Okay, Endeavour. Let's try this again.

BRB going to 4:39am shuttle launch. :D

From quiddative! (Also I realized I still have a meme from rkold I need to fill out! Gotta remember to do that one too!)

- If you are interested in doing this meme, leave me a comment saying "The blob is almighty".
- I'll respond by asking you five questions to satisfy my curiosity.
- Update your journal with the answers to my questions.
- Include this explanation and offer to ask other people questions.

1. Who's your favourite Disney character?
asjklrsnjgfuisf UM. IDK. I think I could narrow it down to Peter Pan, Mulan, and Lewis, though? :D; That is such a hard question. ;_;
2. What's your favourite land in Disney World?
Probably Tomorrowland. It has Space Mountain and the People Mover!
3. How did you get into astronomy?
Hm... that's a good question. I remember when I was in junior high I wanted to be the chief engineer of a starship, like Geordi LaForge. XD But I wasn't actually all that great at actual engineering... Then I really wanted to be an astronaut, but it wasn't like I could join the Air Force (or be an engineer, see above XD) so I decided I could go into science and be a payload specialist, and astronomy was pretty interesting. Though actually MIT has no astronomy major; I started out majoring in planetary science, then switched to physics with a minor in planetary science. And now I'm in grad school for astronomy! tl;dr - THE END. :D;
4. If you're at your desk right now, what's the closest action figure to you? XD
Hm... I think it's Bumblebee. XD Either that or Ahsoka. XD;
5. Is there a place you really want to go but have never gone to before?
Australia! Or San Francisco~


AND ALSO, as long as I'm posting:


Leave a comment asking me to photograph any aspect of
my life - favourite something, something that makes
me feel a certain way, something regular, something weird,
whatever. I'll reply back with a picture of it for you.


ALSO ALSO ALSO, Happy Birthday februaryfour! :D

Woo, OCTOPUS LAYOUT FTW! I figured it was time for a change. XD Even changed the page names, why not? Camp Rock didn't quite go with the underwater theme. :D;;;

I have decided I need more Dr. Horrible icons. Perhaps I will actually make some of my own. I wanted to scan in a couple pages of the comic, anyway. Also, probably some more Star Trek movie icons. Because they are SHINY. Yes. :D;

Anyway, the point of this entry was really to squee because I'm a semifinalist in one of the writing contests I entered and forgot about way back in October! :D Here's hoping! I think they'll actually announce the results fairly soon; that would be nifty~ :D Not that the prize is a whole lot or anything, but still! Just seeing the title of my entry up on their page is kind of awesome. ::dork::

... Yeah, that's it. :x Sorry.

Step 1: Scott and I wear our Star Trek shirts to the Renn Faire and take tricorder readings (points if you know why we're doing this).

Step 2:

Step 3: Gold-pressed latinum Profit!

:D

So~ Heroes tonight was rather entertaning, but I think that may be because our conversation during said show quickly degenerated into, well, what Peter and Sylar were going to do trapped in a world with no other people. Because come onnnn, they were bound to get bored eventually! XD (Seriously, I only maybe started it. Maybe I didn't even start it. But then Nathan picked it up and ran with it, and we all know where that leads. |D In general, "nowhere good" is the correct answer to that.)

Man. As soon as I can screencap that episode. ::dies::

Also, Jessica Alba was on Jay Leno afterwards. We think she may have been wearing a mylar blanket. D: Seriously, did someone try to make her look ugly? Her hair was cute, though!

Tiff will be in town this weekend, yay! That may mean no shuttle launch (ugh, it is at like 4:30 am D:) but we're definitely doing the Renn Faire~ Though that may possibly push DnD back a bit, but that's okay. Next weekend is PJO OMG, and the weekend after that looks like when I'm dragging the G'ville contingent to it. >D

Anyway~ Got started on my Trudy cosplay by purchasing a flightsuit ($27, not bad!) and hunting down some necklace options on the internets, yay! I love easy costumes, and I love Trudy. :D Can't go wrong! I really need to see if they make toys of those helicopters, because I'd totally love to carry one around. XD Scott also mentioned doing Heroes for Megacon, and I could make Claire by then, I think? It's just three quarters of a cheerleading outfit, and I already have the wig. And then I may still do Ranka, too - eesh, I should look into a hotel room! Miss violet_lane, we should talk~

ALSO is it totally dorky that I keep hoping AJ Buckley will pop up at one of these cons? XD I mean, I know he does cons, or at least he has in the past... :D;;;

--

EDIT: Heyyyyy~ I COULD GO TO THIS. With the sole purpose of stalking Ratchet's PB. Because that would be, you know. AWESOME. |D

djaodajfoad TRIP WHY DID YOU JUST RESET ON ME. I was cruising along being all productive in IDL when you logged me out for no reason WHYYYYY. ;_; Man, now I lost a whole buncha lines of code. :x

Grar. Back to work.

