moonbeamsfanfic | Entries tagged with fail flail

Figured I should give a progress report...

Seven weeks since falling down the stairs and breaking my humerus bone at the shoulder, the orthopedic surgeon confirms it is firmly attached in place. A small retroversion of the humeral head remains, but since I'm young I should regain full enough range of motion as to make no difference. It'll still take up to a year to properly remodel new bone growth, but the bone itself is stable.

Unless I have another klutz attack and fall again, of course. But I promise I am trying very hard to avoid that!

( My physiotherapist is like the Energizer Bunny, but my batteries are obviously not Duracell... )

Next challenge, putting my arm through a sleeve! Tank tops and fleece vests have got me through autumn, but there's snow on the ground now. Time to figure how to wear real clothes again. Progress!

Hi World!

I haven't updated in forever, mostly because I only use this for commenting on fic or watching my communities anymore. But it also makes a great documenting tool for personal life events - ie: a journal. Who knew?!

Sept 27th, Sunday night, at about 8pm I fell down the basement steps. Made it down the top steps with little more than a bruised bum, but spun around at the landing and proceeded to go down the last few steps head first. My head survived. My arm did not. Hit my shoulder on the wall going around the turn and broke the bone.

( TL;DR gruesome details )

Will update again in two weeks once I discover if I'm healing well. Or whatever...

..., because then maybe fandom would stop making me feel like I'm a broken freak who needs to be "fixed" to find true happiness.

I would like it if (just once even!) I could a find an angsty fic that doesn't pull a complete turn-around into a so-called "happy ending" by essentially saying: 'Oh, hey? That thing that was making you miserable? All your own fault! Just admit I'm right and you're wrong, and presto! All fixed! Now we can be together forever!' Tadda, instant happy ending!

Because I don't buy it. Relationships don't just magically fix everything. And, hey, guess what? That's okay! People have flaws, they have fears, they have angers... it's part of life. It doesn't mean they're "broken" and need fixing to be happy. They can, wonder of wonders, learn to be happy with themselves flaws and all, you know. Love doesn't always conquer all.

But the message all these fics are sending is that no, really, I'm wrong. If I just change who I am, I can find love and then suddenly everything in my life will be so much better, yay! And that makes me feel horrible and alienated after reading these fics because, sorry, I don't buy their happily ever after endings. Because I want the characters to hold out for once, to not compromise themselves to make the 'happy ending' possible. Because I am not only not satisfied by the relationship working out, I am actually upset by it. Because it's not goddamn FAIR to the character, okay? It's just not. And it's not fair to me either.

Why can't these characters be allowed to be themselves and not have to change to suit someone else instead? Why aren't they allowed to hold on to their so-called "hangups" and have the other person adapt to live with them? To accept them as they are?

Why do they, do I, have to be "fixed" to find happiness?

Answer: We don't. I'm just fine the way I am, and so are most of them. That's why we love those characters in first place, isn't it? So, please, just someone... leave them be. Let them live however they want, let them find happiness in themselves for once.

Even if that means being alone.

The Gdoc of Doom(tm), the impressively huge and quickly developed document within which everyone and their dog put in their own two cents after Pinboard's owner foolishly invited suggestions (ha! he totally didn't see us coming!), has been condensed and contabulated and converted into an easy-peasy form. The simple three question survey is from what Maciej will be picking and choosing which new features to implement based on highest demand for them. So, yanno, if you're interested in a quality service catered to your fandom needs, do it and get your voice heard! Go vote and demand something!

CLICK FOR YOUR LIFE --> Pinboard Features Request Survey! <-- Oooh, baby, do me!

Further detail and explanations of what is included and what got left out by general opinion is all available on the

pinboard community. Have a look and make sure you do the survey! C'mon people, ~~God~~ Maciej is actually watching! And listening! And, even better, doing stuff in answer! So go ask for somethin', he actually cares! Plus it only takes, like, a minute of your time... and it's for the Good Of All Fandom. \o/

Survey closes Oct 7th, 2011. Vote now to optimize Pinboard for your fic searching/reccing needs!

