26.7.13

Too many shows.

My friend got me hooked on Supernatural.

This would normally not be a bad thing, except that I'm also trying to watch Torchwood.

However, I just finished episode 12 of season 1. Yes, I know, I have a lot to catch up on. The point being, I predicted the plot of this one well before half of the show was over.

(Warning: I'm going to start ranting about plot, and if you've never seen Supernatural and you plan to, you might want to stop now and go somewhere else until you get past ep. 12. Unless you don't care about silly spoilers. In which case, be my guest. Because I'm going to pretty much tell the story here. Although I guess this show is now a good seven years old, so while I'm late to the party, I guess that means that a spoiler warning is technically pointless.)

So. Summary of plot.
Dean gets all electrocutey, gets heart damage as a result. Sam is desperate to save him, and drags him off to this blind faith healer (who himself had been miraculously healed of cancer, after which he can apparently heal others) in Nebraska. Dean gets healed, but some other kid dies of a heart attack for no reason - at exactly the same moment. They figure this out, and figure out who's to blame, stop the culprit, blah blah blah, happy-ish ending.
I say "ish" because the nice cute blonde chick with brain cancer and six months to live never gets healed. Sadface for Dean, who has a crush. Well -- he kind of has a crush on every cute blonde they find in terrible danger, just saying.

Now here's where I start ranting.

Halfway through, they start suspecting that the healer guy isn't all he's cracked up to be. They think he's got a tame Reaper that he uses to mess with life & death. Well, that requires a binding spell. So they go snooping in his house and find...
A spell book. With a binding spell in it. Yay. But...

Dudes. Think a minute.

The blind guy is reading a book, now?

And yet they still think it's him.
Use your brains; it's his wife, numbnuts! The one who went totally desperate when she saw her husband dying? Seriously. As obvious as a pie in the face. But I digress.

So then Dean stops one of the meetings. The healer guy's wife says, and I quote, "The Lord will deal with him as He sees fit..."

Like, really? Sam, Dean - you guys don't see what she's saying? That phrase there means that you're the next victim, Dean, and that she's the one playing God with a Reaper on a leash.

Winchester must be another word for blonde, I swear, because these guys seem to be a special kind of clueless in this episode. They made it past at least 11 other monsters (including a Norse Vanr) and they can't freaking figure this out. Although I suppose they could be PMSing. Yeah, that's gotta be why they're so far off their game.

Anyways. Entertaining episode, and not as freaky as Bugs, or as heart-stopping as The Hook Man, or as disturbing as the scene from Home with the plumber in the kitchen (seriously, by the way, was I the only one who could see that coming a mile away? Poltergeist + plumber + "backed up" garburator == very bad things) ... but predictable-as-hell plot.

Rant over :)

Oh yes, and I almost forgot. The dodgeball tournament I was supposed to be in this weekend? We had to drop out. Not enough players. Just as well, I don't think we were quite prepared.
And my pinky finger that I jammed on a ball during dodgeball practice two weeks ago? Pretty sure I must have fractured it, because it shouldn't still be this painful/swollen, although the swelling did go down some, but it's not down fully. Maybe I should go to a clinic... *shrug*

Toodles, love you all!

18.7.13

Like a *bleep*ing BOSS.

I like being independent.

I like the fact that I went out and bought lightbulbs for my house.

It seems like a silly thing to like, but I friggen bought my own friggen lightbulbs. And that makes me feel like an autonomous grownup. Or something.

I also bought a stick of 2gb of RAM for my computer, and stole the 2gb stick from my old one, so I'm running with 4gb, like a boss. And I did it myself. Picked up the right kind without anyone's help - though I expect I confused the poor Best Buy guy... he meant well for offering to help, but I wasn't making sense even to myself... Haha. Anyways. All is running like a blooming dream.

And I will carry on being inde-freaking-pendent, like a BOSS.

By the way, another chapter in the Saga du Pinky: the swelling is finally going down a little. Still a wee bit sore, but nothing fearsome. So that's a relief.

That's it. Toodles!

16.7.13

In which I'm clumsy.

I learned a new word today: pantagruelian. It means enormous, and adequately describes the way my pinky finger looks today, as a result of last night.
Last night I went to dodgeball practice (Don't laugh at me. I joined up for a tournament at the end of the month that's for charity. After that it's done. And by the way we could use more players, particularly female ones.... ...Anyways). We were practicing by standing one person against a wall and a) practicing aim by throwing at the person, and b) practicing dodging by being the one against the wall. It was my turn against the wall, and someone said, "Hey! Try to catch this one!" So I tried. And smushed my pinky finger really badly.
It's all swollen now, and purple. Sadface. I don't think it's broken, cos I could move it yesterday - it's too fat and swollen to move much now - but it still flipping hurts.

