From my convo with Cecile today, after much bitching about boyfriends and other things:

C says:
Man... we need like, daily affirmations or something.
C says:
"I am a rad woman"
C says:
"I don't need to end all my sentences in `i dunno'"
C says:
"I don't need to pay for everything to show that I care"

Just came back from the cemetery after paying respects to my ancestors, and came up with this entry's subject phrase that could only be explained in the creative morbidity of my LJ; msn being too short and facebook being too easily misinterpreted. It struck me as a great title for a really sullen and morbid poem or fanfic, though it's not like I have any content to support such a grand title :D and THAT thought is too daunting to consider, so I'll just leave it at that.

Oddly enough, moonshine and ash smells kinda like smoked salmon @_@

omgomg Muse is playing Seattle on Sept 9th. I'm beside myself with apprehension, 'cause going to that would mean I'd be dragging Tristan on an overnight trip and trying to avoid the issue with my parents. I'll need to talk to him about it 'cause I'm not sure he'll have a fantastic time...

Although first thing's first, getting tix starting tomorrow @ 9am >_< Oh god, I haven't been in a real mosh pit since 2004 Foxfest?

So today is the day someone at work had organized for some computer recycling organization to come by our office and collect any stuff people would bring in for recycling. As far as I can tell the stuff is still sitting in the parking lot even though we were told to bring our stuff in from 8am to 11am.

Over the weekend I wiped 2 hard drives with DBAN. I have no idea if it really works. I certainly hope so. It looked like the best (only?) free/opensource alternative out there. Even got rid of the operating systems, from what I can tell. :O Our first computer, I wasn't able to get the BIOS to boot from the CD-ROM drive, so I just took the drive out and it's sitting in my room to begin collecting dust... Everything else went into the trunk this morning and when I pulled up, my co-worker was like, "are you trying to make a start-up [company]?" I had 4 towers and an old 15" CRT taking up my entire trunk. My hockey bag had to go in the backseat :P

So there went the first computer, HAL, HAL Jr., and Lore; 3 of which were actually still in functioning condition. HAL Jr. we had gutted what lean things we could (hard-drive, floppy drive) for my brother's current computer 2 summers ago. I must admit, I do feel some sense of loss at getting rid of these old computers. my hallway (where they have been sitting for the past several years) is much better for it, though. Granted, Lore was actually in decent condition having only been my school computer (and therefore had never been corrupted by my Dad's questionable usages of his machines) from 2003 to 2005. Being 4 years old, however, means that its 1.7 GHz processor and 512 MB RAM and lack of video card slot made the purchase AMEE (my laptop) much cooler in late 2005. I never did get around to installing Linux on it while I was in school... there isn't any point now.

My mom got upset that we were getting rid of the ones that were still functional, although I'm not sure why; she has issues with throwing assets away, especially things that have cost a lot of money to obtain, even if they are obsolete. I told her (although I think I should have made it more clear) that the organization picking them up today advertises that they refurbish and donate working parts/computers to other needy organizations, so there isn't really a point in me keeping Lore, which I'm not going to use. I think also maybe she wanted one for herself, but Dad seemed to dismiss the idea right out. She doesn't really *need* a computer other than to surf once in a while. Perhaps one day (soon, hopefully) when we finally get a new modem from SHAW or Telus we can set up both of my Dad's computers in the study so she can have her own, but until then, the computers are only going to keep accumulating! My Dad's next purchase will eventually be a laptop.

My current favourite though, is still, of all things, my work laptop. Too bad I can't play games on it. Then again, it has so much heavy chugging crap on it, games wouldn't do much good.

got to stop... playing WoW until 1am... )X on weeknights. DX
I remember before I started playing WoW Melissa and I had a conversation about it and I was like "how long do you stay up playing it?" and she said "maybe 1am"
"on a weeknight!?"
"yeah"

I think I've gotten to that point. Doesn't help that last night and the night before, after hockey or kung fu I'm all adrenalined up and waiting for my hair to dry so I ended up starting around 10:30-11:00pm and playing until 1am. ugh.
Now I'm having trouble staying awake. Sleepy + bug fixing = bad!

