The more things I get to find out, the more I come to believe in Ecclesiastes 1:9. The reference's age serves to further support it.

I CAN'T BELIEVE NO ONE HAS EVER TOLD ME TO READ THIS BOOK!!! DID YOU ALL THINK I WAS BORN WITH A READING LIST??? SOME FRIENDS I'VE GOT!!! ENDER WIGGIN 0WNZ HARRY POTTER!!!

Mom didn't like Falling Free. When she cools off I'll try to extract her reasoning for it, if she has any. What are your thoughts?

Thank God, I'm home.

We're not being fucked over, it's male love. Huh. Chances are good that I'll be guarding the base during Passover. Fun.

State of alert has ended. We celebrated with BBQ. Tomorrow is a long day.

New matra: Escapism is bad for you, my preciousss.

Know that I will not hesitate for even an instant to use the blog's edit function to cover my ignorance, but what the devil is "RfA"?

The Uzi is not as cool as seen in movies. A small, heavy bugger. How is everyone?

AtE#35! The super-formatted version is 524KB in RAR3. Wah. It is available for reviewing the format and navigation, BTW.

I don't think I've ever seen a human being who needed to get laid worse than you do now.

Evil, but funny. Naturally, it couldn't have gone without a flame war, but alas, that's the way fandoms work. Now, where's Firelocks' retribution?

A military field court-martial has dubious reputation. Trust me - it's not half as bad. Well, it might depend on the officer... After this year's hardest rains last week (I was soaked to the bones and considered myself lucky I had time to get inside once it started to hail), we have 87°F. The weather has gone mad. Part B begins next week, which is v. good because it means the end of the hated structural Hebrew. You cannot begin to understand how awful it is to try and program in a right-to-left written language.

Bloody Idiot.

Seems like I'm needed at base. Trying to find out how urgent that is (meaning, can it wait till morning). Noncoms, huh?

Super!Harry, on the H/G continent, has evolved under the influence of the "bigger is better" misconception into a monstrosity. Some characters are big enough (not the best word here, I suspect) to nonchalantly pull off remaining an identifiable-with human while running around with a command headset, the Order of Merit and the Auditor's chain. Others would either be crushed by the weight or become non human, an unsuitable character for the main hero's role. By increasing the hero's firepower and inventing a new boss-creature for the grand finale, one does not create a novel but rather a video game, and even a video game is quickly ruined by cheat codes. The challenges the hero faces are supposed to be about life - inner struggles, not the props meant to attract the younger audience's attention. It feels as if less experienced authors (I mean as people, not as writers) don't see far beyond the toys. A book is about people and not their things, people with their faults and weaknesses and not Gods. Even RPG is supposed to teach you about life, not about building castles in the clouds. And if that is the lesson the author is trying to learn, why inflict it on other people? The internet is indeed a mixed blessing. P.S. There is a rabid plot bunny that should demonstrate my point, but I'm very afraid of setting it loose.

See if this works: http://fox302.com/userdata/wolf550e/files/Me/horrible.jpg

Sinead O'Connor - 2002 - Sean-Nos Nua - 07 - Paddy's Lament Cranberries - 1994 - No Need To Argue - 04 - Zombie

Till this "war" thing is over, I'll be going home @ 18:00 everyday. I don't even know if that's a good thing. Lugging a gas mask around all the time sure is a pain in the butt.

On the SciFi theme - downloaded some TV rips of B5. I have almost forgotten how good that show was. What is the point of Star Trek anyways? Joseph Michael Straczynski or bust.

In the spirit of "better late than never": Good job Carole (Estes)!

Archer/T'Pol, yeah baby! By mid season II they're quite obvious about it too. I can see a pointy-eared Archer Jr. :-)

Just got word that one of the kids who were killed in the latest bombing in Haifa was in my cousin's class in school. Gotta talk to him.

Our course's staff encourages the students to employ their talents for the group's benefit. I and a few others have decided to oblige by analyzing, designing, developing, testing, deploying and maintaining a "web page" for our intranet. Not that we have a minute to spare, but hey - "in the army, volunteering is a privilege" (well, that and our constant complains about boredom, force us to at least try and do something helpful). We found out that, as always, there's a catch: It has to be completely in Hebrew, and it's classified. So I have to research eight-bit bidirectional text encoding and I can't share my groovy scripts. Oh, and if you were wondering - I'm in charge of client-side scripting and standardization, not the artwork.

What is it that they say about men who like petite women and large dogs? Har har har.

A busfull of kids. Bastard. A weekend on leave, because of an important test on Sunday+Monday. Yay. No other news yet.

