Came home from a long day of work and fidgeting in anticipation over reading more of The Lost Hero to this:



EEEEE!!!!

10 pages of Halo 4! I shall report back what I learn! :D

ETA: Oh dear fuzzy. I think... I think I'm gonna die of happiness! Premature, maybe, but I can't help it: 343, I BELIEVE IN YOU!!!

I solemnly swear to attempt a more coherent post in the morning.

I'm right in the center of all this crazy weather in Texas: multiple twisters are on the ground in the DFW area.

Sissy and I were driving to work, remarking on how pretty the sky was. It was then that I noticed how still the air was: not a leaf was moving. As I had Sissy check the weather on my phone, suddenly everyone started braking dramatically.

Leaves and branches covered the road and cars on both sides of the freeway were stopped. As hail began to pelt us, I turned on the radio: a tornado was on the ground in Dallas and heavy hail in Arlington. Traffic was extremely slow moving, no one sure whether to drive, pull off, or turn around.

We were driving through Arlington when the sirens came on.

It was at this point that I decided to turn around. I know you never try to outrun a tornado, but pulling off to the side of the road to duck and cover in a ditch has never seemed safe to me. We took I-20 to Business 287: not even ten minutes later, a tornado was reported to have formed at that very spot.

Driving through Kennedale, we saw some damage from the twister that hit them. We're back home now; the tornado warning in Arlington - which we have to drive through to get to work - ends at 2:15. However, the line of storms extends throughout our route to work. I don't know if it will be safe to drive up that way or not...

To all my DFW buddies: STAY SAFE!!!

ETA: A new storm has formed just southwest of us and is heading straight towards us. THe clouds are getting darker, the air stiller, and there's a continuous rumble of thunder above. All animals have been relocated to the bathroom, excessive appliances unplugged, windows unlocked to be flung open, and I'm about to move the mattress in there just in case.

I'm no longer enthralled. I'm genuinely nervous...

Jacked from spockside. Sorry! I couldn't resist!

Your result for The Fan Fiction Personality Test...
The Mindgamer
Everything is possible, nothing is ever really over.

Fanfiction is a creative outlet for you. You don't intentionally write it, it just happens. You find inspiration in several fandoms, but are not obsessed with only one.
You like to explore "what if" situations. What if this character had never made this very choice? What if this event had taken place sooner, never, elsewhere? What if these people had never met?
You are likely to write Alternative Universes, fan seasons or sequels and just follow your (sometimes pretty strange) plot bunnies.

LOL I like the motto, but me & AU? Can't say I haven't done it, but it was for Remus & Tonks: it HAD TO BE DONE! While I definitely agree with the "what if" driver, my questions are a lot different and based within canon. (Like Stargate fic: how easy is "what if" in that fandom, right?) "What if" used to be the starting point for a lot of my writing, but is now very much second to the more important "Why?" which was never addressed in this quiz. ;)

I totally have some pretty strange plot bunnies, though. Like a mostly-written fic about McGonagall/Remus.

For International Women's Day, I attempted to make homemade chocolate chip cookies like scores of women who have come before me... and frankly currently populate the planet. >.> I failed.

Well, I failed to begin with. Mind you, this wasn't my first time to bake cookies, but I've only done it a handful of times. At first, we didn't have all the ingredients (srsly, what happened to that vanilla extract??) and I had to wait a few hours before being able to drive. (Which means I fell asleep while waiting.) Then I finally had all the stuff...and I mixed it in the wrong order. ANYway, the cookies are finally finished, and they are indeed tasty. I'm sure it was a woman who came up with that recipe, so thank you, whoever you were: the world is a much more incredible place with chocolate chip cookies. :D

I was highly tempted by the International Women's Day fanfic meme going around, I wasn't in a mood for fictional writing today. Instead, I decided to look up some history stuffs regarding women in general. :) Mom and I discussed a lot of it; it evoked some interesting differences of opinion. I hope you find something interesting below...

( Struggles of the Past )

( Women in Government )

( Firsts in Career Roles )

( Random Cool Stuff )

( Linkage )

Claudio Sanchez + acoustic guitar + new song + video camera = EEE!!

Downloading said new song for free + finding out Co & Ca is on a tour with Iron Maiden which is coming to Dallas in August = BEST SATURDAY MORNING EVER!!!

Quoted from teh youtubes....

