what may or may not be hard reality

New layout is... new. I've needed a new one for a while now, but I'm not sure I like it yet... we'll see if it grows on me (the color is a little cold), or if it will change again in the immediate future... fallon_ash

I need to finish my write-up on the season premiere Warehouse 13, but dang, every time I go back to re-watch the episode (for scientific research purposes, mm-hmm) I get lost in *SQUEE*!!! My show! My show is so awesome!!!!

So I know all the things that make fireworks evil and I firmly support banning them. They're terribly expensive and wasteful, they're bad for the environment, they traumatize the dogs not to mention the wild animals, and I can't even imagine what it's like for people who've lived in war zones... but they sure are beautiful. *sigh* Few things make me stand in childish awe with my mouth agape the way a gorgeous display of fireworks does. My favourites are the dark blue ones that just look amazing against the black night sky. Happy New Year, people!

(End of year meme tomorrow. I'm sleepy.)

So I got the last super-mega-huge update set for my computer yesterday. I really dislike that I can't set the color scheme for Windows Live Mail 2011 like I could for the old version though the new send/receive feature is miles better than the last, but the best thing is by far the Synaptics TouchPad update.

OMG!!! The 'palm check' thing is actually working, for the first time ever (I've been a Synaptics TouchPad user since my first laptop 10 years ago and never looked back)! And not only does it work brilliant for accidental palm movements, it works just as well if I happen to drop an extra finger onto the pad (even if that's not the palm check thing, that's the two-finger scrolling feature), instead of jumping all over the screen it stops in its tracks - far better. I don't know how I feel about the, uhm, the continuous cursor movement thing, that lets you toss the cursor to the other end of the screen in one flick of a finger. Theoretically it's awesome (!!), but since it used to take three strokes for me to get from one end of the screen to the other I've developed a style that involves a lot of flicking, which means I accidentally lose the cursor frequently. I'm gonna give it some time, though, see if I can get used to it. If my precision gets a little better it could be the best thing ever. I am pleased. :)

Really. I knew how much I *hated* shopping for clothes, yet somehow it seems like since the last time I'd forgotten, because I was all 'oh, I'll manage 30 minutes to find a couple solid-color shirts'. Yeah, right. I found no shirts, everything is just crappy layered stuff with stupid designs and glitter, and I was pissed off for a couple hours afterwards. Bah. I should just do all of my clothes shopping online (and not just the part where the shirts come with awesome writing on them - that kind of clothes shopping I enjoy). I also failed to find hiking sandals. But I did get my train tickets from the station, and I got a postcard for Amanda Tapping's Birthday Project (my pet charity is rain forest stuff, but every year I try to give to someplace else as well, and I reckon whatever my crush du jour is supporting gets me some variety).

But back to town.

Weirdest thing overheard:
Ho-girl to thug boy (both about 10 years old, but selling their attitudes with great conviction):
"Bye bye! Don't get raped from behind while you're walking home!"
"I'll try not to. Bye!"

Best store-window slogan:
"Not for girls. Not for boys. We make clothes for kids."

Also, Yay California!!! @ the Prop 8 ruling!!! (I wore my NOH8 shirt today in support!)

Dear ETonline,

a "sexual origin", as far as I understand it, is, you know, the origin of something. Google tells me about the possibility of male guppies mimicking fruit to lure females to mate, which would be a non-sexual origin of mate preference. And it tells me about coral colonies that can be sexual or asexual in origin, meaning they either clone themselves (asexual), or they mate and reproduce (sexual).

A human being's sexual origin would then be the sexual act of reproduction that brought them here, which is how all humans are created (IVF is still sexual reproduction in the scientific sense, because it involves combination of DNA from two different individuals. When they start cloning humans, then they'll have a non-sexual origin).

I'm pretty sure Chely Wright never kept her sexual origin a secret. Perhaps you mean sexual orientation?

"Until recently she kept her sexual origin a secret before bravely coming  out on "The Today Show." "
http://www.etonline.com/news/2010/07/89649/index.html

Sincerely,
/fa

Royal Wedding FTW!!!!! (And I don't even consider myself all that much of a royalist... but Victoria is so pretty! I was just gonna sneak at peak at them, and that was almost 3 hours ago...)

(Haven't found any better pics yet... guess everyone is busy watching the festivities...)

I have the prettiest screen saver in all the world! Bubbles! Shiny bubbles that change color!


