So it’s 8 days into NaNoWriMo for this year, and I am regretting my choice of story. The premise really was rather stupid, but at the same time I seem to be able to hammer out the words I need a lot more easily than I have in the past. Luckily, I guess, is the fact that this story happens in the same universe as one of my other more favorite stories, and thus whatever I write in this, even if most of it ends up being trash, can do a lot to flesh out that universe. My ideas do tend to flow the best when I’m actually writing as opposed to just sitting around thinking (not that I don’t have ideas that way too, sometimes) so I’m just going to hit all the important points and see what comes out of it. I have no doubt I’ll get my 50k words, but don’t ever expect to see Jeremy five-five as its own story.
Tag: Internet
New NaNo
So I had a lot of trouble with NaNoWriMo this year. Partially because I started raiding again. I ended up not writing any on those weekends and then catching up on the weekends. It got rather annoying, and more than once I wanted to just give up and not bother with it anymore. However, I did not give up and actually finished early thanks to a desire to play Skyward Sword on the Monday after Thanksgiving. But I kept going and managed to get my 50k words. And I am very glad that I did it. This year was “The Colors Of” my rovas story.
The Website
As important as my writing is to me, my style of writing really doesn’t fit so much with it being posted. I’m more of a nanowrimo type writer, even in the other 11 months. (Basically, write, write, write, write, write, write, and don’t edit.) So while many of my stories are getting to the place where they *could* be almost finished, that’s only in getting the main story hammered out and not that anything (or much of anything) should be read by normal people.
So I want to change my website back to having my actual blog on the front page and have the website have my colors, and not a specific story that has, truthfully, fallen by the wayside. As I seem to continue “discovering” about myself, it’s just too difficult to remain focused on one project or hobby for very long. And since I’m back to websites, it’s time for me to fix this baby up before I move on to something else.
Hackers hacking the world!?
So I found a new (to me) comic called the Fancy Adventures of Jack Cannon. When I first saw the add I was intrigued by the name, cause Jack Cannon was the name of the Harry Potter/Twilight book series in the one episode of House. I wanted to see if it had anything to do with that. It did not, but instead it’s about a kid named Jack Cannon who runs into hackers, who use keyboards and code to do what is essentially magic. And while it is awesome, the main thing on my mind is “Why didn’t I come up with the hacking the world idea?”. I mean come on…CS major and everything.
The closest thing I have to it is Angelic Links, which more sprung from Ah, My Goddess roots than anything else. And even in that only angels can Code. Though now I have to be careful not to let my reading Jack Cannon screw with that story.
Left Behind
So I did something hard. I finally decided to quit raiding. It’s been four years, but raiding on Tuesdays was just killing me. When you get into a certain schedule and do it for four years, you get *used* to how things are. Before raiding ushered me out of my week, now it feels more like a roadblock as I come into a new week. Maybe it’s a weak excuse, but having everything crammed onto three days and then having my entire weekend just open really doesn’t work for me. I need ‘me’ time every day, time to work on my other hobbies and interests. I was spending quality time with my husband last night when I looked up at the clock and realized it was 7:30 and for a few moments all I thought was ‘I could get on. Look, it’s raid time and I’m just watching TV.’ but then I would be raiding, and unable to do anything else until 11 when it’s time to go to bed, at which time I would probably have to just leave raid because Koi’s been pushing past 11 *every* raid since we started in Cataclysm and I’m tired enough already without getting to bed late on top of it.
But whenever I think of raiding, I feel regretful because it’s a whole world that I’m feel like I’m losing. I have friends in the game and if I don’t raid, then we have no interaction. I could raid Wednesdays and Thursdays still, Wednesday might be pushing it, but then at least I could keep my schedule for Tuesdays. I went to Guild Ox this morning and realized that I wasn’t there for a single guild new kill, even when I was raiding because everything happened after I had to go to bed for the night or before we started raiding officially and I was doing other things, or after I stopped raiding. I’ve already been left behind and maybe it’s better to just stay that way.
But the time I would gain by no longer raiding, while hard to see right now. When you don’t have anything else to do, that’s when I could write, when I could play other video games that are piling up. It’s really a hard decision and I’m just not sure how things are going to go from here.
