[Tinu.]

[Asa]

Congratulations to everyone who is ready for it - Usa and Darrion, and Nu, specifically.

Britland, are there any other companies in the area? I do know about missed opportunities... I hope you can come up with some sort of replacement activity.

My mother expects me to write ten pages tomorrow, because I've "been reading all those articles."

>.> ...I dare not tell her I've actually been reading zero articles, and in fact pulled some only five minutes before she made that claim this evening. I feel sick to my stomach with shame, but that still doesn't really improve my outlook for tomorrow... Agh.

On a lighter note, I just finished watching 1776 with a couple of friends, so that was a good way to end the day. ^_^
_________________
Self-styled Forum Grandmother, because I hand out nicknames and hugs whether you want them or not. ^_^

Keeper of the Library and the Gateway to Haven

Nem: "It's the sort of face you just know is getting ready to poke you with something sharp."
BS: "...then insist you eat a brownie."
__________________
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this and all is mended...
Give me your hands if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.

[Tenshi]

[Asa]

Made me giggle. Where did you find the symbols for that face?

I have no earthly clue why I'm so reluctant to get started on this paper. I'm just... shooting myself in the foot and it's not doing anything. On the plus side... actually there is no plus side.

At least I have a head's up about Atlanta now.

[Tenshi]

Today Darrion finished his first Minecraft superstructure. A 22 door hallway, which is a bit curvy and operated by pressure plate per door, will keep large monsters (and almost all monsters, due to path following and collision detection working against them) out of the structure itself. The structure itself is a 300 or so block tall, massive room. He's now working on building the inside, now that the walls are done. Each level is meticulously created with torches, ladders, stairs, and little waypoints to his resource caches.

I am incredibly impressed with this kid, not going to lie!

...and I was proud of this three story house I built, sheesh. I suppose I'll take solace in the fact that I play on Survival, meaning I had to mine and smith all of the items I used (literally, you have to punch a tree until you get wood from it in the beginning). He's playing Creative mode, where you just draw it from a menu.

Edit @Asa: Those eyes? lookofdisapproval.info/

I don't do a lot of sleeping. I've been an Internet denizen. I found.. Things. Things no sane mind should have found, but I have. And I've come back to warn you all! There is a world out there, a world filled with eeeeeeevil!
_________________
. Dubbed "Usagi" by AsA .
Keeper of the Siderean Swords

"If by chance some day you're not feeling well, and you should remember some silly thing I've said or done, and it brings back a smile to your face or a chuckle to your heart, then my purpose as your clown has been fulfilled."
Red Skelton

[Tinu.]

Today my mom gave me a copy of Strunk and White's The Elements of Style. I thinks she's trying to tell me something about my grammar.

She'd be right about that.
_________________
Keeper of Gaia and all the books on Earthsong

"If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing it is stupid."
~Einstein

[Asa]

Strunk and White is an excellent resource. A good investment.
_________________
Self-styled Forum Grandmother, because I hand out nicknames and hugs whether you want them or not. ^_^

Keeper of the Library and the Gateway to Haven

Nem: "It's the sort of face you just know is getting ready to poke you with something sharp."
BS: "...then insist you eat a brownie."
__________________
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this and all is mended...
Give me your hands if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.

[Tinu.]

I'm enjoying it so far. It's incredibly useful considering that the last time someone tried to teach me grammar was my freshman year of high school and I had no intention whatsoever of paying attention.

Today I went to a new phenomenon called a "satellite church". It's like a franchise. For a church. The pastor of all of the churches taught from 40 miles away via a video screen and kept making comments to the congregation I was in, even though he couldn't see us. It. Was. Weird.
_________________
Keeper of Gaia and all the books on Earthsong

"If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing it is stupid."
~Einstein

[Nem]

Today my computer exploded.

Sitting there, playing along quite happily and then *BANG* Everything just went blank. Smoke came forth from the computer.

-sigh-

Fuse blew on the plug going into the wall.

Edit: Got the camera working

[Clickable thumbnail]

Changed that, tried turning it on a second time at the back to run power through it - got a light on the motherboard as normal but when I tried turning it on I got this sort of fizzing sound and then the fuse blew again.

Took the graphics card out, turned it on at the back a second time and something else went pop and this time no light on the motherboard. ...

Tricksie. Using an old Mac we had lying around downstairs at the moment. Mac interface makes my head hurt. OSX. Bleh.

Got my HD from the other computer mounted in it so I know that's not slagged.

