nenena | Entries tagged with life: life update

There is a gas station about three blocks away from my house. I've stopped there for cheap coffee or to refill my wiper fluid plenty of times, but I've never once used the bathroom there. Because, you know, it's only three blocks from my house. Why would I need to use the bathroom in a gas station three blocks from my house?

Today, however, I came home from an afternoon at the movies to discover that a water main beneath my apartment complex was busted, and our whole block is going to be without running water until tomorrow. So off to use the gas station restroom I went.

And, believe it or not, inside that humble little gas station restroom I found that three of the four walls were painted with a lovely mural honoring Eight Belles. At various places on the walls, people had added their own additions to the mural: "In loving memory of [So-and-So]" and "In Memorium" and "Much beloved [Person], you will be forever missed" and so on. Most of the names added to the mural were human names, although there were a few that were obviously horse names (or maybe the names of some other pets, I dunno).

Unfortunately there were several places where the mural had been vandalized because some asshole had felt the need to write that so-and-so was a fucking bitch and that for a good time you need to call 8675309. As you will. And apparently somebody thought that it would be the height of cleverness to ruin the part of the mural depicting John Velazquez by giving him a Hitler-stache of smeared human feces. This was right above the baby changing station, too. Ugh.

Sometimes, people just really suck.

But I refuse to let the shitstache and other graffiti ruin the awesomeness that is this gas station restroom mural that until today I never even knew existed. And to think, I never would have discovered something this unique so close to my home if not for that darn water main breaking.

Crossposts: http://nenena.livejournal.com/378439.html

ME: Just don't do anything stupid with your fake sword.

STUDENT: Is there really anything non-stupid that you can do with a fake sword?

Touché.

Crossposts: http://nenena.livejournal.com/363684.html

Just saw a Homestuck cosplayer at nat'l cherry blossom festival parade.

Holy shit. This is not an anime convention. So much secondhand embarrassment right now.

ETA: On the other hand, a guy riding a giant spider robot just walked right past me, so I probably shouldn't be surprised by anything at this point. (I am so not even kidding, this is A Thing That Actually Happened. The robot was sponsored by the USA Science and Engineering Festival.)

Crossposts: http://nenena.livejournal.com/363322.html

I will go to bed early tonight and be sober for the UK/Louisville game tomorrow. I will go to bed early tonight and be sober for the UK/Louisville game tomorrow. I will go to bed early tonight and be sober for the UK/Louisville game tomorrow DAMMIT.

So here is some nerdy linkspam!

terajk is hosting a People with Disabilities Being Awesome commentfic fest!

sqbr has some recommendations for fanworks about disabled characters.

Apropos of nothing and because (tragically!) it did not make

sqbr's list, "Clothes We Abandoned in the Closet" is a beautiful Tavros/Vriska fic. It's humanstuck!AU but don't let that put you off because it is awesome.

Speaking of disability and sex and love and all that stuff! Random Curiousity has a pretty thorough review of Katawa Shoujo that I mostly agree with. But I do wish that Zaniba hadn't been so quick to declare that "this is not a visual novel for those with a fetish," as that is definitely how it began, and the reaction all over the internet has shown that those with a certain set of particular fetishes are flocking to the game. And yet despite that, the game itself has grown into something so much better that has so much more to offer to such a wider audience than just the disability fetishists. This is a visual novel for those with a fetish, and it's pretty disingenuous to claim that it's not, but it's also a visual novel for the rest of us as well.

Completely unrelated! I am ridiculously excited for the Lupin III ALL FUJIKO ALL THE TIME TV series that starts next week, even if I'm still not entirely sold on the hyper-stylized animation and character designs. Oh well. It's Lupin III and it's Fujiko and there's no way that this can be anything but awesome.

Also, this week I finally caved in and bought myself a gorgeous 27" Dell monitor, which is something that I've wanted for a looooong time, and I'm still feeling a little bit of leftover happiness buzz from being able to finally write the check for the darn thing. YAY! And it has a maximum resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels ~~so y'all can look forward to some insanely high-resolution Soul Eater screensaver rips coming next week~~.

