Antiproductivity update

Over the past week, I've found myself not feeling predisposed to posting anything here, somehow at the same time that I also sort of did want to post something. Weird. But then, I've never claimed I was normal, so tough.

I have done so very, very little over the weekend that could actually be considered "studying for Finance" in the vaguest, loosest definition of that phrase.

Oh, right, I never posted about my house being sold. That's right...sold. I've lived here since 1990 and it's been sold. Aurrrgh. Anyway, I never even really got around to telling anyone we were putting our house up for sale again (hell, I barely even knew about it beforehand, let alone you guys) -- we listed it with our real-estate agent (tiffany's mom) on Friday the 15th and the deal was closed the following Tuesday. I had no idea that this time, the house would ACTUALLY be sold -- we've listed our house twice prior to this with no deals getting made, and so I've gotten quite used to having to deal with people traipsing through here to have a looksee, resulting in absolutely nothing happening. And now, apparently, my house has been sold and as of July 27th, my family will cease to own this place. Yiiiikes.

Anyway, the point of including that little expository segue, getting back to my I-was-unproductive-this-weekend train of thought, was so I could continue on by saying that today we went looking around at potential places to move to, on the waterfront (because my father really wants to have a view of the lake...personally, I'd rather move somewhere [assuming that it is, in fact, necesssary for me to move at all, which it seems like it is] that's close to a subway station -- the waterfront properties require you to take a shuttlebus or streetcar to the subway. Also, all of us get just the slightest bit dizzy looking out at all that water. Lol.) I COULD have stayed home and "studied", but frankly, I feel so studied-out that I probably would have just wasted all that time anyway. Much like I've been doing tonight, and right now. And probably tomorrow. Oh dear. It's funny, being studied-out when I haven't at all studied hard enough. I've been "reading" this same PowerPoint slide for the past hour and a half.

I've had this engrish bootleg Two Towers screenshot image popping into my head all day:
(actual line: "You're not eating. You barely sleep.")

'Cause if I go to sleep at a decent time these days, I feel sorta guilty about it. You know, having done NOTHING before turning in for the day.

Sigh. Speaking of which, I guess I'll go and stare ineffectually at those notes I was supposed to have gotten through by now, in hopes that something will actually get learnt. Blaargh. One. More. Exam. Must. Focus. Must. Study. Must. Finish reading notes. Must. Do more problems. Better not sleep. Must stop blogging. Now.

No, now.

...Okay, now.

p.s. Happy birthday, Suz! Also, a belated birthday shoutout to jess belongs here, too. :)

p.p.s. COMPUTERS ARE THE MANIFESTATIONS OF PUREST, DARKEST EVIL.

M.I.A.

While here studying in front of the computer (always a wise idea, I say. Especially if you're trying to find reasons to kick yourself in the ass later on when you realize how little you've done in the past X hours or so.), I realized that I did actually lose some mp3s -- namely, all of the ones that were by artists whose names begin with letters after T. Huh. Sure, it might be questionable as to how much I ever listened to some of those anyway, but for completeness's sake, I want them back. The ones still missing are the following, and if any of you has any of these and feels like YouSendIting it to me (you can send to verbatim119[at]gmail.com, for anyone who doesn't have my e-mail address) I'll be very grateful for you doing so. ;) Also, if you're sending anything via YouSendIt, tell me who you are so I can thank you, since I don't think it'll say who's sending it.

U2 - Elevation (Tomb Raider Mix)
U2 - One
U2 - Running to Stand Still
U2 - The Joshua Tree (Complete Album)
U2 - Walk On
U2 - War (Complete Album)
Uncle Kracker - In A Little While
Valeria - Rhythm of The Night
Van Morrison - Brown-Eyed Girl
Vanessa Paradis - Bliss
Vanessa Paradis - La Ballade de Lily-Rose
Vanessa Paradis - Que Fait La Vie?
VAST - Here
VAST - Pretty When You Cry
VAST - Somewhere Else To Be
VAST - Temptation
VAST - You
Velvet Chain - Treason
Velvet Revolver - Fall To Pieces
Vienna Teng - Momentum
Vienna Teng - Soon Love Soon
Vienna Teng - The Tower
Viggo Mortensen - Otro/Letter From Nebraska
Viggo Mortensen - Wading
Viggo Mortensen - Week Ends
Vitamin C - Graduation (Friends Forever)
Wallflowers, The - Heroes
Wallflowers, The - One Headlight
Wave - California
Wave - Think It Over
Weezer - Buddy Holly
Wet Wet Wet - Love Is All Around
Whitney Houston - I Will Always Love You

Also, I'm not missing these from the whole hard drive debacle, but if anyone has these, that'd be good as well:

Enya - Only Time
Emiliana Torrini - Summerbreeze
Keane - On a Day like Today
The Servant - In a Public Place
The Servant - Oh No No Not Another One

Thanks in advance for anyone who actually sends me anything; I'll probably be trying to re-download for myself anyway, at any rate.

