heavenly_pearl | Entries tagged with computer

After thinking about it for a couple of days, I think I'm going to put off getting an e-reader/tablet for now. I don't think I've mentioned it here, but we may be moving in a few months. Earlier this year, a great-uncle of mine (who I never met) passed away and left Dad some money. We don't know how much money yet since another great-uncle who is in charge of carrying out the will is still working on selling stocks and properties and whatnot, but apparently he was very well off, and my parents are hoping Dad's share will be enough to buy a house somewhere closer to where my sister lives. If we do move, I'm not sure what the Internet situation will be (especially since Dad wants to live somewhere that is even more rural than where we are now -- ugh), so I think it would be best to wait and see if we'll still have wireless access before investing in a tablet. Plus, I can save up some more money in the meantime and maybe buy one that's better than the ones I can afford at the moment.

But on the topic of not having any room for manga, guess who just bought a complete, 14 volume set of W Juliet from Half-Price Books? Yeeeah, that would be me. -_- But they were only $4.99 a volume; how could I possibly resist? (Maybe I'll have more space in the new house?) I also found an almost complete set of the old Tokyopop editions of Sailor Moon that was in pretty good shape, actually. I didn't buy any of them, of course, but if you do want the old version for some reason, it might be worth checking out your local HPB.

Current Mood: full

So, guess what I discovered yesterday on my laptop? Photoshop Elements 10! Yeah, I've had this computer for about a year and I just now noticed it. I'm very observant, you know. -_- Although, to be fair, none of my previous computers ever came with awesome graphics programs already installed so I had no reason to look for it.

Anyway, I'm still stuck on that stupid Melting Ice chapter, so what better way to procrastinate working on a Kaleido Star fanfic than to make Kaleido Star icons? These are all pretty basic, since I've just been fooling around, seeing how things work, but if you see any you like, feel free to take.

( Ten more here )

By the way, is there anybody who can tell me how to do text? Or knows of an easy to follow online tutorial? I just can't seem to figure it out, and it's starting to drive me a little crazy!

Current Mood: ditzy

Long time, no see!

Part of the reason it's been over a month since I last posted is because I've been without internet for the past two weeks. Remember back when I bought my laptop and said that we were finally getting rid of dial-up? Yeah, that only just happened yesterday. Our landline was having problems, so we finally disconnected it for good and got GLORIOUS HIGH-SPEED INTERNET!

*throws a funeral for dial-up and dances on its grave*

So, yeah, definitely a happy day!

Nothing much else to report, so back to catching up on everything I've missed. Hopefully I'll post here more often, now that posting isn't as annoying as it used to be!

Current Mood: jubilant

Why is it that every time I begin playing a new Sims game, my first pregnancy produces twins? Of course, I don't think Sims 1 had twins -- it didn't even have pregnancy, just the opportunity to adopt a child when a couple amorous enough -- but when I first got Sims 2, I was overloaded with twins! It wasn't until the third or fourth pregnancy that I finally got a single birth. Now I'm playing Sims 3 on my new laptop, and BOOM, first pregnancy results in twins again! (At least it wasn't triplets, though.) They were born to a single mother, since I'm still trying to learn the ropes and didn't want to deal with too many people in a household, but I ended up having to move in the father just to help me take care of them. (And to get some extra income to buy all the necessary furniture.)

On the plus side, if my experience with Sims 2 repeats itself, I should become a pro at raising kids. After being thrown into the deep end with twins right off the bat, you learn pretty quickly how to deal with them. A singleton is a piece of cake after that!

Current Mood: dorky

Yeah, I finally took the plunge and bought one -- a shiny new HP Envy 15 laptop! We went to the same store, but a different location, and the customer service was so much better there. The salesman was actually helpful and didn't stalk me while I was browsing. They had a much larger selection to boot.

Originally I wanted a new desktop, but since this one still works okay, a laptop seemed a more logical choice. That way I can use both. The desktop I'll probably keep using to play Sims 2 on, along with doing most of my writing, while the laptop will be for Sims 3 and the internet, once we get it set up. Oh, yeah, we're finally joining the 21st century and getting rid of dial-up! (Getting rid of the landline altogether, actually, since we rarely use it to make calls anyway.) It's going to be AWESOME! Can't wait, can't wait, can't wait!

Current Mood: ecstatic

I know they're just doing their job, but, gah, I can't stand them.

