The title describes the day as well as the picture. Those are my del.icio.us tags. Get your own pretty tag cloud from your del.icio.us tags or your own text at http://wordle.net/create By way of Bear's LJ.

Hope we get to play tonight. This is, of course, the only night with predicted rain. Lovely.

  Have a Little Faith in Me, Mandy Moore
  Traitor's Moon, Lynn Flewelling
file under: webetcetera Posted by Jen at 10:41 AM | Permalink MTIfCommentsActive>|

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I downloaded...did you?

file under: webetcetera Posted by Jen at 4:27 PM | Permalink MTIfCommentsActive>|

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This is a big day.

Happy Anniversary to my parents. I'm so proud of you for staying together and staying in love. <3 <3 <3

Happy Birthday to Kate and Gordon! *party*

And this website turns six. Six years I've been doing this. Six years of very infrequent blogging and not so often with the layout changes...

I really should have gotten a new layout up. I've got one almost ready, but I've been a bit stymied by the changes MT4 made to their default code, so it's...not...quite...there yet. Soon.

Still writing, still reading, still dreaming. Have a great day, folks.

  New Moon, Stephenie Meyer (yes, again)
file under: celebration , reallife , webetcetera Posted by Jen at 10:04 AM | Permalink MTIfCommentsActive>|

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Here there be monsters...

So here you go. After nearly a year, a new layout. Pirates, again. Sorry for the long wait. Things in RL decided to be more important. Besides, I really liked the old layout. This one isn't so fancy, but I had fun with it.

Tonight I get to see PotC 3 with Leah at 9:30. Yay for advance showings! Will let you know all about it tomorrow.

Boo for my poor little iBook which is currently (hoepfully) on its way to the Apple Depot to get a new logic board. Maybe. It has been acting really funny, but of course it acts fine for the people at the Apple Store. I actually stopped in twice, and neither time did the laptop go wonky. I made them take it anyway. It's still under warranty, after all. Here's hoping it doesn't get erased. At least I have my story file.

  "Singapore," from the At World's End soundtrack

file under: celebration , movies , orlando , webetcetera Posted by Jen at 11:15 AM | Permalink MTIfCommentsActive>|

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Yes, I'm late on posting. But lest you thought I'd forgotten what a momentous day it is today, I thought I should put something up...

It's Kate's (friend) and Gordon's (coworker) and Leah's boyfriend Peter's (you need more clarification?!) birthday today. (triple yay!)

My parents have been married for 31 years. (double yay!)

This website has been live for 5 years. (yay!)

Anything else I've forgotten? Aside from the writer's meetup tonight...

Hard to believe I've been writing on this thing for five years. Just like it's hard to believe that a) it's been five years since I rocked it at the UAA championships in GA and b) I was actually *in* GA this past weekend. I'm not completely recovered, but I do have a nice tan

I promise you that there will be a new layout this year. Yes, I have had the same Pirates 2 layout since the movie came out last year, and *of course* I know that the 3rd comes out next month. I actually have three layouts started, just not finished. I'll get one up soon. Possibly after neurobio ends.

Thanks for reading. Let's see how long I can stick it out.

  Tonight, Jars of Clay
  American Gods, Neil Gaiman (trying it again)
file under: webetcetera Posted by Jen at 3:34 PM | Permalink MTIfCommentsActive>|

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Alrighty then. Etoiline is now hosted at Site5.com. Seems like a great deal, and everything seems to be working on their end. On MY end, however...this is mainly a test post to see if MT is acting up, because the other big database hog on my site is my gallery, which is most vociferously protesting working. Unfortunately before I changed DNS settings, I didn't look at the gallery installation and turn something off I should have before I ported it over. And I can't change it without changing the DNS settings back, but when I tried to do that earlier, the domain didn't resolve, when putting it at the new site took rather little time...maybe I'm just too impatient.

