Sunday October 12, 2008
Ow damn my hand (contd.)Opposable thumbs are such a wonderful thing.
I wish I was able to use mine without pulling off my bandage (bad) or pulling on my wound and making it hurt like hell (worse).
*sigh*
I hate feeling helpless.
Saturday October 11, 2008
Ow damn my handNote to self: saying "it sure would be nice to get some kind of non-life-threatening injury, like a sprained ankle or something, to be able to stay home from work for a bit" out loud is dangerous.
Because some evil god will be listening in.
In the specific, I was washing dishes this morning and a glass broke apart while I was washing it. Cut a pretty big gash in the back of my hand, right over the thumb. Hurts like hell, wouldn't stop bleeding, had to actually go to the emergency room.
And end result, yeah, I can't really work with my hand bandaged up like this, as I can't really move my thumb... can't really cook either, or type very well, or wash more dishes, or button up my jacket without the wound hurting, etc, etc.
I got lucky, it could've been vastly worse, but... grrr.
Now to research how to get bloodstains off a carpet...
Thursday July 24, 2008
AlsoAlso, courtesy of Bird: try and stay grumpy watching this, I dare you.
(So that's the video my father meant the other day at dinner. Have to say, there are few things weirder than my father, who's never been very good at following internet trends, starts a dinner conversation with a sentence along the lines of, "So have you seen that video of the guy dancing on youtube?"
Turns out he saw something about it on the news. Which is also entertaining, because I'd almost forgotten how much news programs in Italy like to feature "fun stuff from the internet" type things. Heh.)
(No, I don't really know why I'm awake at 7am, either. I wasn't really planning on it.)
Where I've been? Er. I wasn't really planning to disappear. I started working shifts around the time I disappeared, though, which is mostly to blame for the lack of me.
I also went to Paris (which yes, includes the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational), and then to Italy for some sun, sea and relaxation with my family.
And now I'm back.
I'm still working shifts, though, so I can't really guarantee I'll be posting much.
But I will probably have a fair amount of things to post about - at least, concerning World of Warcraft - assuming I can pry myself off the shininess long enough to talk about it.
Because yes, going to the WWI meant I got a Wrath of the Lich King beta invite.
\o/
Sunday May 04, 2008
Discovery Channel: I love the worldFound the link for this Discovery Channel ad on a livejournal community a few days ago, and I keep watching it, and it keeps making me smile.
So I figured I'd share :)
Continue reading "Discovery Channel: I love the world"
Friday April 04, 2008
Flour + water = success!So I finally found the courage to try and make no-knead bread again, after failing miserably last time I tried.
This time, I didn't add too much water. \o/
It was still a mild disaster, since I ended up with flour all over my kitchen (the instructions say to "generously coat a cotton towel with flour", and knowing exactly how sticky wet dough can be, I might have floured the towel a bit too generously); but I succeeded.
Best damned bread I've had in years. Yum. Definitely going to be making it again.
Monday March 24, 2008
*mutter*Dear universe,
okay, okay, you've made your point, you can make it snow whenever the hell you want.
But as I was walking home today, did you really need to drop the 5-minute-weather change on me?
Let's review what happened.
Me: *walking home from grocery shopping, lalalala*
Snowflake: *floats down slowly*
Me: ...?
Other snowflake: *floats down slowly*
Me: Umm...
Truckload of snowflakes: *descend en masse*
Me: OI!
That? That was just malicious.
Especially considering that it stopped the moment I walked in the door. :|
Sunday March 23, 2008
And a followupDear universe: it's "White Christmas", not "White Easter". Not that it isn't pretty, and I certainly appreciate the view from outside my window, but... hello? Spring? Ring any bells?
Saturday March 22, 2008
What the...We interrupt the silence on this weblog to bring you a weather update.
It's supposedly the first day of spring.
The weather is currently alternating clear, sunny skies and heavy snow.
What the hell, universe?
Monday January 14, 2008
New Year's resolution: post moreSo.
What have I been up to?
Well, for one this blog has clearly been recognized as one of the "it" places to go for World of Warcraft information, because it's started getting goldselling spam. :P
It's a good thing that only comments with an approved email address get auto-published, and everything else gets filtered and doesn't show up unless I manually publish it, no?
What else... well, the biggest thing is I've been 3-manning old-world content with my boyfriend and a guildie of his. We cleared the entirety of Molten Core and killed Razorgore in Blackwing Lair, among other things. (And yes, I'm aware of the irony in linking to my posts on a LiveJournal community from my weblog - but I'm lazy, what can I say? ^^)
For a while after we did it, it was entertaining to watch it being spread across the internet - WoWInsider picked it up, for one, as well as MMO-Champion.
