MILES to GO || before I sleep

At some point in the not-so-distant future, I will finish my cute wallpaper of a kitten trying to be a lion. And possibly make matching icons.

In the meantime, now that Lion (Mac OS X 10.7) is out, I'm going through my list of apps to try and determine which ones are PowerPC (read: not going to work on Lion, ever!) and which ones are Intel/Universal binaries (read: probably will work, but not guaranteed).

Of those, I'm trying to find out which ones I can and cannot live without. For the ones that I can't, I'm looking for solutions. For example, realMyst. It's an amazing game, with levels you won't find in the other versions of Myst out there, even for Windows (as far as I know). It's also PowerPC-only and unlikely to get patched or updated in any way to be compatible with Lion.


The solution? Get Steam for Windows and download it there for cheap. That particular version of Myst from Steam IS realMyst, so it'll have the special world that doesn't exist in the other Myst releases, will be all kinds of awesome and while yes, I'll have to run it in Windows, for a game like Myst, it's actually kind of worth it.

For everything else, please offer suggestions as to other/better/newer apps that are Lion-compatible, or let me know if there's an update I should get (hopefully free, but if I have to pay for it, them's the breaks).

( PowerPC-only apps )

After this is looking at all the other Intel-based apps and seeing which ones
a) haven't updated lately, and therefore may not work with Lion
b) I don't care about/use no matter how recently they've updated

And I think that's it...right? I almost seem Lion-ready...

So, after-- lost count how many times--I've successfully managed to install, activate, and run every application in Adobe's Creative Suite 4. This most recent time, everything was working EXCEPT Acrobat, which of course, is one of the three programs I use on a regular basis (the other two being Dreamweaver and Photoshop, of course), and as a "solution," Adobe's Customer Service suggested I uninstall and reinstall everything, and use the same "Clean Script" app that mangled my CS3 install and forced me to download the CS4 trial that mangled this install.

Needless to say, I was wary. I had installed this CS4 twice already and was still having issues. But this time, I really did get rid of EVERYTHING Adobe, and the re-installation went smoothly.

I ran Acrobat immediately after the install and it whined about a licensing error, which is what the CS4 trial had been doing after I used Clean Script, but once I installed the updates, it started working again. I opened up a file with it, and opened up a file in Safari (which, for some bizarre reason, requests Acrobat's permission to display, even though you can view PDFs natively in Preview and in some browsers), so everything seems to work fine. Acrobat even has "Enter Serial Number" grayed out, and when I click on "Register," my information is already filled in (and presumably sent to Adobe, since I finally got the "free benefit" email).

I'm still unable to install this "Adobe CSI CS4 1.0.1 Update," as it keeps failing to install, so I'll mention that in my case reply, but otherwise...everything's FINALLY working again. Interestingly enough, for the CS4 case, Adobe told me someone would actually be calling me within 48 hours, and it'll be 48 hours at the end of today, so we'll see if that actually happens and what they'll say/do.

I'm just glad I didn't have to do an Erase & Install after all. Yesterday while I was testing various apps to see if I could re-create the crash that had Photoshop so disabled, I ended up ditching a few apps, sorting the rest, and seeing just a few crashes, all with different SIG errors.

They are:
* Adobe kuler - SIGBUS (once) -- I ended up uninstalling this anyway, since Kuler is a panel in Photoshop now, and it's also accessible online
* Delicious Library 2 - SIGILL (once)
* NewsFire - SIGABRT (once)
* Spring Cleaning 10 - SIGSEGB (twice)

And Firefox hasn't been crashing on startup repeatedly, either, which is cool but also very weird. It, like Toast 6 Titanium (which is probably not even SL-compatible; I really need to get Toast 10), was crashing without a peep. I didn't know how to diagnose that, except to look up the app's name along with "crashes on startup." Often the results weren't very helpful, but if the problem's no longer an issue....

*fingers crossed!* I'd really like to be able to do my homework now!

CS4 finally arrived. I attempted to install it yesterday (which took a while) and was told that it was done BUT it needed me to reinstall anyway, because some components or whatnot were missing. Made sense, considering I'd had the CS4 trial on here and the CS3 Clean Script the "wonderful" folks at Adobe had me run removed some vital CS4 components, too. So I restarted, turned off all the extra bells and whistles running in the background, and reinstalled.

It said done! Successful! Hurrah!

And then I ran Photoshop.

I waited.

It crashed.

AGAIN.

Also, because it crashed, I thought I wouldn't be able to register the applications in-program, so I did so online, at Adobe.com. Apparently that means I don't get my free benefit!? But I tried opening Dreamweaver CS4 and registering through there, and that seemed to go smoothly, except I still didn't get my benefit email. I want that damn benefit, especially after all the BS I've been through with this.

Dreamweaver isn't crashing at all. It's sitting pretty, which is nice and a bit of a relief. But I still need Photoshop. I need it soon, for my class. And because Corel and the Citrix plug-in were both crashing with the same (looked the same, anyway; an error that long, I'm not exactly going to read it line-by-line, although I could always compare them using TextWrangler...hmmm...) SIGTRAP error too, I've determined this is a system error and I need to do something about it.

LIKE, YESTERDAY.

So, I'm going to do an Erase and Install. But not on my own, no. Because much as I love software and think I'm pretty spiffy with it, something as large as this requires the "delicate" hand of a so-called Genius (a.k.a. someone to walk me through this whole mess). I'm going to go there, at my appointed time, bring my Time Machine drive, tell them the last schmuck at the downtown store told me to do something that's not possible with my OS version and he should have known that, and I want them to FIX the issue however they can (and for free, because dammit, it wasn't doing this before, I haven't changed anything, and this isn't fair!).

