Posting from the front steps of the local public library, where the fringes of their wireless network extend even when they're closed on weekends in the summer. My router at home has gone to join such luminaries as Violet, the previous computer that my father and I killed when attempting to upgrade its graphics capacity. It will not be replaced until Tuesday at the earliest.

My life is awesome. Edits with further information forthcoming.

Edit #1: I will not be able to make it to the scene on Brave and the Bold on Monday night. Since I never mastered evilbeej and infinitepryde's trick of phone-MU*ing, that means you either have to find a way to do the scene without me (which sucks because I had some stuff planned for it too) or delay it yet again.

Edit #2: Going to go post hiatuses on polychromatic and campfuckudie. This is actually pretty good timing for the former, terrible timing for...well, everything else, really.

Edit #3: Hiatus posted to campersfuckoff. The one for polychromatic will be a little more difficult since I never got around to joining poly_tldr with this journal, but I'll go do that now.

Edit #4: Hiatus posted to poly_tldr. More important: if you have me friended you should be able to send text messages to my cellphone through Livejournal. If that doesn't work, my cellphone number can be found here. Text me. Or call me. I will also be attempting to get the AIM program on my cellphone working.

Edit #5 (final?): Over the weekend, I am going to work on my game of Persona 2: Innocent Sin (as at least I already have the walkthroughs of that up on my computer), write a lot of fanfic (I might even start on that AU Lyle/Anew idea, even if I never put it anywhere public because lol fandom "ewww they suck go back to writing t-chan!!!" vs. "if you're too stupid to appreciate them in canon, gtfo and go back to your stupid OOC yaoi!"), and possibly watch some of the anime I have piled up on DVD. For now, I am going to finish checking up on LJ, then head back home for dinner.

Okay, I can't do it. I can't go without iconfodder for my primary/most recent/shiniest fandoms anymore. But I am too lazy to comb through the main communities for every last image I lost.

Can anyone zip up and send me as many official artworks (of any kind, including stuff by guest artists and chibi comics) and screencaps as possible for Gundam 00, Gurren Lagann, and Macross Frontier? I still have all my Persona stuff, since that, at least, was stored on the C:\ drive.

I would offer to write you fic for the fandom in question, but right now I have so many G00 fic ideas backed up already...I want to get more done on my self-indulgent Lockon/Tieria thing and maybe write the Louise/Nena hatesex thing too. But maybe after that?

So it's been a bit of a mixed day so far. On the one hand, it's a nice day, I have my new Threadless shirts (of course, now that I've gotten those, there's another one that I totally want), and I scheduled a doctor's appointment for tomorrow to get more tests run on my thyroid and other potential metabolic issues. On the other hand, my computer crashed and I'm stuck on the laptop while I run virus scans on it and the doctor's appointment is at ten in the morning. Back on the original hand, though, a kitten just licked my toes.

Something else that's awesome: tomorrow at polychromatic is Fourth Wall Day. That means players can come pester the characters. You can also bring characters from other games, crack accounts, and whatever else you please.

I will be posting with Lockon (haroicsacrifice) and I invite everyone to come harass him. I am okay with duplicate characters; the one thing I ask is that nobody bring Ali, because that would be a huge moodkiller, to say the least. The point is, troll him. Twincest fanart, Feldt hentai, Innovator accounts who know a little too much about him, whatever would make him flail. At least some of the other Meisters (denyinurgod, worthier, holyinhell, irresoluteness) will be offering up their characters for trolling as well.

When will I learn to save my perennially-open text files more than once a month? You'd think I'd have clued in by now.

On the upside, you are now spared my (completely unsaved) essay on why the second season of Gundam 00 fails to live up to its promise. Man, I had footnotes on that thing.

So I was flailing over what to do about how often I need to check guides while playing Persona 3, when suddenly I realized: hey, there's a wireless-enabled laptop I can use around here! Hmmm.

( More P3 stuff. )

I got my NaNo up over the 2,500-word mark tonight. Not very impressive, I know. I'll finish and post the prologue tomorrow and get more done on the first chapter. Things are starting to flow a little more easily.

One last note: you know you're pwned by your pets when you find yourself glaring at a creature several times smaller and cuter than you and shouting, "This is my muffin! My muffin!"

