Otakon tomorrow, had good news from Ari today, and work wasn't actually that bad - the old people are nice, it's just the little kids that are brats ^^ And I'm both hyper and tired at the same time.
Anyway. Not much else to say, if I don't post again, I'll be back Monday. Cell phone works nicely for reaching me ^^
Mara, it is beauteous <3 And makes me think it's time for something new and prettier around here.
Also, it is pouring rain out. I love the noise it makes, and the way it smells.
Much love to all of my friends ^^ <3
*yawn* Had a rather nice if sleep-deprived weekend. Mara has written up a rather good little summary, saving my half-asleep mind from doing so. My only random additions are that I personally think there isn't much excuse for people who can be organ donors to not be, I hate how I love languages but have neither the talent or opportunity to really learn them, and the four of us have taken to calling tomatoes the Fruit of the Damned (the title is Ari's invention, we just find it very funny)
And now, because Ammie asked (tangent, but I so share the Segway thought there ^^), and I can't refuse people who are all 'I WILL SEND YOU CHOCOLATE FISH! <3', we have the crazy photoshoot, at last ^^ Featuring Mel and I as Seishirou, Claudia as Subaru, and Winter as herself the photographer.
-Subaru, tree, and Seishirou ^^
-Subaru and a different tree (there are lots around my house
-The above with odder lighting
-The two Seishirou have a talk (I look vaguely high >.>)
-Cocoa!SeishirouxPhotographer XD
-frightened!photographer and Mel!Seishirou
-...Now with more reversible action!
-VaguelyFluffy!SeishirouxSeishirou
Currently at t3h Claudia's, along with Mel ^^ Did cosplay stuffs last night, as well as dyeing my hair, which is now Seishirou-black. w00t, accurate hair, finally!
Anyway. Not much other than that, except much love, hugs, glomps, and other such outward displays of affection to C. So happy you're home and doing better, mi amiga. Will call you when I'm home and not about to fall asleep myself ^^
Driver's ed = over! Still need to do the road lessons, but after that I'm good to go come September.
Also, I'm going to be gone this weekend, mostly at Mara and Claudia's houses. This means I will most likely not be on AIM or LJ, although I'll try to check LJ and my e-mail once or day or so. The best way to get in touch with me if nessecary is by cell phone, for anyone who has the number. Other than that, I'll probably be home Sunday night and see everybody then ^^
So, was looking for a particular article about future car safety features in my massive bin of back issues of PopSci and Wired, and I came across my old scrapbook. Now, people who have known me long and well enough know that I save everything. I've got a whole drawer of letters and cards I've recieved over the years, going as far back as third grade, at least. This scrapbook is about that old, although I haven't really added anything to it for the last few years.
Flipping through it, there's all of these memories, and random amusement. I've got the scripts from our 6th and 7th grade OM skits - the 7th grade one actually being exceptionally funny (the one in 6th grade was too long and got thrown out the night before the tournament). I may have to scan it or type it up or something ^^ I also have autographs from Harvey Ball, the guy who invented the smiley face, and Scratch, mascot to our never-heard-of, forgettable, almost perpetually losing, city hockey team, the Icecats.
Also, there is the final proof that I'm a shameless nerd, have always been a shameless nerd, and will always be a shameless nerd - you know, if the fact that I read both Wired and Popular Science didn't tell you that already ^^ Dunno if anyone else remembers this, or maybe they only really made a big deal of it around here, but back in the winter of '97/'98 there was that weather system known as El Niño making its way around, and according to me six years ago, leaving a whole lot of rain. Yes. I was enough of a science geek at age ten to go out and write down all this stuff about the storm conditions, and how much rain was falling, and how deep puddles were and such. It's all recorded on this little scrap of paper, in messy handwriting with absolutely horrific spelling.