Well, I was in Null Pointer Assignment mode for a while during the test and didn't have enough unwasted time to finish it properly, so my grade will suffer. I hope for an 80. How sad. There is a big fucking test on Sunday. I must do well if I wish to save my average.

Something's rotten in the kingdom of the computer that does our grades. An entire course fucked over. We will complain. No answer yet as to what is going on with our status (soldiers in pre-military courses cannot be. So you have to be taken out of service for six months. But that means no paycheck which means starvation for the folks without parents, so it's out of the question. Bureaucracy SUX). The stuffed our entire senior year of high school comp.sci. into a week. Good for them. Vary bad for people who have a test on it tomorrow and day after tomorrow (an 18 hour long test).

Got 91% average score, including extremely stupid stuff. Real coding grades are > 95%. Personally still ok. Must sleep. Week was intensive, especially for people who actually had to learn this stuff. Next week will get more than 10% of the people out of the course (statistics based on previous classes). I *HATE* coding in Hebrew.

Weekly diary entry: all is well. Still not the smartest.

Hosting is dead, have no time to look for new one. Will switch to dumb template. If someone misses the old one - "tough, deal" (© IDF. By "deal" I mean get me a hosting service that supports remote images (I use it for remote .js files)) Classes are peeking up speed and will soon take 120% of my time, which is cool, but also sucks. I rediscovered why I hate VB and human-tongue algorithms. Semitic languages were NOT meant to be used for programming, and no amount of Sumeric legends will convince me in the opposite. The positive news is that people are proving to be as good as I expected. Moreover, I'm still the nerd. Makes me wonder where I have to get to find more people like me, and then consider the possibility that I am truly unique or at least my type is very rare. And then I have to wonder if I should try to fit in. There are 10₂ kinds of nerds in this world: those who grow up to be geeks and those who don't. I sometimes wonder which kind am I. Ramblin' Rover by Andy M. Stewart CHORUS: Oh, there're sober men in plenty, And drunkards barely twenty, There are men of over ninety That have never yet kissed a girl. But gie me a ramblin' rover, And fae Orkney down to Dover. We will roam the country over And together we'll face the world. CHORUS There's many that feign enjoyment From merciless employment, Their ambition was this deployment From the minute they left the school. And they save and scrape and ponder While the rest go out and squander, See the world and rove and wander And are happier as a rule. CHORUS I've roamed through all the nations Ta'en delight in all creation, And I've tried a wee sensation Where the company, did prove kind. And when partin' was no pleasure, I've drunk another measure To the good friends that were treasure For they always are in our minds. CHORUS If you're bent wi' arth-i-ritis, Your bowels have got colitis, You've gallopin' with bollockitis And you're thinkin' it's time you died, If you been a man of action, Though you're lying there in traction, You will get some satisfaction Thinkin', "Jesus, at least I tried." CHORUS There are 10 kinds of people in this world: those who understand binary and those who don't. Also, there are those who can live according to that song and those who can't. Do I contain something important for the human genome?

Coders In Arms Part Deux. LOL.

Never format and install OS' when braindead. Naturally, I've accidentally deleted the only copy of the bleeding edge version of the DHTML work (blog V.2). The backup is weeks old and completely useless. Oh well, I don't have time to deal with it and I'll definetily want to rewrite the whole thing after the course because of all the neat stuff I'll learn. Everything is for the best. $^%&%$#%*&^^#&*%#^$^@#%$&%^(*&(^^$^%&^*%#%#$^&%&&^!!!!!!

Must reinstall windows, have no time. Will now make time.

We had gym class today. In civilian clothes. Made me reevaluate my opinion on the uniform and the reason there are girls in the course - let them be, I'll even do their homework. All they have to do is shut up and keep doing those warm ups and stretches. >;-)

First day of school. Boring. Some folks are either dumb or uniquely good at acting it. Discipline needs work. I believe it will get better. If only because we know 25% of the class do not reach the finish line. The two-three smart girls I've spotted only prove the point about the regular girls - they shouldn't be there. So I'm a chauvinist pig, so shoot me. Ha - you can't, you're civilians. ;)

Saw all the people. Opinions wary. Some seem very nice, some very interesting, a few will definitely go far. Others have not made this impression yet. In any case - much better than techs. Coders 0wn. Schoolkids (people who got to this course the usual way, before enlisting, unlike me) are very funny, not knowing how to wear the uniform or salute to officers and stuff. They'll learn. Supposedly the six months will count as part of the 36 I owe the army, meaning I get more paid months of service (or an earlier discharge), but we're not sure because it's unlikely the army won't find a way to screw us over. I don't mind, much. Got divided into our permanent groups (companies, platoons - classes). I'm Red. Red are rumored to be better. Unit Pride! :-)

RIP Ilan Ramon, and the other six astronauts whose names I don't know by heart but are not less important. Let's wait and see if they say it's pilot error. I can just see the conspiracy theorists' heads spin.