I just want to do a clean install of the whole thing, but I really don't want to have to relabel everything...

  the really loud heater
  Summer Knight, book 4 of the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher
file under: webetcetera Posted by Jen at 6:24 PM | Permalink MTIfCommentsActive>|

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So yesterday we finally got hi-speed internet for the apartment. Joy. But it certainly wasn't without its hassles.

First, we ordered it last week and never got a tracking number for the modem. Since our service was confirmed to be activated yesterday, I started looking at my account over the weekend to see if I could find out what was wrong. I finally realized monday night that for some reason the shipping address, which I'm pretty sure I specified as being the same as the billing address, only had our apartment number and not the street address. I called AT&T tuesday to see what could be done, and see if they had a tracking number for me. Lo and behold it was wrong there too, and of course they had already shipped it (which is good, I suppose, but don't you think someone would have noticed that it had no street number?)

The lady at AT&T (who was very nice, but I don't remember her name) actually called UPS while I was on the phone with her, and the not-so-nice lady there said there was nothing to be done about it at that moment, I would have to call the next day (when it was to be delivered) and change it with the delivery person. Sigh. So I wake myself up early and call the UPS distribution office and (of course) the package is already out for delivery and has been since 4:30 in the morning (according to the tracking number that the AT&T lady nicely provided). I explain my story over again, and *this* woman says I'll have to wait until there's one attempted delivery before they can change it. You might have noticed by now that I am NOT a morning person. And I was already annoyed that the whole thing had gone wonky, so I tried to be nice as I pointed out, "It has NO ADDRESS. How can it be ATTEMPTED if there is NO ADDRESS to deliver to?" "Oh, we have to check with the sender and see if they have it wrong." "The sender knows it's wrong. You know it's wrong. I know it's wrong. Why can't we change it today? The service is coming on today, and I don't want to pay for a day of service that I can't use because you won't try to change the address." "Oh, alright, I'll call AT&T and make sure this is right, and I'll attempt to call the deliveryperson."

Sigh. Thank goodness. They were supposed to call me at work to confirm that it was going to the right place, but they didn't, of course. I eventually called back to check, and lo and behold, it had arrived! The UPS guy must have thought my roommate was very popular since she had gotten packages (for me, natch) two days in a row.

So. We got the modem. Try to set it up, but the unhelpful folder containing the setup cd doesn't mention the fact that registration won't go through unless your default browser is Internet Exploder, which both I and the roommate, owning Macs, don't use. So we called AT&T, who was helpful and led us to the setup page (in IE, boo) so we could finish. Why couldn't the folder say, This registration requires IE. If you cannot use IE, please point your browser to.... Would have saved us a lot of trouble.

Okay! Fast internet, as long as you're plugged in. My roommate had a wireless router from her previous apartment, and it had been working, with a small snafu: the setup page was in Italian. Since neither of us speak more Italian than Ciao you can see how this would be a problem. I might have gone for the internet search route first, but my roomie called Linksys, and after about 15 minutes of trying to explain our problem to the tech guy from India (who was obviously just reading off a sheet) it finally got through to him that a) our setup page was in Italian and therefore we had no idea whick button to click and b) we were using Macs which technically aren't supported by Linksys (which is stupid, because the setup is EXACTLY THE SAME, just with a different OS look)...

The guy goes, "The setup page is in Italian?"
Us: "Yes, that's what we've been saying."

(Pause. A really long pause)

Him: "JESUS CHRIST!"

Which we both found hilarious. We totally stumped the tech guy, AND made him curse. So eventually we figure out which buttons to press, and we rename the router and configure it. Lo and behold, there is a wireless network! I can connect to it! So can anyone else! Therefore we must change the password.

He wanted us to use our phone number, which we both thought was silly, so we started thinking up combinations of our name and other numbers, etc, and they didn't work. He just kept telling us to use the phone number. Finally we got an error saying it needed a hex code or something, so I asked, "oh, does it have to be numeric?" And he said yes, as if he had been saying that all along, which he hadn't. What would have been so hard about saying, "use your phone # or other numeric code"? Sigh. We ended up using the phone number because we knew we could change it later.

