Nikki

Got through my exam all right. I'm not exactly sure how well I did, but I'm considerably less worried about doing super-well on it now that I've seen the marks I got on my last essay. I mean, I truly and sincerely thought that hoping for a 60% on that essay was overly optimistic and was planning everything around having a bad grade on it, so I was like, "If I want even the slightest chance of walking out of this class with a B, I HAVE to get an A on this exam." But as it turns out, I got an A on the paper (I don't even know how: I wrote it at the last minute as a psychotic word vomit, albeit a properly-cited word vomit), so I could have gotten a C on the exam and still walk away with a decent grade in the course. I THINK I did okay on the exam, though. In any case, it's a load off my mind, particularly since that was the very last thing I had to worry about for the school year. I'm now on vacation for a little less than a week and a half before my summer contract at work starts, at which point I'll have to wake up at ass o'clock every morning BUT I'll be making fantastic money and won't have homework to worry about, so it kind of balances out.

In celebration of my freedom and better-than-expected grades, I ordered a pizza and wings for the family, and called today a cheat day as far as my diet goes. Though, I'm still nowhere near my caloric limit for the day yet, so it's more just a Crappy Food day than an actual "cheat" day. I actually can't remember the last time I ate more than my daily limit. I'm actually still rather under where I should be (under-eating is bad, too), but I'm stuffed. X(

And then, while checking up on the latest Yogscast updates, I noticed their Kickstarter link and learned about the new game they're making. I LOVE their Minecraft video series (Get started with this one if you're interested at all: it's a big, long series and very funny), so I was thrilled about this and pledged for the $90 package, even though the game is now more than totally funded with or without my help. I'm not even so sure yet whether I'll completely dig the game; but hey, I technically get to be part of the development process, so considering I'll have the option of having a tiny amount of influence on how it ends up being built, I may end up loving it. Either way, I'm really looking forward to seeing the characters from Shadow of Israphel (and other adventures) take on a new life in a new game. This does lead me to be a little concerned about whether copyright issues might force them to take down their Minecraft fan-videos, though, so I've started downloading the series to my hard drive, just in case. :P

Which reminds me, I need to buy a new external hard drive soon. My current one's getting close to full. Maybe I can splurge on a delicious 3TB one . . . . :9

This entry was originally posted at http://nikkiscarlet.dreamwidth.org/326666.html.

I have some sort of balance disorder/inner ear problem that occasionally acts up and leaves me pretty much incapacitated for hours and sometimes days at a time. It's acting up again: I actually had to leave class within the first half hour (and it's a five-hour class) today because . . . well, I had to throw up, and then I just wanted to go home. I was useless during that half-hour, anyway: mostly I had my head down on the desk and was half-dozing.

I really ought to suck it up and see an ENT to find out what, exactly, it is so I can possibly start treating it (if treatment is, in fact, possible). When the problem is active I feel too dizzy to MOVE let alone get myself to a doctor, and when it goes away I end up feeling like "Eh, I'm too busy now. Besides, how will they even know what's wrong with me if I have no symptoms? I'll wait until I'm dizzy again! :D" Last time I even began looking into it, it was suggested that it might be Ménière's disease, since my CT scan came out normal (so I don't have brain tumors: yay!). It's a little disconcerting that this disease could lead to me losing my hearing, but I suppose it could be worse: I could have, say, MS. Still, I'm hoping it turns out to be something even more benign.

This entry was originally posted at http://nikkiscarlet.dreamwidth.org/325396.html.

MAN, this is requiring a lot of revision. Whole pages just ripped right out and rewritten.

Figuratively speaking, of course: I do all my writing on a computer.

I'm really glad I'm doing it, though, even if it is kind of a shame to lose some of what had to be cut out. If there's one thing this whole process is teaching me, it's how to be really objective about the piece while still absolutely loving it. I suppose it helps that I save everything I cut out into a separate document I've titled "Cutting Room Floor", so that even though it might never be in any way a part of the finished story, nothing's ever really lost. It sort of frees me up to be completely brutal in my editing/re-drafting without letting myself get stopped up by sentimentality.

I have no idea how I'm going to count this towards my inkingitout word count. I don't know if I should ignore it because it's not actually ADDING much of anything to the word count of the story itself (it's mostly breaking even), or if I should count it because it's still new words being written in 2012. I guess I'll wait and see where my word count is sitting once we're closer to the end of the year.

This entry was originally posted at http://nikkiscarlet.dreamwidth.org/325203.html.

Decided once and for all that my main character is most definitely a hemophiliac.

Then realized that this means I'm going to have to do some tweaking to that scene where he gets punched in the nose. And, err, some even heavier tweaking to that car accident he gets into. And quite a bit of what happens after the car accident.

