unsympathetic.net

Do you think I’m a rude person?

I don’t think I am. But my grandma does, and she had no tact when she told my mum all about it on her (my mum’s) birthday on Monday. So I’ve been asking around, surveying whether or not people think I’m rude.

Granted, people might not tell me the truth. But in general, they agree that I’m forward, but not overly rude.

Apparently the problem lies, then, with my interaction with my family. According to my grandma, all three of us–my brother, my sister, and I–are very rude. Which is strange, since I don’t think either of them are rude, and I don’t think they think I’m rude, either. But my grandma thinks it, which hurts my mum’s feelings.

I think our biting sense of humor is what makes us seem rude when we’re all together. We’re often cutting each other down, with smart remarks, and sarcastic responses. And since we’re used to it (and grew up with it) it doesn’t hurt our feelings.

However, it does bother my mum, which I don’t blame her. She’s the easiest to pick on, the least careful with her words and questions when around us. She’ll often say the same thing twice, when trying to explain it in a different way. She’ll also ask questions that were previously answered, but she wasn’t paying attention.

These offenses, in our family, are fair game to be picked on. We were taught to think before you speak, listen before you talk, and to choose your words wisely lest they get turned around on you. While each of us does this to a minor extent, having the three of us and our father together is magnifier that makes it so much more worse.

It’s unfortunate that my grandma only sees us when we’re all together, when she comes for Monday Night Dinner, as she sees us as rude, when we really aren’t, not to the extent that she thinks.

And I really wish she’d stop making my mum cry. After all, we’re only rude. I’ve got cousins that are assholes, and my grandma never tells their mothers that.

- “Dirty Little Secret,” Move Along : All-American Rejects

Erin tagged me with a meme yesterday, and I was all excited when she told me, because I’ve never been tagged before.

And then I saw the meme. It’s not bad, but my answers are horrible (for people who are not me), as my music tastes are firmly in the teenage emo punk-pop-power ballad these days. My music choices have also been based on the fact that I’ve got a few concerts lined up in the next few weeks, and I always gorge on music by the upcoming bands. It also doesn’t help that I’m an album listener, and almost never listen to random.

If I was going to answer with the absolute last seven songs I listened to on my iPod, it would be all Death Cab for Cutie, since their latest album Plans has been in constant rotation, and I listened to it all the way to School.

I’ll spare you all the boringness of that, and throw down my seven songs of choice, from the most recent albums I’ve listened to.

1. Crooked Teeth - Death Cab for Cutie
2. Sophomore Slump or Comeback of the Year - Fall Out Boy
3. We Write Sins Not Tragedies - Panic! at the Disco
4. Dusk and Summer - Dashboard Confessional
5. Chicago is So Two Years Ago - Fall Out Boy
6. Rapid Hope Loss - Dashboard Confessional
7. Marching Bands of Manhattan - Death Cab for Cutie

As for tagging? I don’t expect anyone to actually do this, and Erin tagged the people I would have, so I must branch out. So, Fishy, Rockstr, Gomeler, Zanzaban, Karmatosed, Neogeek, and all of MySpace: have at it.

Things are a bit back to normal. A weird normal, but normal all the same.

The new carpet has been installed, and my room is put back together.In the room I grew up in. I only have two boxes left to unpack, and since one is shoes I hardly wear, and the other yarn I just like to look at, I’m in no rush to get that done. Maybe by Christmas, if I feel like it.

I had everything done by Saturday afternoon, except the papers on my desk. I hadn’t organized them when I packed them up, and so I left them in an unorganized stack sitting on top of the scanner. When I got home Sunday night from Dustin’s, I had nothing better to do, so I went through them all, and sorted them into stacks. The largest stack, by far, was the stack of paperwork to be scanned so that I could throw it away.

Perhaps I’m entirely too anal, but I feel a need to keep all my schoolwork from when I started back in school. And I have a ton of work. A large stack from a creative writing workshop, a larger stack of math homework from last semester, assignments from Astronomy when Pluto was still a planet, and of course the numerous handouts from all English classes I’ve taken.

So, instead of catching up on my reading for American Lit (after all, I’m pretty sure it’s the Puritan’, Quakers, and Founding Fathers that gave me a raging headache all week long), I wasted time, and started scanning things in again. I really would like to have my stacks tackled and removed before someone notices what I’m doing.

I mean, it’s alright to be a digital pack-rat, right? It’s already clear that I’m a physical one, as when my dad asked me why I was keeping an empty box for my printer, and the response was “I bought it at Costco and might have to return it.”

