fishpatrol

Screencaps from the Computer Spying meme:

( command+shift+4! I'll have to look into Skitch, though... )

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I just spent forever deleting over a hundred submissions from my old Y!Gallery and DeviantArt accounts. I don't see why they don't simply allow users to delete accounts and contents entirely, the way LJ does. :| It was interesting, looking at my drawings from six, seven years ago. Some of it was atrocious, but some weren't half bad, haha. Also, oh man, so much nostalgia for my Harry Potter days.

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After watching Iron Man 2 in the theatre yesterday, I watched Iron Man on my computer over dinner. I must say, I prefer the sequel over the original. Pepper was a bit too damsel-in-distress, but Natasha was awesomely cool, and I'm finding myself shipping Tony/Jarvis, just a teeny bit.

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Next week is going to be spent grading midterms. I hope I don't run into this problem, heh.

1. I currently have this picture as the wallpaper for my iPod Touch. Every time I turn on my iPod, my brain stops and stutters a bit while I ogle. (Ahaha, oh, self *facepalm*). Also, speaking of iPods, I just upgraded to 3.0 last night and now I find out there's a 3.1.3. What. D:

2. Yesterday, for the entire day, the only time I wasn't feeling hungry was when I was eating. I was practically starving, in between meals. It was the weirdest thing ever (and also, extremely uncomfortable).

3. I keep losing track of what day it is. I blame the lack of structured classes (which I don't mind) and all the TV shows that I follow going on hiatus (which I do mind).

4. Mac-savvy flisters: if I have a Time Machine full of files and programs from a Macbook running Leopard and I'm getting a Macbook that runs Snow Leopard, should I transfer only the files and then reinstall each program individually? Would it be a bad idea to transfer third-party applications like Firefox through migration assistant (so that I can retain all my settings and history? Mostly, I just want the history)?

5. How awesomely adorable is this?? Also, new Maru video, eee♥

1. I moved around the furniture in my room today. I anticipate being extremely sore tomorrow. I was going to go grocery shopping in the morning, but I'm guessing my right arm is going to be pretty much useless given the amount of pain I'm already experiencing. ;;;

2. Rodney-update: I've been carting my laptop back-and-forth from the Apple store all week. Finally, got an Apple Care guy on the phone and he said that I can get a replacement. On the plus side, a Macbook that doesn't hiss (finally!) and with better specs than my current one. On the down side, I'll have to ship this current one off and wait for the other to be shipped (no computer for a week or so? D:). The exchange will probably happen around the end of the month. Here's to hoping that Rodney 2.0 will be cooperative and non-hissy.

On a related note, does anyone have an idea how much a padded shipping box would cost?

3. Finally finished watching Season Two of Dark Angel! Verdict: the beginning was good, the middle dragged, and the ending was fantastic. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time while watching the finale. As far as the show goes, I liked the whole premise, but I just couldn't warm up to the characters (Alec doesn't count -- he was just eye-candy!). It's a shame that the show was canceled, just when the plot was getting interesting, but I most likely won't be going back to watch the first season.

4. I watched SPN 5x17 again because I missed a couple of lines during the first go-around (live streaming, so no rewinding). ( A few thoughts about the ending; cut for the slowpokes on my flist ;) )

5. My desk looks like someone vomited paper all over it. I...should probably get my ass offline and clean up.

Got my Macbook back from repairs, but the hissing is still present. D: I haven't even had this computer for a year and already it has a replaced hard drive, logic board, and as of today, a new fan (franken-rodney! -- what's left to replace? the optical drive? memory?). The logic board replacement resolved the issue for a few months, but a few weeks ago, the sound came back. Ugh, idek. I'm really sensitive to noise, so the sound gives me a headache, but not a lot of people (including most of the tech people, it seems) can hear it because it's so high-pitched. *tears hair out*

And I just noticed that I have somehow procured a program called Growl without being aware of downloading it... odd. That would explain why I get a notification pop-up every time a download completes.

1. I had my stats midterm this morning. It wasn't as horrible as I'd anticipated, but then again, L and I did spend the past couple of evenings gorging on sour gummies I keep in my office (they don't taste that great, but hey, sugar is sugar) and going through all of the past tests. Even though I spent more time staring blankly at the questions and whining, something must've made it into my head. ;;; The past few days was very similar to the days preceding the computer programming exam last year, where L and I flailed and were all "Of course I'm right WHY DO YOU NOT TRUST MY JUDGMENT" at each other.

1.5 I'm glad there aren't any midterms for my "real" grad classes, but I have a couple of research proposals coming up and my mind is drawing a big, huge BLANK.

2. Autumn is my favourite season, but man, I don't remember there being so many ladybugs around in past years. I remember liking them when I was little, but one day, a switch flipped in my brain and now I'm terrified of them. I was flailing (think windmilling arms) like a crazy person in the middle of the street, trying to avoid them. Ugh, bugphobia.

