Friday, April 27, 2007

Home Again



Jason got home on Sunday. I've been meaning to post a picture of us since then, but I've been too excited and busy. It's really great having Jason around again. He's such a sweet guy and makes me so happy. I feel so much better when I can sit down with him and just talk and give him a hug when he needs it.

He's has been really down recently because of events I can't really go into here. He feels like a monster even though he did nothing wrong and is one of the most kind people I know. He's also doubting his screenwriting career, which I completely relate with, but Jason is a great writer! His script is rock solid and hilarious, but some people think it's mean and hateful, so he's abandoning the entire idea. I wish I knew what to say to make him feel better, but I'm bad at the whole boyfriend thing.

I have a meeting on Sunday for that film crew I'm volunteering for. The one where everyone has a ton of experience, but me. They just got a sound guy with a Golden Globe or something. I don't know what I'm doing and I don't know what they're going to expect of me, but I know I'm not going to be able to meet their expectations. Sometimes I wish I had more reasonable career goals.

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Insert Title Here

So I did some yardwork today, which I enjoy doing. The problem is that when I do stuff like that without listening to music I tend to think a lot, which isn't always good. I started remembering some of the things my mom has said to me in the past about the way I am. I'm not going to repeat it because it's already been said here and I don't really want to repeat it.

Jason comes home tomorrow and I know my mom is going to start shit over it. At this point I'm actually terrified to tell her because I don't want her to ruin Jason's return. But at the same time, I can't just not tell her because he's going to come over either tomorrow or the day after and then she'll be pissed off that I didn't tell her he was coming home soon. I don't want her to make me feel guilty for Jason coming over to be with me, but it's really inevitable. Even if she doesn't say anything, she'll still give us dirty looks and listen at the door all night.

[ADDITION: I told her and she ruined it. She asked the nature of our relationship and I felt compelled to lie. After I told her we are just friends, she said she was proud of me. I almost cried right there, and I did after I left. Now I'm ashamed for having to hide something that's not even wrong. I feel like I have to hide Jason because some stupid pricks think it's not right. I promised him a half hour hug, and I have to take it back because I'm too much of a pansy to admit my love for him. Thank you, you fucking ignorant bitch!]

I guess I just need to try harder to get out of here. Jason and I are going to visit his friend Sarah, and I know the topic of moving in with her is going to come back up now that she supposedly broke it off with her 35 year old, broke ass boyfriend. But even if she did reinstate the offer, I can't go there just to be thrown out when some other boyfriend comes along. But that's assuming she even offers again, which she's not likely too.

My friend Steph is also looking into buying a house down toward the Macomb area. Even if she doesn't end up getting the house she set her sights on, I'm sure she'll be happy with it. She invited me to move with her because she knows I really need to get out of here and we get along really well. The problem is that I don't have a job and until I find one (which shouldn't take that long in such a populated area) I'd feel horrible because I'd be mooching. And what if it did take a long time to find a job? I'd feel so out of place that I wouldn't know what to do. She also invited Jason to come and share a room with me, which was awesome, but her other friend Danielle is kind of a blabblermouth and I don't really want everyone to know just yet. But if I was living that far away from my parents and other family, it would matter a lot less.

On a high note, yesterday was Jason's last day working with the Criminal Intent crew and things are looking good. John Roman, the head honcho (or something) told Jason to send him any scripts he's working on and to keep in touch. The head of every department he worked in loved him, which I knew they would, and one of them even told Jason they'd hire him back in a heart beat if he's ever back in New York. This is all great! But I still have the feeling that if I do go into filmmaking, my career will be based off of Jason's success and I don't want that. But that's something I just have to get past.

Friday, April 20, 2007

Back to Edgy

So after 12+ hours (I went to bed after I called Jason, so I can't give an accurate time) Fiesty was finally ready to run on my computer. So I rebooted and not surprisingly, my wifi didn't work. I looked around on some forums to see if there was a fix, and I learned that the driver was added to the blacklist because it can cause problems with the chipset, especially if people have it built into their laptop and can't disable it. After removing it from my blacklist, the card behaved the same way it did in Dapper (i.e. it showed up in the network connections, but didn't actually work).

