| Final toll: |
[Dec. 1st, 2008|09:44 pm] |
The squirrels got one santa hat, two cardboard boxes, and bag full of what would have been kindling if I ever got around to lighting fires. Could have been much worse.
Took this opportunity to clean out the closet, which should have been done ages and ages ago. Have acquired three new plastic tubs.
Also, Christmas decorations are up.
Bah, humbug. |
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| Hi. |
[Nov. 24th, 2008|09:17 pm] |
Somehow in the midst of doing my homework assignment to make a list of all the known hominids in chronological order I ended up on Wikipedia and then Tree of Life and now I think I have determined that I am most likely a
(Neomura) Eukaryota (Unikonta Opisthokonta) Animalia (Eumetazoa) Bilateria Deuterostomia Chordata Craniata Vertebrata Gnathostomata (Eugnathostomata Teleostomi Osteichthyes) Sarcopterygii (Tetrapoda Reptiliomorpha) Amniota Synapsida (Eupelycosauria Sphenacodontia Sphenacodontoidia) Therapsida (Eutherapsida Neotherapsida Theriodontia Eutheriodontia Cynodontia (Epicynodontia Eucynodontia Probainognathia Chiniquodontoidia Mammaliamorpha Mammaliaformes)) Mammalia (Theria) Eutheria (Euarchontoglires Euarchonta) Primates (Haplorrhini Simiiformes) Catarrhini (Hominoidea) Hominidae (Homininae Hominini Hominina) Homo sapiens (sapiens).
In case anyone was wondering. |
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| Cats are strange. |
[Nov. 23rd, 2008|02:00 am] |
So I started packing for Thanksgiving today, and since I'm taking the cats home with me, I got their stuff out, too.
... Bingley is curled up asleep in the cat carrier.
I mean. I'm glad? But, Bings, sweetie? Four hours ago you were terrified of the thing, and hiding under the dresser. What gives? Will you be so complacent Wednesday afternoon, or will you make me hunt you down and shove you bodily inside amidst many whinings and pointy toes? I think we both know which way it will go down.
Oh, cats. ♥. |
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| FIC: DW: Après la rose (Le Petit Prince crossover) |
[Nov. 20th, 2008|12:34 am] |
So -- apparently? Me + exhaustion + movie about whale evolution = fic to go with ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) sailorptah's Doctor Who/Le Petit Prince art.
... also, it's in French.
(I welcome vocab/grammar corrections.)
.... ENJOY?
(I don't know, either.)
(Also, if this were my yuletide fic, I'd be DONE. Sigh!)
Titre: Après la rose
Auteur: stellar_dust
Ages: Tout le monde (qui comprend le français).
Caractères: Le Petit Prince, le Dixième Docteur, le mouton
Mots: ~1000
Notes: Après ce dessin par sailorptah.
( J'avais une fois une rose.... ) |
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| In which I whine about all the cool things I get to do. Yay me. |
[Nov. 17th, 2008|07:59 pm] |
Stephen Colbert - Another Christmas Song GO LISTEN RIGHT NOW. And then you can watch a preview of the special. :D
So, eBay update. eBay thinks I've made $26. But after eBay gets its cut, and PayPal gets its cut, and I account for the fact that eBay cannot accurately estimate shipping cost for crap, it's more like $10. (I've paid about $11 more in shipping than I've charged. I should probably start adding handling fees to cover the difference.) At least I'm coming out ahead, but .. I don't know if it's even worth it to list the Star Wars stuff, considering the time and aggravation. ... maybe I'll make melannen do it since she doesn't have a job. d-:
I loved my laptop's super-bright screen .. until it started giving me headaches and burning out my retinas. I forced myself to crank out a TDR last night with suns exploding inside my eyes. It got better about halfway through, though, but then I've had a headache for most of today. ... and, yes, I HAVE now turned down the brightness, thanks much.
My presentation isn't gone! So that's good! But I still need to review it and add things to it, and I keep procrastinating, and I'm probably going to suck just when I really should be making a good impression. Sigh. (I don't even know who the audience for this will be, actually. Students? Local professionals? How far do people travel to attend GIS Day at a community college, anyway?)
(I've put off any long-term desktop-computer-fixing until at least Wednesday night. I might set aside the drive that I'm pretty sure contains one corrupt partition for now; I don't know if I want to reformat the whole thing and then trust it with data any time soon. Maybe I can pull the 80G one out of the external case and slot it in as a secondary internal ... must see if I have the right size hex key, though .. and this is all assuming the motherboard isn't fried, or anything like that ... yes, I'm working on my presentation, quiet, you.)
