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Tuesday, January 5th, 2010
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12:01 am - Shiny has arrived!
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So, today I unwrapped Shiny, my lovely new baby laptop. This is glorious, as my desktop is (a) over 7.5 years old and (b) rather difficult to move around.
Naturally, the first thing I did was download Firefox and set it as my default browser (Emma laughed, but I'll not suffer the taint of IE longer than necessary).
My second action was to set this as my wallpaper, because Shiny is black and glossy and it just seemed so very fitting.
But now I require a chat client. I'd much rather have an all-in-one client than load each individual program (because let's face it, if I do that I'll be on AIM and AIM only from now until forever). I require whatever program to have the option of automatically logging all my conversations-- my friends are some funny sumbitches and I can't always remember the many ways they make me giggle without some help. I've been using Trillian for the last six or seven years, and it's been okay. But I am told there is more out there. So, suggestions?
Poll #1507424 Help me annoy everyone with my incessant chatter.
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 20I gotta download a new chat client to Shiny, the new laptop. What should I go with? Tickyboxes are mandatory.
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(11 Bite Marks | Bite Me)
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| Friday, December 25th, 2009
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10:16 am
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I hope you all have a pleasant Friday. :D
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(Bite Me)
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| Thursday, December 24th, 2009
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3:39 am - End-of-Year Meme, v. 2009
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| Sunday, December 13th, 2009
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3:39 am - "... No one's going to actually die, right?" "Well, Travis is involved. Accidents happen."
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So, we are starting a Laurels Christmas Party tradition (it may well only last one year, but eh).
Travis asked for games we could play. My first thought was "What are we, six?" and my second was a list of terrible game ideas, including "Pin-the-tail-on-David", "Find the Poisoned Sandwich", and "Duck, Duck, Velociraptor*".
But then I remembered-- murder mystery games. They're awesome! We get to wear costumes if we want, we get to pretend to kill each other, and there's a lot of general ridiculousness.
But the kits available online are kind of... terrible. The characters are boring (with awful pun-names that even I couldn't stomach), the plots contrived, and the settings kind of ridiculous. This is a group of writers. They expect better.
So I decided to write my own. :D
The Setting: A new nightclub in L.A., the latest trendy hotspot for the young Hollywood elite.
The Characters: I am using everyone's real names, as trying to remember people's fake names is always the most annoying part of this for me.
David M - Lead singer/guitar player for the slowly up-and-coming band, The Itsy-Bitsy Fascists. Has had a very public feud with Jenni for years; considers her a 'hack' and a 'sellout'.
Jennifer - Bass player for The Itsy-Bitsy Fascists, fresh out of rehab but appears to be leaning towards relapse (which may be why she's at the club to start with). Former bass player for Trivial Robots, left them shortly before their major record deal due to 'creative differences', reportedly mostly with Jenni.
Travis - Manager for The Itsy-Bitsy Fascists, who sees Trivial Robots as a threat to his income.
Nicole - Socialite, David M's on-again, off-again ex. Currently hoping to get back together with him, though he is not interested.
Phillip - Roadie-turned friend of Jennifer, #1 fan of The Itsy-Bitsy Fascists, possibly slightly unstable.
Jenni - Lead singer of Trivial Robots, a popular new group, found murdered.
Matthew - Guitarist for Trivial Robots, wants to be the lead singer but was told to shut up and play so Jenni could sing.
Jasia - Actress and newest Hollywood "it" girl, hoping to break into the music industry. Supposedly has a deal in the works to sing on a new Trivial Robots track, but there have been issues resulting in the recording session getting pushed back for months.
Alexx - Celebutante, famous for being famous. Dating someone in Trivial Robots, though no one is entirely sure who.
David R - Club owner, who has a lot to gain from the notoriety of a celebrity death.
Mary - Straightlaced reporter stuck working for a tabloid, hoping for her big break in the news world to help her escape paparazzi hell.
This is fun. I will be making up a bit more details about the characters, but those will have to remain private. If we decide to use this game, I'll post the details after it's over. If not, I'll put them up in a day or two.
*I don't know how this game is played, but I am pretty sure it involves Travis eating people's faces.
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(3 Bite Marks | Bite Me)
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| Friday, December 11th, 2009
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4:39 pm - This Semester... Oops.
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Oh, right, hey. Realized I forgot to do my usual descriptions of my classes. Seeing as how all that's left of the semester is one take-home final, I guess it's a little late, now. Oh, well.
Economics for Management: I wish I'd known that the econ class offered over the summer with a professor I love would have counted as my basic economics credit, but I didn't. So I wound up taking this class, with a professor I'd had for an undergrad econ course, whose teaching methods just do not mesh too well with how I learn. I managed to squeak by, I think. I hope.
Strategic Management: For the first class, our professor had us read the Hamlet chapter from a book he wrote which uses Shakespeare to analyze management styles. He then had us watch part of Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet. This prof is a kindly, grandfatherly old man who can think circles around just about anyone and can smell bullshit a mile away. I wuv him*. This class was tricky; but if the grades recently sent out are any indication, I appear to have made it out with a high B. I'll take that.
