-Saw Hackers over the weekend. Cheesy cyberpunk-esque goodness, and young Angelina Jolie with short hair? Hot.
-I forgot how much I <3 IRC. Seriously, BT may be for the masses, but nothing beats a steady transfer rate on some super-obscure file (in this case, out of print SR and VtM books)
-I love cheesy Halloween decorations. Like eyeball bowls and cheap mummy and frankenstein straws
-I'm going to buy an mp3 player today (Creative's website can't handle billing and shipping addresses in different countries, so I have to call). It's already named (hint: it's big and black, and all my peripherals are named after Turks).
-The laptop battery is pretty much toast - it can hold hibernation for a few hours, though.
-I keep being tempted to start wild Christmas planning, despite it not being November yet >.>
-Started playing Persona 2 last week - will probably blog about that in detail later.
-Go go Red Sox! May have to gloat at Nick tomorrow night, and begin heaping my pity on the Canucks instead (although they're doing okay this year, I think?)

Seriously, guys, this is getting ridiculous. Latest casualty in the ongoing technological death around me? My laptop battery. It was fine a week ago. Then suddenly it could only hold 40% capacity. Now it's saying 'irreparable damage to the battery has been detected'. Nevermind that it was working fine when I went to bed last night, and all I did was run the battery gauge reset (which shouldn't damage the battery, it just syncs the software with the actual charge capacity). And Lenovo US says my battery doesn't actually exist. Lenovo Canada has it - for a nice big $180. I'm going to try running the gauge reset again, but gah.

Also, Creative has some good prices on refurbished mp3 players. Can anyone give any input on buying manufacturer refurbished electronics? I'm always super-hesitant about buying used, but I don't have the money for new right now...

So apparently I've got straight Cs in three of my five classes (one hasn't had a midterm yet, and the other isn't marked yet). And then, instead of having fun in Earthdawn, we all nearly died. Snatching victory from the jaws of defeat would be nice, if we had more than a fifty percent chance of surviving next week. But we don't, and if we all die then, it makes tonight even more pointless.

I wish I could get a re-do on this week.

So, today started out as a normal bad day - slept badly, felt kinda sick, left my USB mouse at home when I was going to be on campus all afternoon, that sort of irritating shit. And then around seven, I get a call from my landlord, who lives upstairs, saying 'Are you home? The alarm just went off'. And of course, I'm on campus - which means bad things are happening.

Turns out our house was broken into - cops think two people. They got in through one of the windows in my suite, tripping off half the the alarms, went into my bedroom and rifled through the nice-looking jewelry box, taking nothing, pried the door to the the upstairs half open with a crowbar, most likely (the deadbolt was almost totally ripped out of the door), setting off the other half of the alarms, and then riffling through my landlord's bedroom. Luckily, we had some fucking stupid thieves - they only made off with one laptop, which was pretty new and didn't have much installed on it. My video games and systems weren't even touched, including Jon's Wii. They ripped off all the alarm panels, probably thinking that it would kill the alarm (only kills the sound, the control panel keeps sending alerts), but they fit right back in and still work fine. So we're going to beef up security some in hopes of thwarting a second attempt by the same guys.

So, what with the mp3 player deaths and all, I'm in the market for a new one. I'm basically looking for something that is 1) reliable and 2) at least 20 GB. The 20-30 GB range is what I'm really looking for. I basically just want something that plays music - doesn't need video or photos or a tuner or whatever else.

Any advice? Ones to avoid would be handy as well.

Downside: I managed to accidently throw my two weeks from new CD player into a wall. 'How did you do something like that accidentally?' you say. Well, when you don't realize it's balled up in some blankets, and then toss said blankets onto the bed with a little more force than was probably necessary, this wonderful thing called momentum sends the heavy things flying fast into walls, and scuffing paint. It's toast, and I can't find the receipt, so I'm out $25. This is not a good year for me and personal electronics - two mp3 players and a CD player D:

Upside: I have a shiny new giant silver Ikea bookcase, full of stuff, which means the stuff isn't on my floor, and it actually looks more like I _live_ here now. And I found my Seishirou bling, which I was positive I had lost at a con sometime long ago, and was never going to see again.

Also, OMG, Lady's in DMC4 and wearing hot pants? WTF? Trish too, but she doesn't look any trashier than she did in DMC.

