Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in reese_tora's LiveJournal:

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Tuesday, September 8th, 2009
1:33 am	Woah... Info dump! Something stupid just happened and I totally went to roll my eyes (even though I'm alone in my room) and, finding my eyes already pointed to the far left of my eye sockets, ended up rolling my head instead. It's been a while since my last post, hasn't it? I bought a new pair of headphones because the pair I got for Christmas is breaking. The plastic has broken in one place and it's now only connected by the wire, and something has come lose on the other side. I picked up a pair of Panasonic RP-HTX7 stereo headphones and, wow... they're great! I picked them because the part that goes over the head is metal, not plastic, so it shouldn't be subject to breaking like the previous pair. It's a 3.5mm jack, which is fine (the previous was USB, but before that I had 3.5mm ) but I had to find and install my motherboard's audio drivers since I didn't ge around to installing them last time I wiped windows. The reason they're perfect is... they fit entirely around my ears without touching at ALL. the previous fit around, mostly, but put pressure on my ears, and I would get sore if I spent a lot of time with them on (more than a couple hours), but these are light and I feel nothing wearing them. One small thing, the cord is only five feet or so, so I can only sue them plugged in to the front of my computer, and I have to be careful not to pull away far even then. I think I need to get an extender so I can plug them in closer to my keyboard. Working backwards in time, my birthday was last week! yay me! I had a chocolate cake, and I went to see Inglorious Bastards with my dad. I enjoyed the movie, though there was a scene near the end that gave me a bit of a headache. Mom and dad paid for my sister and I to see Spamalot the Friday before my birthday. For a play and a musical, it was a little shorter than I expected, but It was fun to see in person, finally. A lot of it is in the sound track, which I own, but there's a good bit of stuff, both visual, and not sung, which isn't in that. There are a lot of references to the flying circus skits that you can easily miss, too. Over all, everything's been going well. I haven't really been up to much outside of routine and the ordinary, so I guess that's all for now. (Comment on this)
Thursday, June 11th, 2009
10:51 pm	bleah, sick I've got some sort of throat thing going on. It started yesterdaya fternoon, and the ticklying and soreness in my throat got worse over the course of the evening. This morning I was feeling pretty bad, so I called in sick to work. I spent most of the day drinking liquids to sooth my throat and getting what I could down my sore throat. There's also a minor runniness in my nose, but that can be attributed to environment. It is exacerbating my throat's condition, though. This morning swallowing made the left side of my throat twinge and pained my left ear. mid afternoon I was feeling pretty good after a bowl of chicken ramen, but now the right side of my throat and right ear are doing the pain twinge thing. It's not as bad as the left was this morning, and I'm hoping it'll be cleared up by tomorrow... or atleast by the tiem I get out of the shower. I'm hoping this is short lived because the monthly party is this saturday, and I don't want to miss it if I can make it. I also don't want to take too many sick days, sinec I get five for the year... I don't normally need them through the year, but it's better to have days off with pay and no notice available than to lose hours. I went to bed early last night, and I think I may go to bed early tonight, too,a s I'm feeling kind of tired. Current Mood: sick (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, June 8th, 2009
6:01 pm	oh, yeah... hey, been a while! I spent the weekend at Califur, so stuffs to talk about! I took friday off and drove down around 2pm, the unregistered line was borked but I missed the worst of it. I got to see 2_gryphon perform, checked out a few panels, and wandered the dealers' den, though I spent a lot of time in the common room chatting with people. Second day I did more of the same, though I did make a mistake of using my camera in the dealers' den, as I'd forgotten to bring it the first day. I also recorded the fursuit parade and a few funny things before and after it, along with some pictures of fursuiters and stuff. Third day I went to see this gameshow type thing called "are you smarter than a fursuiter" but it had been canceled due to technical difficulties, so I just hung out in the common room until all the interesting people had left and headed home. aside from somepics and video, I didn't come away with a lot... a giant microbe plushie for Mange and a rerelease of an old puzzle game (similar to Myst, but older) A lot of time I spent was hanging out with an artist who I watched draw and talked with, and who gave me a few pointers for drawing heads. I'm very happy about taht as he's someone who I respect very much as an artist. I'll post links to video and some pics later. Current Mood: pleased (Comment on this)
Saturday, March 14th, 2009
