February 2007
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
I like fortune cookies. Whenever my dad gets a rice bowl on the way home from work, he gives me the fortune cookie. I believe I've posting a few of the fortunes that I've gotten on here before. Anyway, yesterday I went and picked him up a rice bowl while I was out running errands and I came home and ate the cookie. This was my fortune: "Someone is interested in you. Keep your eyes open." lmao Sure. ;) Already I know that these things aren't going to come true, but if I didn't before now, this fortune would make it so. lol I just thought it was funny. And now that I've wrote about my funny fortune, I think I shall go and throw it in the recycle bin! :D
Not really anything else to post about right now. I'm hoping to get some work done on one or more of my stories over this coming week, but we'll see how that goes. I did edit one thing some last night and I typed up a few hand written notes as well. Oh yeah, and on Sunday I attempted to have my voice recognition software transcribe a few of my recordings for the first time. Wow. It so did not work. lol To be fair though, they weren't terribly proper recordings for transcribing (as in I was doing something else while talking or was talking quitely because I made the recording in the middle of the night when my parents were asleep and I didn't want to chance waking them). So, I'll have to try again another time. Maybe I'll even try plugging in my microphone and having it transcribe as I talk. That could be good for practice. :)
Friday, February 23, 2007
I almost can't believe it. I'm finished testing and updating all of the TCG Admin files... and they all work good. Do you think it's really so? Just watch a problem come up later with something. ;) lol For now though, I'm happy and in a much better mood than just a couple of hours ago. *sigh* My monitor is freakishly bright, and turing the brightness down does nothing except for mess with the colors. It's starting to cause more eye strain than I normally have had in the past or would with my laptop, etc., and I can't seem to find anything of much help by searching online. *double sigh* I guess this means I'll have to call support and I hope I end up getting someone who can help me, and hope that it's actually something I can do, and not just that my screen is evily bright forever.
The other thing that was agitating me a bit ago was that I sent my old host (that I just moved the last of my sites off of, so they're now all on DreamHost) a "help ticket" five days ago to cancel my account and it has not been done yet! @#*! My mom says that it's really not all that long and I should give them more time, but I have cancelled many hosting accounts in the past and none of them ever took more than two, MAYBE three, days. They'd better do it soon. Either that or I'm going to have to call my credit card company and tell them to refuse payment of it. Either way, I'm not paying them for another month.
Earlier my mom and I went out to lunch with a lady from church, and that was nice. I ate ice cream though, so that wasn't so nice. I mean, it tasted pretty darn good, but oh, it was bad. I'm not sure if I mentioned on here or not, but I've started up doing Weight Watchers again. So, my 6-inch sub sandwich, the orange juice, and the one scoop of ice cream used up my entire allotted points for the day. *cringe* Ouch. It hurts. But, I also had my breakfast drink this morning, two little chocolates, veggies and an apple today as well. The veggies are zero points, so that's okay, and the apple is only one, so not a big deal, but the others... they had to come out of the weekly extra that you get. So far I'm not really sticking to the plan. Blarg.
Now, I am torn between implementing some of the changes to the script at Harmony Alley right now, or waiting a bit and watching the last of Love's Long Journey on TV. Which, by the way, is a fabulous movie. Heck, I'll probably be staying up late anyway, might as well take a break from the BLINDING computer screen for a bit. Heh.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
I've spent a lot of time the last few days working on making card decks for Harmony Alley. lol That and, you know, watching TV and whatnot. ;) I made soup yesterday, too, so I wasn't totally non-accomplishing. ;)
Today, though, I have done a decent amount of stuff. I worked out a bit and while doing so brainstormed some on two different stories into my voice recorder, so that was double good. Of course, I was only at the two things for 10 minutes, but that's better than nothing and at least a start. lol I stopped largely because I haven't read over much of my writing stuff for quite a while and I couldn't remember any more things to work on off of the top of my head. lol
I also started the final testing phase for my TCG Admin script today. I've gone over the majority of the pages in the script, but the ones remaining will take the longest. lol I also decided to change how two parts of the script worked and add some to them, so that will need testing in the next few days. The testing so far also uncovered a couple of descrepencies which I fixed, so woo haw! I'm hoping to release it the second or third week of March, so we'll see how it goes. :) Writing up instructions in the part I'm least looking forward to; that, and customization tips. Oh, fun. But, it must be done. (And obviously I've been sitting my computer for too long or something to be rhyming already. Ha!)
