Why, halo thar LJ/DW land. Long time no post ... again. Still reading flist, etc. etc. Lots of wedding prep going on, etc. etc. Might post about that soon!

But anyway, I've been prompted to write an entry about the iPad. I kept tweeting my thoughts about it, but 140 characters is not enough to really say what I think. I also appreciate that many people don't care what I think about the iPad, or might care but are so overloaded with people talking about it that they don't anymore. So I will LJ cut.

( My thoughts on the iPad, )

Wedding update coming soon!

I will have some fun wedding news to post soon! Actually, I've had it to post for awhile. I've just been too lazy to type it up.

In the meantime, have reisha and I ruminating on the fact that Blizzard has apparently sold out of a virtual item for WoW:

Me: Blizz has 'sold out' of the Pandaren pet.
Me: gg, blizz, only you could sell out of a VIRTUAL item
Kelry: how does that even
Me: they put in an arbitrary very high(tm) number as the stock count
Me: and of course
Me: they hit it
Kelry: is pixels!
Kelry: l2code
Me: yeah but their store system must require stock numbers XD
Me: it's not like they're software developers, we can't expect them to understand technical things
Kelry: i stand corrected
Me: wow isn't software
Me: it's MAGIC
Kelry: it runs on unicorns
Me: Charlie, chaaaaaarlie, chaaaaaaaaaaaaarlie.
Me: We're SOLD OUT, CHARLIE.
Kelry: rofl

So, we have some news! Alex and I got engaged on our six-year (?!) anniversary last month and now, having shared it with the few people it had to be shared with first, are ready to tell you all! So, there it is, we're engaged!

We do know that the wedding/ceremony/tandem-sky-diving vows will happen in June, likely the weekend before or after the weekend of the 12th. It will almost certainly happen in the UK, and we have no idea at the moment whether or not there will be something in the US as well.

We have a lot of behind the scenes stuff - venue, invitations, etc - to figure out in the next month or so, as soon as we figure out a budget. There will be a poll of some sort to see who of you all is available to come over, once we have a date set. We will be sharing information with all of you as and when we decide things!

Whee! Engaged!

I started an internship at a consumer think tank a few weeks ago! Hopefully it'll add enough depth to my CV to actually get a job somewhere off the back of it.

Anyway, I wanted to know, does anyone out there in LJland know anyone who's been directly affected or in contact with people who have had H1N1/Swine flu? This could be staff at schools that have closed due to students having it, nurses or staff in hospitals that have dealt with H1N1 patients, parents of children who've had it, or even simply the people themselves who have had it - anyone that has had any direct contact with the current pandemic.

If you do I'd really like to talk to them about it!

Their experiences would be a very valuable and important addition to an independent, unbiased report we're writing on the broad-ranging impact of an influenza pandemic, using this recent one as a case study. The report will focus on the personal and human effects of such a pandemic and as such anyone affected will be extremely important to our work. Anyone that we talk to would have complete anonymity, and their name or place of work would never be released to anyone. Talking to us could be done completely over email, or on the phone taking no longer than 10-20 minutes.

Ideally we're looking for people in Canada, the US and Mexico, but really anyone affected by swine flu anywhere in the world would be very valuable.

Please pass this around and see if anyone knows anyone like this, we need to have some people lined up by the middle of next week (interviews would happen in the few weeks after that).

TL;DR Version: I'm going to post more here. I've also started a Twitter. And a new Blog. They will all be different spaces for me. Read down if you care to hear more.

I've been thinking a lot lately about online identity. For someone who spends a rather large portion of my time online I have very little to point back to and show for it. Most of my online interactions with people happen over IM, or in Warcraft, or simply inside my own head, never leaving those arenas to a place of more permanence. It's got me to thinking what I use this LJ for. I look back and there was a point, many years ago, when I updated quite a lot. But every post of what is almost now the last four years has been very few and far between and has been prefaced with 'I'm still reading everyone's posts everyday, I just never seem to post ...'

It's true. A good portion of my online time is actually spent on Livejournal, reading my friends list and (very) occasionally even commenting on posts. I do engage with LJ but it's become very one-sided over time. This stems from me never wanting to make a post that some people wouldn't like. I don't want to post about Warcraft, because 75% of my friends won't give a fuck. I don't want to post about my random philosophical ideas because 75% of my friends won't give a fuck. I don't want to post about my life because I'm not sure if any of my friends will give a fuck. Of course, I know that some will, but the sentiment is still there.

