MOOP!

Today was, by and large, a pretty good day for me, in terms of working on my little projects. It was an MCAS day, and the way things worked out, I saw two students the entire day. So...yeah. I had a lot of time to work on aforementioned little projects!

On my secretish one of them, I did 1/122 of the work, which is not a whole lot, but at the same time is an excellent start (this is a project that I have not touched since 2022, so that's still good stuff. And back then I only got through like...4/122 of the work, so this is good progress. RADICAL ACCEPTANCE OF INCREMENTAL PROGRESS, OKAY!?)

((Seriously, I keep that phrase on a sticky note posted above my desk. It's important to me. It's right next to the one that says "you can always start again". The only other pithy reminders I have are a couple of NancyButtons attached with magnets to my filing cabinet --one says "If the muse doesn't show up, start without her" and the other "you can't revise nothing". You have now determined most of my philosophy.))

On the other one...well the other one I've been public about, it's my email sorting project. I'm at about 7,600 unread emails and about 25,700 total in my inbox. Before you make snide comments, when I got serious about this project in mid-March, it was 13,600 and 32,800. Incremental progress.

(I mean hell, the start of May was about 11,900 and 31,000. My little graph is _plummeting_ in a most delightful way, and having reached "about 25,000" I was able to reward myself with more goofy data analysis.)

My third little digital project is Going Through And Sorting All My Photos and I have made zero progress on it in this batch (although I have done about 1600 from the earlier batch. I have no idea how many total photos it will be, my very rough initial guess is "I dunno, 50k?"). I kept trying to do some while babysitting Baby earlier this week (when Baby was sleeping, natch, not trying to balance both a child and a laptop) but I did not make much progress. Maybe I will do a little more tonight? This one suffers because I can't do it at work --my photos are not sorted enough between what is and isn't appropriate to have on the screen of my work laptop. That's one of the goals of this project, yanno?

Tomorrow I have actual work, which is a deep and abiding bummer, although we're at the part of the year where things are actually just humming along with end-of-year projects and the like. So maybe I will be able to do some amount of little projects as well. And before too long I'll be off to Pinewoods, and everything will fall apart again (I don't have any data on "number of unread/unarchived emails by month" but I think July will probably have an outsized percentage.)

I hope you are well and have nice things in your life.

~Sor
MOOP!

I am writing these words on a little black thinkpad I have decided to call Melody Clementine Verandern. She runs linux! Which took me _fucking forever_ and required _four other people_ to actually make happen.

(I will try hard to write up an actual explanation and put it on the internet, mostly out of potential use for other people, but long-story-short, there was one little thing to change that no one ever mentioned to change and on Austin's advice to change we tried it and bam! Yayyyyy I hate computers and I do not understand why I have decided to do this to myself.)

Anyways, I name electronics after fictional women I like, and I name computers with German words, so that's where it came from. Melody is Mell Kelly's given name, Clementine is from the best books I read as a substitute, and Verandern is the German word for "change".

(Okay Kat, but Clementine is even more disasterADHD than you are and Mell is literally insane? Yes, this is going to be a very exciting computer. I am looking forward to mixing Clementine's introspection and awareness of herself, and Mell's easygoing nature and get-shit-done attitude. I regret absolutely nothing here).

The next few days are going to be Very Exciting as I do things like...gosh, literally everything. It's been something like eight months since I last had a working laptop of my very own, and this is a new hardware (why are the fn and ctrl keys wrong? why can't I pinchzoom the touchpad?) and a _brand_ new OS (I know absolutely nothing about linux) and there's a LOT to do. Hopefully this will be a fun way to keep myself busy, and not an agonizing slog.

Here's a todo list:

*I'm putting this first because a lot of the later things depend on it - I need to figure out how to make my backup drive from the previous computer talk to this one. Previous computer was a mac, and the beautiful automatic time machine backups worked *great*! I can plug the drive into Ezri's mac and see all my shit. If I plug the drive into this machine, so far I get a complete lack of folders where there should be a lot of folders. Research will occur!

*Once I can speak backup I'M GONNA HAVE ACCESS TO ALL MY MUSIC AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Absolutely that gets that many exclamation points, fight me. It's been ages, I have had to survive with solely what is currently stored on my phone. Of course now I have to choose some sort of music library software and learn how that works, yayyy oh gods. All I know is that iTunes has gone downhill with every version since aught-five, and fuck cloud-based storage solutions, I want to actually own my music.