I'm strangely proud of myself ^^
...or In Which Cocoa Attempts to Summarize a Week In One Post
Yeah, so things have been kind of busy the last week or so, and I've been really dead tired, which is why the world gets this all at once ^^ Started driver's ed last Monday, and man, does it suck. The instructor isn't a bad guy, but he can't hold on to a train of thought at all, so he'll sort of stop in the middle of statements, and wander off on tangents, and then forget what he meant to say, so it ends up being really boring. Add in that it's three hours every morning at 8:30, and yeah, I thouroghly dislike it. But it's only until this Friday, after which I can actually sleep well again. I've also been working a few different afternoons, which is as always, boring as hell, although I have found that not all of my co-workers are total bitches - a few of them are, but some of the other ones are really nice.
This past weekend got kicked off going to see a free outdoor performance of Twelfth Night, put on by a brand new theatre company. They suffered a bit from the massive lack of funding, in that there was very little in the way of sets or costumes, but it was otherwise quite good. First time I had ever seen Twelfth Night, and I enjoyed it ^^ Saturday was largely lazing around the house and sleeping late. My mom and I decided we were going to see Spiderman 2, but it ended up being some special showing that cost more, so we went to see I, Robot, instead.
Being a massive, massive Asimov fan, I was convinced they were going to totally kill it, but it was actually surprisingly good. For those who don't know, I, Robot isn't actually really a novel as much as a series of loosely connected short stories. The movie kind of used lots of different elements from the different stories, as well as one or two that I think were from The Caves of Steel, and succeded into making them all into some sort of coherent whole. The only major thing I found fault with is that I've always imagined Asimov's futures as being a little darker, more grimy, I suppose. Not quite as much as Gibson's Sprawl, but up there. Personal interpretation, I suppose ^^
We then came home, and I ended up watching South Park, and the South Park movie on tv with my brother. Very funny, although kind of stupid humor ^^
Sunday was yet another free Shakespeare night, this time in Boston. Bigger, older theatre company, the same ones who put on Macbeth last summer (which I give myself away as an X fan by saying I loved and found it to be wonderfully dark ^^), this time with Much Ado About Nothing. I invited Grace to come with us, and it was quite enjoyable except for a brief bit of rain. My mind is kind of stalling on commentary at the moment, so I may come back to that another day.
Which brings me to today, which will probably end shortly as I need to go to bed before I fall asleep down here. (Oh, another sign I need sleep is that I played part of the Ocean Lab section of Deus Ex, and then came down here and had the strange sense that my basement was half-filled with water or something...)
In a deviation from my current pattern of either using this space to rant, ramble, or whine about my life, I am instead going to rant, ramble, and whine about some blogging and internet issues instead.
To start things off, a few weeks ago, I switched over to Mozilla Firefox. I've had it installed for a while, but I was always rather attached to Internet Explorer and couldn't be bothered to learn something new. However, my system got hit with some spyware or adware or a virus or something, which caused IE to crash violently - it would freeze, I couldn't close it or do anything with it, and I couldn't access any of my folders, because Windows uses IE to display those. The only way to fix this was to reboot, which I dislike doing, particularly when I'm in the middle of something. I discovered I could access other programs from the Start menu, including Mozilla, which worked while IE was frozen. And I have yet to look back ^^
In a bit of shameless promotion, I will tell you all that I absolutely love this browser. It runs so much smoother and faster on my PC than IE ever did, the tabbed windows are particularly cool (I can look at multiple pages without having to open up the program over and over!), I have yet to get a single pop-up ad, and it hasn't crashed or frozen once ^^ Plus, 'Firefox' is a far cooler name for a browser than 'Internet Explorer'.
However, this leads to some interesting webdesign problems. Namely, a great number of people assume that everyone in the world uses IE, and only test their layouts in IE. Largely, code is cross-browser compatible. Practically all the sites I check on a regular basis are readable in Mozilla, and look nearly the same as they do and IE (The one big change being scrollbars - colored scrollbars are IE only CSS). But then, on a few sites, I get this. Which is utterly unreadable and unnavigable. There's at least two blogs I read doing this too, and another one that used to before the layout got changed, although I won't rant on specific people in public. The moral? Do the world a favor, and check to make sure your layout works in other browers, as well as other resolutions (that's a whole other box of worms). I know I do, and I'm quite proud of the fact that my layouts don't look like crap in resolutions and browsers other than IE at 800x600 (which is what I originally design in). Currently in the process of finding whatever bug (something in the CSS or div tags, I believe) causes that problem above, so I can metaphorically smack people upside the head with the version that actually works ^^
On to another topic! I told Ammie I would eventually write out my thoughts on the subject of LJ vs. blogs, so now that I'm all fired up, I will, although it's more of a 'pros and cons of LJ in list form, and why the cons outweigh the pros'
Pros of LJ
-Friends page: Good for checking lots of LJs at one link, although you could concievably do the same thing with blogs and RSS if people would bother with it.