Amat reserve GET! Thank you, iCarly, for distracting me from how much I wanted dinner until 11:59GMT. XD (As long as they don't care that I probably posted within a minute of the page opening, I should be good? :D;) Now I have the oven heating and then I can eat yummy food and watch Clone Wars from Friday~ (I'm not sure if I'm going to like this one or not - on the one hand, MANDOS! DEATH WATCH! On the other... this may be why Karen Traviss decided to stop writing her books, which may make me unhappy.)

Had people over last night to watch the end of the first season of Dollhouse; I decided to give it another try and yes, the episodes were a lot better than they were in the first half. I'd totally forgotten that Alan Tudyk was in it! Anyway, we watched through the season finale; next time I guess we'll start with Epitaph One and move on to the second season which I am now downloading. The writing's still not as up to par as I would like, but it's certainly much better than the first few episodes, I will give them that. I think I like Topher more now, despite the fact that maybe I shouldn't. XD

That's... really about it. Have possibly totally mangled my sleep schedule, but will attempt to fix that tonight, barring failure. Tomorrow is MAKING GRAPHS DAY OMG because Vicki will be gone the rest of the week so I should have something to show for myself before the end of the day! Then it's back to HATING X-RAYS because they truly are the source of most of the evil in the universe.

Today is a good Friday:

It is not freezing at work.

I got paid today, and what's more I got paid for helping out with STARS so my paycheck is $100 bigger than usual.

I dealt with renewing my lease, and actually came out pretty ahead of the game. They're dropping my rent by $45/month for the rest of this term, and while I had to sign another full year I can terminate any time for $80/month that I've been in the apartment under the new lease.

I get free lunch.

I think I will also get to hang out with adamatari, as I believe he is bike-hunting in Gainesville today.

I realized yesterday that Starstruck premieres on Disney Channel while I'm in Chicago. WATCHING IT WITH STACIE YESSS~



That's it for now. Happy Friday everyone!

You know, rarely have I hated anything with the vehemence with which I hate reducing Chandra data. D< If CIAO is so sketchy at getting fluxes, fine. I'll use ACIS-extract. But only if it will work! Which, apparently, it will not. Not for me. D: I don't know why stupid xspec won't extract this model from whatever package it's supposed to, but it makes me very sad! I don't even know if this is more of an "Ali-chan doesn't understand Linux as well as she should" issue, or an "ACIS-extract is dumb" issue. :x Perhaps that's the biggest problem. I suppose I might as well make myself look stupid and email the software designer. Maybe at least he'll get a good laugh out of it. XD;

You know, it's gorgeous and 60 outside, and I am FREEZING in here. :x I have on three layers and arm-warmers. This should not be happening! I really need to actually bring in my space heater one of these days. I think I'd be more productive if I wasn't trying to retain the last vestiges of my disappearing body heat. XD

Uh... other than that, really can't complain too much. I actually opened my PJO story yesterday. I may have written a paragraph! ::dies:: Seriously, though, I'm going to pick it back up again, because I really want to finish it and I feel bad for leaving people hanging due to my laziness. And I want to be writing again~ Because if I want to work on original stuff, I need to finish this thing first. I swore I would!

Okay, I suppose I should get back to work. In a few minutes, anyway (still eating lunch). Because I have to leave early so I can go and hopefully get them to extend my lease for a month or few since I don't know when I'm going to graduate yet. ::fail::

I think I'll do something useful with my time, for now. Like finding GUNDAMs BCGs. Woo!

(WAIT BUT ALSO. perfectassassin, I got your package! :D Those cards are so cute!!! And bookmark, yay~ I always need bookmarks, thank you! <333)

Aaaaand here is the long-awaited (I'm sure XD) part 2 of my DC pix, featuring the Smithsonian (predominantly Air & Space, since I reeeeeally wanted to go there).

