The Daily Adventures of Mercat

I had a dream I had to miss a week's worth of class work, and then woke up and remembered I have to figure out what's going to happen with final projects

I got an email saying my scenic design class isn't going to happen :(

And my sister got harassed by a guy on the street last night and got her phone stolen. Thankfully nothing else happened to her, but note to everyone, if someone you don't know asks to borrow your smartphone, just say you don't have one I guess? This is why I carry pepper spray with me everywhere now, especially since I don't have a car.

I just have this sense of... general patheticness and malaise. I feel like I've been hitting highs and lows kind of rapidly lately, but that could just be me being more perceptive since I have less social interaction.

I wish I knew how to deal with this.

So much to do, so little time. But a few important things, the good news and the bad news.

The good news: Someone finally created an LED lightbulb with incandescent tone! (Color? idk. I'm no lighting engineer.) It's only been, um, AGES since we've been talking about this in my engineering classes (aka why hadn't anyone done it yet).

The bad news: Instructables was bought by Autodesk. I have nothing against Autodesk, but Instructables is a great site that is fed SIGNIFICANTLY by the hackersphere. That just seems like conflict of interest to me (Autodesk getting sued for publishing hacking how-tos, maybe forcing use of their products as a requirement for publication), not to mention I just see it going down like LJ's slow death via SixApart and the Russian company. "Of course we listen to the users, we fuck up majorly several times a year and yet we never fucking learn!"

Then again, maybe it's a viable business model, Facebook doesn't seem to be suffering much from terrible fucking ideas

OMG color e-ink is coming. By the time I can afford this stuff, these systems will (hopefully) have settled a little more and be COMPLETELY AWESOME. (As if they aren't already.)

I still think it would be awesome if there were an open-source pdf textbook service that would 1) put shitty textbook companies (read: bad writers, those under the effect of legal shit like Texas' removal of non-christian religions and the downplaying of Jefferson because he was "an atheist", ripoff artists who release new editions every few years just to make money while wasting both people's money and the materials used to print them) out of business, 2) reduce the weight load of students, which would, in effect, 1) save students money, 2) [theoretically] allow for more honest writing (think about the accuracy of wikipedia here, sort of), 3) save students from weight injuries (I did my eighth-grade science fair on this, remember?), 4) save physical materials. Look, if you could buy a pdf-reader for your kindergartener and it lasted them all the way through college with the net result of no physical textbooks, wouldn't that be amazing?! It could even be a laptop or a netbook and not e-ink, if that was what you needed.

SO! EXCITING NEWS. A random lady (and by lady I just mean, a female who I would consider in an older age group than me-- she has a daughter who is old enough to have been to COSI, but she's not, say, whole generation older than me, probably in her early 30's or late 20's?) messaged me on facebook through my posts on the "I miss COSI's Adventure!" group. We are going to start a fan page for Adventure and PROBABLY end up breaking the code as a team (unless I somehow manage to stumble into the solution beforehand, which is doubtful). BUT! I am so excited.

Also, I really want to win that spend-the-night-in-Adventure contest. WOOOOO.

A geek pronunciation guide, which I actually found helpful and corrected me on a few things. (Although to be honest when I see "WYSIWYG" I just say "what you see is what you get" which is definitely easier than saying "doublyew-wy-ess-eye-doublyew-wy-gee". Don't ask me why I chose those spellings, I just did. There have to be a ton of ways to "spell" letters, and it probably changes every time I have to sit down and write-spell something.)

WOAH. You're going to want to read this.. It's an internet security issue. ANYONE can hack your social media as long as you are both signed into the same UNSECURED WI-FI. Which is most wireless. BRB trying to secure things.

So I've seen the world's largest gummy worm floating around the internet for a few weeks, and for the life of me, something about it bothered me in the back of my mind and I couldn't figure out what. But I just got it: look familiar? (Side note: I've seen those World's Biggest Gummybears in person, they look disgusting based sheerly on mass. I'm pretty sure the worm would be the same way, although it would make for a GREAT halloween food item.)

Also. I am not in a great mood, currently, with technology. My OneNote files decided to get corrupted, and it's looking like I probably won't be able to rescue them (FUCKKKKKKKK). Additionally, I just discovered today that all the quotes I've kept in my facebook application --ALL 150+ OF THEM-- are no longer accessible because the app just DISAPPEARED without warning anyone. GODDAMNIT. As much as I love OneNote I think from here on out I'm going to try to just keep everything in Evernote. UGH.

Some guy on twitter made a bot to argue anti-global-warming crap with people, originally just for the people that responded to him, but now it actively searches and starts discussion. Trolling for arguments with a chatbot might be the best method of this, because you present the same evidence without wasting your own time, which you know you're going to if you spend your own time doing this. Really. I want to give this guy a hero badge or something, shit.