10:06 am	neat old function I'm going on a trip. I'm going to Oregon. I'm only taking my eee laptop with me, not my work laptop, and it runs linux, but I'll be up there for a week, so I want to be able to keep up with all my webcomics. The favorites list is from my main computer in Internet Explorer, and it's in the windows link format (.url, though this is hidden by windows even when you turn on file extensions) problem: linux doesn't open windows link files. solution: this has stared me in the face every day since windows 98 was my computer's OS. File>Import & Export... I actually had to have this pointed out to me via google search fro a way to open .url files in linux. It exported my favorites as a Netscape bookmark list... an html page I can just open in firefox with firefox on my laptop, which has all my favorites as clickable links. So, now I have access to my collection of bookmarks, I can't think of anything else I want or need to bring with me as software. (taking my game system and camera, of course) Of course, with the prevailance of Firefox and it's ability to automatically import IE's favorites, there's not usually much need for this export function, but I was glad to have it. Current Mood: pleased (Comment on this)
Monday, March 9th, 2009
1:10 pm	Know your rights http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95qZtwJNjxk This guy didn't. (Comment on this)
Saturday, February 28th, 2009
2:14 pm	Ow! So, I was walking past my desk... Which is to say, I was walking sideways to get around the back of my desk, becaus e there's only a small gap between the edge of my bed and my desk for me to get through. Yeah, things are a little cramped at this side of my room... anyway... I ended up hunching down a little, probably to keep my balance, and my back and left side were facing the desk, and I ended up standing into the corner of my desk where it has a bit of an overhang (the top of it extends past the sides) My shoulder hits it and I end up with a ansty looking scratch, a little broken skin, but no real bleeding, thanks tot he shirt I was wearing. Anyway, ( pictures: ) It's not too bad, but my shirt irritates it occasionally. Hopefully it will not keep me from sleeping, since I usually sleep on my left side. (Comment on this)
Saturday, February 14th, 2009
1:53 am	soo... so, it's cold and wet. Winter has finally arrived in SoCal, and it's 45 degrees farenheit outside right now(2 in the morning). It's been cold and raining off and on all the last week or two, but now it's official. I cut my thumb in the shower this morning. The shower is a bath with a pair of sliding glass doors mounted on the edge that doesn't have a wall, and it's got a bar that runs across the top that supports the doors. This bar, basically an upside down 'U' has some sharp corners. OK, so I get out of the shower, drying myself off with the towel by grasping each end and rubbing like in cartoons (there's a mental image for ya, treasure it until you gan get to the brain bleach) and I extend my right arm all the way out and raise it while getting my back. BANG! I hit the bar that holds up the doors pretty hard, the edge hit my thumb between the nail and the knuckle, and it left a trench that's 1/4" long and 1/16" wide. It's a nice deep color now, and it'll probably be a week healing. In the mean time, I have to be careful tying back my hair because that's where the band rests when I'm stretching it around my ponytail. Current Mood: irritated (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, February 9th, 2009
2:24 am	huh... I just recieved my first ever Nigerian scam email. Also, it was raining outside half an hour ago. Lastly, I am awake much too late. That is all. Current Mood: tired (Comment on this)
Sunday, February 1st, 2009
2:38 pm	Coolest movie ever http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntzYG9t5zi0 I am looking forward to this. Current Mood: excited (Comment on this)
Saturday, January 24th, 2009
11:47 pm	long night I was out driving for my company friday night, I don't do it often, adn it wasn't the latest I was out driving for them, but Iw as so tired I just went straight to be when I got home around 5am. It didn't help matters that, unlike most times where I drive for my company where I can sleep in as long as I want in preparation for a long night, I got a call at 11am from one of our guys in an out-of-state market. See, normally, I handle inventory, and I take care of IT for our office and the laptops we check out to employees, including installing drive test software, so the request I got might have been reasonable. The thing is 1: he woke me up, and 2: he wanted me to put FTP Pro on our server so he could download it. FTP Pro is commercial software that we use for uploading and downloading as an alternative to a web browser or the built in windows program. It's also available to download for free from the company's website, including a limited trial period before it needs licensing applied. The tech could have figured this out himself and not called me. Anyway, we were doing pretty basic stuff, no pre drive, just verifying the sites they brought up worked. (Comment on this)
Thursday, January 22nd, 2009
4:22 pm	In the dog house Well, I managed to screw up and get sent home from work. It's my own fault, and I have no excuse for what caused me to be sent home. I'm taking this as some time to look at what led to this and how I can improve my work habits to avoid retracing the chain of events that led to this. On a completely unrelated note, though thematically consistent: http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=213382&title=Road-to-the-Doghouse---Puppedential-Debate d'awwww! Current Mood: contemplative (Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 14th, 2009