The right to vote wrong. I love Democracy.

LMAO. My mom's office (civil engineering, telecommunications) is transferring to ISO9002 compliance. Leslie, I guess you understand. For everyone else: imagine Percy as head of the QA department in WWW. It's a dawn of a new age in the roughneck infrastructure industry. What a joke.

I'm on leave till Sunday, elections are tomorrow, I must meet some people or else I'll never have the chance.

Practicing some perl for the heck of it. I hope to de-rust my l33t c0din9 5|<1llz LOL.

Forgot to blog about my cousin whom I've met, however briefly, on Wednesday. He went to some tests while I went to the previous session/year's graduation ceremony (which R0X'd BTW. Ever seen a hundred programmers march in complex formations, salute and shout, accompanied by a live military band? Didn't think so.) to help setting it up and cleaning after they were done (cheap labor). He had to be there at 7am and he lives more than two hours away, so he spent the night at my place. Anyway, dude is so clueless it's sad. He is half a year and a day younger than me and therefore leaves high school this year. He doesn't want to go to college although he easily can and he has no idea about what's going on in the army and what kind of position he can get. Or at least what kind of assignment he wants to get. He can get so screwed over, it's not even funny. 96.125% on the SATs and I'm telling you - unless he gets his act together, he'll be driving trucks for three years. For next to nothing, let me remind you. Clueless underage stubborn idiots. I sound frighteningly like my dear mother. :Q

I'm probably missing my once-in-a-lifetime opportunity now, but I still can't believe it's actually happening. There I sat in a bus and enters Girl: thick long dark red hair, all the right shape, right size, freckles on cute face, non-baggy sweater, school bag on shoulder. Sits down in front of me, takes the sweater off (interesting lyrics on shirt), puts it into bag, takes out a copy of the Silmarillion (in Hebrew unfortunately) and starts reading without obvious signs of utter boredom.

She's sitting straight with her back on the back of the chair and her legs on either side of the schoolbag. The effect is tantalizing. I'm staring. She is either deep inside Tolkien's world or makes a point of not noticing. I'm chickening out, pulling my notepad and writing this.

It took a bump on the road to divert my attention from her to the window and see it's my stop. I swear I would have missed it otherwise. I kept on looking at her while the bus passed me. It was probably pretty pathetic, but my resolution is to at least start talking to her next time I see her (which is very convenient because it's probably never).

*Some time later*

Been told I'm guarding the base on Thur-Fri-Sat. we'll see how nice it is. Maybe will have some time to listen to music and read. And talk to people. I still don't remember most of the names.

Most unpleasant was to see the most annoying person from BT in out group. I sure hope we won't be in the same class. Actually, I'm going to talk to our temp. commander about making sure I don't.

Edit, four years later. The annoying guy just disappeared. Don't know what happened to him, but I haven't seen him since. Nor the girl from the bus, unfortunately.

Armed again. Volunteered to be on guard duty. So I have a gun and I don't do anything. Nice.

Note to self: don't lose touch with the nice people you get to meet - they're well worth the time spent on the occasional phone call.

I'm wet for the fifth time today and yet I'm happy. I was transferred to the base and got the shoulder insignia thingies. I'm in the course (until I'm thrown out ;-) ) and I have free time till it starts (about two weeks). I'll be home every day (I asked to be in the lodgings everyone else is getting but they said I live too close) which means I can't copy homework but also that I'll have internet access. Statistically, that lowers my chances at successfully getting through, but I guess I'll just have to work harder. It also sucks from the socializing point (there are girls in the course. Non-stupid and non-ugly ones!), but then again - we have twelve hours a day, five days a week (dunno about Fridays) for six months, to be together. Thank god the people seem nice.

Can't believe I'm blogging now. Anyway, I think I'm in. I was sent home to fetch some papers and we'll see what happens next. The weirdest thing happened on the way back: I was crossing a street and a cop approaches; I'm already considering whether he can or can't file a complaint for jaywalking when he says: "hi Ze'ev, wassup?"... I tripped (or, more precisely, slipped) and he caught me by the collar before my arse got into the puddle, I looked up at his face and of course, it's a guy from my tent in basic training. He wanted to be a "blue" cop, got it and he's already on the job. Awesome for him.

