Song of the day: Dreamnote - Hakuna Matata

Maybe everyone's actually pretentious, just about different things. Maybe you're pretentious about subgenres of metal band or specific forms of poetry. I'm probably a little pretentious about grammar. It's just what we care about as people---you don't want to see things you care about, even if they're totally random, butchered. As long as you try not to be a douche about it (which I think I try to do) it's alright, in my opinion. (Maybe I should call this my Tuesday Two Cents instead. Maybe I should make a musings page. I want to work more on my site, but I digress.)

Today's interesting read that inspired this.

Published on Tuesday, April 30, 2024, at 1:30 PM.

Song of the day: BESTie - Thank U Very Much

Long time no blog! The site's really been neglected this month due to school, the play and all that good stuff, and to be totally honest, what with AP exams and finals and graduation coming up, it probably is going to stay mostly that way for another couple of weeks, but I really want to work on it more! And I did make a significant change today---I finally put that Windows 7 PC (see my post "Adventures in Installing Windows" from earlier this month) on my computers page! And rearranged stuff to reflect that this is now my main desktop---and doing a smashing job of it too, so far! Although the Neocities code editor did seem to wig it out briefly earlier today. But yeah, I plan to take this computer to college and use it as my desktop PC there! The Windows 7 user experience is just so much better than the Windows 10 experience, or especially the Windows 11 and modern OS X experiences. It's simple, fast, pretty, uncluttered (despite not being ugly and "minimalist") and generally a joy to use.

But, as I was speaking about college, I've toured two colleges these past two Fridays! One was a full admitted students day program that started pretty early, so we drove up the night before and stayed the night in a hotel to minimize rushing around and/or having to get up at an ungodly hour. The other was just a half-day tour and chat with the admissions counsellor, although it looks like I'm going to that second college so I wish I had gone to its admitted students day instead. It's a bit of a shame that I made two friends at the former college but I'm probably not going to go there now, and that I have no proper friends at the one that I'm going to go to yet. (I do have one classmate, but he and I are moreso acquaintances---not super close. I'm obviously nto super close with the new friends from the other college, either, but they had the potential to end up being pretty close friends.)

Speaking of where I'm going to go, I have to have my decision in Wednesday! I could still deliberate, and I'm scared of making the decision enough that I haven't committed yet, though the deadline is going to force my hand and I'm leaning toward the second anyways, so I may as well just get it over with, though I probably will chat with my college counsellor beforehand anyways.

My college admissions cycle has been a bit of a nightmare, what with all the bullhockey with the FAFSA, as well as some other things that are more individual, like my desire to go to Canada that sadly winded up being unachievable. Looking back, it wasn't really possible on my end since my parents had to be the ones to tell me it was impossible either way, but I still wish I hadn't been so much in La La Land so I would have had more time to look for cheaper but still good colleges in America. I'm pretty well satisfied with where I'll probably be going, but I wish I had at least had time to get to know it better before committing. I also wish I hadn't had to have two sudden and unfortunate changes of course there, but oh well. Learn from me, if any of y'all are going to go through college applications soon---research early, and have financial discussions with your parents early---don't put it off!

Besides that, not a lot has been going on here recently, at least that I can remember. I'll be very glad to have this off my shoulders! But now I need to figure out what I'm bloody going to wear for Prom. I hope I'll enjoy Prom! Because spending all that money only to not enjoy it would be a right shame. But anyways, I'm going to go play Minecraft until I have to get ready for bed---Heaven knows I need it. Talk to y'all soon!

Published on Sunday, April 28, 2024, at 8:04 PM.

Song of the day: Sistar - Touch My Body

Blogger's note: the first part of this post was written on Sunday, not Monday.

I’m coming at you right now live (never mind that I’ll be uploading this later) from backstage at my school play! Today’s our final performance, and things have gone much better these past few nights compared to when I last talked to y’all and the night or two afterwards. Tech week up through dress rehearsal was… concerning, to put it mildly. People weren’t memorized and didn’t know their blocking, and we hit our rock bottom the third night of tech week and dress rehearsal. Somehow, though, opening night went pretty well! There were still some dropped lines, and we had to skip a monologue at one point, but it went well overall. (My water bottle also dropped about four feet whilst full up backstage during the final scene, creating a sound approximately equal to an atomic bomb test in the desert of Nevada. Oops!) Then, last night went really well! There were no forgotten speeches at all, except for a couple little lines swapped around and a line here and there. There was a significant amount of noise backstage, but very little of that was my fault! I’ve been pretty tired today, since I haven’t gotten to bed before 11 all week (and most nights towards 11:30) and it’s been tiring in general, since I’ve had very little free time to just relax.

