girlofprey

I have my tiny wee netbook on the desk where my laptop used to be, and it's so tiny, I am caught between the cuteness and the ridiculousness. But mostly it's just a feeling that I love my netbook. I think it has basically paid for itself at this point. Keyboards are so good.

I have gotten a guide for building a PC in the price range I want though, and I went to my local computer store and asked them to give the parts in it a once-over, and I've asked my dad about maybe getting some of my money back to pay for it with, rather than taking any more out of my ISA and maybe not being able to pay it back this tax year. So - I'm getting on with that, even though I'm a little apprehensive about it. The guy at my games store was giving me tips about installing the processor, and he was like "you know the gold pins? And the gold triangle in the corner?". And I was like "...no." But I'm sure it will all work out eventually. And I can play games, hurrah! Hopefully it won't take too long. At the moment I'm mostly a little sad about having to go through Halloween without playing my custom Scary Soundtrack that I created last year. It's all on the hard drive. And possibly (hopefully) on my backup external hard drive. Like so many other things. Fingers crossed.

One thing I have learned about my netbook is that hotmail's stupid setup doesn't love it resolution enough to actually, really, let me read emails on it. Which is a shame, because that's the account I'm meant to be using to work out a problem with my references at my new job. Hopefully it won't be too much of a problem. But fuck Microsoft, what the fuck? Fix your shit. And now to find out how it handles playing 60fps videos on Youtube. Hopefully 'well'.

I don't know why my computer is slow forever. But between lack of money and being baffled, I might not have a new PC anytime soon.

My laptop spontaneously died last night. I was watching a Youtube video, tried to move it back a few minutes, and my whole laptop crashed. So I figured it was finally time to format my external hard drive and back everything up again. I forgot exactly how long it takes to format it, so I stayed up late last night then had to leave it running all night anyway. And now I'm remembering how long it takes to copy all the files over. Which I have to do without a mouse, because my external hard drive needs two USB slots, and I only have the two. Sigh.

A part of me would just like to replace the laptop, but a) that's expensive, and b) I may have convinced myself it's old and tired when actually I've just let it get dusty. And maybe I just want some up-to-date specs so I can play more PC games on it. I mean, it does struggle sometimes just to load webpages, but sometimes it runs completely fine, so I can't be sure it's not just Windows downloading updates and slowing everything down itself. I've tried to turn off Windows updates, but sometimes that doesn't seem to make much difference.

I got my period on Saturday and have been in pain, off and on, ever since.

I also finally finished the Secret Circle today, and went off in search of Ethan/Cassie fic, or even mentions. It was about as fruitful as I expected. (THIER LVOE)

Also I have been wrestling with a fanmix. Turns out one of the most frustrating things in the world is having a fairly long fanmix that's only half in an order you like, so you have to keep rearranging the other tracks and listening to it over and over again to make sure it makes sense and doesn't have any weird tonal shifts. I'm taking a break from it today.

On the other hand, I have written more Guardians of the Galaxy fic and made a different fanmix, I will post those in separate posts shortly.

My computer hasn't blue-screen-of-deathed at all since the last post I made, and I have been happily watching Youtube videos ever since. I figure maybe it just wanted me to back-up my files? Or leave it on all night? Either way the problem appears to have gone away, and I have a new Flash drive for saving anything new and important onto in between back-ups.

Also my volunteering dude got back to me and said he was ill again, had 'forgotten' I was meant to be coming in last Monday (that's alright then), and would probably be off until after his annual leave, but hopefully see me again after September 15th. So I figured that was it and I would be at a loose end for the next few weeks - until another volunteer emailed round and said they would still be doing volunteering, just at different, fairly inconsistent times. And possibly without an actual staff member there to answer questions we're not sure about? I don't know. So I might be going in. I might not.

Ow.

What my internet problems are really like is like it's playing games with me. But not the good kind of games, and not the evil kind of games. The kind of games where one person is very happy and thinks everyone is having a really good time, and the other person is crying.

The internet is so quick and smooth down here. I might just stay here forever.

Dead Space 2 is still amazing, and just got twice as scary as before. I love Saints Row 2 and all the cars and most of the clothes in it. LA Noire is still slightly weird, but there was a character who is a necrophiliac, and he isn't southern, hurrah.

