The pressure of TV
I like watching certain television shows, as many of us do. But since my office is in the…well, office, and the TV’s in the livingroom, I find myself falling behind
And look how fast we’ve arrived at my current topic.
See, first it’s just a week or so.
“Have you seen the new Once Upon a Time?”
“No, I’m gonna just watch it on Hulu or the DVR next time the TV’s free.”
OK, but I work all the damned time. So soon I’m not just behind a week, it’s been four, and the old one’s gonna fall off Hulu and end up on HuluPlus soon, and it’s in HD so it’s taking up a TON of room on the DVR and we need to get that off there – my not watching is now keeping OTHER people from watching THEIR shows and I need to sit my ass down and watch the thing already except I really don’t have the time so I tell them to delete it and I’ll real fast watch it on Hulu tomorrow but tomorrow I get a call from a client or get caught up in the budget and now I have a day before the oldest one’s going to fall off…
…
When I reach this point, the major part of my brain is going “Oh, fuckit. It’s just TV. In a year you can buy the freakin’ DVDs. This is just not that crucial.”…but the other part of my brain is pointing out that I said the same thing about Royal Pains, White Collar and Leverage, all of which I am also now so behind on that if I don’t buy the DVDs, I’ll never get caught up.
So I should watch them. But I really don’t have the time or energy to do that. It’s attention taken from the things I want to give my attention to during the hours that I don’t HAVE to be working, and as much as I want to know how Emma’s going to break that curse, I also kinda wanna level that IronMan challenger on Wyrmrest to 85, and I’d like to get my Sims together already, maybe without using a cheat this time, and I’d really, really like to finish that book I’m reading because I’m so very much not reading enough lately and as a professional WRITER I kind of need to be reading on a regular basis.
So TV tends to lose, and once again, here’s a show I really DO like, and everyone else in the house is into and watching regularly…and I’m not. For god’s sake, I still have the Doctor Who Christmas Special sitting on my harddrive waiting for me to watch it, and the new season starts up soon. And really, after allll that nagging to get my mother watching it, and she finally IS, I seriously need to stay caught up on that show if absolutely nothing else.
I have this picture in my mind – six months down the road, in my new apartment with Tyger, we’re sitting in front of the TV, DVD boxes stacked up in order of importance, watching through every show I fell behind on over the last three years.
I think she’s gonna kill me.
Read MoreThe Internet Needs An “adult filter”
Yeah, I’m about the ten thousanth person to say something like this, but it’s starting to get to me.
And yes, I’m about to complain about Trade Chat in World Of Warcraft. :p Hush, you.
I would like to know when wanting to actually discuss a TRADE topic, as in, look for something for to BUY, in TRADE CHAT became the big no-no
And I’d really like to know when, exactly, it became a forum for bitchy teens to complain to each other about how badly they raid.
Now, I know that the answer to these questions is “when the game was created” and “what the hell do you care?”.
I don’t. It’s more that I finally got fed up of asking to buy something eight times and being COMPLETELY ignored in favor of the drivel.
Oh, hey, they noticed, though, when I complained about it! -sighs-
Normally, my posts are a bit more thought out. And more important. And less stupid. I’m aware. This is stupid. VERY stupid, as a matter of fact, since I know I am sitting here ranting about a large group of teenagers, and at age 27 (almost 28, oh god, no…) I really should be more mature than this.
But damnit, my father died three months ago. I’m not doing well. And I just wanted to fuckin’ buy a damned gem!
OK. Done ranting now.
OH! OH! NaNoWriMo is coming up! Get your ideas ready, you only have a month to go! 50k words in 30 days. You can DO IT!!!
Read MoreMy laptop is death for the uninitiated
Someone asked me recently if they could check something via my laptop, and I said yes. It didn’t occur to me what that would entail, until I saw them sitting there, eyes wide, staring at the screen, seemingly afraid to touch the mouse.
My setup’s just a bit different. My sidebar’s on the far left side instead of right, but that’s really just the tip of the iceberg.
I don’t have a taskbar.
I hate the taskbar. Seriously, I do. I hate it’s uniformity, I hate the way the start button looks, I hate everything about it, and I hate that it doesn’t MOVE. So I took it off. Now, other people do this as well; but mostly, people HIDE their taskbar. And then when you hover your mouse at the bottom edge of the screen, it pops back up again!
Mine’s gone.
Instead, I have a program called Object Dock. I paid for this program many years ago, along with WindowBlinds and several other Stardock products, because I’m a customizing freak – but really, the only one I find irreplaceable is Object Dock.
And therein lays the biggest problem people find, sitting down cold at my computer.
There are no icons on my desktop. I like to see the picture. Therefore, I have what’s known as a tabbed drawer docked at the top of my screen, and more shortcuts than god EVER intended to sit on a desktop will fit into it, neatly tucked away, sliding out whenever I hover over it.
This doesn’t solve the issue of the taskbar, but that’s my favorite part. I have a dock, far right of the screen, attached at the top, piling down, of all my open programs. This, in fact, is the major reason I will probably always use Object Dock. Always, always, always: I can reorder the icons so that like programs are together, or stuff I want to get to in a hurry are easier to reach. Do you understand? I can drag and drop the icons into any order I want.
But that’s not the best part!! I spent a lot of time IMing, and you know how a window blinks a color at you when you get a new IM on a normal taskbar. It blinks a bit, then stays lit, and there’s this bright color glaring at you…and that I missed after the first four times, since I got used to random programs doing that.
These icons bounce. Why? Because I told ’em to. They can do any number of things, but it really gets my attention when an icon starts dancing around at the top of my screen, looking for my attention.
And of course, I have a small dock at the bottom of the right edge of my screen, with a start button.