The problem with channeling that energy that I put into the game (eg. Auction House vs stock market in real life) is the amount of time and effort it takes to accrue a certain amount of money (or objects) to invest using the buy-low-sell-high mandate. You know how LONG it takes before I stack up enough money to buy 500 shares of anything over 10$/share? I guess you could make money buying penny stocks but then you'd still have to buy insane amounts of it before selling it at a 10cent jump would net you any good amount of money. And then there's the waiting. 24 hours in game and you're done. In real life, you could be hanging onto those shares for months to years, hoping that maybe they'll go up so you can sell.

Which brings me to grinding. I don't like doing it in-game much, although the killing and collection quests often require you to kill many more than you could possibly need to kill, if only the bad guys weren't clumped in groups and if only every single one of them would carry that shaman mask instead of only 30% of them.
Here I am doing the daily grind at work, but it'll probably take me another 3 years before I gain a level and get a decent pay raise in the next pay bracket. Meanwhile I need to grind to get money to buy things, like mounts (a car?) and maintain and my pet (Tristan).
Maybe this is similar to the Harvest Moon phenomenon, where a game mimicking real life seems to create such an addictive formula. Ironic too that it manages quite well to suck time away from your real life. Hence why I'm so tired.

This has got to be one of the most uneventful May long weekends I've ever had. ... or well actually last year's was probably worse, 'cause I don't remember it.

Anyhow it started off with me working :) There's a build happening today so I really had to get all my changes in. It was taking way longer than I thought it was going to! by friday afternoon I was still looking at at least 2 hours of work. By 10pm when I decided it was time to head out to my co-worker's housewarming party, I still wasn't quite done. The work was very menial and tedious. Refactoring variable names, yay. (on the whole, I don't mind doing that kind of stuff once in a while... although it's time consuming, hah, I'm getting paid for it :O I wonder what that says about what I enjoy...)
Party was all right. I drove so I couldn't drink. As usual I should have just started sprouting things randomly, since I get so uncomfortable with talking. Maybe then, I'd get over myself, without the help of drugs.
My co-worker's roommate had a rabbit, which she took out a couple times. It was so soft :O

Saturday I continued working through the afternoon. Then took my family out to Tojo's for dinner, because that's where my mom said she wanted her mother's day dinner. My credit card is crying :'( Dad and I were bellyaching afterwards because by the end of the meal, as with all fancy restaurants, we were just barely satisfied. The food was pretty good, but for what I paid? I should at least be *more* satisfied than I was. :( It was interesting to see, however, the transformation of Tojo's from the cramped diner that is was 10 years ago to the uber swank, business-class-like establishment that it's evolved into...
So instead of paying $60 a head, we recommend going to Toshi's just off Main street. Lineups abound, but it's much more worth it. Try their applecake for dessert, it's the best baked apple thing I've ever tasted :D seriously.

Sunday it was raining all day, and Dad, Carl, and I were downloading patches for WoW all day. Saturday Dad had put together his new computer (that was actually pretty fast :O) and it was time to break the sucker in. Unfortunately, it took at least 3 hours to download all the WoW patches just to run the game... more if you count the fact that my dad's copy of the game must have been older and would have taken 10 hours to download all the necessary patches :O
Carl and I and Edward went to our cousin Jonathan's birthday family gathering. I brought my laptop along to try out WoW to make sure it worked ;) We also brought our GC DDR pad as usual.
I did get to level four so when we got home it was REALLY time to play. We played past midnight and then went to sleep.
You know you're addicted when...
I woke up at 8:30 all excited about playing to find that both my dad (not too surprising) AND my brother were up already playing (Carl had just gotten up right before I did). and yeah, we didn't really stop playing until 10 at night :O
I'm surprised at how fast they caught up to me in levels. I figured I had a good 2 hours? head start on them from the night before! But now we're all level 12. I think I was dying and walking around too much, looking for a profession trainer in the wrong place. And I had the walkthrough guide too! Carl didn't look at it until late in the day after he'd already done most of the quests. Finally, after getting my bear form right before dinner, I took ship to the other continent (my brother is a dwarf warrior, and my dad is a human paladin, I'm an elf druid) and walked all through the wetlands and dun morogh to get to Stormwind. some retard whispered "ur gonna die" to me as I was setting out on the journey. I don't think so, buddy. Maybe if I were on a PvP server, and some rogue or some high-level retard decided to gank me, but there's no danger if I'm walking on through :P you can't catch me, I'm an elf druid! or was that for rogues/hunters...? I had an escort most of the way anyway, I think, because I was following a higher level druid in cat form, and that guy was either stopping every so often so I could catch up, or he was trying to do something and run/jump at the same time all the way.
Throughout the day, I had fought a couple of duels with this one warrior elf. he won one, i won one; the second time we were out in the middle of nowhere and the spiders finished us off afterwards! lol pretty dumb of us, I admit. my third duel at level 11, some level 8 rogue was being a dick and so not gracious after sapping my backside and winning.

