all things me

So, my article on cascading stylesheets came out on 31st. It was nice seeing my own handiwork in an actual magazine — along with pretty pictures by my namesake. Not that I’ve been dreaming of journalism since I was a kid (my friend and I made a magazine for our class, though, in early grades) but what can I say, it was a lot of fun to write for fun for a change. Oh, what am I talking about, I write here all the time! Anyway, you know what I mean.

I had told my father before (response: “uh-huh…”) and when the magazine came out, I showed Mum (response: “what am I supposed to be looking at” and then “oh, that’s what you’ve been up to! Getting all those mysterious envelopes”). Luckily the people at work were a bit more enthusiastic, otherwise I would’ve jumped on some table and shouted I got published in a magazine, dammit! Oh, Grandma asked me questions about it when I told her beforehand, so at least I got to tell the whole story to someone

Today I got my extra copies of the magazine. I sent one to my grandparents, Dad took one (on the excuse of paying most of the tool that was used to write the article… it’s his fault, he never took the money from me), and I’m keeping one wrapped — I also have the one that came in the mail on the day it was published.

So, the story: the editor had read my blog which he’d found via a blog list. Mum always asks why I bother with my homepage. Now I can tell her, and other heretics, that you can get a job (or at least freelance assignments) by bothering with homepages.

While we were having lunch, a gentleman in the next table asked which department we were in. He was conducting a little lunchtime experiment. We told we were from the general linguistics department, and apparently he then told us what he first thought we were, but none of us heard it. I just heard him say “oh, that’s what linguists look like” and tell where he’s from etc etc. I thought to myself that maybe we’re not very good stereotypes for linguists. I for one would probably pass for a philosopher with my black attire (bear in mind that the choices were teachers (and “related”), linguists, and philosophers).

Grandma has told me once that I look like a humanist (student in the Faculty of Arts, or Faculty of Humanities as it is for us), so that’s good. But do I look like a linguist? Think not, at least I’m not a linguist at heart, unless liking languages means ‘being a linguist’. I could be a computer person, but what do they look like? I already have glasses so I think that’s going for me… but everybody has glasses nowadays — or so it seems.

Hopefully I’m not stereotypical anything.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people, after me telling that I have loads to do (papers, assignments etc.), say “hope you get them done in time”. I don’t do “not on time”. I once had to turn in a paper one day after the deadline (and it was a loose dl) because I hadn’t finished it at 3 am on a day when I was just starting full-time work and waking up at 7 am.

In high school (senior high), I wrote a big geography assignment till 6 am and my alarm was set to go off at 6:15. I wrote the paper. On time. Just this week, I stayed up till 3 am (a magic hour, it seems) writing that stupid essay, but I got it done, it ended up being alright, and woke up at 7:45 to go to lectures.

It’s not about “hopefully getting things done”, it’s about how much (or little, to be precise) I get to sleep on the day before — or actually the day of — the deadline.
I’m a close-call adrenaline addict: I don’t get things done until the deadline looms close ahead. I know it’s bad for me, but it’s how I work.

Why can’t the spammers even write correctly!?! I’m invited to check out some very “interesdting” stuff.

None of the spam gets through, so there’s really no point, now is there? What annoys me the most is that the comment IDs get so big! Last legitimate comment was number 2888 — now the number is definitely over 2900 — when in fact there are only 80 comments (wow, eighty) showing on the posts! Do the math.

I miss captcha soooo much. People, not Tom, did you have trouble having to write that short code before posting? Would you mind if I brought it back? I’m honestly ripping my hair here… Even that blacklisting thing won’t delete the posts anymore! They’re stored…! I don’t want them cluttering up my database because Spam Karma can already handle them without any need to compare to past comments. Sheesh.

I hate this essay!

(trying to mean a female techie)

I’m recording the Survivor on my brand new DVD+VCR combo. The DVD is the writing kind so I’m testing it out while there’s a “backup” copy running upstairs on our “old” VCR (which was making smush out of the picture until Dad noticed a S-VHS setting).

Very exciting!

