If she had the words to say she'd tell him

For the record: this is the very first post coming to you live from the new Sony Vaio. The poll is still up for her name, and the last I checked it there were two votes for Mitternacht and one for Prisma. I'm gonna leave the poll up til the weekend, though, and go from there.

Just finished watching Alice (the SyFy two-part miniseries from 2009) with apollymi and must say that I loved the hell outta it. Now I need to find some Hatter icons stat. I'll see what I can dig up during the brighter part of tomorrow.

Ordered an anti-glare screen protector for my new girl, and it should arrive sometime next week. The next planned purchase for her - which I may return to Walmart for - is a keyboard cover, followed by a laptop case for whenever I travel with her. I need to shuffle a few more things off Starscream (my external drive) onto my new girl, but for now I have Firefox, Thunderbird, my Adobe applications and Dreamweaver shuffled over.

And if you're reading this from LJ or IJ, you may notice that comments are turned off. That's mostly because I'm so annoyed with LJ that I don't even want to have to go over to read any comments there. You can always use OpenID to comment on the original post (even from your LJ, which will just show up as something like "katsuko.livejournal.com") or anonymously; I'm just not really in the mood to give LJ too much more traffic and they're already not getting my money, so... yeah.

Next order of business - also for the morning - is to skip over to AO3 and FF.net and make sure that any links to katuskofic are changed to katsukofic instead....

Crossposted from DreamWidth. Click here to leave a comment via OpenID.

So, I finally got around to buying a new computer. The new laptop, a Sony Vaio (because those things can last forever; apollymi and I have one back the hall that she got before we met that still boots up and runs, it's just several years old), is currently charging, and I'm shortly to go and make my recovery disk for the new girl in case something happens.

She is going to be my main computer, meaning that this is one of the last times that I'll be doing anything via Crawford (the Dell Dimension that I've had since 2002 or so). I'm still trying to decide fully on a name for my new girl, so I'm posting a poll.



To explain the choices a bit:
○ Prisma - originally I was kind of looking at the Vaio in a very pretty baby pink. Had I purchased her through the Sony website or Amazon or Tiger Direct, that's the one I would have gotten. However, I opted to go to Walmart after much thought and purchased a black Vaio.
○ Kitty - the very first thing I did upon removing my new girl from her box and plugging her in to charge... was to slap a chrome Hello Kitty decal on her right under the VAIO name.
○ Mitternacht - because I'm a dork, the new baby is jet black, and I love E Nomine's music.
○ VirtuAl Internet Operator - because I kinda dig acronyms.

Of course, one of y'all out there may have a better name, so if you can think of a good name for my girl drop it in the comments and I'll take it into consideration.

Crossposted from DreamWidth. Click here to view other comments to the entry.

katsukofic is now live on Dreamwidth.

What this means, mostly, is that all the actual fics will be posted there from now on with links to the stories crossposted to my personal journal. For now I'll also crosspost to katsukofic on LJ but given how they obviously feel about the "old" userbase that could end in a red hot minute and the stories would appear exclusively on DW.

Crossposted from DreamWidth. Click here to view other comments to the entry.

Originally posted by electricdruid at The fiasco continues

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And because it's all over the place, I'm organizing it by neat little cuts!

( Sherlock BBC )

( Fanfiction/Gen in January )

( Eating habits )

And if you managed to go through all those cut tags, you must be nearly as crazy as I am.

Crossposted from DreamWidth. Click here to view other comments to the entry.

Title: Tea and Biscuits
Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)
Warnings: stream of consciousness, no spoilers but maybe referencing Series 1 and hints towards Series 2
Summary: The pantry was bare and it was all John's fault for going on a date instead of to the grocer's.
Notes: Written for the_fic_trader's Gen in January challenge. The prompt was Sherlock Holmes, shopping.

( Tea and Biscuits )

Crossposted from DreamWidth. Click here to view other comments to the entry.

*deep breath*

C'mon, FSU, let's get those W-2 forms sent out! I want to file early and maybe buy my new computer now, not later!!