BUT...

Somewhere between renaming the router and changing the password, it all went away. And we couldn't get it back. The guy kept telling us to go to the website and download things, which we couldn't do since everything was messed up. It ended with my roomie hanging up on the guy, unfortunately, and the router won't work now. I tried to reflash the firmware, but I don't think it went through. Ugh.

(ETA: one week later) The kicker of this is that there have been wireless networks floating around the apartment for years. It seems that there is at least one other Linksys router out there, and I think, somehow, we managed to change the settings on THAT router and not our own. I think this, because long after the router was disconnected to anything remotely resembling power or internet, the network we had named was still out there, but unconnectable. And to make it even more fun, one time when I was DIRECTLY connected to our router, the setup page connected us to somone else's router!

(ETA: October 1, 2006) Roomie had friends in town for her birthday, and the guy said the router was probably dead. Sigh. Roomie might try to get a refund since it's not that old, but I don't hold out much hope. I guess we can try getting another one on eBay or sth, because it's rather annoying to know that I could have gotten the network adaptor package and theoretically this wouldn't have happened. we didn't get it because she had the router...hopefully we can get it fixed soon.

And if you managed to read all that, have a cookie.

file under: funny , rants , webetcetera Posted by Jen at 9:50 AM | Permalink MTIfCommentsActive>|

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New Layout Time! No particular reason, just thought it was time, and I'm still fond of the Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe (even after seeing it three times) so here you go. Hope you like it...should have everything it needs on there, finally got some issues worked out, so items should be in proper places. Let me know what you think.

I really need to tell you about Vegas, and find time to take pictures of my haircut (it's not that short, really) but I'm finishing up the layout for the archives, so perhaps later.

Oh yes. Happy Royal Birthday, Cousin that I love

  Channel 4 News

file under: webetcetera Posted by Jen at 10:16 PM | Permalink MTIfCommentsActive>|

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Yay! I got my iBook back yesterday instead of today (or later in the week) and it was just fine. They said the main logic board had failed, and was replaced, and since it's still under warranty, it didn't cost me a thing! Sweet.

Of course, the silly thing is, even though I got the laptop back last night, I still only wrote about 730 words. Unfortunately that's less than half of what I needed. Behind already. Alas. But I'm working on it. I have more ideas still! I was just busy studying...you know, for that class I'm taking? We have a quiz tomorrow with twice the questions that are normally on the quiz, and that means I have to know all the parts of a skull. I'm screwed.

Oh well. I'm just glad that the comp is back and in working order. Of course it came back fine, but I don't trust my luck enough to not worry about it. And man was it weird to not have access to one for the weekend.

This week starts off a very busy month at work...lots of important studies going on. Unfortunately I can't take off work the day that the fourth HP movie comes out, nor can I attend a midnight premiere the evening before. Because while I can live with three hours of sleep, it's probably a bad idea the night before wielding sharp instruments. I might be able to finagle it so I can leave early and catch a matinee showing on opening day, but that night I have to help my parents set up for the big Parkway South Craft Show. Saturday I'll be at one of two craft shows, if my mom gets into the second one, so I might not be able to attend that day either. Sigh. I know that it's silly to be attached to a fandom like this, but I really do want to see it, and I hate waiting. Did I mention how I'm very much pro-instant gratification?

Wish me luck on NaNo. Bad idea to fall behind on the first day, but at least I've got the time to make it up I must remember to actually cook something for dinner tonight, though. It's been too long. Pasta here I come!