Even more entertaining was to watch people's reactions - they ran the gamut from "Congratulations" (thanks!"), to "This has been done on a private server, the people don't show up on the US WoW Armory" (have to love people who don't realize EU servers exist), to "This isn't really an achievement because Onyxia can be two-manned" (when Onyxia is nowhere near MC in fight complexity - but whatever floats their boat), to five billion comments along the lines of "Can you upload your UI?" (I listed what addons I'm using in the comments to my first post - I refuse to cater to the lazy any further than that, it's not like I use some esoteric addon configuration, I run things mostly out-of-the-box), and even to "There's five names showing up in the screenshots, not three, you lied" (it's fine, l2read).
Have to love it when the idiots come out of the woodwork.
Other than that... not much. I've been levelling a hunter off and on (engineering ftw), running Zul'Aman with my boyfriend's guild (timed run ftw: three bear mounts - one of which went to my boyfriend - and counting, we'll have to take a screenshot somewhere fancy when all 10 of us have one), and that's about it.
And for those wondering about the outcome of the previous post - no, I didn't get my lobster. And of course, Mr. Pinchy has been hiding from me ever since. Ah well.
Sunday October 07, 2007
Fun with random droprateHow to make one's boyfriend whine about his luck: help him farm Primal Shadow.
The following conversation ensued...
Him: "Bah, lousy droprate... no motes so far."
Me: (jokingly) "Maybe it's your fault. You might be jinxing it. I have four motes on me that dropped before you got here."
Him: "Well, fine, I'm moving to the other place. Woudn't want to ruin your luck." (moves away)
Me: (immediately, upon the next kill) "Look, a mote!"
Him: "..."
Me: (a few minutes later, three more kills) "Another mote! Another two! ...look - a random blue!"
Him: "......"
Him: (45 minutes later or so) "So how many motes do you have?"
Me: "Four primals, five motes."
Him: "...I only have one primal and two motes. I hate my luck."
Me: "...hey, another three motes!"
Him: "If you say another word about more motes, I'll murder you."
Me: (kills some more) "Two more motes... another... ...hey, look - another random blue!"
Him: "......"
I don't know whether to be glad or not that we were done shortly after. With his luck inversely affecting mine, who knows, I might've ended up getting an epic world drop. :P (Another one, that is... got a Lola's Eve a couple of weeks ago from a random birdman in Skettis. Not that I've been able to sell it so far, but still...)
At least the plate chest is going to be useful for his paladin alt, assuming he manages to get it to that level. (Granted, I know next to nothing about gearing paladins, so I have no idea how good that thing is... but given that there are two classes in the game that wear plate, and warriors don't use spelldamage, it seems a pretty paladin item to me. :P) The mail belt I'll probably just try selling on the auction house, as it looks pretty nice, I lack a shaman alt, and - since it's mail - I doubt a paladin would find it useful. (Do feel free to tell me I'm wrong, though. As I mentioned, I have no clue about paladins. :P)
Tuesday October 02, 2007
Life, the universe and everythingWell, what do you know? I'm actually awake and coherent in the morning. Will wonders never cease? (Have had issues sleeping decently for the last handful of days... kept waking up, having nightmares, etc, and very little sleep - and fragmented at that - does not do nice things to one's brain.)
As for the guild situation... let me put it with an image:
And the funny thing is - this isn't even a Serpentshrine / Tempest Keep guild I've joined. They've cleared Mount Hyjal completely, and are on 6/9 bosses in Black Temple. Last night's run was basically a Karathress - Vashj "oh hi new trials, here, have attunements" run.
Here's hoping I (and my boyfriend, for that matter) pass trial. *crosses fingers*
(Boyfriend found the guild. If we pass trial, I don't think he'll ever let me forget that because of him I basically went from a guild that had cleared Karazhan and had a poke or two at Gruul to a Black Temple / Hyjal guild. Heh.)
Friday September 14, 2007
I live!Right. A working computer and a working internet connection should do wonders for my will to post.
Here's hoping.
Friday August 24, 2007
Still aliveNot been around much because, yeah, no working computer to call my own.
Also been rubbish at answering emails - apologies about that; will reply as soon as I can.
This post, though, is made in a bit of a hurry to mention two things:
1. I'm back in Italy right now for a holiday with the family, and I'm going to the seaside, which means I won't have internet for a week (and so won't be replying to emails for a week and a few days longer; I get back to the UK on the afternoon / evening of the 4th of September, so don't really expect any reply before the 5th at the earliest)
2. Went to the computer store where I'd bought my laptop (and therefore where I'd handed it back in for repairing under warranty when the screen started going blue on me) this afternoon; the laptop was there, all repaired.