Still home. Apparently they are in a serious shortage of coders, because they send everyone who's not completely dumb to do the tests. Well, the short version at least. What I got was two hours long, not the full seven hours usually associated with the course. No answer yet, but I'm coming back there tomorrow, so we'll see. The word is that those who fail it get the operator/tech course, which, at this point, suits me fine. Met some people from my school who are already there. If I fail and they pass, it would be truly sad.

Talked to a guy I know through my mother's connections that has been through that thing I'm going to try and get into on Sunday. He says the tests are easy, the course is hard, the job is boring, the people vary and the paychecks when you're done are fat. But he said it's extra three years, not two like I thought. Ouch. Then again - I'll definitely have time to get a degree from openu and maybe even take a break for a masters, if and when I decide I want one. So I still want to go. Now, I hope my brain has not completely deteriorated.

I'm home!!! Going to some computer job tests on Sunday. I think I have a fair chance of getting in, but I try not to get my hopes too high. Must practice coding, since brain-wrinkles are all flat right now (Kudos Penny&Carole for the expression).

Can't believe basic training is O-V-E-R! Hurray! What a disgrace it was. Dima, I shall forever remember you every time I look at my right hand. Big day tomorrow, must go sleep.

sleepy rambling

Stumbled across my work on V.2 of this site. The API needs work, the JavaScript implementation is unreadable and the documentation either does not exist or is written in poor English. And I don't even have an excuse for that. What the hell was I thinking? I need to be home every day lest my mind will rot. This template needs an upgrade. Saying the two are connected is an understatement.

So tired, not packed yet.
Did not take photo with gun, won't be able to later.
Will probably be fucked over at the Sorting.
No brains or courage, nor ambition. No patience either.
Doing nothing and hoping for the best is not a strategy.
Lost opportunities seldom return.
Carpe diem.
Free verse rulez.

Snow Crash of Sea Wolf? Your vote. LL&P.

Dude, relax! You finish basic training on Tuesday! :)

Fandom - Marta, ArtDungeon

Thanks RJA! Wow!

Edit: ArtDungeon is her site. She's an awesome artist.

Soldier discounts work only for combatants on weekends, so it was full price for me. TTT was worth ten times the ticket, though. I don't even mind the changes that much. And can you believe I had HP&tORoP flashes during several scenes? "It's your Sam" - bless their slashy sox. The comic relief was spot on. And the half an hour long battle scene was good. And of course split-personality Gollum. Everything, basically. Now I still need to pack my stuff and I must wake up in three and a half hours. Fuck.

And to prove the military hurts you psychologically too - I listened to and liked this. Sad.

Bootcamp

Back here. This place still doesn't feel like home. Probably never will. But it's mine (kind of), I can use the bathroom whenever I want for as long as I want, and my room is not shared with 21 other smelly armed teenagers in various stages of depression and social-Darwinistic manipulations.

The weather is completely horrible and makes any kind of positive look on things almost impossible. The base is located in a place that somehow forces extreme conditions: if it's "nice and warm" then it will be scorching hot, if there's a "light breeze" there will be chilling winds, if it's "partially clouded" we wont see the sun all day and if "some rain" is promised in various places of the country we will be drenched to the bones in our leaky tents, sleeping on wet beds in wet uniform without any dry clothes available anywhere in the vicinity. It was the freaking monsoon season for us.

I think I have finally learned to aim and scored max hits in the last test. Too bad there's only one left. But then again, on the 14th I get rid of the three-kilo and seven-years-in-jail Weapon Of A Thousand Apologies (already used about a hundred in public transport this Friday). I'm not even allowed to take it apart without supervision of my superiors. And I need to oil the POS. Screw it - I'm oiling it today, I don't need it to jam on the firing range.

Remember that radio they used to call napalm air strikes with, back in 'nam? Well, it's heavy. I'm not exactly in top shape, but I can tell you this: you can either charge, or carry the thing, but definitely not both. Very glad it was my responsibility for only a few days.

Granted, some things, like the weather, the army can't control, but for others it is solely responsible. For example, budgets and the level of competence of our commanders. And drafting people who I would never, ever, in a zillion years entrust with a pocket knife, much less an automatic weapon (yeah, it's illegal to switch it into fully automatic mode so you're only allowed to use it as a semi automatic. Doesn't help me to sleep at night.).