Tomorrow I shall try and be productive again. :)
Monday, February 19, 2007
I'll start out with the big news first: Val's engaged! I talked to her on the phone last night after not having done so for months (she's been really busy), and that's what she told me! lol I called her up and she was just leaving so she said she'd call me back and that she had lots to tell me. In the time between when I hung up then and when she called back later I thought that her getting married was definitely a possibility, and my intuition was so right! lol They're going to be really smart, too, and are going to wait to get married until after they've both finished school in a few years. Good for them, I say, and I told Val that I approved of a long engagement. ;) We talked about other stuff too, of course, but that was the big thing.
Let's see... I believe that Thursday I hung out with Emily for a while, which was fun. Then Friday I went and watched Bridge to Terabithia since we opened it. Egh. I decided I do not like that movie. There are multiple reasons that I don't, but since it's been a few days I don't feel like remembering them and typing them all out. ;) lol Saturday I believe was mostly spent hanging out at home. I watched Richie Rich on TV that night! Hehehe. It'd been a long time since I saw that one!
Yesterday was pretty much just hanging here and having the chat with Val in the evening. Today I got some stuff done on my computer and then I finally decided to watch the extended edition DVD of Narnia! They didn't really add a whole lot, but I liked what they did, and it's just a spiffin' movie anyway, so who could complain? Oh, and they started filming Prince Caspian a little over a week ago!!! *does super happy dance* The only bummer is we still have to wait until 2008 for the final product. *sigh* It's still exciting though! :)
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
I finally got TWO17.net back up! I've been working on it for the last three or four days. First I had to finish setting up the script I wrote (I used most of my base code from TCG Admin and then changed it for a photo blog, lol), then I had to setup the pages to display it, and then yesterday and today I was adding photos and comments and fixing the last few bugs (which there are hopefully no more of). So yes, now it is back up!! WOO! And now I can get to work on adding new images. I have a bunch, I just couldn't add them because I was going to change the system and then I decided to switch hosts, etc., etc. Anyway, hopefully I can get some of those up in the next few days or something. Of course, that might not happen because now I'll probably start transfering over the last remaining domain at my old host to this host. I've got to get that done before the billing date comes around again because I don't want to have to pay for another month that I don't need and am not going to use.
In other news, yesterday I went and watched Freedom Writers again. This time Emily went with me since she hadn't seen it yet. GOOD movie. Afterwards I was bad and suggested that we go to McDonald's for ice cream, so we did. I don't think it terribly ruined the diet, but I'm sure it wasn't a plus. lmao While we were there we talked about different things, one of which was possibly going back to school, etc. Funny.
Today I got the Spring quarter class schedule in the mail. lol Even though I haven't gone for over a year, they still mail me the schedules every quarter. I guess they just want to milk me for more money. And, you know, I'm considering it. lol I considered it before the current quarter started as well, but figured that wouldn't be a good idea since I was looking for a full-time job. Now I'm thinking I'm probably just going to have to get a part-time job somewhere for a while, and there's two classes I'd like to take... so I'm considering. I bares more thought and heavy prayer. At least I've got about a week before I need to decide and send in an application. (I could do a big rant about that, but I'll spare you.)
Oh yes, and Happy Valentine's Day to you all. :) My mom gave me a lovely card and some hair accessories that are very nice. Then, my dad came home with flowers for my mom (of course), and he brought some for me too. Then, they invited me to go to dinner with them as well. And all I gave them were the little school-style Valentines. *sigh* I told them thank you and reitterated that I love them. I guess I'll blame it on not really being into this holiday too much. Besides, all the people I love know it and hear me tell them so often. Next year maybe I'll try to be good though and get them each a little something more than a paper with a heart on it.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
I had a little computer scare today. When I turned on my desktop and came back to see that windows had loaded, there was an error message that my computer had just recovered from a fatal error. That's the same thing that happened the day after I setup my computer, so that was not a good sign. I quickly made backups of all my files and while those were burning to disk, I got on my laptop and searched the internet to see if I could figure out what was wrong.
The most recent program I installed was Cake Mania Deluxe, so I searched google and ended up going to a link that was at the game creator's forum. Apparently other people were having some problems (not sure if it was exactly like mine), and it was possibly related to having had the trial version of the game on your computer (which I had) and it not getting fully uninstalled properly (registry values). So, I uninstalled the game, deleted the registry values, then restored my computer to before I installed it a few days ago, and deleted those registry values for it. I then decided to shut down the computer for a while hoping that maybe a rest would help it heal. lmao Anyway, praise God (and much thanks to Him!), when it restarted there was no error message, so I'm hoping it was just the game and now my computer is okay (continues to ask God for that to be so). I'm not going to re-install the game for a while. lol I'll probably put it on my laptop and see how that goes or something since I never had the trial version on there. Anyway...