So. On the advice of my flist, I have now downloaded AVG free antivirus protection for my virus protection needs. Although Norton will probably still make me pay to renew it somehow in May, but I shall have to deal with that when I get to it. And actually, I was going to get Avast, on the reasoning that one of my friends (as far as I knew at the time) was actually using it and having no problems with it so it was probably fine, but I told my dad about it and he found some review that said that AVG was the best free one, and I think it upsets/irritates him that I take the advice of my internet friends probably more than I take his, so I ended up getting AVG. But anyway. I have downloaded it and been on the internet with it and nothing has exploded so far. And I'm even getting those nice little page status reports that Norton used to give me to tell me if a page was safe or was probably FILLED WITH VIRUSES, so that's nice. And essentially, I'm back on the internet in my room again. Hurrah!

In other news, ( Family drama )

So yes. A fun day. I've got a Jobcentre appointment tomorrow, and an appointment with my Back To Work service thing again in Wakefield in the afternoon. When I may or may not be going to Pinderfields with my mum to see my grandma and staying on afterwards to go to my appointment, but she doesn't know for sure yet if she's going, and she doesn't really want to drive and park so we might be going on the bus, and blah blah blah. We'll see.

In other news:

• I have pretty much totally finished Black And White 2. I used a cunning mix of expanding, building impressive buildings, and throwing a hurricane at the Aztecs. I had a feeling it would make their city less impressive and mine more impressive in comparison. It totally did. So yes, I've finished that. All I have to do left now is to charge up my volcano miracle and set it off and set off my hurricane miracle one more time, because I really never got to see the effects of that enough.



• Given how often I fall in love with jewellery and how much time I spend whining that I can't afford anymore, it's probably a bad idea for me to look at designer jewellery websites. But that hasn't stopped me doing it anyway. Mostly I love the Turandot pendants on that first page, and the XIV collection on the second. Which are pretty much equally as expensive (as far as I can tell).



• Other things I have finished recently: Season 3 of the US Office, although it was an episode I'd seen before. ( Vague spoilers for the finale of Season 3 of the US Office )
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  And I both started and finished No Heroics, which I was mostly interested in because of a) Nicholas Burns, and b) rubbish superheroes. ( My thoughts for the whole series )



• Last Thursday my mum had the radio on on Sky while she was tidying, and while it was on I heard Nick Lowe's Cruel To Be Kind for the first time. Which is, for me, one of those songs that when you hear it you can't believe you didn't hear it years before. I kind of love it.

Hello! I've not posted in a while. I've just got back from a weekend in London with cakesy, where we did such things as go see an Aziz Ansari gig (which was very good), and go to the Sealife centre, to see sharks, among other fish (which were very good). Also we watched a bunch of Parks and Recreation (I love Leslie, and Ann, and Ron, and Andy, and Tom, and April, and sort of Ben) and she allowed me to put her through watching The Other Guys, Wizard People Dear Reader and some My Little Pony specials on Youtube. It was pretty super.

Before that, last Saturday I thought that now I have a new laptop with new components and space and everything, maybe I could finally install Black And White 2 on it, which I got a few years ago, and have it actually work, which I did and it did. I have been pretty much playing it ever since. Until I went to London.

And today I got back at about quarter to six, and went upstairs to check the internet, and found my laptop telling me that my Antivirus subscription was about to run out/had run out. I had thought that because I'd bought the package for my other laptop online and it was there in my account that it would just continue on for my new computer after the trial subscription that came free with my laptop ran out. But after my antivirus protection shut down, I thought maybe not, so I checked it again and it has no activations left. I could renew it online, but I just spent loads in London, and my dad says you can get it half price in WH Smiths apparently, and when I came down to ask him about it, he said he'd have a look on his computer to see if he had any subscriptions going free. Which he hasn't done yet. So for at least a little while my only internet access might be through my dad's computer. Oh well. Hope you're all well, anyway.