Now back to level-grinding before bed.

Funny how I've actually been posting to LJ more since my eye problems started. It's probably because I can't do much else on the computer, and at least with LJ I can peek in for a few minutes at a time, then look away again. This is why watching TV or anime on the computer is right out at the moment: I tend to focus pretty hard on that. Well, maybe when I'm using a smaller-screened laptop down at the shore, I'll be able to watch some stuff.

Here is a cute quote from my cat calendar:

"French novelist Alexandre Dumas considered himself to be the defense lawyer for stray cats. Not only was his own home filled with them, but along with other writers such as Baudelaire and de Maupassant he founded a group in the 1800s called the Feline Defense League."

And here is a link to a cute article about the perception of gender in Wall-E. S-stop making me ship robots. They're just too cute.

But the main reason I am making this post: I finally got my files back! Yay. Now I can at least start gathering up my notes again, even if I'm not feeling well enough to do much in the way of writing.

And finally, here is that meme:

Comment with a fandom and I'll tell you my:
One True Pairing Ship:
Canon Ship:
"If this happens I'll stab my eyes out with a spork" Ship:
"You are one sick bastard" Ship:
"I dabble a little" Ship:
"It's like a car crash" Ship:
"Tickles my fancy but not sold just yet" Ship:
"Makes no canon sense but why the Hell not" Ship:
"Everyone else loves it but I just don't feel it" Ship:
"When all is said and done" Ship:

I'm feeling well enough that I should be able to answer it in the morning, after I've rested my eyes during the night. You guys know my fandoms, I think.

I. So apparently there are no 3.5" drive enclosures in all of New Jersey. My father has ordered one from TigerDirect instead, and it should get here in a week. Fingers crossed that it will worked. I have a lot of stuff on that hard drive that I want to get back to writing...

II. ...including some of my morphworld ideas. I keep hashing out the political system of the Peraneidos Empire and it's just. Such a ridiculously convoluted result of infecting a feudal people with magic and then setting them loose to figure out how this affects their leadership structure. But considering the morphworld story is pretty much me indulging my overly-elaborate setting and character and pairing ideas nonstop, I guess that's okay. I am so ashamed. I am a big proponent of the "do not treat romance as something special or different from any other story element" school of thought that I enjoy so much in Avatar. But...the gleeful fangirl part of me wants to spend big chunks of the story weaving over-the-top epic romances. SIGH.

III. My new monitor--my glorious new 22" flatscreen monitor--is too good. I've been getting eyestrain headaches. But considering that it's been years since I had my eyes checked, I think I'll go do that before trashing the monitor. Maybe if I just need new glasses for this situation. But until then, I'm trying to resist spending too much time focusing too much on the computer screen...and failing. Failing hard. Why am I failing so hard, other than the usual? Well...

IV. Knights of the Old Republic II. It is awesome, and when it totally fails to have a real ending (as I have been warned it will), I will be devastated. The characters are just so damned awesome. I love how they handle and explore the fact that they're all desperately in love with your PC. I also probably shouldn't, but as much as I love Kreia, there's this sulky-thwarted-evil-overlord vibe to her that I find hilarious. She gets so cranky at the other party members.

I'm quite fond of the way "Influence gained: Kreia" serves to confirm that you just did something really manipulative. Also, her total lack of respect for personal mental boundaries. Your mind? Hers!

V. One of the things that has come up in my attempts to settle my RPing efforts has been...maybe my first attempt at RPing on sigillums should be a less elaborate character than Elly. I have another idea--an earnest dork with strange interests, awkward social skills, a history of bad dates, and Patrick from Gundam 00 as a PB--but I think I'd want to talk to some mods before actually going ahead and writing him up. Problem is, I can't find any contact information (aside from the email you're supposed to send your applications to), and while someone gave me an IM I used to contact them a while back, I'm not sure if it's still valid. Does anyone who knows sigillums at all know how to contact the mods?

VI. And now, for lack of anything better to do (I lie: I have a lot of better things to do, but I'm totally not feeling up to them at the moment), a meme.

Five fictional crushes. For each, five reasons it would never work out.

