After four years, ladies and gentlemen, I have a working dishwasher.

Man, it's nice to be able to see my counter after I cook something more complicated than a microwave meal.

This riveting post brought to you in part by my Mom, who is awesome and came down to plumber-sit so I could go to work on Friday. Love you, Mom.

Okay. I know I disappeared, but...

Went to help a friend move into a new place and wound up spending from 11 am to 8 pm there (dear God I still don't know how we got the box spring upstairs), came home, and have been cleaning all weekend.

And I'm leaving to go meet friends for the fireworks shortly. And I still have more chores to do to get caught up.

Calling a general hiatus from the Internet for a few days while I Get Stuff Done. Sorry, Mom, the next part of the San Diego journal will have to wait. The kitchen, the office, moving help and certain cookouts take precedence. ;)

Note to self: Throwing a party four days before you pack up and leave town doesn't seem like a bad idea until you get home from vacation and go "Oh, yeah, I still have to clean this place up." :)

Yeah, I got home fine on Friday night. Sorry for the radio silence but between clean-up and the CFUD meetup last night I've been fairly AFK.

Why?

Here's the view from our hotel room.

:)

Happy birthday, Mom!

(As I type this, she's probably out on the beach. :) )

So I just confirmed that posting my final paper to my blog was an adequate submission for the semester.

What does this mean?

Well, after almost 5 years and 36 credits:

I'm finally done with grad school!

Kick-ass. :)

heh, but now I've got to go clean this house.

Happy birthday, kevenn!

As always, I hope it's as fabulous as you are, and I'm sorry I couldn't be there for your last show last night. ♥

Happy birthday, violetbloom! ♥

Call me, I owe you a birthday adventure, seriously.

On a lighter note... Why Facebook is not an adequate spellchecker.

Frighteningly enough, this is not a photomanip. I tried this myself.

Some people who read this blog know that I have a website. A website that I don't link off this blog. A site that hasn't been properly updated since 2006, and hasn't been properly redesigned since 2001.

I almost let my domain name ownership lapse, but got a couple more years at the last possible second. I realized recently that's because I just can't stand to look at it anymore.

After 8 years of Java/JSP/HTML development geared towards W3C standards and accessibility, and 5 years of grad school, I have been itching to tear everything down and start over from scratch. It's really a better solution than trying to upgrade what's already there.

It's not just the code, though. It's the content. A lot of my old fic... ugh. Well, let's face it, a lot of the stuff up there was written when I was in high school and I twitch re-reading some of it. And some portions of the site just... I don't know, I don't want it up there anymore.

This isn't going to happen until after the semester's over and I've recovered from the last semester being over oh god May 18th but - it's definitely going to happen. I'm going to be pulling huge sections of the site down and starting over again. I don't know how long it will take, so if anyone asks when [insert whatever here] will be back, I won't be able to give them an answer. I just know I can't leave the page as it is. It's not me anymore. It's not necessarily that I've matured (I'm still as crazy as ever), but... I shouldn't look at my website and go "meh."

So. Yeah. Consider this a heads-up.

dskdfkdskflks

Okay. Long story short: Trying to do a social study on UStream and how its live streaming media and audience is being used by online artists, musicians, et al. I keep running into brick walls and scheduling and have to compile some decent data by, like, May 4th.

If you host a UStream or know someone who does who'd be willing to let me hit them up on AIM or gchat with questions or at least toss a survey at them by e-mail, please comment here. My focus is on artists since I've seen a LOT of art UStreams in recent months, but really, in my current state of fail I'm not picky.

All comments are screened so they won't be public to all and sundry. This study will never be published, the only people to see the results will be my prof and the rest of my IS728 class, and there will be no personally identifying information in the results.

Please, if you UStream or know anyone who does who might be interested, drop me a comment.

This message has been brought to you by my need to actually finish grad school (ONE MORE CLASS ONE MORE).

Hey all -

I'm in the market for a hand-held digital recorder for recording interviews for my class study (I can't write fast enough or remember enough not to tape) and maybe for recording D&D quotes again. Any suggestions? Not looking to spend any more than $50 if that's even possible.

Yeah, Mom, I think I "put away" the old tape recorder last semester and for the life of me I can't find where "away" was exactly.

I am such a moron.

Congratulations, Maya and Arvind!

The reason I'm a moron is because it took me two days to connect the dots and post this. Fail.

Where have I been the last two weeks? WORK IS INSANE. That is all. At least, according to everyone I've asked, this kind of chaos is NOT normal for even most emergency releases.

Also, yes, I'm on Facebook. Because this week's assignment involves joining a social networking site (specifics should be posted later) and work is not blocking Facebook yet.

Also, I read the last Blue Beetle, and ( it makes me kind of sad to type that. (EPIC SPOILERS) )

Damn, it's 10 already. Oops.

Also, why it's taking three weeks for LiveJournal to fix comment tracking is beyond my comprehension. Then again, that's what happens when you cut your staff short. *sigh*

Official word on what happened is here.

Just spreading the word so rumors don't start.

TNT is marathoning all the episodes next Tuesday, February 24, from 10 am to 11 pm.

Set your DVRs.

Looks like they're showing them in production order, not airing order, interestingly enough.

When you're on hold with a call center, why on Earth do they intermittently fake you out with that recorded voice that keeps telling you to "please hold" with the same exact wording every TWO MINUTES? With no useful information included like website, et al. I kind of get the recordings that tell people they can go to the website or give out hours because it might potentially thin out the queue. But the repeated useless admonishments to please hold?

It's not like you need to be told you have to wait, the elevator music is a pretty damn big clue. I can't figure out the point of this beyond irritating the people calling in further. Anyone know where this came from?

So, flying in the face of their usual tendency to open on time even in dangerous conditions, my office is opening at 12:30 today.

The problem? ...I have to leave work at 2:30 today to get to my doctor's appointment.

I'm trying to save leave, true, but I'm not sure if it's worth going in for 2 hours. Especially when the doctor's is in the other direction.