*Back up my phone? Yeah, there's a lot of things I'm willing to do with the work computer, but this is not one of them. My fellytone does not get plugged into the work lappy, which means...yeah. Eight months, huh.

*Start fuxing with photos. I have a huge photo library and tons of time on my hands because ~pandemic~. Maybe I can work to combine these two things and start posting more photos or whatever.

*Download GAMES! Steam is an absolute must, as is whatever will get me access to Heroes of Might and Magic 3. (I own a copy from GoG, I just need to figure out the install instructions). For extreme bonus points (lol, not happening), figuring out how to get a copy of Gahan Wilson's Ultimate Haunted House would be _very_ cool of me.

*A whole lot of configuring work to make the keyoard do my fucking bidding. This absolutely must be possible, that's the whole damn point of linux. How do I have multiple workspaces? How do I quickly hotkey into them? How do I switch between programs and between tabs? ALL OF THIS IS SOLVABLE.
(ETA: I have since at least figured out how to switch between workspaces. it's a start!)

*"All of this is solvable" is hopefully going to be my motto going forward. But I'm also still leaving space for the idea that I do this for a month, say "that was a great adventure" and install back to windows. I'm not daft, I know that I am not actually a computer person, and that at my core I just want a box to do the things I ask it to. I also have literally no idea what anything means in terminal, and that's gonna be a pretty steep learning curve. Hopefully I am more looking forward to it than fearing it.

Gosh, I can actually start saving my words on the regular again.

...I can start a BehindtheWalls file again. That's...that's been a while.

So the moral of this story is...I'm happy. I'm going to have an adventure. There is going to be a _lot_ of screaming in my future. Advice is very _very_ welcome, including just straight up recommended reading suggestions --xubuntu 20.04, which I've already discovered looks different from regular ubuntu.

Have a good day, my lovelies.

~Sor
MOOP!

ALRIGHT IT'S 2017!

So, I have this file on my computer from a year ago entitled "REVOLUSTRAVAGANZA". Somehow I am only just now realizing that "rev" is not the start of "resolution" but that's to be understood, since I haven't updated the list since like...apparently April. Huh.

In my defense, I spent a lot more of 2016 in a semi-Depressive state than most of the years prior, prompted in no small part by the minor traumas of losing a job I loved¹, dealing with a serious asshole landlord², and The Election. Usually I just get the drain bamage in the winter, spending much of April-June wanting to sob to pieces in my office was an unwelcome addition.

But separate from that, let's check in and see how I did on things. You can read the original post here.

1) Writing: Ehhhhhnnnnnhhh. I did a significantly spottier job of using 750w in 2016 than in 2015. This is gonna be a common trend by the way, 2015 was an objectively better year all around. I'll see about getting back into the swing of things this year.

2) Making LJ posts or whatever: I certainly haven't been hitting 15 a month, but I've been doing a fair clip, which is great. Apparently in October I posted on over half the days, which is kinda amazing. I'll keep trying to focus energies, I (as always) miss it over here.

3) Backing up the computer: I have been...okay? at this. Currently I'm like 60 days out, which is not so good. I will continue to try and hit once a month.

4) Cull my closet: This did not so much happen. I am not so much good at this.

5) Track bicycle milage: I did an awesome job of this until May, at which point I...got distracted and stopped syncing Eddie³ with Kela⁴, and also stopped using Eddie for a long while. That being said, I managed 1141.84 miles on the bike from January to May, which is a goodly amount, damnit!

((I miss my stupid eight mile commute along the river with the sunrise behind me. Damn but that was good zen-time.))

6) Frivolous bike journey: I did not actually manage. Maybe next year? It's not super a priority.

7) We don't talk about number seven. Being an adult is hard, and I spent a lot of the year in lack-of-meds trauma, which is my excuse for why we don't talk of number seven.

8) Have a job better than substituting for this school year: Well, uh. Huh. Okay, so nannying is objectively better than substituting (it's more consistent, less stressful, and pays better. No benefits, but then, I don't have benefits as a sub either). It's also not what I want to be doing with myself in the long term. Maybe 2017 should be the year where I get serious about finding a *career* again.

9) Five multiday non-dance events: Arisia, Balticon, Gencon, NYFF and.......Marc's Wedding? I don't think that counts. I traveled a lot, but most of it wasn't *events*, per se.