I had the best/worst moment at work today. I went to sit on a chair to do some stuff. Didn't realise it wasn't under my butt. Sat down, astonished myself thoroughly, and landed on the floor. I laughed at myself properly after that. Ended up with a wee bruise on my backside, and a slightly larger bruise on my pride, but nothing serious.

Other than that, been a pretty slow couple of days. I may colour my hair when I get home - it's starting to bug me a bit more now. Yay roots.

So yeah. Toodles...

15.7.13

Goldenears, cleaning, floppy drives, and Monday.

I've had a busy busy weekend.

On Saturday both my Pathfinder games were cancelled, so the first thing I did was googlechat at my dad to request a hike-day. Originally the plan was to do Elk Mountain, cos that's our go-to day hike (especially since the mountain bikers took over Sumas' Centennial Trail, and that one subdivision went up right at the old trailhead... I'm not bitter; why do you ask?), but when I got to my parents' house, Dad suggested suddenly that we try Goldenears, and see how far we could go in one day. So we did that. Started hiking at 10.30 - a little later than I would have liked - and got about 30-45 min past Alder Flats, maybe a bit more, but then various feet started to hurt. I was in my Vibrams, which on any other trail would have been fine, but Goldenears trail is especially rocky, and by the end it felt somewhere between Hans Christian Andersen's Little Mermaid (whose every step felt like walking on knives) and playing guitar with no callouses for six hours straight. Let me tell you how glorious it felt, at the end, to walk on the plain dirt sections; it was like walking on freaking velvet, it was so amazing. Course, I'm also my mother's daughter: coming downhill was hell on my knees. And there was so very much downhill. We finally got back to the trailhead at 4.30. Once in the car, I promptly fell asleep and drooled on my own shoulder. Classy, right? It was a good day though.

Yesterday I acquired a copy of the Lord of the Rings Extended Edition Soundtrack. It has every piece of music from those movies ever. The Elves' chant in the Fellowship when they're leaving for the ships, Aragorn's snippet of Tinuviel's song, all Merry and Pippin's drinking songs, even Gollum's Rock and Pool song - and all the ones you thought you knew (from the "proper" soundtrack) are so much longer and more complicated than you thought they were. So yesterday afternoon I played that while I cleaned my room. I did so much laundry, and I organised stuff. I even rearranged my room - a plan that occurred to me around 8.30pm, which reminds me - why on earth do I get the urge to do major cleanup/rearrangement late in the evening? I did have a momentary concern that it would cause me confusion in the morning, but that didn't last long. And it does look better; much better. Now I'm thinking I might do that for all the other rooms in my house. Someone stop me before I do something foolish....

Today at work I took apart computers and removed floppy drives from them so we can surplus the computers and use the floppy drives later. Yes, we still need those. Yes, they're technically obsolete. No, I'm not going to argue. Tomorrow I'm going to take all those said computers and wipe them. Then I'll put them on my list of things to be surplussed. Can I hear Three Cheers for Doing The Same Old Thing At Work As You Did Before? hip hip....

Anyways, it's almost going-home-time - thus ends another Monday.

Also, I'm looking forward to a metal show on Friday - First Reign and Dialect 9. It'll be awesome.

Toodles all.

12.7.13

Anglophone rage, an adventure in coordination, FINALLY NO MORE HAGGIS, laptops, gaming, and Friday.

To this day I don't understand why Canada has to be bilingual. We English speakers make up most of the population of this country. Francophones are just the vocal minority.
Course, I'm probably just a wee bit pissed because I'm thoroughly mono-linguistic (although I admit I have designs on being fluent in Sindarin, not that that's particularly widely spoken) and I just had to make a warranty call to somewhere in Quebec. It irritates me when I'm clearly speaking accent-free English and I can hear the lady I'm talking to speaking in French to her co-worker without shame. Dude. I'm right here. I can hear you - and I can't understand you. It's incredibly rude, in my opinion.

Last night I hung out with some friends. We had tacos on the porch and played darts and pool, and the six-pack of Lonetree cider I brought disappeared very quickly, most of it not down my throat. I failed epically at darts, but actually did surprisingly well at pool - it was girls vs guys, and we would have won except I accidentally potted the white while trying to get the eight-ball out. At the end of the night, I grabbed three cans and a bottle, two things in each hand, to carry upstairs. At that moment, a pool cue fell, so I caught it. Picture this: left hand, a can held by my thumb and index, and a bottle between my index and middle fingers; and right hand, from thumb to ring finger, similarly holding two cans and a pool cue. So far so good. So I went to put the pool cue back in the stand, and just as I managed to get it to clip into the bit at the top, one of the cans fell out of my right hand and bounced smack off the top of my head. Moral of the story: put down the bottle and cans before you try to do anything involving hand-eye-coordination. Although, it was pretty funny timing.

