Wednesday's and Thursday's posts.

Yikes! It looks like I've been working on my story so much that I couldn't do Wednesday's post!

So, I'm doing it on Thursday.

The first one (tell a random story): Well, my mom and I were out walking, mainly to keep in shape and also to chat, which you can't do very well when your mother is painting all day and you yourself are programming/writing all day.

We were well on our trip back when a strange truck lumbered by. We figured it was a sewage truck, partly because of some distinctions on the truck, but also by what happened next.

The truck grumbled along the road, coming up to the turn. And, right in the middle of the side walk, just in front of us, out of a pipe in the back came a huge splat of number 2.

We stopped and stared.

"Is that poo?"
"Yes, I believe it is."
"I think you had better make a detour."

***

Thursday (a random act of kindness): Well, for this, I think I might go for a random act of kindness that I believe should be done. And for this, I think I need a Peanuts Without Rerun:

Friday's post (a bit late)

Well, this is a tad late, because of the absolute lack of faults this writing class bears. However, I figured I should probably to it, anyway.

The only slightest fault I can find is what Jeni said: more MIP time. However, I gotta remind myself that you had a family emergency, so that complaint instantly goes out the door. I guess I have to say what Sarah says; I just really appreciate being in this class! All of the friendly people, opportunities to flex my writing muscles, learning to tolerate carpal tunnel (just kidding), and things are just awesome.

No complaints at all!

Wow, mom! I just had the best dream ever! It was all about ___________...

...Lemons.

Favorite Article of Clothing?

Unlike other posts, this post can be summed up in one word:

BLUE!
BLUE BLUE BLUE!
Bluebluebluebluebleblueblueblueblueblue!
I don't care if it's a sweat shirt or a t-shirt or a pants or shorts or a snowsuit or shoes or a hat or my tongue after eating a bag of blueberries, just so long as it's BLUE BLUE BLUE BLUE BLUE BLUE!!!!

There, I said it! *whew* Even I have a dark, secret clicheness deep down there, under the weirdness/geekinesss.

Plus, Puppy Linux keeps on working great. I'm trying to install it on another computer with only 256 megabytes of RAM, and so far, it's been great. It's also running on my super-cool "green thumb" flash drive :).

When this was a mining town...

...Well, the place would sure be very strange. The main purpose of this place would be being underground, for goodness sakes! It's a whole different world down there, below the surface. The sun never breaks through, the world only lit by the candlelights on the miner's helmets.

Read City of Ember to get a bit of idea of what that would be like. Electricity (in the old days, candles) is the one thing that keeps everyone and everything going! Half a life, always enveloped in darkness, the only bright things being the light bulbs way up there, dumbed down, thinking that Ember is the only living place... ...Jeez, I love that book! Just so... spine tingling. Should probably get around to reading the rest of People of Sparks, too. And Prophet of Yonwood, and Diamond of Darkhold.

Gotta love the Ember saga, and all of the underground-ish stuff.

Poor and Happy, Rich and Miserable?

Poor and happy is 100% the way to go for me. You see, being rich and miserable is just as useless as poor and miserable; if you're that unhappy, what good are those green slips of paper, really? Sure, they can buy you some great stuff, but to what length can this purchasing go? You can buy new cars, houses, pool tables, computers, clothes, things like that, but if you're really, truly miserable...

...you can't buy happiness. The cars are just for idle transportation, the house is just a place for you to inhabit, pool tables are simply there for the purpose of mindlessly knocking balls into pockets, computers are just there for the lights on the screen, clothes are just to keep you warm, everything just loses its appeal. There is an illusion of luxury, but it's a weak one.

Really, you aren't rich. In a ton of aspects other than money, you are broke. Terribly.

Being poor and happy is VERY much better, in my opinion. Although you are weak in one aspect (money), nothing says you can't be extremely strong in other ones. J.K. Rowling was very poor, but she was also very good at writing. She wrote Harry Potter. It was rejected by a ton of publishers, but, finally, one little company in Scotland accepted.

And what happened when people read it? They loved it! The world went Harry Potter crazy, and J.K. Rowling became the fifth richest person in England.

Poor and happy for me.

Puppy Linux Saves the Day!!!

Sooo, when Windows crashes (I'm not saying "if", because it will crash, trust me), it's nice to fall back on a subtle, relaxing OS: Linux. More specifically, Puppy Linux :)

Well, Windows was totally immobilized by several viruses in the system.

