Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Jackalibis' InsaneJournal:

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Friday, November 20th, 2009
9:46 pm	#twilight OMG! EA Games vs. Twilight. FIGHT! Fatality! EA Games, WINS! *snickers* Mortal Combat. Get it? Yeah... Anywho... And as always, title uses Twitter hashmark for further amusement of attracting attention to this post when it feeds into my Twitter. Heheh. Suckers. Anon-comments welcome. Flamers will be mocked relentlessly. This post was posted at http://jackalibis.dreamwidth.org/96756.html. Please comment there using OpenID (username.livejournal.com or username.insanejournal.com and your password). Current Mood: amused (Comment on this)
8:36 am	Follow Friday!! Because it's freaking out on me if I try to provide any form of description (I think there's something wrong with my java or something), I'm just going to have to provide a list of names again this week. gamerchick  takemyrevolution  sashataakheru  holiday_wishes  kemet  dailyprompt  Don't forget to check out all of this week's recommendations at followfriday ! And OMG I actually remembered it was Friday this time! (I haven't been keeping up with the days of the week again...) This post was posted at http://jackalibis.dreamwidth.org/95811.html. Please comment there using OpenID (username.livejournal.com or username.insanejournal.com and your password). Current Mood: bouncy (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 19th, 2009
3:35 pm	Damn You, SMeyer! Damn You! Here I sat, happily reading a story on the computer, when suddenly, the author chose to use the word 'chagrin'. I cringed. Damn you, SMeyer, for making a single word become so revolting to read that I automatically cringe when I read it. EDIT: Because this deserves attention: CHAGRIN! This post was posted at http://jackalibis.dreamwidth.org/95669.html. Please comment there using OpenID (username.livejournal.com or username.insanejournal.com and your password). Current Mood: annoyed (Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
7:34 pm	Troublesome Cold Weather I've been so sore and sleepy today that I couldn't bring myself to do much of anything. My own writing challenge has been failed for today, but then, with the fact that I couldn't sleep due to pain last night, it's not too surprising, because I ended up having to catch up on the missed sleep during the day instead. It's also the reason I haven't been active online today. It's taken me several attempts to even get this much written. Simply because I keep getting distracted by random things. Namely the cat discovering the plastic slinky. *snicker* So, I'm just going to be doing some reading for the rest of the evening. Maybe I'll find something of interest tomorrow to share. I'll see if maybe I can get video of the cat, though. It's really cute. This post was posted at http://jackalibis.dreamwidth.org/95232.html. Please comment there using OpenID (username.livejournal.com or username.insanejournal.com and your password). Current Mood: cold (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
8:52 pm	Dose of Happiness Today's Happy Things 1. My friend Garrenn came over to visit. 2. An old friend that I haven't talked to in about seven years called me on the phone today and we chatted for nearly three hours. 3.Got the utility bill and it's the lowest amount of the year, and is under $80! (This includes our electric, water, sewer, and trash pickup on one bill.) 4. Wrote 1670 words in a little over 30 minutes. The (unedited) results can be found at ibisscrawl  5. Have told three friends and two complete strangers that I loved them today. This makes me very happy. ^__^ This post was posted at http://jackalibis.dreamwidth.org/95010.html. Please comment there using OpenID (username.livejournal.com or username.insanejournal.com and your password). Current Mood: cheerful (Comment on this)
9:01 am	Fandom Reflections You know, it's been a really long time since I felt like wanting to read fan fiction, much less write it. But over the last few days, I've got back to where a few of my favorite things have made me want to poke around and see what others have written, and maybe try to get back into the swing of things to write my own. If you follow my writing journal (ibisscrawl ) you probably know that already. Looking at my list of possibilities towards writing, though (found here), you can tell I genuinely don't watch a lot of TV. After all, the only TV show listed is Firefly, which I didn't discover until it was already off the air and the movie was already on DVD. We have cable internet, but not cable TV. I forget how I stumbled across it... I'm pretty sure someone suggested it to me to watch on Hulu, though... Occasionally, I'll get the kick to try to watch an episode or two of a series. Firefly became an instant favorite (and I had the advantage of watching it in order!). We found the box set on sale at FYE about a year ago, and the movie soon their after. We own the core rulebook for the role-playing game as well (actually, I think we have two copies of the rpg book... We tend to do that so we're not bickering with each other when we both want to use the book. I've also started getting digital backups of all of our rpg books, which