10) Five multiday dance events: Pinewoods x3, NEFFA, and I completely failed to do anything this fall.

11) Do well at current job: Well, they fired me. Like, less than a month after I made this resolution, there began to be Big Conversations and all of January and February was fucking nightmare awful, but I genuinely thought I was doing the work I needed and getting better and it didn't matter. Come the April contract negotiations, I was informed that I would not be invited back.

(My boss was gracious enough to do it at a free period at the end of the day, which means when I went down to my office and sobbed, I didn't have to worry about getting my face back together for students.)

But I think I did a pretty fucking good job of it up until that ending point. The best I could, at least.

12) Give more presents: Ehhh, a little bit? I got weirdly excited and overboard this Christmas with my family (which I like and feel good about, and since I get many things secondhand or discount, I don't feel like I spent too much money or anything), and I feel like I've done a couple good things throughout the year, but not much.

13) Give more presence: I continue to not do well at this, but I've at least been trying? I need to leave way more DW/LJ comments than I actually do, don't I?

14) Less computer time: Weirdly yes? And also very no? It's complicated. When I have other things to do or people to interact with, I'm a lot better at being present and not on the electronicx. When I'm just living my day-to-day life, it's harder. The introduction of pokemon weirded this a lot --I am more likely to have my phone out in public, but also more likely to not be doing anything that takes my attention.

I am probably not allowed to play Skyrim in 2017 either, but I'll re-check this position sometime around June. (Yes, I'm jonesing. Yes, I know there are other similarly good big sandboxy games, but I can't play any of them *either*, not until I can handle myself better.)

15) Emails: I currently have 9851 emails in my inboxen (667 unread). This is not great, but is better than the "well over 10k" I had this time last year. I'll keep poking at it.

16) Wedding planning: Oh gods, I haven't done any of this, and I need to start. Like serously start, since I'll be 28 in eight months. *whimper*

17) Spend time on west coast: With the corollary of "with my boyfriends". This mostly didn't happen. I did visit mek in April, which was excellent, but I didn't actually manage to visit Sparr at all, and things with K˚ are...complicated right now. My resolutions for this year are gonna include "repair some of my relationships and be a better partner".

18) Highland: Nnnnnn? I've been going more often, sure. I competed again (and I'm getting better --previous comp I was solidly 4/4, this one I was solidly 5/7). I'm now up to having *eight* dances clattering around in my head and getting confused with each other. I really want to find the time to film myself doing the best I can at each of them, so I have something to compare with in n months.

As I've mentioned a couple times here, I have no idea why I do Highland. I should unpack that sometime.

19) Craft more stuff: Unfortunately no. I've started drawing again, which is good, but I have really not been doing much in the creation department otherwise. Need to work on that.

(I did sew a tiny Sporran beltpouch at the NH Highland Games --oh hey, that's a multiday dance event!-- this year, because they didn't mind a grownass adult crashing the kids space. It's cute! I made a (very bad) buttonhole!)

So that's that review. It's good to check in with my goals sometimes. Maybe I will make more goals for 2017, and maybe I will actually do a better job of them this year.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: The narrative I have been using (because it hurts less) is that they were looking for a different classroom management style. This is true, but I don't like admitting how much I would've been willing to bend myself to theirs, despite the fact that I am not remotely authoritarian and that seems to be more of what they wanted.

2: Do you wanna know what I love most about my living situation right now? FUCKING EVERYTHING (except going from free in-unit laundry to coin in the basement). I love my new roommates, I love my new house, I love my new landlord, I LOVE LOVE LOVE my non-oil heat. It's a really good thing in a sea of not-so-great.

3: My shipboard computer! (Making the first electronic I've given a dude-name to in ages)

4: Keladry Selbstzucht --my darling laptop, named for the Lady Knight of Mindelan and the German word for self-discipline.

So, because I both like being stalked and like stalking people, I joined Gather[ETA 2022: dead link], which appears to almost be a cross between a blog and a forum. Anyone else out there who I should go friend thereabouts?

***

Liam! gets cookies for telling me how to change shortcuts on my mac. Twiddle-arrow is a *much* quicker way to parse through tabs in Safari, thanks. (Though I'm actually going to change it shortly, as I realize that it doesn't work when I'm in a textbox --the arrows just function as arrows in the box. This is useless. Ideal would be twiddle , and . I think, except that twiddle-, is for opening sysprefs. Damnit! Ah well, I know what to do now, I can experiment until my baby works like I want her to.)