Yesterday, we decided to go shopping for a new computer and went to Conn's, where we bought our previous computers. I just wanted a regular desktop PC, but the salesman who greeted us seemed determined to sell us a touchscreen instead. He pulled me away from the two traditionall PCs they had on display and took me over to the touchscreen PCs, telling me to play around with them even though I had no interest in buying one. I humored him for like a minute, then went back to looking at the other computers they had. (Even though I was most interested in a PC, a laptop wasn't completely out of the running.) Rather than letting me browse in peace, however, he kept following me everywhere I went, constantly asking, "Which one do you like? Which one do you like?" I felt like I was being stalked! And on top of that, I have real anxiety about interacting with strangers, so it was not at all a pleasant experience. Needless to say, we left the store without buying anything.

I'm still not sure if we should get a new computer, anyway. I want a new one, but since this one still works relatively fine (minus a few minor problems and the fact that the graphics aren't good enough to run Sims 3, which is the main reason I want a new one), it's hard to convince myself it's okay to upgrade. We're not generally an "upgrading" family. We use things until they're broken, and only then do we replace them. It just seeems like a lot of money to spend for something I don't really need...

On a more positive note, I did luck out and find all seven volumes of Tokyo Babylon at Half-Price Books, putting me one step closer to completing my CLAMP library. I was planning to wait for the new omnibus editions that Dark Horse is supposed to be putting out, but it's already been over a year since they made that announcement with nothing to show for it. Finding the complete set, still in great condition, at $5 a volume was just too good a deal to pass up.

Current Mood: distressed

This isn't as polished as I would like it to be, but the deadline is tomorrow and I've been having a terrible time with our internet connection lately -- seriously, it took three freaking hours this morning to sign on with a stable connection -- so I'm posting what I have while I can.

Title: Politically Incorrect
Summary: A scandal involving her politician father rocks Rei's world and puts her in the path of unexpected danger.
Rating: PG-13/T
Word Count: Around 11,600
Notes: Contains vague threats of a sexual nature and mild violence.

( The Story )

Current Mood: pissed off

For the past week or so, I've been getting the dreaded BSOD. At first, I thought it had something to do with the graphics driver since at other times the screen would mess up and the computer would freeze, so I updated that, but that doesn't seem to have worked. In fact, now I'm getting different error messages than the ones I got before. Then today I was going to try a System Restore, only to find out all my restore points were gone except one from yesterday. (They do that on occasion, but gah, worst. possible. time.)

So now I'm not sure what to do. The good thing, I guess, is that at least the computer still works. The errors usually come within a couple of minutes of me waking the computer from sleep mode, and once I reboot, everything's fine. (And it doesn't happen every time; just some of the time.) They're more of an annoyance than anything else. Still, I can't imagine that constantly being rebooted from these errors can be good for the computer... I could take it to the local repair shop, but that would be the second time I had to do so, and if that's the case, I think I would rather get a new one instead than pay to fix another problem. I don't know. I think for right now, I'll just continue using this computer until it gets to the point where I can't use in anymore. (Or the errors drive me crazy. You know, whichever comes first.)

Well, at least I have time to make backups of all my important files this time, which I'm in the middle of doing right now just in case.

Current Mood: depressed

So, I was downloading some stuff for my super-secret possible new project -- okay, since somebody already kind of guessed it, I’ll admit that it’s Against the Rules: The Sequel - Sims-Style! -- when I had a flaky moment and accidentally unchecked the “Always ask before opening this type of file” box. (I meant to actually uncheck the box on the next part, where it shows the file being downloaded.) That caused all my downloads to be automatically be saved to the Temporary Internet Files folder, where I couldn’t really do anything with them. The stupid thing is, though, that there’s no way to turn it back on! Seriously, if you have the option to turn something off, you should have the option to turn it back on, right? It’s only common sense.

Fortunately, I managed to find a bit of a fix that will allow me to choose where I want to save if I use Internet Explorer, but it doesn’t seem to work with the AOL browser (the one I usually use while surfing the web), and the option to pick a place to save doesn’t come up until the file is already finished downloading, meaning I can’t watch while it is being downloaded. That’s the real annoying part, because I like being able to see the downloading progress. It helps me to judge how long the download will take and lets me cancel if I think things are going too slow. Now I can’t even tell if anything is downloading until I get the pop-up asking whether to open or save. Argh!