I pray that this will:
a) fix the problem with the crashing, because it's caused by occasionally corrupt files that can't be repaired the usual way
b) allow me to restore all my applications, or at least the ones I really, really need and paid money for
c) not take more than one to two days, because frankly, I have homework to do and trying to do it on a PC is nearly as agonizing as thinking this is fixed and then finding out it's not

*pray pray pray*

My Photoshop CS3 (not any of the other Creative Suite 3 apps that I use) has been crashing upon open for the past week or more. I have been around the block and back trying to figure out what to do, and I've tried almost everything. I searched Adobe's KnowledgeBase for potential solutions and went through almost all 22-23 short of re-installing Photoshop, mainly because I don't have the discs on me here in San Francisco.

I tried doing Disk Utility checkups and got some weird errors that I couldn't fix, and at the time, I'd been without my Snow Leopard DVD either, so I took it to the Apple Store. They couldn't fix it and the "genius" recommended an Archive and Install...which is apparently not an option for Snow Leopard. Never mind that I spent a good 20+ minutes trying to find a button that just wasn't there, if only the guy had told me--oh yeah, it's no longer an option for your OS!

I tried fixing the same errors with TechTool Pro before just Googling them--hah! Turns out they're generic errors that can be "safely ignored" and have nothing to do with Photoshop's crashing. I tried using Time Machine to restore Photoshop to the earliest date I had--the 15th of December, but no dice.

So then I tried rebooting in Safe Boot mode, and THAT miraculously worked. So apparently the issue is with Photoshop and one of my login items...but which one? The ones I think I have (and I don't know if I know all of them) are: Synergy, Quicksilver, Hyperspaces, some Intego software, and XMarks for Safari. Of those, I updated Intego and Hyperspaces recently. I've used Synergy and Quicksilver for so long, I'm sure they're not the issue. To check, I closed each of them one by one...except Intego, WHICH I CAN'T CLOSE. AT ALL.

I think I have to uninstall the damn thing to test out this theory. And why do I have Intego ContentBarrier, NetBarrier, Personal Antispam, Personal Backup, and VirusBarrier, anyway? Simply put, it was part of a security bundle I'd gotten a while ago, and my boss back at CSUN said it was part of the policy to have antivirus software, even on a Mac (which doesn't need it--not because there are no viruses because of Apple's "small market share," but because it's Just That Damn Good). And I thought all was well--it caught a few infected emails that could have damaged my Windows VM or passed on the virus using my email address, but maybe it's interfering with Photoshop after all.

I'm waiting to hear back from Adobe and see what they say--maybe there will be login items I missed, that the lengthy crash report reveals, or they can tell me something specific about my installed, mentioned login items and incompatibilities with Photoshop. And then there's always trying to figure out how the hell to temporarily disable the Intego software just to test whether or not it crashes Photoshop after all.

I've searched for tips and tricks, but none apply to my situation here, so I'm sort of at a loss until Adobe gets back to me. My options at this point are:
* Uninstall Intego -- and I don't even know if it's really the issue
* Get Baba and Grandpa to send me the CS3 DVDs so I can reinstall Photoshop
* Have my mom buy me the CS4 backpack I've been saving up for myself, as a "graduation present," just to fix the damn issue and have new everything that's up-to-date and be done with it.

I'm not a big fan of any of those, because none are really simple and easy. Any tips would be appreciated.

So, aside from new bundle MacFriendly, there's the regular and usually awesome MacUpdate Promotional Winter bundle. This year, it's got some goodies, but also some oldies. To get or not to get? This might be a harder decision than MacFriendly, where six apps of useful quality weren't enough to swing me into whipping out my credit card.

PowerTunes - Create, organize, and share multiple iTunes libraries. I used to want to do this because I had the majority of my music on my external drive, and I tried to have a smaller one on my laptop...but the way iTunes did it made things confusing. Even though I had the music on the external, some folders were still on my laptop, and Time Machine couldn't back up the full library on the backup. This might be useful if I ever find a reason to do multiple libraries again. Potential hit.

PathFinder - A replacement for Finder. I hear a lot of people hate Finder and think it needs to die already, but I've never had a problem with it. Still, it's always nice to discover something awesome...potential hit.

Socialite - "Keep track of the social networks that matter to you." I don't really know what this means, but I do use social networks A LOT. Oh wait, this is EventBox renamed! The last thing I need is another Twitter client when so many cool ones are free, but this does integrate a lot of others, but mainly for status updates...which, hello, are not the only thing attractive about social networks. But it also integrates RSS feeds, and ever since the upgrade of NetNewsWire, this might be a cool replacement...maybe. Potential hit.

Yep - Tag, organize, find documents. What iPhoto is for pictures and iTunes is for music and video media, Yep is for documents! Does it do HTML, I wonder? If so, this would be a total Hit!

Radio Gaga - Already have it. Miss.

GarageSale - Already have it. Miss.

Speed Download - Had a previous version from another promo and liked it, but having the newest version might be nice. Hit!

HealthNut - Not like I need to diet, but it sure would be interesting to put all that I learned in my Food Science classes to good use. Besides, I can't assume that I'll have this fabulous metabolism forever! Pretty useful! Potential hit!

PCalc - A scientific calculator. Not like I do complex math often, but if I did, aren't there websites or widgets to take care of it for me...or my own scientific calculator that I spent a year taking math classes to earn. Miss.

FlagIt! - Flag email messages in Mail.app with different colored flags. Endless colors, and the ability to mark and unmark the messages and then find out when they're completed. This could be useful, especially for me, when Smart Folders, Junk marking, and colored labels just aren't enough. Every layer of organization helps. Hit!