makes it easier on me since I do all my note-taking on the computer anyway--yay for copy and paste out of PDFs!!). But then, there are times that I really love something, and another aspect of it is added to the fandom that I just can't get into. Take the Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris. I absolutely love the book series, and am personally cheering on Eric over Bill. But whenever I tried to watch True Blood, the TV series based on the novels, I was less than impressed. In fact, I was severely disappointed. There's so much of series missing just from the start of the TV series, that you loose some of the very important aspects of the character development, especially for Sookie Stackhouse, the main character. I was also rather upset that they completely got rid of the grandmother. The TV series starts after Sookie's grandmother dies. Now, this is a series based on vampires, so death and murder is to be expected. And they skipped the first couple of books in the series for the TV pilot. Sookie's grandma was a hoot, and it's a real shame the series didn't start at the real beginning. I tried watching the first few episodes of the series, but by episode five, when I was still not impressed with the show, I gave up and returned to the novels. Besides, I like the way Bill looks and sounds in my head a lot better than the actor on the TV show. I just don't find the actor attractive in the slightest sense. Hell, out of all the characters I saw and actually paid enough attention to in order to remember, Sookie is the only one I even found slightly pleasing, and that's just because I love her attitude! Beyond that, with the current Okami kick, and the severe lack of any decent Okami fan fiction, I'm planning on writing at least some short stories based on the video game. Some will be along the romantic line, most of them will be fluff at best, the majority will just be gen-fic. As for what pairings you might see in my take of things, you'll just have to wait and see. And, of course, I'm going to be working on the role-playing game fictions. Mostly World of Darkness (both old system Vampire: The Masquerade and the newer series, largely ignoring Vampire: The Requiem, because it sucks, and not in a good way. I'm talking almost as bad as Twilight suckage here. Not quite as bad, but almost), along with some Scion and Exalted. Can you tell who my favorite game publisher is? (For those of you who don't know, White Wolf Games publishes all of those game series.) So, yep. I can be into fandom too. I don't really get into the whole OMGRAMPANTFANSQUEE thing that plagues most fandoms, and I often prefer to lurk in any communities or forums that I might even give a chance a looking at. The only community I'm even semi-active in for anything is Shadownessence, which is a fan community dedicated to the White Wolf line of games. I can be found there as Keeper. And no, this doesn't mean you're going to end up spammed with a bunch of fandom posts. If you follow my writing journal, it means you'll hopefully be seeing a lot more writing coming from me, but otherwise, things will progress as per usual. And right now, I really want some tea... I think Asian Plum this time. (BTW, if you're following me on LJ, once April rolls around and my paid time is up, I'm deleting my LJ account. I've set up my OpenID account as jackalibis.dreamwidth.org if you want to add me as a friend that way to keep up with you. LJ isn't sending me notifications of comments like it's supposed to, so I often don't know that anyone has said anything the few times I do receive comments there. And most of the time, no one comments on LJ, so I'm just going to be dropping it all together and go to a read-only account. I still have Dreamwidth invites available if anyone wants one. Or you can check out the dw_codesharing community for instant click-a-link, get-an-account codes. The only reason I'm not posting my codes is because most of them are from a secondary account that I don't want everyone trying to friend whenever it's a primarily private account.) This post was posted at http://jackalibis.dreamwidth.org/94511.html. Please comment there using OpenID (username.livejournal.com or username.insanejournal.com and your password). Current Mood: cold (Comment on this)
Sunday, November 15th, 2009
11:19 pm	Archive of Our Own I have an account now, ever since they released into Open Beta. I have to say, I'm impressed at how quickly I got my invitation for the account. It was just over 24 hours since I added my name to the list that I actually checked my email. I didn't think to actually check the time stamp to find out roughly when I received it, but still... Don't know what I'm talking about? Here's a link: Archive of Our Own (and my currently blank profile!) Fandom stuff. Largely because I've decided to start writing some drabbles for the few things I'm willing to try to write for now days. And at least it's not FanFiction.Net... -_-;;;; So, yeah... You'll be able to read anything I write either there or in ibisscrawl  Tis all. This post was posted at http://jackalibis.dreamwidth.org/93980.html. Please comment there using OpenID (username.livejournal.com or username.insanejournal.com and your password). Current Mood: contemplative (Comment on this)