Apparently, this is where I confused my friend. They sat down, stared at the screen, and couldn’t find Start. I clicked it, and eyes got somehow wider. Apparently, it’s completely unnatural, and horribly evil to have a start button in the bottom right corner. I was unaware of this fact.
What this has brought to my attention is that I clearly cannot sell this computer to buy a new one. See, I’d have to write down what every single shortcut in my tabs were, and redo them by hand and just…hope they’re right. There’s no way. So I have to figure out a way to get a new computer before I sell this one. At which point, there’s no much use in selling this one – I can hand it off to my mother, so she can take it to her classes.
OH! Speaking of classes! Head over to Claudia Suzanne’s site, and check out her early bird special for Ghostwriter Certification Training! If you want to make a living as a writer, there’s no better way!
And I promise, when she walks in with a computer, it’ll be a perfectly normal setup. But that’s likely the only normal thing about her – just a warning.
Read MoreHey, I hate .com – I wanna use somethin’ else!
Most people know about country codes, right? .ca for Canada, .uk for the United Kingdom. Every country has it’s own code. We all know that, blah blah blah. And yeah, you can get a .net if the .com‘s not available, or a .org – people might think they have to be a non profit for this, but you don’t. It’s not restricted. Some people know you can get a .biz if you’re a business, though it’s lesser known.
Of course, a .gov is the US government, right? And .edu is for educational organizations only. (specifically, actually, it’s for “post-secondary institutions accredited by an agency on the U.S. Department of Education’s list of Nationally Recognized Accrediting Agencies*“) A .mil is only for the United States Military. If you’re REALLY into the nitty gritty, you might be aware that anyone can get a .info domain. It’s not restricted either, despite it’s appearance.
Y’all remember the ARPANET? It’s what the Internet grew from. It’s the starter. Blond jokes shooting around on the ARPANET. Which still exists, in the form of anysite.arpa
But are you aware that if you had a cooperative organization, you can get a .coop? Betcha didn’t.
IN FACT!!!
With enough money, you can have any top level domain you want.
Now. Here’s my issue – certain things are obvious, right? If you’re trying to get a .mil, it’s not gonna let you. No one wants the wrath of the combined U.S. armed forces knocking on their door. And there’s a sponsor of record on each top level domain, so yes, technically, someone could come after you if you try to register under their gTLD (general use top level domain) without meeting the criteria. But sometimes that criteria is vague. And what if you’re in the U.S. and they’re in…Myanmar? Or vice-versa? How is this enforced? While you do, indeed, have to register a domain through an approved domain server, it’s all automated most of the time.
I’ve taken the time to sift through all the country code top level domain names to find all the rest, currently existing, gTLD (yes, ALL, at the time of this posting) and their purposes.
.AERO is for members of the air-transport industry
.INT is for “registering organizations established by international treaties between governments”
.JOBS is for human resource managers – and this is where it gets dicey and I start to wonder. WHO’S HR managers?
.MOBI is for consumers and providers of mobile products and services. Consumers AND providers. WTH? Isn’t that ALL OF US now?!
.MUSEUM is for…well…museums. That one I think is obvious.
.NAME is for individuals. Yes, that’s right. Individuals. No, you didn’t see that wrong, and I didn’t mistype. All this time, your homepage? Probably coulda been “JohnSmith.Name” – or more creatively, “Whatisyour.name”. Hey, which ironically doesn’t exist, but the title bar says “Hello. What is your name?”
.PRO is “Restricted to credentialed professionals and related entities”. I use the legalese because I swear to god, no matter how many times I read it, it looks like if you have a degree after your name, you can have a .pro domain, and I’m sure there’s a lawyer out there who’d argue if I just said that instead of the actual wording. (keeping in mind that I’m pre-law)
.TEL is for “businesses and individuals to publish their contact data”. I have to ask. Using this logic, couldn’t FaceBook and MySpace, etc, all have been .tel instead of .com?
.TRAVEL …legalese again: “Reserved for entities whose primary area of activity is in the travel industry”. Dude. I travel a lot, thus I use the industry…I wanna put up a site with thousands of slide shows. I can have a .travel! Likewise, I’m a travel agent…I can have a .travel! Hey, I’m an online booking company…what, use a .travel? No, no, that’d make it TOO EASY TO REMEMBER!! -headdesk-
Now, seriously, this is it. Plus the ones I mentioned in the first paragraph, that’s ALL OF THEM. Anything else in existence right now is a country code.
So, each of those gTLDs has a sponsor. For example, .TRAVEL is sponsored by Tralliance Registry Management Company, LLC.
I assume that if you register a .TRAVEL and instead post something about construction work or something, they’ll be all over that like ugly on a bear. But the point is, they paid, and got a top level domain. Now, I’m sure there’s more to it than that. Like, paperwork and forms and approval, etc, etc. But basically, here, have cash, gee thanks, my new site is www.trinitylast.bleh
Before you ask, all this info is available for free from the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, linked at the bottom. In fact, if you wanted email Tralliance and ask what exactly they went through to get a .TRAVEL gTLD or just what kind of site they WOULDN’T sue for using it, there’s an email and everything on the site. I won’t post it here, that’s just mean, but dude, I’m looking at it, and it’s not even admin@…it’s a person’s NAME.
Heh. And of course, their site is www.travel.travel
The fairly sparse design is excused by the awesomeness of buying a gTLD just so their site would BE www.travel.travel
It’s like the days of alt.binaries are back.
Anyway, to end this fairly geeky PSA, I would like to post this question: if you could have any top level domain you wanted, what would it be? Comments are open on this blog, or just twitter it and I’ll line up the answers in another entry.