( It gets spammy. )

VII. I want to catch up on Avatar so I can watch the final episodes with everybody. But my eyes hurt, and I want to watch Avatar of all things in relative comfort. Woe.

I was just lying in bed angsting about how my new computer wouldn't even ship until tomorrow, when my father yells, "Your computer is here!"

It is a thing of beauty. I will now be immersing myself in attempting to reconstruct all my old stuff on it. This shouldn't be hard for all the anime and TV and comics and music I have on my external HDs, but getting some programs back into place might be tough. I'm not sure how to get City of Heroes back--I didn't buy a hard copy, I paid to download it. And man, am I ever looking forward to playing City of Heroes with all the graphics cranked up.

My copy of Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords also arrived a couple days ago. I've heard that there's a new patch by Team Gizka out that replaces most of the content that was cut due to deadline issues. Can anyone link me to where I can get that, and directions for how to install it?

Unrelated: my Nia application at paradisa got approved. Yay! Now I just need to get Photoshop installed on my new computer, make icons for her, set up her journal (unabandoned), and introduce her.

I'm also thinking of finally sitting down to rewatch and finish Gundam Wing. RPing Relena somewhere might be fun, and I'm on a Gundam kick anyway and I want a series with awesome girls. Contrary to fandom's popular belief, from what I've watched of GW, it totally qualifies. There was a secret on fandomsecrets a few days ago which made me go ♥: it was about how the girls of GW taught the secret-poster what feminism was before she knew the word.

Edit: My (awesome) old monitor does not properly hook up to my (awesome) new computer. Hm. This actually isn't too much of a tragedy--we needed to get my mother a new monitor anyway, and this way my father can use my old monitor and my mother can use his (which is perfectly serviceable, just not as awesome as mine). And because I am totally spoiled, I'm going out later today to get a new monitor. Anyone have recommendations for a monitor to go along with the XPS 6600? (I'll be looking it up anyway.)

Bride of Edit: New monitor get. It is twenty-two inches. The computer, for the record, has been named Virtue-Nadleeh. Because I am a weeaboo nerd.

Here's the deal.

My new computer can be either a Pentium 2800 with 2 GB of RAM, bundled with XP...or a quad-core processor with 3 GB of RAM, bundled with Vista.

Which do I choose? Is there a way to make games like KotOR II (which, for the record, is on the way from Amazon now), Portal, and City of Heroes run on Vista? And is there a way to uninstall Vista and stick XP on instead if I go for the latter?

Never mind, we found a computer with a quad-core processor, 4 GB of RAM, and bundled XP. :D But it actually comes with the graphics card I recently purchased, so uhhhh I'll need to figure out how to return that stuff.

Okay, so, as far as I can tell, my computer is shot. My father is still working on it, but let's be real here: he doesn't have a clue what he's doing. I'm not really happy with how my parents are handling this, but they're not happy with how I'm handling it, so I guess we're even. No use angsting over it; my father's told me that if he can't fix this computer, he'll get me a new one and just hook my hard drive into that. I'm grateful.

Right now, however, I'm going to try to distract myself (on my mother's clunky, poorly-interfaced computer...sob) with fandom and ideas.

First, a meme I haven't done in a while:

PICK A FANDOM AND I'LL TELL YOU...
1. The first character I fell in love with.
2. The character I never expected to love as much as I do now.
3. The character everyone else loves that I don't.
4. The character I love that everyone else hates.
5. The character I used to love but don't any longer.
6. The character I would shag anytime.
7. The character I'd want to be like.
8. The character I'd slap.
9. A pairing that I love.
10. A pairing that I hate.

Next, I'm going to try to flex my fic-muscles a little in preparation for writing some TTGL and Gundam 00 fic--hopefully. Give me a character, platonic relationship, or pairing and a prompt, and I'll write a line or two of fic. Just a line or two, though, or I'll wind up fretting over it too much. And fair warning, you won't get much luck asking for Naruto fic right now.

I'm also facing an embarrassing little dilemma. I kind of accidentally...got a pretty compelling idea for an RP that blends MU*-style narrative and character development with LJ-style accessibility. I know I should be working on rosemush, but...nobody seems to actually want to play there. And this idea is so awesome kfjkf augh why. My brain always churns out more ideas than I can actually keep up with, the stupid thing. ;_; This idea involves Jungian ideas of the collective unconscious and the Shadow combined with mythic fantasy combined with mystery combined with epic anime. What. And it's totally designed for RP, so I can't adapt it into another format.