Saturday, November 14th, 2009
5:47 pm	Taking Tomorrow Off This is mostly concerning the whole Children of Kemet thing... I'm taking tomorrow off. Completely. No work will be done on my end. No email checked, no searches for software ran, and not even a forum visit. I've been working on getting things back up and running for days. I need a break before I just stop caring. So, if you submit a support request, I'll get to it first thing Monday morning. Right now, I have Garrenn over. She's playing Okami on the Wii. I'm watching while enjoying a glass of sparkling grape juice (didn't have any wine or anything left, plus I'll have to drive her home in a couple of hours). Since we were able to finish up the yard and all today, I don't have to deal with any of that tomorrow. A portion of the yard needs mowed, but Sabam is supposed to do that. If he doesn't, then I guess I'll have to get out there myself, but it's only a small area of the backyard, so it shouldn't take me too long so long as the mower cranks. My plans for tomorrow is basically to take it easy. I think I might try just working on writing whatever story will come to mind. And play some Okami for myself. And maybe Super Smash Bros. Brawl or Mario Kart on the Nintendo WiFi. Mentioning that, does anyone we reads this want to do a code exchange? So, nothing important for most people. But a break will be had. I've put in more hours on the website in the last few days than most people work in a week. I really need a day off. This post was posted at http://jackalibis.dreamwidth.org/93556.html. Please comment there using OpenID (username.livejournal.com or username.insanejournal.com and your password). Current Mood: calm (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 12th, 2009
8:41 pm	Taking Requests! :D NOTE: I have no idea why the other Okami video is at the bottom... That's kinda weird. And I don't care enough to sort out the code for it... Tomorrow, I'm going to start recording music on the flute. I'm not doing video of myself playing it very often though, because frankly, it freaks me out knowing people are seeing me play. o_O Yeah, it doesn't make sense to me either. It's the anxiety... Regardless!! I'm taking requests! Comment to this post, being sure to leave me a link to the music request in question (like from YouTube or something). If it's possible to play it, I'll do it. Here are some of the songs I plan on doing tomorrow: 1. The Journey Continues -- Okami Soundtrack 2. Transverse Town -- Kingdom Hearts Soundtrack Current Mood: bouncy (Comment on this)
7:05 am	Morning Musings Wow, that was a weird dream... I dreamed that because of some computer error, there had been a mistake in all of our finances for the last five years and that in settlement for the trouble, we received $25million dollars so we wouldn't take them to court. O_o I wish someone would decide that we were owed $25million!! I would happily settle outside of court if that was the kind of money being offered to me. So, anyway... I figured out that yes, I will eventually have the money to get caught up this month on the bills. I won't have extra to start paying anyone back just yet, unfortunately, but next month is the last payment on one of our loans, so I will at least work on paying you back starting then. And then I won't have to worry about that loan anymore! *happy dance* After that, I'll just have two more to pay off, and one is to a family member rather than a financial company, so it's less of a stressful, considering if we're super tight on funds that month, she lets us skip a month. Technically, we're still $177 short of being able to pay our mortgage bill on time, which means I'll have to use $191 out of the next check which arrives in less than two weeks to pay it and be completely caught up to date. One thing that is going to help, though, is that we have a voucher to skip a month's payment on our auto loan. While yes, this will add an extra month on the very end of the loan itself, it also means we'll have some money for the holidays. And with a five-year-old, having money for the holidays is a good idea, you know? That's $182 that we don't have to put towards bills next month. So, beyond finances... Children of Kemet is still coming along smoothly now, if taking a while because of the tedious process. I've also discovered that I really need to learn the CSS and PHP coding languages. All I know is HTML, but at least I can handcode entire websites if necessary. But with HTML becoming largely obsolete as a primary web design language, I figure I'd best try to keep with the times. Which means I need to find some sites and books on CSS and PHP... Joy. And then, something that makes me happy: I found the ROMs for some of the really old Sega games that I used to play all the time as a kid. Primarily, the Sonic The Hedgehog series. I was a Sega kid growing up, owning everything from the Mastersystem to the Saturn, including the GameGear (which I still have, but it doesn't work--the games still work fine, though). My only exposure to Nintendo was at my grandparents' house where my cousins had an NES. The only game we had for it was Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt. I sucked at Mario... Like...really bad. I still