.. finally, the obligatory yuletide flail: omg why did I say I would write in this fandom I have forgotten SO MUCH canon and it's so far outside of my comfort zone and I'm not worthy!!! Aughkhhhgh.
Ok, let me have one moment of happy: Christmas socks and mint tea and a holiday Firefox skin and Stephen Colbert singing carols and snuggly kitties! Mmmmmm.
I need more tea, and the last of my apple cranberry pie. |
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| Very Important Links |
[Nov. 14th, 2008|09:30 pm] |
The Most Important Greasemonkey Script, Ever
Harry Potter Trailer!
A roadside attraction full of anamatronic dinosaurs, stomping through the woods and nomming on Civil War dudes. Awesome thing, or THE MOST awesome thing?? Man, I wish I went that way more often. My co-workers who do are on notice to visit and report back to me.
stoney321 reads Twilight so you don't have to.
The first female four-star general seems awesome.
And finally, because it has been stuck in my head for the past two days:
So, what became of that ridonkulous test? He passed it out, let us sweat for ten minutes, then turned it into a take-home. Whatever. And then he passed out evaluation forms and I slammed him. *eyeroll*
I'm slowly moving my mp3s over, and I think I figured out how to migrate the playlists. There's just one thing .. I have a bunch of stuff on my iPod that I no longer have in any other place, thanks to all the catastrophic hard drive failures I've suffered, mostly videos and radio interviews and audiobooks and things like that. But they remain when I sync my iPod on the old laptop, because there are still placeholders in the playlists in iTunes. Of course, though, when I import playlists into a fresh iTunes install, it doesn't add any songs that it can't find. So .. does anyone know of a way to either a) copy the files gracefully from the iPod to the computer or b) fake out the playlists so I can at least keep the files on the iPod when I sync with the new computer?
.. I like Vista a lot better than I expected to. The file structure takes some getting used to, but the only thing I've noticed so far that I'm a little worried about is that it may have some issues handling image formats? But I haven't done much with that yet, so we'll see. (So bright! So shiny! So many things work! So many things I can do! Eeeee!)
Man, so glad it's the weekend. Unfortunately, I still have to pull together a presentation for the GIS thing next week, drop off a package at the post office, and get gas. Not to mention Yuletide and school applications and anthropology paper, but shhhhhhhhhh.
ETA: In honor of my new vistaputer (her name is Bastet, by the way - Norse gods have ceased to bring good luck to my computers - and among other things, she has a remote control *loves*):
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[Nov. 13th, 2008|08:22 pm] |
Ok. So my new laptop came, and I'm still getting used to it, but it's awesome.
It came with a fingerprint reader.
Are there some people who are physically incapable of using fingerprint readers? Because after running through the tutorial, like, ten times, my fingerprints are stil "not good enough." ):
I could never get it to work on melannen's laptop, either.
Wah. |
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| Yuletide! |
[Nov. 12th, 2008|12:10 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | yuletide | ] |
| [ | Mood |
| |  excited | ] |
| [ | Music |
| | TDS! | ] |
I have my yuletide assignment! Squeeee! :D I can only really do one of them but I THINK IT WILL BE AWESOME! (And now I get to be all omg-flail-I-don't-know-what-to-write! and augh-do-i-have-time-to-reabsorb-all-the-canon! andandand...!)
Anyway, ( Dear Yule Goat: ) |
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| Anthropologically speaking -- |
[Nov. 11th, 2008|01:13 am] |
I like cladistics. I think it's elegant and powerful.
However. Scientific names are assigned phylogenetically. They are much easier to memorize when presented hierarchically. At least, to me.
Or, you know, just pick an order. Any order. Please. One big chart instead of five zillion little charts would be nice, too.
(Actually - surprisingly - I'm not doing to bad with the names, most of them have some kind of mnemonic I can hang on them well enough to answer multiple-choice questions. I'm having more trouble with the dates.)
Also? I think it's sad and tragic that I can probably rattle off at least 50 dinosaur species but I've never heard of Oligopithecus. Or Gigantopithecus. That's - we know all about our twelfth cousins seventeen times removed, but we haven't met our aunts.
Oh humans. Ouch. I wish we weren't so afraid to look at ourselves.
(May not be failing as badly as feared. One chapter to go! ... tomorrow. Hopefully.)