Holiday DVD Templates - Well, I've never made DVDs, let alone holiday ones, but it's cool to have the option to have jazzy holiday DVD menus. Useful for when I finally get around to learning iMovie and iDVD and maybe even shooting my own video. Hey Santa, can I have a Flip camera? Potential hit.

iRip - Get music from my iPod back to my Mac. Nice tool, but I've already got the free (albeit basic) expod for that. Miss.

Machinarium - An adventure/puzzle game featuring robots. Sounds cool enough, and it might be neat to review for GD. Potential hit.

DragThing - A professor I had recommended this, and the Macworld editors seem to love it. I already have Quicksilver as a launcher and Overflow as a dock manager (which I hardly ever use, since Quicksilver's become second nature to me), but DragThing seems to do a lot more: you can have hotkeys, have multiple docks, have a Trash on the desktop, play sounds in response to actions, and even stores frequently used clippings! Sounds like a total hit to me!

14 apps for $50 is already a better deal than MacFriendly, but how does it break down?
Misses: 4
Potential Hits: 6
Hits: 4

That means 10 total apps of the 14 (3 of them are only available for the first 10,000 sales, but they're only at a little over 1,000 now) are something I'd like to try--a much better fraction than with MacFriendly. I might just have to invest in this...but would anyone like the licenses for Radio Gaga and Garage Sale, since I already have them? If each app were evenly priced, they'd be $3.57/each, so two apps would go for about $8. Any takers?

Anyone know about any other bundles out there I should take a look at?

So, I'm chilling here at SFO (San Francisco International Airport, for those that don't speak airport code). I shelled out $7.99 for a T-Mobile Hotspot Day Pass, because even though I don't visit airports (or Starbucks, or even Borders) quite often enough to get a Hotspot account/shell out $40 a month, sitting here for 3 hours nursing a Coca-Cola and reading the August issue of Wired just doesn't cut it for me. I need to be connected, which is kind of sad. I sort of miss my childhood. :P

( Tech jargon )

( More win and OSM )

I'm actually somewhat looking forward to going home, if just to sleep on my own bed (though the AeroBed Mom got was pretty damn comfortable, no matter what Eva said about it being too soft) and have steady Wi-Fi in all my usual haunts. Also, MAIL! And money. And work for a week, until I have to get my butt to DC. And in-between all that, family visits and the Orange County Fair. Should be fun.

Meanwhile, Michael Jackson's "Beat It" is stuck in my head, along with a plotbunny for a multichapter Sailor Moon fic I meant to write for sm_monthly and never got around to. I mean really, ANOTHER multichapter? I wish I could churn stuff out as fast as moodwriter, with her "Hate, Prejudice and Secret Intentions" (I think I got that title right) Dramione fic that I've been reading lately. Good stuff! I've also got to catch up on Stargirl's "Tsuki no Namida," an AR of the Silver Millennium, since the latest chapter is up for critiquing on one of the_circlet communities. I'm not a big fan of walking into a long-ish multi-chapter fic blind, so I'll start with the beginning and go from there. So far, it's got an interesting premise but some grammar issues that irk me. But hey, SAILOR MOON FIC. I ought to get writing!

Yes, it's shiny and inexpensive for what it comes with, but why should I buy the MacUpdate Promo bundle? Aside from the fact that, yes, $49.99 is a damn good price for the software included (retail value of $521.71, according to MacUpdate), and there are only four days left to get those apps at that price, why bother when:

(1) I already own Parallels Desktop. There goes a $79.99 part of the overall value.
(2) I already own Circus Ponies' Notebook. There goes another $49.99 (but I only bought it for $29.99, because I'm a student!)
(3) I already own Quicken, which might not be as intuitive as MoneyWell, but it serves the exact same purpose. Minus another $49.99.
(4) "Posterino - Posters, postcards, and more." Hm, these are things that a) I can do in Photoshop; b) I can do in Pages; c) I can do in MS Office. Heck, I can even do this from within iPhoto! WHY would I pay $24.95 for it?
(5) BetterZip - Okay, so StuffIt isn't perfect, nor is the Mac OS X zip utility. But it does the job, and that's all I really need. I don't zip or unzip TOO frequently (maybe a few times a week), so why would I need this? Hmmm.... minus $19.95!
(6) RipIt - hey, wait a minute, what the heck is DVDRemaster Pro for, then? Minus $18.99!
(7)Multiplex. Useless to me. I watch pretty much everything in MPlayer OS X Extended, anyway. (VLC started to suck a while ago and I haven't looked back since.) If it's got some features above and beyond the default OS X DVD Player, point me at 'em! Minus $35.00!

TechTool 5 might be worth it, except I've already got DiskWarrior AND Drive Genius. Let's be honest here, as awesome as TechTool 5 is, what does it do that those two programs and a good piece of freeware, e.g. OnyX, can't? (I'm not being sarcastic here; if there's a wonderful feature of TT5 that I ought to know about, sell me on it!)

NetBarrier X5 I'm seriously considering, if only because I HAVE to have my firewall down in order to connect to a wi-fi network these days. Due to the fact that none of my external hard drives are big enough for an exact clone of my hard drive (or the bulk of the really important data, which is scattered all over the place), I have yet to do a clean install of Mac OS X 10.5.7 yet! It might be nice to have something protecting my Mac from what few things could possibly screw with it.

DVDRemaster Pro 5 - I don't really duplicate video DVDs. Converting them might be useful though, and if it works with non-video DVDs, like Data DVDs, I might consider it....

Paperless - Reminds me of Notebook fused with NeatWorks. This COULD be useful, if I didn't have that sinking sensation that it does something that other apps that I own already do.