So apparently SR4!Ally is like a kinder, gentler Satsuki - technomancers do what Satsuki does, talk to machines like people. I find this strangely amusing, but must admit that Ally talking the computers into telling her what she wants sounds, well, very Ally-like. And sticking a technomancer in a shielded area is not unlike sticking a normal person in a small, totally dark closet. I kind of want to stat Satsuki up for SR4, but I wouldn't actual play her, because misanthropists are less fun to play in a team setting, and I want to try my hand at a non-hacker at some point. I may actually stat up a version of Tseng, possibly going for a combat-oriented adept, as he's not really a cyberware kind of guy. It wouldn't quite be the same without the subordinates screwing with his stuff and asking if the moldy loaf of bread in the fridge can be be a new team member, but I like playing his personality - dry humor mixed with an ability to be ruthless and very, very dangerous when necessary - and I could make the backstory work out. I dunno, we'll see how long it takes this team to bite the dust XD;

I can't tell if it's because Excel is too user friendly, or too non-user friendly, or some strange combination of the two, but it takes forever to figure out how to accomplish some seemingly simple task. Like adding a linear line of best fit to a graph. This is in part because searching the help for 'trend line graph' gives adding a trendline to a graph as the tenth or twelfth hit, rather than, say, the first.

In giving thanks for small miracles, however, the three-month garbage strike has finally ended, which means come Wednesday morning my week-old three bag of mashed yams will be gone, along with some truly sketchy hot-pot leftovers. And my video card, integrated though it may be (look, it was like $200 cheaper, okay?), is still awesome enough to run Halflife Source, which means I have something to do when I actually have time to play games again.

I have just spent the last three hours working on stats. It's all very simple stuff, but the data sets are really big, and my graphing calculator batteries are dead, so I can just program the set in and then let it run all the functions. On the plus side, it's the worst of all my current assignments, and it's _done_. I had my first midterm yesterday, which I'm fairly certain I did terribly on - I didn't realize it was yesterday until Tuesday afternoon, at which point it was too late to do much other studying than rechecking my notes (I don't pull all-nighters to cram, it would just make me do worse). I think I passed, though, which is a start.

Thanksgiving on Monday was fun - unlike my mother, I almost managed to get the amount of food right so we weren't swimming in left-overs for a week (too much mashed yam, though). Unfortunately between this and a large cell bill from August, I should probably not spend money on anything other than food until next month, really - although I think in the confusion I've paid my next cellphone bill as well (Rogers doesn't list late payments until the next billing cycle, which is really confusing).

My dad is coming next week, my house is almost clean, I'm helping Jon go shopping tonight - life is largely pretty good.

Finished Twilight Princess last night - overall, an excellent game, although it seems to me like the last few Zelda games have been getting easier. Maybe it's because I'm getting more skilled? Not sure. I do miss having a bit of challenge in boss fights, though. This lead me to reminiscing about the old Zelda fandom, back about nine or ten years ago - there are all these fics I used to read that have all fallen off the web. Even HTLOZ isn't the same any more. Weird to think how things change.

And because I haven't done this in a while, and have lots more new OCs, the 'ask my characters anything' meme returns! The list: Jorim, Anya, Ally (SR and SF), Asher (RR and SF), Lucia, Isaac, Raphael, and I'll field my version of canon characters, like Eva and Tseng, too.

- Jon is really cute in glasses <3
- Had another mp3 player death (my brother's old one) over the weekend, so I bought a CD player until I have enough for a new mp3 player
- Thinking of joining Fencing Club, but I'm not sure I want to sacrifice my Thursday evenings for it
- This has lead me to wondering if my old fencing instructor remembers me - probably not.
- And fencing gear is pricey. Damn.
- For the first time since moving here, I lost money converting from USD to CDN instead of the other way around.
- I impulse-bought a 1GB flash drive today. It was only $15, okay >.>?

Two words: Trolls waterskiing.

Along with having more money for food, and of course, my ever-wonderful boyfriend, this managed to make up for the fail that was the rest of the day. Said fail included labs running overtime, low withdrawal limits, my bank having shitty hours ('we're open late - until 5!'), and managing to get to the last monster level in the Cave of Ordeals in Twilight Princess - only to die. Oh well. Gotta balance the good with the bad.

I feel like I should be posting more, but it's all 'blah blah work blah school blah' lately - funny stuff happens, but I never managed to _remember_ it.