my moral standing is lying down

So while LJ was indisposed I decided to pretend it didn't exist and pretty much ignored the situation altogether. It seems to be back (or close) to normal now, so here I am. I've been in this weird limbo of unemployed with lots of free time.... and somehow finding myself sort of busy. And ffs, spending too much time with my parents. I spent 10 hours with them yesterday, helping my father buy and set up an awesome new laptop. But. TEN HOURS. =/

Just saw this movie from 2007 called Shelter, which was just great. It's about a guy named Zack, an artist in the ghetto of some SoCal city, with a sister who's a big flake and a 5-year old nephew who has clearly hung the moon and all because Zack is holding the ladder steady beneath him. His best friend goes out of town for a while and his brother stays there, and he and Zack end up hanging out, surfing a lot, and falling for each other.

Of course there's more to it, but it's pretty typical and straightforward -- nothing happens that you couldn't see coming a mile away, but it's sweet, and it's just-- nice to see this sort of romance/drama with a gay couple. =D I recommend it if you're looking for an easy, pleasant way to spend an hour and a half. <3

So now is where I'm going to get all fannish and say I WANT THE SPENCER/BRENDON AU! FIC FOR THIS MOVIE! They're surfer dudes! In southern California! The artist (~musician?) angle with family troubles is ALREADY THERE! There's an adorable kid! What more do we need? And really, WHY HASN'T THIS BEEN WRITTEN ALREADY? =(

And so I leave you with this, one of my favorites from the 8/09 Chicago M&G, from what I refer to in my head as Surfer-era!Panic. <3

The last two days have been unexpectedly AWESOME! Let's see why:

FRIDAY NIGHT hockeysaurus was visiting NYC and WE GOT A SUPER SEKRIT TOUR OF THE NHL OFFICES! Basically it was just too awesome to describe in words.

( Here, have a few pics instead. )

SATURDAY AFTERNOON I bought a new laptop. Ahahaha. My old one is 5 years old and really should be lasting a bit longer than that but it's doing this thing where it's REALLY SLOW for like an hour and thereafter runs normally for 5 minutes broken up with 2 minutes of lag. It doesn't seem like a virus and it's actually not an overheating thing either; my mom thinks its the heads. Whatevs, time to get a new one before I can't even turn it on anymore. At least I had time to backup the new data/etc.

So this new laptop is TEENY TINY. Well, for a laptop. Toshiba Portege, 3 lbs, 13.3" widescreen. My old one was a 14" so I know I'm going to be adjusting to the reduction in screen size but I decided the super light weight was worth it. It's kind of the perfect middle ground between a laptop and a netbook. I'm sad it's a single core processor but I'm pretty sure I don't run many big memory-consuming programs simultaneously.


SATURDAY NIGHT was Choley's going away party; she's leaving NYC for medical school in DC. SAD. The only reason I'm not more heartbroken is because DC is relatively quick and easy to get to from here, so I plan to visit her as often as I possibly can.

I was unexpectedly plastered last night and also had an unexpectedly good time!

Things of note:

- Wingo (my new favorite ex-bartender from Whiskey Brooklyn) showed up for a brief moment and bought a couple of us a round of whiskey.
- Leaving Ace Bar, I TRIPPED OVER A HOMELESS PERSON. I HAVE NEVER DONE THAT BEFORE OKAY.
- Also, I felt pretty bad (read: horrified) about it.
- Drunk tweeting.
- OMG I don't even remember tweeting this.
- My drunken ranting about netspeak to Judy while waiting in line at Pommes Frittes at 3:45am. JSYK they close at 4!

...And all of a sudden I'm extremely into the genderbending aspects of this fandom. The best part is that it's CANON. SO FULL OF WIN.

THIS FANART is like, the hottest thing ever, right now.




Basically I've got nothing else of interest to say, other than I'm disgustingly sick and all I want to do is go home and sleep. But also be able to read fic with my eyes closed. It saddens me that should this ever be possible, it probably will not be within my lifetime. CAN SOMEONE PLEASE MAKE ME INTO A VAMPIRE OR SOMETHING? I FEEL SO CHEATED. I WOULD BE WILLING TO KILL PEOPLE AND/OR LIVE OFF THEIR BLOOD IN ORDER TO SEE THE FUTURE, OKAY!

Anyway, my laptop is back and I've finally been able to update my iPhone with music and in honor thereof I've downloaded the Bronson and Brick soundtracks. They're SO GOOD! And the Brick soundtrack, in particular, has quite a few tracks which I'll probably be using for the playlist for my housewarming party. WE'RE HAVING ANOTHER VINTAGE HOUSEWARMING PARTY! I'M SO EXCITED! (AND OMG THERE ARE WAY TOO MANY PEOPLE TO INVITE EVERYONE I WANT TO.)