Also, because you care so much, this is the end of the Saga of the Haggis: I ate the last of it for lunch today.
I just have to laugh at all the people who get all grossed out by the fact that I'm eating haggis. It's really not as gross as you'd think, I swear!

I have a laptop at work today that I'm supposed to image with a specific image - and it refuses to take it. Dammit Toshiba why?! I've tried at least five different ways of getting it to image, and it just refuses. At the moment I've got it on my lap instead of the desk behind me, so I can keep a closer eye on it, and hopefully see what it is that's breaking so badly. Aaaaand nope. It still broke. WHY.

On the subject of laptops, I installed Steam on mine this morning before work, and started it downloading Portal. Hell yeah. It was about 40% when I left. I have yet to upgrade the RAM in it, but that will happen before I start playing. And on the subject of gaming, I'm definitely going to go out and get an HDMI adaptor for the monitor I bought so that I can use my OUYA with it. Who needs a TV?

Happy Friday, everyone.

Toodles.

11.7.13

Is it really only Thursday?

So for the new laptop I went with Ubuntu 13.04, because I'm used to Ubuntu, overly pretty or otherwise. I had some fun trying to get it installed though. My mother has my 4gb flash drive in her possession because I'm playing her Doctor Who dealer, and I only have a 1gb one otherwise, and the iso once applied to a flash drive takes 2gb, and I didn't have any writable CDs or DVDs that were compatible with the CD drive in the old laptop. This made my life difficult until I found a 2gb microSD card. So I currently have a card as big as my thumbnail loaded up with Ubuntu, fully bootable. Which seems really bizarre to me, because it's so damn tiny. (I should totally try to boot my phone from it. Then again, maybe not.)
Anyhow, spent some time setting that up, and then got it into my bedroom and hooked it up to the secondary monitor that I bought, and watched Torchwood on the monitor while still having facebook open on the main laptop screen. Damn, new shiny stuff is awesome. Heh. I did find out that the new lappy only has 2gb of RAM, so assuming they're the same type, I'll definitely be boosting that out of the old one.

And yes, I had haggis for dinner last night. Cooked it up with 3 sweet potatoes, sliced up, and half an onion, all in the oven together with some rosemary on top. Hit the spot, it did. And had leftovers for lunch today, and probably enough left for lunch tomorrow too. At $8 for one haggis, that works out to 2-something a meal (not counting the sweet potatoes), which is a pretty good deal. Cheaper than eating out, anyway. And tasty. Nom nom nom. I think I weirded out my boss by appreciating haggis. Oh well, more for me.

Didn't get much cleaning done, because of the computer taking pretty long to set up - nor did I get my hair recoloured. But that's okay. I can get some cleaning done today after work, maybe - and definitely Friday after work too. Thankfully, the hair thing (as I said yesterday) isn't imperative - so that could wait til Monday, or even longer, if I wanted. We'll see how it goes.

At work my boss and I set up a computer with two monitors, which is fairly standard, but we also had to put a second keyboard and mouse on it. Hilarity ensued: I'd go to right-click on the desktop for settings, and he'd click away so my menu disappeared immediately; or he'd go to log in, but I'd already hit Ctr-Alt-Del and so he'd do it again and thus exit from the login screen. At one point he was moving his mouse left/right, and I was moving my mouse up/down, so it went in a really wonky circle. What is it they say about small things and small minds?

The radio at work played Werewolves of London this afternoon. I can't take that song seriously. I crack up every time I hear it. I want to know how in hell he sang that song with a straight face. Also, I'm getting bloody tired of Skagit Valley Casino radio ads. That and whichever credit union has the stupid jingle about being "in your corner".

Can't wait for Friday, it's been a long busy week so far. Can't wait for next Friday, either - metal show to see! Woohoo!

Anyways, signing off for now.
Toodles.

Edit: formatting ...

10.7.13

tl;dr: skunking, mondayism, talk geeky to me, haggis, and reddit.

Well. Stuff happened.

Sunday I had a picnic in the park with all my dear family. It was picnicky - and much too warm. I skunked my uncle and my dad at cribbage - almost didn't cos my dad was one point away from getting across the line, but then I pegged out. Made me feel good, cos I've never skunked anyone before, and they've been playing much longer than I have - but I got a whole string of double-runs one after another, and most of them had fifteens too, so that's why. Plus my uncle had a series of really terrible hands. Sorry, Uncle.

