So I'm sitting here reading forums, blogs and stuff like that. And my brother starts practising on the piano, and good old Clementi must be beating the world record for grave spins right now.
(Little brother, if you're reading this, I kid because I love. Though I would probably appreciate it more if I didn't get stabbed in the eardrums by a stray note every other bar. ;)

Yep, new layout, finally. As much as I loved the previous one, this blog was overdue for a new look... it had been dark for too long. And spring is my favorite season, how could I not celebrate it somehow?
As usual, comments and opinions are welcome. :)

Rebuilding, parts two and three. Yep, that's my handwriting on those layouts. Opinions welcome, as always.

Hm. Odd dream I had last night... I don't recall much though, but what little I recall makes it very odd.
In the dream, I was the reincarnation of this girl who had died several times. There was something that I had to do, I have no idea what but it was very important. My previous incarnation had ALMOST managed to accomplish this, but she'd hidden in a room in a cave, locking the door behind herself, and some guy found the door, hammered a needle in the door with scissors and the needle pricked her and she died. Or so I was told.
So I went back to the place where she died, to attempt to find her body and finish whatever it was that I had to do. There was this huge fuckoff storm, though. And one of the girls who lived in the place was accused of witchcraft and nearly burned at the stake. The storm foiled the burn-the-witch-at-the-stake plans though, and there was a bunch of Christians praying for the storm to go away and the girl accused of witchcraft and her friends were trying to make the storm go away but the Christians kept interfering.
Then a river overflowed because of the storm and everybody had to cross it to get to safety... they all just barely managed. The group with the witch girl crossed differently than the group of the Christians... the former crossed one by one, using rocks as stepping stones, with some people perched on some other rocks down the river so if somebody slipped they could catch them and drag them to safety. The latter group, more numerous, crossed by making a human chain.
Eventually, I managed to get into some ice caves and find the door behind which my previous incarnation was. At that point I woke up.
What's really weird is that last year, around this time, I had a dream in the same setting, except I was the previous incarnation. That dream ended when I slammed and locked the door behind myself in the room in the ice caves.
I recall some of the locations in the dream as well... some of which are odd. I recall the room the previous incarnation was in, for instance, seen from the inside, body of the previous incarnation slumped against the door and all... something which I couldn't have been able to see in either dream with my own eyes. I think it was a vision when I was told what happened to my previous incarnation. Same with the vision I got of the guy who hammered the needle through the door... though I don't recall him in detail. I just recall a blue jacket and short black hair... a very average guy, nothing remarkable about him at all.
I figure next year I'll find out what happened to this incarnation... heh. I'm quite curious, I have to admit. And I want to find out what exactly it is that has to be done... I knew in the dream, but it was obvious to me, so it never occurred to me to stop and think about it. So since I didn't think about it in the dream, I don't know what it was, if that makes sense.
Anybody have any idea where this all comes from?

Went to the mall this afternoon, my mom needed a couple things... bought a bunch of things for myself, while I was there. Some candles (yay, it had been a while since the last time I'd had a chance of buying any candle, and the ones I had were all gone), and a few CDs. I got the Two Towers soundtrack (FINALLY), the CD version of "Come Thelma e Louise" (by Giorgia) (I already had it on tape, and usually I don't bother buying an album again if I still have it on tape, but it came with a magazine and it was cheap, and ripping the CD to mp3s is easier than tracking down the songs)... [language switch] ...e un doppio CD, "I più grandi successi dello Zecchino d'Oro". ^^;; Ci sono cresciuta con lo Zecchino d'Oro, e sembra ridicolo ma l'ho visto, ho letto la lista delle canzoni e mi è venuto l'attacco di nostalgia... anche le canzoni che hanno partecipato prima che io nascessi, le conosceva mia mamma e me le cantava sempre o me le faceva ascoltare... e quindi non ho resistito e l'ho comprato. E così adesso sono qui che mi ascolto le canzoni... me le ricordo praticamente tutte, ce ne sono alcune (questa e questa ad esempio... sì, ascoltavo ancora le canzoni dello Zecchino d'Oro a quell'epoca, qualche problema? :p) che ancora mi mettono i brividi... ^^

Hmpf. So.
Slept all of three hours last night, had to finish a paper that was almost done when my computer somehow chewed up the file. So I stayed up until 4am to finish it, then had to get up at 7am to come here to uni, because I have a meeting at 10am and the only train that allows me to get here in time (an hour early, 9am) is at 8am. (The next one would be at 11am. Grrr, stupid trains.) I am SO going to crash when I get back home. I'll curl up on the sofa and SLEEP. I just hope I can stay non-zombie through the meeting.
What else... went to see The Ring yesterday, at last. (BEFORE my computer chewed up my paper, before you call me irresponsible.) It was good. I liked the original better, to be honest, because it was more subtly creepy, while the remake aimed more for directly scary, and in my opinion explained a bit too much... but it was good anyway.
One minor gripe, though not with the movie itself: the Italian poster for the movie has a pretty big spoiler on it. Gah. Stupid promoters.
Oh, and in the cinema with me there was a bunch of youngsters, who screamed and jumped and whimpered and gasped at each scary or creepy scene, then laughed nervously to pretend they weren't really scared. Quite amusing, but annoying at the same time.

THIS ENGLISH 2 AOLSPAAK TRANSLA2R IS ACTUALY QUIET MUSNG!!11 WTF NOW U 2 CAN SPEAK LIEK TEH 12-YEAR-OLD MORONIC PLAGU3 OF TEH INTERNET11!!1 WTF LOL SPEAK LIEK GBM!1!!!!1 WTF DAZLE UR FREIND!11!!11 LOL ANOY UR EN3MEIS1!11!1 LOL G3T BAN3D FROM AL AERAS OF DA CIVILIEZD WAB FOR3VER1!11 OMG WTF LOL
Hee hee hee.

