Goal #1: Stop Biting Nails

Goal: Stop Biting Nails

Start Date: 11 February 2014

Check-In Dates: 4 March 2014, 25 March 2014

End Date: 22 April 2014

Why? It's utterly disgusting how many germs I'm putting in my mouth on the daily by doing this. It isn't even like I live in the middle of nowhere where maybe it's some good old-fashioned all-natural dirt or something I could maybe justify if I didn't have a brain; I'm in a big city living with a bunch of other college students. Everything is gross. I should not be essentially putting everything I touch in my mouth.

I'm also always a little embarrassed about it when I'm around potential employers, professors, and love interests. None of those are people in front of whom I want to look nervous, anxious, incompetent, unprofessional, or unattractive. And yet I do.

Course of Action: First, paint the little bastards. It will look like a Jackson Pollock painting. Then, wait. Then, when they start to chip, instead of peeling it off and thinking, "Oh, I totes have this! I have all sorts of self-control!" remember this post and say, "Oh, shit, I have no actual self-control whatsoever. I should not do that at all. Time to repaint!" If I can sustain that until my end date, I'll do whatever I like from there.

P.S. Yeah fuck you I know I haven't posted in a year. 

Here's Me, Trying Linux Mint

For ages (eh, three years- since freshman year and my first reading of Little Brother) I've been using Ubuntu Linux. And for "ages" minus exactly one week, I've been hearing about Mint. A lot of people I respect use Mint, and I've yet to even try it, so here's me... trying it. This is a sort of installation log; it'll be updated throughout the installation process.

Which version of Mint do I want? This is mostly an arbitrary decision on my part. I decide I want the version with the fancy-looking Cinnamon desktop. Not so hard. I download the .iso

How the fuck should I do this? My laptop doesn't burn DVDs. My largest CD is too small to handle this file. Fuck. I'll use an old mp3 player (about five years old- a cheap knockoff iPod, 2GB, probably cost about fifteen bucks when it was new).

Let's try using a "flash drive" to install an OS. This feels responsible. I try to install imageWriter. I realize I already have it installed. I attempt to burn the .iso to my mp3 player (herein called Dipshit). It fails to even see the file. I remember that sometimes iW doesn't like .isos. I change the file ending to .img. It still fails, although this time I did get as far as attempting to burn it. I get a nondescript error message: The dd process ended with an error !

Let's Google this error message. I find this. It helps. Putting up with IW's shit, indeed. I use "sudo imagewriter" instead of just "imagewriter". It works.

Let's wait. Here's where I spend time figuring out if in the D&D group I'm in next semester I wanna be an elf paladin (neutral good) again or a half-elf rogue (chaotic good). I decide to be a half-elf rogue. Chaotic good sounds like my ex-boyfriend when he didn't take his ADD/ADHD/whichever meds, but I'll give it a try. It's good to try new things.

It's done burning. Let's try booting from it. I'll see you on the other side, bitches.

I'm No Longer Cool

So I haven't been feeling very cool lately. Maybe it's just the hormone-induced attitude changes (thanks, uterus!) coloring my view of recent weeks, but I just don't feel cool.

For one, my literary obsession of late isn't something I can talk about with most people. Everyone knows Harry Potter (although I have a more vast set of knowledge on the series in my head than many may realize is even possible), and every geek worth his pocket protector gets a good Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference ("What is the question?"), but nobody who isn't in the running for an English Lit degree seems to adore Shakespeare the way I do.

The insults in Hamlet, the sexual tension betwixt Beatrice and Benedick (hell, in Spanish IV, my chosen Spanish name is Beatriz after this woman!), just the changing-up of his style from work to work- it's all marvelous! I'm simply devouring his works, and since all my favorite people are more engineering geeks than literature nerds (and the lit nerds I find all feel super pretentious about it), I'm finding it hard to discuss.

For another, my hobbies lately are off. Gone are my days of learning Python for my internship (I mean, I have the internship, but it isn't my biggest obsession, which is probably a problem). Hello, knitting! I have recently knit a voodoo doll of a friend for the same friend, a hat (which I started last November and left almost complete in the top of my closet until a week ago), a scarf with stripes based on the digits of pi, and a Golden Snitch. I'm now working on my first legitimate hat (knit in the round rather than knit flat and seamed up the back) and a Möbius strip cowl.

I mean, knitting's incredibly fun, not to mention it has a more tangible result than any other hobby I've ever had, but again, there's no one to discuss this with in my life other than my grandmother. If I try to talk to friends about it, they beg me to make them things. Because they don't knit themselves, they don't realize how much effort it is- even once a project's done, if you have a thousand color changes, you have two thousand ends to weave in. Which is a bitch, jussayin'.

Ah, well. If being cool is anything like being beautiful, it is "a witch / Against whose charms faith melteth into blood*." So who needs it, right?

*blood passion, desire