This evening I booked lots of trains (and hostels) mostly in Canada. My best friend decided, for some inexplicable reason, to move up North. So I bought my train ticket in advance (which I don't do often) because I knew it would be expensive - my rail card doesn't go much further north than where I live. So I four hour trip there and four hours back cost me £75.

Then I booked a train from Halifax to Montreal which takes 20 hours and includes a bed and that cost me £150.

And the government wonders why people don't use public transport.

P8290827

Originally uploaded by paranoidangel

This is what I've spent most of my past week on (apart from looking at houses): the little blue laptop. I've photographed it on top of my current one to show the size difference. My computer is 15.4", the laptop is 8.9" (I know they're both laptops but I have to call them both something different). It has Linux on it (Linpus, to be precise) so I've spent a lot of time on the forums trying to work out how to do stuff. It's a lot like Unix, so some of it is coming back to me.

Biggest pain in the arse so far is my TV. When I plug my computer into it I set it to PC and it shows me a picture. That doesn't work with the laptop, but it turns out what you're supposed to do, is cycle through the options that let you watch two channels at once until you get to PC. At which point it'll show you the picture at 640x480, no matter which computer you plug into it. Which is not helpful, since it only shows you a corner of the screen. Useful.

Thank you to all the people who commented to my last post, it did make me feel better.

And what I was planning to do last night was the fic commentaries requested on this post. The double drabble first, as I can only do one LJ cut from here:

Read more...

I thought I was having a bad day mid-afternoon, but then it got worse.

Last night, at Rotaract, I opened a door, knowing there was someone behind me, but not how far. So I looked round to see where he was and when I looked back at the door it was swinging open further than 90 degrees and I was worried it was going to hit something. So I reached for it to stop it. At the same time it got as far as it was going to go and started swinging back. It hit my thumb really hard. It hurt last night, but I assumed it was stop. But no, it hurts more today because it hurts if I move it, and it's very hard not to move.

Then today, after spending the last hour of work not doing anything urgent, or that important really, five minutes before hometime someone decided they needed something doing urgently and it wasn't a quick something either.

So after leaving work late and being really hungry when I got in, I found my landlady is selling my flat, so I have just under four months to move out. Which given how stressful moving was last time, was not in my plan for a few years yet.

This has come round again, and pretty much everyone on my friends list has done it, so:

Request any fic of mine and I will provide you with a commentary/annotations, like a DVD extra.

My fic is all here, on my website. If you pick something old, I might well not remember anything about it, but you never know, I generally have quite a good memory.

I'm feeling all Sunday afternoon-y at the moment: ie I have things to do, I just can't be bothered to do any of them.

The annoying thing at the moment is I ordered a little Ace laptop (in blue, since despite them saying they were going to do red, they don't) from Amazon a couple of weeks ago. After a while they emailed me to say they were having trouble getting hold of it, so couldn't give me an estimated date, but they would let me know.

So I waited for a bit, checked the forum and discovered that quite a few people had had trouble with Amazon sending them theirs, so I ordered one from laptopsdirect, which cost a bit more because of delivery and them changing 0.95% to use a credit card.

A few hours later I had an email from Amazon to say they had an estimated delivery date for it, and it was later than the date I was expecting to get it from laptopsdirect, so I thought I'd wait and see who managed it first.

This morning I had an email from laptopsdirect to say they'd despatched it and I could track the order after midnight. So I thought I'd wait till midnight just to double check and then cancel the Amazon one.

This afternoon I had an email from Amazon to say they'd despatched it.

I looked on both websites and you can only cancel before despatch. So Tuesday/Wednesday ish I will have two of the things and then have the fun of sending one back and waiting for a refund. Both payments will made August's credit card bill, I think, but the refund won't. So September's credit card bill will probably be a minus number.

I just know that if I'd done nothing I wouldn't have any.

So that's the Olympics done for another four years (except for the Paralympics in a couple of weeks).

What am I going to do with myself now?

I realised, a while ago, that I've been doing that volunteering thing in Doctor Who fandom. I reckon I've inherited it from dad, but I can't get involved in something without volunteering. It's why I've done every exec post in my Rotaract club, am on my third year on District and am on the National Conference organising committee. I did it in LOTR fandom when I was an admin at HASA. Now in DW I've run a ficathon and was an editor for the Sarah Jane newsletter.

I've also reached a point where I just don't like DW fandom any more. As a whole I mean. I'm quite happy with my little corner(s), but the rest I just can't be doing with any more. So I've now stopped doing everything, apart from reading and writing.

While I was taking relevant comms off my LJ friends list, I had a bit of a sort out of the whole thing. I have managed to get my friends list down to 42. I took off a whole load that I'm either just not reading or haven't updated for a long time (mostly the latter, I have to say).

Because the term friends in LJ is so loaded, I just want to repeat that my friends list is a copy of the LJs I am reading in RSS Feeds. I have people on there that aren't friends and people that are friends that aren't on there. Anyone not on my friends list isn't missing out on my friends locked posts because I very rarely make any, and when I do I'll put them on my blog too, which you can ask me for a registration on, and you can use your LJ ID for that.

And while I'm here I want to plead to the people who only say what they're posting about in the LJ cut text and nowhere outside of it - please can you put something in the text of the post or the heading to say what you're talking about? Otherwise I have no idea because I don't see LJ cuts in RSS Feeds, and it also means that the page where you write comments doesn't say either.

I wrote fic: Rain, Rain, Come Again for the Sarah & Harry ficathon, which has lots of good fics in and you should go and read them all.