Bearing all that in mind and only subtracting those apps that I truly felt would be of NO use to me whatsoever, that brings the total "value" of the apps I'd actually use to $277.85. That's just slightly more than half the total value if ALL the apps were included, and I subtracted the most expensive apps, AND the majority of the apps (seven out of eleven; not including the two "bonus apps" if I were to BUY BUY BUY like, today).

I'd really only do this if I could split the cost with someone who could use the other items, like Parallels, Notebook, and so on. Considering the high-ticket value of those, wouldn't it be more fair to have that person pay $35 and me $15, and we each get huge savings AND just the apps we want? (Are we even allowed to do this? I mean, I'd buy the bundle if I thought the apps would go to good use, but the other Mac at home is a PowerPC and not exactly state-of-the-art, meaning it can't even HANDLE some of these apps!)

Anyone up for it? It's a pretty sweet deal for anyone that wants to: you get 7 apps for WAY cheaper than their market value, and I get 4 apps (plus the bonus ones, if you don't mind) that I could actually use.

Eek, big bad final exam tomorrow.

Still haven't finished my Shakespeare essay. Maybe once I get public relations stuff out of my brain, Shakespeare will come to me easier. And then when THAT'S out of my brain, I can finish my belated Fanswap assignment (I got an extension/excuse, so participants don't have to worry about me just being one of those evil non-submitters).

Mac OS X updated to 10.5.7 today. I guess I'm one of those folks who doesn't mind upgrading, because if it's from Apple, I typically trust that it's an update for a good reason. Of course, I read the "What's Changed in this Version" notes for any updates to ANY software I get, which might make me a bit unusual...anyway, I found this rather amusing tidbit:



They changed the Energy Saver icon in the System Preferences to a CFC bulb! HA! Cute, Apple, real cute.

Also, the plotbunny I've been tending to--the one that's the trans-dimensional offspring of the second daughter of WDKY (a.k.a. the spin-off of the third story in the WDKY series)--has gotten a lot larger. I suddenly thought of TWO FULL ARCS for it, meaning the story (which only exists in note-form) is now at least 16 chapters long. And I suddenly thought of a socio-politcal twist to it (that's been happening a lot with my fic ideas lately. I wonder why?). I wonder if this is what happened to JKR when she was writing "Harry Potter?" The idea sounds cool and you fiddle for it with a while and then of a sudden: IDEASPLOSION! Of course, "Harry Potter" was an original series and this is a fanfic that won't see the light of day for some time now, so it puts me in quite the pickle.

That's my new catchphrase as of late: "in a pickle." Hm. Pickles.

Finally, my Firefox bookmarks issue solved! I made a backup of all my bookmarks (both a JSON file and an HTML export) and restarted, restoring the backup, but that didn't help. Nor could I find the environment.plist file mentioned in the section of "Other solutions" pertaining to the Mac. BUT I could close Firefox, get into the Profile folder and my profile, and get rid of the places files, which helped! Huzzah!

Next up: bought iLife '09 today. The thing I'm most excited about is iPhoto 8, which has got the Faces feature, among other nifty add-ons. My library is upgraded and all the faces have been scanned. I want to know if it works for anime, manga, and video game images, too! I've already tagged several hundred pictures, and it's learned SOME faces pretty fast, but not others. When there are lots of people bunched together in a photo, it's hard to tell what "box" (around a face) refers to which person, because each box has a callout bubble and that bubble's box isn't always visible with the other bubbles around it... if that makes sense. It was funny how, at first, it found a ton of pictures of me and one of them (that I had to either confirm or reject as me) was of my dad! :P Yay genetics. Well, similar things happened with Shaina, Erin, Becky, and my mom, so....

The Places feature is also neat, but I've had to enter a lot of locations manually. It pays to be as specific as possible, but to spell things out fully-- California, not CA, and so on. I've got tags for Washington High School, Presidio Middle School, RTA, and the cities of Mito, Tokyo, and Uchihara. My camera doesn't have GPS support, as far as I know, so it means tagging manually for ALL of those photos. -_- I wonder if there's a way to ask for help-- you know, have the photos in a MobileMe gallery so people can suggest Faces or Places tags for them. It'd certainly make my life easier, especially for all the Faces I have!

Speaking of upgrades:
(1) Should I bother to upgrade to iWork '09? I'm going to use the trial that came with iLife '09 to test it out, but there'd have to be something pretty significant (preferably about all 3 programs, and not just one) that would get me to upgrade, even though it's priced totally reasonably. I imagine Keynote would be a great reason to upgrade, but I'd like Pages and Numbers to be upgraded nicely, too. Of course, I have MS Office (even though I hate Microsoft, NeoOffice just doesn't come close), but it's almost like comparing apples (hah!) to oranges (Microsoft being an orange. Or a lemon, maybe).

Sadly, Keyword Manager isn't compatible with iPhoto 8 yet, but hopefully it will be soon. I still need to keyword a lot of stuff!

(2) If I upgraded the downstairs iMac to Leopard, would I lose my OS9/Classic access? I mean, the iMac is still a PowerPC, so you'd think "no," but.... It's such a stupid reason: I want to keep playing the game Spin Doctor. It's fun! There's no OS X equivalent! (WHY!?!?!) Has anyone who's upgraded a PowerPC machine to Leopard regretted it? Why?

 Someday We'll Know by Mandy Moore feat. Jonathan Foreman from A Walk To Remember Music From The Motion Picture [Special Expanded Edition] (Rating: 0)

Well, I restarted my computer THREE times and each time, the keyboard/trackpad was frozen or non-responsive. It's been getting more and more frustrating, and I don't know what to do. There's no single solution from other users that have experienced the same thing on the Apple Discussion Boards, and the fixes from the "Genius" at the Genius Bar and the "Expert" from Apple that I called didn't work permanently.