Speaking of such things, I wonder if it's okay for me to ask God to let my computer be okay? It's an inatimate object and a material thing which I'm not taking to Heaven with me. On the other hand, I'm using it now and not having problems with it would really be nice. I hope God doesn't mind.
Brand new Kim Possible episodes aired on Disney Channel tonight so I watched all four of them. lol I had it written on my board all week as a reminder. I can't help it, it's a cool show. ;) That was sort of the highlight of the evening I guess.
I still haven't watched the extended DVD of Narnia, but I did watch The Last Unicorn last night and it was great--wonderfully restored. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it, especially if you really like Fantasy stories. :) They were going to film a live action version of the film, but it looks like that's stalled. I hope it will get picked up again soon though, because I think a live action version would be awesome and the technology is definately able to produce the kinds of visual effects it will require.
I shall now be going to Disneyland in a few weeks instead of for my birthday. This way my dad gets to go down to see his mom (who is doing pretty good right now) and some other family will be there at the same time, so that will be good. And, I'm excited because my cousin Mike said he'll have time to hang out with me! lol I'm hoping to see as many of my other cousins as I can as well, but almost all the rest of them are still in school of some sort, so it's a little harder to find times to get together. Which reminds me that I need to talk to Don a well because I've got to try yet again to see his place that he's had for a few years and I still haven't seen. lmao But yeah, so no Disneyland on my birthday, but that's totally okay, and this is more off-peak season anyway so lines will be shorter! lol
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Cake Mania causes pain in the mouse hand. Yes, it does. lol Or, at least it does for me because I get all intense with it. lol So, I ordered the deluxe version of it off of Amazon and it came today. The first 10 levels aren't that hard, but then... holy cow! lol Customers get harder to please and you have to move so much faster and I just had to foce myself to stop for the night or I was going to have serious issues. As it is, along with my right hand hurting from pushing the mouse around, my right eye is messed up from strain. Left eye is fine, but the right eye is currently unhappy. So, I'm trying to stare at my fingers typing on the keyboard as much as possible right now. Therefore, please excuse any typos. lol My eye hurts, I'm not that concerned with typos. ;) After I'm done typing this I'll have to take a break from screens for a while.
Along with Cake Mania, I also got Ashley Tisdale's CD. I'm liking it pretty good. I knew that I would at least like a few songs, and I like more than that, so hey, not a waste of money. ;) lol I probably never would have even considered buying it if I hadn't heard some of the songs at the High School Musical concert. I like "He Said She Said" and "Be Good To Me" the best thus far. :)
My mom and I also went out for a bit of shopping. I got two new t-shirts and two pairs of shorts--which means I now own a total of two pairs of shorts! lmao At least, shorts that aren't for sleeping in. ;) They're actually long too, so I couldn't pass up getting them. So many shorts now are WAY too short for me, so when I find ones that are longer and I like them, got to snag them up. I almost considered buying another pair too, but I decided that would not be wise and I should just go with the two for now. They're a little too tight to wear right now because I've been bad with food lately, but today I began turning that around. So, I'm going to lose at least 10 lbs before my birthday, hopefully a little more. Wish me luck! At least I've been drinking more water lately... that should help. ;) Anyhow...
I also got the 25th anniversary edition of The Last Unicorn on DVD! :D I've had it on VHS for a few years, and they released it on DVD a few years ago, but I heard that one was really bad quality. This one is remastered so it should be good--I haven't watched it yet. Speaking of haven't watched DVDs, I also got the Extended version of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe in the mail the other day and haven't checked that out yet. I tried to talk myself out of buying it, but Disney's got that stupid vault thing and I missed my chance at getting Beauty and the Beast on DVD, so I decided I had to nab this one up even though I shouldn't have spent my money on it. lol At least I got it off of eBay for cheaper than even Amazon had it, so that made it easier to justify to myself.
I also discovered yesterday that Apple makes an orange iPod Shuffle, so I must now refrain from buying that for myself. lol It's just so cute and so my favorite color. ARGH! Must not be so materialistic. I will not buy it... at least, not until I have a job and an extra $80 to throw around, which won't be for a while. I want to save money to get a new (used) car for me first, anyway. It's funny though because just of the few things that I got at Wal*Mart today, I spent pretty much the same amount as if I would have bought that iPod Shuffle. lmao But as my mom said, shoes are more of a necessity anyway, so that part was at least okay spending. ;) Now I must save, save, save!
