For the love of sex and chocolate, have something distinguishing your links. That means don't use CSS to remove the underline unless you have another way to show that the link isn't normal text. Bold your links, italicise them, leave them underlined -- hey, do all three. I don't care.
Do NOT just use color. Why? Because the world has people like my dad. He's colourblind. If he goes to your site, he can't tell your red links from your green background (and PLEASE, don't use that colour combo anyway!).
There's a whole lot more accessiblity rant, but if I get started I'll go on for ages. Just -- friends don't let friends hide the links from the colourblind.
What a rotten day. I've been wearing sweats all week until today, when I tugged on my blue jeans and got a nasty surprise. I double-checked on the scale.
Hi. I'm the fattest I've ever been in my life. Heaviest weight, largest jeans size. I don't even own jeans that fit me well enough that I can tie my shoes with the fly zipped.
Insert massive swearing and tears here.
I inherited hypothyroidism from both grandmothers and my mother (we'll get to what hypothyroidism is in just a sec). Every direct female descendant of my maternal grandmother has had to take medication to treat her thyroid, though I seem to be on the heaviest dosage (higher than my mother's even); I did get it from both sides, after all.
Hypothyroidism is underactive thyroid, which goes hand in hand with slow metabolism. I had been contemplating calling the clinic for two or three weeks now because I've been so damn sleepy. Fatigue is a symptom of hypothyroidism. So is dry skin (mine has been soaking up all the lotion I can slather on -- guess I know why now), difficulty concentrating, low body temperature (mine is currently 97.9; not shockingly low, but on the cool side), depression (like my crying jag upon discovering my new plus size), and -- weight gain!
Well screw this. I'm calling the clinic first thing Monday, because this crud has got to stop. Seems like every six months or so I need a higher dose of synthyroid. I have now decided to get retested for thyroid every six months, regardless of how I feel, because I feel like crap and want retesting every six months ANYWAY. This way I just write ahead in my planner, that's all.
Stupid fracking neck gland. Someday a clever scientist will discover a way to engineer a new thyroid that uses my DNA (keeping my body from rejecting it like a transplant) but has been treated to keep active. That day will probably come when I am 97 and can't remember to take my medication anyway and just sleep all day.
I have been reading at the Cag just now (among other places) and someone mentioned strawberry. Strawberries are a bit of a thing with Jaina and I; she because someone once dubbed her Strawberry when she refused to give him her name, I because I can telepathically contact strawberries. That's how I know my mom thawed some from last year's pickings. Honest. (I fought the urge to type "telepathetically," which is probably more accurate but eh.)
There is one more reason why Jaina reddens brightly at the mention of strawberries. That's more when strawberries and cream come up, actually. Oh the innuendo -- well, the cream wasn't an innuendo. Er, not at first, and it wasn't, uh, that is...
Jaina is a dirty birdy! *yells in her best Annie Wilkes voice*
*snickers* Strawberries and cream. Yes, Hirax, I suppose you could refer to those as "strawberries," if you really want to suffer.
The voices in my head are making peanut/berry/cream jokes and I'm just going to be hiding in the corner, my face the colour of Jainey's hair so bye.
My mom said the strangest thing last night over supper. Squirt had asked me what Spock's full name is -- and she knew the answer.
"You watched Star Trek?" I asked with a mix of horror and awe.
"Sure," she replied casually.
I do not know what to make of this new information. I thought she grew up watching Gunsmoke and such, all those Westerns that aired at the time. But she watched science fiction. She watched Trek.
Problem is, I'm a Star Wars fan myself. I'm torn between squealing at random passers-by that I inherited my geek factor from my mom, and burying my head in a pillow while my brain locks down from wondering what on Earth (or off) my mother saw in original Trek.
It's all so dang confusing!
40 Things Every Drunk Should Do Before He Dies
Jaina is pathetic by this standard. She just drinks herself out of the picture. There are a few others I could name, though.... hehehe. And I know for a fact my friend Sin has done at least two of these.
Test for thyroid imbalance negative. I'm just a bad-tempered cow with bad skin for no reason.
Birthday started with watching video of man getting decapitated simply for being American, as I am. I nearly made my mother cry by the end of the day. Happy birthday? Not quite.
Classes start Monday. My textbook should arrive somewhere around the first assignment deadline. I do not forsee my stress level dropping noticably soon.
I would say I want August here already, but my house has broken air conditioning. Maybe I want to have August in Australia?
Not everything sucks. I have Queens' Greatest Hits and an apparently observant brother/gift-giver. I also have a friggin box full of gaming books which I have only begun to eagerly absorb, so it ain't all bad (as Tank Girl says in the movie. Damn, I like that movie).
In conclusion, meh.
MovableType is going paid. I've only glanced over the data (because I have never used MT and don't really care) but it looks like a kick in the teeth for a couple blogs I read. Ouch.
Wow. Bad news for the blogosphere that doesn't directly smack me. Kinda helps me feel less like toejam, somehow.
