Ree’s musings

I took two quizzes and a unit exam last night. The quizzes went well (average score: 90%). The test did not.

It would not submit. I got an error page every time I tried to save my answers or submit for grading. Eventually I was able to get exam page back, with less than three minutes left to re-fill half the answers that the system should have saved but didn't. That was the opposite of fun. Then it autosubmitted (as usual for timeouts) and, oh surprise surprise, gave me the error message instead of my final score.

I am a strong person. People tell me this. My strong reaction was to burst into wails and tears and threaten my computer with grevious bodily harm to parts that it, being a computer, has never had.

On the plus side, it turns out that my online college tech support staff are nice and are working with my instructor to let me retake the remainder of the test for the full grade. Despite this, I still feel depressed and vaguely ill just looking at the computer.

Clearly it is time for a marathon Tetris session. There is nothing like Tetris for clearing one's head. I tend to cling to dumb ideas with all my might; playing Tetris while thinking about other stuff permits one part of my brain to spin Tetrads while the other part looses its manic "oomph" and is forced to think logically instead of emotionally. It works pretty well until I get focused on trying to set a new high score. Heh.

There are few things more rewarding then finally accomplishing a goal you've had for months. I knew that there had to be ways to process an RSS feed, iron out the invalid parts, and produce a valid feed from the horrible broken one.

Success!

I'm still not entirely pleased with the effort, but very nearly. I neatly commented my code (for a change) and intend to investigate ways to let other people use my script to repair their own broken feeds (all munged by the same ill-planned system). For now I'm content with refactoring existing code and grinning that I finally got it done. Amazing what you can do with some well-placed preg_replace!

I am, as usual, hard-pressed for time. Cursed illnesses. I have to watch a movie for class and scrabble up an essay on it -- a rather longer essay than I had planned for, actually. Bleh!

However, I had forgotten that Seven Years In Tibet, while mostly a cerebral and philosophical sort of picture, does contain a scene of half-naked Brad Pitt: bare to the waist and grinning all the while.

Did I mention the instructor for that class happens to be female? I'm just saying. Buwahaha!

There is a neighbor cat around. It used to visit a family across the street and hang with their cat, but the family has recently moved away. Their replacements aren't letting the cat in. He's irked by this.

But he came to say hi to me instead. Actually, I coaxed him over with some effort, but after he realised that I would give him lots of scritchies he decided that I am his personal climbing toy -- AKA his cuddle bitch.

I don't mind. He's soft and gregarious!

I can walk on the ground again! No more ambling through narrow valleys between mountains of snow. No more putting on boots before stepping outside. Instead of dreary melting snow, there's soft grass underfoot.

I even got my sandals out and have been wearing them. This is an annual rite for me, this donning of my favoured footwear. It invariably props up any flagging moods I have and encourages me to do daft things like paint my toenails in alternating azure and emerald.

Of course over winter I just wear psychedelic toe socks -- but now people can actually see my bizarre toes!

(Let's see if this shows up on Jangly Ganglia as it ought, eh?)

My mama took my shopping the other day, insisting that I needed new shirts. She's the mama and she's paying, so clearly I do need shirts.

My new shirts have long sleeves. Not just long, but long enough. I'm a tallish woman (5'10", or about 177 centimetres). It's a pain to find sleeves that actually reach my wrists.

But the lovely shirts I found fit me perfectly, even to my wrists, and were on sale! Score!

Can't concentrate for shit. As of this morning, I am finally caught up with last week's classes. I haven't even touched this week's and I have quizzes due Sunday night. My brother Squirt is here for the weekend, wanting to screw around and hang out. Hang on a sec, I'm having a vision of the future: my grades are about to get flushed. Woosh.

For some stupid reason, reading (something I've always loved and done well) is frustrating right now but computers are sane and sensible. I managed to port a Wordpress theme to Tabulas, on a whim. It was rocky at first (the Tabulas nav bar dislodged the alignments and stuff) but got consistently easier once I got going. It's basically done now, though I think I may put the main site nav links in the header instead of sidebar. I keep looking for them in the header and getting confused when they're not there, even though I'm the one who moved them. Yup, I'm on the ball today.

