I really need a stress management strategy that works for me.  I always get so frustrated with the art class (a rant on that later) that I’m not paying much attention in math.  I’ve always had a hard time “quieting my mind” I guess you could say so I’m always thinking, not necessarily about what’s important though.  So when math rolls around I keep getting drawn back to my frustration and thinking about how I can fulfill the requirements of a project while making it look at least half-way decent.

So, rant.  We’re working with shapes now and the next project has to have personal meaning and be easily understood.  Black and white, with shapes cut out of a square.  A pain already.  So making thumbnails I put together 4 that are pretty much stand alone objects.  Come to find out, today he says it has to have objects interacting.  Ok, fine, maybe I missed that part.  Re-working things, I hear him tell another student something to the effect ‘make it a moment in your life.’  Wait.  He said last class it doesn’t have to tell a story and while this doesn’t explicitly mean “story” it means a period of time that probably pertains to a story.  So I’m back to square one.  I have a feeling that this is going to be a “basic requirements met, piece of crap” art piece.  Small tangent, with another assignment he had us each present it to the class stating “this isn’t a critique.”  It ended up being a critique.

Now that that’s out of my system, I was reading an article in Time recently about shyness.  Actually, it was about introversion but on the cover it had “Shyness.”  Anyway, I found it interesting being an introvert.  Not only interesting, but soothing too.  I hadn’t expected that a magazine article pretty much saying ‘it’s ok to be an introvert in an extrovert’s world’ to help me feel more comfortable in my own skin.  Being a loner doesn’t bother me as much anymore.  I still need human interaction, don’t get me wrong, but I guess I’m happier with less than the average American’s amount.

Found out that the pain I’ve been having in my ankles is due to my ligaments being too streached out.  No way to fix it, unfortnately, but I’ll be able to manage it by strengthening the surrounding muscles and tendons.  At least I don’t have to worry about it tearing.

Tonight’s a DA 2 night me-thinks.

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First, all in all, the Holidays went well.  My sister and her boyfriend celebrated Christmas with us and he’s a pretty nice guy.  It took some adjusting on my part, as I’m used to being alone most of the time, and by the time that happened they had left.  *sigh*

And on to the rant.  A couple days before my sister left, my laptop spontaneously stopped working.  Put it to sleep and the next morning it wouldn’t really come back on.  I mean, the fan was running and the disc drive kept trying read a disc that wasn’t there, but the screen didn’t turn on and pressing buttons (ctrl+alt+del) did nothing.  Took it into a computer repair place and found out the motherboard died.  And even if it was replaced the same problem could happen again, apparently HP didn’t issue a recall or a fix.  Peachy.  I was advised to get a Dell or Toshiba, and I made the decision that it’ll be a desktop this time.  I’m getting sick of laptops dying on me with no way to fix them!

Fortunately I had been saving for a trip and my parents are helping me out so I was able to afford a Dell XPS without a screen.  The processor is great but the graphics card is slightly less then mediocre (according to serious gamers).  It should be a big step up from my, at least, 2 year old laptop though.  I’m considering biting the bullet and using the last of my savings on a screen, Best Buy has one on sale for $100.  We have an old tube screen I can use but the clarity sucks.  Can you tell how spoiled I am?  Anyway, it’s due to arrive on the 24th or so.

In other news I had my first day of class in 2 years yesterday.  I’m not sure I’m ready but I think that’s anxiety talking.  I’m just taking an art class and pre-calc so it shouldn’t be that bad.  Though the art prof seems critical, so what if the colors aren’t fully filled in?  They may have wanted a light shade.  Also not looking forward to the 2 hour gap between classes, I thought I’d have my laptop when I scheduled but now it’s almost unbearable.  Maybe it’ll get better when I have school work to do.

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Don’t like, don’t read.

