My sister has dug up and posted a picture of me which I think is one of the better ones of me I've ever seen. So:

( I am under the cut. )

Baldacci signs same-sex marriage into law.

That would be the Governor of Maine.

I don't even know what to say, you guys. I never dreamed this would happen here so soon. I thought maybe, you know, within the next decade or so. I mean, socially progressive Maine is not. It took repeated efforts over years of votes and referendums just to get equal rights made into law. I kinda figured we'd be one of the last, and but here we are, right up there in the first ten. In the first five.

I just . . . I'll be over here, being totally overwhelmed.

I work at a sandwich/pizza/pasta shop, and while we of course maintain perfect food hygiene at all times (. . . ahahahaha), there's been an additional notice posted about being even stricter about hygiene due to the swine flu. (I think we're up to five confirmed cases in Maine?)

It starts out with the obvious stuff about washing hands a lot and not sneezing on people, and then it - sort of unravels, until it gets to the following gem:

"If you have the swine flu, stay home and call your manager immediately."

. . . if I am diagnosed with the swine flu, my ass is probably in quarantine, and [shop name redacted] doesn't even make the list of my priorities, okay? I mean, there's probably some set of laws or guidelines in effect that would require some kind of contact, but believe you me, I'm not thinking of that without being reminded.

Oh, [shop name redacted because I don't feel like turning up on a Google search with this particular entry]. Never change.

I assume everyone on my flist knows by now that Amazon is made of douchebags, so I'll just get to the point:

Amazon Rank.

Why.

And here is a bunch of contact information for Amazon.

Ways in which computer/internet technology has progressed: I am no longer required to download a separate file in order to view Chinese or Japanese characters. No more rows of empty squares and question marks!

. . . admittedly, I cannot read Chinese or Japanese, so the characters make about as much sense to me as the empty squares and question marks did, but THAT IS NOT THE POINT.

Um. I seem to have a really interesting situation with my laptop.

I explained about the virus that required me to reinstall Windows in order to keep my CD-ROM working, 'cos my aintvirus software apparently bound it to my CD-ROM driver, right? Right.

So. Um. I reinstalled Windows, and my CD-ROM is working fine, but here is where the interesting thing comes in: I have poked around a bit on my hard drive, and apparently I did not so much wipe away my old version as I did, uh, layer over it. I have discovered that it is still there, complete with all the files I had on it.

So, my question: Is it at all safe to access any of those files to back them up, or do I risk unleashing that virus again? Alternately, in order to free up space on my harddrive once more, should I reinstall Windows yet again, following a different method than I used before? Or should I just say FUCK IT ALL, borrow more more from my financial aid, and replace my currently defunct Mac?

Things I am going to hell for:

* Singing Spike Jones's "Der Führer" under my breath while watching a documentary in Western Civ on Hitler's rise to power. (Okay, so this is only one thing. But it can't be good.)

Look, the documentary was awful. I mean, if a documentary uses the phrase "dark, demonic personality," can you really trust it? It's probably a bit much to demand a neutral presentation of facts when it comes to Hitler's reign, but must it be sensationalized? Isn't it shocking enough all by itself?

I Googled the doc in question and found that it was made in 1956, which explains a lot. Including my professor's use of it. I've written about this guy before, and how much I enjoy the effects of his seeming inability to move beyond a grounding point sometime in the seventies, but sometimes it is a bit questionable. There's got to be a billion documentaries on this subject that are better than The Twisted Cross. (See? Even the title is ridiculous!)

. . . anyway. I have been a bit MIA journalwise because I have been having issues with my internet, but this will hopefully be resolved shortly. In the meantime, I have a couple of stories in the works, one of which is finished and needs typing - it's written entirely by hand, on paper; it's been years since I did that! - and one of which is getting there and will need to be presented for inspection by the flist before I unleash it on fandom in general.

*deep, calming breath*

So. Anyone know of a wireless router I can set up without being REQUIRED TO USE THE DEFUNCT ETHERNET PORT THAT IS THE REASON I AM TRYING TO GO WIRELESS IN THE FIRST GODDAMNED PLACE?