Thank god for our platoon commander, the cutest nineteen-year-old I've seen. Half of my squad want to marry her. She's competent enough for four and she tyrannizes our commanders mercilessly. At times she seems like the only good thing on that stinking base. If Gaza is the Gates of Hell (and according to the people who served there it is), I might be in love. Alas, it was never meant to be. Oh, the angst. ;-)

Some of the kids are halfway decent, but most are future truck drivers and in our obligatory "drugs are bad, mmmkay?" talk admitted to having first hand experience. Many a fun moment I had listening to them describing in vivid colors their latest dream about the blonde¹ commander from another platoon or how they would like to drop-kick the company commander (who is a bastard of a lieutenant that thinks him being able to court marshal us for being untidy or late makes him God. I'm sure the blonde commander sleeping with one of our commanders and not him makes it worse. No pity from here - May you be involved in a weapons accident, you fat pig. :-) ).

Well, it's only one week and a couple of days left, and I think I'll manage. You can eat the food when you're hungry enough and I just have to remember to bring lots of sweets to share with everyone so they remember to re-label be a "nice guy" every day.
Now I know who I can have a semi-intelligent conversation with and who can't see a difference between me and the Ukrainian drunk with his acid raves pounding in headphones ten feet away louder than some of my music through speakers because our first language is the same. It also happens that the people who are stupid and biased are hardly worthy conversationalists unless you want to discuss the finer points of faking an illness to get out of work. Not a big loss by any rate.

I guess you wouldn't be surprised how much some people's attitude changed when they found out I can fix their computers, but you could think that in a predominantly ethnically homogeneous country established to protect a people from racism there would be no internal racial squabbles. How wrong would you be.
Russians, Romanians, Poles, Checks, Argentineans, Moroccans, Iraqis, Ethiopians. Color, facial features, head and body hair, customs, foods, language. Combined with the usual disagreements between people who had to work at McDonald's to buy the cheapest Discman-clone and the people who's daddy bought them a brand new mid-high range car the day they got a driver's license and you can get a pretty tense atmosphere. Especially when everyone's trying to establish he's tough and should not be messed with. And when there isn't enough privacy to get off for two weeks (popular topic of conversation around the dinner table, btw).
I can't wait to get out and be in a more segregated-by-motivation-to-not-be-an-asshole environment. And idea I couldn't really express there and not be considered an elitist (a lost cause by now, I think).

My school principal also believed in integration. The idea is that putting all the nice guys together might produce a very productive group of nice guys, but all the not nice guys will be lost to society, so the two groups should be mixed and then at least some of the not nice will be inspired to move upwards rather than downwards and will get a decent job rather than get into drugs. This forces the nicer people to carry the extra weight of the no-work force until they're allowed to ditch the leg shackles and run straight into exclusive groups. Which turn into a joke like mensa, but that's another problem.
The problem I see in this is that although some pebbles might be polished, the diamonds are definitely dimmed², and it's a heavy loss. I saw it in school, I see it openly practiced in IDF policy and I see it in western society in general. I don't like it. This criticism does not mean I have a solution to propose, so consider it a rant. Probably an immature one at that.

I'm going to try and use the soldier discount in the movie theater this evening, because I need my TTT fix.

Thank you Lou for your letter. I might even be able to answer it.
Everybody — I am VERY sorry, but I have no time for anything. Please, email me, stay in touch. Tell me about your lives, what's going on in the scene, etc.

1 - keep in mind blondes are rare and sought after in these parts, at least by the oriental population, though the Ashkenazi are also at fault. What's with the Aryan complex? There are fine girls available with dominantly Semitic features.
2 - quote by Robert G. Ingersoll

Basic Training is ok so far. Will stay only one weekend on base (the next one). Still don't know about assignment. Conditions and the weather suck very badly. The people are halfway decent. Met a new immigrant from New York, of all places. Weird guy. Am tired from lack of sleep. The military is very demoralizing. Had a very difficult conversation just now with one of my best friends. It involved some math that led to some difficult conclusions. Having a fit. Can't imagine how it is to be him. Having very bad thoughts. Friend was of course correct - the tragedy is that suicide is not an option. Real Life basically sux. Responsibility of being a grown up is a heavy weight, especially in these uneasy times. I sound like a broken record clay piece from 2000 BC. The time of fooling around is over.

Anyway, I just typed up a few pages and then decided I really shouldn't post it as it's not very patriotic. I'm ok, see you in two weeks, I think.

Well, I think this is the last post, for a while at least. I'll try to check mail every time I can get online and we'll see when I get settling into any kind of routine, but for now - bye folks, it's been nice.

window.innerFoo = teh suck

LOL.