If you made the switch to Pinboard or are planning to, look me up! Heck, look everybody up! And don't forget to add your name(s) to the Great Delicious Migration spreadsheet so others can find you too!

Also, VERY IMPORTANT, remember to ticky-box the setting so you can see who is subscribed to you -- and they can subscribe back!

I'm busy renaming all my tags so I can have some form of organization again (oh, my bundles! ::wails::), which I'm doing by hand. There apparently is a Python Script that is supposed to make it easier and faster, but honestly I couldn't even understand the installation instructions for the script, so probably shouldn't try my luck running it. Anyway, hand editing all my bookmarks one by one is proving useful. Not only can I add new tags to my older bookmarks from before I established a homogeneous system, I'm finding and re-locating a few dozen dead links so my story recs can keep being read. But I've got 24 pages of bookmarks and only a page and bit done... I'll be at this for awhile.

In the meantime, Delicious finally gave me back the ability to view all my tags. Now if only they'd return my beloved bundles, network, and subscriptions my world would be complete. :)

... not panicking. ;)

Okay, so as pretty much the entire intarwebs knows by now, Delicious' new owners Avos revealed their new "beta version" to almost universal outcries of "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooo!!!!1!!"

Day or two later, some small hope is returned. Their Beta Status Blog indicates that the much-loved and essential features such as tag bundles and subscriptions are due to return. Special characters like the "/" for pairings, the exclamation mark (!), ampersand (&), period (.), colon (:) and even certain symbols like the heart (♥) and triangle (▲) are now working. (Although, apparently only for some people? Mine just came back a few hours ago, so maybe all it'll take is a bit of time to settle things.)

That said, thousands more fen are now participating in the Great Delicious Migration (add your name to the GoogleDocs Spreadsheet so we can keep track of you!) that first started last December with Yahoo!'s plans to shut down our lovely bookmarking tool. Some are heading for Diigo's free alternative, but there one must think about censorship concerns over random privatizing of porny links. Which isn't really very practical for most fen.

Many others are shelling out the small one-time fee ($9.44 at the moment) for Pinboard. I did too -- come see moonbeamsfanfic on Pinboard and feel free to add me to your network! (Don't forget to change your settings to show subscriptions!) Entry-cost aside, Pinboard is seeming to be the next best alternative to an as-yet nonexistent fan-made bookmarking tool. At least Maciej, the founder/creator, is being very friendly and welcoming to fandom invading his doors en-masse as we are. He's even open to suggestions as the in-progress GoogleDoc demonstrates.

Plus he's been very understanding of our crazy quirks even as it took no time at all to Rule 34 him with anthropomorphic crackfic in which Pinboard steals Delicious' girlfriend, Fandom. Which has been shared everywhere, and even Maciej has tweeted about it in good humour. For him and his awesomeness alone, I am happy with Pinboard!

In conclusion... I am not giving up on Delicious. The beta-version site relaunch was obviously WAY too early, but I'm hopeful things'll return to some semblance of normal. Fairly quickly too, if the other "fixes" implemented in the last 24 hours is any clue. (Granted it doesn't solve the problem of why they took them away in the first place, but meh... no harm, no foul in my book~~mark~~s.)

In the meantime. watch

deliciouslymad for updates and come find me on Pinboard!

I'm not gonna get into how big a FAIL this new 'upgrade' is because everyone else is doing a good job loudly calling bullshit on it, so I'll just say:

If you do use Facebook or Twitter, may I respectfully ask that you NOT cross-post your comments from my LJ, please? Thank you!

I don't think it'll be much of a problem as most people seem to be in agreement over how much of a violation of privacy this new trick is, but it doesn't hurt to ask. Also, I kinda hate Facebook as a business just on general principles, so would really prefer to not ever be associated with it for any reason if at all possible.

::sigh:: I'm gonna have to get off my duff and make a Dreamwidth account, aren't I? Eh, maybe this weekend -- if they're not too swamped. Still not leaving LJ though.