(Kitties have been cuddly recently. D'awwwww!) |
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| Why you should always agree to beta when asked: |
[Nov. 10th, 2008|06:45 pm] |
You might get omgamazingwonderful presents like this.
♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥!
(If you're a big ol' sap like me who can't read Le Petit Prince without sobbing, make sure you have extra tissues on hand before you reread it with that picture in mind. *loves, & has a new desktop*)
-------
While I'm here:
Obama positioned to quickly reverse Bush actions. Oh, thank goodness.
They didn't read my letter on the Bugle this week! Alas.
I called the person who won my puzzles on ebay - she totally forgot about it, still wants them, and is going to pay asap. Yay for resolving issues, and extra yay for talking on the phone without dying!
What with all the fossil primates late last night, I completely forgot about thedailyreports. Oops. Shall do that as soon as I post this.
... I'm so going to fail this test, but whatever - so's everyone else. (So far behind where I should be tonight. 2 chapters Saturday, 1/2 chapter yesterday, 1/4 so far today - arg. I wish there was time to give this material the attention it deserves!) (Shall try to find someone in the Sociology department I can complain to tomorrow.)
My Halloween costume. And, bonus, you get to see my cubicle at work! I asked and he said it's okay to share, so -- I guess it's okay to share. Enjoy. (Ignore my expression and huge chin. At least it looks like I *have* a chin, which it doesn't always.)
Dr. Horrible soundtrack (mp3) is only $5 on Amazon. THIS is how to combat piracy: cheap, easy, fast, and DRM-free. I approve.
Oh, so much to do, so much to do. Guess it's better than being bored. |
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| Things. |
[Nov. 9th, 2008|07:13 pm] |
1. My water's back! Yay!
2. Buy all my Rainbow Brite crap!
3. Halloween pictures! Stay tuned. Cat pictures! ( cat pictures )
4. I can barely keep modern primates straight. I am supposed to know all the *extinct* ones, too? With names like Telihardina and Rooneyia and Catopithecus (meow) and Branisella and Homunculus (awesome) and Mahgarita (yum)? None of which I have ever heard of? By Wednesday? Riiiiiiiiiiggghhhht. Or not.
5. I'm making pie! Mmm, pie. I hope it is yummier than it is weird. (It called for two cans of apple pie filling & a cup of cranberries. I substituted one can of apple filling, a random number of cranberries, some fresh-but-old apple slices, and a can of strawberry filling. ... it smells yummy? We shall see.)
6. Why did you let me go to Petsmart? Cute kittens! Need homes! Waahhh!
7. Speaking of adorable? Joe Biden is that. ♥ my new VP.
8. Would it be lame if I didn't send Christmas cards this year? What if I just sent post cards like Mom does? Would that be extra-lame? I'm talking about in general, not just to internet peeps. Hmm.
.. off to clean the kitchen, now that there's water! |
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| Now for something completely different |
[Nov. 8th, 2008|02:02 am] |
My anthropology teacher is OUT OF HIS MIND.
Last week, he had to cancel class.
This week, he showed up twenty minutes late, after half the class had walked out. He had been sitting downstairs the entire time. He forgot what time the class started.
He started discussing our paper topics, and couldn't remember what he'd told us to do: couldn't remember how many pages it's supposed to be, couldn't remember that he'd told us it could be anything anthropology-related.
Then, he almost started to lecture, but was shocked - SHOCKED!! - to discover that we were only up to Chapter 6 (Chapter 6 being what we should have discussed last week, during the canceled class). But the midterm is next week, he wails! We should be finishing Chapter 10 by now!
So he decides that next week's midterm will be on chapters 7 through 10. Chapters that we have not yet read or discussed. Oh, you will be fine, he says. He will email us all a study guide, and these are easy chapters, and he will lecture for the first half of class next week, before the test!
Then he said, no lecture tonight, if you have a paper outline to turn in, show me it, then you can go home!
The study guide that he emailed around is seventy-four pages long.
Keep in mind the following things:
- half the class was not there when he made this decision;
- a quarter of the class failed to get his email cancelling last week, and so also probably failed to get his "study guide";
- there is bound to be considerable overlap between the previous two points;
- I say it again: we have not studied, discussed, read, or seen this material up to A WEEK BEFORE THE EXAM;
- THIS IS A COMMUNITY COLLEGE COURSE. (I could almost excuse this behavior from a grad school prof. almost.)