[click to enlarge]

Introducing Helen Precious IV, for Helen Magnus, naturally. My last one was Haydon Precious III, after Haydon Palmer in Love's Masquerade, by Radclyffe (and Precious after my first computer, a Compaq Presario - Precious Princess), and Haydon wasn't quite falling apart yet, but I've been having trouble with the power cord for some time now, in that power hasn't always made it all the way from the wall to the battery, which is something of a problem. So it came down to either track down a new cord online, or buy a new computer. And buying a new computer may or may not seem like the reasonable thing to do, but Precious was getting on, almost 4 years old, and a laptop of that age tends to start showing its age, which means there will probably be further problems down the line, in a not so distant future. And then I would have been all 'but... I better fix this, now that I went to all the trouble of getting a new cord'.

Helen Precious IV is new and shiny with a 15-inch screen, which is larger than Haydon, an HP Notebook something-or-other. I'm not over the moon over Windows 7, though, but some stuff I really like about it (like the see-through edges of the windows), and other stuff is annoying me already (Outlook Express!! Gah!) (but I remember feeling exactly the same way back when I brought home Haydon the first time). The one thing that bothers me is the constant hum. I was well and truly blessed with Haydon in that she was almost completely silent. It was bliss. I was talking to the guy in the store about the noise, and he told me that was something that couldn't really be changed, and most HPs these days have the constant hum in the background, as opposed to the older ones which were silent and let the heat build up, and then blew it all out in a short period of time... I guess it's better for the computer this way, but it's bugging me a little - I never play music or anything like that in the background, which means I'm actively hearing it most of the time.

Anyway. It's bedtime. I have the most important programs installed, and shall take my leave of my new darling until tomorrow.

Yay Home! I've actually been home since yesterday, but I've been busy watching Stargate unpacking and stuff.

Christmas was lovely. I received several gifts that I had no idea I wanted, which is rare. (I truthfully prefer to buy my own gifts and then sell them to select family members. Leaving a list of article numbers might work, but it would be a bit impractical since I'm the one who does all the online shopping in this household.) A lovely music book, and one of those mobile internet USB sticks thingies, and that 'Lord of the Rings in photographs' book... all things I had no idea I wanted as much as I love them now that I have them. The questionable sci-fi movie from '02 called The Void starring Amanda Tapping I had to buy for myself, but my mother gladly bought it off me and wrapped it. Yay! And seeing family and friends was very nice as well.

But home is also nice. I have a new electric blanket for my bed, which is incredibly awesome, and I've been missing it while we were away.

And going home was gorgeous. It was insanely cold and everything was covered in a thin layer of snow, the individual branches of the trees covered in thin layers of frost, the sun was shining, and occasionally there was this amazing snow mist (is there a word for it?) floating just above the ground. It's hard to take pictures from a moving car, but I tried...

( A few snapshots from the road under here! )

Thanks so much to sakuracorr for the Christmas card, and fyca for the present! They arrived this week, and YAY!!! Thanks!! (To everyone expecting a card from me this season, rest assured that you will receive it at some point during the winter season. Ahem.)

LJ has been annoying me lately by logging me off pretty much every time I leave my computer. The only time I notice is when I suddenly get one of those 'this entry is not appropriate for minors' cut on my f-lish, which I'm not supposed to get, and I realize I've been logged out again. I have no idea how many private entries I've missed since whenever this started. Is anyone else having the same problem or is it a cookie problem that's between me and my browser? (Other sites requiring login haven't been behaving this way.) I've poked around lj_maintenance but it doesn't seem wide-spread enough to have reached them.

Randomly, I love how much LJ is about fandom, going by the number of fannish icons used by people in the comments over at lj_maintenance. One count Vala, one count Helen Magnus on the first page alone!

Anyone have any good tips for curing hypochondria?

Taking a break from my essay on Mycobacterium leprae (bacteria that causes leprosy), to post one of those end-of-year memes:

( Under here the first sentence from the first post of each month of 2009 - excluding the occasional meme post. )

Watched some Sister Act 2 over dinner earlier tonight. I have a bit of a thing for Whoopi Goldberg. I feel vaguely compelled to buy all her available movies.

OMG epiphany!! Heh. I start off by saying how much I prefer writing, and then I completely fail at writing a coherent post.

