So I woke up this morning from an anxiety nightmare, where in I was ten minutes late for my last animal physiology midterm, not because I had forgotten about it, or failed to set my alarm or anything usual and mundane. Instead, I dreamt I was late because I was at the post office attempting to to mail a package of uncooked ground beef. And the problem wasn't that the clerks objected to me mailing raw meat, it was that I hadn't brought enough paper to wrap the whole thing in.

Of course, I did end up being five minutes late to the midterm, but for the rather more boring reason that the first bus passed my stop was full and couldn't pick up any more passengers, so I had to wait for the next one.

Also, two unrelated moments of planning fail which more or less neutralize each other - realizing that the convention is in two weeks, not three (with costume still unfinished), and then realizing that the 3-4,000 word paper that I thought was due Wednesday is actually due Friday. Luckily I don't have too much left to do on the costumes, and I had already started in on research for the paper, so It all works out in the end.

I drink a lot of tea. I think I'm on my fourth cup of the day - third, at least, as I can't quite recall if I had a second mug during the OS-25 raid I did earlier. School is busy busy busy, and I am tired of ending up in charge of things (in this case, group projects) just because I'm the only one who doesn't want to do it all the night before.

Also, I can drink legally in the US now! Which is very anticlimatic, as I've been able to do so here in Canada for two years now. Made Jon take me out to Coraline 3D on Friday, which I enjoyed immensely despite the fact that it gave me strange dreams about mirror world, and there was a six year old in the third row who kept talking.

Blizzard has decided to forgive me, I think - Naxxramas went amazingly tonight. We one-shot eight bosses, and two-shot a ninth, and I got two awesome upgrades. Hopefully the Construct Quarter and Frostwyrm Lair will go as smoothly tomorrow.

In other gaming news (as gaming is the only interesting thing I do - everything else would be whining about school), our Hunter game dissolved because one player left, and we didn't have a very cohesive group, and has been replaced by GURPS Alpha Centauri. When we left our party, the Spartan bioroid and the decommissioned Peacekeeper cyborg were about to get into a bar fight, with the small, angry, humanity-hating ex-University computer genius caught in the middle, while the empathic, electrokinetic detective meets with a client at another table. We'll see if we get through session two without party deaths.

My Earthdawn game is set to finally start this week - I'm both excited and very nervous, because ED is such a story-heavy system and I am not always so good at story. So, fingers-crossed. I've also decided to keep an in-character log of our Tuesday night Earthdawn game, mostly as a characterisation exercise, as I've been having trouble finding a voice for Isak. It's up here - there will probably be some exposition in the next few days, as Isak is aware that he's writing for an audience as well,given that his IC reason for keeping it is to provide a counterpoint to that pack of lies Dawnstrider calls a journal.

Question for more techy people on my flist - desktops and wireless networking, how do you do it? I expected it to be an add-on card, but after searching New Egg, I can find no such thing. My last experience with desktops and networking was something like seven years ago, installing a ethernet card in an old Dell, so I'm really behind the times.

The reason for this is that I'm planning on using my income tax refund to build a media box/NAS, because I have 250 GB of disks scattered across my desk, and am tired of my roommate's PS3 refusing to play any of my older AVI files and mucking up sound decoding on some of the newer ones. My basic plan is to install MythBuntu to provide a video front end, and then use Samba for file sharing - if MythBuntu won't let me install Samba, I'll probably go for a normal Ubuntu build, strip out the extras and then toss in MythTV and Samba.

The two biggest planning hurdles so far are aforementioned wireless networking - I have absolutely zero access to the router in the house, so wired is basically out of the question - and trying to find a motherboard/CPU/graphics combo that's both cheap and space-efficient. The big flaw there is that this system will run fine on a 1.8 GHz single-core CPU and integrated graphics - but I need an S-video or composite video out. And it seems like integrated video + s-video or composite = nonexistant. Which means putting in a cheap dedicated card, which is 1) more space and 2) another $30.

Also, another sign that I haven't touched desktop stuff for a while - my jaw dropped when I saw that you can buy a DVD burner for $25. Mostly because I remember being excited when I bought a CD burner for $60 in like...2001.

There was an alligator in my biology class today, and I got to pet her. Alligators have surpisingly supple skin, and are unexpectedly cold (which makes sense, as they're cold-blooded, but some part of my brain reads animal = warm).

And then I came home and made cheese and cheesecake with Jon, which was totally awesome both for the 'OMG I'm making cheese' factor and getting to use my new mixer and food processor, which were Christmas gifts from my mom. Photos to come, as the awesome must be shared.

Downside: I am still totally not prepped for the game I'm supposed to run tomorrow, oh god oh god oh god. And have classes pretty much right up until game time.

I noticed while waiting for my class that the pay phone nook outside of this lecture hall has it's own little sign with a room number and the label 'Telephone'.

And today is both inauguration day and and patch day! There is goodness all around (watch, now tonight's Mage game will end in all of us being eaten by vampires or something).

-Driving in heavy fog at night on the highway is both very creepy and very nerve-wracking, because the visibility is so bad.

-Industrial sprawl in NJ is a very freaky place to get lost.

-I am not cut out for road trips - nine hours with a two and a half hour break in the middle of it = way too long.

However, my brother enjoyed Video Games Live!, and I enjoyed seeing them again, so in the end it was worth it.