Crossposts: http://nenena.livejournal.com/361493.html

American Wal-Marts are now selling licorice allsorts. It took some exploring to find them in my local Wal-Mart, but I finally found a few boxes of them lurking at the bottom of the "specialty" candy display that they had in the back of the store near the discount bakery items.

It's been years since I had the Bassett's brand candies and I can't say for certain whether the Wal-Mart brand tastes anywhere near the same, but nevertheless, the Wal-Mart brand candies are pretty darn good.

I have no particular nostalgic attachment to licorice allsorts or anything, since I only discovered them as an adult shopping at the yuppie Whole Foods near where I used to live in St. Paul, but I still think they're pretty awesome and I'm happy to see that they're now available in a major discount chain store.

Crossposts: http://nenena.livejournal.com/361440.html

File this under "Kids Say the Darndest Things":

On the final day of the NKU World Languages Camp, we had a pageant day in which all of the language groups got to give a presentation to all of the other language groups. This year we had a grand total of four different Spanish groups, which was twice as many groups as the other languages had.

There was on particular student in my Japanese group who was only ten years old and prone to often saying completely awesome things right out of the blue. On the pageant day he did not disappoint. Halfway through the presentation from the third Spanish group, he turned to me and asked, "Why are there so many Spanish groups?"

"That's because a lot of people wanted to study Spanish this year," I told him.

He pondered this for a moment, then said to me, "That makes sense, I guess. Since nobody ever wants to study Canadian and Spanish is the next closest country to us."

Bless his heart. I'm going to miss this kid so much.

Next, file this under "Dads Say the Darndest Things":

So my dad is not a native English speaker, which means that he is still occasionally prone to mixing up his English idioms when he speaks. We still make fun of him for this one time that, after a particularly gluttonous meal, he declared to me and my sister, "I'm stuffed like a pork!" For many years I thought that nothing could ever top "I'm stuffed like a pork". Well, until yesterday, that is.

My dad and my stepmom came to visit me, and while we were having lunch together, my dad decided to tell me a story about his latest and greatest harrowing adventure being mistreated by United Airlines employees at O'Hare International. Halfway through this story, in order to convey that he had been getting angrier and angrier, my dad said, "And by that time I had really got my mustard up--"

My stepmom and I started laughing. So he stopped and said, "What?"

"Dander," my stepmom corrected him. "You mean they got your dander up."

"Oh, okay," my Dad said. Then literally two minutes later, he said again: "And I didn't mean to be rude, but they kept raising my mustard so I wasn't about to back down, you know?"

And then I just started laughing again. I mean, I can understand exactly where I'm stuffed like a pork came from, as that's a very common mistake for non-native speakers to make. But where on Earth is this mustard thing coming from, and how did it even get into my dad's vocabulary in the first place?! It's a total mystery to me.

Next, file this under "Things I Wish I Had Paid More Attention To When I Was A Little Girl":

Recently I've been on an 80's music video binge. And I know that the art of the music video really didn't start to take off until the late 80's, but I had forgotten how often the best music videos of the early 80's often had absolutely nothing to do with the songs that they were made for. (Unless you believe that "Total Eclipse of the Heart" actually is a song about a sexually frustrated pedophile teacher who wants to diddle Catholic school boys, I guess.) But this weekend I had the joy of rediscovering what is absolutely my all-time favorite 80's music video that in no way shape or form even remotely comes close to matching the song that it's made for:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66aqcOsnP2E

Okay, so embedding is disabled for that particular video, but just in case you can't see it and/or don't want to click: That is the music video in which PAT BENATAR FIGHTS NAZIS.

Yes, really.

So flist, do you have any favorite epic music videos in which the video doesn't particularly match the song?

HEY PEOPLE WHO ARE IN IOWA!

I am also in Iowa. Call me. Tomorrow would be a most excellent day for hanging-out-ness.

Also, here, have a link: Jenn breaks down Avatar for all y'all.

Last night I discovered that it is extremely difficult to argue that Avatar is exactly like Dances with Wolves and The Last Samurai to somebody who has never actually seen Dances with Wolves or The Last Samurai.

Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

A notice that I found in my mailbox today, from my landlord:

WINTER HEATER NOTICE: When it reaches below 28F, the outside units will not function properly. Therefore, you will need to switch from normal heat to emergency heat. If you have problems with your heater, contact the office.

OMFG.

Clearly I'm not in Minnesota anymore.

28F?! That's like the high temperature on a warm day in March in Minneapolis.

Last week the temperature dropped all the way down to - gasp! - 54 degrees on Monday night. Some of my cohorts were complaining about how insufferably cold it was. I just sat there and LOL'd silently. Oh, ye thin-skinned southerners.

1. John Deere fruit snacks.

They exist.

2. An actual headline on the front page of USA Today: "Democrats Push Opt-Out Public Option."

I was going to LOL at the redundancy in that headline, but then I realized that said redundancy is actually sorely needed. Especially when I live in a country where "medical counseling" somehow reads as "death panels" to a frighteningly large percentage of people.

Edited to add: Oh dear, I was very very very wrong about the meaning of the "opt-out" in that article headline. It is not, unfortunately, a redundancy. Rather, it is a stunning example of a completely asinine concession to the completely asinine states' rights advocates opposing the bill. Suddenly I am having flashbacks to NCLB. Oh dear Lord.

So today, since I was cooking Mexican for lunch, I decided to make myself some fried tortillas for dessert. And then I figured, "Hey, this recipe that I'm using calls for sugar and butter, but I bet that these things would taste really awesome if I added some brown sugar as well!"

And then I turned the edges of my fried tortillas into toffee.

This, kids, is why some basic knowledge of chemistry should be required before you start experimenting in the kitchen.

I can't find a stapler. Anywhere. I have staples, and I have two staple removers. But no stapler.

I can't find my nail clippers.

However, I did find, mixed among my office supplies:

1. A rainbow slinky.
2. A Hanuman lunchbox.
3. Two ~~kitchen~~ debate timers.
4. A box of scented markers that are still scented despite three years in storage.
5. A lightsaber spoon. The handle lights up. It still works. The battery is still good.

I'm pretty sure that last one was actually a cereal prize.

Alas! The lightsaber spoon does nothing for my hangnail. I suppose I'll just have to suffer in silence until tomorrow.

Oh, and a zip disk! I found two zip disks in my last box. I have no idea what's even on them. Or if I'll ever be able to find an actual working zip drive in order to, you know, check and see. Hey, does anyone still remember zip drives? I recall that they were actually cutting edge technology back when I was in high school. This was of course before the invention of USB flash drives. Hell, that was even back from before CD-writers were common. No wait, that's not quite true. I remember that when I was a sophomore in high school, external CD-writers went on sale at Best Buy for the first time, and this was like a Huge Freaking Deal. And yet, by the time I graduated high school I think that pretty much all computers on the market came with built-in CD drives. That's only a difference of two years, but two years is like *forever* in technology terms.

Random: The last time that I had dinner with my mom, she waxed poetic about electric typewriters. For like, fifteen minutes. Someday I will be old and drunk on Argentinian Malbec and waxing poetic about the joys of my first external CD-drive, too.

Installing Apache on Vista: A lot harder than it looks.

Also, this whole UAC thing would be a lot easier to disable if it didn't magically re-enable itself with every reboot. Fuck. I know that's NOT supposed to be happening, but it is.

And as long as I have UAC running rampant all over my computer, I'm not allowed to install Apache. Or uninstall my first borked attempt at doing so. That, too. It's not letting me fucking uninstall anything even though I'm still logged in as the admin/owner!

Don't mind me, I'll just be over here headdesking for a while.

I just found out that Big & Rich are playing at the Mississippi Valley Fair on Friday!!!!

Unfortunately, the show starts at 8 PM, I already have plans for that night, and you have to buy a $40 "Fun Card" to get admitted to the grandstand shows anyway. Phooey.

Oh well. There will be other opportunities later, I'm sure.