1:34 am	Hot enough for ya? Wow, it went from being pretty chilly to being quite warn here in SoCal. On the topic of being warm, I was channel surfing during commercials, and I saw this show on National Geographic. 6 degrees warmer. Guess what it's about. Now, I would like to preface this with the disclaimer that I am not a climate scientist, I am not an expert, and I do not take for granted the rightness of my opinion, but I am basing my opinion on a number of facts that I have run across here and there. Now, about this show... I saw three segments in it, one talking about the water problems in the NY city subways, one talking about desert shifts, and one talking about the effect on life in ocean. The subway. The premise of this is that there is some problem with keeping water out of NY's subway system, and the fact that a rising sea level would cause major flooding in New York. The show even goes to the trouble of showing us Government agencies modeling the effects of raising the water level huge amounts. Problem. Climate scientists don't agree on if or how far the sea may rise if the ice caps melt. There's no guarantee that the ice caps are or will melt(yes, there's ice receding now, but find a news agency that'll report on the fact that it's spreading in other places) with only a 6 degree increase in temperature. Worst case scenario has sea level rise some 30 feet, but some estimates have a decrease in sea level over all. The deserts. The narrator talks about how deserts will march across the land, and tried to convey a very bleak image as the graphic of the Sahara desert moving south runs. Problem. The desert graphic is filling in with green on the other side, it's not entirely obvious due to the way it's shown (as a somewhat curved globe), but it's there. The ocean. I had to flip away in disgust at this, they suggest that a rise of 6 degrees in global temperatures will somehow kill all life in the sea. Buh? for ONE thing, the earth HAS been much hotter than it is now, and life thrived in that sea. Maybe life as we currently know it would stop, but new life would take its place as species evolved and adapted. And that's assuming that the major shift in temperature didn't just cause the current species to move with their respective conditions. Yes, I think that climate science is important, we need to know what's going on, how everything works. We need to know if things are getting warmer or not, and what's really driving these things. (There's not doubt that temperature data shows an increase in temperature, and CO2 might be the cause of it, but there's so many reasons why CO2 might not be.) But it's a complete farce to present the WORST CASE, the most extreme end of the simulation scale, trying to SCARE and TERRORIZE people into changing. Did NatGeo lie? only be omission, but it's still a blatant misdirection, a fraud. I think it's a shame that what is supposed to be an educational channel, which should be promoting learning and critical thought, would show something so manipulative. Current Mood: aggravated (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, January 8th, 2009
7:08 pm	how about that... So, I got a link to a news article http://www.switched.com/2009/01/08/is-microsoft-dumping-vista/?icid=200100397x1216827693x1201098409 The guy that posted the link suggested that Microsoft was finally dropping vista, and the title of the article implies the same. Really, what it is is that Mr Balmer gave a speech talking about some of the stuff MS is working on, one of which is windows 7 (it doesn't have a real name yet, just as Vista was known as Longhorn) Now, to be quite honest, there's only one bullet point that matters there; everything else is irrelevant garbage or useless features, and that's the promise to improve boot time and performance. It's important because that's what is useful, what effects everyone who uses this OS. It's also important because improved performance is one of the things that was promised with Vista (and quite the opposite happened.) The public beta is also interesting, but, when all is said and done, that just means that they are calling a spade a spade and not charging the public to participate. IMO, XP will continue to be relevant so long as MS intends to push DRM through their new releases of windows. To be fair, they're doing it at the behest of certain despicable bodies in the movie and music industry... Current Mood: geeky (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 30th, 2008
9:53 pm	I'm not dead yet! In fact, I think I'm getting better. I just had post nasal drip yesterday adn today (which, of course, meant some coughing), and I havn't otherwise been feeling sick, so I think I'm on the mend. In the last few hours, I havn't even felt that much in the way of the drip or runny nose, too. (*coughs* spoke too soon. :P ) I'm hoping I feel good tomorrow, and completely recovered on the first. It would be a shame to waste most of my holiday and vacation days being sick, after all. :P I spent most of saturday... asleep; I went to bed at 6 or so, I was feeling so rotten, and while I was up and blowing my nose or hacking up a lung every few hours, I spent until ten the next day in Morpheus's sweet grasp. I managed to last until my normal sleep hours on sunday (didn't feel bad enough to consider skipping pawpets, yay!) I'm just glad I'd already arranged to take monday off with a vacation day, becasue I don't think I would have survived going to work if I hadn't, and I didn't have any sick days left to spend. Current Mood: hopeful (Comment on this)