I joined Naked Day this year with most of my sites (pokitty.com, my Tabulas, and my LJ), which was educational. I found a few niggles in my code that I'd forgotten about while they had CSS to cover their shame. Once those became public for all visitors, I got ansty and ended up fixing them live just to have them gone. There are still some spots that need a go-over and some weeding out of unused code, but for the most part I'm happy with my HTML. That was a nice pick me up. Still need to take out a presentational table or two, but I have a pretty good idea how to do that so it should go rather smoothly. I'm not going to worry about the source code for my LJ as that's a site theme. Also I am lazy and don't care enough. If I take the time to code a page myself, though, I should damn well take the time to do it well. (My ported WP theme validates XHTML and CSS, though I'm not sure how strict. The original theme had the validation buttons and I refused to keep them up without validating.)

My brain is just not on. Mleh.

Because insulting Kevin Federline turns out to be hilarious, I'm obsessed with this song: Wigga Please. It's good music too.

Warning: swearing, insults, and general rudeness abound at that link. That is why I love it so.

I have been moving cardboard boxes and template tags. Brain no worky. Thus, a meme for you.

Go to Wikipedia and look up your birthday (excluding the year). List three neat facts, two births and one death in your journal, including the year.

12 May

Facts:
1191 - Richard I of England marries Berengaria of Navarre.
1932 - Ten weeks after his abduction, the infant son of Charles Lindbergh is found dead in Hopewell, New Jersey just a few miles from the Lindbergh's home.
1967 - At Queen Elizabeth Hall, England, Pink Floyd stages the first-ever quadraphonic rock concert.

Births:
1812 - Edward Lear, English author and poet (d. 1888)
1820 - Florence Nightingale, English nurse (d. 1910)

Death:
2001 - Perry Como, American singer (b. 1912)

No graded discussion in history class this week! Woot! That gives me a little extra slack to get caught up, which is exactly what I sorely need class-wise.

(Not a great night.)

You do not see the shadows creep
Or lean over the bed.
At minute sounds you never leap --
I quake with rampant dread.

If you saw within my head
A civil tongue you'd keep.
Of certain things naught should be said
Nor whispered, not a peep.

My history class just covered the rise of Communism, making this all the more hilarious:

[CHORUS 1]
Spiderman! Spiderman!
Does what Friedrich Engels can.
Hands out tracts in the parks.
Catches crooks while quoting Marx.
Look out! Here comes the Spiderman!

I don't have words. Only giggles.

It's slashy time.

It was purely by chance when Pasht ran into Lady Knight. She wrote bad love poetry and they made a living out of dressing up like boys and acting out yaoi.

Gee, that doesn't sound like either of them at all, does it. *snerk*

Lady Knight was sharpening a stake when she noticed the sexiness of Katai. She wrapped herself around him like so much static cling and eventually they stopped boffing only when they lost count of their progeny.

I have no idea where those descriptions came from. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

It was during a total eclipse of the sun when Cate was crossdressing as a man and stole the heart of Lady Knight. She wrote surprisingly good love poetry and a session of naked mudwrestling made the male audience very, very happy.

Lady Knight gets the mudwrestling session a lot. It's uncanny.

Sebastian was scaling the walls of a harem when he finally realised he loved Hirax. So he waggled his eyebrows suggestively and dressed him up in pretty clothes and gave him a kitten.

Aw. Kitty! Speak of the devil:

Müttly Föe was busily retconning his history when he thought it'd be fun to declare undying love for Weft. So he showered him with roses and plushy toys and eventually ended up with a knife in his back, but it was worth it.

I feel better now.

No essay in world religions this week! I'm going to get spoiled if I keep catching breaks like this. No sense staying up late when I've a good excuse to crash early...

My dad dropped by yesterday while I was cleaning. For a change, I was naturally cheery and charming. He made to leave and I refused to let him take off without a hug first. He held me tight and reminded me that he loves me. I did likewise.

It was a very good day.

Buwahaha. Buwahaha!

My world religions essay topic has been approved. My instructor doesn't know much about it and is interested. So hail Eris!

I've been tying my shoes wrong all my life. Hated shoes with laces. Preferred slip-ons and zippered boots. Now, however, my bows sit evenly and securely instead of coming undone as I run down the stairs and magnificently collapse in a pile of aching joints.

I just thought y'all should know.

