a bit random...

[chrystalline]

Wasn't going to cut it, but it got really long on me.


YOU ARE AIR!

Your inner element is one of change and growth. You
are an intensely intellectual and curious
person who simply must know the answers to
everything. You question everything about the
world and the people in it. Because of your
constant search for new things you are blessed
with the ability to change and adapt to most
anything. You love people and tend to get
active in causes that interest you. You tend to
attract many friends but don't tend to hold on
to them for great lengths of time. Any career
that stimulates your desire to learn or develop
new things is ideal for you. Love for you tends
to start out as friendship and build into a
life-long commitment. You look for trust and
openness in your partner, and once you find it
you will let yourself fall completely in love.


Your greatest strengths are your incredible ability
to learn and adapt to all things. Your
weaknesses are your inability to slow down and
let others catch up. If you aren't careful, you
will leave too many people in the dust.
Balancing your strengths and weakness is
crucial for you to achieve balance in life.

Astrologically, Air is associated with the signs of
Gemini, Libra and Aquarius. You are most
compatible for either love or friendship with
another Air Elemental or with an Fire. You are
least compatible with a Earth Elemental.

Now that you have an idea of your strengths and
weaknesses, why don't you put them to the test?
If you follow my lead I can take you to a game
world where you can explore different sides of
yourself and taste real power....

...and all
the world can be yours.


Which of the 5 Prime Elements are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

AIR? Of all the... There are only two elements that don't fascinate me: air and earth! I'm more interested in fire and water. Ether sounds interesting, too. Stupid quiz...


Perfection Obsession


What's Your Obsession?
brought to you by Quizilla

What is it with these quiz writers who say "pick a song" and then list a whole column of songs I've never heard of?! At least put in a "none of these" option, huh? Sorry, I grew up listening to Beatles and Beach Boys, because my dad liked them, The Kings Singers, because my mom liked them, and Classical (and other eras that tend to get lumped in with it because nobody knows the difference) music because *I* liked it. Especially those fiery Russian composers like Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky and Khachturian and Shostakovitch and Rimsky-Korsakov and Stravinsky and Prokofiev and I'm probably butchering the spelling because it's been ages since I bothered to get those CDs out...Then I discovered film scores;) Other than a brief boyband stint during grad school (when BSB and NSync were big, and yes, I was into both) I stick to instrumental music. I sing; I don't generally care to listen to someone else sing. Unless he's a bass and he knows how to sing properly;)

Okay, I'm curious. I don't think any of my RL friends read my LJ, so I really wonder: how much do my Online friends know about me?

1. Give me a nickname and explain why you picked it.
2. Am I lovable?
3. How long have you known me?
4. When and how did we first meet?
5. What was your first impression?
6. Do you still think that way about me now?
7. What do you think my weakness is?
8. Do you think I'll get married?
9. What makes me happy?
10. What makes me sad?
11. What reminds you of me?
12. If you could give me anything what would it be?
13. How well do you know me?
14. When's the last time you saw me?
15. Ever wanted to tell me something but couldn't?
16. Do you think I could kill someone?
17. Describe me in one word.
18. Do you think our friendship is getting stronger/weaker/or staying the same?
19. Do you feel that you could talk to me about anything and I would listen?
20. Are you going to put this on your livejournal and see what I say about you?

And if you have this in your LJ: I'm coming, honest. I'm just really, really behind right now. I have literally dozens of *digest* messages in my email inbox that I haven't touched, and I can't catch up on everything at once. I haven't been to the DAZ board lately, either, and people have responded to threads I started or commented in; they're probably starting to think I'm rude...


It is very late, it is, and I've stayed up to catch up on LJs, and I forgot to take out the trash and left the dog out until just a few minutes ago (that is, a little before 2 am CST...poor guy...it's frosty out there), and I never even finished doing what I was supposed to be doing because I was checking my email and got invited to a chat (which was fun...it has literally been years since I was in a multiperson chat and I had a ball), and my room is still a mess, and I didn't get anything done today...yesterday...whatever. I need to send Christmas cards to my friends, since I can't afford to send them presents, but I'm not sure I can find everything I need. Like addresses and stuff. And those cute little unicorn Christmas cards I was sure I had but can't find now.

Crud. I just dropped my stick-on Renderosity tattoo on the floor and got cat hair all over it; the protective plastic came off it, and it's wrecked. Bummer.

Have no money to pay bills. Not fun. Not looking forward to the phone calls when they start. Need to foist off last of old photo job things back on the owner. He's supposed to be in town tomorrow...today, so maybe I can just run by and dump it on him. Got editing work to do; two months I've been delaying that one, and they wants it, don't you know.

Need to do laundry, too. And finish cleaning my room. I just cleaned the litter box, why does it still stink? Got a bunch of stuff to try to sell off; gotta ask dad where he stuck the digital still camera so I can put them up on my website or on eBay or something. Could be a real trick, since he's out of town on business. He hates that, but it's more pleasant around here.