WELP.

This entry was originally posted at http://nikkiscarlet.dreamwidth.org/324909.html.

So, as usual, I've waited pretty much until the last minute to start an essay. It's for my Film class. I had originally thought I would do my paper on Martin Scorsese's Hugo, but decided I probably wouldn't be able to come up with any good arguments relating the film to what we'd studied in class, so I went through our list of options and narrowed it down to either a Canadian film based on a Mordecai Richler book, or a documentary. I chose the documentary, ultimately, because . . . honestly, we'd been studying documentaries the most recently, so the information was still fresh; but also because I was just in a documentary mood.

The film in question is Cave of Forgotten Dreams. It's fascinating and beautiful: I LOVE learning about ancient history, and seeing remnants of the distant past. I'm really glad I chose it, but . . . .



Yeah. It's due Friday.

This entry was originally posted at http://nikkiscarlet.dreamwidth.org/324306.html.

So, I've added 42 My Little Pony icons to my journal, all courtesy of simbada93. Well, so far I've only added them to Dreamwidth. I've only added the one to LJ so far (the one attached to this post) and am WAYY behind on updating my icons over on IJ. And I STILL have room for many, many more. I love being a permanent/seed member. :D

But that's not the only pony thing I did today.

( BRONYQUEST! Click here to read all about just how much of a fannish dork I am. )

And after that, I came home to find my tax refund had arrived. So, yeah . . . pretty awesome day, all told. :D

This entry was originally posted at http://nikkiscarlet.dreamwidth.org/324005.html.

YOU GUUUUUUUUUYS. We have an upright vacuum! With a clear container instead of a bag! And a hose attachment and pet hair attachment and it's light-weight and and <3!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've been dealing with simple shop-vac style vacuums ALL MY LIFE, and we always lost the carpet attachment so we were forever cleaning WITH A HOSE. THAT WAS IT. JUST A SUCKING TUBE. It never REALLY got anything clean, it just sucked up a few dust bunnies. AND IT TOOK FOREVER AND IT WAS HEAVY AND I COULD NEVER FIGURE OUT HOW TO PUT IN NEW BAGS PROPERLY AND I HATED IT SO.

This vacuum. OMG. I think this single vacuum might be the one thing that makes me ENJOY cleaning.

This entry was originally posted at http://nikkiscarlet.dreamwidth.org/323577.html.

Despite the fact that I had more than enough icon slots available (here on Dreamwidth, I could have doubled the number of icons I had and still had a few extra slots to spare. On LJ there aren't QUITE as many spaces, but still far more than I've needed), I went ahead and deleted some icons I just didn't think I'd use much, taking me down from about 121ish to 112. This might mean there are some references in previous entries and comments I've made to icons that are no longer there, but I can't be bothered to care about that anymore. :P

The deletion is actually in preparation for what I'm hoping will be some new batches of icons. I've been meaning to get myself some new ones for a while but couldn't really think of what exactly I wanted in a new icon. I've put together a rough list, though, which I'm going to work on filling:

• Icons for "negative" moods. I have a lot of neutral/smiley icons but not many for things like fear or sadness.


• My Little Pony icons!


• More Sailormoon icons!


• Actually upload at least a couple of the Ouran icons I made ages ago!


• Tenth Kingdom icons?


• Finally, and what I want the most: icons of my and Danielle's characters from Two Princes (our novel-in-progress) and its expanded universe. For now these would just be Sims of the characters - eventually I'll try to actually DRAW them, though honestly their Sim!selves were pretty instrumental in their character designs. I didn't even have solid concepts of what some of the secondary characters looked like until I started tinkering around in The Sims 2. So their Sim!Selves are pretty accurate representations. :D

The talk of icon add-ons over in dw_biz was what really got me going with this, though also my previous post about wanting some friends for my icon of Julian. I actually did try to whip some up that night, but in the end I didn't have any good pictures of his friends to use, and when I went into the game to snap some, I noticed I've got some sort of hack conflict or installation error or some such messing up the game. I'm a little concerned I may have to completely reinstall everything. It wouldn't be a BIG problem, but it is a pain. Even without a fresh install, I'm going to have to re-learn or remember everything I used to know about how to make the game run Just The Way I Like It. It's something I've known would be the case for a while which is why I've neglected it for so long: I've been too busy for that kind of commitment. :P It wouldn't even be such a chore if not for The Sims 2's obscene loading times. Just booting up the game takes like fifteen minutes. Then you have to boot up the neighbourhood. Then the lot you want to play. Then if you want to do some building it has to load up all your content. FOR EACH PAGE. I spend more time WAITING than PLAYING. On the plus side, if I DO go ahead with a fresh install and slowly reintroduce my hacks and custom content, I might weed out some of the stuff I don't really need.