I have a computer again! \o/
Saturday July 28, 2007
Damnable bureaucracyI'm finally in the process of rescuing my data from the evil clutches of my dead computer, and of course, the first thing I move over is my Opera folders (the upside of never managing to convince boyfriend to switch to Opera and stop stubbornly clinging to IE: when my computer dies and I need to use his, I can just copy over the email / bookmarks / etc files and just take over the install). And the first thing I do after that, of course, is to check my mail (especially my "reserved for important things" email, which keeps getting sent spam and trojans now - clearly somebody I shared the address with wasn't as smart as I thought, sigh).
Nothing much, but among the clutter, I dig up an email from the university I did my master's at - a notice that "the official graduation papers for the Master's in Writing for Television and New Media for the academic year 2004/05 are ready".
At this point I'm cheering, because they said they would be ready, oh, last September, and hoping the "academic year 2004/05" is a typo (because I did the master's in 2005/06, and if the papers that are ready now - in 2007 - are for the '04/'05 class, I really am losing all hope).
Then I read on, and the email happily tells me that I can go pick up the thing, at my convenience, at the Student Services office of the university - all the way in bloody Turin. Which would've been a pretty long and annoying trip to take even if I were still living in Italy, which I'm not. Augh.
This is particularly stupid because this master's was a long-distance program in the first place, only requiring a computer, internet connection and DVD player to attend, with the exception of the entrance exam (which took place in Milan) and the final exam (which took place in Turin, and which I had to plan a trip for, complete with hotel stay). And they said they would send the papers to us.
The email included a phone number to call "for any necessity", and I will most certainly call it - but the fact that the email mentions the necessity of me bringing both an official stamp (which costs money) and identification makes it sound pretty impossible for the papers to be retrieved in any way that isn't me going there in person. Sigh.
I guess I'll have to plan a Turin trip for my next visit to Italy. D:
Wednesday July 25, 2007
I have no luck with computersThis particular tale of woe starts shortly after I moved to the UK in a more-or-less permanent fashion. I took a (back then) almost brand new laptop with me: it was shiny, it worked much better than my old desktop had, and it did what I wanted it to do.
All was well for a few weeks, then the laptop decided to break. While I was playing a game (an old game, at that - Starcraft), it rebooted. And rebooted. And rebooted. It wouldn't even load Windows anymore, nor any of the load-from-CD rescue solutions I tried. So I backed up my data (thank god for Ask Metafilter, that website is absolutely priceless) and asked my parents to mail me my old desktop, so I had a computer to use while the laptop got fixed (as opposed to just stealing my boyfriend's computer now and then).
It took some convincing, but they sent me the desktop. That computer worked briefly, then the videocard died. Fine, we had a spare videocard in the house; we replaced it, and all was fine for a while.
Then the (second-hand) monitor we'd acquired to attach to the computer started turning all sorts of interesting colors. A gentle push (or a not-so-gentle whack) would fix it, and though I knew it would eventually break down, I would be getting my laptop back soon.
Then I got my laptop back. Yay, everything worked again! I moved all my data back to it, and it took less than a couple of weeks for its monitor to start going blue, too. This, of course, was a different issue, not fixed by a gentle push (or a not-so-gentle whack); it quickly ended up making the laptop unusable for me, unless I connected it to an external monitor - which I did, while waiting to get the chance to send it off for repairs again.
A week ago, I pulled all my data off the laptop again, sent the laptop off for repairs (thankfully it's still under warranty) and went back to using the desktop.
And yesterday, while I was innocently surfing the internet, it froze on me (the kind of hard freeze where you have to pull the plug to get any reaction from the computer, as not even the power button will work). And now it doesn't load into Windows anymore (freezes halfway through), nor into any sort of CD-based rescue environments. As the HD Windows is on appears to be fine (booting into DOS and running various disk-checking programs works), I suspect the RAM (running Memtest86 right now to check), but if it is, we have no spare RAM to use, and the desktop is (unless my memory is trying to trick me) using a single 512MB stick - so it's all or nothing, and neither will do me much good.
Sigh. And I don't even know when I'll get my laptop back. At least my data is fine, I guess, it could've been worse.
Friday July 20, 2007
Hello worldDesire to actually do something with my website: check.
Fresh install of blogging software: check.
New layout: check.
Er. Hello internet, I'm back?