That's frustrating; why is it he can only be pleasant to us when he's on the other end of a long distance phone call? He calls every night when he's on a trip, but when he comes home, he plunks down on the couch and channel surfs or goes down into the basement where his computer is and netsurfs (he's the only one still on dialup, because we don't have a cable long enough to plug his computer into the router...something about running the entire length of the house *plus* down the stairs seems a bit much) He doesn't talk to us when he's here, and if we try to talk to him, he pushes us to hurry up and finish saying what we're trying to say and get out of his way. It turns into an interrogation; he wants certain facts and tidbits of information at his rate of speed and in his order, not yours, and completely ruins the conversation. If he manages to start an argument, he likes it, because he thinks that's conversation. I've actually screamed at him in frustration when he's done that: "Do you enjoy this?!" "Of course; we're having a great conversation!" And any time you try to tell him about your life, he starts telling you what you ought to do. "You need to..." is his favorite way to start a sentence. Strangers get the pleasant side of him; he's only unbearable to family...

I don't know why I felt the need to vent about that *now* while he's away and being civil. I guess it's because I really want him to be nice all the time, not just long distance. I know better, but that doesn't stop me wanting it.

My computer is too slow. Only has 95MB of RAM; talked my mom into getting me a 256MB stick of RAM at the After-Thanksgiving madness (which is a story all by itself, since the stupid salespeople at the not-too-popular store were apparently more interested in serving the *men* and passed right over my mom...she was *not* pleased, and plans to write a very unhappy letter to their HQ) BUT apparently the thing isn't backward-compatible, so my computer refuses to recognize it as memory. Isn't that nice? My other computer is newer and uses PC2100DDR, so when I got a stick of memory for it, the salesmen explained that the stick would work fine, that the memory capable of more speed than the computer so it would run at the computer's speed. I figured, okay, so the older computer, which uses PC100SDRAM should be okay with PC133SDRAM. Wrong! So I have a 256MB stick of PC133SDRAM I can't use, and I don't think it'll work in any of our other computers, either. Dad's computer is older than my old one, Mom's old one is older than that, her new one is a VAIO with the scourge of MS: WinME, my other one is an XP VAIO with a Gig of RAM already, and the only other computer in the house is a laptop that we can't decide who it belongs to. My brother has a laptop and a desktop computer, but he's away at grad school, and as far as I know he built it himself, so I have no idea what type of memory it takes. It's probably newer than PC133, though. Frustrating. And this entire paragraph probably makes no sense to anyone who has never played around with the innards of their computer before...

Yes, we are a computer geek household; the above list only counts computers that will actually function. Not even I know how many dead towers are still down in the junkyard we call a basement. Dad refuses to get rid of anything; another of the things that drive me crazy with regard to him. I do know of at least three down there, though, one of which was my computer when I was in college; it stopped working (on the day I needed to finish writing and print out a ten page speech...it was a convenient excuse, too...gave me an extra two days to finish;) probably due to a virus, since I didn't know much about those yet and had freely installed the goofy games that were being fired around the email system. When my parents came for the graduation ceremonies, I asked my dad to look at it and try to figure out what was wrong. He didn't know, but said he'd take it home and try to find out; when loading it into the car, he dropped it three feet onto the asphalt. Bye-bye! Oh, and the dead Portable Commodore 64 is down there, too, I believe. My brother kept playing around with it up until about a year ago, when it finally gave up the ghost.

Reveling in my geekery: I pulled the modem out of the old machine, since I've got an ethernet card and router for the cable connection. 'Spose there's any sense in trying to see if anyone might want it for anything, or would it make more sense to use it for geek decor? (translation: is it just junk?) I want to upgrade the hardware, but the blasted opsys will be a problem. I got it about the time MS switched to "Restore Discs" instead of actual installation discs, so I don't know if I'd be able to reinstall the opsys if it conks out. It's 98SE, and yes, I like it. I don't want to upgrade, thank you; I have XP on the VAIO and I hate it with a passion. (besides, I have a lot of old programs that won't work on the newer versions...Lightwave 5.6, for example) I'm willing to consider Linux, but I have so many Win-only programs that I really need to be able to use. I'm debating the idea of backing everything up on CD and doing a system restore (the machine is nearly four years old and hasn't been restored before - have only had minor glitches with it in all that time) and then doing the hardware upgrade and hoping the installation lasts another three or four years without dying on me. Alternatively, I suppose I could pester MS for a way to reinstall 98SE on newer hardware - I have a legitimate copy, with Certificate of Authenticity and all that jazz. Just with a crippled install disc. It's a legitimate claim; probably couldn't actually make a legal battle out of it, but I sure could make a lot of noise;) If it came to it, I could try to find some minor computer retailer who still has a few copies of 98SE on a back shelf somewhere, but I don't think I should have to buy it *again*.

Even cut, this is long. Oh well. What's the sense in hiding more of it, though? I'm feeling strange and random, and, well, geeky. I like being a computer geek. I like changing out the guts of my computer. Oddly enough, I feel tired and not-tired at the same time. I should go to bed (it's almost half past 3 am...you can see how long it takes me to write all this stuff, huh;) but I don't really want to. I don't particularly want to meet mom when she gets up, either, but I feel like staying up through the whole night. Like I need to just stay up and do stuff, and worry about sleep later. Can't really explain that one.

Normal people are weird. Ergo, there is no such thing as normal. Unless you're talking geometry. ;}