I'm obviously concerned, because, like the last time I went to the Apple Store with a serious problem (the memory card pin-holder in the old MacBook Pro), the Genius made it sound like it all boils down to the logic board, which is a $1300 repair. My laptop's out of warranty because I didn't have $300+ to spend at the start of September, and I didn't think to put it on one of my credit cards on time. So that $1300 might actually be MORE, because I don't know if that's the in-warranty quote or not. Last time, that price tag convinced me to buy a whole brand new laptop, this time... I can't afford that. I don't know what to do, especially since I'd never risk opening the top case myself to see what might be wrong with the keyboard/trackpad (assuming I could even tell by looking; I'm not a hardware person by any stretch of the imagination).

I'm hoping to take it to the Apple Store again and find out. Maybe they can open the top case and diagnose the problem, but not necessarily charge me for it unless I ask for a repair? That might be too optimistic, what with how busy the Genius Bar usually is.

This sucks, because it's another major incident that renders my laptop unusable by itself, but it's not enough to get me to switch back to the hell that is Windows. Right now, I'm using a USB keyboard Mom found (turns out the plug I'd examined in the back of one of her dinosaur PCs was actually an adapter-- good thing I didn't run out to Radio Shack to pay $16 for something I already owned!), along with my usual Wacom tablet.

( Smell my feet! )

Greetings from... Santa Cruz, CA. Incidentally, the day I came to S.F., I completely spaced about having a Biology quiz, so I missed it. I'd already gotten one extension from when I got mugged and I knew the professor wouldn't give me another, so... argh. It's not as if it'll be a big dink to my grade provided I keep up with everything else, but it's not as if keeping up is EASY. We're well into the "tough stuff" of this "basic" biology class.

Anyway, I'm in Santa Cruz because, like forgetting my biology quiz, I also forgot that my cousin Brooke's baby shower was THIS WEEKEND rather than "the 7th," which is Tuesday. Because Brooke and Shaina are driving down to Fresno (where the shower is located, at their mom's house) on Friday morning, I had to meet Brooke here in SC *today.* So I took a bus downtown, a Muni train to the Embarcadero, the BART train from the Embarcadero to Fremont, a bus from Fremont to San Jose, and then another bus from San Jose to Santa Cruz. I stuffed myself with 3 horribly unhealthy tacos from taco bell and stared at all the pretty shiny books at the Borders I met Brooke's hubby, Honis (aka Mike) at.

And so here I've been at their place pretty much ever since, studying my geology (which I've been slacking on; I've already taken 2 quizzes but have 5 more due within the next 24 hours; 4 of those are probably fairly easy, but only if I do the reading and make an effort to concentrate and take notes). We did go out for a quick bite at this homey diner called Jeffrey's and talked family, jobs, and the evil brainwashing that is Disney.

We have to wake up at an ungodly hour of the morning tomorrow to head to Shaina's, but she's the one who's going to be driving, so Brooke and I can conk out while we drive to Fresno and do who-knows-what while we're there a full day before the actual shower. I know in my case I have to stay awake and STUDY, sucky as that is. Actually, what's truly sucky is I'm more or less relegated to sitting at some table near an outlet, because my MacBook Pro has been suspiciously sucking with keeping its charge. A few days ago, I noticed that, even after it was supposedly fully charged, it only had a life of 40-55 minutes, rather than a good hour and a half or more like it used to have. I got the iStat Pro widget, and it says that even though my battery's "fully charged," it's at 97%, not 100% (or even 99%), and the "battery health" is at a dismal 45% (it was at 38% at my mom's house). I don't really know what's going on or why; I tried the SMC reset, but it didn't seem to help. I'm really worried...

Staying at my mom's house is a bit awkward this time around; rather than staying in the "Tovstin," aka what used to be my room and is now Gary's study/bedroom (he never sleeps in there though), I stayed in my mom's room. Bigger bed, but... er, not as comfortable. Maybe it's me and my picky back (destroyed by Disney), but I couldn't lay flat on that bed. The only way I could sleep (and not even comfortably, because I kept tossing and turning all night, and woke up with the comforter all haphazard) was on my side. Staying in the Tovstin would mean "inconveniencing" Gary, because his closet is in there, and unlike my mom, who's on her leave, he still has to work everyday and access his clothes. And I've seen the closet in my mom's room, there's just no way Gary's stuff'll fit in there. -_-

So, it looks like when I go back on Sunday I'll be sleeping in the living room on the couch. Awwwwkward.

Speaking of awkward, did anyone catch the vice presidential debate tonight? Things I found amusing, somewhat sad (read: pathetic), and kind of weird:
* Joe Biden referring to himself by name, rather than with a proper pronoun such as "I" or "me" or derivatives thereof
* Sarah Palin being kind of "cutesy" and saying stuff like "you betcha" and "darn right" (don't get me wrong, some people think that her speaking to the "average American" and coming across like a "soccer mom" is a good thing, but I think it made her sound very unprofessional and most definitely un-vice presidential-like)
* Sarah Palin saying "um" a lot (no, really, she did. If you re-watch the debates, you'll notice she said it OFTEN. Speech coach, much?)
* Joe Biden looked like he had an eye lift
* Sarah Palin looked like she had Botox (cheeks!)