. . . okay, so the calming breath didn't work. I have a perfectly good internet connection that I CANNOT USE and I am TRYING to find a way to deal with this. And it is not LETTING ME. I am so frustrated I could scream.

So you know that thing where people have been away from the Internets for a few days, and when they come back, they post saying Hey guys, I'm am way too damn lazy to scan back like a thousand entries on my flist, so if you could give me links to anything you think I might be especially interested in/was particularly important, that would be awesome?

Please.

(Guess who had to reinstall Windows? Apparently, the lack of working on my CD-ROM was due to a virus I picked up; Avast caught it and bound it up, but in the process had to kill my CD-ROM drivers. When the computer guys let the drivers loose, it let the virus loose! It was the kind of virus that doesn't let you log into your Windows account. So, reinstalling Windows and losing a bunch of stuff! Mostly stuff I can get back or just hadn't deleted because I was still pretending I was eventually going to use it, but also stuff like Trillian IM logs. I love IM logs. I actually use them sometimes. Ah well.)

Yeah, so, I gave up. My computer is with a local shop for investigation and possible repair. I should hear back in a couple days about what needs to be done.

This means that the earliest I could possibly get it back, between my work schedule and their hours of operation, is Monday, and that seems pretty unlikely. I'll have some access on campus, but don't expect to see me around over the weekend.

In other news, a couple items of dorktasticness:

* In Spanish class on Tuesday, discussion of iPods turned to discussion of downloads, and my professor said, "I've only downloaded one thing. Anyone else heard of Doctor Horrible's blog?" I believe my approximate response was "EEE." And then we had a brief geek bonding moment.

* Then later, in my Performance Genre class, we were discussing A Doll's House, and the professor was talking about Nora's limited options after the end of the play. He asked, "Where could she go?"

I thought for a minute, and then I decided: The Doctor showed up and grabbed her as a companion, obviously.

Now I almost kind of want to write this. Nora would be an awesome companion, and the timing would be perfect. The Doctor could help her find who she is, and he needs someone after Donna and the terrible writing unfortunate circumstances surrounding her departure. IT WOULD BE GREAT.

* I just saw Taken again. Why did I do this, when I already knew it kinda sucked and would get on my nerves? Um. I forget. It probably had something to do with Milliways, as do many things these days. But hey, it was kinda more fun this time around, and I noticed at least one difference between it and the British release I downloaded last year. It would just an editing thing, but it happened to involve leaving out the single most cringeworthy shot. I appreciated this very much.

Anyway, I'm running down on the time I bought at the internet café, so I must flee. I'll keep you guys updated as best I can.

Emergency trip to mall today, as my computer apparently did not feel the need to acknowledge the connection to my cable modem. I optimistically decided that the problem was the cable, so it's constantly falling out of the jack on the laptop and I've figured for a while that it's kinda broken but have lacked interest in spending money on a new cable.

Bad news: New cable is even worse fit, which forces me to admit that the jack is what's fucked up (which I secretly knew while firmly ignoring it), and that plus the unresponsive CD-ROM and a host of random other things are really going to require a trip to get it fixed in the near future. (Shame I don't drive, iarwain, because otherwise I would totally use the excuse to make the trip out to Nashua.)

. . . or maybe I'll just look into getting a wireless router. Do I have to do that through my ISP, or can I get one and hook it up myself?

If I do THAT, I will not be like my neighbors and blithely leave my network unlocked and leechable. :D

Good news: I was drawn to Borders by the irresistible force of books, and located a copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. (Yeah, that's right, I got it before you can order it on the Internets. Go, brick and mortar?)

The look on the cashier's face when I set it down was fantastic.

Oh, man. Here is my stupid snow story, since everyone else has one:

For the second Monday in a row and third Monday overall, my Western Civ class has been snowed out. We also missed a class because the professor was ill.

We are FOUR classes behind in the kind of basic framework history class that never covers everything it needs to cover ANYWAY. This is RIDICULOUS. We are supposed to have a test today that was meant to happen last Wednesday (it's a Mon-Weds class) and I now assume will happen this Wednesday.