- “Slow Decay,” Dusk and Summer: Dashboard Confessional

It’s nice to know that if I had to, I could pack up and move all my stuff in two days.

My parents are getting new carpeting installed throughout the downstairs, (If you really want to see it, watch the video, and everywhere you see carpet it’s getting replaced) which means that I had to pack up my entire room, and every other room downstairs.

Honey absolutely flipped out about the new arrangements. She didn’t know what to do in a room that only had my bed and her bed. She was attached to me for the rest of the night, not understanding what’s going on.

However, I am not looking forward to moving everything back. It’s just a hassle. While my mom says I can wait until the weekend to do it, I know my dad will want everything moved back tonight.

Just the thought of all that moving has given me a headache all day, and I desperately do not want to go home. If I don’t go, I don’t have to do it, right?

Sigh. Stupid carpet.

- “Slow Decay, ” Dusk and Summer: Dashboard Confessional

I love my dog, but occasionally I have the urge to beat the crap out of her.

Which I know is wrong, and I don’t do it.

Anyway, on Saturday, I was knitting a shawl-like thing that I started two years ago. I know that I started it two years ago because I was knitting it to wear to C and J’s wedding two years ago, and it still isn’t done.

I had pulled it out of the closet, and realized that I didn’t particularly like it. It wasn’t my style, and I probably would never wear it. But, it was pretty, and easy to knit, so I figured I’d finish it off and give it to a classmate that I’ve had classes with every semester since I started at SCC. It was exactly her style, and since I’m trying to convince her to transfer with me next fall, I figured a present would be appropriate.

So, I had been knitting it. I was storing it in a plastic box that fit exactly under the sidetable in the living room, so that when I was watching TV, I could pull it out and work on it, and slide it back under the table when I was done for the evening.

Saturday, though, I forgot to slide the box back under the table when I was done. I got up to fix myself dinner, did other things, forgot about the knitting, and spent the rest of the evening on the computer.

Around 9pm, I look over at Honey, who was laying down where her bed is supposed to be. I had taken it outside to shake it off, and never brought it back in. So I go out, and I see something that makes me angry.

Right inside the dog door is a black ball of yarn. The exact ball of yarn that was attached to the knitting I was working on. So I follow the string out side, far out into the back yard, when I find a broken end when it got wrapped around an outlet in the backyard.

So, Honey has stolen my knitting, and I don’t know if I’ll get it back. I searched Saturday night. My mom searched on Sunday. The shawl is nowhere to be found.

So yes, I’m irritated. And the moment I found out, I really wanted to beat the dog. But I didn’t. I refrained. And didn’t talk to her for the rest of the evening, after a minor punishment (”Is this your toy? It must be your toy, you chewed it up” sort of thing).

Even though I can’t find the knitting, I’m over it. The initial irritation is what really bothered me, as I didn’t expect Honey to attack cotton yarn. My mom says it’s because she wants to be close to me, and after two years, that yarn definitely smelled like me.

So, now I have to find new TV knitting. Sigh. And it took me forever to pull the shawl out of the closet.

- “Your Heart is an Empty Room,” Plans: Death Cab for Cutie

Some days, I wonder why I have Techcrunch in my news reader, as often the stuff they write about it over my head, beyond my means, or has no particular use for me.

And then there are days when posts like this come along.

Since my harddrive had a near-failure last month, having just caught it in time to mirror the data before replacing, I’ve been fretting about how to back up all of my data to guard against future data loss.

I could go the external harddrive rout, but then I need to get a harddrive as big if not bigger than the one on my laptop. And 100gig drives aren’t going cheep these days–cheep being under $50, since I’m a broke college student.

So, enter Carbonite. A great way to back up your stuff to some ether place on the internet, so that one day when the unthinkable happens (and it always does), you can get your stuff back quick as you please.

At $5 a month for unlimited storage, it seems like a great deal. The only reason I’m not jumping on the bandwagon is the lack of a highspeed connection at home, and the amount of time I’d have to leave my laptop at work to get the initial backup done, seeing as how I have so much crap.

Now that I know that there are solutions like this out there, though, I’ll be keeping my eyes open, keeping notes on which service people like best. Because one day I will have highspeed at home. Even if it doesn’t happen until I find a new home.

What is everyone else doing for backups? Is off-site the way to go? Should I really plunk down the cash for an external drive? Are there any other solutions I should be looking at?

I need to know these things people, because for once, my geek-factor isn’t helping me at all.

Awhile ago, I wrote a post about how Flock has become my new default browser. It was a pretty tame post, as it was just an overview.