Hello dudes. I am posting to you now from my fancy new laptop. Dun Da Da Dah! After getting most of the way through my bookmarks during the week, I made a decision to get my new laptop all set up and running before the end of the weekend. And then last night I decided not to let the fact it was 3am stop me from doing that. It was mostly set up with Windows, Internet security and Windows Office anyway, so I moved my old one out of the way, set it up with it power cord and everything on a newly dusted desk, switched it on and started transferring all my backed up files over. Most of which went without a hitch, except for the slightly terrifying moments when I couldn't get both the USB sticks into the USB ports properly and yet my external hard drive seemed to be hooked up to my laptop just the same anyway. Hmm. But I Safely Removed it and put it back in properly and it worked just fine as well, without having horribly damaged the external hard drive horribly in any way. So everything's basically in it's place on the computer, all my Favourites are in my Favourites tab thing, and all my files seem to be in order except for Windows Media Player wanting to download Licenses every time I want to play a music file I ripped from a CD. But anyway. LAPTOP. It is red and wide and strange. But lovely. And shiny. And has plenty of space on the Hard Drive.

My dad's reaction to my having successfully set up my computer now: "So you can get back on with your bedroom now then". My dad. No gratitude, never satisfied.

Anyway. Apart from that it's been quite a day. It's my oldest nephew's birthday (he's 6), and I didn't have a card or a present for him, and we were meant to be going out in the evening and I hadn't had a bath and my only pair of jeans were falling to pieces. So I sort of assumed it would be hectic. I'd asked my mum to wake me up before she went into town so I could come with her and get my nephew a present, and she woke me up at about half past 12, and said she'd been on the phone for some of the morning, because her sister had been taken into hospital after having had a stroke. She's getting on, my aunt, she's 69 but she doesn't really act it. On Christmas Eve me, my mum and my oldest nephew went to her house to take her a Christmas card (or rather talk to her, since we couldn't find the Christmas card), but we couldn't see her because she'd already gone out to go clubbing in Leeds. So it was a bit of a shock. She's alright-ish apparently, she's not in any danger, but she's lost all movement down one side of her body. My mum had explained that she couldn't go see her because it was my nephew's birthday, and we were planning on spending the day with him, but she's planning to go see her tomorrow. But it was still a shock, really.

So I got up, got ready and went with her to my sister's to get her and my nephew to go into town, except they weren't ready so we had to go into her house and wait for her. Then we went into town and to Morrisons for lunch, where, I think, my dad called my mum and said he'd been talking to his sister a bit that day, because my cousin went to my grandmother's to take her shopping as she usually does on Mondays, and when she went in she found her on the floor in the bathroom. She was alright apparently, my aunt had gone down and made sure she was okay, and then left her, but she wanted to try to get someone to go see her later on in the day, just to check on her. My mum explained again that she was spending the day with my sister, my nephew and me and we were going out for a meal later, so she couldn't really go now, but would try to go later. So we finished our lunch, went to pick up my youngest nephew from his playgroup, came back into town, and went round the shops letting my nephew pick out presents (mostly arts and crafts kits and paint), and buying his birthday cards. And I ran over to New Look to get a new pair of jeans, which don't have massive holes in and weren't on sale, but are actually quite lovely. Then we met back up, went back to the car via a supermarket to get my nephew a birthday cake, and drove back to my sister's house. When we got there, and were just trying to decide what to do about going out for a meal, since it was quite late and we weren't sure there was much point in driving home and then driving back for them - my dad called my mum again, to tell her that my grandmother's carers had gone to her house at their usual time, about 4:30, and found her on the kitchen floor, so they'd called an ambulance and she was being taken to Casualty. Again, she was apparently alright, but she had some pretty bad bruises, and since she'd fallen already that day, they decided they had to take her in.

So we decided what to do again, we didn't really want to let my nephew down and my grandma was apparently pretty much okay. So we decided to go out for the meal straight away, and then take my sister, her partner and their kids back home and go see my grandma in hospital afterwards, if we hadn't missed the visiting hours. So we ran around getting ready, I had to change into my lovely new jeans in my sister's kitchen, then my dad turned up and me and my nephew went with him, letting my mum come after us with my sister, her partner and my youngest nephew. We'd decided on Pizza Hut, since the kids probably wanted pizza and it was a bit more pizza and kid-oriented than our first thought, which was the nearby Frankie and Benny's. Or, as my mum calls it, Ben and Jerry's. Or, as my sister dubbed it today, Alfie and Fernando's. Anyway, so we went, then my mum and the others got there, it was actually all quite civilised for one of our family meals, the food was nice, my youngest nephew mostly wouldn't eat any, but what are you going to do. Our waitress brought out a birthday cake for my nephew with his name written on it, which I don't think he was expecting, so it was quite nice.

