Boom

Chiyo-chan is dead. My tower’s hard drive decided to corrupt some OS files, so today I (for the first time ever) witnessed the innovative “Your computer is hosed. Restart.” kernel panic message that appears in approximately 17 languages (even the dead ones) when your computer is…hosed. Considering that this happened after I ran my disk repair programs, I’ve decided to recreate Chiyo from scratch. Yay.

Yesterday Eric and I saw Nick for the first time in ages, and the fairly rare Corvallis Thunderstorm made an appearance early today. It’s the first time I’ve heard birds twitter alongside the rumble of thunder.

…shiawase…

This afternoon I felt something I haven’t felt in a heck of a long time: actual, honest-to-goodness happiness. The kind of feeling that, down to your very essence, everything is well. Life is in balance. I had forgotten how good that feeling really is.

Ever since this term fell off a cliff (back when I forsook math for the term and the UHC for eternity), and for the entire build-up to that decision, nothing felt right. I couldn’t handle school, work, or my home life—or, rather, I tried to handle them all and failed on all accounts.

Today was a (mostly symbolic) turning point. I enjoyed chatting with Joel, Misty, and Jessie—and later chatting with Sunriver Tom—earlier in the day, and smoked my banking quiz soon after. I got in to work, which (after surviving my crisis point yesterday) now houses a modicum of hope for getting out of my (and Marin’s) current backlog of papers to shuffle. I enjoyed the sun, ate dinner with my family, and then headed over to Andy’s to play Hearts, followed by a smattering of several types of poker.

About the poker…. If Andy were Alan Greenspan, and the poker chips on the table the monetary supply, then the United States would be experiencing double-digit inflation after he decided I needed support under the Too Big to Fail doctrine. [That’s a clumsy way of saying that I lost all my pretend money, and then lost the extra tower of chips Andy sent my way.]

Hearts, of course, was a completely different story. I kicked ass. That, of course, means that I got my ass handed to me on a plate. With a nice garnish and some wine on the side. On the house.

It stings to be schooled that bad. No matter how wonderful the rest of your day was.

60/40

As I told Eric yesterday, there was a 60% chance I was going to quit my job today. Thanks to my office manager—who has incredible people-skills—the other 40% won out. I had been listening to Komm, Susser Tod right before I went in to chat with her, so you know I was ready to end it.

I guess that means I can still be a consumer whore, right? Never forget the essential question: “what can I buy today?”

A fun Commercial Institutions quiz, spelled m-i-d-t-e-r-m, awaits me on the morrow. [No, I can’t buy that.] I haven’t actually studied for it yet, however, so I should…get…back…HEY! LOOK AT THAT! Azumanga Daioh desktop pictures!!!

Brazil

Andy called, and so this evening Eric and I got to go watch Brazil with Andy, Rob, and Carl. To give you a feel for the movie: it was about a dystopia—and was directed by one of the Monty Python people. I’m not sure how else to sum it up.

In local news, I finally got this blog to look decent (and about the same!) in Safari, IE, and Camino on the Mac. Windows IE seems to have issues with it, still. That’s all right, because I still have issues with Windows IE. =P

HTML Day and Anime Night

Today was spent almost entirely tweaking the layout for this page…I’ve been through about eight revisions now (believe it or not), despite this sucker only being some three days old. True, many of those were working out some serious kinks (repositioning links can be a bear with CSS, in my all-too-limited experience), but there were also some alternative layouts that got lost along the way. For your edutainment, a few pictures of my monsters:

   

As you might guess, the one on the left was (pretty much) the original layout. The image is from Saishu Heiki Kanojo, or She, the Ultimate Weapon. If I went with that, I could call this blog “the last love song on this little planet.” That sounds nice and poetic, until you consider my life. sigh.

The one on the right, of course, is Azumanga Daioh-inspired. Sakaki and Chiyo-chan actually (assuming your browser could keep up) stayed fixed at the bottom of your window, no matter how you changed the window size; if you made it small enough that Sakaki started running into the title image, then she actually went underneath the text. I’m torn between this Love Hina layout, and the Azumanga one—I like them both, though I’m still uncertain about the empty sidebar space both seem to suffer from. I have no qualms, however, about using other people’s art without their permission. =)

The evening, then, was spent trying to actually watch some anime. It’s been quite a while, really…. We finished off the second half of the Rurouni Kenshin OVAs (we watched the first half two or three weekends ago), and then took in the first episodes of Onegai Teacher, Chobits, and Tiny Snow Fairy Sugar. Quick opinions: Kenshin rocks. OT was too fanservicy for Marin, but (oddly enough) I didn’t mind. Tiny Snow Fairy Sugar was way too cute for my blood. Gack. I had to resort to MST3King to survive the first episode. Though I did have fun with that, I don’t think I’d enjoy doing that 25 more times. Marin probably wouldn’t enjoy it, either. Finally, Hideiki’s whacked-out expressions and pervertedness made Chobits. I now know one way you can say “porn site” in Japanese (keep in mind that I need to hear things a couple times before I remember them): ero site, roughly pronounced “arrow saitou.” You learn something new every day, I guess. Too bad these days I seem to forget two things for every new thing I learn.

Three-way, baby!

Three-way, as in, uh…my third pseudo-blog entry? I’m not sure. Perhaps I should direct people to look at a different site.

Of course, I only link to Brian’s proto-blog to try and shame him into learning modern page-layout technique. HAHAHA. Damn, I’m cruel.

We’re Getting Feisty, Now

I’ve been working on my blog’s layout for quite some time now, while pretending to listen to Brian’s mindless blather on IM. “Miwa this,” “Miwa that,” he keeps typing. I imagine his M, I, W, and A keys will be worn out by the end of the month.

I wish I had some keys worn out on my keyboard.

First Entry, Yo

We’re giving this CSS shizit a test run, fool. You best not be messin’ wit Da Man, ’cause he can smack you down like it ain’t no thang. Really, it ain’t no thang. I suppose such a blog entry would probably run on a few sentences, so I ought to keep typing for a while.

It was nice and sunny today, but it’s supposed to rain over Memorial Day weekend. Suck.

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