I have no damn clue what's going on here, but it's really annoying.

Basically, my browsers aren't working. At least, not tolerably well. Getting anything to load in any of them (especially Firefox, the one I regularly use) is a chore; it'll usually simply...blank out.

I've rebooted. I've tried updating Firefox (despite the fact that doing so loses me both the plugins I favor). It didn't help. I tried scanning for viruses with Ad-Aware. Nothing except cookies.

So, uh. I'll try rebooting again, but then I'm out of luck. I'm really hoping this is not related to my recent connection of my epic terabyte hard drive, because my anime collection is getting out of hand and I totally need that thing.

In the meanwhile...I'll be kind of scarce, as checking LJ is really difficult in this situation.

Edit: Rebooting seems to have at least helped. So, er. Anyone have any idea how I can go back to Firefox 2 and get my plugins back? D:

I. The bat is safely outside. ( Details. )

II. Got into polychromatic and proceeded to make my entrance post. It's currently at 131 comments, WTF. LJ RP moves faster than I expected. It will be Difficult balancing it.

But it's been fun! I cracked the fuck up when Omar started nosing around about the City's drug culture, only to be told that he should ask Spider Jerusalem.

Apparently Spider Jerusalem lives next door to Raoul Duke, which makes it even better.

I'm already making horrible plans for when I apply for John there. Of course.

III. I am having a problem related to the above, though: namely, the need to keep a separate browser open to run Omar's LJ (blue_satin_pjs, for the record. Of course). This raises the question of what I'll do when I'm playing more LJ RP characters than I have browsers, but for now, I have another problem. Namely: Opera is pissing me the fuck off. Sometimes it just refuses to follow links when I click on them. Does anyone have any advice? Know any other browsers they can recommend? I normally use Firefox and am quite satisfied with it.

IV. Forgot to mention earlier: I watched "Appa's Lost Days" yesterday. Augh. Did I mention that "animals struggling to make their way in a world they don't properly understand" is about the surest thing ever to tug on my heartstrings?

Also, oh, Suki, I love you so. I have to say, it's impressive that even though she's a minor character who until then had no purpose other than being a love interest for Sokka, she still got to fight and be badass in her own right, not as an Obligatory Love Interest. This show is so respectful of its own characters. More fiction should follow that lead. You can't go wrong with treating your characters with care and respect.

Also, this episode reminds us of a bonus bit of personality that I'd forgotten: Suki is a leader. Not necessarily the best one ever, but a heartfelt and inspiring one, at least. That counts as personality, guys. It's kind of amazing how they fleshed her out so much given only three episodes. Sure, Zuko and the Gaang have a lot more depth, but they've had the entire show!

...I want Toph and Suki for myself. Screw Sokka. Except not, because he and Suki are just so damned perfect for each other, so I guess I'll just wait until Toph grows up and take her.

V. I still plan on getting to the "wacky fandom conspiracy theory" meme of my last post. If you haven't, comment there with a wacky fandom conspiracy theory!

Edit: VI. ☆ The Fanficcers Love Meme ☆

Tell me what's your favorite of my fanfics. Because I always like hearing feedback about my writing.

I. *happydance*

It will be mine, in the space of a few days. Because I am a disgustingly spoiled brat, I am only paying for a small fragment of the cost. But it will be mine, oh yes. Finally, I will be able to get back to Photoshop and start iconing again. Finally, I will be able to run my computer for months on end the way I like without worrying about it heating its innards half to death. Finally, I will be able to burn the Wire for people.

I will have a proper computer!

I am pondering names for it; I'm thinking possibly something Legion-y. Maybe Jenni; but if I did that, I just know it would turn out to be abominably slow. I don't want to jinx it. We'll see.

II. With the Proper Computer in hand, I may finally be able to get into certain MMORPGs. I know everyone's into World of Warcraft--but here's my problem. I generally prefer to solo most of the time and just quietly enjoy global events and new content, save for the occasional team-up with friends. It's why I get along so well with Kingdom of Loathing (when I bother to play it). And to be honest, World of Warcraft doesn't seem very solo-friendly to me.

