The Daily Fires

Journal inactive, completely covered in dust, and probably broken too.

Comments still occasionally left places.

Email: kassfireborn [gmail.com]. If I don't respond it probably means the email got lost or buried. Try again.

I posted this to imquotes, but I couldn't resist repeating it here:

ZombieHamster: Why do people suck?
Kass Fireborn: because of the rate of expansion of the universe.
Kass Fireborn: the fact that people constantly suck is helping to hold things together and slow the way the universe is flinging itself outward.


And I might have pimped Digger to scans_daily. Just a little.


I've also concluded there are only two things I really care about with paid accounts: having more than just the three icons (I don't feel like I need 100, but even ten feels cramped; three is just silly) and being able to make polls. I'm going to need to find someone to post a poll for July's grindstone, for example.


Went out and had fun tonight. Am v. tired and kind of scrambled today as consequence. Sigh.

Fishtato!
Spudfish Strikes Back

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Hi, my name is Kass, and I poke badgers with spoons!




I also poke Zazzles, but everybody pokes Zazzles.

(If you ask me to explain this on AIM, I will might.)

As Kass Vs The Malevolent Computer Gods continues, we find the Malevolent Computer Gods (or the MCGs) in a comfortable lead, but I have impressively come from behind to be, if not exactly doing well, at least not in the negative numbers anymore.

See, when I first attempted to hook everything up to transfer, I figured things would be fine, so I unhooked everything from Ifrit, my current computer, moved it out of the way, and moved HAL (...it started as a joke), the new one, into place, hooking everything up to that. I get everything set up so I can cross-connect, start HAL... and don't even get through boot. It asks for the system disk which, uh, oops. It's in Washington DC.

Much disgusted rearranging later, Ifrit was back set up, I felt like death--hauling HDs in my condition is impressively unwise--and Canth was hunting around online to figure the problem and come up with a way to fix it.

Which we managed to do, requiring only a floppy to use to get through boot. The floppy gets made, I shuffle technology around some more and get HAL set up with all my non-working technology--the keyboard missing the SNVCL and left arrow keys, the bad mouse, and Slade's "I'd use it except the ghosting makes me physically ill" monitor--inserted the disk, and turned it on. And waited. And got the damn error again.

So Canth tells me to reboot and keep my eye on the floppy drive and see if the light comes on at all... which it doesn't. For those of you playing along at home, this means that not only will HAL not finish booting, but the floppy drive also isn't connected.

I don't blame this on Carrie, for the record; I blame this on me. This is me-luck.

So Canth gnaws and ponders and plots, and having your tech support on another continent really blows sometimes, but eventually he comes up with a way to burn a CD to boot with, and let me just say, renatus, whatever other difficulties Ifrit and I may have had, it's CD burner has always brought me only the greatest joy. I love that thing to bits.

Thus, we finally get HAL to stop hanging in boot--though there was some business with file names that required burning a second CD--and load the OS to find... the OS has cracked. And yes, I'm going to have to reformat the whole damn thing and start over. *sighs*

So... the good news is, we know what's wrong. The bad news is, the system disks are somewhere in the mail, so I'm still limping along on Ifrit, which is sweet but increasingly neurotic as its system is overstrained.

Oh, and the monitor Amy gave me refuses to speak to HAL, or rather HAL refuses to speak to it, so for those of you playing that home game, that makes three non-working, flawed, or dying monitors around here.

But Amy took me out for lunch on Thursday, so there is that. With luck, my next post will actually be sort of positive--maybe I'll have successfully transfered, or I could share some pictures I've taken with Tink, the camera Canth got me for Christmas, or something.


ETA: Not that I am DYING OF ENVY OF DIANE or anything.

I have survived the visit from alisandre without completely breaking myself physically (mostly due to somewhat-late but not entirely hopeless arrival of new shoes), and having miraculously only spent a mere $15 (not including, of course, price of shoes). In addition to these astounding feats, I have also visited several art galleries, introduced several people to Tink (my one true love; also, a Canon Powershot A400 that canthlian got me for Christmas), visited the Aviary and taken scads of pictures despite the fact Tink and I haven't quite worked out some focus issues and I couldn't photograph any birds in cages or behind wire mesh (Tink focused beautifully, actually, just not on the object in question; before I gave up I achieved several amazingly well-done, beautifully-captured, highly-defined shots of wire mesh, with a bit of a bird-blob in the background), been to elfowls_nest's house, met several cats, visited the Incline, given impromptu car-tours of Oakland and East Carson Street, been talked through locating nebulawindphone's house thus that not only shall I be able to do it again, but I also have a better sense of just where the hell Friendship is, and miraculous not gotten lost even once. Not necessarily all in that order.