-Threaded comments: One of the two things that as far as I know are unique to LJ that I really like. I find threaded comments seem to promote more discussion (as well as randomness ^^)
-Friendslock/Custom privacy settings: Even I occasionally have things that I'd rather keep from specific people. However, people keep asking for features along these lines for future builds of Movable Type, so we'll see what happens.
Cons of LJ
-Friend's Only: I've expressed my dislike of it before, and I'll do it again. I know people have their reasons, but it's irritating to an outsider. I read blogs and LJ because I find them interesting. Guess what? I can't tell if you're intresting if I can't see your entries!
-Friending and the politics thereof: Ties in with the above, and probably is going to get the most ranting. People get too...worked up and emotionally tied to their friends list, and who friends them back and whatnot, I guess is the best way to put it. People will bitch and whine about being defriended, and I know I've got people who's LJs I don't really find terribly interesting to read any more that I haven't taken of my friends list because I don't want to deal with a bunch of pissed of people. Several of them are people on Friends Only who I friended just to see if I would actually like reading what they wrote. While doubtless this type of thing exists somewhere on regular blogs, I've been reading and blogging for nearly three years now and have yet to see any of it. Also with blogs, there's more of a sense that the people who link you do so because they actually read your blog. I can practically guarantee you that half the people who friended me on LJ, though, don't really. And don't say 'I don't care if people read it or not', because deep down inside, half the point of keeping public journals is to want to share your thoughts and/or life with the world, and it's nice to know people do in fact read it. I'll fully admit it, I like knowing that people actually read my blog.
-Layouts: LJ is a webdesigner's nightmare. You can't change very much with a free account, and it's awful to try to write HTML that will display properly on more than one browser/resolution (I figured it out, but it took a lot of experimenting), and even if you have a paid account, the LJ code is a total bitch to deal with. And coming with someone who used to deal with tables and still deals with CSS, that's saying something. And even then, nobody sees your nice layout except you because everybody reads from their friends page. I'm a webdesigner. I like pretty layouts. I like seeing pretty layouts. I like people seeing my pretty layouts. I like other people seeing other pretty layouts.
In short, I really only keep LJ around because I know that nobody reads this thing any more. I love it so very much more than my LJ, it's just not many other people feel the same way. And now all my pro-LJ friends will come screaming down on me, but I don't give a fuck. There was more I had to say about something, but it got lost somewhere under my elitest bitching and now I forgot ^^
So. Managed to pass my CPR recert class on two and a half hours of sleep, which is largely a good thing. The instructor was cool and gets major points for using the term 'Whack-a-Baby', as, well, that's what you do to a choking baby, mostly - flip them over and hit them hard between the shoulder blades.
As for today, Mel and Claudia came over (and are currently asleep upstairs in my living room), and then Winter came over for a while too, and we planned and cooked and talked, and took wrong, wrong photos (Seishirou/Seishirou XD), and watched Prince of Tennis. I've come to the conclusion that I'm basically the only one of my friends that I know of that has no major problems at all with their parents. I know damn well how lucky I am - both my mom and my dad are wonderful people, and I love them a great deal ^^ And I should go to bed, I have my first driver's ed class at 8:30 tomorrow >.>
It's two am, and I can't sleep. I wouldn't mind, except I have a CPR recertification class so I can keep working as a lifeguard at eight. Oh well. Hot shower and black tea for me, I guess.