  The Lunatic Cafe
file under: celebration , webetcetera Posted by Jen at 9:34 AM | Permalink MTIfCommentsActive>|

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In honor of the new movie Elizabethtown coming out today, you have a new layout. Lots of new things tried in this design, and it's not finished yet. I hope you like it...it took me a long time to learn the CSS. Please forgive the odd placement while I try to figure out which stupid DIV tag isn't closed. Everything that you remember should be here, it just might be in an odd place. If you see something that you know absolutely cannot be right, comment, and I'll see if I can fix it. And if you notice it, it's most likely that I noticed it too, since it's still being updated. I hope to have an archive page redesign up soon, but it might be a while. I've got a list that's slowly but surely being checked off. If the colors are screamingly annoying, comment, and tell me what colors would be better. I like having my (ahem) fans' input.

Tonight not only do I get to see a movie with Orli, I get to see it at the Moolah Shrine Theater which has couches in the first five rows. Hopefully we'll snag one of those, but it's first come, first served, so who knows?

And it's official...I've got my tickets to Vegas. Now all I have to do is not spend any money from now until then, and I'll be ok...though I really want an iPod Nano for the trip. Wouldn't that be grand.

file under: movies , orlando , webetcetera Posted by Jen at 12:25 PM | Permalink MTIfCommentsActive>|

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Finally, the blog is back up again. You might not have noticed, since the index page was still up, but I had to go back in and reinstall everything before I could get the entries I made last week to show up. So yes, I'm still here, but just now had time to download and reupload everything. Cross your fingers that things continue to work.

Tonight is the writer's meetup for the month and I feel bad. I did very little writing, and I can't claim the MCAT as an excuse this time I do have a story idea for this year's NaNo, but it would involve me learning about religion, which I don't know if I would feel comfortable doing. It's not that I'm not religious; I just don't want it shoved in my face for a month. If that's not it though...I need a new idea.

And I shouldn't be thinking about that anyway, since med school application should take precedence. But I'm sure you all know how good I am with precedence...Right now my problem is knitting/crocheting. I learned how to knit sometime last year, but the very first project I did (forgive the link, the gallery isn't working correctly right now so the picture links are crucked. Just saving the place for future reference) was lost, so I wanted to try to make another hat out of the same yarn, with a matching scarf. Turns out that they don't make that color yarn anymore, so I'm going to improvise and make a hat and scarf with fuzzy trim. Yeah. And I got a free pattern for easy crochet, so I'm trying to do that too. It's darned hard to keep the number of chains right. In knitting you can usually clearly see where the next stitch is, but the yarn that I'm using for crochet is very bulky, which is usually good, things go faster. But in this case it obscures where the next loop is...so I've got a very lopsided scarf begun as I try to increase and decrease...I've got a shawl in the works too. Maybe if I ever finish you'll get pictures.

Since I couldn't post here for the past week, I put an entry on LJ asking why YOU think I should be in med school. So far the only response I got (feel free to add to this here ) was from my loverly friend Punz, who contributed the following:

Subject: Why Jen Should Go To Med School
1. because she wants to
2. because she's clever
3. because she has lots of medicalistical/sciencey experience (ie labortaory work)
4. because she's compassionate and cares about people
5. because she listens well and would therefore have a great bedside manner, and because talking about bedside manner can lead to silly jokes about in-bed manner, and so on, and who would want to pass up that opportunity?
6. because she knows she wants to and isn't just like hmm maybe?
7. because she's worked in a related field thinger for a while and has proven her gumption and ability to stick it out. even though med school is hard.
8. because she's awesome and [insert school here] would be goshdarn lucky to have her.

If only the med schools were nice like Punz. I doubt she would charge me $160 to send an application, either. Help me out, huh?

I think I'll get a credit card sometime soon, because I sure don't want to have to pay all of these application fees at once. And I suppose it would be good to have something for Vegas. We'll see. Seems like I'm venturing into realms unknown quite a bit lately. I hate the feeling ouf floundering, being out of my depth, but I think I just might have to get used to it.

At least I can fix my MT installation and finally get Thunderbird (Mozilla's answer to Outlook Express; download it now!) to work on both my home and work computers. Silly strange plus sign in username. Now if I could only get the old gallery links to work.