Oh yeah, so if you have any suggestions for music, let me know. It's 1880s-1980s this time.

And BTW, buying the Brick DVD was so worth it. The extras (while unfortunately do not include much of JGL) are really fabulous; the director really goes into detail about his ideas and visions and it's wonderful to hear about all the stuff that goes on before the movie even makes it to pre-production. I'm really fascinated by all that stuff!

/babble

So that was a let-down. Rangers lost 3-1. Buffalo's defense was tight (and also sweet?) and impenetrable. Not only did they NOT win for a 6-0-0 record, they also finally allowed two power play goals -- the first they've allowed this season. Sigh.

To make up for it, I'm just going to focus on the fact that at one point they drew a penis on the screen. If I had a screencap, I'd post it. I thought it was pretty funny. >_<;



In other news... my laptop contracted a virus, which was really fucking annoying. I did system restore and installed McAfee and ran a virus scan. It didn't find anything, and I'm hoping the comp's clear. But IE has been really slow since then (Judy suggested it's because virus programs use up a lot of memory), but I wonder if IE is just corrupt somehow -- Firefox seems to run fine, and because I'm not a huge fan of Firefox, I downloaded Google Chrome to test it out, and that seems to work fine (and speedily) as well -- and Chrome uses like twice the memory of Firefox!

So, anyone have any suggestions regarding the virus or IE? And what are your thoughts/recommendations regarding Chrome?

For those of you who may not have yet been informed, Maryann (finally) bought a laptop. So we have had the pleasure of being not more than 15 feet away from each other (although in separate rooms), IMing each other as well as yelling to each other. Oh, the silliness. Hopefully, this will bring her further into the world of the evil internets and maybe she'll post a little more often.

Liz got into the CUNY Honors program, so she gets a free laptop. Unfortunately (from our PC-loving perspectives, of course), it's a Mac (of the new Macbook line). And it's technically the property of the school until her junior year, so she can't sell it to buy a PC laptop instead. So over the weekend she partitioned the hard drive and installed Windows on it so that she can use it as a PC. It's a 1.8ghz dual core processor, but only has a 60g hard drive, though, and there was about 20g of stuff installed on the Mac hd, so she only has about 25g to work with after partitioning and installing Windows. =( But it's very pretty -- a really light, 13" widescreen size. If you hold it sideways, it feels like you're holding a legal pad. I'm jealous of the cool 13" size. ^^ But it's exactly what she wanted size-wise; smaller than a 14" but with a full-size keyboard. Oooh! And it has one of those mini webcam things built in at the top of the screen!

Of course, like any jealous sibling, if both Maryann AND Liz get new toys, I want one too! So I got a new laptop. =D And it's the one that I wanted when I bought my "old" one -- that didn't exist until 6 months later! But I am not really insanely frivolous -- the only reason I was really able to do this is because my mom has been meaning to buy one for herself so she can do her work and school stuff on it. So I sold mine to her (at more than half off the original price, so I don't feel guilty about "selling" it to her) and bought this new one!

It has a 1.8ghz Core Duo processor (heh -- it has a sticker on it that says Duo inside! See icon.). ♥ And 1g of RAM! And a 120g hard drive! And it's a 14.1" screen, so it's considerably lighter than my old one. I luuuuv it so~!

I do have to say, though, that it the decision to get this new one was difficult -- I really like my old laptop. And I thought it fitting that, since my old laptop is named shinigami, to name this new one aibou. =D

Oh! And as for skins, I decided not to get the flames one again, so I'll have pics up once I get the new skin. =D

(I feel like it's really silly for me to be so excited over my new laptop, but I can't seem to help it.)

For some really weird reason, whenever I try to load my koyasunomiko.com email site on my computer at home, the connection is insanely slow. I can access my koyasunomiko.com webpages fine, but not the email. And when I access it on a computer at work, it's fine; fast as usual. I'd say there's something wrong with my laptop, but it happens with the desktop in the computer room upstairs too. =( And then I'd say it's a problem with my router, but I tried using the next door neighbor's connection too, and it was the same. I am lost. I don't even know where to start, what it could possibly be. This really sucks.