*Download the audio for free at www.coheedandcambria.com*
Instead of making you wait until the album is released, I thought I'd share my excitement for this song with you now. I decided with this piece to video document it's creation. This is literally the first time I played the song through in its entirety. His name is Sentry The Defiant. - Claudio

He is so ridiculously AMAZING! XD

I have this thing about not posting more than twice a day, so I didn't put it up yesterday. Jacked from spockside and other LJ buddies. (You know what's creepy? I just remembered my dream. While I completely forgot about the Florida primary, my subconscious did not. I dreamt that Newt won against all odds. O_o I was watching CNN and Wolf Blitzer of all places for coverage. So. WEIRD!)


I'm running a test to see who's reading my posts. So, if you read this, leave me a one-word comment about your day that starts with the third letter of your LJ USERNAME. Only one word please. Then repost so I can leave a word for you. Don't just post a word and not copy - that's not as much fun!

I think I should confess something- a realization I just recently had. Maybe I'm just getting too far into the motives of my villains in the novel I'm working on (Geez, that feels so weird to say, but it's finally true!) or maybe I'm just really angry about SOPA and big Hollywood in general. Maybe I've always secretly admired hackers and what they can do.

Guys, I think... I think I support piracy. Not just that I'm apathetic towards it or even just okay with it. I think I literally support pirates and hacktivists. In fact, you may even call me an Internet picture pirate, because many of the images I use, I'm supposed to pay for; I'm handy enough with photo editing that I easily remove their watermarks. I won't apologize, either: I'm not paying up to $1000 just to download a tiny image I'll alter and use for a few months at best. That's just a tad bit excessive if you ask me.

The main reason I support them is because of my hatred for the Hollywood industry. Yes, piracy is theft. But I would classify a $15 movie ticket because it comes with 3D glasses theft too. - Okay, so it's actually greed, but still. - Their response to that would be that they've had to raise the prices because of piracy, but we all know that's bogus: if all piracy ended today, you would not see a dime of price changes on anything from music to blu rays. The excessive court cases would continue, too. Like the woman who was fined millions for uploading 22 songs or the 10-yr-old whose charity video was fined thousands until the charity dollars were all in the pockets if greedy CEOs, lawyers, and producers.

Unjust court cases aren't all they pursue, though. No, they crafted a purposely vague law in the hopes of catching even accidental offenders. They lobby and intimidate Washington -why do you think dems still support the legislation?- to ignore the rights their bills will endanger. If someone says the word greed, I don't think of Wall Street; I think of Sunset Boulevard.

So I support pirates to get back at them the only way they can comprehend: their wallets. Whether though means of piracy, DDOS attacks, hacking to steal information and posting it publicly, or evolving the threats of being online thereby costing them more in R&D to protect themselves. The more havoc they cause, the better.

( What are the reasons for piracy, anyway? )

In one of their attacks a couple years back, Anonymous compared the Internet and the regulations it faces to limit its abilities and the information it is allowed to pass on to the political history of the printing press: it was this comparison that really made me stop and think.

You see, within the Internet exists the ability to be entirely anonymous, to be entirely free. While this freedom is often abused to carry out illegal activity, I believe that the freedom SHOULD exist. And hey, sometimes that illegal activity has a very good reason, even! Even so, just because Megaupload was used for piracy doesn't mean it was always used for piracy. (It also doesn't mean that the DOJ should have free reign to shut down sites at will. What happened to due process and innocence until proof of guilt in a fair court of law?) Much like the second amendment, freedom has always and will always require responsibility on the parts of the free.

I just... I dunno. While I'll never support thievery, I can't help but support piracy: the free spread of any and all information, regardless of what it is. It's hypocritical, I know. Maybe it's anger; I get pretty angry about abridged rights and such, which is what greedy Hollywood is after. At the same time, I've always believed that information above all should be accessible to all. - Not as an entitlement, but as a right. While governments and individuals are allowed to have secrets and privacy, no government should have the power to limit access to information.

What do y'all think about piracy? Is it a good thing? Are hactivists awesome? Or are they criminal menaces who should be hunted down? I'm certainly not against the prosecution of hackers and pirates; they are breaking the law and stealing, and they should pay the price if they're caught. - But not excessive prices... Like when a handful of pirates from Pirate Bay were fined $6.5 million. Like they'll ever be able to pay that! It's just greed!

Dude. I have a free account, and I can customize it out the wazoo WITHOUT having to use CSS. All colors, all headers, images INSIDE the page, header images - all WITHOUT CSS! And if I do want to get into the CSS, I can do stuff like add fonts!!

Thus far, the only thing I can't do is have a custom mood theme! And that's going to change when I upgrade to the paid.

Suffice it to say that it's going to take me a while to get my page set. I have to create a new banner...

