anagram of brat

New glasses are new! And shiny! And dyeeeerrrrrgh! I'm still adjusting to them three days later. It was crazy, I put them on for the first time and WHOA NELLIE THE CLARITY IT BURNS US PRECIOUS! Which is all well and good, it was just a major adjustment. My old lenses were so scratched up and the coating was so dead that the having the new shinies on was... yeah. Whee.

The nice bit is that for the first time I have a workable sunglass type thing. The new hotnesses had a little clip on shade option so I ordered it. Sunglasses, man. I AM IMPERVIOUS TO THE EVIL DEATH RAYS OF THE DAY STAR WHILE DRIVING! Or something.

The last interesting thing about new glasses is that now that I have the new ones, all the dysfunctional patterns of behavior I'd unconsciously developed to accommodate the old busted ones are actually noticable now that I don't have to continue them. I used to hold my head at a weird angle when bending over or looking down to keep the old ones from falling off. Don't have to do that anymore, but noticed I still was last night when I was gathering up the laundry. Blerg. The other is that I hadn't noticed how close I was sitting to various computer screens or holding books and devices. Too close. It's kinda nice to be able to sit back and still see what I'm doing. Probably better for me too from an ergonomic standpoint. Plus they're cute. I'd camerawhore, but between allergies and having the Cold that Doesn't end, my nose has erupted into this special tantrum of cold sore mayhem. It's gross, and I hope it gets at least marginally presentable by Pax. But anyway. New glasses are awesome.

The weekend in general was a good one, mostly hanging with the short people doing quiet things. Lil'Beast was having a super hug and cuddle sort of weekend, which was a nice change. And Kidzilla continues to be her amusing self. I've been especially tickled by the fact that she's already developed a fantastic flounce - she now leaves the room in a hilariously indignant huff if either we tease her past a certain point or fail to behave like her interpretation of rational serious grown-ups. I always thought that was more of a teenager skill, but at seven, she's got it down and it is funny as hell.

One of the things I've been enjoying about their visits indirectly is that Kidzilla actually really likes Doctor Who and has been watching the newer series with her father on Netflix. Being the giant fanboy that he is, cell23 is over the moon that she's enjoying it. Yesterday we all watched "A Good Man Goes to War" and it was really fun watching Kidzilla react to the various bits of the episodes, even if a lot of the humor went over her head. (The Sontoran's line about "superior lactic fluid" still cracks me the fuck up.) But that first moment when the Doctor makes his surprise appearance on Demon's Run? She bounced in her chair and clapped her hands; it was adorable. Makes me sort of wonder if the Sarah Jane adventures are on Netflix, though awww, Elizabeth Sladen... *still sad*

In addition to the glasses I also acquired a working printer/scanner thing on Friday, and seeing as I had things to print yesterday afternoon (more on that in a bit) I got it set up. This wouldn't warrant mentioning other than it's Fisher Price My First Wireless Printer (what the hell is this wifi witchcraft? THE FUTURE) and watching the cat warily trying to ascertain what sort of intruder this thing was was unexpectedly hilarious. She'd walk up and sniff it, then it would suddenly start printing and she'd be all AAAAGH IT MOVED HOLY SHIT RUN AWAY!

Why is cat trauma so fucking funny?

Anyway, the reason to print stuff is that thedavin made an attempt to resurrect Drinktank, which from what I understand was a short-lived Squirekids writing workshop involving a nonzero amount of alcohol, and I decided what the hell, I'd go both to spite my socially anxious hermit tendencies and to jumpstart my writing some. Also get over that whole crippling fear of people reading my shit. It turned out to just be me, thedavin and bloodandsmoke in attendance, and none of us drank, but that said, we did join thedavin's family dinner (which was quite with the tasty) and had an enjoyable evening critiquing each other's work. I got some good feedback on the story intro I'd brought with me, as well as some suggestions for where the story could go afterwards. Reminds me, I need to type up the notes I'd made on both of their contributions and send them out. But anyway afterward I went home and spent some time implementing the suggestions received and starting to scribble down ideas for the next step in the story. Clearly the exercise was good for me, as cell23 did comment that it was nice to see me on a roll again. Anyway, we will definitely be doing it again next month. If anything, it will give me Things To Work On during my PAX downtime this weekend.

Holy shit, PAX is this weekend, eeeeeeeeeee. I don't really anticipate having all that much spending cash - when do I ever? - but the excitement of the rest of the Squirekids going is infectious and I am excited about the panels I want to attend and the list of exhibitors. I will probably spend some part of this week assembling my convention survival gear (ha). But yeah, I'm getting excited and looking forward to Friday.