This message brought to you by the woman whose current computer is the same one she moved with her from Maryland to Tallahassee in 2004 and has been upgraded as far as it's gonna go without her gutting it and starting from scratch.

Crossposted from DreamWidth. Click here to view other comments to the entry.

The Asylum is now updated!

My home on the internet now has a shiny new layout coded by the marvelous apollymi with imagery by Sanrio; all cropping though was done by me to make the process go a bit smoother all around. Please stop by to visit!

Crossposted from DreamWidth. Click here to view other comments to the entry.

So, I'm pretty sure that I made mention somewhere that I was trying to get The Asylum up and running again, and one of my resolutions for 2012 is to try and make sure I update it at least once a month. I've already gotten the first of those updates done as of 28 December, with a massive update to the fiction page of the site.

The next planned update/overhaul, which I've placed into apollymi's capable hands, concerns a brand new layout for the entire site. Since The Asylum has been .php-and-.css-based since late-2009, it's not a terribly difficult change over to make. I've created new splash page and header images that I think Yami will be pulling colors from, and the planned name for the update is "Your Favorite Hello." I'm hoping that my icon for this post (visible on my DW and LJ, if you're somehow reading this on IJ) gives a big goddamn hint as to the star of the new layout.

And... that's my babble for now. I should probably go and try to gear up for bedtime. We've been going to bed this past week way past midnight (for New Year's Eve, we didn't go to bed until the neighbors stopped setting off fireworks around 2:30 this morning), so we're trying to get back into going to bed "early" so it's not such a shock to the system to get up at 5:30 on Tuesday morning. But maybe I'll spend some of that time working on one of my Gen in January fics. I dunno, but I think we're aiming for a 10-10:30 bedtime, so I might just read more Amaranth instead (and, seriously, buy it! Perfect story for urban fantasy lovers!).

Crossposted from DreamWidth. Click here to view other comments to the entry.

For the second time, I've decided to participate in the_fic_trader's Gen in January fic challenge. This year, however, I had four prompts (two from previous years) grab my eye, so I wanted to make sure I had them listed somewhere for me to get at them.

These will all be posted to the_fic_trader, but I plan to crosspost the links on this journal in a single post.

Prompts for 2012:
#62. Transformers G1 - Beachcomber - making a choice not to fight
#76. Weiß Kreuz - Schwarz - patchwork family

Prompts from previous years:
2011 #76. Sherlock (BBC) - Sherlock Holmes - shopping
2010 #56. X-Men Movieverse - Any Xavier's School teachers/students - mutant powers vs. household chores

I've pretty much got semi-plans set for all of these (2012/62 will slot into my RoA universe, 2010/56 is definitely gonna be First Class fic, thoughts in my head for 2012/76 and 2011/76), but won't start posting until I have at least one pounded out.

Crossposted from DreamWidth. Click here to view other comments to the entry.

So, this is 2012. Seems a lot like 2011 so far. We'll see how it goes :3

Crossposted from DreamWidth. Click here to view other comments to the entry.

As I'm actually (for the second year in a row, at that) going out with friends for New Year's (Rockin') Eve, I'm going to take a moment to pop in right now and wish everyone much happiness in 2012... and add that I'm pretty goddamn sure the reason the Mayan calendar ends at 2012 is because that's when they realized that they could just go back to the first "page" and start all over at the beginning.

Anyways, me and apollymi are meeting up with krishnas_recipes_and_food and her hubby for dinner at the Melting Pot at 7:30. Since we're planning to leave around 7 to make sure we get a decent parking spot, I'll be headed off here very shortly to go get changed for the evening.

No real resolutions, but I'm making one to exercise every day or every other day (even when I'm sick) and to lose at least 4 pounds every month til I hit my goal of getting from 164 to 135.

Crossposted from DreamWidth. Click here to view other comments to the entry.

Minerva has arrived!!