(I know I'm not usually a concert-type person, and there are very few acts that I'm at all interested in ever seeing perform live, but Big & Rich are definitely at the top of the list.)

I'm posting this from my mom's computer, lol.

Anywhoo, my laptop decided to eat a bunch of viruses this morning, and I basically wasted the entire day today just trying to get it to stop hitting itself. No less than four antivirus programs (AVG, Spybot, BitDefender, and PC Doctor)* ultimately proved unable to save the day. Now my registry is completely corrupted, Firefox is uninstalled, IE isn't working, and the whole thing is kind of borked. Soooooooo tomorrow Debbie is confiscating my laptop and taking it to one of her computer-expert friends who will (hopefully) be able to clean it out, and possibly completely reinstall Windows. This process will take several days. I spoke to the dude on the phone, and he seemed optimistic that it wouldn't come down to a Windows reinstall, but of course he couldn't say for sure without looking at the laptop itself.

*No, I didn't run them at the same time, I'm not stupid.

What this means is...

1. Scanspam Week is temporarily delayed. Um.

2. Some other things that I wanted to get done this week won't happen either - I have a prettyful update to PDK that isn't going to happen, and somebody just donated a bunch of doujinshi scans to Starlight Pops that aren't going to be added anytime soon.

3. Fortunately, I have two giant doujin dumps ready to post on

shibusen as soon as possible. And I can probably do that from my mom's PC, as it's just a matter of uploading the right files, and I don't even have to use an FTP program or anything for that.

4. Unfortunately... Yeah, so I have those two giant doujin dumps sitting on my harddrive, and the scans from Honey009 alone are TOTALLY ILLEGAL in the state of Iowa (hell, probably in the United States period - oh hell, let's not pretend, those images violate all of Japan's obscenity laws too) - and tonight I have to panic about getting all of that stuff on a bunch of flash drives and trying to erase every possible trace of it from the laptop. Fun times!

So tonight I look forward to many hours of fun and excitement, trying desperately to back up my data safely, while at the same time erasing anything from my computer that would cause the FBI to come knocking on my door, since I *am* about to hand over my machine to a total stranger. And since this *is* Iowa. You know, the home of Christopher Handley. Um.

Oh wait, here's the icing on the cake: So, I probably didn't mention this to people who don't know me IRL, but back in June this year I had some major drama with my identity being stolen by a thief in Canada. He got my Paypal login, my credit card information, my SSN, and he even managed to get my freakin' credit report from one of those free credit report companies. I'm still recovering from that shit, I had to close my old bank account and open up an entirely new one, my Paypal situation is still FUBAR, I have fraud alerts on my credit report, and I only *just recently* got a new credit card.

Okay, so, today? It turns out that the initial infection on my computer was the Trojan Mundo virus. That's the one that, like, invites other viruses to your computer to come and play. So PC Doctor informed me several times that my laptop was attempting to broadcast "unauthorized information" on the interbutts, and when I mentioned that to Debbie's friend the PC Dude on the phone, he said, "Oh yeah, if it's the Trojan Mundo virus, and if PC Doctor caught your computer trying to send information on the internet, that probably means that your credit card has been compromised."

My brand new credit card.

I told Debbie about that, and she literally banged her head against the shelf that we have on top of the fireplace. I'm going to go ahead and count that as a headdesk. It's not quite "desk" that's involved but it's close enough.

So yeah, now I have to wait a day or two to see if indeed my new credit card HAS been compromised, in which case I'm pretty much fucked. Oh yeah and I'm supposed to be moving to Kentucky and setting up utility, phone, and internet contracts next week. With my FUBAR credit history and fraud alerts all over my name, this is going to be fun!

Anyway, yeah. That's how I spent my Sunday. Blaaaaarrrrrrgh.

Grad school applications: 2.5 out of four complete and submitted. The .5 would be the NKU app, which unfortunately is a two-part process. Yes, that's two steps in paper submission before you even get to the interview stage. Thank goodness they have a final application deadline in freakin' June for the fall semester.