I am feeling GREATLY WHINY about this. I don't think I've had a course yet that missed this many classes, and we're only a month and a half into the semester. He's gonna have to make some cuts from the syllabus, and dammit, I don't want him to cut any of the stuff on twentieth-century Russia. I am looking forward to those classes. Even though I also totally have a book that I'm going to read one of these days that will have much more information. I DEMAND MY RUSSIAN HISTORY IN CONVENIENT LECTURE FORM.

Oh, man, I think I love my Western Civ professor.

Random Classmate: "How long do you want the answers to be on the test?"
Professor: "About eight minutes."
My Classmates: ". . ."
Me: *spends rest of class fighting off intermittent gigglefits*

And he spent the rest of class answering the question without in any way offering helpful information. He's kind of amazing like that. He can be really exasperating, but he does love the subject and he's pretty funny sometimes. I mean, on purpose.

I just wish I didn't constantly have the feeling in that class like we're missing the most important stuff that really ties everything together, but I can probably only expect so much from a 100-level Western Civ class. I'm only taking it because it's a prereq for the French Revolution and Napoleon class I really want to take, anyway.

(Which: I know this is in no way a news bulletin to anyone who has previously managed to take a halfway decent world history class, but I have not done that until now, so - French history is FUCKED UP. How that country even still exists is frankly beyond me right now. Holy crap.)

Yeah, that meme that's going around. I got mine from sotto_voice.

Association Meme: Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.

( Really long works of literature )

( Obscure musicals )

( Red Sox woo! )

( Food service industry )

( Maaaaaaaine )

Boy, I love dragging myself out to campus to discover that my only class for the day has been cancelled.

. . . actually, the weather is gorgeous, my Creative Zen decided to present me with The Fix, and I walk to campus instead of taking the bus now so it was a lovely walk and I can leave whenever I want. Plus I can hang out in the computer lab and use the gigantic gorgeous Macs they have (seriously, so fucking pretty) to thread at Milliways and possibly even type up and finish polishing a Fix fic that I keep - uh, not typing and polishing.

So what was I bitching about again? MY LIFE IS SO HARD YOU GUYS.

I think I need to do another challenge request of some kind. I might do crossovers again. That was fun. I still need to round up and post the ones I did for the kiss challenge way back in like October. Which I still haven't finished fulfilling, and frankly, aside from the one I've written but not typed (you know who you are), I can't do the ones I have left. I just have nothing coming to mind whatsoever. That happens with these challenges; there are always a couple that don't click for me. Anyway. I suppose I could get going on compiling those here on the gorgeous Mac too.

Okay. In my Shakespeare class (I am taking a Shakespeare class, which I have only wanted to do for like ten years! but I digress), we are reading As You Like It. For some reason, the campus bookstore ran out of copies, so I have had a bit of an epic battle in the past couple of days trying to locate a copy. Borders had, I swear, EVERY SINGLE ONE of his plays EXCEPT AYLI. And an entire SHELF of Hamlet. WHATEVER, BORDERS.

So yesterday I went to the campus library, which I do not do much because it is gigantic and does not use the Dewey Decimal system (and, okay, the giant posters on the wall explaining how things are categorized aren't that hard to read, but it is still off-putting), and found the world's most antiquated edition of As You Like It. It's a 1963 reprinting of an edition first published in 1890. The "footnotes" frequently take up entire PAGES of the text, and always fill at least half a page, which is distracting and makes it hard to read the play itself.

And I NEED to concentrate on the play itself, because it is published with Elizabethan spelling intact. It's perfectly readable, but disorienting, and if you tell me that it would not take you a good thirty seconds to figure out the word "deuife" even with Obvious Context, you are a LIAR.

. . . so I think I'm gonna order a copy off Amazon, which I was avoiding because I didn't want to lose too much time waiting for it. We have vacation next week, so it'll still get here in time to get plenty of use out of it. I'll just make do with with this crazy edition until then. It's neat and all and I'd hang on to it if I was just reading for fun, but since it's for school, I'd like an edition that as immediately accessible as possible.

Okay, so. Two of the three Aussies on my flist have checked in as not being anywhere near the bushfires.