We managed to get out by about quarter past eight-ish, my dad and I went home, my mum went and dropped off my sister, her partner and the kids, met us back at the house, and we went to hospital to see my grandma. She actually seemed quite cheerful to be in the A&E, she said it was lovely there and there were a lot of nice girls around. She said she couldn't remember falling, and then later talked about falling, but couldn't believe that the bruise on her eye (which was slightly horrendous) had come from a fall. She thought someone must have hit her, but she couldn't think who would have done it or why, or why she wouldn't have hit them back for doing it. My grandmother has got dementia, so she spent a little while talking about the men living in her house who are always about in the night using the toilet and messing around, and how she has to move all her ornaments and things into her bedroom while she sleeps. But she generally seemed to be in quite good spirits. Then she got moved up to the ward, and got a little bit more ratty, but it was about quarter past nine by then, and she was settled and I think visiting hours were over anyway, so we had to go. Mum seemed to think she might be out of the hospital tomorrow, because someone had said she didn't have any broken bones or anything (although they did an X-ray while we were there, so how they could have decided that I don't know), but given that she's fallen twice today, they might also decide to keep her in, or do an evalution of how okay it is that she's living at home on her own. We'll have to see. Also, she's going to see my aunt tomorrow. Who hopefully is also okay, or as okay as she can be.

In between all of this, I picked up a jumper in New Look because it had no tag on it and I hoped it would be in the sale, then found out it wasn't in the sale but bought it anyway, without remembering it was an 18 and I'd only decided to try it on/possibly buy it because if it was in the sale it might be the only one left; my mum and I found out just how slightly rude and awful my two nephews could be when we were in the car with them and they decided to scream at the top of their voices while my mum was on the phone to my dad's sister about my ill grandmother, to the point where she had to get out of the car; and while we were in town my sister found a bottle of someone's prescription medicine on the ground, so I ended up going back from the supermarket to the pharmacy in the town centre to hand it in. So yes. A pretty full day, all in all.

I have so much to do at the moment. Or not that much to do, but a lot more than I have been doing over the past few weeks. I am still not on my new laptop from Christmas, despite it all being set up and everything, because I want to back up everything from my current laptop before I move onto it, including my Favourites/Bookmarks, if possible. But I want to go through my Favourites first, to check for any broken links or things I don't want anymore, before transferring them over, and I have not edited my Favourites for at least a couple of years. I have added to it. Plenty. But not edited it. And a lot of the time when I find a broken link, I mostly spend my time trying to find another link to it, so I can decide whether or not I want it later - mostly because it can be hard to tell from a broken link and a bookmark title what a page actually is, and whether it's something I would actually want. So. It's taking a little while. And mostly it's reminding me of all my old fandoms. Remember when Heroes used to be less shit? I do. Also, last night I started going through my Vids bookmarks. Which basically led to just watching a lot of vids. So. It's a bit slow going. But hopefully once I'm through the big folders, near the beginning, the rest won't take very long. Then I only have to back up my Favourites, back up some music, and try to back up my Morrowind saved games, if possible, and then I am ready to move over to my new laptop. My dad keeps asking me if I've started using the new laptop yet. I want to tell him that after 7 or so years, and doing a lot of stuff online, moving laptops sort of feels a bit like moving house. But I've decided to just get on with it instead.

Other than that, I was meant to have a dentist appointment today but the receptionist called this morning and said I couldn't go because the dentist was at a funeral in Africa. And I thought I might have a Jobcentre appointment tomorrow, but it turns out that's not until next week. Apart from that, I need to tidy my room, which is a tip, buy some new jeans (desperately), decide whether or not I want to stay on Jobseeker's or try to get onto Disability Allowance, possibly chase up the mental health organisations I'm meant to be getting further help/treatment from, possibly buy some new wellies in case it snows again, go down to Alliance and Lester to check if I changed my details with them when I moved back to my parents' house, try to look at and sort out my money at the moment especially since I need to put some money aside for London, and try to charge my new electric toothbrush. And try to book my travel tickets for London. And try to watch up some of the stuff on our Sky+ box from over Christmas. Honestly, I finally deleted a mere 38 episodes of Emmerdale with lovely Nathan in then from off the Sky+ box on Friday, and dad IMMEDIATELY tried to get me to delete other stuff as well. HE HAS NO CONCEPT OF GRATITUDE.