Reading: Tsubasa (this week's chapter actually made me cry!!!), Ah! My Goddess (HOLY CRAP you guys this story arc is getting awesomer by the minute), and catching up on the past two years' worth of X-Factor. Oh, X-Factor. You are so, so good. Even with your insistence on revolving entire storylines around ~~Sparklepunk Mary Sue~~ Layla Miller, you're still so, so good.

Linky-links: Derek Kim on the Avatar movie. Read it. NOW. Derek Kim is an amazing writer, and if his words can't convince you that "racist" is exactly the right word for this shit, then nothing can. Also: It just keeps getting worse. However, there may be a way to make lemonade from all those lemons.

Doing: Yes, I am scanning stuff. Hold yer horses.

I took my laptop, a kimono catalogue (great for highlighting scanner colorfuckery), and the new scanner to Eiden today, and had the Canon techie guys look at it. This was our conversation, recapped and translated from Japanese.

EIDEN GUY: It's either not picking up red, or not picking up blue. Or maybe both.
ME: Can you fix it?
EIDEN GUY: There's a way to fix it, but that way doesn't work.
ME: So you can't fix it.
EIDEN GUY: Blah blah blah gamma levels blah blah blah borked blah blah blah Canon won't refund your money, 'cause this kind of thing can be caused by punching the scanner too many times so it's basically your fault for breaking it.
ME: I swear to God, I never punched my scanner.
EIDEN GUY: Did you travel around with it? Like take it on a road trip? Or an airplane?
ME: ...Oh. Yeah.
EIDEN GUY: Well there you go. But maybe Softmap will give you a refund if Canon won't.
ME: So can I sell you this defective scanner as a totally high-quality "lightly used" item?
EIDEN GUY: Ha ha, no.
ME: Okay, just give me that cheap-ass $80 scanner over there and we'll call it a day.

So now I have a new-new scanner that works well, and an old-new scanner that I need to get rid of. I'm going to call Softmap tomorrow, and see if there's a way for me to return the scanner without having to physically go back to Tokyo.

Flist, I know that some of you are arty people with experience scanning and photoshopping things, so I have come to you to beg for help.

I bought a CanoScan LiDE 600 while in Tokyo, and so far, it has been ass. And in the weeks since then, it has only gotten more ass, as so far my ever attempt to scan Soul Eater magazine illustrations have been frought with discoloration so bad that there's no way I can post those scans in good conscience. And I'm talking really, really bad discoloration. Like, "pale violet on the magazine page turns to bright turquoise in the scanner output" bad. FFS, the goddamn scanner is trying to give Kid orange eyes. This is totally unacceptable, and I don't understand why it's happening. I've checked and re-checked my every option using the scanner software itself. I've turned off the color auto-correction, I've made sure that all of the color/channel options are set at "0" corrective value. Nothing that I do seems to be able to make the scanner capable of actually outputting anything remotely resembling the pictures that I'm actually scanning.

There is an option to correct the gamma dohickey in the CanoScan toolbox, but for some reason I'm locked out of clicking that option, and I don't understand why.

I have spent many, many hours diddling around in PSP, attempting to correct color channels, hue saturation, contrast, and etc. In fact, I've tried just about every trick in the PSP toolbox, but it's no good. There's not much that I can do to fix a raw scan where half of the colors are right, but the rest of the colors are coming out on the wrong side of the rainbow.

So, um, flist. Any... advice? Is there something glaringly obvious that I'm doing wrong on the scanning side? Do any of you have any tips for fixing this sort of crap in Photoshop? Or should I just give up on this scanner altogether? (In which case, do any of y'all have recs for a reliable scanner?)

Note that, at least for the time being, I am extremely unkeen on the idea of giving up on this scanner. Returning it would mean taking a trip to Tokyo in which the highway and gas fees would cost me more than the scanner itself, and trying to pawn it off at a recycle shop would mean selling it at a loss.

~~And yes, I totally am holding this month's SE drama CDs hostage until I can make decent scans of their lovely jackets. Yes, "their." Yes, there are two of them this month.~~

meiousei T-minus 17 hours and counting!