Off to work.

file under: celebration , webetcetera Posted by Jen at 10:45 AM | Permalink MTIfCommentsActive>|

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...or make new layouts. (the title is from the Oscar-nominatee for Best Song from the movie version of Phantom, sung by Minnie Driver in the film and Beyonce on the show, for some unknown reason...) I've actually had this done for a while, just never got around to putting it up. I was a little busy, if you hadn't noticed. Hopefully this layout will only be up for a few months, as I hope to do something cool for Kingdom of Heaven, and that opens in May...we'll see, I suppose. I need good pictures first.

And on the computer front...things are going ok, mostly. There are some printer issues, but perhaps it will work out. It's very pretty, though, and sometimes it jumps on someone's wireless network, though it's titled my apartment number. Weird. I have to restrain myself from playing with it, since there are more important things to do like studying for orgo (speaking of which, I think the lab midterm was a near total disaster; thank goodness it's only worth a lab report). I could tell you all about the damn 3 am printing session last friday/saturday night, but that would take up too much time before orgo starts. Don't you just love it when you're very far behind in reading? Boo.

I still want a vacation, but I doubt I'll get a raise anytime soon, so said vacation, if it happens at all, would not consist of a trip. Alas for me and my lazing desires. Oh well. Better study while I can. And yes, I know there are things wrong with the layout. I will fix them. Soon. Just not now. Now is class. Adieu.

  Tonight, Jars of Clay

file under: webetcetera Posted by Jen at 5:47 PM | Permalink MTIfCommentsActive>|

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Yes indeedy, here's the first entry with the new iBook. Egad, it's late, so shouldn't really be doing this. Everything seems to be in its proper place, but for the fonts I had installed...I'll probably have to search them out again. Oh well. If that's the only thing that's wrong with a new comp I won't complain! Busy busy day tomorrow. Er, later today. Best get some sleep or I'll be napping while I'm isolating...trust me, that would be a bad thing.

file under: webetcetera Posted by Jen at 2:42 AM | Permalink MTIfCommentsActive>|

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Well, I'm back...Now Leo can putter around here and procrastinate all she likes.
And now for the Way to Have a Stressful Weekend; or the Way to Make All Emotions Related to Money Flash Across Your Face in an Instant; or How to Feel Wonderful About a New Purchase But Dread the New Number on Your Bank Account.
So, last friday night (after seeing Constantine all by my lonesome, which wasn't a bad movie, as far as that genre of movies goes...) I was working on the part of my orgo lab that was due the next day. (Boo saturday lab. ) I realized that I had to print it out (which, really, I discovered, I didn't have to, but it made more sense to have it printed out) and not having a printer at the apartment, ran over to work and printed it out (and faffed about, of course). Now, I left the computer on as I normally would, as it has a nice Phantom of the Opera screensaver which works as it should. The monitor has been flickering a little bit, but it always goes away. I fully intended to get a new computer soon...I realize I've been saying this for quite some time now, but the flickering really got to me. So it wasn't quite a surprise when I came back and the screen was dark. Not dark like the computer was sleeping...so dark it was like the brightness had been turned way down.

And of course there was no way to bring it back to normal. The video card or tube or whatever finally said to hell with this, fuck y'all AND this popsicle stand, and is kaput. Of course, to fix something like this, especially on a computer as old as the one I had (which I was sort of proud of...an original clamshell Blueberry iBook, the first of its kind) is heinously expensive and not worth it. So, I have now *paid for* a new iBook, but don't have it yet, since the nice people at the Galleria Apple Store (thank goodness there's an Apple Store at the galleria...used to be the only one in town was out in West County, where everything is hard to get to and mucho expensive) are supposedly transferring the goods from the old iBook to the new. Hope they could do it ok. I bet it makes things a little hard when you can't see the screen. Too bad there was no deal for getting an iPod and the computer...there was one at the beginning of the school year, but of course, my trusty little computer was *working* then...I did get a printer, though. You could either get a printer for free or an all-in-one scanner/copier/printer/card reader (for the day in the sometime future when I have a digital camera) for $30. I got the all-in-one, since I've always wanted a scanner. Go me. Man, my bank account is hurting. I had to transfer money from savings. At least I know I'll get a nice tax refund this year, it would have been nice had the computer waited until then to putz out on me, but I guess I'll get a new bike when I get that refund instead. And here's hoping that there's nothing wrong with a two year old return like there was last year.