Because I am kind of drunk right now (brother came home and his girlfriend is over, and we had a few while chatting after dinner), and Jon linked me to this thread, which is bringing out the epic eyerolling and ranting in me. And hey, I haven't bitched a bout cosplay for a while XD

This thread fails on many levels:

1) 'Asians are the most awesome perfect cosplayers ever!' - not actually outright said, but all but one of the 'good' cosplayers they link is Asian (I'm pretty sure that Ivy is Caucasian, but with all the make-up and wig, I can't make a 100% call). This is an attitude I am really sick of seeing in fandom and in the cosplay communities. Yeah, there are some fucking awesome Asian cosplayers. There are also some fucking awesome Western cosplayers too. And related, there are terribad Western cosplayers, and terribad Asian ones as well. Asians do not have a mystical cosplay gene that makes them automatically better at it. I know a lot of it is the weeaboo/Japanophile bullshit that is one of the reasons I've kind of fallen out of anime fandoms - if it comes from Japan, it must be better! (NB: I actually think most of the 'good' cosplayers linked are in fact amazing, it just tripped my pet peeve born of people on Cosplay.com actually outright saying 'Japanese cosplayers are the best evar omg')

2) 'Cosplay is only okay if it's done by hot chicks' - 1) up there is a pet peeve of mine, but this makes me want to find the person and give them the finger while shouting 'Go to hell, you sexist pig'. Newsflash, male nerds: this cosplay is not for you. I think it's a fair estimation to say that most cosplayers like it when other people like their costumes. We're human. We like compliments, we like flattery. But a lot of us? Costume for ourselves, for fun. Your like or dislike of our costume does not somehow validate or invalidate the work we put into it. We are not there for the sole purpose of your sexual gratification. You do not get to decide who cosplays and who doesn't. And you know, this goes for the female nerds too - anyone who says shit like 'ugh, he/she is so fat/ugly/pimply/etc, they should be banned from cosplay for life'.

3) 'I think all the cosplayers I see at cons are losers with no social lives' - I'm not sure whether I should laugh and laugh and laugh or just roll my eyes until they come out of their sockets. Please. You bought a con pass, do not judge the nerdiness of others. Besides, at least cosplay requires creativity. And for all the 'but cosplay is so expensive!' - so are video games, and TCGs, and RPG books (oh god yes T.T) and golf, and going to the movies all the time, and cooking (the net worth of my cooking appliances/utensils/supplies is def worth more than all the cosplays I've done), and, well, most hobbies. It's just that nobody rags one someone for spending hundreds of dollars on golf clubs because it's considered socially acceptable, while making your own really cool clothing and fake weapons and shit is super-nerdy and worthy of mocking.

And I will end this by admitting that yeah, I am hypercritical about cosplay - both my own and others. I'm hypercritical about a lot of things in life (riding public transit a lot really makes me hate humanity), and I know full-well that a lot of it is because I have self-esteem problems. I belittle others to feel better about myself. But you know what? At least I keep all my bitchy criticisms to myself - I don't walk up to the person, or their friends and be like 'you are a godawful cosplayers, now GTFO'. Hell, I don't even post it on the internet. Honestly, this is in part the reason I stopped entering competitions - it made me even more of a massive hypercritical bitch, and I hated that part of me. Judging, on the other hand, actually made me remember why I love cosplaying - talking to people, new and old cosplayers alike, who were just so enthusiastic and excited to be there, and be cosplaying, was really uplifting. Even the discussions among the judges afterwards managed to be constructive in their criticisms - a lot of 'this part was really awesome, but I think if they had done this, it would have made the costume a lot better', which for craftsmanship judging (which is what this is) is the right attitude to have.

(Semi-related hint - cosplay on the internet is all about photography. Crappy construction will look great with a a good photographer, and amazing construction will look lousy with a bad one.)

Dear Money,

Go die in a fire

-Me

So, after figuring out how much money I owe people, and then factoring in the lousy exchange rate, I realized I have $150 left to 1) buy food for the next week and 2) finish buying Christmas presents.

I also discovered my credit card won't authorize any more - I'm guessing it's a combo of Vanoc running the full amount of the Olympic tickets I requested for my Dad plus my mom putting a bunch of stuff on one of the linked cards.

I also want to play DDS2 more, but don't really want to spend $50 on a game I already own, and have tossed another $20 and a year and a half trying to get back into my possession (I'm not bitter at all, no). I know I can probably buy it again with Christmas money, but I'd really rather buy something I don't have already.

I'm angry and bitter and can't sleep, and nobody else is on for me to bitch to. Argh.

EDIT: I should note that this is not 'oh noez I am broke and going to starve' - I have money for food and rent for January (and already paid up this month). I was just hoping to have some left over after presents to buy some books or something for myself.

Oh Arts, how I love you ♥

I had these two papers I was really worried about the marks on - a paper for a third-year science lab (the one I was wailing about a few weeks ago), and a paper about portrayals of anarchism in The Secret Agent and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man for a fourth year English class. Both were super-bullshitty, and I felt like they were both C/D papers - not strong work at all.

I don't have the science paper back yet, although with 40% and 60% as my two previous paper grades, not looking good. The English paper? 78%. I laugh and laugh and laugh. And then cry a little, because there's no way I got 78% on my stats final this morning.