I guess what it boils down to is, are vice presidential debates supposed to be about the candidates selling their running mate, or about THEIR personal opinions, policies and actions should THEY get elected into the office of VP? Maybe I'm mistaken for having thought it should be the latter, but the bulk of the debate came off as "Obama this" and "McCain that," and I was like "Yeah, but what do YOU think?" I know that Biden wouldn't be Obama's running mate if they didn't agree on a lot and share the same policies, nor would McCain have Palin if they didn't agree on at least some fundamentals (they at least have some more clear-cut differences though, which is interesting... sadly, for other things, she's more or less his parrot, and can't talk about her opinions because she doesn't have the knowledge to have formed any substantive ones).

The thing that pisses me off about both candidates: they agree that gays should have the same rights as committed heterosexual couples (read: a man "married" to a woman), but they refuse to redefine the word "marriage" outside of the traditional "man" and "woman" sense. This is bullshit. It's a WORD, you nimrods, it has nothing to do with politics, ethics, the Constitution, etc. You don't OWN a word. You don't get to say who uses it and how. The more you say a group can't/shouldn't use a word, or the more you use a word in a derogatory sense, the more people will rise up and do just the opposite: they'll use the word, and they'll use it to empower themselves! (See: Nigga, Queer, Colored). It just sounds ridiculous, the thought of a governmental body saying "this word is going to mean THIS in our country" even if it has a different or more general meaning elsewhere. Of course, definitions in general are subject to societal standards and values, as I'm sure is apparent from other words throughout the centuries, but to get everyone's knickers in a knot over the use of the WORD "marriage" just seems a waste of energy.

For me: marriage is the sealing of a lifetime commitment between two PEOPLE, regardless of gender. This allows them to be listed on each others' insurance, have visitation rights in hospitals, adopt a child (or children), have shared property rights, joint bank accounts, etc. Sure, politicians can say that a "civil union" between gays should have all these rights, but then why not just call it what it is: A MARRIAGE? Why is it "necessary" to create a different word, process, paperwork, etc. just because X couple is gay but Y couple isn't? That's hardly equal rights when there's a simple snit over WORD USAGE, of all things!

*sigh* I need to get to bed. My brain is fried.

Postspam ftw!

So about, oh, 10 minutes ago I finished my STA Travel 193 Karaoke entry. It's currently exporting from iMovie '08 (*cringe* I can explain!) into a format that everyone and their dog can view-- in other words, a format I can upload to the contest website before it closes/changes tomorrow night. It needs to be under 40 MB though... which is the hard part.

My whole plan was to use iMovie (I wanted to use iMovie HD, aka '06, but for some reason it wouldn't detect my built-in iSight. I have iChat AV, no other iSight programs were open-- and when I *DID* open things like Photo Booth or iMovie '08, they detected the camera just fine. WTF?) and record myself all gussied up as Songstress Yuna singing to, what else, Jade's version of real Emotion.

I slaved for a pretty long time just to make a passable karaoke version of Jade's real Emotion ~FFX-2 Mix~. Yes, I know there's the instrumental version of Koda Kumi's ~Original Mix~, but I didn't want to sing in Japanese (too cheesy for the contest, somewhat difficult), plus the ~Original Mix~ is nearly twice as long as the ~FFX-2 Mix~ of which there is NO karaoke or instrumental version. So I made one.

Well, lamesauce was poured all over when I recorded it- I had to play the music in iTunes and use my IR remote to play it, but then capturing the video from iSight meant a delay-- plus, I had to physically CLICK using the touchpad, which meant either the music would be off-sync or there'd be a weird amount of time where I was adjusting the video. I chose the latter, since re-syncing the music would be a pain in the ass. I could just cut the video of me leaning forward to the computer anyway.

But having it play in iTunes meant my voice over the USB mic was barely audible, and the setting for "playing audio while recording," didn't work the way I expected it to, so I ended up creating and trashing a few projects that HAD to "assemble" after I realized "Oh shit, this isn't working!" So that added time. Anyway, I read the manual and figured the tip on plugging headphones in for the audio so it wouldn't interfere with the voiceover (aka my singing) would work-- and it did, but now you can hardly hear the background music, which obviously doesn't make for good karaoke.

In any case, I've tried so many different things and all the iMovies are frustrating me to the point where I'm just happy with what I've got. It'll suck if I don't win, but come on-- it's not exactly a talent contest. I'll be happy if I do, but honestly? I don't have the energy to put forth the EFFORT to make something so satisfying even I would be impressed (were I a judge giving away a 9-day trip to Japan). That's kind of sad, really...

Anyway, Mom wants to know what I want for Christmas, and after this week's brou-ha-ha, I think I'll tell her I want the one-to-one training Apple offers. I really need to learn iMovie and GarageBand. I'd RATHER learn it from a friend or something (hint hint), so...? Anyone have any experience in this area? You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours-- I'm a woman of many talents...

Ugh, I'm back to drinking Brisk iced tea, and now Wild Cherry Pepsi (haven't had THAT since high school) to keep myself awake T-Th when I have classes that last 2-3 hours at a time with short breaks. It sucks because I thought I'd been getting enough sleep and eating somewhat healthier, to the point where I wouldn't need boosts that also rot my teeth. Urgh.

I don't want to get crazy-stressed, but the past few days haven't helped-- there's always so much to do. I've got to finish raking off the garage roof, clean my bathtub, clean my room, put my laundry away, do my handwashing, figure out a system for a clothesline in my tile tub, send my glasses prescription to school, get new glasses, see if I can vacuum the house (I bet Dad forgot to take the giant vacuum Baba wanted him to have, and waited months to give him) and... figure out wtf is wrong with the wireless on my NEW LAPTOP!