I never had any complaints against Microsoft before, but this is just utter design fail, pure and simple. -_-

EDIT: I fixed it! Did some Googling and found a way to reset it. It involved editing the registry, which I wasn't thrilled about, but it wasn't too difficult (just had to delete something) and it worked! Seriously, though, Microsoft, you should not make your customers have to edit the registry for something so seemingly simple. (Especially since it looks like you fix it quite easily in XP.)

Current Mood: frustrated

Heh, I don't even know if anybody realized I was missing, but I've been without a computer since last Friday. Out of nowhere, it just DIED. And it's not like it's a very old computer -- we bought it in late 2008 -- so you can just imagine how distraught I was, especially since I didn't have back-ups of my files. I pretty much tried to keep busy the entire weekend because if I stopped too long to think about it, I would just burst into tears. Fortunately, though, we took it to a local repair shop yesterday and they managed to get it working again. I think they had to replace the power source or something; Mom didn't explain it very well, but the important thing is that I have my computer back!

*hugs computer*

The one thing that sucks is that I didn't get to enter the second round of the LIMS contest at

sailormoonland. Yeah, everyone has a bye they can use, so I'll be able to move onto the next round automatically -- thank goodness! -- but I had my entry done pretty much a couple of hours after the round was announced. I was just waiting to enter it because I was trying to decide between two versions. *sigh* Oh, well, maybe it's a blessing in disguise. This round's entries are much stronger than the first round's, IMO. I'm not sure if I would have made it to the next round without the bye, but if anybody's interested, here are the icons I made.

I'll get up-to-date on the 30 Day meme tomorrow. For now, I've got a lot to catch up on!

EDIT: AND THEY JUST HAD TO ANNOUNCE THE REPRINT OF THE SAILOR MOON MANGA WHEN I WAS GONE! ASDATJADGTJDGKDAKLD!!!! I missed out on all the excitement!

Current Mood: ecstatic

Well, turns out the glitch I mentioned in my last entry wasn't a glitch after all. I just didn't understand how relationships worked in Sims 3. Unfortunately, it looks like I'm going to have to get a new graphics card if I want to keep playing it, and, well, that just seems like such a pain -- both financial-wise and the actual installing. I think I'll just stick with Sims 2. I like it better anyway.

Ah, well, at least I got the game for free, so no big loss! (And thank goodness I didn't pick up any expansion packs when we were at Wal-mart like I was tempted to.)

Current Mood: disappointed

Yeah, as I feared, Sims 2 is making it mighyt difficult to concentrate on NaNo. *laughs* I held out until I reached about 2100 words today, but by three o'clock, I just had to quit and play Sims. The game was calling out to me, "Play me! Play me!"

Evil, eeeeevil game. But, oh, so fun.

Anyway, it was a okay birthday, I guess. I couldn't decide if I wanted a cake or to go a little non-traditional with birthday brownies, so my mom was nice enough to make both. Yum. Plus, we also had barbeque. Double yum. As for presents, of course I got the Sims, but Mom thought a $20 game wasn't enough, so she also let me pick out about $60 worth of manga from Right Stuf. I ordered all four volumes of Cherry Juice, the one-shot manga Shirley (from the mangaka of Emma), Vol. 2 of Sugar Princess, Vol. 7 of Fushigi Yugi: Genbu Kaiden, and Vol. 13 of NANA. Everything is either backordered or on pre-order (though coming out tomorrow), so this is one time I'm actually hoping Right Stuf will take their time in sending me my order.

'Cause new manga and Sims 2?

I'll be in big trouble.

Now, off to play Sims!

Current Mood: sleepy

Well, I'm twenty-five today. Ugh. I feel unbelievably old. (Yeah, I know it's not that old, but to someone who considers herself a teenager at heart, I'm old. :P)

Only good thing about today is that Mom's going to buy me Sims 2 for my new computer. I told her I didn't really want anything, since my parents already bought me the computer, the new desk, chair, and printer, but she insisted on getting me something, and I've really been wanting Sims 2 ever since we got this computer. (My old one had trouble with the original Sims, so I never even dared to try Sims 2 on it.) It's kind of bad timing, though, with NaNoWriMo going on... I'll probably have to make up a rule that I can't play it on the weekdays until I've at least reached my 2,500 words-per-day goal, or else I'll never get anything done. *laughs*

Speaking of NaNoWriMo, I'm off to a decent start, I suppose. I wrote about a thousand words yesterday, which is good, considering it was a Saturday, and I normally don't write on weekends. I'll get really serious about it tomorrow.