Anyway. Good news! Through an act of stunning good will by her mom, I'm going to Otakon! Yeah, biggest anime con in the US, for the very first time ^^ At the moment costume plans are along the lines of X!Sei, Shikifuku!Sei, possibly TB!Sei, and Tatsumi. Exact plans are being formulated Sunday when Mel and Claudia come over ^^ There is a certain person who's metaphorical Seishirou-cosplaying ass I fully plan on kicking, as revenge for all the shit they've pulled on some of my friends.
And, um, there was more. But now I've forgotten it ^^;
I return! Yes, I'm back from the land of relatives and tons of food (In the rural South, I've found, everything is an occasion for food. Lots and lots of food. Most of it is pretty good though - green beans, biscuits, tons of corn-on-the-cob ^^). Strangely enough, the item I'm happiest to have back is my keyboard. I always have trouble using other people's keyboards, particularly laptop ones and really new desktop ones - I guess I'm just too used to the key placement and key resistance on the one I've got now.
Anyway. Last few days. Drove up to Philadelphia on Friday, hung around the house some, and then went into the city Saturday afternoon. After a little bit of confusion, I managed to meet up with Audrey and Micheal, and we walked, shopped (I got Queen CDs! *is shameless geek*), ate, talked, and generally hung out, which was really cool ^^ Sunday was largely spent playing FF8, which is finally starting to get interesting, and then going into the city to see the fireworks, which were awesome - probably the best I've seen aside from Disney.
And that's about it. Flew home this moring, and am currently wishing I didn't have to go to work in a hour.
Last post from the South, most likely, although I'll probably check my e-mail and LJ friends list before I head out. Will either be in Virgina with cousins tomorrow night, in which case I'll have both internet and cellphone, or in Philly, in which case I'll probably just have cellphone. If I don't post again, I'll see everybody again from the good ol' North ^^
Anyway, didn't do much today - slept late, sewed, hung around online, and talked to Marina on the phone for like, two hours, which was nice because I haven't done that in a while. I shall call people more often, although probably from home where I can kill the long distance bill and nobody will notice >.>
Also, happy slightly belated Canada Day to all my Canadian friends and my dad - it's still the 1st over there, I'm not _too_ late ^^
(Yay cousin's boyfriend and his laptop and dial-up <3 *has internet access again, for now*)
I meant to bring this up in my other entry, but I kind of got distracted by having other people around me. Even the thought of people reading over my shoulder bugs me, it's kind of a pet peeve.
Anyway. So, last night, before I went to bed, I decided to read TB 2, because I wasn't quite ready to go to sleep, and I hadn't read my English copy of it yet. And then, because I had it with me me, I read through X16 again (I use 'read' in a very loose sense here, as I have basically no Japanese comprehension). And...I think I caught a glimpse of something I've been missing for a while - what I guess could be called my Seishirou. What I see in him, why I love him, and most importantly right now, why I started cosplaying him.
I've been starting to realize recently that I've grown from cosplaying Seishirou for me, to somewhat cosplaying him for certain other people, who I think know who they are and thus won't be named, and in a competative, unhealthy way at that (My two Subarus, Hokuto, and Tree-san, I don't mean you guys. Don't get upset, it's not your fault ^^). I do unfortunately have tendancies towards jealousy, and being competative. And now...now, there is a standard to match. One that I can't match, at least in the eyes of most. This, in turn, leads to two problems:
One, not cosplaying for love of the character, which is a nasty rut, and one I promised myself I would never fall into, and two, tensions and problems with aforementioned certain people, who I really do love and admire, possibly more than they realize, beyond all the times I get jealous of them, or upset with them. And everybody else has to put up with all that, unfortunately ^^;
As for a solution - amoung other things, I think I need to find that reason I started cosplaying Seishirou for myself, and holding on to it. How, I'm not entirely sure, but I'll try. And...I think I need to find a way out from under their shadow, or how to stop being jealous of them, because it'll make it harder to go back to being non-competative about this.
...Wow, that was a hell of a lot about cosplay. Never let it be said I don't take it seriously, I suppose ^^ Anyway, interested in hearing thoughts and comments on my crazed, early-morning ramblings ^^
