it, to be honest. It was well done, don't get me wrong, but the passing of time was sometimes confusing, and the ending wasn't what I'd hoped for. Well. It was and it wasn't. I can't really explain it without spoiling the movie for people that haven't seen it. ^_^;;;

However, I will say this- the guy that played Jonathan is WAY too freaking adorable. I just wanted to snuggle him throughout the movie. XD

5. Gakuen Alice: 6 episodes in, and it's still... really weird. I started watching it because it sounded like crack... turns out that the cute mopey boy is voiced by Paku Romi (when I told Aki, she was like, "Of course, he's cute and mopey."), which doesn't hurt either. I have to keep remembering that they're elementary school kids, though, because god, the slash. XD Both of the male and female variety. Honestly, could they make the Hotaru/Mikan and Natsume/Luca ANY MORE OBVIOUS? The hell, they're ten year old kids! *flails at self* Okay, so it's not really that bad since it's not like I want smut or anything (eew), but still. Guh.

6. *_* It is supposed to be GORGEOUS the rest of the week. Methinks I will go out tomorrow and get my hair cut. It needs it, badly. If I feel like it and if I get out early enough to bother. ^_^;;; Also need to make an eye appointment soon so I can catch the end of my insurance year. I need the appointment anyway- I haven't gone in over a year, and it doesn't seem like I'm seeing quite as well all of a sudden. Might need a higher prescription on my lenses.

.....okay, I'm going to quit being boring now. ^_^;;; After 5am and I'm rambling mindlessly, it's time for bed!

*waves* Hi, flist. How have things been going, you ask? Well...

1. Computer is still good for the moment, and lifted my hiatus on SW. Am considering apping a female character, but I have no idea who I'd app, and I have a hard enough time juggling three characters as it is. (And no, before anybody says anything, I'm NOT apping Hawkeye. Awesome she is, but there's no way I'd be able to pull her off even remotely IC.) So I most likely won't end up doing it anyway.

2. Good sleep. I misses it. Some guys are working on the roof of our apartment complex... and since they start at around 8am-9am... um, yeah. I get woken up. I try to go back to sleep and end up getting woken up again about every 15 minutes to half hour. Yesterday was day three of this bullshit, and I was at work trying my best not to fall asleep. Suuuuuuuuck. It seems they don't work weekends though, so maybe I can catch up on my sleep a little. It was lovely to not be woken up at 9am today. ^_^;;; Still exhausted, though, but a little better.

3. Lovely Complex. I'd heard about it before, and started watching it in the interest of finding something new to make Kelly watch, since unless I force Gravitation on her, I don't have anything new for her to see anime-wise.......... it's brilliant. Honestly. Go watch it. I basically inhaled it, and I'm not that much into shoujo. ^_^;;;;

Now I'm watching Higurashi no Naku Koro ni on a rec. I don't like horror too much (predictable), but I do love getting my head fucked with, so I'm hoping it'll be good.

4. Work is sucking. Meh. I need a vacation.

ASDJKSALDJKSLA. This is just... not my week, I tell you. I'm about to throw my computer out the window here. I had a nasty bit of malware on my computer the other day and did actually manage to remove it after a lot of headache and pulling my hair out (...with... the anti-virus software. Go figure.) Yay, right? Um... no. I don't know if something important got deleted or what... but all of a sudden my computer was acting up wicked bad. Freezing randomly, especially during startup. I would have to restart my computer at least 4 or 5 times in order for it to START. And then it was doing its "random restart" thing way more than normal. It wouldn't let me do a system restore, either.

Fine, fine... except last night it did a restart but wouldn't pull up windows no matter how many times I tried. I did get it to open up in safe mode, so I backed up what I could and ended up doing the nifty little "IBM Product Recovery" thing in the startup options. At that point I figured I had nothing to lose, since I couldn't get the damn thing to boot anyway.

The good news is, the computer works now (though I have to reinstall everything, because it puts everything to "factory default". Ugh.).... the bad news is, the display settings are stuck on a really low quality and it won't let me fix it. D: SUCK.

It's times like these that make me wish I was better at computer stuff...

**EDIT** YAY. I updated the graphics controller drivers and it's fine now. SCORE.

(Note to self: Created a restore point for today (October 23, 2008) in case it's needed later. Putting it in here in case I -do- need it, and then I'll know what date I need to put in. ^_^)