Also, I have a new tower, a new monitor, and the cables necessary to transfer all the stuff from my old tower over to the new one. o.O That all went... surprisingly smoothly. Thanks scads to both Carrie and Amy.

And before I forget, Happy Birthday to ladyluna.

I could explain this. I just elect not to.



ETA: That "Where are you from?" should be taken to mean, "Where'd you get your accent?" just in case that's not obvious.

Every so often, someone links me to something so mind-boggling it begs to be shared. And tonight, it's this:

"Cows look calm, but really they are gay nymphomaniacs."

I have no words.

I very seldom post much in the way of fannish ideas, ideals, or navel-gazing. It's not so much that I don't participate in fandom, both in the broader sense of SF/F/H fandom, which I'm undeniably active in, and in the more modern online usage which involves the fic and the icons and the vids and the meta and the communities and mailing lists, which I do lurk around the edges of a lot. (My one attempt at becoming more active in a fandom seems to have fizzled, much to my disappointment, and even that was rather oblique.) But every so often I have a thought, or more accurately an opinion, that I find myself wanting to share, and this is where the other reason I seldom post fannish thoughts comes in--I usually tend to get partway along in writing them, then get distracted by other, shinier things, and forget about the post in question until it's rendered invalid by other developments. For example, the post I was writing defending The Matrix Reloaded, which was more or less blown out of the water by the vast river of suck that was Revolutions. A post I'm working on about the HP Houses, their relation to to the elements, how you can characterize them in terms of obstacles, and how no, the Slytherins really are not rebels, is something I'm hoping won't suffer a similar fate.

But something's been bothering me related to a fandom for a while now... and I've only bit by bit come to understand that it's upsetting me not just for what it means in terms of that fandom, but also for a number of personal connections. So, since it'll be keeping in the general tone of my regular LJ--random silly post, billboardish notice post, random silly post, real life drama, real life drama, meme, billboardish notice post, repeat until infinity--I actually decided to sit down and finish this one.

There's a new show on FOX this season called House, and quite miraculously, given FOX's history with anything decent, it's managed to get at least a full season from the network. It's not something I ever would have expected to like, being at least nominally a medical drama... but really, it's not. It's sort of a medical mystery, which due emphasis on the latter, and even that is aided and abetted a lot by one of the show's real joys: the snark. There are also some surprisingly complex and interesting interpersonal relationships between the characters... but by itself, none of that probably would have gotten me into the show. I might have watched, but for the same reasons I watch 24 and NCIS sometimes--because it's entertaining, and both my mother and I like it and are willing to watch it together, which is an increasing rarity.

What made me love the show was--well, is, at least for the moment--the main character. Gregory House is, in his own words, a board (emphasis his) certified diagnostician with a double specialty of infectious disease and nephrology. He's also a snarky bastard, and a character descendant of Sherlock Holmes (the brilliant, somewhat neurotic, puzzle-solver). But more importantly for me, at least on a personal level, he had an infarction in his leg about six years back, didn't catch it, and ended up with muscle death, resulting in his having to hobble around with the aid of a cane... and also resulting in his having to constantly be on Vicodin.

Now, the number of chronically-in-pain characters in the media and fiction is, um.... Well, I'm sure if you give me some time I could come up with another one, but I would need that time. And when you factor in the constant, casual popping of Vicodin, I've been thrilled.

Some of you are already thinking something that's part of the reason I'm disgusted now.

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rosaleendhu asked for a rant on the weather. (....)

It's freezing outside,
and it's damn near that inside.
I hate wintertime.

I mean, snow is fun,
but it makes driving a bitch,
which makes mom one, too.

Bad insulation
is a problem in this house;
the bathtub freezes.

And by that I mean,
the shower curtain gets iced,
stuck to the tub's back.

I wear hobo gloves-
gloves with the fingers cut out--
but still, my poor hands.

Our cat won't go out,
so she gets cabin fever,
and breaks stuff for fun.

I don't love summer,
it's too hot, and too humid,
but better than this.


jaenanda asked for a rant on people who eat fish and poultry but still say they're vegetarians:

Vegetarian:
it means only vegetables.
So why the chicken?

If you claim no meat,
poultry and fish aren't kosher.
That's just cheating, mate.

Like fish don't feel, too.
Chickens are decent people.
George Carlin says so.

So, if 'no red meat'
is the 'tarian you are,
leave the 'vege' out.


Go, leave your own topic.