MILES to GO || before I sleep

Wow, it's been a while, huh? I guess my excuse is just that I've been busy with work: pulling around 40 hours a week (though last week I had only 28, which SUCKS when it comes to paying the damn rent) and then dealing with slowness on the computer.

In fact, I finally shelled out a load of money to get my internal hard drive on my MacBook Pro upgraded to a 320 GB. Or maybe it's a 300 GB, because OS X can only see 297 GB of that as my drive's capacity. I know that you never really get the full usage out of any given HD, but 20+ GB seems a bit excessive to me. Anyone?

With my laptop out of commission due to an Apple Tune-Up (all the way in Newport Beach, because I'm very occasionally dumb and figure that it's better to make an appointment with a store many miles and 2 hours -by bus- away rather than use my ProCare card to go on stand-by at a store that's much closer) and then for the upgrade, I spent a ton of time playing Kingdom Hearts. I'm at the point where I have to defeat Maleficent's dragon-form, but she thrashed me pretty badly once already, so I want to level up a bit more (my characters are mostly in their mid-40s, level-wise), upgrade my Aero spell, and so on.

Problem? I can't seem to beat Herc in the Hercules Cup tournament. Sometimes I can't even get to him, because every now and again, Cloud's a bitch and I can't beat him, either. This does not bode well, as I need to beat Hercules to get the ability to use Yellow Trinity marks, so I can return to Neverland, upgrade my Aero spell to Aerora, free the poor little puppies, and possibly beat Phantom (assuming he appears prior to Hollow Bastion being sealed) to level up before kicking Maleficent's dragon rear. Anyone have any tips for beating Herc, other than the usual: throw barrels at him from close range to make him lose his invulnerability, jump/dodge roll/glide a lot to evade his attacks, and have a LOT of items on hand, since you have to fight him alone, without Donald or Goofy?

So, while I'm avoiding playing the game because "lather, rinse, repeat" is never fun when it comes to playing one boss/tournament over and over again, I've been trying to clean out my mailboxes. I made the switch from Thunderbird to Mail 3, since I want more integration with OS X, and I don't like the Lightning add-on. I've opted to switch from POP3 (downloading all my emails) to IMAP (leaving all my emails on the server, and having the same folder structure wherever I am; this also means that if I delete something, it's GONE FOR GOOD), but now I need to figure out how to sort out all those thousands of emails that are already on my computer. It seems as though the best case scenario is to sort through them, somehow, and then for whatever ones I really do want/need, move them to IMAP so I can access them from anywhere, whether or not I'm on my laptop.

And for those of you that know me in IRL, sorting computer junk is just as hard, if not harder, than sorting real-life junk. Having a messy room most certainly equates to having a messy mailbox, except I try and establish rules/filters to somewhat sort things out...

I might post an F'Locked entry a bit later about work and people-drama, but for right now, that's it. I'm alive, okay (well, broke, but that's not exactly surprising), and hopefully going to Northridge tonight. :}

OH, and I MIGHT BE GOING TO A SARAH BRIGHTMAN CONCERT IN DECEMBER. :D :D :D :D

Your Gemstone Says...

You are stable, strong, and full of life. You are an inspiring person. People turn to you first for leadership and advice. You are able to gently help people get to where they need to be. And while you aren't afraid to lead when necessary, you are never heartless or bossy.

So, turns out any Kingdom Hearts data I had on my PS2 memory cards must have been on the ones I lost on the way back from Japan. I restarted my game tonight, and with the help of Megan, one of my roommates, we got as far as the final boss in Wonderland. It's a pain in the butt boss though, what with those sticks it keeps setting on fire... I run out of magic so fast, and it never seems to douse them... I suppose I could train in the Rabbit Hole a bit more, though.

I posted the latest chapters of WDKY up at FanLib, finally; it's been a pain in the neck because FL strips horizontal rules out of HTML submissions, which means I have to re-insert graphical ones (hence my asking for dividers/separators/lines/bars/rules whatever they're called) wherever I remember the scene break should be. And I still haven't done it for ALL the chapters yet, but it's tiring work, so I'm leaving it as is-- for now.

I also finished my Fandom 411 for the No Hiatus FanLib blog, which Cyn told me will be up by next week-- yay! I rec'd fics by guardian_kysra, obabscribbler, and winterwing3000, the 3 people I know for sure are on FL and posted something. BTW, Scribbler, I've discovered you can easily go back and edit your stories in something akin to FFnet's Quick Edit manager over at FanLib-- just click "Edit" on your story's "box" when you're viewing your profile, and you can tinker with it there. I'm sure if you fix the formatting before next week, you'll have a lot more readers/reviewers for your fic that's there. :)

Re-reading WDKY while posting it up at FL has got me straining to finish chapter 26 soon. Volunteers for betas and pre-readers gladly welcomed.

By the way, the sole reason why I'm even up right now is "practice" for Saturday and Sunday, when I have training shifts from 4:00 and 3:30pm (respectively) until MIDNIGHT. I need to figure out how to stay bright-eyed and bushy-tailed till at least 1am if this ends up being something on a regular basis (which I doubt, what with the whole PARK CLOSING AT 8PM!)