Other news: I got a haircut last Sunday (not yesterday). It's yummy, I like it sooo much! It's short on my right side again, and longer on my left. The right side is shorter than I'd cut it before, though, so it's new for me, and I really like it! The only thing I don't like is that I'll have to have it cut a lot more frequently in order to maintain the look. Before I started cutting my hair, I'd go for years with nothing more than a semi-annual (if that) trim. Now I'll have to cut it every few months. Which is damn annoying because I have yet to find someone who will cut my hair the way I ask for it. ::growles::

Also! I watched the 13 Mirage of Blaze TV episodes this weekend during the snow... and O!M!F!G! it's soooo good. The further the series went, however, the more Naoe seemed to turn into Nanjo Koji, which is quite appropriate, IMO. I appreciated the fact that Takaya was a strong character and with the exception of one episode (where Naoe Koji Hayami exerted his Ultimate-Seme powers), he didn't really give in and become a weak/whiny/helpless uke.

I really like that, for the most part, the story was plot-driven and NOT (thank god!) YAOI-driven. I have to watch the OVA tonight which, I'm hoping, will have a bit more story than was revealed in the TV series. Was this based on a manga like most anime? If so, I'd love to read the manga! If it's anywhere near as good as the anime, I'd be highly impressed. Anyone have any of the manga?

I am so going to watch Zetsuai over tonight after watching the OVA. =D

Lastly, the snow. Over 2 feet. Lots of shoveling. Need I say more?

That's what I sound like. Slightly over a week ago I went to sleep in the path of the air conditioner with too little clothing on. ^_~ And woke up the next morning with chest congestion and coughing. It sucks.

Let's see... I registered for Onna! over the weekend, and sent an email to Erica yesterday saying that I'd registered and can I volunteer? So now I'm working "Special Ops," which is some security, some miscellaneous stuff. Dunno how long I'll be volunteering for because I do want to hang out with friends, but I think I'll have fun volunteering too.

I noticed another small bug with the layout and dutifully reported it on s2flexisquares. So far afuna, my knight in shining code-armor, has not come up with a fix (that worked), but I ended up manipulating some code for someone else's layout! That was fun. =D

Although Angelica gave me Samurai Champloo and Flame of Recca (which I've seen already, but am in the mood to see over) last night, I didn't watch anything. She also told me to give her her DVDs back. And now I feel weird, like, I should buy a DVD burner right now so I can make copies of the anime series so that if I want to watch them I don't have to ask her. Especially 'cause what if she's at her grandmother's house for the weekend or something? Maybe I can buy a pack of DVD-Rs and she can make me copies of stuff for now until I buy a DVD burner. What do you think, Angelica? And after you mentioned Anita wanting an external hard drive, I got to thinking -- maybe I should get one for my laptop too. And then I thought, should I get an external hard drive instead of the DVD burner? Or just get it first, then a DVD burner later? And now I'm going crazy trying to figure out what to do, and it's making me feel really weird and pressured 'cause you want your DVDs back and now I can't watch anime.

T_T;

I think you should help me decide what I should do.

I decided to leave the computer named "shinigami" and change the user to "aibou." As if anyone was really interested in that.

However, moving on...

( Two pics to show what shinigami looks like: )

And one last thing, if anyone knows how to set up WS_FTP or any other FTP application so that it works with a firewall/wi-fi connection, please let me know. I'm having the devil of a time just trying to access my site through FTP. T_T;


[edit: Didn't end up changing user name to "aibou" -- kept as "shi-chan"]

I just heard one of the other young consultants who works at a desk near me saying something like, "what other games do you have for the PSP?" LOL. That certainly woke me up a bit. (I'm horribly sleepy today, I really didn't get enought last night.) Anyway, then he said something about really liking that Metal Gear (Acid?). I know there's Metal Gear Solid, but it really sounded like he said acid. =D

Well, I brought my sexy laptop with me to work today, and turned it on briefly this morning to retrieve some files. I/It did a scan for a network to piggyback off of, and it listed several, but when I picked one at random, it didn't seem to connect.

Angelica said one of her co-workers "did something" to her laptop so that it would "work anywhere." Does anyone know more about this? This is my first laptop and I'm not really all that familiar with wireless networks (especially wireless-network-piggybacking) just yet. ^_~;

...playing with their new laptops! Teehee.

The screen is a lot wider than I realized it would be. But it's kinda cool; it's definitely going to be awesome for watching DVDs/anime... if I don't change it to 1024x768 instead of 1280x800, which I just might do anyway.

The printer I purchased arrived at the same time, so now all I have to do is buy ink for it. ^_~;

However, the router I ordered is the wrong one, so I'll have to exchange that. Luckily, we seem to be able to mooch off of some unsuspecting person in the neighborhood because I get a decent connection on the first floor and a good one on the second. =D

More tomorrow later today!