However, since I am known as the girl who can break anything¹ I thought I’d take an in depth look at the things I use most in the browser, what I like about it, and what I think needs to be changed.

First up is the Newsreader. This is probably the one feature I use more than any other in the Flock browser. I spend most of my time in the Newsreader, reading my feeds, marking posts for later, and just catching up with my corner of the world in general.

The Newsreader has some really great features, which makes it indispensable for me. At the same time, however, a few additional features would make it kick so much ass that I might never close the browser window. Or, if everyone would use full feeds, I’d be able to never leave the reader, unless I need to comment.²

First off, I love the default news page. You can see a recent post for the the category at hand, and then a few links to to other recent posts. While this is a great feature, something needs to be changed about the way posts are shown, or my install is somehow borked.

Each folder tends to show up differently for me. With some, the displayed post is the latest and newest. On others, it’s the last post I marked to save within that folder, and others have no rhyme or reason to why a certain post is picked as the one to display.

The only constant seems to be if it’s the latest unviewed post. That always gets preference over what other hierarchy system is in place. I think that it would be great if the individual was able to customize their view hierarchy for themselves. For example, I’d rather “saved” posts have priority over just “viewed” posts, but maybe someone else would rather it be the other way around.

Also, the way “saved” posts are treated is brilliant. Just by clicking the star, I bookmark the post in del.icio.us (or whatever bookmarking site you’re using, I assume). However, unlike when I bookmark the post in the traditional sense, I am unable to set tags and a description for what I’m linking. I don’t mind that it doesn’t show up right that minute–as often times I’m marking something to think about it, or am in a hurry, and want to remember to take my time with it later.

However, I think that there should be a way to bring up the bookmarking window really easily from within the newsreader, so that when I go back over it later, it’s easy to update, and I don’t have to go into the del.icio.us interface to do it. If this functionality is here now, I can’t find it for the life of me.

Another change I would make for the “saved” posts would be the ability to organize them amongst themselves. Such as a way to create folders for them to be sorted in. After all, I mark posts for three things: tutorials not to loose, posts to write about, and posts I like but don’t know what to do with yet. It would be nice if I could set up folders for these, so when I’m ready to write about something, I don’t have to dig through all of my saved posts to find it.

I’d also love to be able to tag the saved posts, or just have the del.icio.us tags for the saved posts able to be searchable within the feed reader. That way if I’m looking for a marked post on socks, I can just plug in that tag, and find everything I marked with it.

Overall, though, I like Flock’s newsreader better than all the others I’ve tried. I like that it’s browser-based and not web-based. I like that it’s integrated with the browser and not a stand-alone desktop program. I think the “saved” option is brilliant. I like that I can organize my feeds the way in a way that makes sense to me.

While I do wish I could get everything I wanted in a program³ I do think that adding in some of this functionality would make everyone love the reader the way I do.

After all, the newsreader is the number one reason I switched to Flock as my main browser. I’m to lazy to look for new sites, and I want the content I like delivered to me with as little work as possible. And if I open the browser for just a minute or two, the newsreader will pull all the feeds for me, and save them so I can read them later when I’m offline. Like when I’m in class without a wi-fi connection.⁴

Yay! for the Flock newsreader, making me more productive in my quest to waste time. I really don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t of found it. Or used it. Or fallen in love with it. Oh, one last thing: I’d love to be able to change that blue color, because sometimes I’m not in a blue mood.

1. If you have something you need tested, throw it my way and I’ll break/find something it absolutly needs it in less than ten minutes. It’s a freakish skill.[back]
2. And I do feel the need to comment a lot, so it’s not like full feeds would keep me away from the site.[back]
3. We wondered in IRC today how many Flock programers I’d have to sleep with to get what I want. The consensus is 10 to 12.[back]
4. Another reason why I’m an advocate of the full post. There is nothing more annoying than being offline, and reading an excerpt that really makes me want to read more. In two hours, I’ll forget that I even saw the excerpt at all, and not get around to reading the full post.[back]

Occasionally, I think of incredibly weird things that just stick in my mind.

Example: For the last week, a children’s rhyme has been stuck in my head. Around here, it’s the song that the Ice Cream man plays while driving slow around the neighborhood.

The lyrics, though, are what interest me. I’ve been singing this song since I was little, and I never once stopped to think what the words really meant.

Do your ears hang low,
Do they wobble to and fro,
Can you tie ‘em in a knot, can you tie ‘em in a bow,
Do you throw them o’er your shoulder like a continental soldier,
Do your ears hang low?