I might not post here anymore. Still mulling it over. The crossposting system was great for a long time, but it's been borked lately. If I can write a post in Tabulas and press the crosspost buttons, I'm glad to do it and post three places (here, Xanga, LJ) with ease, but when it breaks and I have to copy my post over and post to Xanga and LJ individually, it pretty much blows.
I still need to rummage through Tabulas' documention to check if crossposting has officially been turned off for free accounts or if it just has problems lately. If paying will let me keep this nifty feature, woot, but I don't feel like shelling out money for whose killer feature (at least for me) doesn't work anymore.
I know I'm not explaining this well. Sorry guys. I'll check out the docs and see what I can find. I know free users no longer get support (which bothers me even though I can't recall having any but the smallest problems until lately), which is why I suspect the crossposting may have become paid-only as well. If it has, fine; I'll probably pay. If the crossposting is simply broken, people can find my current posting on Xanga or LJ.
[EDIT: Then it goes and generates the crosspost forms for this entry, even though I'm not crossposting this one. Heh. I should keep trying and copy/paste the message it gives me, something like "MySQL connection lost" or something. Even when it works, I get:
Warning: fsockopen() [function.fsockopen]: php_hostconnect: connect failed in /home/virtual/site170/fst/var/www/html/private/inc/entry.php on line 23
Warning: fsockopen() [function.fsockopen]: unable to connect to rpc.weblogs.com:80 in /home/virtual/site170/fst/var/www/html/private/inc/entry.php on line 23
Connection refused (111)
Huh. That second line is Weblogs.com not accepting pings correctly -- I use Ping-O-Matic for my online diary and I get a message that the ping was not well-formed, even though it used to work. Conclusion: Weblogs.com is just borked lately. Wiggy.
The rest is... I don't know what to make of it. It can't be Opera because PHP is server-side. Opera makes soup of bad JavaScript sometimes, but -- anyway. This isn't helping. To the docs!]
When I am tired enough I may as well be stoned. If that doesn't explain the title, I'm sorry but I'm lacking in ability to explain right now.
I am going to crosspost this and carefully copy/paste any error message I get. If it errors, fine; I get the message and go from there 40 winks from now. If it works, hey, that rocks my socks too.
I have a stupid plan. (Maybe I need formal classes to distract me from pointless endeavours?) See, I have accounts for Xanga, LiveJournal and Tabulas. I started posted at Xanga, abandoned that for LJ after some friends got invite codes, and crossposted to both throuugh Tabulas after finding it. This means I have posts all over the damn place.
So I am copying posts over to LJ from Xanga. Once that's once, I'm going to backup my LJ XML, a good idea anyway, or so they say; I've no idea how that helps if it can't be plugged back into LJ. The XML *can* be dumped into Tabulas though. Tabulas is even supposed to automatically detect duplicate posts and weed them out, though I'm not sure how that works.
I ought to check that Tabulas still allows free users to import their LJ backups before I try it, but I still want my Xanga posts on my LJ anyway, so I'll go ahead with that.
Right after I topple into the carpet. It looks so fluffy way down under my toes. I have funny toes. Look, they wiggle!
....right, it's bedtime now. I'm fairly sure this post will shame me by morning's chiding light, but I do not care now except to be irrationally smug and amused by myself. Don't worry. It'll pass.
Hehehe. My summer education is underway. I started with a pre-test, which I was permitted an hour to complete.
Nine minutes and fifty seconds later, I'm totally bloggin' it. Man, I feel cool.
Some Opera tricks should keep the popup window from closing. If that works, maybe something in the window will help me figure out the problem.
[EDIT: Yup, disabling JavaScript totally keeps the window open. It's blank though. Why on Earth is Tabulas opening a window to http://www.xanga.com/private/xtools.asp when the "New Weblog Entry" URL I get from the private section of my Xanga site is http://www.xanga.com/private/xtools/xtoolsclassic.aspx ?
When did my posts first not crosspost, though I didn't notice it until later? Oh, about the time Xanga updated xTools and changed the URL. It could be a coincidence. Maybe. It feels connected though.
What can I do about this? Not a damn thing. I posted on the forums, felt like a dingus doing it, and got nothing to show for it. Humph. If there was even one other user who had noticed this problem, I wouldn't feel so stupid, but as it stands it's just me. How infuriating.]
New idea, courtesy
phantompenguin in the forums. So here we go!
EDIT:
Lost connection to MySQL server during query That's come up before, but not lately. Crap. Crossposting form not generated even though the page took its sweet time loading. Repost time!
EDIT #2: OMG. It worked. The trick is to be logged into Xanga on one page and hit the crosspost form on another page. I'll have to remember to do that, but it still beats highlight-copy-paste blehness. Woohoo!
Should keep this short. I have assignments and housecleaning left.
Been thinking lately about roleplay being worth it. It took me long enough to realise that I go crazy if I don't play. As they say, quitting is not an option.