I surrendered my baby to the techs Saturday night. Tammy the saleslady (who was quite nice and gave me lots of discounts, as far as that goes) said they would try to get to it as soon as they could, maybe Sunday. Unfortunately no. My mother called yesterday to check if there had been a new addition to the family. Then she pointed out, "See how good a grandmother I would be?" Mmmr. I'm working on it. I'm a little peeved because I realized that instead of the work number, they have the number of the apartment and therefore if they *do* call I won't know it until I get home, most likely after class because it's a pain to try to leave early before class, especially with Luigi the Italian back and quite ready to do lots of experiments. Alas. And if I can, I'll head over to the 'rents and get gas at the 'cheap' Shell station, and see if I can find the *ahem* cd's of things that I saved from the last OS X computer I had. Unless, of course, anyone wants to contribute to the 'Get Jen Word and Photoshop for OS X' fund.

(Side note: I'm quite happy to have OS 10.3.x, which is collectively known as 'Panther.' Yes, I know I'm a little silly. Sue me. I have a favorite animal.)

Hopefully when I write next, I can say it's from my lovely little friend, which is thoughtfully pre-installed with a wireless card, so I can surf at the library without wires! Whee!

Hot damn! You actually read all that? wow.

  Rob Thomas: Lonely No More (free download from a Pepsi cap)
  The Golden Key, by Melanie Rawn, Jennifer Roberson, & Kate Elliott
file under: webetcetera Posted by Jen at 2:57 PM | Permalink MTIfCommentsActive>|

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I finally upgraded MT to version 3.15. Hopefully with the increased functionality of Blacklist 2.0 I can get a handle on this crazy spam. We'll see.

I brought back the 'ask me anything feature...has a snazzy little layout, it was, how you say, a quickie. I kill me with my little J-C reference. Check out the link at the top of the entries and ask a question! Perhaps I'll have an answer for you

  Jars of Clay: Trouble Is

file under: webetcetera Posted by Jen at 1:57 PM | Permalink MTIfCommentsActive>|

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...or for yourself.
Clickity-click on the banner, and select the 2-Day Shipping option during checkout, and get FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $60 or more. (good til Dec 21.)

So this isn't solely an ad post, I can ramble a bit about studying for orgo, and how very sad I am that the stupid final is Monday so I won't get to spend much time with the wonderful people coming into town for the holidays this weekend. I am finding it immensely hard to keep my mind on orgo, even without the temptation to pop in the RotK:EE, since I don't have it Grudgingly I admit that it's good that Mom is holding onto it for me. But I just want to touch it...lol. So sorry Molly and Alex and Leo that I'll only be able to see you for a short time on Sunday. It looks like I really shouldn't even go carolling with the AHS drama alums, as much as I would like to. I suppose I'll have to resign myself to singing along with my Christmas cds and KEZK, the soft rock Christmas station.

I hope that Molly and I get to watch RotK together sometime, and Leo needs to watch HP 3...sigh. I keep thinking that I've got a break coming up or something, even though I don't, really. Well, I guess I could take some vacation while there are no classes, but I guess I'm still stuck on the "christmas vacation from school" thing, even though it's been two years. Bah. I really do need to take vaca anyway. Here's to Jen and Lell going to NY! Yeah. Next summer.

Oh, why don't you head over here and check out these story banners? Well, there's only the one right now, hopefully there can be more uploaded later. I like hosting people.

I guess I should get back to voting and studying. Sigh. What a way to spend a friday night.