NaNo and beyond
Once again I have managed to be NaNotorious.
It was harder this year, for sure, since I had a full time job. Week three was the worst, I really wanted to just give up and get on with…well not doing this. But I managed to stick it out. Once again the book is not finished. I think I’m further through the book than the halfway of last year, but once again, we’ll see how that goes. I, of course, celebrated by starting work on my other book, The Trickster.
That being said, we’re less than a week away from Wow’s Cataclysm launch which will consume my soul for at least a month before I come up for air. Looking forward to the days off if nothing else. Though with the time, I really should get the ‘credits’ thing done to try and encourage other people to make their own so I can get that done before Cata launches.
There’s also the pesky issue of my lost SoulSilver game, and with it all of the Pokemon I have collected over the past, roughly three years. I have reached the last gym of the Diamond version of the game (which I hate as a game, but made better by sending over eggs from my husband’s Heart Gold game for a familiar team) and am playing with getting White when it comes out in March. However last night I looked over the pictures of the pokemon from Gen V and am sadly (but expectantly) disappointed by the horrible designs in most every respect. Most of my problem being that a lot of the pokemon don’t *look* like pokemon. The style seems incorrect. The starters are fine along with a few random pokes, but even the legendary dragons don’t really fit the style of pokemon designs I’m used to. I still desperately cling to the original 151 with some passion, with only tiny cracks for some pokemon from the later releases. By the time they hit Diamond’s pokemon, I was thoroughly disgusted, and think I hold no love for any of those pokemon (I’d have to check to be positive.)
So what is the point of going into Gen V? The possibility of at least good gameplay. I did not dislike Diamond only because of the unfamiliar, unimagined pokemon, but because the gameplay itself was terrible as they took a Game Boy game and spent five minutes making it DS compatible. (I also didn’t like it because of the storyline. While Team Galactic was cool for once again having a PLAN, the idea of being able to put the world’s creator in a ball in my pocket really pushes past even the suspension of disbelief one must have for being able to put something the size of Onix in a ball in my pocket.) SoulSilver was everything that I could possibly want in a game. All of the pokemon. A huge world. Fabulous gameplay and an actual (fabulous) use of the ds screen. In my mind they improved the game in almost every way. (Even the pokewalker was so cool.) So I’m hoping that Black and White will be worth it. If not, I suppose I’ll get another SoulSilver game at some point and complete my Gen IV collection and be happy with that.
I saw a full rainbow
NaNoWriMo has started and it’s going okay except for the one hiccup where I thought my only file of my story got corrupted, and yesterday’s late raid which made me so tired that I’m napping instead of writing. But then I should’ve have any trouble catching up this weekend. Of course I need to get ahead since next weekend I have to go family visiting.
Blah, it’s so cold out today. About time to pull out the heavy layers so as to stay warm in the barn. All the horses are getting frisky in the cold and of course there’s the lazy sleepy feeling cold weather brings in general.
And tonight should be our Heroic Lich King kill assuming we get the numbers. Hopefully with how well we did last night, people will be excited and come tonight as well.
The State of Things
So yesterday, after a particularly tough day at work, I decided to risk putting my computer together. The motherboard showed up at some time on Tuesday without the need for the signature that so delayed my first shipment. I guess replacement parts aren’t considered as valuable as the original shipment?
Anyway, I pop in all the parts, hook them up, all the time thinking ‘Man, I am going to press this power button and the darn thing isn’t going to turn on.’ A problem which has plagued me on more than one occasion, but was particularly dreaded this time, not only because of the previous problems, but because I was generally just too tired to stick my face in the case and try and figure out which wires I had crossed, or accept the possibility that something else was broken.
So I finish up, put the case in place, and low and behold, the power turns on when I hit the power button. (Ah technology.) The motherboard blurb pops up on the screen as I stick in the Windows 7 disk I have. It loads for five minutes and everything pops up all fancy as is Windows wont.