Entrepreneurship: This was a class I actually wanted to take (which is a rarity), taught by my previous Marketing Management Theory professor, who is adorable and awesome. The class itself was pretty interesting, though deciding to take a course scheduled from 8 AM to 11:45 AM on random Saturdays was possibly the stupidest thing I have done in a long while. To my credit, I only skipped one class, and that was because it was the morning after the Shadwell Wake, and I'd not gone to bed until 4. The biggest frustration in this class was my group, with whom I had to do two projects. They all did their research and their writing parts... but their writing was bad enough that sometimes I couldn't figure out what they were saying. So I had to rewrite both papers almost entirely, and in some cases re-research to back up the claims they made without support. This is part of the reason why I wound up spending the night in the Laurels office at one point.
Laurels: Oh, Laurels. As always, my source of fun and (in)sanity. We had a good group this semester, but I just don't feel like the magazine was as good as last semester. I dunno. I miscalculated the amount of time we'd have to put it together (forgot to account for the Thanksgiving break and we'd originally scheduled the reading a week earlier than usual), so there was a huge rush to get it done. I felt like I was cheating the staff members out of their opportunity to really work with InDesign and Photoshop, but it had to be in by a certain time and there was nothing to be done about it. The title was Moments Between Masks, taken from a Rilke poem, and the front and back covers were masks I made:( They are pretty creepy, and have delightfully pretentious titles. )
The reading, then, was a masquerade. All the readers (and some guests) wore masks, everyone was dressy (Travis wore a tux! He looked like a secret agent), it was cool. It was originally supposed to be in the same venue as last semester, but there were concerns about whether the printer could get the magazine out in time, so we wound up pushing it back a week at very nearly the last minute. I still wish I'd had more time to sort things out and decorate and whatnot, but everyone seemed to have a pretty good time anyway. We had balloons and lights (Tish and Travis both possess mad decorating skillz, apparently), plenty of food, and even music after the presentation of work was finished.
So, once I finish this final take-home exam, barring sudden and horrific failure in ways I completely failed to anticipate, I will have an MBA, with a concentration in Marketing.
This is normally the point where one could expect me to get all weepy about how much I'll miss Laurels, and start panicking because no one has hired me and oh god the real world is scary.
But, um.
I'm going to be returning to the University of St. Thomas in the spring to get my MLA, with a concentration in English (specifically, editing and creative writing). You know. The degree I should have gotten in the first place, if I'd had any sense at all. Which means I'll still be lurking on the Laurels staff** (Editorship has been handed off to Travis and David-- that's right, it takes TWO people to replace me***), while simultaneously immersing myself in all manner of other creative outlets. If I explode from joy, that will be why.
Dr. Lowery has also been talking about me possibly being hired as an adjunct once I have my MLA, and teaching the Laurels class.
Yeah. I AM CLEARLY NEVER LEAVING LAURELS, EVER.
PROFESSIONAL STUDENT FTW!
* Sir, you had me at "Hamlet"
**The actual quote from Dr. Lowery: "Would you be willing to let others work as head editor while you still work on staff with a different title, such as 'Empress'?"
***Actually, they are just both really busy.
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(1 Bite Mark | Bite Me)
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| Friday, November 20th, 2009
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6:28 pm - Today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance
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| Friday, October 16th, 2009
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3:04 am - Call for submissions for the Transgender Day of Remembrance Webcomics Project 2009
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This is copied directly from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) jenndolari, who is in charge of the project. She is the person you need to contact with submissions!
"Howdy, everyone.
I'm gearing up to do this year's Transgender Day of Remembrance Webcomics Project and am looking for transgendered artists and writers who'd like to participate.
For those of you who don't know about the project, in a nutshell, we're a group of webcomic artists and authors who put together a remembrance strip for late November. There is always a running theme, but the themes are voluntary (especially if your comic has no TG characters). If you'd like some examples of the earlier entries, you can see previous projects for yourself at the Webcomics DOR site at http://www.dolari.net/dor.
All we ask is that you link to the other comics running images as well, and keep the images up for your normal comic-length. We're aiming at having these displayed on the week of the 20th. After the comics are done, I'd love your permission to keep them on my Day of Remembrance site, at http://www.dolari.net/dor
This year's theme is "[Something Mundne] shouldn't end in a death." Such as "Falling in Love shouldn't end in death" or "Taking out the trash shouldn't end in death" (which actually happened). The one I'll be doing is "Going to the Store Shouldn't End in Death." This theme will prolly be more narrative than before, and multipage entries will be accepted.
Again, the themes are voluntary, and if you have an idea you'd like to pursue, or a better idea for a theme that you'd like to present, please do.
Please let me know if you'd like to participate this year by letting me know via Email ( jenn@dolari.net ). IF you know someone who may be interested, but isn't on this list, by all means, forward it along (especially as real life has kept me from researching the newer comics out there)."
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(Bite Me)
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| Thursday, October 15th, 2009
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12:14 am - I should be studying for my Managerial Economics midterm. But I'm not. Eh.