I'm really glad I made a ghost image of my root hard drive because it only too 12 minutes to return to Edgy. I just didn't feel like messing around with it. So everything is back to the way it was yesterday, but I had a tough time getting GAIM to work right again. I guess my settings were kept on the root partition instead of with the rest of my data and settings because I had to reset all my options and reenter the information for my AIM account (but my MSN and Yahoo! accounts still worked just fine). But reconfiguring an app here and there is a Hell of a lot better than reinstalling Ubuntu or living without Internet access.

There are a few problems that I still need to fix in Edgy. Like I said, I broke my camrea driver. There's probably a simple solution that I'm just overlooking. I've been having problems with stability in WINE, but I recently upgraded to a new version and haven't tested it, so that might be okay. The directional buttons on my AxisPad controller don't work, but the Analog sticks work well, so I'm not even going to bother with that. And, of course, there's the bug that forces me to restart the ACPI daemon every time I reboot my computer.

I need to get on those because I want Jason to accept Ubuntu as a valid operating system. I'm not going to make him use it or anything, but he uses my computer a lot when he comes over because we're both into computers. I guess I'm kind of worried he's going to criticize everything that doesn't work the same way it does in Windows, and especially the things that don't work at all. He's like that some times.

I can't say that I really liked Fiesty overall. There is an application that allows you to install restricted (proprietary) drivers, but it didn't think my ATI Mobility Radeon needed one, so that didn't really work. It replaced all of my icons with really ugly ones and removed a lot of "obsolete" software that I needed. There were some new things in the administration panel, but I couldn't really be bothered playing around with them. Fiesty also ran noticeably slower than Edgy even though many people have been reporting it to be faster.

There's another something being released tomorrow. Ubuntu Studio looks pretty interesting. I can't get Cinerellla to work with Ubuntu and Kino only works with DV files. I'm not sure about the details of Ubuntu Studio, but I think I'll download it tomorrow....or in a few weeks.

The Really, Really Long Haul



I swear, if I didn't have any other reasons to stay up tonight, I would have gone to bed hours ago. But I did get a chance to catch up on some blogs and youtube. And at least I'm not sick tonight. That's always a plus.

P.S. Thanks, Julie for showing interest. :)

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Upgrading Part 2: The Long Haul



I spent the last 4 hours using partimage to back up my partitions, and as you can see, I'm not even close to being done. I probably should have waited a few days or something because their servers are getting completely hammered right now. But I really do want to see what's new. I've seen the topic discussed on some forums, but no one has actually completed the download yet.

Oh, and the remaining time keeps fluctuating between 7 hours and 4 days with a minimum downspeed of 268 bps. Yes, bits per second. BITS! AOL wasn't even this slow! But it does give me ample time to surf the Internet before Jason gets home.

P.S. If this breaks my wifi capability heads are gonna roll!

Upgrading Edgy

Feisty Fawn (the newest version of Ubuntu) came out today! I'm going to back up my data and upgrade right now! I'm kind of weary about the upgrade breaking my wifi support, but that's the point of the backup. I can't wait to see what works better (or worse) and maybe I'll finally be able to upgrade my BOINC client, allowing me to use CPU throttling so it doesn't steal all my clock cycles anymore.

I broke some packages the other day by editing my sources list, allowing me to download cutting edge versions of some of my software. I realized I killed the I/O library that lets my camera work with the photo import tool. Hopefully the upgrade will fix it, but I can always figure out how to fix it later.

*excitement*

Monday, April 16, 2007

One Year

It's been one year since I started blogging. I don't remember why I started or where I wanted to go with it, but there's one thing I know. It's really helped me be honest with people, and really myself. It helps me open up, express myself, and really understand what I'm feeling. It's been a really great experience for me.

It took a lot for me to start this. I debated for almost a week whether I really wanted to start this blog. I even went to Jason, maybe hoping he would tell me it's a bad idea. I took another 3 days trying to find the perfect name, probably hoping I'd get bored and give up. But I eventually mad my first post. It was, of course, about childish name calling - a recurring theme.

I have a hard time being completely honest with people, sometimes even Jason. It's really crippling because it keeps me from doing normal things like hanging out with my friends. I know I've been blaming on depression, but I really think it's the cause of my depression. I really want to start vlogging on youtube and hang out with my friends more, but I have a hard enough being honest here, in my words and occasional photograph. But I'm going to try really hard because if I can do it here, I'm sure I can do it in person.