( Floating 'round my tin can. )

Next up, the actual AAS (I swear I did attend!) and maybe the Half-Marathon, rolled into one? Plus I have a weekend update that should amuse~

Oh, great - this is what I get for watching Twister last night. We're under a tornado watch today. ::fails:: Butbutbut, I was at Target the other night and they had it on DVD for $5 and how could I not buy it? (I was previously still using the VHS. |D) And, of course, buying it subsequently meant I had to watch it again. It's actually kind of funny - now that I know how academia works, it's so much more obvious to me that they're on grant money and I can tell who's the grad student and it's just... kinda hilarious. XD Ah, Twister~ You bring back so many memories.

For the record, when I FALL OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH (or just start using CAPS ALL THE TIME XD) I will henceforth blame Amat for being awesome. Among other things. XD I swear, I got nothing done yesterday. I was supposed to do stuff! (Well, okay, by "do stuff" I really mean read Holmes/Watson fic and resize pictures, buuuut...) In the meantime, I will just say that Ratchet is a ho and he is going to sleep entirely through Friday, whether he wants to or not. The end~

Okay. Off to FIGURE OUT SPHERICAL COORDINATES AND WHY THEY HATE ME. D: Because I'm pretty sure I can't have distances between objects on my frame be larger than my frame size on the sky. Somehow... I think things just don't work that way.

Oh, but! Before I forget~ pergamond, thank you for the card! :D (This is what I get for never checking my mailbox at work. XDD)

I think it may be the same temperature inside my office as outside of it. Apparently having no heat last week has made things just as unpleasant this week. I'm seriously beginning to think that 2010 is playing one big joke on me. D: I did even read something the other day about January 2nd purportedly being the worst luck day in the entire year. Yeah, you got that one right. Ah well~

Actual updates still pending, but suffice to say the Half Marathon was full of COLD and SLEET but still awesome~ Next time I'm putting all my music on my phone so I can have an iPod and a camera at the same time, because I ran by Lewis and Wilbur and Bowler Hat Guy in Epcot and you have no idea how sad I was that I had no camera! Disney afterwards was also cold but the lines were short and the hot chocolate was good. We also discovered that Winter Summerland Mini Golf is pretty fantastic, and there are no Perry the Platypus plushies (try saying that three times fast!) to be had.

Yesterday was kind of the break I shouldn't have taken but really needed. I swear, I've pretty much been on the go since I went home in December; I barely had time to check email at home and I didn't get much work done, then it was back to Gainesville for two days before the AAS in D.C. and then back to Orlando for the Half and a Disney-full weekend before returning Sunday night to fight with installing Windows 7 because it kept resetting my monitor refresh rate OUT OF RANGE in the middle of installation so I couldn't finish it. Three tries in and lots of Google searching later, I disabled the video card and finally got the silly thing installed. Eesh! Seriously, this is the second Windows install that did that to me. Microsoft, you need to get your act together and stop changing refresh rates on flatscreens while you install. For serious. D< So I stayed home yesterday and went grocery shopping and did laundry and caught up on Heroes. And here I am back at work today.

Also, It took me at least an hour today to figure out how to scan all my trip receipts into a PDF to turn in (crazy new-fangled machines) and now I'm just finishing up lunch before I get all the stuff I have to mail out and then try to do two weeks' worth of work in an afternoon. Whee~ (Or something.)

But before I go, stolen from Blanche:

India Foxtrot Yankee Oscar Uniform Charlie Alpha November Uniform November Delta Echo Romeo Sierra Tango Alpha November Delta Tango Hotel India Sierra, Charlie Oscar Papa Yankee Alpha November Delta Papa Alpha Sierra Tango Echo India Tango Tango Oscar Yankee Oscar Uniform Romeo Lima India Victor Echo Juliet Oscar Uniform Romeo November Alpha Lima.

:D

Whew, home again! BRB, catching up on life. :O

Good morning from (freezing) Epcot! T-minus 1.4 hours (or something close to that).

And now Frank is taking a picture of me blogging. I supose that means I should go and put my gloves back on.

Have a good morning, everyone!

... BTW, I think it might be snowing.

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