The show's just going on now (I promise I'm writing this during a time where I don't have scene changes for a while---I'm not being a lackadaisical assistant stage manager!), and we’re doing well! Although we might be a little slow with the scene changes—it’s weird doing a matinée rather than a soirée and we’re also all tired. But this has been really fun! I’m glad that I chose to do this this semester! It’s a shame that I won’t have another play to do with this bunch next year, for this is a great bunch to work with (besides the memorization thing), but alas. Maybe I’ll do theatre in college! This has been a great experience. :)

Now it's Monday! I got home from the play yesterday and was totally beat, so I vegged out watching YouTube the whole rest of the day. Right now I'm sitting at my new PC in my room, with my fan blasting air in from outside since it's night, so it's cooler now. It's been around 80 F these past few days, so I've been cooking! I've been working these past few days on getting the PC how I like it, and before long I promise I'll add it to the computers page! Especially as I plan for this to be my primary computer when I go off to uni. Windows 7 really is such a more pleasant user experience compared to modern Windows and modern Mac!

Besides that, I've been absolutely beat since the play! I really widh I could've just had today off today to recuperate, but alas. And I have a trip to take soon---oy! I can't wait for this next weekend, then! But yeah. I'll talk to all y'all later!

Published on Monday, April 15, 2024, at 9:08 PM.

Song of the day: Sistar - Shake It

So two important things happened yesterday. I mean, not ground-breakingly important in the grand scheme of things (contrary to some people's belief, yesterday was not indeed the Second Coming), but interesting, big-ish things nonetheless. Firstly, we started working on tech for my school play, which means I have to stay at school until really late---agh! But it's going well I guess, although this is my first ever theatre production so I'm... still figuring it out, shall we say. (That's code for I'm partly crashing and burning, but it's okay because we don't open for a little while longer.) I am freaking out a little bit, since we have one actor voiceless and some people aren't memorized, so I'm just hoping and praying that it'll all come under control. But I think I'll be patronizing drive-thrus quite a lot this week.

Besides that, we had that solar eclipse yesterday! It was only partial where I was, which wasn't as cool as 2017, when my mum and I got to see a total eclipse (of the heart), but it was still really cool to see how everything darkened (and got cooler! It's already warming up, and I can tell my poor constitution is going to be greatly vexed by this summer.) So yesterday was an eventful day for me, and I'm just hoping I'll have minimal homework because homework and tech week cannot coexist peacefully. Toodles!

Published on Tuesday, April 9, 2024, at 10:07 AM.

Song of the day: Sistar - Shady Girl

Aaand, again with the Weekend Blogging syndrome. I'll probably have time to actually update the site during the week after this week, since a week from today is the last show of our school play, but this week is tech week, so I'll have to stay at school until 9:00. Who know---maybe I'll find time in there to blog? But it definitely won't help my late nights I've been having recently. For some reason, some confounding factor or other has meant that most nights this week, I haven't been able to get in bed until 11:00 or later, which is frustrating and tiring. And then this morning, my digital alarm clock somehow went an hour early, so I heard that "You've Got A Fast Car" song at 6 o'clock.

Anyways, my big project this weekend (besides writing a history paper) was working on a computer I bought used the other day! A local church hosted a rummage sale this weekend and I bought a used HP computer because it said it was made for Windows 7 and it was only $20. (I also bought some cute clothes, a little boombox for my room, and a whole load of CDs---some of which I mainly bought because the singers looked handsome, to be honest---amongst other things.) It turned on all right, but booted into Windows 10. What's more, the Web browsers were filled with some... racy bookmarks the previous owner had never erased. So I went on a long journey to reinstall Windows 7, which involved a long hunt for an ISO to reinstall Windows since Microsoft no longer provides them, getting temporarily IP-banned for downloading too much from the Internet Archive, figuring out that burning an OS install disc onto a DVD doesn't mean you can boot from it, and some misadventures with drivers. (I spent hours this morning trying to get drivers, including the graphics driver, which gave me a lot of trouble---but at least, I was able to get it working and thus get Aero working!)

But it's working now, and working well! And for all the bad rap spinning hard disks get, Windows 7 works really well on them. Now, I might have to reinstall the OS now and then to liven it up, but honestly, I should be doing that on every computer, probably. I really like it! Who know---I may make this my main computer during college. But anyways, because of that and the essay I've spent gobs of tiem on the computer this weekend, which is kind of annoying and draining, but oh well---I'll always have what part of next weekend I'm not devoting to the play etc. to read, listen to music, etc. I do wish I would've had a little more time to work on my site, but I also have more time for that. But I don't have time right now since it's getting late, so I'll talk to all y'all later. Toodles!

Published on Sunday, April 7, 2024, at 9:27 PM.