Sunday, April 15, 2007

One Week

Jason gets home in exactly one week. I'm really excited about seeing him again. It's been such a long time since I got to sit down with him and look into his beautiful eyes. It's been so long since I got to give him a great big hug and a well-deserved backrub. I really can't wait to be back in his warm, loving arms again. It's been far too long and I'm looking forward to it so much.

At the same time, I'm slightly worried. Jason has progressed so much as a person since he left,living on his own and learning so much about his career and life. I'm the same unmotivated, inexperienced child. Jason has some really great things going for him, and I'm just kind of here. It's hard to explain and I know I'm doing it wrong, but I don't want to completely ignore it. I just don't want to spend the rest of my life mooching off Jason. And even if I'm not, I'll probably feel like I am.

Stephanie should be getting here today. I think. If not today, then sometime soon. I'm excited about that too because I always have a great time hanging out with her and she's one of the 3 people I ever actually hang out with. That should be fun, but I'm shy and I don't say a lot. Her family probably thinks I'm just weird or hate them or something. But I can't help being shy.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Major Life Decision

My Ipaq

My 6 year old Compaq iPaq died today. I got it for Christmas in 2001 and since then I've run over it with a car (no joke this time), slammed it in my locker door, dropped it numerous times, thrown it around, scratched it with the stuff in my pocket, and lost it at least a dozen times. None of those things are the cause of the problem though. I think a contact pin got worn out because it stopped reading the memory card properly. I tested multiple cards and checked to make sure they were formatted properly, so I'm sure it's the player.

Now I'm in the market for a new one in the $50-$150 range. I've been thinking about buying a refurbished iPod Nano ($119), which is a bitch to get working right with Linux but is a solid piece or hardware. My main problem with that is that I always criticized the iPod for being too trendy, but I wouldn't be buying it because it's the popular thing to do. I'd buy it because I really need a new player. It's only 2GB (an odd statement, seeing as my iPaq was only 96MB) but I couldn't justify paying $160 for the 4GB model because it just seems like a lot of money. But then again, who can complain about a 24 hour battery life?

I've also been looking at the Rio Karma ($139), which ended production a few years ago, but is still available on eBay. The main point here is that it works as a removable hard drive out of the box, meaning it's Linux friendly. It's a lot less sleek than the iPod and weighs quite a bit more, but it's got a 20GB hard drive which is more than enough for what I want to do with it. The screen is kind of dull compared to the other players, but I guess I could live with that. The Karma is at the upper end of what I want to pay though.

The Sandisk Sansa c250 ($99) is more like the iPaq, but with a nicer screen and a 2GB upgradeable capacity. It won't play Ogg Vorbis files, but neither will the iPod and neither did my iPaq. It's not that important, because I can just change the URL to all my Ogg podcasts to the MP3 version.

The iRiver T30 ($40) was suggested to me, and it's at a great price. It plays nice with Linux and supposedly has decent sound. The interface is reportedly clunky and the screen looks kind of bleh. It's only a gig and I kind of wanted 2, but This is a nice unit (at a great price) if I decide I can't afford one of the other players. Or maybe I will get it. 1GB is enough for like 12 hours of audio, 24 if it's all podcasts because they're encoded at 64k.

I was also considering the Creative Zen V Plus, but ruled it out because it's just ugly. And it looked very ergonomically incorrect. That would be bad for my carpal tunnel.

So I'm in a bit of a crisis here. I'm probably going to have whatever unit I buy for another 5 or 6 years, so I want to make sure I make the right decision. I also can't live without an MP3 player because I like to have something to listen to while I walk, and I enjoy a great number of podcasts, so I might as well partake in both activities simultaneously. Any suggestions or recommendations?



EDIT: Forget everything I said about the iPod being a bitch to get working. It turns out that the media player I use in Ubuntu has solid, built in iPod support. This not only means that it'll be a piece of cake to get it working, but also I'll be able to copy music directly from my library instead of hunting around my hard drive for it. That's a big plus!

Saturday, April 07, 2007

How I Ruined Easter

I don't have any money because I don't have a job. I can 't buy people Easter gifts because I don't have any money because I don't have a job. My mom bought something for me to give to her because I can't buy anything because I don't have any money because I don't have a job. But tonight, she took it back to give to someone else. Anyone else would just say "Okay, now I just can't give you anything for Easter." But not me.