So I'm thinking...maybe City of Heroes? Hmmm. Once again: we shall see.

III. I must take a moment here to express my deep and abiding hatred for infinitepryde. My spending pretty much the entirety of tonight on this insane game? All her fault.

It's a farm, you see. Only it's got a wiseass newspaper, and aliens. And I have a robot chicken there. Aaaaugh so addictive.

IV. Finally got another fic done on the Tarot meme. So no, I have not abandoned it. Yay! The fics are longer than usual for this type of thing, though, I imagine because of the complexity of the prompts. And yes, I have some ideas for the others; I just don't have the brain to complete them tonight.

I. My connection spent a while flickering earlier today, for no apparent reason. It had seriously better not be squirrels again. (Yes, once squirrels gnawed through my internet cable.) But it seems to be fixed now.

II. I did some catching up on Berserk today--reread volume 30 and finally read volume 31 and a few chapters of volume 32. ( Thoughts. )

I've read up through chapter 279 now. I started to download 280+ from Stoptazmo, but it crashed my browser, so...I think that's a sign that I should wait until tomorrow.

III. Was too busy reading Berserk to watch Romeo x Juliet today, so that will wait for tomorrow (er...later today). Ditto on icon-making, especially since I saved a bunch of cute panels from the Berserk bits I read in order to icon them. I think I'm too lazy to fully color those panels, but I'll color them a bit and add a bunch of effects and that should be enough.

Tomorrow will be icon day, I think. And maybe time to make some secrets for fandomsecrets. I've been putting off opening Photoshop for weeks, but now that I've rebooted, I don't have an excuse anymore.

IV. ( Some more philosophical general Berserk thoughts. )

V. The requests for het_challenge are in! I'm pretty excited about some of mine. Of the lot I got, I chose one D.Gray-man, one FF, and one Berserk. Since this is a public post I'm leaving it at that for now, but since I don't think any of the requesters are on my friendslist, I may talk about the ideas more later. Probably filtered, though.

VI. Character analysis, mostly for my benefit, since so far I have only properly semed dragonsquee into watching the Wire. (I will be fixing this soon when I burn DVDs this week for joiedecombat, infinitepryde, and ew_younerd. Damned torrents.)

I joined the Television Without Pity forums, finally, solely so I could post about the Wire. Specifically, solely so I could post in the Omar thread. I'm so predictable. ( Spam, very vague spoilers. )

If you're 12.8% of the way through a torrent, you pause it, try to open the first file in it, and get told "Invalid Archive Footer," is that a sign that the files in the torrent don't work, or just that you need to finish downloading before watching any of it?

;;;;;help;;;;;;

my files. my files, I have them back.

hear that, people? that is the sound of my SOBS OF RELIEF.

Granted, they're not on this computer yet. They're currently being transferred from the old drive to Mom's computer so that EVENTUALLY, when I've reinstalled Windows and fixed everything that's wrong with this computer, they can be transferred to the new 100gig USB drive which can then be attached to this computer.

BUT STILL.

My files. They're all intact. ;___;

Note: tonight I will finish my Lady Uchiha fic, get it posted in all the appropriate places, and get in RP as Urahara and Komui. YES I WILL. ♥

I really, really want my computer to be working again. I had so much stuff in progress, including files for rosemush, and just--AUGH I want to work more on them. It's even worse than not being able to play more KotOR, and let me tell you, that's pretty bad.

In other news, does anyone have any tips for getting cats accommodated to a new home? The company Mom works for decided that its assisted living/nursing homes needed to have cats, so Mom and I picked out a very lovely mew named Varsity who was extremely friendly to us when we went to the adoption place and just in general seemed quite confident. But now that he's at his new home, he shies away from people easily and refuses to go into half the building.

AFDSJKL

I have reinstalled the driver and the hardware alike (I hope to God I didn't erase the entire contents of the drive in doing so).

I have restarted a thousand times. AND MORE.

I have uninstalled and reinstalled every other USB device on the computer.

The device manager says the E:\ drive is working fine.

AND YET ACCORDING TO THE REST OF MY COMPUTER, THERE IS NO E:\ DRIVE.