I've thought a lot about what this LJ is, and what I want it to be. Most of my friends on it are either very old real life friends, or people I met through fandom or random LJ communities. As such I've made a decision about what I'm going to post here. I've decided to get the fuck over my insecurities or whatever the hell they are about posting random shit and just post. This LJ is going to be a place for me to post personal stuff, stuff about Warcraft, stuff about my life, shit that's happened to me and generally random stuff, many times with a geeky fandom flavor.

I've also now started a Twitter feed. This LJ is going to stay a very online interbutt sort of thing to me, something that will share my life only with those that share the sort of general internet view of the world. My Twitter, on the other hand, will be much more public, something I will give out to more recent real life friends, to random acquaintances, etc. As such Twitter and this LJ will be separate things and this is the only time I will link to my Twitter from here, and my Twitter will never mention this LJ, they are going remain separate spaces, even if some of the friends and content overlap. If you want to follow me on Twitter I am here. I won't be using LoudTwitter or anything else to ship them here, I find it obnoxious.

I'm also starting a new blog on blogger to discuss more of my ideas, stuff that I've never felt comfortable posting on LJ because they were of a totally different nature than the personal bent I want for my LJ. It can be found here. As of right now it only has a post explaining what it is, though I hope to have its first real post up later today, though it's looking increasingly like it won't be up until tomorrow. Like Twitter, my blog and my LJ will be separate and likely will never really reference each other. I'll probably cross-post my first real post to my LJ to give LJ friends an idea of what to expect if they decide to read my blog, but that will be the first, last and only time I will do that.

So, hopefully this will lead to more posting everywhere, a more permanent record of my online life, and a more social me.

Your addresses, give them to me! All comments screened, also mention in your comment what you celebrate if you don't celebrate Christmas (if anything).

As usual I do read flist every day, I just ... don't post anymore. I'd say I'll work on that but I say that every time. : /

IT'S OVER GUYS.

OVERRRR.

VA AND FL CAN ONLY SWEETEN IT.

OVERRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

CNN.com apparently wants us to know that the economy isn't the only shit hitting the fan. From the main page the current Latest News:

- Nancy Regan falls, fractures pelvis
- Cheney's abnormal heart rhythm returns
- Freak recess accident kills 5th-grader
- Steve Ballesteros has brain surgery
- Hurricane Omar's winds up to 85mph
- Smoke, ash shut down freeway
- 'Marcia Brady' tells of trading sex for drugs
- Starved Teen begged for help in 2005
- Mom dumps kid at hospital 724 miles away

That's over half the news list, and the rest is all political stuff. Is there anything good happening anywhere? :

Dissertations done and handed in. Exams next week. Moving on to the OMFG.

I was looking around my old old external harddrive to find some Kyou Kara Maou (no, I don't know why) and found a bunch my old High School work. Including a script for an English project done with reservoir and others. We had to perform a modern adaptation of a scene from Macbeth, and we decided to tape ours and edit it to make it all shiny. Our modern adaptation was in the style of, uh, Valley Girls. So, Seana has said I should post it, because for all of its cracky 11th grade immaturity it is still very funny in a satire of badfic kind of way.

This is now 5 years old, unedited from that time, a lot of the humor may only make sense if you know the people involved, and it was always meant to be (awesomely) bad. So, with that in mind, I give you our 11th grade English project (Oh god ...):

Macbeth, William Shakespeare, Act IV, Scene i
Modern Adaptation: Valley Girls

Cast:

Jane (first witch) – Kerry (chibikaijuu)
Tracie (second witch) – Seana (reservoir)
Stacie (third witch) – Kat (white_howler)
Heci (Hecate) – Lowell (aegeus)
Mac (Macbeth) – Lowell

---------------------------------

EXT. A SEMI-WOODED AREA – DAY

A cauldron sits in the middle of the scene, JANE comes into the scene carrying her familiar, a CAT, and a bag.

CAT
Mew, mew, mew.

TRACIE enters with her familiar, a HEDGEHOG, who nips at her nail, and a few grocery bags.

TRACIE
Unh! Stupid animal! I broke a nail …

( Read on ... :O )

The finished product was even crackier due to someone's playing way too much with some of Final Cut Pro's sillier settings. The fight scene especially got drawn out and I believe ended up not having Britney Spears but Heart's Barracuda played over it. I also don't think this is the final version of the script, as I remember some other jokes in the final product, though those might have been improvised on the day. There was also an easter egg thing with reservoir dying of a SlimFast and cough syrup overdose that came after the credits.

We ended up getting a 100% even though almost none of classmates got the jokes. Our teacher did and that's all that matters.

[Poll #1150602]