The Mirror and the Mask

I may have lost my password. I'm still logged in on a handful of devices due to the magic of the cookie - but due to an old email registration and the inability to update my information without my current password, and an inexplicable and infuriating lack of current security question, this may be the end of my journal. I changed passwords around the time of the Heartbleed fiasco and I cannot locate my password log from that time. I've managed to guess back into everything else, but if I go silent, o dear friends, this would be why. I'll try and post a link to my new journal if it turns out I have to make one.

We'll see.

I finally finished with the basic wipe, all that's left is to install the software I'll need in China (and maybe some music) on my old laptop.

Also, I just discovered that those buttons with the video/audio control symbols work from completely outside whatever relevant application. I can be using Firefox and tap to skip a song on iTunes. Brilliant. Awesome. Life-saving, given the number of things I tend to leave running at once. ^-^

Gargoyles comic = awesome as well - it's a shock to see non-blunt wounds finally used, and for blood to follow, for the first time. You realize how safe the sandbox was in the animated show. Tore through the whole thing in two hours or so, TRYING to go slowly... It's interesting what the art styles have done. I'd heard a couple of bad reviews, and although some of it looks a little green it's not bad, and most of the time avoids the broken-spined implanted nipples-visible cliched figure style I'd been fervently hoping not to see on characters I love and respect (Elisa, Angela). Some of the art's downright gorgeous, in fact, but I'll get back to that later.

Off for now, I wanna read some happy silly fluff - I've been on a quest for Labyrinth fic all about goblins since KnifeEdge at FF demonstrated just why indestructible children were such a good idea. (And bad idea.) I always thought that Sarah was an idiot not to agree to Jareth's bargain from the start - Sarah gets to be an only child again and a very special gift, Toby gets to be a kid forever and in the best possible way, Jareth gets another goblin for his Labyrinth, who loses?

The last thing this leaves me thinking of is that we need a word for a blended sense of "hedonism" and "pursuing curiosity."

So the aforementioned chunk of technological security arrived in the mail. And I formatted it, and partitioned it, and started running Time Machine on the specified partition.

I've been waiting on it for just shy of four hours when I look and notice I'm only one gig into my fifty-gig computer. Ouch.

So I watch, and it's loading a tenth a meg a second. Ohhhh, ouch.

I restart the whole system and it loads that same gig in the first minute.

...Ew.

In other news, saw Forgetting Sarah Marshall. What an exercise in vicarious embarrassment (something I excel at, in fact) and general awkwardness. The first ten minutes do characterise the film. If you can't bear it, don't watch the rest. All in all, I thought it was not without flaw but certainly worth seeing through, though preferably not while seated next to one's parents.

...To return to backup woes, apparently it zipped along for the first gig and is now crawling again at a snail's pace. One hundredth of a gig in ninety seconds?? WTF!?

If anybody has any suggestions, please feel free to leave word....

So my PSE won't work on my new computer, I'm afraid to even try installing my tablet for fear of same, I didn't get my study abroad in on time today between unplanned extended sleep and the lack of an image editor (and yes - I downloaded every Open Source I could get my hands on).

I pay for my software. I mean, c'mon. I PAY for my software. Even Painter's being buggy and not allowing my usual activities. I have NO photoshop equivalent. I am stranded and without ability, and I don't even have the energy to be pissed off about it.

And when I called the study abroad program's office for help on some very contradictory terminology, their office had closed early due to inclement weather.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck.

In case you needed proof that the I in ITS here stands for Idiot, we get on average ten to twenty five emails a day, and most of those are junk (but junk from the school itself, not pornspam.)

There is no select-all feature. You have to click every. Single. Email. Subject line. If you want to throw them away - deleting in my email client does nothing with my actual inbox, nor can I get it to. Probably something to do with "what if there's a technical failure" and how important it is that we actually receive our email, amidst a wash of "Join us for Event #299748 - now with free keychains!"

Is that normal? I'd been laying out in the grass reading, and every now and then caught a whiff of something dead - maybe I smelled of last week's dinner? In any case, he was trotting along with me at my normal (rather quick) walking pace, accelerating when I did, and essentially chased me to my door, where I was hardly able to maneuver around him to get inside without him coming too. He complained about that for about three minutes.

This particular kitty's not looking so good, either - he's got some open sores and his back was a little crusty. He was in pretty good shape last time I saw him, so go figure... He obviously is used to having people, and was probably looking for some comfort.


In other news, iTunes has allowed me to keep my podcasts from my old computer on the condition that I do not subscribe to the podcast again. Weird.

I love how, upon sensing that I badly need to clean my room and also that my feet hurt and I'd like not to walk...

I sit down at my laptop, recreate my usual filing system, set up a new and experimental alternative to throwing whatever files I need on the desktop, rearrange Stacks, fiddle with Preferences, and set up a new desktop image.

In a similar vein, my new current screensaver, 梅花, is a slideshow of photos taken from the internet of plum blossoms, and I can finally type in Chinese.

I really like this new computer.