I tell it, it’s going to install Windows for me, and it displays the drives on which this is possible. All of them, except for the one on which Windows already is. I stare, for a moment, at the only 2gigs remaining free on my C drive, wondering where the heck the ‘reformat and install on this drive’ option is…
Well as far as I can tell, there isn’t one. So I figure I’ll have a better chance trying the only other install option, which is an upgrade while Windows is running. So I pull out the CD, restart, and get the fun ‘You’ve changed something, you have to reactivate.’ message. I try to get past it only to find out that the ps2 keyboard and mouse I have plugged in (when a computer has no OS, it has trouble reading usb keyboards and mouses as what they are, so I have a backup.) do not work. Nor do the usb keyboard or mouse.
After a few moments of disbelief and a restart (just in case) I shut down the computer and pull out the hard drive that has the C drive on it. I then proceed to my husband’s computer, where lots of fun and boot drive setting later I clean off the drive with a shift-delete. NOW I put the hard drive back into my computer and get the installation going.
When it’s finally ready for human input it starts up and of course there’s immediately the message for ‘activate windows’. I click on the activate, forgetting that I have not yet installed the drivers for my motherboard, meaning the Internet does not work and the gosh darn OS blue screens on me. Once I ignore the activation thing I actually get to Windows, am able to install my drivers and everything is peachy.
So the moral of the story is: Everything works forever except Windows 7 is dumb in some ways that will likely never matter again.
It’s August
Well tomorrow anyway, but not a posting day. In all honesty, I was planning on having a post ready to go today, but when I actually sat down and write it, it came out horribly. I mean just painful to look at bad. This chapter is another one of those ‘I just have to get through it’. I have most of chapter 9 already written, it’s just getting to it.
In the past, my writing has been when I want to, and writing on whatever story I felt like at the time. That’s all well and good, but I’ve moved to the point where I’m making it a more serious hobby, and sometimes that means working on it even when I don’t want to. I’m sure that all those people putting up webcomics don’t always feel like working on a strip, even if they have the time to do so. But they do it anyway, and the comic continues.
While it’s a little different when you don’t have time and have to call a break, I’m now realizing that instead of just hoping I feel like writing and throwing together a post the day before updates when I don’t, I need to actually start sitting myself down and writing whether I feel like it or not. Sure it’ll come out pretty bad at first, but I need to learn to be able to just sit down and write when it’s time to.
We’ll see how it goes, but there will be a post on Monday no matter what.
Links
I’ve used the same ftp program since…forever. I liked the layout, it was easy to use. But just about a month ago they decided that they just can’t afford to keep letting people just use it for free. Now I understand that. I mean it’s a good program, and they probably put a lot of work into it, but I’m still a cheepo and so I’ve tried some other ftp programs. I haven’t been impressed by any of them. As such those buttons I was planning to get up so the site looks less stupid hasn’t happened because I can’t get said ftp programs to connect. Now the program I have at work will connect, but I keep forgetting to bring the buttons with me. As such I’m just a lazy poopie head with ugly links. I’ll probably break down and actually buy the program I used in the past because…well my website is one of the main things in my life, and as much as we’re trying to save money and such, I need a stable and working ftp program. So in summary, there’s no buttons yet because I don’t have a working ftp program at home.
And on the note of being a lazy poopie head, next step in wedding (now that we’ve actually got the place and pastor for the ceremony itself, meaning the date is final) is sending out the wedding invitations that apparently should’ve gone out three months ago. I guess I’m just used to being a person who doesn’t normally have plans, as such two month is more than enough time. (I mean heck, it’s enough time for me to plan the wedding.) I’ve found places online, but I’m not exactly thrilled to either wait a week for them to come in the mail or pay way too much to have them shipped overnight, so now I have to see if some place like Kinko’s just has wedding invitations (You can tell how into this wedding thing I actually am.) that I can just buy and send out to all the people the parents have decided should be invited to the wedding.
It’s not as if I don’t like family. They’re cool enough, I’m just not much of one to make a big deal out of stuff like this. Everyone’s all like “YAY WEDDING!” and I see it more as a party that happens to be the same day as the legal ceremony society required in order for us to get tax breaks. It’s sort of the same as when I got a job. I’m positive my parents and siblings were more excited about it than I was. For me it kind of feels like business as usual. I’m more excited about going to Otakon than the wedding, though that could be biased a bit by the amount of work I have to put into the wedding. But then I always have been a bit of a freak.