  National Treasure sdtk

file under: webetcetera Posted by Jen at 5:10 PM | Permalink MTIfCommentsActive>|

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Comment spam really sucks, and I'm worried that it's knocking other (legitimate) people off the blog. Sigh. No one's commented since the beginning of the month. I've done test comments myself and know that comments work...some people have reported getting 404s when they click the comment link. I don't know what that's from, because the site shows up fine where I am, on two different computers. If you are having a problem posting a comment and you can't (for some reason) use the 404 form to send me where you got the error, please send an email to me at etoiline [at] etoiline [dot] com and I'll see what I can do.

One of these days I guess I'll break down and upgrade to MT 3, even though there are some things that I don't like about it. And I've got to start thinking of a new layout, not that I don't still love Peter I know that the index page is a little slow to load, forgive me for being on the high-speed at work. But I liike having everything there on the front page...alas. I'm just a wannabe techie. Whatever. I'll shush now, as this too-long entry was just so I would remember that link about a possible spam-basher. We'll see. Please comment so I know you're out there!

file under: webetcetera Posted by Jen at 10:51 AM | Permalink MTIfCommentsActive>|

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This is really cool: Webphilia Advent Calendar 2004. You should check it out. There are some spectacular blends there. Inspiring. Just like talking nutrition with the applied phys. folks at the holiday party. Makes me feel inadequate that I don't work out or do amazing things with photoshop. Ah well. One of these days when I get a new laptop...

  Josh Groban: Remember When it Rained

file under: webetcetera Posted by Jen at 3:47 PM | Permalink MTIfCommentsActive>|

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So you probably noticed there's a new layout. I don't know what it is about me and layouts but I just don't have a quick turnaround with them. Had the picture done about two weeks ago but was just now able to get all the coding done. Hah. Done. There are still some weird things, like why my posts are getting progressively more indented as the archives scroll on...guess I'll have to look at the code again. Ah well. Hope you like. Feel free to comment or gripe. It's still in progress, be warned.

And yes, I know that the Peter Pan movie came out last year and the dvd came out way back in May, but I just got it myself and truly adored it. Jeremy Sumpter is too cute for words and another notch in the 'jailbait' section. I don't care. The picture was too much fun. Thank you ohsomuch to Thia for her glorious star brushes. Exactly what I was looking for.

Happy Friday before Halloween! Yay dress-up time!

[ETA: I can't believe how many times I've had to open up this editing window to fix that thing or the other. It seems it never ends! Sigh. Adult ADD anyone?]

  Something Corporate: As You Sleep

file under: webetcetera Posted by Jen at 10:49 AM | Permalink MTIfCommentsActive>|

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Well, you may or may not have noticed that there are now colored scrollbars! Yahoo! And the site doesn't get bigger than 1024x768. Thanks to SN for telling me what's up with CSS.

In other news, the first softball game was cancelled because of field conditions. Ah well. Next week, perhaps. Hopefully we'll get some in before it gets too much hotter...though it's plenty hot now. mmm. summer in St. Louis. Gotta love it. Or not.

I'm interested in web design again funny how it comes in cycles.

file under: webetcetera Posted by Jen at 4:45 PM | Permalink MTIfCommentsActive>|

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yes, yes, I know. things are wonky around here. but at least you can still read. *knock on wood* I'll fix it...soon.

[ETA: Now it's working again. And no more unsightly search boxes! Although I'm probably pulling lots of kbs on the background jpg ]

Remind me to tell off all the people who come here talking about how I was wrong about Imana Nushif. Read the rest of the journal, people! And I've asked it before and I'll ask it again...why are you coming here for it anyway, if just to put me down? Thanks. More later. Maybe. Gotta go catch 24.

file under: webetcetera Posted by Jen at 7:18 PM | Permalink MTIfCommentsActive>|

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Alex won't like that I'm not reading the Iliad but this morning when I was waiting for bloods I made an AIM Expression. Go me. I am so creative. You can check it out here. Be warned, it is Troy themed and focuses mainly on Paris. Yay antihero.