Problem is my computer was the only vaguely modern one in the house. Even the other PSUs are only rated for half what mine was. Can't even swap a graphics card from one of them around to see whether that's the problem.

Not that it makes much difference, I'm not rich enough to fix it at the moment anyway.

Plug that went into the wall didn't have the ground cable connected - which may have had something to do with the explosion. I mean it blew pretty violently - there are scorch marks on the socket. Which I'd show you but I'm on the Mac and it doesn't support my camera.

//---------------------------

Can't get lastpass to work on safari on this. Tried installing Opera but apparently it's not supported by this architecture. :/

Bleh.

Macs have several nice features - they don't have a registry - to install things you just move them to the applications folder, to uninstall things you just delete them from the applications folder....

They don't undergo bit-rot in the same way that Windows does.

But.

For all that there are several crippling difficulties. How do you turn the awful mouse smoothing feature off? I don't know. It's not in mouse options.

I can't even figure out how you're meant to open another tab in Safari. Don't know that you can with a version of Safari this old.

Mneh. I'm just a bit cranky.

Taking stock of the things that I know survived:

Hard Drive
Monitors

Beyond that? Your guess is as good as mine.

Could be quite a bill.

Thank god I saved my most important passwords to Last Pass - which, I believe, unlike the Opera password service allows you to view the passwords. So, even if I can't get the extension to install I should be able to scribble them down on a bit of paper.

Bleh, I need a cup of tea. I would have my laptop up here plugged into one of the larger monitors - run that for the time being - but it only outputs into RGB and I don't have the appropriate cord to .... Well, I might be able to steal one off the TV now I think about it.

Fnargle.

I know it gets hot in this room sometime but I really didn't expect the thing to explode on me like that. Truly grey something or other - a dust or smoke or something - wafting from your case is not the most reassuring sight in the world.

-----

Safari keeps telling me it wants to use the login keychain - which is going to have all the password for whoever was last on this machine >_>
_________________
Never forget,
We stroll along the roof of hell
Gazing at flowers.
- Issa

[Nem]

Today, opened the old PSU up. I'm not immediately surprised if this is the thing that fried - certainly there are no marks on the motherboard as there were on the plug in the wall. Then again I can't see any visible signs of scorching, that I'd have expected.




[Clickable thumbnail]

Does that huge cylinder (capacitor?) look bulged to you?



[Clickable thumbnail]



[Clickable thumbnail]

Ironically the bit right in the centre under the axis of the fan (the fan would sit on top of all this when it is assembled) is spotless. >_>

There's not really much more to see after having blown all that out - I wonder whether they've put a fuse in the switch or something so they could easily fix them if they got RMA'd - or just to make you buy a new one every five years or so.



[Clickable thumbnail]



[Clickable thumbnail]

I'm the sort of person where not knowing precisely what went BLAM - assuming this is what exploded at all (though all signs point to it) - is going to bug me for AGES.
_________________
Never forget,
We stroll along the roof of hell
Gazing at flowers.
- Issa

[Asa]

Went shooting with my dad and brother again - this time, we shot sporting clays.

It's sort of like trap shooting, in as much as trap shooting is like rifle shooting. In rifle shooting, you sit still, the target sits still, and you point the gun directly at the target. In trap you stand in one place, and the clay pigeons emerge from a trap house in front of you, going in various directions. You have to swing the gun around and fire in front of the pigeon, because they're moving targets. They start out like the upper pigeon in the linked image, and the goal is to make them look like the lower one.

In sporting clays, you stand at a certain point, and the pigeons emerge from literally anywhere - from any angle, at any height, going in any direction. It's incredibly dynamic, and you can't predict anything before you see the first pigeon at the station. I did quite well for myself, considering how poor a shot I am at trap and how badly out of shape I am, and hit one target out of three (mostly) at each station. A few times at the end, I hit two. My dad and brother, on the other hand, were consistently hitting six or seven out of eight or ten shots fired. I'm very proud of them, and a bit envious.

Then, when we got home, I made funnel cakes with my mother and brother, which my mother relented and sprinkled liberally with powdered sugar. ^___^ I do love powdered sugar.

However, possibly the most exciting part of the day was this: using a brand new seam ripper on a pair of jeans I converted into a skirt years ago. We'd used the wrong kind of fabric to fill the voids, so it has to be redone. Well, with the old ripper it took half an hour to do one long seam, and I had to yank out or saw at each stitch. With the new one, it took maybe ten minutes. All I had to do was place light pressure on it, and half an inch tore at once! It was amazing! No more aching hands! I love new tools. ^_^
_________________
Self-styled Forum Grandmother, because I hand out nicknames and hugs whether you want them or not. ^_^

Keeper of the Library and the Gateway to Haven

Nem: "It's the sort of face you just know is getting ready to poke you with something sharp."
BS: "...then insist you eat a brownie."
__________________
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this and all is mended...
Give me your hands if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.