Step 1: Determine where the annoying high-pitched whine is coming from.

My CPU cooler's dinky-little 60mm fan*.

*Hopefully, though it is a bit hard to judge purely by ear. But it'd better be this part, because this only costs $20 to replace, whereas the Power Supply fan would cost upwards of $200. At which point I'd probably just get a new computer for $500 and save myself the hassle.

Step 2: Research new CPU coolers (heatsink with fan, aka HSF) online. Determine which would be best for your needs.

The Thermaltake TR2-M3 is an excellent, efficient, and affordable HSF for my now rather old and out-of-date (but still more than good enough for my needs!) AMD Athlon 2500+ processor.

Step 3: Buy it.

Have bought the Thermaltake TR2-M3 heatsink (with attached 80mm fan) for a modest $17 in store. Could have got it for less online, but shipping and well, Christmas, would basically cancel out the few dollars saved anyway.

Step 4: Figure out how to install it.

New gizmo does NOT come with it's own installation instructions. Have researched installation online. It is, apparently, easy and tool-free. Less than 5 minutes to install, blah, blah. I just have to be careful not to bend, stab, crack, or otherwise destroy the delicate processor and thus completely scrap my entire computer system while I do it. ::coughs:: No pressure, right.

Step 5: Just do it, dumbass.

I am planning to attempt removal of old HSF and replace with new HSF tomorrow, as I must be off to work now. If all goes well, new fan will be faster, cooler, and above all quieter than current.
Granted, if I mess up... it won't matter what the fan is like, because my computer's brain will be fried and the whole thing scrap.
Alternatively, I can wait until a few weeks for the holiday season to be over and take it to a professional to be installed. Would probably cost about a hundred bucks and take them a couple of days to bother fixing, but... Yeah. Less chance of irreparable damage.

Step 6: Contemplate other modifications one can make to their computer tower while waffling on just fixing the damned fan.

Pretty lights! The Logisys CCFL Light Sticks are amazingly cool and come in green, red, or blue. Oooh, or you can get fan grills with LED displays on them -- I saw one in the store with a dragon motive surrounded by orange, green, and blue LEDs that looked awesome!

Step 7: Realise what an idiot you are, and just go back to trying to fix the first problem instead of making more.

Umm... ::looks sheepish::

Crap!

My 11-year old Hotmail account just switched itself over the "Windows Live Full" version. I tried to force it back into "Classic", but the version of Classic they offer is still completely different from the ancient version I've been happily using for over a decade now. Crap.

If anyone out there knows a way to reset my Hotmail account's appearance to the old, pre-Windows Live era style, I'd be unbelievably grateful. I've been steadily denying the so-called upgrades for years now because I hate the new look -- now it went and upgraded without asking and won't let me refuse! Dear god, it's horrible to look at... ::shudders:: I want my old boring Hotmail back! Whaaaaa!

Oh, please, can't someone help me? :{

Well... I think we all pretty much know what's going on by now, so I'm not gonna get into it. I will say this though:

1. I will NOT be giving up my LJ account.
2. I already have a JournalFen account in the same name, but I pretty much never use it unless I'm commenting on someone else's stuff.
3. I don't yet have a Greatest Journal, but may very well get one anyway. It will most likely not be updated anymore than the JournalFen account, but will serve for maintaining contact with those Flist who make the Exodus.
4. My LJ account is paid yearly, so I won't be downgrading to a free one until next year when my renewal date approaches. (Depending on the situation come 2008, that is.)
5. Please consider joining

fandom_counts with your fandom-related journals. It's just a body count, just so LJ knows how many of their customers are here for the very thing they're trying so very hard to alienate.

And that's it for my opinion on the latest kerfluffle. Good luck, my friends! Hope to see you all on the other side. :)

Peace,
Moon.

EDIT: My JournalFen and brand-spanking new GreatestJournal accounts, for the curious.

EDIT 2: FTW, the best thing to come out of this entire kerfluffle is