3. I find the hard drive of my Macbook to be really noisy even though I'd already had it changed once. I had a bit of spare time today before I had to catch my train, so I walked all the way to the Apple store (half an hour), waited around even though I had an appointment (fifteen minutes), had an Apple Genius take my Mac to the back room (ten minutes), returned the Mac to me saying that he couldn't hear a thing and refused to change my hard drive, thus leaving me to drag it back to res (half an hour). On the plus side, at least I got some exercise?
I'm pretty sensitive to noise, so it could be just me -- or maybe the Apple Genius was hard of hearing. >__O Either way, the hard drive noise is irritating and ugh, idk.

4. I let my dad have first dibs on my Kindle because he drove out and picked it up for me (also, I didn't want the additional distraction before my midterm ;)). My Kindle is significantly grubbier than when I received it, two weeks ago. I should've put it in a Ziploc bag before loaning it to my dad. ;) But hurrah, a new toy to play with ♥

5. Since I'm all caught up on Leverage, Psych is on hiatus, and Supernatural is going on hiatus soon, I'm thinking of taking akeyoftime's advice and trying out Dark Angel. Can't go wrong with young!Jensen and sci-fi, yeah? I watched Young MacGuyver and hee, young!Jared is so very adorable. But back to Jensen -- I have My Bloody Valentine on my iPod and I've been slowly watching it in increments. Watching it in 3D would be neat, but I think the "Omg ugh" factor would win out the "Omg, Jensen in 3D", haha. ;;;

5.5 And now I'm going to go curl up in bed and watch yesterday's episode of Glee.

So I totally wasted time today by bumming around in my office (I was going to do my article readings, I swear!) and taking advantage of the Wi-fi by downloading useless iPod apps. \o/ What are your favourite (useless or otherwise) apps?

Speaking of electronic toys, I ordered a Kindle the other day, and bweee, I can't wait to get my hands on it. Hurrah for wasting my scholarship on time-wasting toys~ \o/

On a completely different note, I was reading this article on why women give up their last names when entering a marriage. I've always found that practise a bit peculiar. I can understand why children acquire their father's last name (paternity confidence, as the article mentions), but what reason do women have to change their name, especially in modern society? If it's merely an issue of convenience for both partners to have the same last name or a symbolic gesture to say, "Hey, we're part of the same family", then we should also see the occurrence of some men giving up their last names (which is pretty darn rare). I'm not judging women who do change their last names (because, hey, long-standing tradition entangled with societal norms -- who am I to challenge that, yeah?), but some of the comments to the article irked me. Each individual has her own reason to change or retain her last name (following tradition, switching out her difficult-to-pronounce maiden name for something better sounding...whatever); the problem is the underlying societal expectation that if anyone's going to be giving up a part of their identity (as teeny and inconsequential as it may be) it will always be the woman because she's the one leaving her family to join her partner's. In cultures that don't have this last-name-changing practise -- China, for example -- other practises with the same underlying message exist. I'm by no means saying that women who take on their husband's last name are obstructing the progression towards gender equality or anything remotely as radical as that, but I do wonder what the prevailing reason is for continuing this practise, if it's simply people continuing a long-standing tradition where women expect to give up their last names upon entering a marriage and men expect their wives to take their last name without questioning the rationale behind this practise.

In other news, Kurt Fuller guest starred on last week's Psych and Glee and I was all, "Omg, Zachariah is invading my shows! \o\" Speaking of teevee, so how awesome was last night's episode of SPN? :>:>:>

I was only going to do a wee bit of configuring on my new Macbook and set up some essentials, but the next thing I knew, the whole day zipped by and I didn't get any studying done. =__=;; I'm quite liking my Mac, but I do miss some of the PC keyboard functions -- never realized how much I depended on Home, PgUp, Delete, etc (having to remember to hold down fn just isn't the same). Also, I keep forgetting when to press control and when to use command. Also-the-second: this whole two-finger scrolling requires far more coordination than I possess.

I'll of course become accustomed to these keyboard quirks eventually, but my loathing towards iTunes will persist. (to be fair, I hated Windows Media Player too -- I preferred Winamp, where tagging and organizing are for the ambitious -- the rest of us could just drag-and-drop) It is bulky and syncing it with my iPod is time consuming and what's with this only allowing my iPod to be synced with one computer? *throws up hands in frustration*

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I found the last two episodes of Psych rather lacking. Next week's episode could be improved with the following changes:

"The Devil is in the Details... and the Upstairs Bedroom" August 28, 2009
Shawn and Gus investigate the suicide of a college girl at a Catholic University. Father Westley Sam and Dean Winchester, one of the professors at the school a pair of demon-hunting brothers, is are convinced the girl was demon-possessed, and while Gus is on board with the idea, Shawn is more skeptical... Guest starring Ray Wise Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki.