You know. While I'm studying...

ETA: Okay, now I just feel like a colossal idiot (well, even more so than usual) -- I just realized that I had those mp3s on CD-R, but just forgot to transfer all of the U to W files onto my computer because I wanted to put them in a separate folder from the T songs. D'oh. That's how frazzled I am when my computer's not working... Sorry, people, for my stupidity.

I Y Google. :)

I didn't know it before just now, but my brother's got the same birthday as DaVinci. Neato.

Anyhoo, got to go study for the first time today -- good job, me, starting at 11:30pm... :P It can't be helped. I was volunteering at the tax clinic down at the university all afternoon, and then we went out for dinner to celebrate the brother turning 25. 25, wow. A quarter-century. Now when did that happen?

Okay, that's all for now. I am so unmotivated it's scary.

GeekAlert! GeekAlert! GeekAlert! GeekAlert! GeekAlert!

One Man Lord of the Rings
Written and performed by Charles Ross | Directed by T J Dawe

One ring to rule them all. One ring to find them. One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them....And one man to do it all. Charles Ross is at it again with his assault on the world of Tolkien as seen by director Peter Jackson. 3 masterworks. 40 characters. 3600 seconds. And one very busy actor. "It is simply brilliant, one of the most enjoyable shows I can remember in 25 long years.... Do whatever you have to, but see this show." - Robert Crew, Toronto Star

Premiere Dance Theatre - April 28, 9 pm; April 30, 4 pm

---

I've been hearing about this thing for ages (the show started in Vancouver and is now making its way around), and now it's coming to Toronto and I'm going on the 28th.

I wasn't going to. Really. I thought, "Well, that's nice, and it does have good reviews and all, but...I'm already gonna be going to the LOTR Symphony in June and probably the musical (in all its glory/horror depending how the case might be) in February/March, so...well. Going to this would be a nice thing, too, but really, how much would people mock me if I went to all three? And three really is rather excessive, isn't it? And just the other day, Chloe was giving me looks of incredulity when she saw me looking at the LOTR Edition DVD Trivial Pursuit Game. More stuff to tease me about really isn't necessary..." But then Mom came into the room and asked me what was new and/or interesting, and...I couldn't help myself. I wasn't even going to mention the thing, but then she asked that, and well, I had to tell her about it, and then she said she'd go with me, and well....yeah. Now I'm going. It'll be a nice way to celebrate the end of exams, at any rate. :)

The Good: My computer crisis has been (mostly) averted; still some files to transfer back onto here; new hard drive was installed yesterday and so far, everything seems fine and the Internet is working better now...

The Bad: ...except that I can't get some of the Javascript on some sites (well, specifically, the file that I use as my homepage) to show up in bloody Internet Explorer. Had the same problem when my computer was new, and somehow I fixed it back then, eventually, but I've tried everything and it isn't helping.

Also, I let somebody borrow my Law notes last week to photocopy, and just now, I was all settled down to start studying off of them and noticed that, not only were they all in completely the wrong order, but that somewhere in the course of photocopying each handout (several pages stapled together) got un-stapled and subsequently re-stapled. WRONGLY. OH DEAR GOD. I have Practice Cases that pertain to specific chapters that I'm now going to have to puzzle out slowly and reattach in the proper places so that my notes MAKE THE SLIGHTEST BIT OF BLOODY SENSE. HOW HARD IS IT TO AT LEAST KEEP THE FREAKIN' PAPERS IN THE SAME ORDER, EVEN IF YOU DON'T RESTAPLE THEM AT ALL??? Which, in fact, is preferable to stapling them in some random, annoying way. GAAAAAAAAAAAH.

The Ugly: Okay, well there is nothing particularly ugly right now, but hey, needed the category for completeness's sake. :P

ETA: HA! Take that, Microsoft! :P Apparently my homepage file was considered a "Restricted site" (it's not even ON the Internet, for grief's sake, and I made the page myself) so I went in and made my restricted site security settings LESS bloody secure so that I can actually see everything properly. *rolls eyes* And I'm pretty sure that's not what I did the last time, but...hey, it works, so whatever.