Next question is figuring out a way to unminimize windows without using the mouse. Maybe I should just switch to hiding windows instead of minimizing them...no, no good, that hides all the windows in a program, not just the active one. Hmm. A quest!!

(Hey, we'll start taking bets now --who wants to bet that, by the end of the summer, Sorcy will have started learning how to code things. Damnit, I am not a computer geek. *sighs*)

.....did I seriously just somehow hit twiddle-w (close tab) instead of twiddle-tab (go to next program)? What the fuck?! That just doesn't make sense.

***

My mommy's coming up to town in a couple weekends! Unfortunately, said weekend is the weekend before the weekend of the show. *crosses fingers for being able to hang out with people, and introduce her to Lauren and Emily, damnit!*

There's also 19th century dance going on that weekend, which makes my heart kinda go "!, want!" though I suspect I've got a nil chance of making it *that* time. (Reoccuring dance events are win and love, yep.) Though I could always drag the 'rents to it with me...(if I'm not in rehersal. :p)

***

Ah-HA! Ha ha ha! BRILLIANCE!

Man, keyboard hacking my computer is my new obsession. I'm sure I'll get over it within a week, but while I'm doing it, it's awesomely fun. (Finally figured out how to fix one of those little things that's been bothering me since I got Seren --the fact that twiddle-M on a mac will not turn itunes into the miniplayer (zoom view), it'll minimize it. Miniplayer now has a shortcut, and YAY!)

(Damn, I'm a dork.)

***

Uhm, yeah. Life is school, rehersal, and occasionally hanging out with people. Last night I went over to Jere7my's to watch some MST3K movie (Attack of the Gila Monster? Something of the Gila Monster, certainly) which just furthered the huge crush I am developing on Joel. I need to hang out with Dan4th sometime, since I haven't seen him since before break. Same with Dominik.

Yeah. The world is quiet here and all.

***

P.S: I'm writing things again. *bouncebouncebounce!* I don't care if it's complete shit, I'm *writing!* This is what the Sorcy is supposedly best at. <3

~Sor
MOOP!

Souhm, yeah. Sorcy = helladork.

No, seriously, I am geeking out about how cool it is to be able to do the whole computer thing just with my keyboard and not have to use my mouse at all, what is wrong with me, damnit, damnit!

Because, I mean, it was cool enough when I finally started seriously using apple-tab to switch programs. "Oh, I am typing a livejournal entry but Keira just said something I want to reply to in IM? No problem!" But just now, I learned that I can open chats with people in Adium without using my mouse at all -- apple-/ to open the contacts list, arrows to navigate the list, enter to open a new chat with a new person. Holyshit, so easy.

Soyeah. Now all I *really* need is an easier way to swap from tab to tab in Safari (c'mon Apple, shift-alt-twiddle-arrow? what the hell is *wrong* with you, that's four keys! Get it down to two, bitte.) and I will be a happyKat.

(Or, I mean, I could start using Firefox. Which I probably should do anyways, as it's got a handful of better features that I'm too lazy to go hunting for in Safari --ability to have multiple search boxes, for instance, and not just google.)

Alsoalso, I apparently need to learn Dvorak, so I can train myself to stop hitting twiddle-Q instead of twiddle-W. Computers are weird.

....

Yeah, that's all. Go play The World's Hardest Game, which I'm sure *isn't*, but is tricky enough to be annoying and addictive and I'm stuck SO BAD on level ten, but I'm getting better, and I've only died eighty times on this level. Hate.

~Sor
MOOP!

LAST FINAL OF SEMESTER:
Part one: Finish databases for projecty thing. STATUS: Complete.
Part two: Print out a page of information, with pictures, for each superhero. STATUS: About to be started
Part three: Create an Excel spreadsheet. STATUS: Oh god, there will be no sleep tonight, will there?

EVERYTHING ELSE I NEED TO DO BEFORE I LEAVE:
Part one: Clean room. STATUS: Bahahahahah!
Part two: Pack. STATUS: Oh god, there will be NO SLEEP tonight, will there?
Part three: Hit up Newbury Comics for Becky's birfday present, hit up Joie de Vivre for more christmassy grabbag things and possibly a clone-type present. STATUS: Well, I actually can't do this one until tomorrow. So, on hold.