The Kahiki's fireplace is for sale! If I had a real job, and I lived here, and I were actually opening the tiki restaurant I dream of opening, I would buy it. (Last time I checked it was at $1.25... I COULD AFFORD THAT.)

PROMPT TIME! I used to play softball. However, my "sport" is marching band. Specifically, drum corps. <3

A cute video:



So, more information on the 200 student cheating incident I posted yesterday. Granted, I only read the article the other day and did not watch the professor's video; I think I'm too empathetic and I didn't want to feel angry or guilty or shamed watching a video that had nothing to do with me. I get that enough in regular life, thanks. (I can't stand to see people embarassed... I, unfortunately, am readily affected by second hand embarassment, which SUCKS.) ANYWAY. It turns out the students were just studying from the publisher's testbank. Maybe it's a generational thing, but I don't see a problem with this. I study from people's notes, from answer manuals, etc. IN FACT, the books we've generally used HAVE THE ANSWERS IN THE BACK SO YOU CAN CHECK YOUR WORK. Granted, this is a test. But I do think the professor should expect students to be studying from the materials they can attain legally, and if he uses the same problems, I don't think that's the students' fault. I use solutions manuals to check my work regularly, when I can, because THIS SHIT IS HARD. I need any advantage I can get to pass these classes, and I don't consider it cheating to check my work, or, in this case, anticipate problems and study.

I'm still not watching that video, I'd probably make myself sick.

Honestly, what's with all the "Cowboys & Aliens: Ford's Comeback" crap? WAS HE EVER GONE? I say no. Choosing to do a different genre doesn't mean you've slacked off, it means you got offered different things.

SURE, just like Disney's switching 100% from 2d animation. Okay. Look, you can be creative and come up with more general-children's-films ideas, but at some point you're going to want to make "a princess movie" again. Also, WHAT THE HELL DO YOU CONSIDER ALADDIN TO BE?! If that's a princess movie, I CAN'T EVEN.

In other rage-inducing media news, there's a Mean Girls 2 coming out?! Ugh. Please.

On a positive note, I'm catching up on episodes of Chuck and they just made a Fievel Goes West reference. UH, YESSSS.

Alot is cute. Actually, a lot of today's post is going to be cute.

An adorable painting otter!



Indiana Bones and the Temple of Groom! Adorable.

WW3 reimagined propaganda posters. Love them.

DUDE SOME GUY BUILT A JARVIS. AND HE'S OPEN-SOURCING IT. I'MMA GONNA GIT ME ONE BRB

Oh-ho, Six Hugh Jackman period films that can be watched as Wolverine prequels. YES. Except don't go get that version of Oklahoma, it's horrible. Aunt Eller is the only one who doesn't have a horrible American accent. It's painful.

So this is kind of crazy. It's kind of awesome, because it's like HEY LOOK ALIENS TAUGHT US EVERYTHING WAIT I TOTALLY GOT YOU DIDN'T I? It's called a coincidence. A CRAZY coincidence, and an awesome one.

Well, this is... interesting... (astrid087 that one's for you... sort of.)

Beard trustworthiness scale, although they're forgetting a lot of important ones, like the fact that Charlie Chaplin isn't evil and Groucho has a rather famous 'stache, too.

7500 online shoppers unwittingly sold their souls! AWESOME. :D

Everybody's got a baby kangaroo! Right?



Well, you know... I want one now... :3


Looking at this image and watching Ghostbusters at the same time is creepy. If you imagine that cloud is an ever-growing cloud of Gozerian power and escaped ghosties, it's a little unsettling. Then again, as awesome as Ghostbusters is, since I've been playing the game it's become legitimately creepy. D: In a good way, though, it just makes the movie even more awesome. And I really hope they do make a third one now and that it's superb. Also, I never really noticed how amazing the soundtrack is before playing the game.

Speaking of soundtracks, Rocky & Bullwinkle has a great soundtrack but as a story suffers from being a product of the late 90's. Or early 00's. Anyway, it's more than a little bad, not to mention the animation of the cartoon... painful. Egh. However, it kind of serves to remind me how awesome the George of the Jungle movie is, that one is truly great.

The internet/home computer, as imagined in 1969:



Awesomesauce.

Can you imagine how you would feel if you were that officer? Shit.

Oh shit it's the 15th anniversary of the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland! Sometimes it's so completely surreal that this ride is so young. Sadly, I don't think they'll bring out any really awesome new souvenirs until next year (which will be the 30th anniversary of Raiders).