Other things that have been happening, in bullet points:

• There were three new Marples on in a week over Christmas, which is almost always a good thing. I like Marple better than Poirot, I think. But unusually, I managed to guess massive plot twists in each one, if not who'd actually done it, long before the end of the programme, which I don't normally do. I can't tell if it's because I'm more used to the formula/stories, or if it's because they're getting more obvious. I feel like it's the second one, with all the ominous line delivery and close-ups on people's shifty faces, and Clearly Important Slight Slow Motion applied to certain things that happen. Which seems like kind of a shame. Still, nothing happened that was quite as disturbing as when I was watching the new one in August, and suddenly started shipping Miss Marple with the killer. Dolly is clearly Miss Marple's girlfriend, but I remain convinced that the killer from The Pale Horse is her one true love. Sort of.



• Coronation Street did a disgusting thing, but at least David had the good grace to look slightly ashamed and hunted over it the next day. And I don't normally enjoy sexual slurs being aimed at women, but the sheer timing of his comeback to Tracy the next day was sort of too good to believe.
  
  ( Spoilers for the Tracy storylines over Christmas and New Year. Mostly about the Platts )



• ( Sort of big spoilers for Tracy storylines up to the next six months or so )



• Nathan got a mention in yesterday's Emmerdale! A sort of actual involvement in the script! His little brother Will was playing computer games with his friend Belle, alone, and someone called his mobile and he looked at it and then his face darkened and he just put it away. Belle said maybe he should answer it because it might be someone important, and he said it was no-one he wanted to talk to. Then later on, in another scene, his phone rang again, and he checked it and his face darkened again and he put it away. And Belle asked who it was, it was okay, he could tell her anything, and he said "You want to know who it is? It's Nathan! He won't leave me alone!", and then he SMASHED THE PHONE ON THE FLOOR. Oh, Nathan is calling his little brother! I have wondered what Nathan's first Christmas and New Year without basically ANY OF HIS FAMILY would be like, unless he visited his mother. It makes sense he wouldn't totally give up without a fight too. And at least it suggests he's okay-ish and still has his mobile phone, or a phone, and hasn't had to sell it for warmth or food or shelter. I'm assuming Nathan's probably okay, they had a house all rented down in London to go to and I think he still has friends in London he could call on if he was properly in trouble. Still. It's nice to hear of him again. OH NATHAN.
  
  ( Some spoilers for upcoming Wylde storylines in Emmerdale )



• I didn't see the new Doctor Who special over Christmas (also I did see a bit of Voyage of the Damned with Tony Gordon in it, with his hair slicked back and calling everyone idiots, swoon) - but I did see a clip of it yesterday with the CRAZY SHARK, CRAZY MASSIVE SHARK THAT WILL TRY TO EAT ANYONE, ANYTHING, BUT ESPECIALLY HUMANS, NO MATTER HOW MUCH EFFORT IT TAKES OR HOW MUCH DAMAGE IT DOES TO ITSELF DOING SO. I know that it was some sort of weird air-breathing shark from some sort of mysterious anomoly. I'm assuming it was an alien shark and they explained that earth sharks generally don't act like this. Or that it was very hungry. Or something. I'm being very kind about it, really.



• Reason number one why it's probably a good idea for me to sort through everything on my laptop and back it up and start using the new one: I'm keeping the new one on the floor next to my bed, out of the way. Or so I thought. The fancy Christmas light decoration thing my parents put in my window is no longer staying on the glass, so I was propping it up against the window. I just went over to close my window and knocked it I think and it accidentally fell over and knocked a bunch of ornaments of my windowsill, including one I think onto the laptop. There doesn't seem to be any damage to the computer or marks on it though. Still. Oops.



• I was following John Allison's little Giant Days 'blog' on the top twenty albums of the year complete with sample songs. I wasn't too taken with a lot of them, but I'm finding myself suddenly a bit obsessed with Infinity Guitars by Sleigh Bells. Warning: This music may make you feel like punching a crow.
  
  And I was all sort of feeling a bit Alternative and pleased with myself. And then today I was watching E4 and an advert for the new series of 90210 came on, using that song as a soundtrack. Damn you 90210. Or you E4. You and your music-stealing ways.



• Ed From Bugs Dancing On Ice starts on Sunday. Eeee!