Oh, and I guess I have to bring this entry down to a more somber note here. :( My dad's mom is not doing well. She's had Alzheimer's and been in a home for a few years and now they've discovered a tumor in her breast, so it probably won't be real long for her now. They're not even going to do full tests to confirm it's breast cancer, and if it is, they're not going to treat it; reason being that she's so old and already has health problems and her body probably couldn't stand up to the treatments. :( So, now I'm just praying she doesn't end up being in a lot of pain, and that my dad and my aunts and uncles and cousins on that side can get time with her before she goes and be comforted once it happens. It's sad for me, but it's not as bad for them since I never really got to know her being that she's my step-grandmother and lives far away, then got Alzheimer's. My poor daddy though. Anyway, if you're the praying sort, maybe just pray that she's not in a lot of pain and comfort for the family knowing she's going to pass away probably within a year. Thanks. :)
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
I finally got around to putting up my pictures from the HSM concert. You can view them by going into the girl section, then concerts, then High School Musical The Concert, or you can just be lazy and click here to go straight there. :) Keep in mind that's about half the pictures I actually took; the rest I deemed unworthy and deleted. lol Most of these ones are pretty darn good, but I did leave in a few I only thought were okay just because. I also sized them down from their much larger original size. They're still pretty big though (almost 800x600 or vise-versa for vertical).
Getting that concert page done made me think about also doing the ones for my first two BSB concerts, but then I realized that the vast majority of my BSB stuff is now in storage, so I couldn't scan the tickets. Also, I looked in my old journal (a hand-written one) to see if I'd written about them in there to help jog my memory. Well, I did write about both of them, but it wasn't very much. lol Apparently, though, I typed out a lengthy version of the Millennium concert. I sort-of remember that, I guess. The only place it would be though is in one of my scrapbooks with the rest of the BSB stuff, I'm sure--if it's even still around. So, not sure when I'll be doing those ones. lol
That was my "big accomplishment" for today. lol I also started moving TWO17 over here to DreamHost, but that's just the domain name propagating. I still need to write out the script I'm going to end up using for posting images. I'm basically taking my code from TCG Admin and modifying it for photo blogging purposes (specifically how I want mine setup). Now I just need to do it. lol Now that the domain is moving over though, that should help encourage me... I hope. ;)
Monday, February 5, 2007
I finished watching the movies I rented last night with The Illusionist. Good movie. Would have been better if they'd not included a particular scene, but it seems that many PG-13 movies are making it a point to have stuff like that in them. *sigh* Anyway, I did not see the ending coming, and it was good, so props to the writer! You know, I think so many times when people see movies they give all the credit to the actors and the director... but there'd be no movie without the writer. ;) How To Eat Fried Worms was funny, and, like so many other Disney animated sequals, The Fox and the Hound 2 wasn't very good. I won't be getting that one, but I think I shall probably end up ordering the orignal one of these days if I have enough money. lol
This evening I made a layout for paraph.net. It still needs to be sliced and coded, and then I have to make content, of course, but at least it's something as opposed to nothing! ;) lol I'm excited. I actually started it Saturday, but only got the background done (which didn't take very long). Then yesterday during church I got the idea for how to have the rest of it look and doodled it (I was still listening and it only took a minute or two!). So, today when I got back from some errands, I started on it... and then finished it! :) I used paths again, too! There are some vines, and then I made some simple flowers. The flowers proved to be rather difficult to free-draw on the computer, so I drew them on paper, scanned them, then traced them with the pen tool and that worked pretty darn good! lol I'm pretty happy with it; as it is the majority of times, it doesn't look exactly like I pictured it, but it's close enough for me. ;)
There's a possibility that I may get to go to Disneyland on my birthday again this year! It was just so darn nice for my 20th, why not go my 22nd if I get the chance? I'm telling you, that's the place to go on your birthday (at least once, more if you can). Lots of people wish you a happy birthday! I wore a whole bunch of Tigger stuff when I went before and Tigger gave me a big hug for a picture! :D It's not really related to Disney, but it makes me want to sing the Toys-R-Us theme song: I don't want to grow up... lol
Friday, February 2, 2007
I'm a little proud of myself. lol Last night I decided it was time to finish the Batman Begins wallpaper I was making for my desktop. When I finished adding all the cool textures and stuff, it still felt like there was a little something missing. So I wondered to myself if I could manage to make a trace of the bat logo (from that movie) using the pen tool and paths. I haven't worked much with paths and only recently did I manage to create a shape I wanted with the pen tool. Happy day, I did and it looks awesome! :D It was just what the wallpaper needed to have a semi-large version of it in the middle. Then, just as I was typing this now I had the sudden brilliant realization that I could probably make the path into a custom shape that I could just draw with the shape tool... and I could, and I did, and it's rad! lol And after that, I was like, "hey! I could make a pixel of the bat!" So I did. lol If anyone wants a way rad card template for a Batman TCG, just give me a holler. ;)
Anyway, in other news of things, I worked on the scripts site a fair amount this evening. Mostly I was re-doing the other two scripts I have (not TCG Admin) and creating their pages. I figured I'd get that out of the way first since it's not as much work. I also created a few of the standard site pages as well, and fixed a boo-boo in my CSS code that was making the site display wrong. Hopefully that part won't be an issue anymore. ;)
I think I was going to write about a few other things as well, but then I got all side-tracked with the shape thing and pixeling and making a card template for a TCG that I'll never make. lmao But like I said, if anyone reading this wants to make a Batman TCG, let me know and I could be willing to give you the card template I just made! lol I've still got my way rad Narnia template sitting on my computer as well as one with a film strip look that would work for a generic movie TCG. Too bad I can't make a living designing online TCG card templates. Ha ha! Okay, now I'm going to go and watch one of the movies I rented the other day. Ta!