do, actually. Ronin does better than I do! I can't even make it to the end of the world 1. He can easily get to world 4 by himself without any help whatsoever. We're also seeing some major improvements around the house. Granted, now the yard looks like shit at the roadside because the city hasn't come by with the junk truck yet, but at least the stuff is getting out of the house. We had had to move out of our last house and then into this one so fast, we didn't have time to sort anything before moving. We're just now getting the bulk of the stuff sorted out and got rid of. What I dread is going to be sorting through the books again to trim down the collection a bit... >_> I love books. A lot. I love to read. And even though I have a Sony Reader, I still buy paperbacks and hardback books because I love having the actual books themselves. Given the chance, I'd probably build floor-to-ceiling bookshelves throughout the majority of the house just to house all the books I'd love to have. And hey, if something happens where I do get $25million (or even less, I'm not picky), then that's very likely what I'll do. I'd live in a library if they'd let me. And that would be when you would see my OCD really kick in. I'm severely OCD when it comes to books, which means I'd be perfect for working in a library or bookstore. The only problem is that a) I can't work, and b) none of those places ever are willing to hire me. Or even let me volunteer, in the case of the libraries. I've tried. On both fronts. And...well...this has been sitting open for a few hours now because I forgot that I was making a post whenever I got distracted by work on Children of Kemet again... *blush* So, this is the end. I'm getting back to work now. This post was posted at http://jackalibis.dreamwidth.org/92113.html. Please comment there using OpenID (username.livejournal.com or username.insanejournal.com and your password). Current Mood: busy (Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
9:30 pm	Children of Kemet Forums -- No Need to Re-Register! If you were previously a member of the Children of Kemet forums, there is no need to re-register your account (with the exception if you possibly had 0 posts, at which point I didn't register the ones that appeared to be spambots). Instead, you need to let me know your email address so that I can send you your temporary password! The staff and I have been working very hard at getting things fixed back up since the recent malfunction that locked everyone out of the old forum. By registering yourself a new account, you will loose all of your posts you have previously made, as we are manually moving posts from the old forum to the new one, and reassigning the accounts to the appropriate posts. We will not go back and change these posts again to match a new username! If you wish to have your username changed, you need to allow us to change it in the account currently registered within our system. Unfortunately, we did not have records of everyone's email addresses to where they could be accessed offline. This is why we are having to ask for everyone's email address: so we can send you your temporary password to the forum. We will also be setting up an email forwarding system for everyone that is currently registered to have your own @childrenofkemet.org email address to receive mail at. This is an email forwarding system only. All emails will be delivered strait into your personal email inbox. This post was posted at http://jackalibis.dreamwidth.org/91755.html. Please comment there using OpenID (username.livejournal.com or username.insanejournal.com and your password). Current Mood: busy (Comment on this)
5:22 pm	Not A Happy Webmaster Ouch. I just realized I've been working on getting Children of Kemet Forums back up and running for the last eight hours. ... Yeah. EIGHT hours! With no real break. I haven't even eaten lunch yet, and it's 5:25pm now. So, obviously, I'm going to be taking a break for the rest of the night. The forums are open now, for anyone who wants to use them. I'll still be checking the support emails for a few more hours to see if anyone needs help getting signed in. But as for actually getting things set up any further than they are now, that can wait until tomorrow... This post was posted at http://jackalibis.dreamwidth.org/91460.html. Please comment there using OpenID (username.livejournal.com or username.insanejournal.com and your password). Current Mood: exhausted (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
2:04 pm	Children of Kemet Things Well, users of Dreamwidth, LiveJournal, and Twitter can now take advantage of the new Support & Development Blog for Children of Kemet. Here's where you can find everything: childrenkemetsupport_feed : Dreamwidth's Feed for the Support & Development Blog of Children of Kemet cokemetsupport : LiveJournal's Feed for the Support & Development Blog of Children of Kemet childrenofkemet : The Official Children of Kemet Twitter (will auto-post notifications of the Support & Development Blog as well) I am currently working on backing up all the files and such from the current website. I will be changing things around, so expect some changes in the next few hours. This post was posted at http://jackalibis.dreamwidth.org/90947.html. Please comment there using OpenID (username.livejournal.com or username.insanejournal.com and your password). Current Mood: busy (Comment on this)