1. Buck :: wheat
2. Harry :: Sally
3. Play :: time
4. Monstrosity :: ogre
5. Nightclub :: Carpe Noctem (warning: link is not a webpage but a word processing document)
6. Missing :: link
7. Sprout :: gross
8. Flavor :: sweet
9. Identity :: card
10. Saucy :: Vox

I have a song in my head that is pissing me off.

...has someone you trusted left you betrayed
has someone who loved you thrown love away
do you see God? does he have a face?
looks like your father's, how does it relate?
you're scared of being let down
tell me...

Why can't my mental repeat be "Yellow Submarine" like everyone else has?

Dirty joke ahead.

My brothers and I are all at my mom's for Easter weekend. She made us waffles today. One container of syrup was almost empty, so she tipped it upside down over the other. Pretty average stuff.

Then she noted the names of both brands and calmly pointed out, "Hungry Jack is eating Aunt Jemimah."

!

My brothers and I are home at our mom's for Easter. TJ, the music master, is practicing upstairs. He's quite good -- good enough that I always silence any other music in order to listen to him play.

I also sat next to him at church service and got to listen to him sing then. He has what may well be the perfect tenor. I'd be jealous if I sang in the male register.

All in all, a good day; however, I may have been unduly influenced by the truckload of Easter candy my mom accumulated prior to the holiday. ¡Azúcar, bebé!

1. Ambition :: Jim's Big Ego
2. Meatloaf :: Eddie's teddy
3. Celebrity :: Deathmatch
4. Coach :: meathead
5. Slacker :: me
6. Reflection :: shiny
7. Original :: creative
8. Risk :: Asia
9. Saved :: faith
10. June :: bug

I reinstalled w.bloggar and am dorking around. First off, I love that Tabulas has implemented the old Blogger API (as opposed to the new Atom API Blogger prefers, which looks complicated as hell and is associated with the Atom syndication protocol, which also looks hellishly complex). I do. I love that during a power outage, I can run my laptop off its battery and compose a post, and when I get online again I just have to hit "post" instead of copy-pasting title, entry text, and any metadata. It's shibby. That said, there are a few improvements I'd like to see somewhere down the line:

• w.bloggar can post to LJ with metadata, using lines like lj-mood:geeky and such. Similar functionality in Tabulas would be wonderful. I like putting my mood on posts.
• I really wish my current music could be auto-detected without resorting to (ugh) Windows Media Player. This is a limitation of w.bloggar, not Tabulas; if I ever manage to find an open source (preferably GPL'd) Windows client for the old Blogger API, I want to see the ability to detect music from iTunes and WinAmp. To hell with WMP.
• I miss my categories! I'll have to edit this post in the control console to file it under Tabulas and geeky. I really hope the MetaWeblog API can be added to Tabulas down the line; this would take care of the categories.
• I'd love to be able to sticky or mark as favourite when posting. There's no implementation of this in the w.bloggar interface, but it could be handled similar to the LJ metadata. Same goes for crossposting. There needs to be a way to tell the API to send it on along.
• w.bloggar can not handle uploading images or files except through FTP. The client is not set up to handle it, and I don't think Tabulas has an uploading API implemented. Well, there's the one used with the Windows XP uploader -- it uses a client built into WinXP, but it may be possible to find clients for other OSes that could use the same API endpoint. Now that I have to investigate. There might be at least a Linux tool out there for it and that might work for MacOSX too; the problem is non-XP versions of Windows.

That's all for now. As I said before, I love APIs and RSS and basically, techie acronyms. The big picture is lovely; I want to find ways to perfect the niggling details so it's absolutely perfect.

Brownie is not doing well.

I rule. After months of meaning to, I got my blog to show on my domain, complete with category listing -- sorta. It's built off my RSS feed so I had to fudge some stuff, mostly the category and comment links.

I deserve a freaking cookie for obsessively stripping all the smilies though. I refused to have something something like "UNC" (encased in colons) showing on my domain when it was supposed to be an angry face. So I sat down with my main webmaster guide open to regular expression and systematically weeded out each smiley. Did y'all know there's an alphabetical order for punctuation and that PHP will holler at you if you put a preg_match sequence of punctuation in the wrong order? Learn something new every day.

Someday I intend to massage out the categories and smilies, but for now it works, it validates, and I am glad, glad, glad. Now I can use the hosted blog system I love and have the same blog on my domain.