(FYI, I decided just earlier this evening that my lovely new Sony Reader WiFi is going to be named after the Roman goddess of wisdom. It was going to be either that or Athena, which is pretty much the same thing on the Greek end of things.)

Now all I'm waiting for is her beautiful case to arrive and then I'll get her loaded up with her first two books.

(Quick plug: seriously. Click the two links above and buy apollymi's first two novels. They are fantastic and I personally think them a must-read for urban fantasy fans.)

Crossposted from DreamWidth. Click here to view other comments to the entry.

Ever have one of those days where you wonder why you made some of the decisions you have in life?

I've been having what feels like an entire week of wondering why I ever left retail.

That might sound weird to those of you who have been there and left, or who've never done retail work, or who are trying to get out of retail, but let me lay it out for you:

I have worked for Florida State University since I think late-June early-July 2005. My last cost of living raise was in 2006, right around the time I left the library and started working at the medical school. I have gotten exactly one raise since that time in a non-cost-of-living capacity, and that was only enough to put me juuuuuust over $21,500 annually. I spend 8 hours of my day at a computer for the most part, with intermittent times away to deliver paper to the office suites and run documents because we have not had an OPS-level student assistant worth any damn since Ashley - who was a literal godsend, I'm telling you - finished both her undergrad work and graduate studies in 2008. In February, my immediate supervisor is retiring and I will be inheriting all the travel stuff from her, but I already do half of that anyway.

Prior to 2005, I worked at (in order) McDonald's from June 1996 til July/August 1998, Walmart from July/August 1998 until late-2004/early 2005, and Suncoast Motion Picture Company from November 2004 through June July 2005 when I started working for the university. The only reason I left Walmart was, honestly, the fact that I worked with a rampant misogynist on the Inventory Control Team (i.e. I worked in the stockroom, took items to the floor when needed, and helped unload trucks from 4pm until I left, generally 8pm). Had the management team actually done something about him, I might still be there or I may have moved to another retail job. Another reason I left retail on the whole was that I wanted to get into a job where I wasn't living paycheck to paycheck, where I could have some spending money as well as a set schedule with weekends off; my days off at Walmart were Monday and Tuesday, and I worked closing shift every Saturday at Suncoast as well as working nearly every Sunday.

The fact of the matter is... I'm still living paycheck to paycheck, mostly because of the aforementioned no cost of living raises for years now while the cost of living in Tallahassee has gone up at least 10% since my last 3% raise. I go through many days feeling like I haven't gotten anything done in spite of how much is on my plate. I don't get overtime pay, instead I get comp time that I have to use up before I can delve into my vacation hours. I generally have regular 8am to 5pm work days, but sometimes - like tomorrow where I'll be stuck here until around 7pm and the two days of the symposium in January where I'll be working til 7pm one day and probably be trapped on a fucking Friday evening until almost 9-fucking-o'clock - I have no choice but to stay at work late and get no real compensation for it... because I'd rather get monetary overtime pay than a few hours of "free" time to use however I want later.

When I worked in retail, if I worked past my usual hours, I got time-and-a-half pay. Meaning if I was making $9 an hour and worked an extra hour? I got $13.50 in extra cash on my paycheck. I honestly miss retail work with a passion some days, because even if I only unloaded two trucks or straightened up the aisles in Housewares or accepted delivery or put out stock all day, and I went home feeling like something Jimi dragged in after batting it around the house a dozen times, I felt like I had actually gotten shit done. It was even more rewarding to get that overtime pay just for helping out at work a little more.

What's even worse is, apollymi and I went to Old Navy on Friday to do a bit of window shopping (we wound up buying stuff after all), and it was all I could do to not ask the nice cashier who rang me out if he knew whether or not they'd be hiring after the holidays.

Some days, I'm sure the only reason I don't just chuck this job and go right back to retail is the fact that I have insurance benefits (such as they are...) which won't really carry over if I start from scratch again somewhere else. Still, I get the nostalgia sometimes and wonder what if I'd just told that guy to shove it up his ass, pointed out that I cleared twice as much merchandise in a day as he did, and just kept on keepin' on?