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I love Halloween, but probably should not be allowed to celebrate it.
It occurs to me that Emma is young enough that she doesn't really 'get' any of these references. Goddamn, I'm old.
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(12 Bite Marks | Bite Me)
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| Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
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10:09 pm - I made SUCH a Sadface, you cannot even imagine.
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| Thursday, October 8th, 2009
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12:31 am - Our new way of calling someone pathetic: "... They are totally gonna get a monkey."
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Seriously, did y'all see this show? What, exactly, were we learning, TLC? YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE THE LEARNING CHANNEL. GO TO YOUR ROOM.
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(7 Bite Marks | Bite Me)
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| Tuesday, October 6th, 2009
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11:18 pm - DON'T STOP BELIEVIN~
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This is comic #69. HURR HURR 69
I did not think I was going to like Glee at first. But I wuvs it. I wuvs it so. One of the cast members described it as "if High School Musical was punched in the stomach and had its lunch money stolen" and YES.
current mood:  geeky
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(6 Bite Marks | Bite Me)
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12:37 am - It is crucial to avoid the Sass Radius.
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| Sunday, October 4th, 2009
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10:31 pm - Oh, Emma.
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| Friday, October 2nd, 2009
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3:32 am - 42 hours and counting!
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| Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
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10:16 pm - Those marvelous computation machines...
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So, it's looking like I might want to invest in a new computer.
I mean, my desktop is fairly well-behaved, it's just getting up there -- over seven years old, now -- and it simply can't keep up as well as it used to.
I am not really that hard on computers, all things told. The only game I play is the Sims (1, and my computer moves slowly enough with that. There's no telling how bad it would lag with the Sims 3), and my biggest memory-chewers are Firefox and Photoshop 6.0. I do tend to open a zillion Firefox tabs, though. Sometimes all at once. This makes my computer very sad. I don't try to draw much in Photoshop. I use the tablet to color, but there's enough of a lag that attempting to draw directly onto the computer results in jagged, awkward lines and it looks terrible. Now that I think about it, I haven't used Photoshop very much at all in the past year or so. I don't draw much anymore, so its main uses have become cropping and resizing photos. I don't take many photos, either.
I have thus far resisted, but my next machine will most likely be a laptop. Nicole and Gabe have sung the praises of Macs, but I am not entirely convinced. I am also not sure how much of this lack of conviction is a result of real questions, and how much is my utter loathing of change. Change is scary and annoying.
Any warnings or recommendations for brands, upgrades, stores, etc.? Halp, Internet. I am not good with computers.
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(9 Bite Marks | Bite Me)
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| Sunday, June 28th, 2009
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4:41 pm
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Watching the footage of Michael Jackson in his early 20s, I was struck by how vibrant, happy, and just flat-out attractive he looked. To those who followed his career from the start, this was no surprise, but I was born a year and a half after Thriller was released. The Michael Jackson of my conscious memory was more punchline than performer, an unhappy-looking man with at least one foot firmly planted in the Uncanny Valley, whose eyes seemed larger, his skin more pale, and his features whittled away with each media appearance.
Thriller is the first music video I can remember seeing. I'm sure I saw glimpses of others before then, but Thriller was different. It was a neighborhood party, and the kids had been banished to the upstairs of a neighbor's house. Their son, bless him, was a teenager at least four or five years older than any of the other kids and to his credit did not immediately bar himself in his room to avoid us. Instead, he instructed us to watch the video MTV was playing. This is probably responsible both for my love of Michael Jackson's music, and my ongoing interest in the undead.
Jackson was-- is-- the King of Pop, and there will never be another. There can't be. Not because it would insult his music and video legacy, but because the cultural landscape has undergone such a massive shift that no one can ever again be that iconic, that well-known, and that well-loved. Not for long, anyway. We value marketability over talent and our attention spans are short.
I am sad that he is gone, in a detached sort of way-- as I said, I was very young when the bulk of his hits filled the airwaves, and was primarily aware of him as this strange man with a unique voice who danced like nothing I'd ever seen, and seemed to be in the tabloids an awful lot. I had no time to build a love for him to buffer the shock of the allegations against him, and the struggle to reconcile in my mind music that I loved with the possibility of truly monstrous behavior on the part of the artist was awkward, at best. There may never be a clear answer regarding those allegations. If they were true, I hope his victims can find peace. And if they were not, then lies can no longer trouble him.
current mood:  contemplative
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(3 Bite Marks | Bite Me)
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| Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009
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11:07 pm - Want an iPhone 3G?
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| Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009
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2:32 pm
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| Monday, June 1st, 2009
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11:04 am - Damn you, Milholland.
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| Sunday, May 31st, 2009
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8:50 pm
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Many of you are probably aware of the murder of Dr. George Tiller this morning.
I am only going to say this once.
If you believe that Dr. Tiller's murder was a good thing, that he deserved it, that it is justified, or if your reaction to the news that an abortion provider had been murdered was joy, please kill yourself.
The world will be much better off without you.
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5 (27.8%)
awake