Went to Akihabhara today. Missed Comiket by one day, but meh. The aftermath, so to speak, is better. Mandarake stocked most of the popular stuff anyway, and hey, less crowds!

Man. The more I read of Hetalia, the more it... squicks me. Like, deeply squicks me. I'm still trying to sort through my feelings as to why. Well actually I've already attempted to write a "my thoughts on Hetalia" entry, twice, but ended up not posting either version because I don't want to piss on anybody's kink-parade. Let's just say it's not my cuppa, and leave it at that.

I bought a new scanner, as my old one was a) well, old and b) permanently scratched. I bought my scanner at one of the bigger Softmap stores. It's funny because, at first this dudely salesman was trying to help me, and being all patronizing and stuff - like saying "Do you have Eeeeeeenglish Windows? Wiiiinnnndows Viiiiiiista?" using super-slow, super-loud English. Then I answered him in Japanese, "Vista, GOD no." Barfy-face. "I'm using XP. But yeah, English version." And THEN he started talking to me like I was a real customer. ;) I think it was because I made the barfy-face when I said Vista, not so much because I was speaking in Japanese.

Yesterday!

1. Adorable elementary school kids being adorable all freakin' day long!

2. Kiryuu-sensei surprised me with a gift of homemade cookies and a lovely card.

3. I managed to sneak the packing peanuts from Debbie's Christmas care package into my Wednesday trash, and didn't get caught. VICTORY!!! (For those of you who don't know: It's actually illegal for me to throw out styrofoam peanuts, I'm supposed to hoard them until a special trash collection day that only comes around once a year, in March. Yeah, no.)

Today!

1. My epic one-woman re-enactment of the Christmas story in front of a class of second-years. Including epic stick-figure drawings on the chalk board. (You should've seen my lamb. It was a work of heartbreaking beauty. And I gave King Herod glowy red eyes and fangs, just because.) To top it all off: I did the same thing again for the special ed kids, and Captain ADD actually sat silent and rapt through the whole thing. Except for at the very end, when he stood up and said "Something's missing." Then he walked up to the chalkboard, took the orange chalk, and proceeded to give one of the three wisemen spiky orange hair. "Now he's a wise man."

2. Christmas party... at a sushi bar! Because that's just how we roll.

3. The Kimchi Man dropped by today! I bought some extremely epic kimchi. Now I hope it will last until

meiousei gets here, because I *will* inflict it upon her.

4. Another LOLtastic tribute to Soul Eater chapter 56. LOL. Public domain.

Yesterday, I...

...talked about Ultraman with one of my Namiai students for half an hour, mostly in English, and that is awesome.

...went to the bookstore and bought a pretty artbook! Mutuality is so devastatingly pretty. My brain is still melting from some of the paintings therein.

...wrote a livejournal post that I'm proud of. It feels good to be thinking about things again.

Today, I...

...had an awesome video chat with my family.

...kicked ass on my grad school applications.

...went for a walk, got to eat fresh crepes and oden for lunch, and got to pet the mysterious chocolate-and-white-marble-colored shiba inu that lives near Yamabiko. I shall henceforth call him Mr. Marshmallow Cocoa Pants.

...solved a logistics problem that had been plaguing the Sumiko and Vicky RE: the international festival that my village is hosting next month. Yay, problem-solving!

~~...am going to update PDK tonight. I swear. I swear to God. Newtype scanning powers, GO!!~~ ETA: Well, that didn't happen, as I felt tired and opted to go to bed instead. Will try again later.

Paper Moon

The Dreamwidth version.

Entries tagged with life: life update

Unexpected Treasures.

The wisdom of fourteen-year-olds.

(no subject)

Linkspam of Interest.

Why was I not aware of this until now?

Nobody ever wants to study Canadian.

What's up.

Winter lollerskates.

Two things that I saw while out shopping today.

I fail at science.

The last throes of unpacking.

Further bitching.

Awwww, sadness.

Tragery!

State of the Nena.

Scanner update.

Begging the flist for advice.

(no subject)

Happiness Meme, Days 7 and 8

Happiness Meme, Days 5 and 6