7:05 am	Icons Meme! 1. Comment to this entry saying 'ICONS!' 2. I will pick 6 of your icons. 3. Make an entry in your own journal and talk about the icons I chose. The following icons were selected by takemyrevolution : ( Read more... ) EDIT: Saving the f-list/access lists. Be glad. This may be repeated several more times! ^__^ The following icons were selected by twilight_zone : ( Read more... ) -- Nomnomnom... *snicker* This post was posted at http://jackalibis.dreamwidth.org/90667.html. Please comment there using OpenID (username.livejournal.com or username.insanejournal.com and your password). Current Mood: amused (Comment on this)
Monday, November 9th, 2009
1:52 pm	Children of Kemet Revisited? For those of you who haven't figured it out yet, I'm Kemetic, meaning I worship the deities of ancient Egypt. And well, in addition to this, I also run a community for others who also worship these Gods, as well as anyone else who just happens to be friendly and wants to hang out. Honestly, we're open to anyone, and the community we're building is one I'm very proud of. So, anyway... I started the newest incarnation of the website by reforming the forums (which won't be changing, so don't start freaking out!), and by installing a community software called Joomla. Well, things started out okay, until I realized just how much of a pain Joomla was going to be for me to run. The biggest issue is getting it to allow members to contribute when it comes to articles. It just honestly does not want to allow it. Even I have to go in through the article manager sometimes to get it to work. This has also boiled down to it requiring me to upload every single person's contributions, and them not getting the proper credit for it like it's supposed to do. This is becoming excessively frustrating for me, so I decided to start looking at alternatives. I am also a guest-blogger on the blog for the local Pagan store, The Sacred Paths (the spiritual side of The Cool Store in Boaz, Alabama). Their website for The Sacred Paths is entirely powered by Wordpress, as you can see here: http://www.thesacredpaths.com/village/ I've ran Wordpress sites before. I really love using Wordpress, too. It's easy to administer, modify, and use on the user-end of things. So I started looking into a few things like themes and plugins to see how I could make it best work for the Children of Kemet community. Right now, I haven't installed a lot of things to it yet, and some of the features won't start showing up until more posts are made, but there is a site being formed to just run the tests on: http://childrenofkemet.org/wptest/ So, basically, I was hoping for some feedback from everyone. Even if you've never visited our website before, I would love to know what you think. Here's the current main website: http://childrenofkemet.org/ And now, I have to get ready to pick up Ronin and Garrenn from their schools. Be sure to check my other posts for today! (I'm almost always a multi-post blogger. I have too much going on in my head!) This post was posted at http://jackalibis.dreamwidth.org/90439.html. Please comment there using OpenID (username.livejournal.com or username.insanejournal.com and your password). Current Mood: busy (Comment on this)
9:39 am	Kemetic Humor Slowly but surely, things are returning to normal. While I'm still having trouble "hearing" at the moment, I can "feel" again. This is a small miracle in my eyes, and I'm enjoying the quiet time spent snuggling up against Anpu while sitting here. I might not be able to sense his presence as well as I normally can just yet, but it's still extremely enjoyable to be able to feel his arm wrapped over my shoulders while I write this. So, in the process, somehow I got to thinking of some of the more humorous moments with the Gods, most specifically the Neteru (though sometimes other Gods were involved as well). I figured I would share some of these things with you, especially since one of these things happened only yesterday and was quite funny. The kitchen light had been out for some time. The switch had been left on as well, it seemed. My friend Garrenn was over helping us clean up the house, and she volunteered to replace the lightbulb in the kitchen overhead light. So I found the stepladder and she climbs up. While I'm explaining to her how to remove the cover, she touches it and the light comes back on. o_O She makes the joke of "Let there be light!" and I get the first words from any Neter that I've heard in a couple of months. "Very well," came the amused words from Ra, and the clouds parted and the sunlight came in through the windows as well. I about died laughing. It made it easier to cope with the leg pain to get more work done after that rather humorous miracle. Especially since we'd only had two lightbulbs left. Another time, I was trying to decide whether or not I should go out for a walk. I wasn't feeling the greatest that day, but I hadn't been out of the house for over a week. I had my phone in my pocket, and the keypad was locked. For those of you who don't know, my phone is one of those Sony Walkman phones, where it's got the built-in speaker and MP3 player. Well, one of my ringtones was made from The Bangles' Walk Like An Egyptian. It's impossible (or at least, so unlikely that it might as well be impossible) for anything to accidentally push the buttons to get to that file in order for it to start playing on its own. And guess what happened. It started playing. I decided then to go for my walk, and the sick feeling I'd been suffering went away in the process.  (And yes, most of the Kemetics for whom I have your phone numbers ring in with that ringtone. Except for Tut, who has the G1 Transformers theme. *giggle*) Then there's Set. I think anyone who has had to deal with him for any extended period of time knows how he can be sometimes... I love him to death, but sometimes, I wish he wouldn't amuse himself at my expense. He's like that old Grandpa that you're kind of embarrassed about because of how lewd he can be, so you don't really ever talk about him, especially not in public. You love him, but you just don't know what to do about him sometimes. There are too many things to go over about Set to cover everything. One of his favorite things to do though is to play against my OCD and turn his statue at either a 90 or 180 degree angle from where it's supposed to be. This drives me insane, and amuses him to no end. He says that it's to ensure I pay attention to his shrine, but really, I'm sure it's just that he enjoys messing with me. And anyway, I need to get back to work on the housework. I'm trying to not strain myself, so I'm doing the light duty stuff as much as possible. But I still need to get some stuff done. So maybe more later... BTW, this isn't the first post of today. Keep going down to read the others. (May be friends-locked, so if you're not on my list, you probably won't be able to see them all.) This post was posted at http://jackalibis.dreamwidth.org/90224.html. Please comment there using OpenID (username.livejournal.com or username.insanejournal.com and your password). Current Mood: amused (Comment on this)
Sunday, November 8th, 2009
9:08 pm	Random Things First of all, yay, we're finally getting the house organized. One of our friends spent the night last night and helped us out with getting things out of the house and cleaned up. We had moved in so fast when we bought the house that we literally had to cram everything we owned in the house. This house was too small to hold everything that had been packed, because we had to move out too fast to be able to sort it before we moved. It may have taken a while, but at least it's finally getting done. Of course, now I hurt, but still... >_> I also discovered I really need a stool that I can sit on in the kitchen for when I'm washing dishes or cooking. Also, our dryer has died. This really sucks because I currently have two loads of wet clothes that I can't get dry as a result. I'm going to have to take them to the laundry mat. I'm going to do that in the morning though. I don't want to go out there at night by myself, and with Ronin having school tomorrow, he's in bed. On the bright side, there is no shortage of people around here who will by non-functional appliances and haul them off for you. We have both the dryer and the stove that need hauled off, so we should be able to get at least $100 for the pair, if not more. That's enough to buy us a new-for-us used dryer. And a friend of mine is giving us a stove, so all I have to do is get it brought to the house. And please go check out my friend's deviantART page: garrenn.deviantart.com She's awesome and deserves some love, so go watch her if you're on dA. I had other stuff to say, but I forgot... >_< Maybe I'll remember later... This post was posted at http://jackalibis.dreamwidth.org/89547.html. Please comment there using OpenID (username.livejournal.com or username.insanejournal.com and your password). Current Mood: sore (Comment on this)
Saturday, November 7th, 2009
7:47 pm	Company & Camera Finds Yay! I found my camera. It turns out it was still in the car. Sabam just didn't see it. (Seeing as he had the car with him at work in the next town over, it was a bit hard to check myself...) And I also have company over. Garrenn from deviantART. ^__^  We're playing Okami on the Wii. I has happy now. I is also noms. *giggle* This post was posted at http://jackalibis.dreamwidth.org/89318.html. Please comment there using OpenID (username.livejournal.com or username.insanejournal.com and your password). Current Mood: happy (Comment on this)
7:15 am	Why Does This Keep Happening?! My digital camera... You know, the bright red one? It's gone missing again. I just had it six days ago. It is still in its bag (which unfortunately is black and dark blue... I need a dayglow orange one, apparently), that was supposed to be attached to my laptop bag. Well, I checked my laptop bag, not there. Not inside of it. Not anywhere around it. Not in my purse, the car, the couch, or anywhere else that I could find. I really hate when my camera disappears on me like this. Especially when a local friend wants to hang out today, neither of us have a car, and we're going to be on foot. Even more especially when this friend is also one of my volunteer models that I haven't got to work with yet and would love to be able to do a few test shots while we're out. And my goddamn camera has to choose now to go MIA again!!! ARGH! *headdesk* I think I'm gonna cry now... This post was posted at http://jackalibis.dreamwidth.org/88729.html. Please comment there using OpenID (username.livejournal.com or username.insanejournal.com and your password). Current Mood: depressed (Comment on this)