I’m a heavy user when it comes to recording. Not a day goes by that I don’t record something. That is why I’m excited about the writing DVD. The tapes I have get worn out pretty quickly, but then again, the DVDs are said to go (only?) 1000 recordings (or re-recordings). Or, maybe the tapes got worn out because of my old and crappy VCR. Who knows.

A VCR and a separate DVD+harddrive combo could’ve been pretty cool too, but that may have been a teensy bit too harsh on my bank account, especially when I have to buy storage space for my piles of tapes and DVDs that got evacuated from the recorder’s shelf.

Härpäke — (Fin.) something like ‘thingamabob’. My version: härpätin

This guy (Dermot Mulroney) or this guy (Rupert Everett) was in my dream the other night. Now that I stare at them, I’m pretty sure it was Everett. Whoever it was, what on earth was he doing in my dream?! I haven’t seen either of them in movies in a long time. A moment ago I accidentally caught a glimpse of “My best friend’s wedding” on an Estonian channel and it reminded me of my dream.

Actually, whoever it was, welcome back some another night

(hey, now I can sneak a peek at these cutsies whenever I want )

Mum (or any other relative), STOP READING! I’ll tell you in time
Here’s the secret I’ve been keeping for quite a while now. I can’t take it anymore!
Continues »

A lot of the time when people post their site links for others to see at “Strut your own stuff” (I’m talking about WP forums), pretty soon someone will write “that’s cool/beautiful/nice/awesome/the best layout I’ve ever seen!! Do you have it for download?/Please make it available ASAP!!!1”

What if the person has worked their butt off to get a beautiful, ORIGINAL, DISTINCTIVE layout? What if they don’t want to stumble across a clone everywhere they turn? Some people have miles and miles of themes in their theme switcher (right next to the miles and miles of blogs they apparently read), and they add to the list practically every theme they can get their hands on.

I know I’m being too hard on people who don’t have the knowledge/patience/interest to do their own themes but that is my opinion and this is my blog!

Disclaimer: This writing is by no means affected by the fact that I’ve been doing my portfolio layout for hours and hours (loving it though, but the theme pleads — in a wrong place — are a pet peeve). I might modify the layout to fit here, too It could be an invigorating change.

Happy Valentine’s Day!!!
In Finland it’s a day for friendships which is much fairer because we don’t all have valentines (or maybe you all do, but I don’t) but people usually have friends…

Don’t know if any of you ever glance at the Recently updated posts, but if you glance at it now you can see I’ve been updating my old old posts. Yes, I admit it. I’ve been checking my posts for typos. I’m a little odd like that. But boy did I find some silly blurts.

I’m also pondering whether or not to publish a post about the secret of mine that is now done, finished, over (I guess) on my part. ‘On my part’ being the operative phrase. Aren’t I annoying?

This, well… yesterday, morning I was feeling very sick. Very. I don’t really know why, but the world was spinning around me and I could hardly stand straight, let alone walk. I just hope it’s not yet another bug because I’ve missed enough lectures as it is (= one). Luckily, it settled down after a few hours and the rest of the day I’ve been feeling fine — if a little queasy. I wonder what that was all about.

… which is why I also bought Dreamcatcher today. It’s always dangerous to go through the DVD section in sales season (I took a biiiig de-tour to the horror section though so it’s all my fault).

Yesterday we finally got ADSL connection. I forgot it at one point and wondered how the sites load so quickly It’s nice, we’ve had 56 kb dial-up (it might’ve been 28 at the beginning) since 1997, and it was annoying not being able to download programs properly (for example my Java environment is really old because the file sizes are whopping). GetRight which is able to pause and resume downloads only works on IE so I don’t use it…

Anyway, downloads are a rarity, but it’s wonderful to have pages load really snap.

I’m reading Dan Brown‘s “Angels and Demons” at the moment. It’s soooo good! Very addictive! When I get off the bus I feel like walking my nose in the book all the time. Before lectures I read until the teacher starts talking and as soon as they say “let’s take a break” I dig the book up from my backpack.
I've read Da Vinci Code and I have already bought Digital Fortress and Deception Point. I wish it was this easy to get all the Kings in my bookshelf. Then again, it’s better that there are loads of Kings even though it takes time to acquire them.

(The computer guy that came here to set up the ADSL was really cute Like a Gary Barlow in his early years.)