He has to be insane, right? Whatever emergency made him cancel class last week is stressing him out and driving him crazy? Surely that's the explanation?
.. anyway that's why I spent tonight writing a massive political post, instead of reading the APPROXIMATELY TWO HUNDRED PAGES THAT I HAVE TO UNDERSTAND BEFORE NEXT WEDNESDAY.
*headdesk*
These chapters are about primate behavior, fossil primates, and early human ancestors - topics that I haven't studied or haven't studied much. (1) Why couldn't this have been stuff that I *know*, like the basic genetics and evolutionary theory from chapters 1-5; (2) I was looking forward to the lecture and discussion! So that I could learn! Things!
SO MUCH FAIL. |
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| My very long post all about why I'm happy. |
[Nov. 7th, 2008|11:36 pm] |
Download mp3: Frank Sinatra - The House I Live In
Let me tell you about the America I grew up in.
( Let's talk ancient history. )
And THAT, America, THAT is why I rejoice.
click for a free sticker
(I intended to write a blow-by-blow account of my Election Day, for posterity. It, um, kinda got away from me. Maybe later?) |
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| YES |
[Nov. 4th, 2008|11:32 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | politics | ] |
| [ | Mood |
| |  giddy | ] |
| [ | Music |
| | 'sit just me, or does McCain sound a bit happy to lose? | ] |
AMERICA, I AM SO PROUD OF YOU RIGHT NOW!
Especially Ohio. And Loudoun County. I'm sure my neighbors heard me squee!
(I am less pleased with the haters at McCain's speech, and the probable outcome of WAY too many ballot issues across the board - banning gay adoption, Arkansas? Really? How is that even - but - anyway.)
And Indecision2008: America's Choice was awesome. Oh, boys (and Sam). ♥.
Oh, look at all those happy faces on MSNBC! |
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| *needs a Yuletide icon* |
[Nov. 3rd, 2008|08:43 pm] |
Actually, what I want is an icon of Mulder's IWTB poster with the Obama logo 'shopped in in place of the UFO. Because "I Want To Believe" sort of sums up my feelings about Obama.
.. but DAMN IT, why did I not think of this until THE NIGHT BEFORE THE ELECTION??? Fail.
Speaking of wtf-election-tomorrow, I JUST GOT the Obama/Biden car magnet that I ordered like a month ago. Lot of good that'll do! ('course, I do have two O/B bumper stickers already, but it's the principle of the thing.)
I plan to set my alarm for 5 and get to the poll early. We shall see.
In failputer news:
Today it is showing me a DIFFERENT partition than last night, but still not the C: partition with the boot stuff on it. I'm hoping this means I haven't lost *everything*? (also, see comment.)
I found the DVD with my GIS data on it! Sadly, however, it only has data, not the paper or the presentation. Luckily the paper's in my google docs (also my LJ), the images are on my webspace, and the presentation shouldn't be too hard to recreate, hopefully.
According to McAffie, The Sarah Jane Adventures S02E06 Secrets of the Stars Part 2 [MM].avi is clear of viruses. I'm afraid to watch it, though. And it looks like my 80G external is okay - whew - I'd be frantically burning Old Who and LoM to DVD right now, IF ONLY MY LAPTOP REMEMBERED IT HAS A DVD BURNER IN IT. *headdesk* (I think it needs a reboot? I'll try that in a sec, and hopefully everything will work.)
My laptop is also low on hard drive space again! Oh yay! I should organize my mp3s - that would probably at least a little space - but I'm afraid of breaking my iTunes playlists.
eBay update:
1. My RB puzzles sold over a week ago, but the buyer hasn't paid or talked to me yet, and I got no response yet to my message. UGH.
2. eBay keeps telling me "feature unavailable" when I try to relist the Murky doll that didn't sell.
3. I wonder if both these problems have something to do with eBay discontinuing money order/check payments DURING MY AUCTIONS.
All three of those things are pissing me off. .. but the person who bought Starlite left me awesome feedback, so there's that.
YULETIDE! How did I possibly offer 32 fandoms. D: Actually, I think I need to go back and trim a few, add a few others, and switch some to character-specific offers. Also, need to write my Santa letter.
... not to mention, my soundtrack re-inspired me on my languishing DW fic this afternoon, and I really should get going on the LoM fic that I'm NOT WRITING before ABC josses it. (Maybe I'll get lucky and someone will request a LoM-US/UK crossover from me for Yuletide!)