Read the reviews. I'm cracking up!

Oh man. If I wasn't thinking about sixteen young men locked up in a tent for two weeks, I'd be ROFLMAO just about now.

Please tell me the address Leaky is registered at is not Mellie's home address.

And I thought the idea was original. Oh well, I don't even want a bloody LJ! ;)

Dude really has to work on his language and typing. I mean, really. But, he's just about right. Except the bits where he just whines about not getting laid. Not in a position to critique him there, though. And yes, being an Intellectual Whore sucks ["...because she doesn't and it's not gonna suck itself", I would have said if I were writing in the style of that site].

With all due respect to my all-time favorite OFC and her author, editor(s), fans etc., this worries me more. Seems like Cassie is going to kill Ginny. And then maybe Hermione. And the last chapter will be 250K of H/D smut. Thank God I'm leaving the fandom before that happens.

Read the entire thing.

I once read some complaints that there wasn't enough femmeslash in the fandom. So today I was bored and ran a google search. Hah. Padma/Parvati twincest, anyone?

Today I have learned something very important. I have learned it a few years too late, but as the saying goes: better late than never. Nobody cares.

Elizabeth. She somehow made the same mistake. Yes, that mistake. I don't know if I should laugh or cry. And I know it is her greatest fear. I'm marking this day as the day I officially stop talking with my family about stuff. They are so receiving their wedding invitations by mail. Poor dad, if she shares her intelligent ideas with him. Definitely laughing now. I needed that.

The fandom sometimes amazes me. You know Ali_Wildgoose, webmistress of Diagon Alley, the ultra-exclusive fanfic archive for slightly older (and weirder) folk? She's part of The Inner Circle (bitching about it is passé, but hey ;) ), and she draws these funny DV comic strips and shares a basement (aka Headquarters of The Bad Place, depicted here. I guess Lori's leaky Columbus apartment shouldn't be called "BPHQ" because it never hosted meetings) with Cassandra Claire, where these Evil Breeder Women do horrible things to innocent British boys? Well, she's a SugarQuill Professor now.

The Tech Talk scares you people off, huh? Too bad. Those things are important.

Wolf550e's rules recommendations of web publishing

• Anything published on the web must at least be 100% HTML 4.01 Strict and encoded in the ISO-8859-1 charset. XHTML and UTF-8 is even better.
• Validate using industrial strength tools until 100% compliant. No exceptions.
• Do not publish files in "Macintosh" or "windows-1252" charsets.
• Use paragraph tags, not line breaks.
• Do not use <font> tags.
• Always specify a generic font family and widely adopted alternative fonts. Do not use proprietary symbol fonts ([Wingdings] "J")
• Define formatting in global CSS. Do not use <span> or <div> tags in every paragraph.
• There is no need for Netscape 2.0 backwards compatibility. Version 4 browsers are dinosaurs whose time is come to pass. CSS1 support is expected. No need for "align" properties, <center> tags or any such means.
• Indent sections should be included in a <div> so a single style can be applied to all indent'd paragraphs (e.g. italics or a cursive font).
• Make sure your formatting will not look too horrible if CSS is omitted. This means no casual use of <H1> paragraphs.
• Use tables and frames sparsely.
• Use a consistent, sortable, file naming convention (this means leading zeros and a single file extension).
• Links to next/previous chapters should be relative to current directory while links to review boards should be full.

Buses are a major part of my life. I took a bus to school and back everyday for six years. I still use them frequently. I will be using them a lot in the next three years (unless I'll only be home for the weekends). Taking a gun with me will be of very little use, except for providing more potentially lethal shrapnel. I hold very liberal views on many subjects, but being afraid makes me angry. In the February elections I will vote for those who will let me shoot first and ask questions later.

HP Fandom - CoS movie

Good:
Kenneth Branagh
Jason Isaacs
Christian Coulson
The R/H non-hug, though awkward.
Quidditch

Bad:
The applause for Hagrid at the end (*WTF?!*)
John Williams
Wuss!Ron
Criminal loss of detail, feels like everything is coincidental and cartoon-ish, not alive like in the books.
Richard Harris
Chris Columbus
I think I miss some of the Burrow scenes they cut out.

Notes:
Emma Watson is so ickle. And she overacts. And everyone's facial expressions were fake. Looked more theater-like than RL.
Dan is ok. Rupert is very much Ron, but in canon I see him as more of an equal to Harry. In the movie, he's very much the sidekick.
The Slytherins were good. Myrtle was weird. Dobby was excellent.