(Heh, you know what's kind of amusing? Today's the end of Daylight Savings Time, meaning today gets an extra hour. Twenty-five hours for my twenty-fifth birthday, that's kind of neat. Just wish my body had let me sleep in the extra hour... Oh, well.)

Current Mood: depressed

You know, having this huge computer screen is pretty cool, except for one thing. It's practically impossible to find a cute anime/manga wallpaper that fits a 1920 x 1200 resolution. :( I mean, the default wallpapers on the computer are fine, but the computer feels a little...impersonal without an anime/manga background, you know?

I suppose I could lower the resolution -- it goes down to 800 x 600 -- but lower resolutions don't look very good on this screen.

And I would try my hand at making a wallpaper to fit, but the only graphics program that came with this computer is Paint. You can't make a nice wallpaper with Paint. *sigh* Ironic that now that I have a DVD drive and can make my own screenshots, I don't have a decent graphics program to do anything with those screenshots. I may have to breakdown and finally invest in Photoshop.

Does anybody have any suggestions about where to find some 1920 x 1200 anime or manga wallpapers? Please?

Current Mood: disappointed

*glomps everyone in sight*

Ah, it feels good to finally be back on-line again after all this time. You guys have no idea.

Anyway, Ike.

Everything's fine here. Thanks to everybody who expressed their concern in my previous entry. Mom and I did eventually evacuate to her brother's house when Liberty County was added to the mandatory evacuations list (although it took some crying on my part to convince her how scared I really was), but Dad stayed at home because of his horses. (Ironically, the reason why Mom really wanted to stay home -- the traffic -- was no problem at all this time. I guess since Liberty County was added so much later than the rest of the evacuated counties, we managed to miss it.) A side of our porch got messed up, and I now call our front yard the "Graveyard of Fallen Trees," but luckily none of the trees actually hit the trailer, thank goodness, which is more than I can say for my uncle's poor truck. A tree fell and broke his windshield, as well as dented the roof and a door. :(

Mom and I returned back home on the Tuesday afterwards to discover that Dad had actually bought us a generator from a friend of his. We all (even Dad) think he paid way too much for it ($1100), but I have to admit it was nice to be able to make our own ice, turn on a lamp and fan (although we got a cool front and didn't really need it), and even finish my Sailor Moon anime marathon. We actually got our electricity back that Friday, but that's when tragedy struck.

Our computer died.

I'm not really sure what happened. It just suddenly stopped working in the middle of logging on to the computer after the electricity returned. It might have been because in our rush to leave, I stupidly forgot to unplug it, or it might have just been the age of the computer -- it would have been seven years this December -- but thank goodness I was smart enough to back-up all my really important files while I was packing up. I still lost some stuff, like saved emails, links, etc, but it wasn't as big a loss as it could have been. (Still didn't keep me from sobbing for over an hour when I realized what happened, though.)

Mom had to work that weekend, so I had to wait until the following weekend until we were able to buy a replacement. Ended up spending the week really finishing up the SM marathon by watching PGSM and reading the manga, trying to keep busy until I had a computer again. (BTW, somebody really needs to rerelease the manga. My poor volume four is pretty much being held together by tape and staples now, and some of the others are getting to that point.)

The next weekend, Mom and I bought our new computer, along with a new living room suite (we've been needing one), a desk that would hold the new computer's honkin' big 24 in. monitor, a chair to go with it, and a new printer that was Vista compatible. Unfortunately, when the computer was set up, we discovered that it didn't come with AOL software. :( That meant my return to cyberspace was once again delayed while we waited for AOL to send us the software.

As you can imagine, I was getting really antsy at that point. *laughs* Starting a Card Captor Sakura marathon helped a little, but I practically stalked our mailbox, hoping the disc would come in soon. It finally came in today, and after fixing a little installation problem that prevented us from signing on, I am now officially back.

*parties*

Anyway, time to catch up on everything I missed while I was gone. See y'all around!