Playing with my dad and my brother was interesting. The monsters like going after me, more than I thought they would. Carl rushes in way too fast and gets us killed. lol and my dad doesn't do any healing so I ended up doing the healing in the end. Totally forgot about my bear form! I have to try that out.

I have to figure out what else to do with my life before WoW consumes it :(

Dad: "So you decided what class you're going to be yet?"
Me: "uhm... tank?"
Dad: "......"
Me: "Oh right, you're gonna be tank. Damn."

and THAT's how I became a Druid. will be, anyway.
Dad spent ALL day Monday and Tuesday reading that strategy guide he bought. I was talking to Carl about it yesterday and he was like "yeah, he's probably got every level up figured out down to the last talent point."
Me: "he's spent like 20 hours and he hasn't even started playing yet! the only 20 hours of prep I'm going to spend are to figure out what my character is going to look like!"

Thursday night, I went out to practice driving with Tristan. I cannot back into spots without cars on either side. i have no idea where the lines are... this is bad. Olivia also told me that they would test parking on hills :O crud, i guess i gotta go practice that. :(

Friday I went horseback riding with Olivia. It seems taht's all i really did that day. It took until 5 by the time i got home, at which point it was dinner, then bubbletea, and then guitar hero :) 2 player is pretty cool.

Saturday not a lot happened, my parents went to buy flower bulbs, then superstore and costco, and then carl and I washed the car. In the evening I was to do my taxes although I'm not sure why it takes so long to get going. I was in my room at 8 but must not have actually started filling things out until 10pm. Granted earlier in the day when we were at superstore reading video game magazines, I saw a preview of Lord of the Rings Online and hoo boy, free beta for 3 weeks until 26 april? you betcha I'm sold ;D So I started downloading that on Saturday night as well. My internet is so bloody slow at home even though it's cable; at night I could only get speeds of 36K/s :( That's like dial-up modem speed for crikeys sake! When I woke to check on the 3+GB download at 7am the next morning though, I was getting speeds of 130K/s not bad but still seems kinda slow.

Sunday morning I was torn between revising my tax sheets after my dad had gone over them, getting my hair cut, and creating my character for LotRO:

Much to my surprise I wasn't able to get my elf's hair to be silver for some really bizarre reason... unless my video card is so bad that it can't display the difference between grey and light brown :( strange because I swear other people were able to get the hair colour that I had wanted. Anyway, they didn't allow me to use the names Galathil, or even Galathilion (who ELSE could have thought of that name? I'd really like to meet him/her). For my pale haired elf I ended up naming him Lindarion, but I was still so set on having the name of someone notable, that I decided to create a new character, one named after a kin of Elu Thingol ('cause really, I doubt Celeborn would have been available). I tried Elurin (I figured it'd be obscure enough... though Galathil had been even more obscure), but that was not available. To my surprise Eluchil was, and so Eluchil I am. :D

I didnt' have time to start playing because I rushed out of the house after lunch to pick Tristan up and go karaoke-ing in Richmond with my co-workers. man I have not heard that much canto-pop in... well maybe ever. :O
At 5 we went drove downtown (I don't know how to get to the granville street bridge while in Richmond :O) and went to T's sisters' place where his parents were in town and his mom made turkey dinner :O lucky me. for some reason dad didn't make turkey dinner this year.
dinner was good. we played cranium afterwards. I hate cranium. lol
had dessert while wathing The Amazing Race. I'd never seen it before. It seemed like such a shame to be always rushing through a place and not actually getting to visit it really... although who knows what happens when they're not filming.