What-ifs and maybes. I guess I'll never know.

Crossposted from DreamWidth. Click here to view other comments to the entry.

I was a bit of a naughty and bought myself an early solstice gift:

The Sony Reader WiFi in red and this lovely cover/case from Etsy for it.

I know, somewhat frivolous... but I've been wanting an ereader for ages but most of the bigger name readers didn't appeal to me - mostly because I didn't want to get tied down to one format-type or one specific bookstore like with the Kindle (Amazon) or the Nook (Barnes & Noble) - and about 90% of the ereaders on the market now seem to focus less on the "read ebooks and magazines" aspect and more on the "apps games social networking now I'm a tablet" side.

So, yeah. Basically I wanted an ereader, not a tablet playing pretend :3

Crossposted from DreamWidth. Click here to view other comments to the entry.

Well, it's that time of year again, and since the next week is gonna be nutsoid, I'm gonna do this now while I'm thinking about it:

Go to your Calendar and find the first entry for each month of 2010. Post the first line of it in your journal, and that's your "Year In Review".

For the record, some of the first posts may have been f-locked, so if you didn't see it... that may be why.

( 2011 Year in Review )

Crossposted from DreamWidth. Click here to view other comments to the entry.

So, apollymi and I are already beginning to plan out our next costuming ventures. As part of this, we're getting serious once again about eating right and losing weight so that we don't look like chunky versions of the folks we're planning to cosplay.

My top two cosplay ideas right now are Wasp from the Avengers (the black-and yellow costume variant) and Amber vrom Sucker Punch. The link to the Amber costume is the one I'm likely to buy, but I'll have to buy the boots, buy a black bra to embellish a bit to match, and make the choker.

This is all doable. But first, gotta get my chunky ass down from 158-161lbs to a more sleek 135-140lbs....

Crossposted from DreamWidth. Click here to view other comments to the entry.

Title: Sinner
Fandom: LXG (aka The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen loosely based on the graphic novel of the same name)
Warnings: hurt/comfort, sort-of stream-of-consciousness, hope
Summary: He would have preferred to live in obscurity for the rest of his life, but circumstances would not allow for that.
Word Count: 553
Notes: written for hc_bingo Round 2, the prompt being "humiliation." Also, new fandom on tap, yay!


( Sinner )

Bingo card and previous fills can be found here.

Crossposted from DreamWidth. Click here to view other comments to the entry.

For some reason, I have the oddest craving for chips with malt vinegar.

Not like salt & vinegar potato chips, I mean like proper English-style chips, those things we here in 'Merica call french fries (except I just called 'em chips, because I'm a bad example of the average American in many, many more ways than just that :3).

And for the record, I get odd food cravings sometimes. It's always been like that, even when I was a kid. There was a whole month that I would only eat grilled cheese sandwiches with a slice of ham added and nothing else, and my mom is a total saint for letting me pull that bullshit.

Crossposted from DreamWidth. Click here to view other comments to the entry.

So, apollymi and I were watching The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen last night (I know, the graphic novel is better, but for what it's worth the film is a fantastic example of steampunk on film and a fun ride all on its own). For whatever reason, when Dorian Gray answered the question "What are you?" with "I'm complicated," my first reaction was to say:

Dorian Gray is in a relationship and it's complicated.

To which Yami responded with, "You could tell this whole story with Facebook statuses."

It kind of steamrolled from there for the rest of the time we were watching the movie.

And now, I have it in my head to attempt to tell the entire movie in the form of Facebook status updates. Including those alerts that you can program to pop up via FourSquare whenever you win a new badge or steal a mayorship. For that part what I wound up saying to Sawyer's comment about "M's summer retreat" was Rodney Skinner has just stolen the mayorship of M's Summer Retreat (Frozen Mongolia)!

Please, someone talk me out of it, or I'm gonna figure out how the hell to do it.

Crossposted from DreamWidth. Click here to view other comments to the entry.