Thursday, February 1, 2007
I'm back! :) I moved this domain over to DreamHost finally. I've got a couple more to move over before the end of this month. I decided to do this one now so that I could not have to deal with moving over the MT databases and just start fresh on a new month. lol All my archives are still visible, of course, in the archives section (you can find the link to your right). :) So, anyway, all seems to have gone smoothly, and will hopefully continue to do so. *prays that now she's said that there are no surprise problems.* I even updated a few things around the site and will hopefully do more of that soon. I should really get up the concert pictures from HSM, and do write-ups for the other two remaining concerts, so hopefully I will do that some time this month or something. :)
In other news, today (aka Jan 31st since it's only a little over an hour into Feb) I left the house for a while to go grocery shopping with my mom! lol I rented four movies while I was at it, too! And, from two seperate places. lmao The grocery store does not have the original The Fox and the Hound movie, so I had to get that one from Blockbuster (which they finally had in!!), and then from the store I got: The Fox and the Hound 2, How To Eat Fried Worms and The Illusionist. So far I've just watched The Fox and the Hound. It'd been quite a while since I'd last seen it, and I was considering buying it since they just released the 25th Anniversary version, so I thought I should rent it first to make sure I still like it. I do. :) Not sure when I'll have money to buy it though. lol I heart Tod though. I even drew a picture of him years ago (which I should scan and put up here in my drawings). It's a sad movie, but also happy. I'll see how the second one is tomorrow probably.
I also finished getting things setup here (obviously). Hopefully I didn't forget to upload anything. lol If you come across a problem with the code or a missing page or something, it'd be great if you'd let me know. :) Anyway, then I decided that I might as well send off for my free Express Upgrate to Vista even though I won't be installing it until after the first service pack comes out. I got triple happiness out of the whole process too! I know, you're shocked. lol Anyway, through HP's site I could fill out all the info and send it in online, which was nice. Then, I thought I'd have to pay for the shipping and handling for it because I didn't think the place I got my comptuer from was offering to cover that, but then, I didn't! It was zero dollars and zero cents! :D Happy day! lol Finally, it said to complete the process I had to send proof of purchase. I was like, "oh, I guess I have to mail that." Nope. You can scan it and e-mail it to them... so I did! What fun! Yes, fun. lol Much easier and nicer that way. :)
I went and told my mom about that, then my dad, and when I told my dad, he asked me if I could crop some pictures for items he wants to put on eBay in Photoshop. I tried to write him a tutorial on how to do it himself so he wouldn't always have to ask me, but, as he told me, I apparently needed to write the "Idiots" version, and I did not. In other words, he needed more explanation than I gave. ;) But, I am proud and happy to say that the second set of pictures my dad did almost all on his own--with me talking him through it and doing a couple things, but still! lol Go dad!
Oh yes, and then when I called Emily I was reminded that my stupid bank is changing my checking account over starting today (Feb 1st), and I forgot about it. It wouldn't be a problem except that before I didn't have to pay a monthly fee, and now I have to... and now they don't offer any free checking plans. The only way it's free is if I have a direct deposit every month, which is not possible for me. Grr. I just got new checks, too! So, now I'm going to have to pay the stupid fee for this month since I forgot to check further into it before now (letter got buried under other things on my desk). As soon as the last of my checks and stuff clear out though, I'm totally switching banks! There are so many banks that offer free checking without stupid requirements, there's no point in staying with mine and paying a fee. Blarg. On the up-side, when I get the new account later this month I can order myself either Narnia checks or PotC checks. :D lol I liked the ones that I just got (also Disney related), but there's nothing to do about that now. *sigh* Anyway, now I think I shall go and read. :)