I must see it two or three more times at least, so I can discern what details they cut and what I just missed. Unfortunately, a movie ticket goes for about two hours minimal wage here, and I have no one to go with me, so I think I'll wait for the DVD rip to surface (Note MPAA: I paid for my copy of PS, so shush).

I'm being late for CoS!!!

Ok, this is "weird square" or in short form: weird². There I was, reading bad fic (on an ever worse site), and I had a "moment". Now, I can't explain this exactly, so I'll give an example. A scene from Mallrats (If you haven't seen the movie, you should not be reading this blog): On the 42nd minute, the main heroes talk about sleeping beside people (as opposed to sleeping with people), and Brodie (the guy whose girlfriend is played by Shannon Doherty (-"Brenda!" -"Prick!")) shows on TS how when he and his girlfriend where "spooning" he had nowhere to put his right hand and it was a metaphor for their whole relationship. So TS and Gwen (the girl they're with) look at him kind of bewildered, but the girl working at the store in which they were standing starts crying, says she was very sorry but she knows exactly how he feels and runs off. Well, today I had this "I know exactly how he feels" moment. In Chapter 5 of this fic (a smiley to whomever locates the exact sentence). You artsy types should also tell me what "-ism" this fic is, because it's weird. But the author used a number of long words I liked. And the shipping was correct. And umlauts, up to a point, are fun. So it's passable. Especially because it's quite short.

Here's a shocker - I'm listening to reggae and liking it! Must compare with original.

Nothing. Still hurts. More shopping to do tomorrow. Shamelessly procrastinating.

Two and a half hours one way, two and a half hours back (already in pain) and he wouldn't even give me a status report. And, of course, my next appointment can't be scheduled because I don't know when I'll be free next month. Joy.

Incredible. Who else noticed the files are named "Burrows##"? ;)

Nice. Edit: Very Nice.

Lies, damn lies and ...

This is not your usual LoTR crossover.

Mandrake Linux 9.0 supports pptp during setup

I just fell off my chair. There I was, installing Mandrake 9.0, switching CDs (damn that was fast), when all of a sudden it asks for registration. So I gingerly typed up me email, thinking "yeah, right". And then… it sent that info. Through the internet. Yeah. I was @#$%^&* online. All I did was checked "pptp" and provided it with my login and password. And I was online. During setup! I could actually download and update packages while installing, because it was already online. It takes winXP a minute to feed it all the data to get it online. VPN and DSL dial, DNS, all that crap.

I'm in Mozilla, I'm online, I have a fuzzy clock in my task bar and I can safely format my NTFS partition. I have died and gone to heaven.

This is one of the few things I can actually retell from ATOT without people thinking bad things about me.

Don't ask me how I got there, but I discovered A/T is not Archer/T'Pol but... Archer/Trip. Now I can't go to sleep. Note to self - browsing referrers' search results in close proximity to bedtime is never a Good Idea.

I'm going barking mad. Here I sit, reading the Cryptonomicon, giggling helplessly at every mention of sex, in a most embarrassing imitation of Hermione's dorm-mates. I think I need professional help. Not sure which profession though, yet. That's it for today I think. Must go gift shopping tomorrow. Think oral contraceptives is too blunt?

Reading and re-writing half of my code from a month ago is a pain. More so because it isn't the first and (I'm quite sure) isn't the last time. Have reached the phase where six-month-old stories from school are childish, old and irrelevant but not yet constitute "the good old times" so talking about them is a no-no. Am afraid will have nothing in common with own friends in the next year or so. Am cuddling in winter feather blanket and howling in great t00by sorrow.

Imogen is back from maternity leave. Yay!