Dude. When I press "Post Entry," it'll show on my domain! Wiggy cool!

Today is a better day. High time. I have candy, warmth, humidity, sandals, "The Internet Is For Porn" in the background (on Radio Free Bender, which is entirely fantastic kick-back music).

I'm waiting for my religions class to collectively hunt me down and smack me in the head. See, this week we were studying Taoism and Confucianism, the teachings of Confucius (Kung Fu Zi). I tried to be good. I really did. But in the last 15 minutes of the discussion period, I couldn't stand my impulse and succumbed: "Taoism and Confucianism are Kun Fu Zing!"

As I was telling Churn the other day, I never did have a subtle sense of humour.

In other news, my mother's computer was rebooting every time she tried to login. My brother Squirt get frustrated with it, washed his hands of the problem and left. I was getting desperate until some celestine voice suggested I try hitting Esc to login as guest. No go.

So I replaced her wireless keyboard's batteries and all was well.

My favourite necklace is one my sister gave to me: a green cat on a black leather cord, with a few beads and a sturdy clasp. I forgot to take it off before bed last night and the pendant, the cat, came off in my sleep. Panic! I spent the morning fruitlessly feeling through my bedsheets and around the floor in search of it -- even before I got out of bed.

Eventually I tore all but the fitted sheet off the bed, and there smack dab in the center of the bad is the cat pendant, facing me directly. All I could think was, "Isn't that just like a cat."

I'm bouncing off the freaking walls. My mother insisted I still need new shirts, and while being exploring stores I managed to sidetrack myself into a lightly used copy of Ian Fleming's On Her Majesty's Secret Service. That's right, it's Bond -- James Bond. Eeeeeee!

Bloglines crapped out on all Xanga feeds last week; they're fixed now but I have a backlog I'm wading through one by one. I'm at my mother's house, allegedly studying (right after I check one more site, honest...).

Said mother walked into the room just as this entry loaded on my screen. She didn't bring it up at all but I have to wonder what was going through her matronly head.

See, she's a Sunday School teacher. Head of education for her congregation, actually, and an active elder in the church consistory. She's a registered Republican (I think two-thirds of South Dakota is Republican, or at least consistently votes that way in presidential elections) and just today threatened to write an angry letter to a store with a great sale on Sunday, because it "wasn't right," shopping on Sunday or drawing families into stores on Sunday. (My response? "Maybe the people who devised the sale are Jewish and have Sabbath on Friday night. Or Seventh Day Adventists. Or atheist--" at which point she gave me A Look to shut me up.)

I'm sure I wouldn't have liked it, but I'm deathly curious as to what she was thinking when she glanced at my screen. It's my personal perversity.

(Crossposting this outside Xanga in case it gets baleeted, and because I think these are just questions regarding rules, regardless of who tries to institute the restrictions.)

Oh hell damn, that's priceless. "Adult content" is left undefined so that people can slap that label on anything they deem "dirty". So is some motherfucking shitty language "adult content"?



Is nudity "adult content"?

I'm also not fond of of the "advocating self harm" flag. I got the "anorexia = bad" and that even though it's free speech, Xanga has the right to refuse such content on their servers. That's fine. How about bulimia? Purging without bingeing first? Telling people it's okay to be unable to stop self-destructive behaviour right away? Informing people who cut themselves how to minimise the wound and resultant scar? Posting instructions for home tattooing or piercing? Technically a fresh body mod is a wound, and if done poorly constitutes blunt force trauma -- which is why people should know how to do stuff correctly instead of causing additional, accidental damage.

What's verboten on Xanga?

The world may never know.

This morning I dreamed about a woman named Christine Circe. She had a frilly white dress and long red curly hair, and apparently turned domino-masked men into pigs. Um. And she may have been carrying a golden apple, which doesn't fit her name but proves that one should not smoke the Principia Discordia before bed.

A redhead with matching initials. Gee, wonder there that came from? Oh yeah.

JanglyGanglia

I helped my mom cook a family dinner and clear the table afterward. Some table scraps were earmarked for her dog, a large mutt we like to call Cookies. I did the practical thing and took them out to the mutt, along with a fork to scrape the plate clean.

She tried to jump me, as usual, so I put the fork on the plate -- or tried to. I missed by a foot and the fork went sailing behind me. Cookies was dancing excitedly around me. After the fifth or so iteration of saying "Sit!" to her, she finally obeyed.