Contrary to the icon used this post has nothing to do with porn, except tangentially by way of making it easier to obtain it. Theoretically, anyway.

I have this tendency to order shit online for myself and then clean forget I did so. This is only bad if I fail to budget for said purchase, but if all's well on the money front (in this case the purchase in question only cost me $5 in shipping) having the UPS guy knock on the door is a total shock followed by the "ooh, what did I order again?" excitement. Which sometimes is compounded by the box contents being orders of magnitude smaller than the box.

Anyway, Squee's new 2GB RAM chip showed up today (size of box: 11"x8"x4.5". size of item shipped: 3"x1.75"x0.25". *facepalm*), and after probably the fastest chip swap I have ever done in my life (seriously, that was it? it took all of a minute and a half!) Squee seems to be doing much better with double the RAM. Not ludicrous speed by any means, but at least he can now play youtube vids without hiccuping (testing this by drooling at the men in red heels again - that vid never gets old).

So. Epeen's happy, Squee is happy, The Preciousssss's retirement is in sight so its happy, and provided the cat doesn't kill my iPad trying to dig virtual mice out of it (yes, we found an app or three designed for cats last night and ridiculous cute and hilarity ensued), I would say that barring major disaster I'm pretty all set on the tech front for a while.

ETA: oh yeah - have a dumb cat video. I have a feeling with the iPad my youtube channel is going to very quickly fill up with Lily being a doof and Lil'beast arguing with people.

If people are interested in reading about the Mysterious SQWRRL Project (this will include lots of nattering on about programming and QRCodes, sophomoric jokes about nuts, and occasional rants about how squirrels are all evil and need to be destroyed written in-character by the game's main antagonist) I've started a separate LJ/blog for it over at sqwrrl.

There's also a twitter (CBombSQWRRL) but I haven't been nearly as good about keeping up with that. That will mostly be in-character squirrel-flavored Hatorade though.

Disclaimer: I actually don't hate squirrels, I kinda think they're perversely cute when they're not being the assholes of the rodent world.

I can't even deal with the Troy Davis trainwreck lighting up my twitter tonight; maybe another night I'll have it in me to post about things like the death penalty and how I feel about it. Not right now.

So instead have a post of me nattering about computers.

While indulging my craving for fried food (hey, when most of the time eating hurts, if I get a craving and don't feel like throwing up I try to follow it) I was idly poking the nets for info on upgrading both Squee and EPEEN seeing as both of them aren't quite in the home, but getting on up there. Squee I can't do much with other than swap out her paltry 1GB RAM chip with a 2GB one, but what do you want, she's an older and quite well loved netbook. Not exactly built for performance. Still, I'd like to be able to make a skype call with her on occasion and not have the person on the other end come out sounding like Max Headroom - doesn't seem like too much to ask of something that's basically my travel compy.

EPEEN I can't do very much with either, which I was at first kind of exasperated by until I poked at her spec sheet and discovered that she's still about par with a good solid desktop machine available now; in fact most of the systems I've been selling at the computer store clock a fair amount slower or only slightly faster than her at best, albeit with far more efficient chip architecture (i7 in the new machines vs EPEEN's Core 2 Duo). Still, damn girl. Not bad for a going on 4 year old system. I don't know why I'm surprised, she was configured with the express purpose of making Janra cry/shit himself with envy while I played games on it (and yes, that maiden run of WoW with all the sliders set to max was a glorious thing indeed). I guess you get so used to thinking about any kind of machine you have that's more than a couple years old as a Triassic era paperweight, no matter what's under the hood. At any rate, she's already maxed out for RAM, so other than eventually getting a Win 7 upgrade and clean installing it she doesn't really need too much. Well, probably a once over with the compressed air maybe.

So yeah, pretty much, new chip for one, new OS for the other... s'like $200. I can probably get that done by Christmas, and then should be good to go for computer stuff for another long while, which is good. I get inordinately attached to these beep boop boxes... which is probably why in 24 years I've only ever had three main desktop systems*, supplemented with a smattering of hand-me-down/rescued laptops.



* I've had my own computer since I was 9 years old. Started with an Apple IIGS (Christmas 1987), an IBM Aptiva (Master Freak, Christmas 1995), had an essentially desktopless period between 2005-2008, and then EPEEN. Rate I'm going, I'm not getting a new machine until 2017, lol.