Still trying to convince my brother to watch Ringu, he's promised he will do so this afternoon ¬¬ and hopefully I will manage to drag my family to see the remake sometime this week.

[EDIT] Lego Sadako. Heehee. [/EDIT]

As for the rest of my life... reinstalled programs and stuff on That Fucking Computer, still looking around for a good data recovery company for That Fucking HD. This afternoon I shall have to put all the data I collected from the survey for uni in a readable format and start working on my presentation, which I have to give on Friday afternoon. Also have to turn in a written version, professor said I can turn that in on Monday though if I want (yay!), so in case I don't quite make it for Friday I can polish it during the weekend.

Nothing else. Life's pretty uneventful. *shrug* I should work on pulling my websites back up, I have a couple ideas, but that will wait until after the weekend, I think. Or until after I've finished everything for uni, whichever comes first. (Yes, I'm actually being responsible for once... don't look that shocked. :P)

Just finished watching Ringu.

...

Dear GOD that was freaky. The ending especially... when [spoilers, highlight to read] Sadako crawled out of the TV. The way she crawled, and her hands, and the eye... very freaky. Couldn't help but feel a bit sorry for her, though. She was practically driven to being evil. [/spoilers]

Going to see The Ring, the American remake, soon (hopefully). Let's see how different it is...

By the way, I found a couple decent sites on the Ring movies in my searches online: this one and this one. The second one even has a page where you can download the two curse videos, the one from the original Ringu and the one from the remake.

[EDIT] GAH, FB, YOU FUCKER, YOU SCARED ME. I almost had a heart attack when that text message set off my phone. Gah. >:|

So. Got That Fucking Computer back, and set it back up. Considered for a moment naming it "TFC" or "That Fucking Computer" in the family network, but I'd have had to change all the config that was left on the other computers (for installed shared printer, etc.), so laziness eventually won over. *grin* Installed all my programs on it, still have to transfer over a couple large files but apart from that I have everything. Except of course for the contents of That Fucking HD, which will have to be soon sent to a data recovery company to see if it's possible to get anything off it.
Oh, almost forgot to mention. I'm now running in 1024x768 screen resolution (yeah, yeah, took me long enough, shush)... but I'm using Opera 7, tabbed browsing, hotlist docked to the left of my screen. Which means the width of my browsing screen is still ~800. Which means I still get to bitch at people who make layouts without considering people in 800x600. Best of both worlds. XD

Meine Kleine Draw Toy. Very fun, though I wish they had an option for saving pictures other than just "take a screenshot" - the effect of moving brushes + rainbow color is great.

As you may already know, I'm taking a "research methods for social sciences" class this period. Instead of the final exam, we have to do an actual research on a subject we picked, then present it in front of the class. Can you take this survey to help me collect the data? It's completely anonymous and will only take you a few minutes. Thank you. :)

Rebuilding, part one. Opinions please.

(Note to self: "simple layout" == "you'll spend much more time than expected fiddling with stupid HTML". Bah.)

Hmpf. So. Still haven't heard from my host again, considering just re-layouting the files and reuploading them.

This morning I almost risked missing the train to uni... usually in the mornings it's straightforward enough, go to train station, get ticket, get on the train... but this morning - I'd forgotten to plan for it - was the first Monday of the month. First Monday of the month == Queue From Hell. So I just got on the train and bought it from the ticket-checker guy... cost me a bit more, which is bleh as it means I pretty much have to skip lunch today, but hell, it's better than missing the train.

In other news, remember the computer which I mentioned had mIRC installed? It's my new favoritest computer, since I found out how to install stuff to it. :D Apparently, the dumb "sysadmin" thought that, to stop people from installing stuff on this computer, it would be enough to make the "program files" directory write-protected on the students account. Which is, of course, just a tad dumb if you have semi-tech-savy students who know you can specify the directory you want to install a program in. *huggles Opera7 which is now installed* I found this out because IE is b0rked (just gives an error if you try to start it up... no, I don't want to fix it, I don't give a fuck about IE), so I wanted to try to install Opera. I had a friend DCC the install file to me, then tried to install, and there we go. :D I installed Opera7, I installed Filzip (because it was lacking an unzip program... for shame), now I'm pondering what else to install. RoughDraft maybe... I was also considering Trillian, but then I'd have to lug my buddies.xml file around with me on a floppy, and I would run the risk of accidentally leaving it in the program. So, no. If I want to chat there's always mIRC, for the little time I have to spend in the computer room this year... Trillian can wait until I get home.

Any other recommendations for programs to install? I was also considering Paint Shop Pro, but I'm afraid it would be a bit overkill for this aged ailing computer (it takes a full two minutes to start up). Suggestions?

What was here isn't.

Okay, here's the deal... my host choked. Everything I had on wingedspirit.net is most likely lost... they said they're still working to see if they can recover anything, but with my luck...
Of course, the backups I had went when the computer died.
I got the vast majority of the stuff I had on the domain back, thanks to Google cache and the Wayback machine (and a nice friend who had some images cached).
I'm not going to start rebuilding until I'm absolutely sure that my host can't recover the data, because I'll have to re-html and re-layout all the files, which is quite a lot of work. In the meantime, this blog is going to keep being updated, of course, but there are going to be a lot of broken links. All of the "old archives" listed on the sidebar on the left, for instance. Bear with me, I'm trying to get this sorted out.