So it's messy at the moment, but my new journal over at DW is fantastic_jackie. I decided to get rid of the Patriot because I'm extremely frustrated with politics, and I no longer want to be defined by them. I will probably change my name here eventually, too.

The Fantastic stands for four things: Fantasy, aka writing/reading, FANdom, being a fantastic gamer (it's an overstatement), and just being a fantastic person - again, an overstatement, because I actually think I'm rather average and plain. :) I feel like the form of overstated humor describes me better than the hastily chosen political name I've had these last few years.

As a serious note to anyone who isn't thinking about DW, check it out and give it a chance. LJ has stagnated; DW is genuinely a better site with regards to technical stuff. On a friends level, of course LJ has the edge because you guys are here. But seriously, do you remember how much customization LJ used to have? Imagine getting all that back and more. Plus you can stay connected to LJ through crossposts and feeds. I say this strictly as a customer comparing two products: like when I chose to go with the iPhone through AT&T and not Verizon, it's simply the better product.

Have you guys checked out the article LJ is proudly displaying on the homepage yet? Because you really should, and then you should check out the comments on the post.

I am an extremely loyal person. I actually liked the comment page changes; perhaps because I use Chrome now, I have no problems with LJ loading. Posting from my iPhone is mildly problematic, but it's nothing a little patience and copy/pasting from the Notes ap doesn't fix. Seriously, even the DDOS attacks I didn't mind. It's probably not surprising, but I viewed the attacks as a testament to free speech; kind of like we were standing with the Russians at whom the attacks were actually directed. I thought it was kind of cool to experience their political process all the way in Texas with you guys all across the world, despite the minor annoyance of no LJ for a little while. And LJ was always cool about it, too, extending my membership for the length of the attacks. It hadn't even crossed my mind, to be honest. Prior to this article, the ONLY reason I was considering DreamWidth at all was because some of you have moved over there, and I was only considering it as being supplemental to LJ, not the other way around.

I have to say though that this article has changed my mind. It's a combination of three factors:
1) The stated intention to make LJ more like Facebook. You guys already know how much I hate FB.
2) The article's undisputed claim that LJ flat out does not care about its current loyal American customers or their feelings on the new direction.
3) LJ's decision to proudly display and link to the article with such a statement and make no comments regarding it. It's that tacit approval that hurts the most.

I know this LJ is not the LJ I originally joined, and to that end, I'm not really this new LJ's loyal customer. I'm the old LJ's loyal customer, and I guess it took this post for me to see that.

On the post, I left a comment that expressed my loyalty and the fact that I'd just renewed my account in November. For that reason, and because I'm a loyal and patient person, I intend to remain here for that account to expire. I sincerely hope they respond appropriately to this latest blunder between now and then, because I do not want to make the decision to leave LJ. - If even one of you guys is still here and not at DW, I'll keep my account, but not in a paid capacity.

Someone made the comment that they had been regretting renewing their account but now felt embarrassed. I have to say that I kind of concur. More than that, I feel embarrassed for being such a fan of LJ. That, I think, expresses more than anything the screwed up nature of this PR move. Because I brag about LJ being a superior social networking site.

Facebook is about "friends" as commodities, Twitter an expression of society's shrinking attention span, Tumblr a site that feels like it somehow clawed its way from the depths of MySpace, MySpace a site that is the embodiment of superficiality, and Google Plus is as pathetic a social networking service as gmail is an e-mail service. Networking may actually describe what these other sites accomplish: loose acquaintances that you may be able to use in some capacity down the line. Networking is the number one thing I hate about working in corporate America, because the relationships are all about what you can squeeze out of them. But LJ? I think it's safe to say that we've all made lasting relationships through the communal, expressive environment that LJ has created. Even if some those relationships are in the past tense now, unless you currently know those people on Facebook, I bet they were more meaningful than your friendships with your other 250 "friends." It's true that the real reason I love LJ is because of the people I've met here and the communities I'm a part of, but it's also true that LJ is responsible for all of us being here. That's why I'm so loyal to this site, why I'm so reluctant to leave. But I cannot and will not support a company that doesn't value scores of users like myself and proudly declares it. I hope and pray they make some sort of apology or reversal, but I have to admit that I doubt it will come.

Anyway. I've said my piece. I'll be making the DW account shortly. Since it will be a new account, I'm seriously considering changing my name. I may not, though. I've been Patriot Jackie for years; it feels pretty natural to me.

Also, the next time I buy a Starbucks drink at 9:30pm, I will drink it all right then rather than sipping on it through midnight. That was apparently not a good idea.....