And sat on the tines-up fork and wondered why something was poking her.

She's, uh... not the brightest animal.

I've been Googling around for various API stuff and discovered a few things.

Too damn many services refuse to let me enter an API endpoint to post, insisting on adding supported services one at a time by themselves. This usually means TypePad/Movable Type, WordPress, LiveJournal, and Blogger -- and nothing else. DIE. All those platforms should understand the old Blogger API and the entries up to LiveJournal generally use the MetaWeblog API, which is added on to the old Blogger API. In short, if they would just let me enter the Tabulas API endpoint, I could post to Tabulas But they don't, so I can't. And those services, therefore, suck. What if I still use B2? What if I use a LiveJournal-based site that is not LiveJournal.com? (A few of the services I'm complaining about also have DeadJournal as an option. That is not good enough -- there's also Caleida, Blurty, GreatestJournal, JournalFen, and that's just off the top of my head.) Grrr.

There is a thing called Really Simple Discovery. I'm not sure how many XML-RPC clients actually use this, but the idea behind it makes sense: sometimes people don't know where their API endpoint is or which APIs are supported; if users can enter their site URL and let the client check it for this data, the user's experience is much smoother. I've mocked up an RSD document for my Tabulas site but have yet to implement it or test it. It's possible that the only Windows XML-RPC clients that use RSD are shareware or simply not available for free at all; that would suck. A lot. However, if most clients can use RSD, then having it in place would cut down on people wondering what settings they need to enter to get their downloaded client program to work.

It really sucks to post via API and then login via the web to set categorisation and metadata. Metadata -- mood and such -- isn't so strictly important; categories are moreso, particularly if/when Tabulas' by-category RSS feeds return. B2 used the old Blogger API with an additional tweak to permit categories, so it's possible. I don't know how hellishly complex it might be to implement but it is possible, and that gives me hope. Hope of categorised posts made with closed browser window, forcing me (for a moment) to post my words instead of devouring everyone else's.

I really should get my schoolwork done before the deadline. Bah.

Xanga wants to flag content, including "adult content" -- which they leave undefined and have already gotten much flack about.

This has resulted in me interrupting all manner of conversations with my brother and our friend Arak to holler, "Adult content!" (complete with frantically waving hands to signify oh no the panic), after which we all snigger.

We're easily amused.

I have fixed it! I'd broke my best (read: loudest) alarm clock months ago ago -- slapped the snooze button so hard that the stuff the held up the button broke. Today I found super glue and inspiration, opened 'er up, glued the broke-off rattly parts back into not-rattling, and closed 'er up.

This has extra meaning to me; the first time I tried to repair the same damage, the super glue refused to exit to the tube until it exploded all over my fingers. It left residue on my nails and jeans, and the phrase "hand of rock-hard jism" in my vocabulary.

I thought I felt inspiration, so I opened up a blank document file and tried to write a poem. It was very like the experience of trying to move a completed jigaw puzzle by sliding a piece of paper under it, then attempting to keep the paper horizontal as you move the entire apparatus. It worked about as well, too; I could actually watch my web of thoughts and rhymes tumble off my mindscape in chunks and dribbles.

I should have stuck to online sudoku. At least then I can hit a button and learn what I've done wrong.

Oh, life is like a pizza is --
Sometimes you get the crust,
Sometimes the sauce explodés
Like a pocket full of pus!

Just chew your pepperoni bits
And tug apart the cheese
Enjoy the loads of flavor
But don't drop it on your knees!

(I don't know either. Just go with it.)

Got an email from my aunt by way of my mom. It won't be much longer.

How childish I feel, railing against everything for being unfair.

I usually slip socks on and off in near-dark, so when my shoes got soaked today and I had to bare my feet to dry them, I got a little surprise. I had plum forgotten that my toenails were coated in fuschia glitter! It was a nice bit of bright colour on an overcast, chilly day.

Xangans find the best kinds of wrong (except Muraki's favourite kind, and maybe even some of that too).

I got to hang out tonight with some friends of mine from college and their little one, who has gotten so big and cute. He's gonna be a heartbreaker with those shining eyes and charming grin.

It was really good to just be with friends and not feel obligated to play a game or watch a movie, to just relax and chat a bit.