I know Sims 3 does not have this problem. This will not persuade me to switch over to Sims 3. The gameplay on that game sucks, even if the architecture is improved.

So, I don't know exactly WHEN I'll get around to putting up more icons: it depends on how fast I can resolve this problem with my Sims game and get some snapshots, and when I find/make some new icons from other fandoms. But I'm hoping at least a couple will go up today, because I'm feeling just frivolous enough for this to interest me. There are things I really OUGHT to be doing, of course, like a major term essay that's due next Friday and an assignment that's due on Monday; but the beautiful weather we've been having has put me into both a carefree mode and a "spring cleaning" mode. My bedroom's looking to get tidied up as well, this weekend. I've opened up my window for the first time this year to let the sun and fresh air in. Glorious!

( And here's my (and Danielle's) running commentary as I tinker with the game. )

Then we sort of got distracted talking to John and, in my case, also cleaning my room. Oh my God, you guys, I have a floor. Ultimately, though, I narrowed it down to one folder that was causing problems and I'm not too sure yet which file inside it was causing those problems, but everything else is working fine, including the over 1,000 hacks in my main hacks folder. \o/ The game actually seems to work a lot better than it has in a long time: the graphics are a little smoother and run a little faster. The loading times are still horrific, but I ain't even mad.

This entry was originally posted at http://nikkiscarlet.dreamwidth.org/323045.html.

Testing out a browser I just heard about called Pale Moon. Essentially, it's Mozilla Firefox with the Accessibility and Parental Control features taken out, supposedly for the sake of making it lighter/faster for (Windows) users who don't need those features. I do like it so far: the profile import tool made all my settings and extensions from Firefox transfer over seamlessly (with the exception of the skin I was using, which I just re-downloaded and it worked fine). I'm not really noticing much of a difference in speed so far, though, (Firefox has always been perfectly speedy for me, even with my tendency toward having several billion tabs open at once) and when I opened up both it and Firefox with all the same tabs open and everything, I found upon checking Task Manager that Pale Moon was using up about 360,000K to Firefox's 260,000K. I'm not sure what's causing the 100,000K extra bloat: they're both running the same amount of tabs with all the same info saved and all the same plugins and extensions.

Still, there is this part of me that wants to stick with Pale Moon anyway. I think it's my inner hipster wanting the cred for using a browser that the average person hasn't even heard about. Even though it really is just Firefox.

Before people start chiming in about it: I've tried Google Chrome but found I couldn't customize it as much as Firefox, AND it seems to open a new instance of itself for every new tab you open, which would kill my system, given my habits. I couldn't get used to it, though the rest of my family has.

I have not tried Opera: I've heard good things. But I've been really happy with Firefox.

I use this icon of Julian a lot. I've got a little free time: I should whip up some icons of some of the other characters from my universe. Hmm.

This entry was originally posted at http://nikkiscarlet.dreamwidth.org/322720.html.

I've fallen behind on my word count again. Partly due to school work and partly due to a stomach bug that left me in a state of spending my day alternating between sleeping and running to the bathroom with a hand over my mouth. :( I'm able to keep food down now, but my sleep schedule's a mess and my appetite sort of comes and goes. Since my sleep schedule's a mess, I'm up at this hour writing instead of getting sleep for the early morning I'm supposed to have tomorrow but am sort of considering just bailing on. I was planning on going to that presentation for students interested in grad studies, which is being held in the morning, but . . . honestly, I have two more years before graduation, and I'm still not even sure I want to go for a Masters degree yet.

Also, Danielle keeps badgering me to write. :P

She's in Montreal right now for a presentation/speech thing she has to do on behalf of her school. Next week she'll be in Ottawa for another school function. I'd actually been asleep from about 5 p.m. to roughly 10 p.m., but was awakened when she sent me a nudge over MSN because I'd forgotten I still had it running on my phone, and nudges translate to vibrate, even when it's otherwise set to Silent mode. I'm a light sleeper, so it sort of gave my heart a jump-start. I think I might have slept through the whole night if not for that. X) A few minutes into our conversation she said, "I think I might go to bed early." I replied, "You woke me up to tell me you're going to bed?" :P

Oh, well. The weather is absolutely beautiful here and it's snowing in Montreal. I got to rub that in.

Oh! Also! I finally got my first bit of Canada's new plastic money today - one of the new $100 bills with the transparent windows and holograms and such. It's actually kind of amazing how much like normal money it feels. It's cool. I approve.

This entry was originally posted at http://nikkiscarlet.dreamwidth.org/322348.html.