We had plan A; get some real anti-virus program up and running. Nope, the devious little bugs detected Norton 360 and stopped it cold.

Plan B: Boot into safe mode and run an anti-virus from there. But, it wouldn't even boot into safe mode, courtesy of the worms.

Plan C: Use my computer tutor's suggestion; burn a Puppy Linux disk and boot the PC from that. This one actually worked! I transfered all of the important data to a flash drive and then installed Puppy on another memory stick. Ta-dum! We're now happily running Linux!

If you wonder what Pup Linux is like, I suggest you go here: http://puppylinux.org/main/index.php?file=Overview%20and%20Getting%20Started.htm

It has a few kinks, mind you, like having to call up a terminal and type in the name of the program you want to unpack (with a whole bunch of nerdly stuff typed around it, mind you) to decompress something, but it's worth it.

Also, when you boot up, it says "WARNING: DO NOT REMOVE USB FLASH DRIVE!", which is convenient. I wonder if I can mod it to say "WARNING: DO NOT REMOVE USB FLASH DRIVE UNLESS YOU WANT A FIST TO COME OUT FROM BEHIND THE MONITOR AND SEND YOU FLYING ACROSS THE ROOM."

Now, where would I find an inconspicuous but effective USB fist...?

Double Uggggggghhh...

Well, the Google Redirect Virus is reaching its final stages, fake anti-virus warnings popping up every thirty seconds rendering the computer nearly unusable. Phooey-phooey-phoo.

How most viruses work these days is to disguise themselves as anti-virus programs. When the person clicks "Scan for viruses", "Block Threat' or what have you, the malware unleashes its havoc across the system. And usually they try to make money in the process by having you buy their so-called "Pro" version of the software which is no better than the free one.

AV Antivirus Suite is a trap. This is NOT to be confused with AVG, which is good.
Malware Alarm is a well-known trap.

Well, we're currently been reduced to using my tiiiiiiiiiiny netbook, which, obviously, has a display so small you need a magnifying glass to read the text. Wonderful for traveling/quick note-writing, not too wonderful for everything else.

What really annoys me is that the novella I'm working on is inaccessible 'till I get a Puppy Linux CD/jump drive running on the thing, which will take a fair bit of trial and error, since I don't label my CDs after I burn them >_<. I had better do it kinda quickly, too, 'cause I need three, preferably five pages done by the sixth.

Well, m'kay, Friday's journal.

When I was little, I found a blank book. It changed my life.

It's curious; a book full of print has a small chance of changing someone's life, but a book without any writing to be seen in it has almost no chance at all, it would seem.

It would seem.

But things are not always what they seem, and that's what makes the world go 'round. In fact, the world doesn't seem to go 'round, but it does, at several hundred miles per hour.

The book did change my life. Why? Simple: it allowed me to write a story. Actually, I couldn't write. Therefore, I dictated to my mother, and she wrote it down in the little black book. The story itself was pretty much what you would expect from a six-year-old Harry Potter fan; a blunt, predictable plot, much too heavily based on HP, I used myself as the main character, things like that. However, it planted the seeds of writing in my life, which is extremely important to me.

My life would be very different if the move had never happened.

Well, Thursday's blog comes into view while traveling slowly along the gloomy Thursday morning.

The subject of today's blog is having one event hypothetically not happen in your life, and writing how it would affect how things are today.

Well, it's pretty cliche, I know, but the move from Pennsylvania to Michigan really had quite an effect.

Well, first of all, and most obvious of all, I'd still be living down in the 'ol church. It was actually a pretty nice place to live; very spacious, of course, plus several little hidden wonders about the building.

However, it was mortgaged, plus the roof was cracked pretty badly (if you took a loooooooong bamboo stick, you could chip off one-square-foot chunks of roof. Seriously.)

Second of all, we wouldn't be nearly as financially stable as we are in this little town. It's a lot better here (I can do my strange experiments on old computers, yay!)

Third and last, Michigan is just a much more enjoyable place to live. Friendly people, a beach just three miles away, cleaner air, all around great place; that's Michigan. Pennsylvania just can't compare.

All-in-all, I don't think we would be extremely happy if we had never moved. Then again, I wouldn't know, since I had never compared living in my old town to living up here.