I taped Oprah yesterday because Brad Pitt was on...yes, they showed scenes from Troy...and Eric Bana came on too...and Orli taped a bit because he's still shooting Kingdom of Heaven over in Morocco. Sigh. Hunk o' hot men on that show. Can't wait for Troy! whee!

file under: webetcetera Posted by Jen at 2:58 PM | Permalink MTIfCommentsActive>|

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WP: Describe division 3 ways, drawing on a different sense each time.

At the end of the night I was dizzy, the alcohol dividing my sense of sight from the reality. When I knew I was looking forward, but my brain persisted in thinking that the world was swaying. The darkness behind my lids was comforting. I thought my friend was split in twain when I opened my eyes, but I knew the truth when we gripped palms. The birdsong of early morning shifted from one side of my head to the other as a robin exchanged one branch for another. The bed was too persuasive to ignore. I'd leave the division for another day...perhaps when I woke things would have multiplied back to normal.

not so good, eh? that's what you get for writing at midnight.

So you like the new layout? It still needs work but at least you can see the pretty pictures Please comment. And look for the new little features

file under: webetcetera Posted by Jen at 12:50 AM | Permalink MTIfCommentsActive>|

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I'm not a very good coder. I'm a terrible programmer, since I never really learned how. But I can have fun with html and php and such, and hopefully make the site look better. You may have noticed how the sidebars finally sit where they're supposed to and some misc links have been fixed. Some of them, anyway. Does it look better? Bet you can't really tell. But I know.

Do you need hosting? Now that I have this new hosting provider I have lots of space. Yay! Oh. need to remember to change my mailing list. And re-add the ask me anything feature.

Here is my Geek Code, for those of you curious...

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GE/FA/MU/S/TW d- s: a-- C++(+)>$ U@ P+@>+ L@ E--@ W(++)$@>+++$ !N !o K--? w--(+)@> !O M+>++$ V? PS+() PE Y PGP-@ !t !5 X()@ R>+$* tv+>+$ b++++>++++$ DI-- !D G e++>+++$ h r>++ x-
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

Get your own here. Decode it here.

And the whole reason I started this entry... Visit Blog-Fu and read the funny coding silliness. Of course the actual articles this particular entry are taken from are pretty much over my head anyway, but at least the ones highlighted are funny...yeah.

file under: webetcetera Posted by Jen at 4:33 PM | Permalink MTIfCommentsActive>|

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It works today Whee! Thank goodness the cache was refreshed or something. That means I can get back to working on my site! Now if only I could figure out which email is going where Those of you who had email addy's through me...I'll get to you in a sec. I just hope all my hosting stuff is going ok! You'll get your ftp login/pass soon...please email me so I know that you got my message!

file under: webetcetera Posted by Jen at 9:27 AM | Permalink MTIfCommentsActive>|

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Well, welcome back to etoiline.com. I hope things are working more or less as they should, though the 'dreamer,' 'content,' and 'realm' areas of the site are not up and won't be until I get a change to rewrite the php which caused the lovely downness of this site in the first place. And would you believe that I CAN'T SEE MY PAGE ON MY COMPUTER! This is not the normal computer I work on. Sigh. Quit caching my page, dammit!

Today is going to be hell. It was gonna be hell before I learned that our newly part-time tech Mark (the semi-cute guy) was sick today and won't be in. Now it might be slightly less hell because we might not do a part of the exp since there's one fewer pair of hands, but I've still got two different isolations to do today and Luigi can't help since he's busy upstairs. sigh.

Lovely to have a rant on the first day back, eh? By the way, Kate, if you see this...the Moonstone Chronicles are back up, as are the Decadence chapters

Anyone out there have trouble with installing Movable Type? lol. I feel disloyal typing that in Greymatter

file under: webetcetera Posted by Jen at 9:38 AM | Permalink MTIfCommentsActive>|

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