all things me

I got me Mozilla back!!

For weeks now I’ve pouted every morning after trying to start Mozilla at work, and the computer claims it can’t find the install file (stupid automatic updates, *mutters*), so the updating/installing exits abruptly. I’ve been using FireFox instead (and been dreading the day it can’t find the update). It’s ok and all that, but I’m a Mozilla Girl.

Today, after noticing two Mozillas in the “Open with…” list, I decided to browse the Program Files. Lo and behold, there’s a mozilla.org folder with a Mozilla.exe file, which after a double click actually works! *sighs*

Recently I’ve been playing Vampire The Masquerade — Bloodlines. It’s RPG which isn’t my favourite genre, but hey, it’s vampires!!

It’s a very interesting game. Games don’t usually freak me out (except for the piranhas that were in my face in Pharaoh), but when I went to pick a lock to a haunted house and a light crackled above my head with electricity… I jumped. And in the house when I was happily walking in the narrow basement corridors, I came to crossroads and a ghost runs past. Yeeep.

I’ve taken a seduction, persuasion, talk-my-way-out-of-it approach to the game so some of the necessary fights have been pretty difficult. There are a few unfinished quests because I’ve found the bad guys to be a bit too tough for me. I’ll get back to them after collecting a bit more experience points.

Today I was jamming at the local disco, Asylum:

Dancing with the triplets

Another set of triplets

… and this guy …

… or people who’ve only had time to write one article for a magazine so far.

Yesterday evening my sister and I went to see Star Wars III. I had got an invitation from the computer magazine, so of course I went, and I managed to drag her along.

Thank you for the movie night, Mr. Editor

Continues »

What a weird day — I was offered a job. I won’t be sharing any details about it yet until I know what the deal is but it would almost be my dream job.

I got it through a teacher(-ish) at the Uni. They (singular) were impressed by my work in a couple of classes.

Crazy stuff. I’m grinning from ear to ear (like this ) and can’t wait for tomorrow to call about it. I’m dead scared of phones (or of the sort of conversations…) but I’m going to call. Of course I am. Yes, I am. Yeah.

Alas, this probably means I need to quit the research job. It would be a shame because the people are really nice and it’s interesting and I was secretly hoping I could get my master’s thesis topic off of the project…

But I wouldn’t be the only one that’s left for a “real” job (I don’t mean that the research is less real than something else — but it can only go on for so long). I sometimes feel like I’ve given what I’ve got to the project and am twiddling thumbs (well, except now that I have this bloody tricky XSLT-script to write). But I can’t keep three jobs (be they only part-time and occassional), now can I? I still have studying to do as well!

But I really really do want this new job. OK OK, I don’t know if it’s going to be anything or am I just getting excited for no reason, but I sure do hope it will work out.

This is actually pretty scary, or odd at least. When I was younger (well, before I got sucked into this Uni project and realised that I may be able to be of use) I thought I probably wouldn’t amount to anything. I’ve been studying this vague subject that doesn’t give you a clear cut pigeon-hole occupational title like a doctor, or a lawyer or a kindergarten teacher (not that I’ve ever wanted to work in a pigeon-hole).

Honestly, what did I do?! (Well, I am after all )

[update May 19 @12:35] Darn, it would be a full-time job. I don’t know if I can handle that. I have to negotiate. [/update]
[update May 19 @ 15:25] Negotiations on-going This is very exciting! When they find out I don’t study languages, though… ooops. [/update]

Today I finally had the exam that fell through the last time. I had time to read the books a second time yesterday (and the day before) which I really needed. I think it went well. There were 10 questions and I had to pick 6, so I could leave out the ones that I couldn’t think of anything to write about.

During the exam I had got a text message telling that my book order (Bachman Books) had arrived and I thought damn, just the day when I decided to leave my credit card at home (just to be sure because in the exam you weren’t allowed to take your things with you). Luckily, I had taken some money so I could scrape up enough and got to bring the book home. It’s so pretty!

And just after hearing the news about the book, . What a day.

[Via: the sociopath]

What a hoot!

Robot
You are 100% Rational, 0% Extroverted, 0% Brutal, and 28% Arrogant.

You are the Robot! You are characterized by your rationality. In fact, this is really ALL you are characterized by. Like a cold, heartless machine, you are so logical and unemotional that you scarcely seem human. For instance, you are very humble and don’t bother thinking of your own interests, you are very gentle and lack emotion, and you are also very introverted and introspective. You may have noticed that these traits are just as applicable to your laptop as they are to a human being. In short, your personality defect is that you don’t really HAVE a personality. You are one of those annoying, super-logical people that never gets upset or flustered. Unless, of course, you short circuit.

To put it less negatively:
1. You are more RATIONAL than intuitive.
2. You are more INTROVERTED than extroverted.
3. You are more GENTLE than brutal.
4. You are more HUMBLE than arrogant.

Compatibility:
Your exact opposite is the Class Clown.

Other personalities you would probably get along with are the Hand-Raiser, the Emo Kid, and the Haughty Intellectual.