Also, by Wednesday I need to write an outline for my anthropology paper. I think I'm doing it on pre-Clovis. (Yes, by the way, this IS me keeping in mind that community college paper << grad school paper. *headdesk*)
Off to get dinner and restart the laptop. sigh. |
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| Sarah Jane Smith destroyed my computer |
[Nov. 2nd, 2008|01:43 pm] |
It failed at playing the second half of the latest SJA story, and now it's dead.
It restarted a couple of times. Got as far as Windows proper a few times, very very slowly, before crashing. Now it just reboots .. and reboots .. and reboots ... won't even start in safe mode. I stuck in a Windows boot CD-ROM and meandered my way to a DOS prompt; the disk it's calling C: is NOT C:, but the one that I think was called E: before today. "Access denied" on attempts to cd anywhere other than the root of that drive.
So anyway, all I can think is that the episode must've been a deadly virus. IF ANY OF YOU HAVE DOWNLOADED SECRETS OF THE STARS PART II BUT NOT WATCHED IT YET, SCAN IT VERY CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU DO! It's on my last remaining functioning external hard drive, a tiny 80-gig one Ellen gave me when she didn't need it any more. Perhaps later I'll plug it into my laptop and run a virus scan on the file and see if everything else on that drive is okay.
If I've lost that C: drive, I'm not *too* upset - I just reformatted it at the beginning of the summer. However, C: was a 10 G partition of a 40 G drive, and I *think* I may have also lost the remaining 30 G, since the utilities on the CD couldn't see it. This sucks, because all the data from my GIS project was on there, and I'm supposed to give a talk about it in just a couple of weeks. I think most of it should be on CDs somewhere - if nothing else, I gave one to Dr. Clark, and hopefully he could find it quickly and loan it back to me. (Also, of course, ArcGIS student edition was on C:, and I don't know if I'll have the permissions to reinstall it.)
The stuff on the other physical drive - the one that's now being called C: by the computer - is mostly Old Who episodes I hadn't got round to watching yet. It may be recoverable, but if not .. no great loss.
At least my laptop still works. It's still becoming progressively more and more of a piece of shit, though. I think it may FINALLY be time to suck it up and order a new laptop. Probably not a new desktop? I can set my old laptop up on the desk and treat it as a desktop? Hrm.
*SIGH*
Anyway. Sales at my nearest California Tortilla benefit the local animal shelter until 5 this afternoon. Time for some burrito therapy and reading Bones, which I've had on my to-read pile for years. (It's fascinating, but it's written by a journalist, not an anthropologist, and she often takes up a condescending attitude towards archaeologists that seriously grates, and makes me wonder if some people she called and interviewed might have failed to give her the whole story - not because the information has been lost, as she assumes, but because she acted all holier-than-thou when she talked to them. ARGH.)
Speaking of Cal Tort, this'll be about the 4th time I've been there since they started their McCain and Obama burrito promotion. The McCain burrito looks delicious, but I cannot bring myself to order one. *headdesk* |
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| Woez. |
[Oct. 29th, 2008|08:44 pm] |
1. David Tennant to leave Doctor Who
D: D: D: D: WOE, LAMENTATION, AND GNASHING OF TEETH.
(Andy Zaltzman for Eleven!)
2. My stomach hurts. Can I curl up in bed until after next Tuesday?
3. Co-worker had her baby early this morning! Seems there will not be a baby shower tomorrow. :D Here's the stuff I cross-stitched for her (yes, from a pattern this time):
( om nom nom )
4. Here is a picture of my cat:
( mew )
5. My halloween costume:
( X never, ever marks the spot. )
(COME TO MAH PARTAY.) I hope enough people come, and everyone has fun, and no one goes home wishing they'd just held their own party. *wibbles*
6. MORE FREE BOOKS. Tell her I sent you. (Note the ETA:.)
7. I have freshly sandblasted teeth, and the beginnings of a cavity.
8. Class got cancelled tonight.
Lots to do! |
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| I just tried to start laundry. |
[Oct. 26th, 2008|01:18 pm] |
The washer, it does nothing.
Well, it spins when I tell it to spin, but there is no water.
I think they hooked it up wrong (or not at all) when they replaced my water heater last week.
DAMMIT.
*goes to put in yet another maintenance request*
I do NOT have time to find a laundromat this week. |
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weird
tired
amused
hopeful
appreciated! :D
crazy
annoyed
optimistic
cranky
discontent