Actually, just yesterday my mom and I were talking about how shocking it is to think that the "anti-vaccine" thing has only been around TEN YEARS. You'd think it's the kind of anti-intellectual argument that was maybe around pre-internet, say, from the 80's, but no, it's from like 2000. That's just crazy to me. (Thankfully, that douche got unpublished and there was only ONE paper ever published in the first place. I think they maybe even revoked his license to practice? Or tried to? Anyway, yeah, douchery.)


And finally, a literary crossover containing two of the most famous and renowned authors who ever penned the written word-- I present to you, "Green Eggs and Hamlet".

(Well, fuckyou, lj app, you deleted my entry. Let's try this again.) So in addition to what I wrote earlier, I forgot to mention that those two Carroll kids died so everyone's feeling the Young Death morbidity right now, Mandi is essentially getting kicked out of school for the semester, the last month seems to have really desired to up the level of drama, and I guess with all the economy talk and engineering talk and graduation talk I've just been worried I won't be able to find a job I'm actually interested in. (It's kinda been like this since I looked at Disney's site; they encourage competing in a competition but I wouldn't want to give them my ideas "for free" essentially, and even though I have a head up for the internship with being an engineer... I can imagine the competition is pretty stiff.) =/ BUT, Anna came out of surgery pretty well, they put small catheters in her artery and vein (or something) to medicate the clot to try to break it up, and if it's not broken up today they're going to go in and try to remove it manually. So... idk. It's not good, but it could definitely be worse, I feel. Trivia was good. The No-Clue Nazis didn't win, and we tried our best and did not win (nor did we lose, unfortunately, but we only kind of threw the game). They played Billy Joel so I felt successful in being able to name the 70's artist. Not a complete waste, haha. I think I wrote something else here before the internet ate it. Idk. Then we went to Lara's and watched Return of the Jedi, good times. Also I'm completely obsessed with my new ipod. There are wireless networks everywhere and it's AWESOME~

Oh LJ staff, you are too good.



Also, Sean Connery reviews IJ4.

I couldn't find any of my good april fool's links from last year so we'll have to go with Is It Christmas? Rumor is youtube is playing everything upside down today, as well.

Anyone get conficker?

DON'T FORGET TO SCAN YOUR COMPUTER FOR THE CONFICKER WORM AND IF YOU HAVE IT TURN OFF YOUR INERNET BEFORE MIDNIGHT TONIGHT

code got writ over the weekend, find it here

VIRUS WARNING

There is a virus currently dormant on possibly nearly 15 million computers that will activate April 1st; no one is sure what it will do because it will take over the host computer and contact a remote server for further commands. So this could really potentially be a huge deal, and I believe if you use peer-to-peer anything or share folders at work or ANYTHING like that, you are more likely to have it. And since it is currently dormant, most people don't know it's there.

For more information (and a possible way to get rid of it) go here.


This is either the real y2k panic, or a massively trollingly successful practical joke.


If we all get rickrolled because of it I'll just give up for the rest of my life, mkay?

Sooo some bad news (for me). Last night while I was surfing on the lappy, disk cleanup popped up and told me I only have 199 MB left on my C: drive and that 200 remaining is optimal for... running. Or whatever.

I ran disk cleanup, so presumably I have some more space now (and I need to defrag that thing like crazy), but I'm still rather operating on the fact that I really can't download anything else to that computer. Which is an issue, because I'm a media whore. I save webpages like crazy.

So here are my options, I figure:
1) figure out some sorting system where I can save stuff to my external harddrive, though I'd have to partition it somehow because it's also my backup harddrive.
2) figure out a system of storing stuff on the new 16GB flash I got
3) figure out some kind of system where I can store ALL my music/video files on a drive (flash or SD or something) as well as some media player (something that runs on linux/windows/mac?) and open up a lot of space. As well as be able to use music on any computer then. (I'm not saving anything right now on the netbook... I'm not sure what I want to do with that yet.)

Otherwise:
--maybe turn my netbook into my writing/gaming computer? This would take some effort.
--I NEED to organize my old files, and I could probably go through and edit whole webpages down to text and photos and address and save them in a scrapbooking-type notes system, like OneNote.

Thoughts? Resources? Anything?

My main concern is that flash drives are not secure enough and are liable to corruption; however, I've pretty much been living on my 2GB for a year with no issue, and I've never actually read anything about it, just from hearsay.

GAH. This means it's time to take a vacation to sort my computer out. Reorganize all the files like I've been meaning to (there's a lot of messy overlap). But it does mean that I might be able to invest in some other media storage, like a music player (if it could actually store my files) or something.

Bzzzeh.