Friday, November 6th, 2009
12:19 pm	Musings Cooking myself lunch. Nothing much. Just threw some pizza rolls in the toaster oven. It's all I really feel up to eating at the moment. So, anyway, I've been thinking (like I have anything else to do, right)? Besides wishing like hell that I'd win the lottery (who doesn't?), I've got to figure out exactly what I'm going to do with my life. One of my local friends is currently attending the Art Institute through online learning. While that's not what's for me (seeing as I can barely draw, and I have a hard time with anything original), I have thought about going to school to better my creative streak. On one bright advantage, though... This friend is going to let me borrow her Photoshop course book once her class is over and done with to study over it myself. Which means I will hopefully have some mad Photoshop skills in the future. ;) Without really knowing what I'm doing, my skills with Photoshop are already improving drastically. Here's hoping that trend sticks around. And next month, on December 20th, another friend is getting married. Her mom has asked me to take some photos while I'm there. With my point & shoot camera, at that! That is bright red... Oh yeah, this is going to be interesting... Me, being socially awkward as I am in person, around a bunch of people that I don't know, taking pictures of them with a bright red camera and trying not to attract their attention under most circumstances. I'll be sure to write about the aftermath of that one. But the fact that this isn't the only photo request that I've got. In fact, I'm getting a surprisingly increasing number of locals wanting me to do photos for them. So, come February when we get the tax return, once I pay back some money that's owed, I'm investing in something for myself... A digital SLR camera and a couple of lenses. Normally these cameras run upwards of $400 or more. But being in Alabama, I have the advantage of being within easy driving distance of Unclaimed Baggage, where I can get one of these cameras for less than $200. I had paid $100 for my point & shoot a few years back, and it was on clearance at Walmart. Paying up to $200 for a professional camera is extremely reasonable in my book. A few people have worried about whether or not I would be able to learn how to use it. Let's just put it this way: I'm an extremely fast learner, and I do my best whenever I'm self-taught in something. I taught myself how to play every musical instrument that I know. I taught myself the HTML that I know (and am now working on learning CSS and PHP, because let's face it, HTML is almost dead), once my dad showed me how much fun I would end up having with it. I'm teaching myself digital art and pixel art. I've taught myself Photoshop to the extent that I know it now in a matter of two weeks. I don't think a camera is going to be that difficult for me. Besides, if necessary, I'm not ashamed to go ask for help. I'll always Google it first, to see if I can find something to help me on my own before I approach someone, but if necessary, I'll go ask someone that knows what they're doing when it comes to it. And it's a major advantage of being on Dreamwidth and deviantART, meeting fellow artists and such, in that I can easily find people to ask. So, professional camera? No problem. I've played with a film one before, anyway. It belongs to my uncle. I know how to do the lenses adjustments and all that already. Now the big thing, though... Do I want to continue to do self-taught, or do I want to see about maybe taking a certification course in digital photography? As it stands, people are willing to pay me, with me only being self-taught. The course would just be a piece of paper saying I know what I'm doing. Whereas my portfolio basically does the same thing, right? Mentioning portfolio... I'm building one up online. What do you think? I need to order some new business cards from VistaPrint soon. Mom (the surrogate one) was asking me for some to put up there at the store. At least the cards are free. And she'll probably help me with shipping if I need it. Which, currently, I would. Stupid finances... So, in the end... Should I try taking a course, or should I just continue to work on learning everything that I can on my own, seeing as that's seemed to work for me so far? And if I go through with the course idea, where should I take it through? It's going to have to be online, and preferably on the set-your-own-pace thing, just in case my health gets bad again. I really need to call and finish the application for disability... >_> I'll do that soon. Tut, if you see this and don't hear from me by Monday night, call me, okay? This post was posted at http://jackalibis.dreamwidth.org/88102.html. Please comment there using OpenID (username.livejournal.com or username.insanejournal.com and your password). Current Mood: contemplative (Comment on this)