Current Mood: ecstatic

For the last month or so, I've been trying to stream episodes of Ginban Kaleidoscope and Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto: Natsu no Sora (the new Someday's Dreamers series). I had been using a site called CrunchyRoll, which worked fine for a while, but then I started having problems with the episodes not buffering all the way. After spending all last week trying to watch Ep. 5 of Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto: Natsu no Sora and only getting as far as the opening song before it conked out, I decided to try YouTube.

Yesterday, it was great. I managed to watch the first part (of three) of the episode with no problems at all.

Today, when trying to watch the second part? You got it: buffering problems yet again! And the workaround they suggested doesn't fix it.

ARG!

*tears out hair*

Oh, why must I be stuck with dial-up? This is driving me insane! I just want to watch the stupid episode; is that too much to ask?

Current Mood: aggravated

I'm alive, and back online!

Finally.

*dances*

If anybody has been wondering where I've been for the last week or so, I wasn't able to sign on due to problems with our landline. *sigh* It just got fixed this morning, although then our mouse decided to crap out, so Mom had to go to Wal-mart to buy a new one... Well, anyway, the important thing is every thing is now working properly, and, boy, it feels good to be back!

*glomps everyone*

Other than that, not much to report. I'm behind on my

sm_monthly entries due to not being able to check the day's themes, and I didn't really feel like doing any other writing, so I ended up spending most of my involuntary Internet break re-watching Wedding Peach and Rah-Xephon, which I ordered from Right Stuf a couple of weeks ago and came in on Monday. Not necessarily a bad way to pass the time, but I'm looking forward to catching up with everything. ^_^

Current Mood: ecstatic

Make a list of everything you would like to receive for Christmas. Yes, Christmas is supposed to be a time of giving and thinking of others, but we’re all guilty of experiencing those greedy gimmies. So why not give in to it, if just for a moment? The list can be short or long. It can be as simple or as outrageous as you want it to be. You can list what you actually asked for, create an ultimate wish list, or a mixture of both. It’s all up to you!

( My Grown-Up Christmas List )

I guess that's about it. Makes me wonder what is under the tree since I never got the chance to give Mom my list before she announced she had finished her shopping and I doubt she knew I wanted most of the stuff on the list. Guess that means she spent a lot of money on stuff I don't want. *sigh*

Current Mood: contemplative

How is it that my computer got infected with the Exploit-WMF trojan when I had the patch to fix the vulnerability already installed?

Oh, well, at least McAfee detected and deleted it as soon as the computer was infected. No harm done, that I can see.

I just wonder which website I visited gave it to me. I had several windows open at the time of the infection, but I would bet good money it was FF.net.

Current Mood: confused

Well, Laura just left to go back to Nacogdoches. She originally planned to stay until tomorrow, but I guess she thought she should go home early to go work on something for one of her classes. Our A: drive doesn't work anymore, so she couldn't do any work here. (Plus, it has to be done in Word, which we don't have on this computer anyway.)

I wish she could have stayed, though, because I was hoping that we could go to the mall tomorrow and take advantage of the post-Thanksgiving sales. I've been dying to go for weeks so I could buy some more manga, but oh, well. I've been rereading the beginning volumes of Fushigi Yugi, which I haven't read for the longest time, so it almost feels like I'm reading something new. ^_^ I forgot how much I like Miaka's brother Keisuke. I need to add him to my harem.

Dinner was very good. We had turkey, but being the picky eater I am, I got barbeque chicken instead, along with French fries, deviled eggs, and rolls. Yum. ^_^ And for dessert, there was a choice between lemon, chocolate, and pecan pies. I had chocolate, but I'll probably get some pecan later if there's any left. *crosses fingers*

Otherwise, today's been pretty boring. We'll be putting up the Christmas tree tonight, but since Laura doesn't live here anymore, we're just putting up my little 3-footer. *sigh* I'm going to miss our big pretty tree.

Current Mood: full

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Sweet Dreams

Entries tagged with computer

Where am I going to put these?

Icons!

Yes, I'm still around!

It's a curse...or maybe a blessing?

New computer!

Pushy salespeople are annoying

Sailormoonland Big Bang

Crap

FAIL!

I'M BACK!

Sims 3

The day after

I don't want to grow up, I'm a Toys R Us kid....

Search for desktop wallpaper

I'm back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, I hate my computer!

I'm back!

Christmas List Meme from Masked Maiden

Riddle me this...

Turkey Day, Part 2