RJA's talk about the ill-effects of a movie on a fandom inspired this rant-on-a-rant. Admittedly, this topic is old. Practically everyone I know who has ever read a good book talks about whether introducing the story to new audiences by porting it to a more popular media is worth the grief of losing the original author's intent in all the "fixing" and "editing" that must be done in order to make it more profitable. It was said just about everything. I myself have ranted for months about the Dune TV miniseries. The HP fandom discussed whether the movies are a Good or a Bad Thing, and there are many more examples. I'm afraid it sounds snobbish and elitist, but it must be said: the reading public and the movie going public are not exactly the same, and some books were not written for the benefit of the population that fits in the highest section of the bell curve. When it's too long, too slow and requires too much imagination to follow, even some of those brave souls who were not afraid to lift the hefty thing will not get to the second volume. So, in order for the ends to meet and populations to overlap, you must either educate the bell curve or simplify and air-brush the work-of-art. We know which way is more profitable. One of the dangers of capitalism, I guess. Of course, sacrifices must be made in the process. While moving the target audience to the left of the curve to get more people, you lose the rightmost tip. Commercially speaking - it pays off, even if they sometimes trace your Orcish ancestry (I shouldn't talk though, as I myself was ready to claim that John Harrison is a predecessor of the Harkonnens). LoTR is a very costly production. They had to make the movie sell well. So they adapted it to fit the audience better. Some of that new audience are bound to be the swooning fangirls. They could've used less hunky actors, emphasized and explained Tolkien's Victorian ideas about male bonding and the role of women in society, even preserved the language. They could have made it an utterly geeky movie, one that no fangirl-ish type would ever pay to see, so TVSDs' reader-base would shrink beyond the point of self-containment and no one would print out PHF t-shirts. We have an example of what those movies look like. Have you seen any of the nine Star Trek films listed in IMDb's top 250? I personally think the solution is encouraging people to read instead of filming every book. Filming should be left for cases where the original is in danger of being forgotten by non-scholars. I'm sure Zeffirelli is the one to thank for a whole generation's acquaintance (minimal as it may be) with the long-dead playwright's work, but 20th century literature? We should read the original.

A birthday present for poor Wolf550e, my preciousss... I can just picture young John Ronald poring over a book much like the one I now hold, referencing grammars and scribbling notes. Alas, I do believe I do not have what it takes to repeat such a feat. Older I may be, but, no matter how fascinating the subject is in my eyes, linguistics is not my forte (I happen to not share the professor's francophobia as well as his talents). Thank you darling, you've made my week.

I wonder why I never watched BtVS. From what I see of it projected through HP fanfic, I would've liked it. Oh well, I guess there's always the net. I'll download some episodes, see what it was like. Oh yeah - my quest for an entertaining H/G epic has finally yielded results. It's OOC, not edited and barbarian, but I like it. Now I'm content. :-)

I've seen people talk about really bad excuses for fanfic and I never understood them. True, I've read some not-so-great fics, but generally, whatever I've read was, if not good, at least decent. Today it hit me - I only read recommended fics. And now, in my random browsing through GT (looking for that elusive H/G epic I've missed the last time) I saw it. Not the general lack of proofreading or OOC main characters. I can live with those (separately, though) - oh no. This was plain bad. I mean really bad. Complete with lack of grammar, lyrics of bad songs and general stupidity of the entire cast. Not to mention there was not a single original sentence in the two chapters I've read. I had to clear my browser's cache after reading it because I felt my computer became somehow dirty. That's what you get for procrastinating, (there are no) boys and girls.

Arabella's A Very Secret Diary (as opposed to The Very Secret Diaries). Check out the Thank You note. Who elso would be able to "canon thump" the SugarQuill Headmistress, huh?

Since the recent Friday Five is so popular, I decided to jump on the bandwagon. 1. Were you raised in a particular religious faith? Nope. I was raised an atheist. My mother believes in the one God but can't/won't abide with the laws, and my father is a silent communist (of the utopical kind). 2. Do you still practice that faith? Why or why not? I dislike organized religion because it invariably gets involved with politics and economics, thus becoming powerful and corrupt. I believe people should have something to guide them. If they choose "it" to be a belief in a higher power, afterlife, creationism or whatever - it's their choice, as long as their beliefs don't make them hurt people (including themselves). I also believe that whatever it is - it should be practiced in private. 3. What do you think happens after death? If all goes well - you get buried and rot. 4. What is your favorite religious ritual (participating in or just observing)? Zazen sounds cool. 5. Do you believe people are basically good? I do not believe in absolute good and evil. I do believe in evolution. People who survive are those who fight to survive. This means that the population becomes increasingly greedy, which is the single most powerful common human trait. Some are willing to be nice and share, thus enriching themselves and others, while the less enlightened want to keep it all to themselves. Us nice people must be able to not only relax, talk and think, but also kick butt when the other party is not yet ready for communication.

Check out the No.1 Googlism for "Harry Potter". Also, you can use that thing to discover again that FA is better than SQ. But we already know that FA (and Schnoogle) continually beats SQ at GoogleFight. We must admit defeat. No one stands against the Inner Circle. Heidi/Lori/Cassie/Alex/Monika rule. And I say, "Yes, I feel wonderful tonight."

Emma is too pretty. Bonnie is not pretty enough. That's the H/G shipper talking, of course. Ah well, they have a few more years till the GoF and OoTP movies. And there's always makeup. And for the record, I have noticed the Tom Felton/Eminem thing a long time ago.