Last night as soon as I came home I set it up and transferred all the data from my old MBP, but while the old one connected to the home network just fine, the new one wouldn't. I tried changing the router settings-- the SSID and the password encryption, but that just screwed things up further. This morning I called AT&T tech support (gawd, I want to switch to Time-Warner Cable), and I had to change the SSID back, the encryption back to WEP-Open, and the channel back from 11 to 10. That fixed it for my old MBP, but not the new one... and I have no idea why. It's not like there are any proxies, AppleTalk, or other weird settings... I hope it's not the AirPort being half-malfunctional or anything. I've got an appt. at the Apple store today, and if all works out well, I'll also renew my ProCare and get Diner Dash. :) What's weird is that it works here on campus, and it SORT of picked up someone else's network near home for a bit, but not for long enough (to get the updates for the AirPort Express). I wonder if the updates (which I managed to get here at school) will help?

On the bright side, the new computer DOES mean I'll be able to play with my .Mac sooner, check out all the goodies iLife '08 offers, and see what's new with iWork '08. I'll also hopefully be able to work on WDKY and the BSSM Another Story novelization. But, speaking of other writing projects, all the weird dreams I've been having lately (a lot of apocalyptic stuff, for some reason) got me revising "Prophecy Girl," and the extended ideas (which will involve revising the first two chapters a bit) make the story a LOT more solid. I might end up switching between it and WDKY (since PG was around first, anyway) in times of blockage.

During all the stress last night, I played some FFX-2 while the data was being transferred. I forgot why I was where I was (I'd already beaten the Ruin Depths), so I headed around to get more Oversouls (I have about 20 left, including the dreaded Concherer). I only managed to get 1 so far, due to the randomness of battles, so later I hope to get more... :P it's my way of de-stressing. I'm planning on figuring out more Mix strategies to beat the tougher Oversouls, though.

Right now I'm in my JOUR 410 (Investigative Journalism) class, and I need to come up with 3 story ideas for our upcoming proposal. As with so many other things, I'm dry out of ideas. Help?

Oh, as for the BEST NEWS OF THE DAY (even though I'll be busy until late and busy even tomorrow and this weekend with an NSCS retreat in Malibu where I'm responsible for figuring out dinner for 10 for only $40?)...
I GOT A RAISE! Nearly 30 cents, too! Not a ton, but way better than my last raise. :)

So I called Amtrak today, and indeed, the North American Rail Pass (the one that's good for 30 days and has unlimited travel) is $899.10 student discounted (that's as low as it can get). The easiest way to buy it is over the phone, but you have to have AT LEAST the first segment of the trip planned. And for me, that means knowing I have the money available, places where I can stay (and reservations, if necessary), and so on. I've got a lot more planning to do, and I've got to see if I get that NSCS credit card-- if not, I might end up getting a WaMu one. I don't LIKE the idea of being in debt -I mean, moreso than I already am just for being a college student with loans- but I don't want to just shove this great idea aside. I can and I will make it possible-- somehow.

In the meantime, I got my ticket to Philadelphia with the rest of the NSCS; the unfortunate thing is that they didn't have enough Rewards Points to cover my hotel/convention registration. I'm hoping I win this Geico essay competition that will pay for it. Even those that are getting some portion reimbursed are only getting $50 out of the $314 round trip tickets. It's on Delta, which is "meh" in terms of airlines in my book, but we could have taken a cheaper flight if only everyone's schedules weren't so restrictive. Unlike a lot of other members, I'm not taking summer school, and my work's fairly flexible about taking time off.

...Still haven't heard from Apple one way or another, which frankly doesn't surprise me. It's kind of sad that it worked out that way, though...

Ooh, and Erin said she's getting my CS3 *today*! I hope I see her soon so I can get it. That would be cause for much yayness.

In the meantime, I've got enough to keep me occupied, so I'm glad for that.

( ETA: Just one teeny tiny software/journaling question )

Like when I was in Japan, now that the semester and a full workload has started, I'm back to cherishing my weekends the way a man parched of thirst cherishes the single droplet of water he can get on his tongue. Nonetheless, I get to the weekends hoping to relax, and I only find myself bombarded with more things to do. I keep telling myself "I need to help out" (in the case of Baba and Grandpa) or "I can't quit" (in the case of school), but sometimes I just feel like staying in bed ALL DAY LONG. (And then of course, I feel miserable after the fact, for all the things I missed).

Anyway, starting yesterday my computer started acting strangely because of my "overload" of fonts. Well, I only had something like 700 fonts on the system (when the OSX documentation says it can handle up to 7000!), but Photoshop just wasn't reading them. So I decided to go through Font Book and weed out the invalid fonts (those missing Font Name Tables), of which I found 67. The important ones (esp. the ones I've hunted for or paid for) were intact though, but then Firefox (which was already acting weird, smashing words together and causing them to overlap sometimes) and Firefox (which had previously been acting weird but apparently stopped when I switched the default fonts) suddenly had NO text anywhere.

So I had to take all the fonts I'd put in the trash can and go through them one by one, to make sure none of them were fonts used by the system or the applications. Then I weeded out the duplicate installations, disabled and removed them, closed font book, emptied the trash, and was able to reopen both Thunderbird and Firefox without any problems.

But encoding is still apparently an issue with Firefox; in Safari, Japanese characters show up just fine in the default Western (ISO-Latin-1) encoding, but with that same/equivalent encoding in Firefox (ISO-8859-1), I get random characters. I'm worried that it's because I deleted some Japanese font on my computer, but I doubt it-- I doubly made sure that all the fonts that I deleted were trouble fonts, not system fonts. What's even more irritating is the lack of a singular encoding for Japanese/other Asian languages and accented characters, like é and ó and such. So I could see José Cuarón, but not ラブとエロス. And I know I didn't (and COULDN'T) have deleted those fonts, I just 'accidentally' disabled them. A Spotlight search revealed their location and I re-added them to Font Book, but before I would drag them over or double-click on the files and nothing would happen or change. Now that I have installed them again (and can see them in Font Book and noticed the change in Cocoa applications like this one), I hope my font woes will be over with.