Monday was mondayish; I actually fell asleep on my desk partway through the day and I'm really glad no-one noticed. It was only for a few minutes anyways. But then after work I got to hang out with my good friend Jessi and another friend, Jazzy - I made paleo apple fritters (I keep getting asked for the recipe. One of these days I'll publish it here, all formatted and with pretty pictures to go with it) and Jazzy made Earl Grey Tea and Lavender cookies. OH MY GOSH those were amazing. Then we sat on the floor and did crafty stuff for a while. I got some chain-mail done, as well as part of my "uniform" for the dodgeball team I'm in...
And I laughed at us because for a full half hour none of us said anything to anyone else. Introverts, much?

Yesterday I got to hang out with a friend whom I didn't really know very well beforehand - she's been more my sister's friend up til now - and it was nice to get to know her a bit better.

Yesterday I also got a new laptop and a monitor, YAY! And just in time, too - my old lappy was becoming more and more decrepit. For the last few weeks, if it ever tried to do anything, it had to access the harddrive fifty bajillion times first, during, AND after. I thought maybe it was using the swap space too much - which says bad RAM to me - but dad thinks maybe it's just retries because it has bad sectors on the harddrive as it is, so maybe the harddrive is finally giving up the ghost. I'm hoping for the latter; as long as the RAM is still good, I'm happy, cos my old one has 3 gigs (a stick of 1, and a stick of 2), so if the new one also comes with 3 (cos I haven't checked yet - I'll do that tonight probably), I'll swap out the 1 for the old one's 2, making 4 in the new one. Mmmm hardware. And the RAM should be compatible - they're both Lenovos, one's the T61 and the other's the T61p - so I see no reason why it shouldn't work. *Crosses fingers*
Which brings me to the question of what OS I should put on it. I was considering Linux Mint for a while, cos Ubuntu's pissing me off, just a little; but I may just bite the bullet and give it Ubuntu 13.04 Raring. I stuck with 11.04 (Natty) for quite a long time, and now they've "stopped supporting it", of course - but on the other hand, 12 and up are Steam-compatible. I mean... I'm not interested in starting gaming... at all... no... um. All I know for sure is that I refuse to have Windows anywhere near it.

Anyways, my plan for today is to go to the butcher's and buy a haggis (because I want haggis for no apparent reason, and I know it's not paleo, but I refuse to make an excuse for this; haggis is its own excuse, in my opinion) and have that for dinner while cleaning my house and possibly putting some OS or other (meaning probably Ubuntu Raring) on my new laptop... and I may even make this Goth-Upkeep Day and recolour my hair. Maybe. I could probably last a couple weeks more if I wanted to, so it's not imperative that I recolour it this week, I just feel like it's almost that time again.

Final thoughts: you know you're on Reddit too much when you find that people ask the same questions and make the same comments over and over - and you know you've been on Reddit too long when people start nostalgically referencing stuff that you saw when it was first posted. Yeah.

So. Back to work.
Toodles, all.

3.7.13

Well that wasn't so bad.

After the terror inspired by my co-worker, that really wasn't so bad. She just asked about how I liked it, what I've learned so far, etc., etc. So the terror really wasn't warranted.

Oh, and yesterday I somehow won a custom sundress from a giveaway on facebook - I never win stuff, so that was a surprise. I get to inspect some sketches today. Hoooo boy.

Today I also discovered that The Devil's Panties is back... that was my favourite webcomic for a long time and then she stopped - but she's back! However, I hadn't checked her site in a while, so there's a couple of years of stuff to catch up on, like her marriage, for example... And no, it has nothing to do with Satan, nor porn. She's a geeky chick with LARPing tendencies who wears big black boots; I need to be friends with her, I think, but fat chance of that cos she lives in the States and probably has dozens of fans besides me anyways.

I'm thinking of getting another piercing or two. Possibly somewhere on my ear(s). My one friend says I'd look good with an industrial. I was thinking either a secondary pair of lobes or maybe something up in the top of my ear, in the cartilage. Alternatively, I might get my nose done, or (less likely) a couple of dermal anchors somewhere. Thoughts, people?

So that's it.

Toodles.

Oh help.

Today is the Co-op Site Visit.

That means that someone from UFV's Career Centre comes out to the place I'm working, to discuss me with my supervisors, and then talk to me after. It's like an interview; only it's an interview that affects my grade at university.

My co-worker very kindly gave me a piece of advice - anything they say about me, not to take personally, because it will probably be constructive criticism. As in, they might say less-than-pleasant things.

You know that knot that happens in the pit of your stomach, the terror-fueled adrenaline rush that makes you feel like you want to vomit? Yeah. I have that right now. Not pleasant.

Even worse, I have to come back and sit through the rest of my eight-hour day afterwards. I wish this was over and I could just go home.

Oh the stress.
Toodles.