Got home a bit after 10:30. I decided against doing homework in order to break in my elf. I figured I could play for an hour until midnight and then go to bed. I went to bed an hour later at 1am. :P Currently at level 5. there's a level cap of 15 for the beta. I was disappointed no one seemed to talk to each other until near the end there was a quest mini-boss type of animal that everyone had to kill (it just regenerates) but that a single person could probably not kill by oneself. Then after I had taken the first kill with some help someone suggested that since there were a bunch of us we should wait for it to regen. I was quite willing to help other people with their kills and in hindsight I shoudl have thanked the others more for helping me kill mine... there were several people gathering around by then though, so i figured after helping out with one other, it was time to move on.
Afterwards I told tristan about that and he said people don't talk much at the n00b levels. I thought that was kinda strange, but I could see that at the beginning everyone is really quest driven and wants to hurry and get more money and more stuff...

Is it really wrong for me to want to not work today and play LotRO? like RIGHT NOW....
I can vaguely comprehend why people will do nothing but play MMORPGs, though perhaps at this point it's maybe just because I've found a new video game -the first in years- that is really exciting (although after 2 hours I was starting to get kind of bored with all the little quests; walking around and chopping monsters gets kind of tedious too).

boo work.

http://www.tednasmith.com/

oh yes. hehe :D
The elves are not all that hot (particularly his rendition of Eol), but I can't complain, some of those landscapes are phenomenal. And I'm pretty sure they must have consulted this guy for the movies (I forgot if he was one of the artists or not, along with Alan Lee) because a lot of the images (dated before the movies) are portrayed almost exactly as seen in the movie.
Yay, Celeborn (seated on the swan ship in front of Galadriel). Bizarrely, his hair does not appear silver as it should be. Maybe it's reflecting the light from the trees, who knows.

We rented Eragon and watched it last night.
Good: Jeremy Irons :D After his first scene I was like "Man, he SO outclasses this movie."
Bad: Plot jumps and impossiblities... even for a movie using magic and dragons.
Ugly: Did they decide to rehire that wormtongue dude from LotR?

Yeah so they killed Brom (Mr. Iron's character) about 3/4 of the way through and I was like "nooooo, there goes my reason for watching this movie." I really liked the costumes in the movie though, especially what Mr. Irons was wearing. I guess I've gotten used to the beard. Due to his age, it's probably better that he has it.

gahh....

OMFG. do i ever.

hoho, sold! i am so going to get this game now...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpQmtjfsZU4

Wednesday after my server was being buggy I left work a to hit the mall at Metrotown.
Some places still had sales getting rid of winter stuff, but the majority of places were already into the spring fashions.
Those fashion reporters weren't kidding when they said the short trench coat is back in style. I saw so many I think I might actually want one, even though beige isn't really a colour I'd like to wear and I already have so many black jackets it's not funny. Still it'd be nice to have a rain jacket that's not my Columbia ski jacket.

During my walk, I had an epiphany.
The button-up-shirt-underneath-sweater look has already been in style for a couple years now, but as shopping with Karen and Melissa has proven, it's difficult to find something that actually works without being fake. For example, several trendier stores sell the look, but when you examine it closely, the "shirt" underneath is actually fake. The ensemble is just a sweather with collar and sleeves sewn on to it. Looks good, 'cause it's tight with now underlying wrinkles, but bizarre to say the least.

Ok let's try this again. The stores now sell a lot of things for layering, first it was the frilly tank-tops bordering on lingerie, then it was the hip length t-shirts (which, much to my chagrin, I actually own one now, despite deriding the look when it first came out... i blame this on the fact that my t-shirts have been shrinking in the wash and the majority of pants are now low rise, so i need to cover up if i'm sitting in an office :P or anywhere else for that matter). Now, back to the shirt/sweater thing, they sell really thin (really really thin) button up shirts. This, I assume, so you can layer it with that sweater without looking boxy or rumpled.

The future is here: The sweaters this year are sleeveless and low neck, probably to reduce the area of two shirts trying to occupy the same space. again, less rumply.

And then, because I realized that I already owned a really thin button-up shirt, I realized I could cheat. If you don't mind not having cuffs, just get a sleeveless button up shirt for the long-sleeved sweater. The look is more classic less trendy I guess, but at least I get some use out of my sleeveless shirts and that pale pink cardigan that I wasn't getting much use out of.
Bonus :) in the summer time i can still wear this in the office 'cause it'll be cold (same temperature in here all year around) and then just take the sweater off when it's time to leave in the hot sun.

