a wolf angel is not a good angel

One of the things I most enjoy about giving out candy is deciding who to give what to. Teenagers in jeans, anyone wearing football uniforms, anyone talking on their cell phone? Rockets. Kids in homemade costumes, snowsuits, or out with their nannies? Chocolate bars. This year I also gave into requests for exchanges (almost invariably requested by 8-10 year old girls), and gave in to one kid and his identical twin, but not their identical triplet.

Most annoying: the live band hired by the neighbours, playing mostly 60s tunes and dancing on top a fire truck.
Rudest: the photographer who walked in, said he was a photographer looking for something good to take a picture of, then walked out without taking any pictures. Yes, I know that the Kloda stuff looks better, but I also know that your digital card is already paid for.
Most bizarre: little boy who went to the pirate chest, picked up the (dollar store) sword on it and tried to run out with it, saying “Look what I found!”

Hello, Australians who read my blog! I am glad you enjoyed the no-knead bread which, alas, I cannot take credit for, as I got the recipe from the NYT. But it is indeed a lovely crusty bread and if I weren’t lazy as all get out, I might make it again.

There is not, as it happens, a street called “Saint-Jaque” in Montreal. Nor is the intersection between St-Laurent and St-Jacques a four way intersection. Nor is that where Notre Dame is in any case.

But hurray, an episode partially set in Montreal. I am not entirely sure how I missed hearing about that before.

An article today about how some researchers wanted to test how much impact X/Y chromosomes had on behaviour. So they created XY mice with ovaries and XX mice with testes and tried to teach those two, plus normal male and female mice, to find the door with food from a bunch of doors. The XX mice all learned faster.

But the article headlines how this means XXers are more likely to have addictions and form habits more quickly. No, it’s not that they recognise patterns better or learn more quickly, of course.

Any recommendations for easy to use dvd slideshow software? I’m looking to be able to have a menu, so that I don’t have just 1000 pictures at once, and add captions to many pictures. I don’t intend to play music or do any weird effects between pictures, so it doesn’t need to be good at those. I want this to be able to play on my grandparents’ dvd player. Ideally, I’d like to be able to preview the thing before I burn it (if it’s a command line interface, this is even more ideal).

I finally got everything on this computer set up to my liking (and getting the display to work was a huge pain), and was just going to fiddle with some scheduling crap, when my other computer suddenly returns. Which is wonderful, of course, because there are certain things (update itunes, play some games[1]) that don’t work so well on this computer. And yet I feel almost sad and wistful about going back to it, because though sure, I don’t use mostly the command prompt stuff, I *could*. I am less wistful because they replaced my keyboard (full of cat fur), ac adapter (full of broken wires) and motherboard (full of not working right) and now it is working again, so hey, two functioning computers! Right now I am vaguely thinking I should use the windows one for entertainmenty stuff, and the linux one for basic web browsing and office stuff (bonus: watch movies while using the computer more easily). We’ll see, I’m not sure I can really pull off multiple computers that well.

Right now, of course, I’m having intermittent internet issues. Computers have been hating me lately.

[1] Web browsing and office applications work just fine here, and it’s way easier to make a pdf on this computer than Windows. I don’t like the video playing as much, but it works. I know that most of my use is goofing off, but goofing off is fun.

My cold is worse today than it was yesterday, and I can’t breathe right so I cannot sleep right, but on the bright side, my screen resolution is right, and WPA works. (I’ve never been able to get WEP to work on XP computers, so I refuse to have my routers go WEP.) I know that some of the games I’ve installed are changing my screen resolution, but I don’t know how or why, so I’m going to back up my config files and then I will be forced to play computer games until I figure out where the problem is. (Alas, alas.)

I am, however, tempted to just cut my stupid head off because it hurts so much. I know it is somewhat extreme as a solution, and that the cutting through my throat would hurt more than my sinuses do, but damn, this is unpleasant.

I hate colds. My whole head hurts and my sinuses are blocked and I am coughing and I really, really, really hate having a cold.

After trying a half dozen things, I notice that the next Ubuntu release, currently available in 4 days, should have native WPA support. Currently I’m debating whether to try the release candidate (seems stable) or just suck it up for 4 days, when installation will be clicking one button instead of writing one line in the terminal.

Probably this will end up depending on if I get bored in the next few days.

Update: what the hell. I’m going out, I might as well allow my computer to do some downloading work while I am not there. Since I just installed 7.04 twice in three days, I can always re-reinstall it if things go bad.

I’m really not doing well at the whole distracting. Hey look! Over there! I’m not madly unhappy, see? I am, however, doing very well at the avoidance, including the not bothering to contact people much. Who needs to talk to people? If I do, I might have to talk about myself. I can do it through the somewhat polite fiction of this blog, but that’s it.

Not that I mean to think my friends are stupid and blind and think I’m a-ok fine, just that they know not to ask, because I will deflect. I am good at deflecting, and I do not really want to talk, because I don’t know what to say, and I don’t know what I think, and really, too much talking just feels like too much wallowing, as an assy, hurtful email I got earlier this year said.