Firstly, we’ve been having trouble with our DSL service.  Wednesday the 9th it went out unexpectedly at about 6 pm.  Figuring that it’ll be on by morning, as something like that happened once before, I let it go and went to sleep early.  When it wasn’t on by 10 am the next day, drove to a location for our ISP and they gave me the number to call for technical support.  Fair enough.  Went home, did that, and was told that my modem probably died.  Ok, fine.  Went out the next day to purchase a modem/router (not from the ISP), and attempted to configure it.  For 3 hours.  Finally called my ISP’s tech support to get my DSL password (like it said on the box) and spent and hour trying to configure it with them.  Didn’t work.  Called tech support for the modem/router and spent another hour on the phone with them and they couldn’t get it to work.  So, they told me it was faulty and to take it back.  Ok…  Decided to take my old router to my ISP to see if they could find anything wrong with it and they couldn’t.  Finally found out from a very nice (and I do not mean that sarcastically) employee that other people have been coming in with the same problem.  So, back to the phone.  Finally had someone tell me that there’s a problem with the connection.  Really?  It took 3 calls for you to figure that out?  So they scheduled a technician to come out to our house and take a look at things.  He came the next day and had to go “down the street” because we weren’t getting any DSL service to the house at all.  So he patches it up and goes on his merry way.  (Did I mention I was called off from work when I was half way there?)  You would think this would be the end, but no, I was not that lucky.  About 5 hours later we lost the signal.  So back to the phone.  They scheduled another technician to come back out on Monday.  Alright, so Sunday I went to a hot-spot to do a couple things and help out my dad.  Nothing note worthy happened.  So Monday the technician comes, checks everything out and has to go down the street to fix it again and gives me a local number to call if anything should go wrong.  I feel like I’ve made some progress, the internet’s back on and I don’t have to go through the 800 number anymore.  That was short lived.  Internet goes out at 5pm, I call the number I was given at 6 and leave a message.  Next morning, waiting around from 8 to receive a phone call back from the guy.  8 turns to 9 to 10 to 11.  At noon I call back, no one answers and I get kicked to voice mail.  Same thing happens at 2.  So I go back the to the ISP asking if there’s another number I can call or if the guy is on vacation or something.  He didn’t know if he was on vacation and there isn’t another number, so I was told to call the 800 number again.  As I was in a very foul mood by then, I decided to wait till Wednesday and try to cool off.  Now we’re at Wednesday morning, I try the local number one last time (with the same result) and proceesd to call the 800 again.  I went round-and-round with a lady trying to tell me the line was fixed before she finally made an appointment with the technician.  Thursday he comes again and replaces the jack (didn’t work) so he goes down the street again and replaces the whole line.  The internet has been on for longer than 6 hours (almost 24 now) so I’m cautiously optimistic that it’s fixed.  That was such a pain in the ass.  Oh, and the local number?  The guy was just heading back Thursday (from what I’m guessing was vacation) so I wouldn’t have been able to reach anyone had I kept trying.  That’s some info I would have liked to know, or just don’t give me the number at all.  Ugh.

Secondly some small rants.  The Occupy movement, it started out fine but now all I see are people camping out like hobo druggies in parks and being a pain in the ass for everyone else.  Their goal is understandable and I agree with it to a certain extent, but the execution really needs work.  Black Friday becoming Black Thursday, I hate it.  I understand that the winter Holidays are the biggest retail event of the year but to me, it just looks like stores are being greedy.  Personally, I’m waiting for Cyber Monday because I hate the crowds and the lines.  Yes, I acknowledge I’m complaining about something that doesn’t affect me, but it’s based on principal.

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A people sort of storm, not the natural disaster sort.  Well for my emotions it may as well be a natural disaster.  Yes, I’m talking about my cousin and grandma.  They’re due to arrive in less than a week now.  I have a horrible feeling that things won’t go well.  I’ll do or say something rash, I won’t call it stupid yet, and there’ll be another fiasco like last time.  If that does happen, I hope my dad will actually stand by me instead of cater to my bratty cousin.  Time will tell.  In a more practical sense, I’m cleaning the bathroom.

May as well get the negative stuff out of the way now.  Some jack ass on VDex is trying to, in essence, steal from Shiro.  I won’t quote the article or go into detail, but that’s unjustifiable and inexcusable regardless of their economic standing.  It really pisses me off how low some people are.  I feel horrible for Shiro that she has to deal with all this crap on top of her own life.

Back to more mundane topics.  Started playing Aika with a few people from Gaia.  I’m only lvl 10 but I can’t tell what the fuss is about.  So far, it’s just grind, complete quests, and purchase skills.  Not much in the way of character building or community so far.  I really want to play Rift though!  Unfortunately, it’s $50 and I’m broke T_T  Oh well, it’ll have to wait.

Completed my first trade in Pokemon Black!  Got a couple White exclusives (Solosis and Petilil).  Right now I’m grinding to make sure I can beat the last gym and am planning to get a legendary or 2 before that.