My mom turns all these crappy religious holidays into greed infested balls of horror. She's been walking around the house saying "I sure hope somebody buys me something for Easter," which I assumed was directed at my aunt because when she says things like "Not eating the last donut is bullshit," which is directed at my aunt. The whole time, she could have told me to buy her something or at least told me she was going to take that stupid gift back. Now it's 10PM the day before Easter and I need to buy a nice gift with $10 before tomorrow at noon.

If I don't buy her something she'll be mad for at least a month. Probably more. She'll accuse me of ruining Easter just like every other holiday. I really hope she didn't buy me anything because then I'll really hear about it. Isn't Easter about Jesus or something? How is it suddenly about presents? My dad bought her a VCR/DVD player for her TV in the kitchen (which is WAY better than the one I bought them) and I know she's expecting something nice from me.

I never should have bought her all that stuff I did for Christmas. I should have spent about $50 total (except maybe on Jason) and put all the rest toward my student loan. Then I would have the money to pay for my mistakes and I wouldn't have set such high standards. So i guess, in a way, it is my fault for ruining Easter. Again.

Thursday, April 05, 2007

Help From Nidhi

I contacted youtube's tech support again today and not only was it not helpful, but they actually repeated what I said! The solution on the FAQ to my problem was to reinstall Windows, and I did (just kidding, I needed to clear my cache and cookies). So I did that and now I need to revisit all my frequented sites to resave my passwords and cache template images, and it didn't even fix my problem! So I sent youtube another support request in the hopes that there would be a better solution.

But at least I'm confident I talked to a real person. Last time they simply directed me to the FAQ and that was that. Today I got a more human response from a guy (or lady maybe) named Nadhi. He basically said that it could have been caused by two things:

1. The owner of the video deleting or declining my comments.

I'm sure this isn't the problem because I didn't say anything offensive or even disagree with anyone! Why would they delete my comment, but not all the ones that say "OMFG!!!Go die Fag!!!!!!" (Yes, I watch a lot of gay youtubers)

2. "Our engineers looked into these issues and determined that our spam filter
was somewhat overactive in some instances."

What the fuck!? "Don't read this or you'll have bad sex for 20 years," "Repost this or Mary Anne's ghost will come rape you tonight," and "Come buy my Viagra bitches!" all get through, but "Don't give up! You can do it!" gets flagged as spam!?!?!? I hope someone gets fired over that!

So basically, I still don't know why I can't comment on videos, but I guess I can live with it. I was going to vlog about it, but I haven't really felt like it recently.

I haven't really felt like doing much of anything recently and I don't know why. I've been kind of depressed and people always assume it's for some childish reason (such as losing at Scrabble), and I can't really debate it because I don't actually know why I'm not happy right now. But I don't really want to get into that now.

And sorry if I offended anyone with my April Fool's joke. I really thought it would be a lot funnier. Only a few people seemed to care and everyone else just ignored it, which kind of bummed me out. But the phone call I received the next day totally made up for it.

Also (I've been meaning to ask for a while), do you guys think I should post photos and other media more frequently?

Sunday, April 01, 2007

Yet Another Driving Disaster

I know I complain a lot that I don't like driving and that I feel uncomfortablle behind the wheel of a car, but today I did something horrible. I went out driving like any other day and it went great. I did all the turns fine, I didn't speed, and I didn't hit anyone. ANYONE. But that's not to say that I didn't hit anything...

house.jpg


I was pulling into our driveway, which is fairly long so I take it at some speed. Not 40 or anything, just not 5. I normally don't have a problem with it because it's just a simple straight shot. But today something terrible happened. A little black cat ran out in front of the car and I didn't know what to do. I swerved away from it, and unfortunately toward the house. I hit the house and left a hole. A hole!

Oh God, I feel like such an ass. I don't know what to do. My mom is convinced that it's the landlord's responsibility to fix, but it's really not. I'm the one who made the whole, and I'm the one who needs to fix it. It's times like these that I kind of wish I was dead. My mom keeps screaming it me and acting like I did it on purpose, which I didn't!

But hey, the cat is okay, and I have my health. And as you can see, the car is just fine.

Ma's Car

APRIL FOOLS! There's not really a hole in my wall and that photo is from flickr.