I need to work on where I direct my efforts though. I have a folder on my hard drive that holds little projects I have done for various roleplaying groups. Most of what I've done in the last six months or so has not been used. This bugs the shit out of me, even though I know it's fair reward. I can't justly expect accolades for doing work that nobody noticed needed doing, if it was worth doing at all.
Interestingly, I've done things for two separate groups in about equal proportion (lately, that is). Both ignore what I do. I have index pages, listings, updated resources -- all for nothing but my personal use.
Yeah, it's about time I quit fixing broken shit for other people and mind my solo stuff. When it's my project, I can fix it up without waiting on someone to implement my code. I'm not fond of this stance -- I love helping other people with websites much more than I care about my own piddly junk -- but I'm getting sick of "oh, this is so cool! We'll use it right away!" where "right away" = "eh, if an admin is really bored this December and somehow re-encounters your code". That's bullshit.
If I'm going to be honest with myself, I miss the chance to play with toys I couldn't afford. I used to have good clearance to tweak, but that's gone for now -- hosting problems beyond my control. People used to listen when I talked; that was within my ability to keep, but I lost it and I don't even know how.
I am going to blame this foul mood on a caffeine O.D. cross with easily stressed personality and sign off before I stick my foot all the way down my gullet.
Pet peeves of the moment:
Teachers who require one-inch margins in MS Word even though I don't have Word and Word was not a technical requirement of the online class
Design that mixes teal and lime
Buttons that do different things but are the exact same image without distinguishing labels of any frickin' kind
Lovely sturdy code I can't grok and can't legitimately use
MovableType not letting me download even the old, OK to use for many blogs version without registering for something I don't want and won't use
MovableType not letting me download the version I want (that works with the plugins I've stored up) even after I succumb to their crap (at least the email address I gave is a redirect, so I can nullify any announcements they might send to bug me)
Finding a recent enough copy of MovableType in my install file folder after jumping all the hoops to get almost exactly that install file
Reading the same essays as last year
Waking up at 6 A.M. from a basketball-sized dream scorpion in my hair
Needing to check hair, even after waking to safety, to be sure the scorpion wasn't there
Still remembering the unique curve of the giant stinger against my neck and fingertip...
The good points:
A family friend giving me his old (but working) copy of Word for free
Patterned tank tops!
Ears have gone weeks without infection recurring
One essay down, nine to go
Browser option to stop all images from loading on discordant sites (no my friend, screw YOU and your colourblind site scheme!)
My crossposting works again, thanks to a kind penguin in the help forum [EDIT: Except it randomly doesn't again, just when I was settling in to enjoy not having to copypaste, and it does this for the sole reason of pissing me off. Fuck this shit, I'm outta here]
I had Djew (hee!)
My bed is soft. G'nite.
So I managed to piss somebody off without even trying. I made a small snide comment that somebody assumed was about something they did that I had thought was done by someone else because it was the second person's site all along and damn this sound stupid.
I still like the part where the offended decided that it was crude of me to vent my spleen on my blog -- and posted it to that person's blog. I drag people down to my level! Glory, that was worth the price of admission and I wasn't even trying. Fell into that totally by accident.
Ever tried the random Xanga link? Ooh. Wow. I only thought I knew travesties of HTML. Yikes.
Have nothing to say for required class discussion, am lacking topic to essay due this weekend. Cannot start essay without idea.
Still think certain colours do not go together.
Did I accidently revoke my own lisence to visit certain websites, draw opinions of them, and post them on my website? Wait. That's not a coherent thought at all.
I don't get it. I went and edited my old post to remove anything that could be construed as hurtful, but I'm confused. Are there people out there who automatically assume that the latest yucky webpage I have found is theirs? Because I was looking for something in particular earlier this week and ended up at a LOT of gag-me websites that built up my latest pet peeves.
I don't like orange either. Don't like the fruit, don't like the colour. But I love this orange diskette (it is mine, I tell you!) -- it's all a matter of how something's handled. Some people have experience to turn things I normally wouldn't think about into things to beauty, and some random twits out there are capable of taking my favourite colours and patterns and turning them into disgusting muck.
I'm not making anything better with this, am I. My assignments aren't getting done (not that they would be anyway), my face has that icky dried salt coating, and people will always take what I had meant to be subtle jabs as salt in wounds.
Dude, I wasn't even trying to attack the person who reacted to my last post. I didn't know that person was even involved and yeah, I know -- still not helping myself.
And the growing chasm echo gloats: Stupid, stupid Ree. You'll never make anything better. Maybe if I cry enough, I can wring the bad feeling out of me?
You [insert string of profanity here] browser! I am trying to write a letter of apology to someone important, I can't think straight when I'm this sick and dizzy, AND YOU CRASH.
YOU SUCK.
Now I have to rewrite the entire letter when all I want to do is chug NyQuil and try not to fall off the bed.
WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM.
On the upside, this wooden computer desk resounds nicely when I slam my fist into it with all the strength of rage. Hand hurts, but that makes my throat hurt less somehow.