There's nothing worse than stressing about the things you normally love. I love fonts. I love video games. But my computer was driving me batty, and I still haven't found my PS2 Memory Card! I've almost completely cleaned my room, too. It wasn't just hidden amongst the piles of things I had unpacked from Japan or from my mom's boxes; unless it somehow got mixed up in things that I put away, or is still lost under something in the rec room, I don't know what to do.

Sure, it might be fun to just buy a new memory card and start everything fresh again... but honestly, I had made SO much progress with the games I had on there. To name a few that I can remember:

Final Fantasy X - I finally was inside Sin! But I hadn't beaten the game yet, because I wanted to try getting the Ultimate Weapons. I remember getting past Seymour Flux and finding out Auron's secret, but that was as far as I remember getting.

Final Fantasy X-2 - I'd already beaten this game once with a 98% completion (I didn't beat the Den of Woe or the Via Infinitio on my first run-through), and I wanted my second game to either be the 100% completion or the "get tons of accessories" game, with a possible third play-through being the 100% Perfect Game. This is the one I'm most sore about possibly losing, because I had John (back in Japan) help me shove Tobli into the elevator during that one Chapter where you can get the Enterprise accessory... and that's SO damn hard! Yes, I know the greatest feeling of accomplishment is for something you've done yourself, but I tried SO HARD to do that, and I couldn't. John said he could, so I let him-- and he did! I treated him to dinner for that, and to throw all that all away would make me so sad.

I was also playing this game on International + Last Mission, because I'd never want to get to the final dungeon in LM without having accessories like the Iron Duke.

Katamari Damacy - In the original, I think I'd gotten up to Make A Star 7 or something, but I had something like 68 total constellations. Then I moved on to Katamari Damacy 2 (aka We ♥ Katamari) and managed to find a lot of "lost cousins" and reveal much of the King's sordid history, but there were various levels I hadn't beaten completely (like the Origami one).

Yu-Gi-Oh Duelists of the Roses - I'm actually not too bummed about this one. Over a year ago I'd accidentally overwritten my winning game file when trying to play "the next side" so I could eventually unlock the special Duel Masters and Deck Creation modes. Whenever I tried to play again, I always lost miserably to someone in the beginning. So I wouldn't mind a fresh start with this game.

Overall, I'd say I wouldn't be horribly upset if it were gone-- I mean, I could have a lot of fun replaying some the games over again. It's great when a game has "replay value," but I don't think my situation is what game designers and publishers have in mind when they say a game has "great replay value." So if it really did get down to it, I might buy a USB adapter for my memory card so I could just download some saves for FFX and FFX-2 (maybe not ILM, even though I think that was the one I got Enterprise in), and hopefully backup my saves, too. I don't know, does anyone know of a place where I can get:
* a new memory card (preferably a larger one, like a multi-card-in-one, or a pair of Memory Cards at once)
* a USB-to-Memory Card adapter
* free savefiles for FFX and FFX-2?

Last night Elliott came over and we ended up spending most of the night watching Food Network or the Tyra Banks show (it was the episode I'd wanted to watch, even though I stumbled on it totally by accident-- the episode about her supposed horrendous weight-gain. For the record, I thought that particular picture was just a bad angle, the same way plenty of people get their pictures taken where their face looks bleached out, their hair looks mussed up, their teeth have something in it, red eye, etc).

And hey, here's something you may not have known about me! My BMI is 19.5, which is just one point above the bottom line for the healthy weight for adults of my height. If I were 18.4 or under, I would be considered underweight, but I don't know how many pounds would calculate my BMI that far down. And frankly, I don't care. I happen to like my figure very much, even though occasionally I think my butt's just a bit TOO curvy or my thighs look a bit like bowling pins.

( On weight, body image, and stupid models )

Damn, almost jinxed myself today. In Japanese class, we had to use the structure for "Even if ~ I won't get mad." I used the sentence "Even if my computer broke, I wouldn't get mad." That's probably a lie, though, as evidenced by what happened about an hour or so ago... I had just finished my spaghetti with mushroom Neapolitan sauce (fresh mushrooms! Mer can kinda-sorta cook!) and was guzzling some water to wash off the pepper that one particular mushroom had all over it. And my hand went this-a-way, and the glass went that-a-way, and before I knew it, water was all over my laptop.

I toweled it off as best I could, shaking all the water out of the keyboard, but within a few minutes, the screen died on me. For some reason that I have yet to figure out, the computer occasionally turns the display off. The computer is still on, and it's not in sleep mode or display off mode; I can still see the faintest of programs on the screen when I tilt the monitor REALLY far back underneath a light. But I can't close anything, or get the screen to light up again. I always have to do a cold-reboot. Luckily this has never happened when I had anything important unsaved-- I make it a point to save often, anyway.

Well, long story short, I freaked out, and the headaches that have been plaguing me for the past few days came back full... which sucked, because I'd had a stomachache earlier too, and I was sort of hoping for the problems to be ENDING. And I've still got a bit of a headache, so I'm considering just turning the heat off (even though it gets FUCKING COLD here in the morning without it on) and then just going to bed after I brush my teeth. I'm becoming more willing to wake up early to do my homework (even though that made me late to class today) rather than do it at night, when feel like it.

There are certain letters I can't type right now, so I'm going to log and hope that the rest of the keys dry and fix themselves by morning.