( which is why there's a cut, under here are ramblings about the directing-epiphany I had the other day... references Sanctuary 2x07, but no spoilers, I promise )

Also, Meredith Baxter came out yesterday! OMG! I had *such* a crush on her when I was little. For a good two months when I was around 10, Elyse Keaton was the prettiest woman in the whole wide world. I had friends who were like 'I wanna be cool like Mallory!', or 'Alex is so cute!', and I was all 'My favourite scene was that one with Elyse in the kitchen, because she's the prettiest woman alive!', only I didn't say that out loud. See, again, I had no idea I was gay, but I was vaguely aware of the fact that it was best to keep such opinions to myself. And she's gay. Which makes my inner child just die of *swoon*. And more grown-up me is pissed off that she was forced to come out but also in awe of the graceful way she handled it. Go Meredith!

Aahahaha!! Where more exactly is this place, and how do I get there??

Chinese media finger Swedish lesbian enclave - Mythical city of Sapphic luuuurv

Today I took candy from a stranger.

And this morning I finished Secrets in the Stone by Radclyffe.
( a few thoughts on that under here - mild spoilers )

New LJ fall layout yay!!! (Still need a new default icon... last year's fall icon clashes just a tad...)

fallon_ash

Today I was so bored I sorted all my sheet music alphabetically and put it into binders... urk.

Spent the morning watching season 2 of The Guild, and drinking out of the cup on the left. It felt apt, and it's one of my favourites. Then I saw the rose on the right, and took a picture of that too, because it was pretty. [click either to enlarge]



I gotta say, though, that for all that I like The Guild, I have to wonder when it became ok to portray child neglect bordering on abuse as something comedic? If spousal abuse was portrayed similarly that would never be acceptable.

Spent the morning listening to the piano tuner working his magic. He wasn't using any kinds of devices other than a single tuning fork for a starting point, and after that he just listened to the chords, and it was amazing. (Like, maybe that's how they usually do it, but I remember it being more atonal and annoying...) Also amazing, my newly tuned and tweaked piano... the sustain pedal started to come loose a few weeks ago, which was absolutely horrible, so he reattached that and OMG I can sustain notes again, and the sound is beautiful.

Also, I've spent the afternoon watching season 1 of The Guild. HOW DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS??? Why hasn't anyone told me?? That Avatar Video is all over everywhere, but it was the first I've heard of The Guild. It's adorkable and awesome!!!

And now, herbs to harvest. Real kind, not FarmVille kind, for once...

Hero of the Day:

TeraCopy

And it doesn't look much for the world. A simple little copying program. And I'm not much for having added program for every single function just to spite Windows. There are a lot of things Windows performs perfectly adequately for my needs. However, copying is NOT one of them. And I've made the mistake of searching for backup programs, which keep offering me online backup, and automatic crap whatever that I don't need. What I need is a simple "no to all" button, that is mysteriously omitted from the replace? box.

Just a few months ago I finally went and bought myself one of those extra harddrives, where I keep all my large files. But I still have some 25 GB of My Documents that I use frequently and that interact with the Internet, meaning that a lot of files there are constantly added into the 350+ different folders. And then when I wanna back this up, I either have to "replace all" on the little USB drive, which takes a loooooooong time, and is annoying just on principle, or I have to say 'no' for every single file that already exists. And that's some 40 000 files. However, today, instead of ripping my hair out, I just for the heck of it ran a google search for "no to all", and up popped this little program. And it WORKS (so far. I've had it for the last 45 minutes). It has a "no to all" button. So while it still takes a good 20 minutes or so, it's nowhere NEAR the head-meet-wall pain of Window's way.

Thank you, TeraCopy!

Mariska Hargitay has hi-jacked my brain. And I've been meaning to blog about that (and many many other things) for the past week or so, but I seem to be spending every free moment (not that there have been that many of those) watching SVU or reading Olivia fanfic (or talking at people on IM about Mariska). I don't think she'll become a full-blown obsession (I swear I don't, but I've been wrong before), but I'm very fond of the crushing process, and I need something to occupy my mind with while I wait for Defying Gravity and the 3Way DVDs... erg.

Things that have pleased me:
Mariska Hargitay and Kim Delaney having scenes together. Darn their characters for being so damn unshipable, because they totally have chemistry.
Emo fanfic.

Things that have not pleased me:
I'd forgotten how pleasant it really is to have an obsession where I'm not tense and wincing all the time from awkwardness. Not that that has ever stopped me before, but Christina has spoiled me this last year. Come back, Christina!
Emo fanfic.

I'm going out of town for the weekend. Seeing My Fair Lady with HELEN SJÖHOLM. OMG!! (She'd better not be out with the flu...)