And the part that bothers me most about this song isn’t that there is a question of having ears long enough to throw over one’s shoulder, it’s that I had no clue as to what a continental soldier was, or if one even existed.

Thanks to the power of the internet, though, I can look it up. There really was a such thing as a Continental Soldier.

Without looking up anything, my first thought was that a Continental soldier would be someone from Europe. After all, it’s an old song, and Europe was referred to by the British as the Continent. So, it would be reasonable to think that soldiers there would be referred to as Continental soldiers.

However, I was wrong, as usual. A Continental soldier was an American soldier, as the army was created by the Continental Congress.

So, now that I know what a Continental soldier is, I can now worry about other, more worrying things. Like, why do they have such long ears? What happened to them? And why do they throw them over their shoulders.

I have questions, and for once, the internet isn’t answering.

Last week, Ben over at Open Switch wrote a post titled “How to stunt your spiritual growth.” I’ve been thinking about this post a lot, especially since in my American Literature class we’ve been reading the work of early Puritan settlers.

Ben’s post is essentially is a list of things to do if you don’t want to grow spiritually. While I understand where he’s coming from, as he is a youth minister and this is from his point of view, at the same time I can’t help but disagree with him.

Which shouldn’t be so unusual, really, as I do every thing on his list (well, “Hang out with the wrong crowd” can be debatable, since I don’t think there is anything wrong with the people I hang out with), but I do not think I’m spiritually stunted. Of course, people could say I’m deluding my self, but that’s their opinion.

But, what I really wanted to say¹ is that Ben forgot the most important step to stunt spiritual growth.

Stop thinking.

I don’t mean regular thinking, like writing a blog post or an email. I’m talking about thinking for yourself where you form an individual opinion. So often I run across people who when we discuss anything controversial, their opinion was formed when they were younger, and they never thought about it again.

This accounts for the big outrage with The DaVinci Code Code. People were shocked that someone would write a story where Jesus had a love interest, and a family. Never mind that the entire story was fiction. Many people saw this as an attack on their beliefs, and attacked back. Whole churches banded together to boycott the film.

For some, they took the opportunity to start a dialog about their beliefs of Jesus’s life, and actually thought about things, taking the opportunity to look at what the believe. Others, though, just through a blanket over the whole thing, condemning a fiction book they hadn’t even read yet, because they didn’t approve of the plot line.

I think everyone should think for themselves. They should have a reference text–such as the bible–which they turn to for clarification or for research on what they’re thinking about. But they should never except what other people say as spiritual law, if they haven’t thought about it for themselves.

After all, my spiritual beliefs have changed as I’ve grown up. With each new text I’ve been introduced to, I’ve had to rethink the things I believe in. And at the moment, Jonathan Edwards is scaring me creepy with “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”

- “Your Disease,” Every Six Seconds: Saliva

1. And I mean really wanted to; I had to write this post twice because the first one got lost in computer ether.[back]

I love pins. Especially little ones with sayings on them. Is it no surprise, then that I’ve fallen into the new web trend? The one where everyone is sporting buttons from other web sites? And where else would I sport these pins, but on the backpack I carry every day.

First, it was Eric over at Bad Tofu sending me his new button in exchange for a laptop bag I made him. Sure, it doesn’t really seem fair. After all, the button was way better, in my opinion. And he sent me two! But, while I was waiting for his pins to arrive, I couldn’t stop myself from ordering from Prickie.

It took me an hour to choose six buttons, and then an impatient week or two to get them. I love them, though. After a photo session, I spent a good twenty minutes deciding on backpack placement.

But then, the mother of all pins finally arrived. The 9rules pins, the reason I got hooked on pins to begin with. The arrived, and I had to rearrange the bag again.

Since I was limited to my phone’s camera this week, I took a close up photo of the pin so you can see what I mean. It’s brilliant. And if anyone ever recognizes it, I can pimp myself for being in the network.

I’m also thinking of doing pins for my own site. I have no idea if there is any interest, though, so we’ll see. I might just get them as a little somethin’ somethin’ to include with the laptop bags when they finally go up for sale. I’m thinking a full set, using the fruit vectors that the rockstr Bryan Culver made for me. So, of course he’d have to get the first mailing.

I’ve also been looking into buying a pin maker, but at $200, it really isn’t in the budget for something I’d be using essentially as a toy. I’d love to have one though, so perhaps I’ll save up. Because, I love pins.

Yay! pins.

- “Don’t Phunk With My Heart” Monkey Business: Black Eyed Peas