So now, my list of things to write consists of:

1. LOTR request from
2. Atlantis request from
3. LOTR request from
4. Doctor Who or The West Wing request from
5. Ian/Barbara fic I know the start of and no idea yet how to end
6. Post-Genocide fic with Eight & Jo, as we never see their goodbye in the book
7. Arathorn & Gilraen long fic I started years ago and mean to finish

That lot'll certainly keep me going till Yuletide.

(I was interrupted in writing this post when the Athletics stopped and I looked up to see a medium-sized, very black thing with eight legs on my ceiling. It's now in my hoover.)

I haven't done an update for so long I've almost forgotten what I think of these books...

22.264 / 50kg (45%)

I think I've been very confused this week. I knew it was Thursday yesterday but I didn't quite grasp the fact that it's Thursday. To me Thursday means fencing, even though I haven't been for a long time, but it's also the day I buy the paper because that's when it has the Online section. Even though they've changed the name of it and what's in it.

It only occurred to me this morning that buying Thursday's paper at lunchtime would be a bit tricky, seeing as how it's actually Friday today. I'll have to go and read it on the website instead, which is never the same.

It was only this evening that I realised I also have no TV guide for next week because I usually buy that at the same time as the paper. Admittedly, I've usually forgotten what I found in there that I wanted to watch, but the thought is there.

Although it's probably not that much of a problem really, since all that's on next week is Olympics. I haven't watched last week's TV or the DVD I've had from Lovefilm for the past week, so I don't think I really need to worry that much about what might be on next week.

Except that there will be no more swimming. I was forced to watch some athletics in between the swimming and gymnastics on 302 tonight (or as the BBC website calls it, Freeview 2) and all I could think about was that they were just running. And 800m was a lot shorter race.

This evening I've enjoyed watching the diving and swimming. Now there's some horses running and jumping. I don't know how they get the horses to do that - in my experience horses generally do exactly what they want. It is quite amusing that when they fall off the horses carry on.

It's annoying that all the tennis has been on during the day when I'm at work. Although it is something that's harder to show highlights of, as opposed to swimming, where a race might only last a minute. And the fencing highlights really are highlights, ie bits of fights. With the results listed on the right of the video. So I'll live without seeing the stuff in the week, and concentrate on watching the fencing this weekend.

Tonight I bought myself a new laptop! It's the Acer Aspire One, which they promised would be available in red, but it turns out my choices are white and blue. So I picked blue. Although it isn't out till next Monday because I wanted one with 1Gb RAM (rather than 512Mb) with Linux. I ordered myself a wireless keyboard with a touchpad, so I can plug the baby laptop (it weighs just over 1kg) into the 26inch TV and type on a laptop-size keyboard, while sitting on the sofa.

I am enjoying the Olympics. I've seen fencing on TV for the first time. Although, to be fair, it was fencing on the internet with a computer plugged into the TV. But still. It's annoying that most of it goes on overnight and during the day, which is fine for weekends, but less good for the week, when I'm at work. I'll have to go and find the fencing highlights when I get home, especially tomorrow when it's women's foil.

But I am liking having Freeview. So far this evening I've watched lots of swimming from earlier today. Last night we watched lots of rowing from earlier today, which was also good.

I like how the Olympics allows you to see sports you wouldn't usually on terrestrial and sports you'd never usually watch too.

I have a bit of a dilemma, caused by LJ and its mislabelling of 'friends list'. If only Dreamwidth was out already.

Basically, my friends list on LJ is a copy of the journals and communities I'm reading in my RSS Feed Reader. So I have friends that are not on my friends list and people that are on my friends list that aren't friends. Which makes the name of it rather a misnomer.

But, people friend me and I feel like I should friend them back, even if their LJ doesn't look like it contains anything I want to read. And I also friend people and then find that actually, I'm not reading their LJ. It seems a bit funny to friend someone and then unfriend them again not much later.

But it also seems really deceitful to friend people without reading them. Because putting someone on your friends list is pretty much a statement that you're reading this person.

To make it worse, a lot of people in TR put stuff related to the RP under friends lock in their personal LJs. I don't like to ask them to friend me, because if they wanted to read my LJ then you'd think they would friend me anyway. And I don't want to be on their friendslist with the knowledge that they're not reading it.

I did think about having two LJs, one which had the people I'm reading friended and one with the people I would friend whether I want to read them or not. But I think that would confuse other people. And not be particularly helpful either.

In theory it shouldn't be a problem because when I write a friends locked post I planned to copy it into my blog as a protected post, which anyone I allow can read it - and anyone that's friended me that I haven't friended back will certainly be allowed. As well as people without LJs.

It's just that, well, I feel bad about not friending people back, mostly.

Comment on this post. I will choose seven interests from your LJ profile and you will explain what they mean and why you are interested in them. Post this along with your answers in your own journal so others can play along.

gave me the following: Read more...

Dear Andy Murray,

Henman is not your hero and he's not someone to emulate. I only have a finite number of fingernails and the edge of my seat is really uncomfortable.

Just win or lose, none of this mucking about in the middle, okay? Or at the end either, I mean, win when you have championship points, not five games later.

Love, a British tennis fan.

It was at 4.30pm on Friday that I thought my brain might dribble out of my ears. And there was still an hour of work to go at that point. I did quite a bit of overtime last week, which has something to do with it. The weather isn't helping. At the moment it's slightly too hot for a quilt and slightly too cold for a sheet. At least, it is in the night. Once the sun rises I wake up boiling and have to put my sheet on. And consequently wake up really early.

I also seem to be allergic to something. Last night once it got dark I blew my nose every five minutes before I shut the windows and decided I'd rather be hot.

And what's really annoying me at the moment is WP keeps logging me out, even if I don't close Firefox and even though I tick the 'Remember me' box. My fanfic blog was fine, until I decided to check it this morning and it won't let me in at all.