Update on the computer situation: just to make this all just a little more fun, re-installing (basically) my Windows operating system onto my computer didn't work. Why? Well, apparently, my hard drive got damaged, and now Dell's gonna have to send me a new one.

The good (well, better) part of this is that I don't have to pay for the new hard drive as long as I send them back my busted one (the shipping's paid for) and technical service is still covered under my warranty (seeing as how my computer really is a baby; just got it at the end of November), so I can get a technician to come and help me install the new drive and that's free of charge as well. How lovely.

Oh, and another good thing: I was able to access and transfer most of my files onto the other computer or CD-R...most, but not all. I thought I'd lost my entire folder of movie pictures (and that's a big deal, because I've been collecting those since forever...like, nearly 10 years), but thankfully I still have all of those pictures up until the end of last November because I had a duplicate folder of those that didn't get erased. Basically, any of those pictures I saved after I got the new computer are gone, but at least most of it is still there (goodbye Phantom and lovely Sin City photos...it was fun, but alas, it's over). Similarly, I've got back most of my academically-related internet favorites. Whee.

All in all, I've lost nothing to major [as far as I can tell] -- I lost one mp3 (Air, "La Femme D'Argent"...still have that one, HG?), my final assignment from last term's Theory & Policy class, and my folder of art and photographs done by Viggo Mortensen (remember my last header graphic?). So really, assuming that the new hard drive gets put in properly and everything works, it isn't too, too bad.

I do, however, still need to transfer back to my computer (once it's healthy again) all those files I transferred to the laptop. Via USB -- like, 20 files at a time. Sigh. The ones I have on CD-R will go much faster, but damnit, most of it's on the laptop.

Anyway, wow, this update turned out to be much longer than I thought it would. Bah. Will update about stuff that's more fun later, maybe. (Procrastinating at procrastination; look at that!)

My baby is ill. So very, very ill.

I'm not on my computer right now, because, wouldn't you know it? My computer contracted some sort of virus or SOMEthing at some point and when I turned on my computer today, I couldn't get into Windows. I talked to the tech guy at Dell, and I'm currently trying to install Windows on top of itself or something in an attempt to get into the Windows system so I can back up my files before I have to, basically, lose everything I've ever saved -- ever -- onto the computer. EVERYTHING.

There's still a chance that some of my stuff will already be missing, but this is my best chance....oh god oh god. EVERYTHING. My computer is my livelihood. And wtf am I supposed to do? Save everything on to freakin' CD-R discs? Or...upload everything to the Internet somehow, assuming I'll still have a connection? Or....oh god. Why me? Why is this happening?! Why don't we have any CD-RW discs, gosh darn it?! Blalaaaaarrrgh!

I *was* going to post about how badly my week's been going so far in terms of the unlucky-being, but...really. This pretty much sums it up AND takes the cake. The big, chocolate cake. I might still post something later, maybe, because damn it, I'm a blogger and that's what I freaking do. Even if I'm a blogger with NO FILES.

*glurbglurbglurb*

Google image meme

Go to Google and search images. Type in the following things.
Pick your favourite and post them in your journal.

1. The age you will be on your next birthday.
2. Your mother's middle name.
3. Your favourite color.
4. The place you lost your virginity (someone's house, their car, your bed, the woods, etc.) or would like to lose your virginity if you haven't.
5. A bad habit of yours.
6. Your favourite fruit or vegetable.
7. Your favourite animal.
8. The last name of your kingergarden teacher.
9. The name of a pet.
10. Your favourite band.

Number, label, and post the answers in an lj-cut.

( click )

Random music meme

The rules: Open up the music player on your computer and set it to play your entire music collection. Hit the "shuffle" command. Tell us the title of the next ten songs that show up (with their musicians), no matter how embarrassing. That's right; no skipping that Carpenters tune that will totally destroy your hip credibility. It's time for total musical honesty.

I doubt I have any 'hip credibility' that can be destroyed, but here are my 10 nevertheless.

1. Velvet Revolver, "Fall To Pieces"
2. Chantal Kreviazuk, "This Year"
3. Phantom Planet, "California"
4. Phantom of the Opera (2004), "Madame Giry's Tale/The Fairground"
5. Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Soul to Squeeze"
6. Carole King, "Where You Lead"
7. Luther Vandross, "Dance With My Father"
8. Whitney Houston, "I Will Always Love You"
9. Fisher, "Dirty Girl"
10. Tori Amos, "Sleeps with Butterflies"