Anyone know where, roughly, tahira_saki lives? My favorite answer would be "not in Victoria."

A few random items, because I would like to get into the habit of, like, posting again. Or at least to not have entries on the front page that are from October.

* My Western Civ professor is about as stereotypical as a history professor can get. It's amazing. His terminology is grounded firmly in the seventies at the latest - he refers to "examinations," which I of course am aware of as a term for tests, but I have never once had a teacher who used it before now. He also explained to us about Louis XVI being in "the hoosegow" during part of the French Revolution. The hoosegow, you guys. And he said it twice. I kind of love him a lot.

Also, his scorn for the aforementioned Louis XVI knows no bounds. He kept cracking on the guy for not being able to make a damn decision, and he would do it in this polite-history-teacher way that just made it more awesome. He sounds like he's editing himself for the classroom, but if there was some kind of French History Bitching Session, he would just let it rip and really tear Louis XVI a new one.

* Victoria's Secret sells lollipops. I do not know if this is a new thing, since I only started shopping for proper bras (as opposed to sports bras for Wal-Mart) like six months ago, but it is new to me. And hilarious. And of course I bought one.

. . . and, since it was of a particular brand, it qualified me for a free small stuffed dog. It is flashy and ridiculous and I cannot determine a reason for it to exist, and I have a history of naming stuffed animals after characters in whatever fandom I'm in at the time. So, obviously, Bewildering Scribble Dog's name is Jack.

* The series three Doctor Who finale arc makes less sense every time I watch it. It also makes me want to write more year that never was fic. And that just brings me back to the stagnating recent-past-paradigm, because even though I STILL have no idea where to end it and have more or less decided that including the YTNW is not entirely workable, I just still can't shake the idea. Maybe it needs to be another fic, or something. Maybe there's a reason I can't get any farther with what I've got. Maybe I need to suck it up and start writing the damn thing again already. It might help to start doing drabbles again or something.

* The finale does, however, contain one of my favorite lines, after Saxon greets the President right before the broadcast: "Can I make you some tea? Or is that not American enough? *pause* Can I make you some grits? What are grits, anyway?" Because he doesn't go for the obvious coffee joke! Also: GRITS. Ha. I wonder if RTD was aware of that joke being extra-funny because grits are a specifically Southern food, and a lot of our Presidents have been Southern. If it was just because grits are inherently funny, that's okay too.

* Seriously. Does anyone know of a good drabble challenge community that I can use to get myself posting again? I spent about a month last year posting drabbles every day and it was fun! For me, at least.

So I have this thing where I cry much more easily over fiction than reality. Why? I don't know. I suspect a lot of people do the same. Anyway, today this translated rather hilariously into me merely misting up during President Obama's inauguration speech, and then twenty minutes later on the bus having to all but restrain sobs over Billy Shipton as I watched Doctor Who on my Zen player. Priorities, my tears ducts has them.

Today was the first day of classes, which I was a bit put out over since I wanted to watch the inauguration, but the class I would have been in during the swearing-in ended early because the professor wanted to see it, and they had places set up everywhere to watch. I got to the spot on the Gorham campus just in time to see (well, hear, it was very crowded) President Obama have difficulty retaining sentences in his short-term memory long enough to repeat them, which, seriously, I just wanted to pet him. It was very adorable. superior knowledge of the Constitution, which is very slightly less adorable but far more useful. So I watched that and most of his speech before I had to run for the bus back to the main campus, then another class, then I hung around the campus center watching the set-up they had there until I got too cold and had to flee. And now I am in the much warmer computer lab with the CNN feed running.

Awesome new classes (Spanish and Shakespeare so far; one more today and one more tomorrow), awesome new president (other thing I am restraining myself from: typing "President Obama" fifty times in a row. I would be crying properly by the end of it), and awesome new way of entertaining myself on the ride between campuses. This is a good day.

(President Obama.)

(President Obama.)








PRESIDENT OBAMA.

For sotto_voice, because eighty-seven people definitely won't have linked you already:

Rwanda's Bagosora sentenced to life for genocide.