If you scored near fifty percent for a certain trait (42%-58%), you could very well go either way. For example, someone with 42% Extroversion is slightly leaning towards being an introvert, but is close enough to being an extrovert to be classified that way as well. Below is a list of the other personality types so that you can determine which other possible categories you may fill if you scored near fifty percent for certain traits.

The other personality types:

The Emo Kid: Intuitive, Introverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Starving Artist: Intuitive, Introverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Bitch-Slap: Intuitive, Introverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Brute: Intuitive, Introverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

The Hippie: Intuitive, Extroverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Televangelist: Intuitive, Extroverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Schoolyard Bully: Intuitive, Extroverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Class Clown: Intuitive, Extroverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

The Robot: Rational, Introverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Haughty Intellectual: Rational, Introverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Spiteful Loner: Rational, Introverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Sociopath: Rational, Introverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

The Hand-Raiser: Rational, Extroverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Braggart: Rational, Extroverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Capitalist Pig: Rational, Extroverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Smartass: Rational, Extroverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 91% on Rationality
You scored higher than 0% on Extroversion
You scored higher than 0% on Brutality
You scored higher than 20% on Arrogance

The Personality Defect Test written by saint_gasoline on Ok Cupid

Pretty!
These Google Maps are really addictive. You have to check out Google Sightseeing if you haven’t done so already.

[edit: Aug 19] the crop circles aren’t there anymore and I browsed through all of Google Sightseeing’s site but didn’t find it. If anyone finds more, please tell me where. Pretty please? [/edit]

Via: Jafer as usual

1) Why do you keep your weblog/blog/online writing thingie: for fun, for fame, for money, for popularity, or for another more obscure reason? What about the weblog gives you what you want?

For fun, for memory (not memories, as such), for an excuse to tweak a design to no end, for not forgetting how to type.

2) Imagine that your weblog becomes wildly popular: your hit counter skyrockets, your comments are overflowing, and everyone is emailing you about everything you post. Name 3 positive things that could come of this, and 3 negative things.

Pros:

1. I’d know my writings are of use (or amuse) to someone else besides me
2. I’d know what other people think of things that I’ve cared for enough to write about
3. I’d get some useful and interesting information off the comments

Cons:

1. I’d worry about my bandwidth
2. Replying to all the comments and mails
3. I’m sure the people are just looking for page ranking for themselves

3) What’s the worst possible result you can imagine (short of being electrocuted or having your computer take over your brain, and who says it hasn’t already?) from keeping a weblog?

Family coming to talk deep about the few “personal” things I’ve written about.

4) What do you do to prevent that worst possible result from happening?

Nothing really. Just keeping my fingers crossed.

5) List 5 reasons that would make you stop keeping your weblog for a period of 6 months to a year.

1. Uneventful world
2. Busted computer
3. Having no money for the internet connection (oh, but there’s Uni or libraries — well then, having graduated, moved out, and not bothered to wait for the brats to get off the library computers)
4. Getting tired of it
5. Being too busy

6) List 5 reasons that would make you stop forever.

1. Dying
2. Not being able to type (either motorically or mentally)
3. Getting too old for/tired of it?

7) Describe your definition of a ‘successful weblog.’

A site where people like to comment, posts have something important-ish in them.

8 ) Is yours successful by your definition?

No. But that doesn’t bother me. I don’t blog for the world.

9) What pisses you off most in other weblogs? What pleases you most?

Pisses: reckless spelling, ads, 2+ column layouts, mile long link lists, too tiny text (I’ve committed that crime myself in the past, and still on a couple of sites), the necessity to comment on the same things everybody else comments on, iframes when the basic page won’t fit the window either
Pleases: nice layouts, interesting links to check out, funny memes/quizzes, interesting news…

10) Make a list of 10 weblogs/journal style websites that you wish your weblog/website/writing site was like.

I don’t really want to list any, and 10 is a lot. First of all, I don’t know that many (although I check out quite a lot because of hanging out at the WP forum) and if “being alike” means layout-wise, I don’t want to be like anysite else. If “being alike” means the writing abilities, then I wouldn’t be myself anymore. I write what I write, how I write and I can’t really do anything about it. And if my writing was alike someone else’s, I’d probably have way more typos.

I don’t remember being this terrified of an exam before. My heart’s racing like I’ve had too much coffee (but I haven’t… well, a mug 5 hours ago, but not too much).

I know why I’m terrified. I don’t have a feeling that I’ve read enough. But the problem is, there wasn’t enough material! Just some vague links to different sites, so I only know finite-state automaton systems well enough, but not (plain, augmented, or recursive) transition networks or artificial intelligence or that damn mysterious acronym SM which I couldn’t figure out. No, it doesn’t stand for sadomasochism.

These sort of comments just make my little forum volunteer heart flutter.

With the help of my new hero “Minna” over at the WordPress forums I have a new navigation look. I grabbed the necessary css from Michael Heilemann at Binary Bonsai. Minna helped me step by step with changes at the forum.

Thanks Minna!