You know what's fun? KNOWING that you're not going to sleep until approx four PM the next day, so you can crank the loud bouncy music and grin like a manic idiot and be prepped to stay up late.

~Sor
MOOP!

( babblebabblebabble eee, iCal!, boring notes about things. )

And of course, there is my most important calendar-subset-thing: BIRTHDAYS!

If you suspect that I don't have your birthday listed*, drop me a comment telling me when the last time you had your head shoved through your mom's vagina. Unless you're into some sort of really kinky incest shit, at which point, I just don't need to know.

~Sor
MOOP!

*ETA: And if you've got your birthday listed in your profile, so that I can see it when I go to livejournal.com/birthdays.bml, I don't need it again. Really. I don't mind having more birth years though, so yay stalking I suppose.

Serenity Freiheit
Aug 2007 - Nov 2007

***

The last three months of my life have dissapeared.

No, I don't want to talk about it.

Hokay. So, I had this research paper to write before tomorrow. This paper that has already cost me entierly too much of my money and sanity from the fact that I had to turn in my old books (and wipe out my fines) before I could check out any new books from the library. Big frigging research paper for my english class.

(which, incedentally, because AP classes rule, is the only english class I have to take for my libral-arts base. I'll have to take more if I want to be an English teacher, but that's about it.)
(Additionally, because I attacked the SAT's with awesome and destruction, I'm almost out of the only math class I have to take for my libarts base. Booyah!)

DISTRACTIONS ASIDE!

( Apple should not equal Windows. So why is my MacBook acting like a Windowsboxen? )

Dude, computer troubles aside, I totally just got shangheid into hanging out with the people in my hall.

See, I was trying to make Seren work, figuring that if I was going to have to tearfully call someone at midnight thirty, I should do it somewhere where my roommate wasn't sleeping, and Bonnie, the truly wonderful girl next door, was all like "Hey, come sit in my room, it's warmer" in the "you cannot refuse this!" way.

So I did, and some other people showed up, and it was decided that we should go across the hall to Tess and Christina's room. We check to make sure that Tess and Nick are decent, and the five of us from Bonnies room join Tess and Nick and the seven of us hang out and chat. So that was pretty groovy.

Also, my parents are sane, and I am SO DAMN THANKFUL for that. Just...so you know mom. Thanks for not stealing a mini cat-machine and driving to the liquor store at three in the morning, or smelling random hoodies from my room to make sure that they don't belong to a boy.

Soyeah. Random people + hanging out = awesome. Also, Bonnie has the knack of being my friend straight from the beginning for no real reason, so that's pretty cool too. I need to go over to her place and play Geetar Hero with her some time.

I am sad that I missed out on watching Cars, with Beth, again though. She came over round tennish, but I only had about four pages done out of six-seven, so I was not ready to go play. Maybe tomorrow (no more scary homework!) or maybe next week. I'll get there.

Alright, brain is full up. Life has gotten back to decent, although my world is kinda profoundly "meh" right now. Has been for a while --maybe now that the show is over and I can go back to staying up too late with the twins and Dominik, it will get better.

~Sor
MOOP!

xkcd post really truly is forthcoming, I just need to figure out a way to fix the video first. IMPORTANT QUESTION: If I shot something holding my camera sideways, is there an easy way to take the video and rotate the whole video 90 degrees?

(For reference, I have a macbook with iDVD and iMovie bundled. Help?)

***

I wrote a drabble for english class that I liked enough to post in the Kattales. Go read!

***

College remains fun. I am slowly making better friends (as opposed to aquantinces). Ria has a scanner which I may attack at some point. I'm trying to get together a RHPS expidition for this Saturday.

***

I have gotten back into Neopets in a hella-bad-serious way. By which I mean, I have made an excel spreadsheet and am keeping track of how much money I bring in and where it comes from. Yeeeeeeeahhhh...

***

Vegan Pizza is super-delicious. Vegan Baklava is just about the greatest thing I have ever eaten in my life. Boston has one of two vegan pizza parlours in the country --the other one is in Seattle. (Ksatyr and I went on Saturday night and it was AWESOME)

***

Free, reasonably intense, yoga classes rock my socks.

***

I used too many stars in this post. :(

~Sor
MOOP!