[Allicat]

Britty, I'm glad you're feeling better, even if you did miss out on dive time with your Dad.

Asa, how's the paper going/gone?

Usa, good to hear about your back and Darrion!

Nu, fabulous news about the job!

Today my family left for their annual holiday and tomorrow I leave to go back to Norway for year two. I'm not used to being left, it's usually me doing the leaving. This isn't fun. I feel I should apologise!

It's been a brilliant summer. I've been with my family for 6 weeks, I've been to the Olympics, I've been back to Scotland and met up with friends and I've been told that one of my oldest friends has had feelings for me for over a year. Feelings which aren't unreciprocated. While I'm in Norway nothing can really happen, but if I move back to the UK at the end of the course and if we both still feel the same... there's wonderful potential there.
_________________
He who does not eat cheese will go mad. ~ French proverb.

Keeper of the fallen leaves. 'Cos they're still pretty.

[Asa]

Separating at all is sad, no matter who leaves first, but I'm glad to hear you had a good summer.

The paper... is exactly where it was before. Partial outline and an abstract. -_-
_________________
Self-styled Forum Grandmother, because I hand out nicknames and hugs whether you want them or not. ^_^

Keeper of the Library and the Gateway to Haven

Nem: "It's the sort of face you just know is getting ready to poke you with something sharp."
BS: "...then insist you eat a brownie."
__________________
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this and all is mended...
Give me your hands if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.

[Nem]

Maybe you need to lock yourself in a room with no internet connection, write the thing and include the article citations later or something, Asa. Just, something to get going....

//-----------

Today: new PSU's in, computer works again. Glad that the other one didn't take anything with it when it went. ^____^

That got here in 11 hours, from ordering it to it turning up at my door O_o

Shows it's worth spending a little more to get a decent PSU though. On the one hand it fried, on the other hand - it contained the damage entirely within itself by the look of things.
_________________
Never forget,
We stroll along the roof of hell
Gazing at flowers.
- Issa

[Tenshi]

Only have a minute while waiting for Darrion to pop out of the bathroom before we head to the park, but in brief:

@Alli: That's awesome news! Call me a hopeless romantic, but the distance-separated young hearts waiting for one another is one of those super classic stories. Like I said, hopeless, but I truly hope it does work out. If the feelings are there, start calling, sending letters, Skype, VoIP calls.. just contact, you know? Get to know the person. It's the little stories and in-jokes which makes long term relationships - friends or otherwise - so truly amazing.

@Asa: ...Please work on your paper? o_o'
For real though, I've got like a dozen links to cute pictures and entire website to offer you once you have it finished. Carrot and stick, yeah?

@Nu: Did I already congratulate you about your job? Yes? No? Either way, congrats again! Largely because I think it's going to be awesome, and I'm glad you have the opportunity to pursue it.

@Britland: How are you doing? Any time medical issues come into focus, I get nervous (perhaps just my own experience). How are things?

@Nem: ...I am now suddenly very, very glad that I helped wire much of the wiring in this house. I can't really tell much from the pictures (I'm not an electrical engineer or anything even close), but that wall socket looks positively torched.

On the PC side of things, the _type_ of beeps that your motherboard throws at you can mean something. If it's still beeping, then it is actually giving you an error code. That's a good thing. You can do The Google for "<brand> motherboard error codes" or the like. It depends on your motherboard and (possibly, though I'm not sure) your BIOS firmware. Either way, good luck.. that looks a bit nasty.

As an aside, because using the term "torched" reminded me of it, my UK friends and BBC lovers back stateside might find this interesting:

"Torchwood"
is an anagram of
"Doctor Who"

Mind. Blown.

Edit @Nem: Glad it's up and working. The above part of my post is largely irrelevant now. And yes, that is one of the reasons why I'll spend an extra $20 or so on power supplies. I've had towers survive lightning strikes coming up through the line before. Fried the NIC (unprotected), but even the power supply was fine. NICs are a lot cheaper than...well, anything else in the tower.
_________________
. Dubbed "Usagi" by AsA .
Keeper of the Siderean Swords

"If by chance some day you're not feeling well, and you should remember some silly thing I've said or done, and it brings back a smile to your face or a chuckle to your heart, then my purpose as your clown has been fulfilled."
Red Skelton