Oh!  That reminds me, I’m switching over the fanlistings to a collective site.  Link is on the right.  And along with that, I kinda started archiving my games and pokemon…  Yes, I have no life.  I’ll put up FCs sooner or later for trading purposes.  I think that’s all the site news.  Probably, I don’t do much with my hosting x.x

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Ok, so things may or may not still work (i.e. links) but I thinkI covered everything.  In a nutshell, my host was attacked and around 19 nodes were brought down.  Of course everything was erased, so this is the first post since June!  Wow!  I’ve been gone forever! /sarcasim  I actually am surprised that I kept the backup from then.  This definitely teaches me to backup more often.  Back on subject, I’m staying with my host seeing that they were up front about the attack.  Honesty is something I really respect, especially if telling the truth could be harmful to you.  This wasn’t their fault and while I’m peeved that it happened, what can you do other than be proactive?  And learn from your mistakes of course ^_^

Obviously this is a new layout.  Started work on it before all the downtime but kinda threw it together trying to get everything back up ASAP.  I’m satisfied with it, meaning while it doesn’t look the best it won’t be tweaked, it’s simple and in my opinion, can represent both winter and spring well.  Yes, I drew the sakura…  Don’t laugh at me!  *runs away*

Hopefully catch-up will occur in the next entry.  Right now I need food and a pain killer.

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Well, I edited the entry to add in the Kurayami walkthrough links and started working on a layout for Shattered-Sky.  Layout is being thrown together because I don’t have any inspiration, I figure the blog layout can wait.  I need to find happier avatars too, most of the ones I have are quite depressing.

Yesterday, I went to a middle school to jog on the track with my sister.  Unfortunately, the gates were locked so we had to hop the fence.  I hate climbing over fences, my shoes never fit nicely in the chain link.  Anywho, we walked/jogged a mile and then walked a least another mile, wasn’t keeping track for that.  We had an interesting conversation about running styles, she jazz runs with short steps and I jog.  Well, I guess I kinda run, but not just with my toes like sprinters.  She jogged almost the entire time and I walked the curves and ran the straights.  We kept about the same distance.  I really need to work on my endurance and muscle strength, my legs feel kinda tight and sore.

Made an appointment for my car because the check engine light is on and I need to take it to Chicago on Monday.  Well, my dad will probably drive it.  You know the family trip I’ve been mentioning?  That’s what Monday will be.  I haven’t started packing or getting things together that I’ll need.  I have no idea what I’ll take specifically, just in general.  But what’s really stressing me out is my parents.  I have a feeling that when we get there, it’ll be chaotic for us.  Prioritizing, planning things out, and actually getting things done.  My dad has to plan just about everything out and nothing has been planned other than our tickets.  I don’t think he reserved a rental car or set anything up for him coming back.  Tangent: Rental car; I would love to rent one but it’s super expensive!  Not to mention I’m under 25 and would have to pay extra everyday.  That’s not what’s bothering me, my dad is only putting one driver on the rental is what’s pissing me off.  He would probably put himself on and not my mom even though he’s coming home a few days earlier!  We (my mom, sister and me) would have to rely on him or my grandpa.  We could take my grandpa’s car on the weekends but he works weekdays.  Grr…  I’ll try and talk to him about it.  Back to what I was saying.  I have a feeling that my dad will be a dictator and plan everything out according to him, not taking into account the rest of us.  We’ll have to see.  But I’m anxious about seeing my family, I haven’t seen most of them for at least 5-6 years.  Not sure how well I’ll get along with them/they get along with me.  Not to mention obligatory family stuff.  Gah!  I don’t want to go!  My ticket has been purchased and it would look really bad if I didn’t go.  A bright spot about it is that’s a free wi-fi hot spot within walking distance from my grandparents house, they don’t have internet.  I deliberately left out where we’ll be going.  In this area at least, it’s a big deal going there.  I want as few people to know as possible (ironic that I blog), but will reveal the location in another entry.

Enough about that!  Something else that’s ticking me off is Gaia.  I’m not exactly sure why, but it feels like everyone on there is really stupid and obnoxious.  All take and no give.  They’ll keep you around when they need you but stop talking when they have what they wanted.  Most conversation is about them and they don’t care about the person they’re talking to.  I admit, I am guilty of this in a few cases.  But I ask about them and they don’t ask anything back!  Make me angry.  I read one person’s post how it’s all about having the best/most expensive avi and not about decent conversation.  Maybe it’s just me, but Gaia is turning into a place where immature teens go to act out, get attention, and be idiots.  Ok, that was 2 rants already.  I’ll just shut up and make dinner.

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