...because crossovers make everything better. \o/ Picture this: epic!snarkfest between Shawn and Dean, and random-information-spewing!competition between Gus and Sam. *wants*

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Exam's on Friday, so I should probably make myself scarce for the rest of the week. I'll keep up with the flist by surreptitiously checking LJ during the break between lecture and tutorial. ;) (there are totally people who check the internet on their iPod Touches/iPhones during class -- but they probably have a better chance of passing the damn course than I do, so I shouldn't really judge)

I once told myself that I would never succumb to the lure of Apple products. But alas, I just threw away a chunk of my savings on a Macbook and an iPod Touch. I was very, very close to buying a Lenovo ThinkPad, but Apple's customer service won out. If something breaks, I'd at least be able to get it assessed in person and not have it shipped off to God knows where. I plan to buy a large monitor so that I won't have to squint at the 13" screen at home. Apparently, you can run Windows on one screen and Mac OS on the other -- that sounds pretty awesome.

Mac experts on my flist: is it very taxing on the processor to run both Windows XP and Mac OS simultaneously? Also, what do you guys use to burn data CDs and DVDs? I'm currently using Nero SmartStart (with a registration code I found illicitly XD) -- I don't believe it's available for Mac? And what anti-virus and anti-spyware programs do you guys use? Or are Macs completely immune from viruses and spyware?

I can't wait to get my iPod Touch because my Meizu Mini busted itself again (I was trying to fix a problem by updating the firmware and then it just died). Thankfully my mother has agreed to loan me her teeny tiny Creative Zen player until my iPod arrives. Maybe I should keep a stock of those cheap little $10-$20 mp3 players as back-ups...

I had "DON'T PANIC" engraved on the back of my iPod, because yay, geeky sci-fi references. And also, I do have need of that constant reminder since I've been on the edge of a panic attack for months.

I've had my lovely Toshiba Satellite (named Juggie) since I first started university. It has, thus far, withstood the wear and tear of being dragged to classes and libraries. It died once and only once in my first year, but was recovered by a friend, no harm done. I love it like a second brain, but it is slowing down in its old age. I'm looking to get a new laptop as a reward for surviving the past four years of torture school and signing myself up for five more years of torture school.

So, the age old question: should I get a Mac or a PC?

I've never been big on Apple products (I don't like the idea of paying 40% more just for the brand). I've never had major issues with this Toshiba laptop or my previous one -- my main quibble with Toshiba laptops is that their battery life is too short. But I've heard the horror stories of people losing their data from hardware crashes and whatnot and I fear my luck with Toshiba laptops may one day run out. So if it is true that Apple laptops rarely ever crash (assuming that it's not, y'know, the result of reporting bias -- since more people own non-Apple computers, more non-Apple owners will report crashes, thus making it seem as if Apple computers crash less. Also, HP computers are probably driving up the crash rate. :P) and are mostly free from spyware and viruses, then I think it's worth spending the extra couple hundred bucks. I'm hoping to get a model that'll last me until the end of grad school without me having to reformat or, y'know, weep in despair as I lose all my precious data due to a hardware crash.

But on the flip side, there's no right-click button on the laptop. D: I really, really like the right-click function, okay? Also, all of the computers on campus, including the one in my office, are Dells, which raises compatibility issues.

But on the flip flip side, if I buy a Macbook through the school's Apple store, I can get a free iPod Touch -- I don't really like iPods as mp3 players, but the WiFi capability calls to me. XD

So, what kind of laptops do you guys have? And what kind would you suggest I buy?

I was trawling through cracked.com (instead of studying math because math ceased to be fun when the symbols outnumbered the numbers) and came across these two gems:

1. At some colleges, Quidditch is a real sport: College Quidditch. According to the founder, the Snitch is recreated by sticking a tennis ball into a sock and hanging it from the waistband of a cross-country runner. They...just...I can't even...*flails with fits of giggles*

2. Re-use your dog's hair! Sweaters and vests made from the hair shed off by pet dogs -- it's kind of ingenious...yet, at the same time, a teeny bit gross.
Speaking of which, I shed a lot -- back in the dorms, the vacuum cleaner broke because there were too many hairballs on my carpet. Wonder if I could crochet a scarf from my hair... >__O


On an unrelated note, I really want to buy this nifty little thing. Have any of you guys tried ebook readers? Are they really less straining on the eyes?

I'm a bit wary of ordering things from the States (or from anywhere outside of Canada, really) 'cause the last time I bought a set of DVDs from Ebay, I was slapped with a customs charge that was higher than the cost of the DVDs. :| I can't find anything online that tells me how custom fees are applied and how much extra to expect to pay. I used to buy manga from Ebay and various sellers on LJ and I was never charged taxes or customs fees, but I suspect it's because sellers labelled their packages as "gifts".