Saturday, December 27th, 2008
12:23 pm	sick! darn it, I did catch something! I didn't sleep well, having to blow my nose every few hours as it woke me up. I don't feel too bad right now, just some headache where my sinuses are bothering me (thanks to a nice hot shower), but my throat is still bothering me and my nose is running a lot. I was planning on doing some stuff, getting my scheduled bribe phone (renew your contract for another year, get a discount phone upgrade!) but now I'm just feeling blah. Fortunately, I bought some strawberry apple juice last week (I normally don't, though I like the stuff) and I had that to sooth my throat. I wonder if what I got I got from my tour of the Midway. If you follow the audio tour, you are holding this little sound device that you enter the exhibit/location number and get an audio track played to you about it, and you do and up climbing up and down a few ladders, and those both make good vectors for disease. Except my throat was bothering me as we drove home, and that's awfully quick for an incubation period. (Comment on this)
Friday, December 26th, 2008
4:47 pm	Santa came! As usual, here's my list of stuffs... my older sister baked me a pan sized chocolate chip cookie(one 9x13 pan full of chocolate chipy goodness) my younger sister got me a neat t-shirt(green, reads "I am away from my computer.") my parents bought me a new watch, a USB headset (over-ear headphones with mic), and the lolcats book and my aunt got me a flannel shirt. Today, the day after christmas, I went with my dad to the Midway museum. That's the USS Midway, the aircraft carrier commissioned in 1945, two months after the surrender of Japan. We toured the facility, had lunch, and I came away with a greater appreciation for the cramped quarters and massive size of these vessels and the planes that fly from them. Unfortunately, my throat is feeling a bit scratchy. It may just be from the talking I did on the drive down and back (about 100 miles each way) and the cold air, but I think I may be contracting a cold. I've got monday off anyway(taking a vacation day), so I may be fine by the time I have to return to work anyway, but it's annoying to say the least. Current Mood: happy (Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 24th, 2008
8:24 pm	Merry Christmas, one and all. Here's a three and a half hour wish to everyone to enjoy their holiday tomorrow, whatever creed you may follow. And here's the story at the top of the hour: Canada has declared Santa Clause a Canadian citizen with full rights to enter the country. OTTAWA, Dec. 24 (UPI) -- Santa Claus has been declared a Canadian citizen with fully authorized re-entry rights, the country's citizenship minister announced in Ottawa. Full story: http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2008/12/24/Canada_declares_Santa_Claus_a_citizen/UPI-38291230121178/ My, what those Canadians will do... I expect a reaction from Russia, since Santa purportedly lives at the north pole, which is technically international waters between Canada and Russia. (and a couple european countries, too) (Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 17th, 2008
12:21 am	not safe for work? ( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. ) (Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008
11:18 am	and -10 points for stealing this from Forestcat Dear Santa... Dear Santa, This year I've been busy! In June I helped bucktowntiger hide a body (-173 points). In February I pulled gabiapf's hair (-5 points). In August I gave callie_fuzzy a wet willie, then I took it back (-5 points). Last week I committed genocide... Sorry about that, writingrose (-5000 points). In April I saved a busload of nuns in Angola (326 points). Overall, I've been naughty (-4857 points). For Christmas I deserve a spanking! Sincerely, Reese_Tora Write your letter to Santa! Enter your LJ username: (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, November 28th, 2008
11:56 pm	Update so, um, little update, I did put the new video card in my computer, and I have celared a path to my closet AND cleared out all the stuff that was in the floor in my closet. Then I put a bunch of stuff in my closet. Oh, and I discovered that I may need a slightly more powerful power supply to support my video card... my current supply is 430 watts- 20 less than the minimum recommended of the new card. So I went out and bought a power supply that supplies 650 watts(I misrememberd the spec as 550w while at the store, and couldn't find any 600w supplies, so 650w). However, the card functions perfectly fine except for a little image corruption in my most graphically intense game, so I havn't bothered to install that yet, so installing the new poere supply gets tacked on to my list of thinks I need to do. (I'm not too worried at the moment, but power supplies do tend to lose power delivery ability as they age, so... replacement has to happen at some point.) oh, and I did take my car in, it was pretty quick. No progress on the other stuff, though (Comment on this)