I still need more pants though :(

Just watched The Prestige with Heather, Dan and Clarissa.
oooh... this movie was really cool :) I think if I think too hard about it it may become less cool but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Didn't have anything to do with the fact that Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale and DAVID BOWIE were in it. Not entirely anyway ;)

Gods, I wonder what life would be like if I were like this ALL the time. I'm really jittery this morning, and I have no idea why. Like i want to chat or something... probably because Tristan is being heads-down-working unresponsive which is good for him, bad for me, sort of, because I'm not used to him being more focused on working than not.
His flash site is simply not happening... to the extent that I might build a static one just to get something up. Something I've been saying for the past few months already. Maybe I should go get one of those O'Reilly reference books on ActionScript or something... but they're bloody expensive. like 50$ or more.

Work is tedious and not particularly stimulating right now, although i've gotten to hanging around different people... except that they're all devs, so they work through lunches a lot too.

I really should study for my Java Certification, but I hate reading and never get around to studying. Now two guys from the study group said they're just going to cram for 3 weeks and get it over with. I should do it too, that's probably the only way I'll ever get it done...

but of course to procrastinate from doing those things that I should be doing I've managed to think up 2 more scenes for The Likeness of Twilight Lost. That's phenomenal, because 1)I've never cared for writing about Arwen/Aragorn or Luthien (not that I am, haha, they're still only vehicles for my writing about Celeborn) and 2) I haven't written a full fanfic in 3 years :O

this sunshine makes me happy :)

Got to stop spending money >_< otherwise I won't have enough to contribute to my RRSP like I did last year :P
So foolish.

Anyway Sport Check is having a Closing Out Sale - the one near Futureshop at Metrotown. Everything in the store is at least 20% off. If you're looking for cheap running shoes, they've got some decent ones for $50.
I went there Friday to look for a new hockey stick :) and I got one of them non-wood, synthetic light ones for 60$ after tax. Not sure what this will do for me other than the fact that it's damn sexy. hahaha. all blue and shiny; gotta love it like it's a new car kind of feeling.

I mean, I can't stickhandle worth a damn so such an expensive stick seems rather pretentious. I figure maybe it'll last me longer than a wooden stick (since Mr. Irons is starting to look close to splitting open on the heel and losing a huge chunk), although there's no proof of that. I'm not sure how quickly the blade will wear away. Originally I thought these synthetic sticks were unbreakable... until earlier this season when one of my teammate's sticks broke in half, the shaft cracking and snapping like so much dry firewood.

I really need to try it out. Sadly over the chinese new year weekend i had to skip a game of hockey to appease my mother who, under the pretense of handing down the commandments from my grandmother, forbade me to wash my hair all of saturday and sunday. ick.

wow, I haven't been this happy during a work week since... well, maybe early last week. Actually, giddy is a more appropriate term. I finally got put on a new project, and while it looks to be something less than ideal, I'm just excited and in the moment. Now if only my environment isn't all messed up... so much stress there, where it's theoretically unnecessary.

Problem is, I'm still bloody tired even as I'm sitting here. My eyes are tired. It's not a good thing.

I also need a haircut. very badly. I've just been so lazy about it though :(

I got FF VI for the GBA. finally, no loading times. the sound capability on the GBA leaves much to be desired though. The new translation makes the game seem fresher and more readable, but at the same time, I still remember what the text was like in the original version. So while the dialogue actually makes more sense, it runs up against my previous conceptions and memories from the original.

Another thing I don't like about it is that they censored some of it! You would not think this possible but maybe because of a retarded ERSB rating of "E for Everyone" (hello, war and killing anyone?) they took out an appreciably noticeable few frames where Celes -held prisoner as a traitor to the Empire- is beaten by one of two imperial soldiers. As sprites, the visual effect is equivalent to one sprite running into the other in what looks like a body check, but you get the idea. Instead the soldier sprite doesn't do anything and just leaves the room (as he's supposed to after the pounding in the original) while Celes's sprite, through no instigating action whatsoever, falls to her knees. I guess in this version she's collapsing from despair. :{

Happy big 60th birthday, Bowie :O

last time i checked he was only 58 >_< time goes by so fast, motherfucker :(


edit: yay! I finally know what to do with one of the Hilfiger ads my mom saved for me from a magazine a couple years back. Bowie with the guitar is going up in my spartan cube :D