ArcMoonblade

A talented friend of mine is doing a giveaway!  There are points, a 3 month subscription, and commissions up for grabs.  She's a really good artist, very good with detail, and is totally awesome.  Check it out here!: shadowednavi.deviantart.com/jo…

mad-but-happy.deviantart.com/a…
This is an awesome Tshirt for DA's upcoming Tshirt contest.  You should go vote for it, because it is awesome.  

I am incredibly sick of seeing the last journal entry.  New entry time!  And there's good reason:  my computer now proudly possesses a new hard drive and DVD player.  

I can never really tell what kind of service I'll get when I go to the Apple store.  It seems to depend on the repairperson.  I have dubbed the guy from this time "Kyle" as per this:  www.notquitewrong.com/rosscott… was awesome.  He went, "It looks like you dropped your computer at some point.  Oh, you have AppleCare?  I'll just replace that failing hard drive then, and... eh, I'll replace the crappy failing DVD player while I'm at it.  Same day service, since you use it for school."  He could've easily been like, "Hey, you're the one who dropped your computer, and that might've damaged these components.  Sucks for you."  Especially on the DVD player.  But no, he was awesome.  And his awesome saved me several hundred bucks.  Dear Kyle: you are made of win and awesome.  

I don't often feel like I want to kiss a stranger, but if I could get away with it, I would've.  The parts were replaced and I had the computer back five hours after my appointment.  Took another few hours to restore my data, but hey, I can take it to school tomorrow and take notes like I always do.  Lotsa happy.  

While my computer was gone, I started making a list of things my computer replaces.  I ran out of space on the PostIt, so the the list is shorter than it probably should be.  Also, I only listed functions I personally use.  There are lots of others I didn't write down.  

Things My Computer Replaces On a Regular Basis
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Outdoor Thermometer/The Weather Channel
Encyclopedia
Video Game consoles
Notebook
Library of Favorite Books
Clock (with multiple timezone support!)
Newspaper (with comics!)
Cookbook
TV/personal entertainment system
Dictionary/Thesaurus
Typewriter/Composition Book
Calendar
Sticky notes
Pager
Mail service
text messaging service
Exercise program console (Stepmania)
Filing Cabinet
Time Capsule (I have my schoolwork saved all the way back to 8th grade)
CD/mp3 Player
Video Phone System
Phonebook- white pages and yellow pages
Photo Album
Personal Heater (it routinely runs at 135˚F or higher!)
Radio
Video-On-Demand Service
Flashlight
DVD/CD Player
Puzzle Book
Mail Order Catalog
Journal
Airplane Departure/Arrival Board
Appointment Book
Scholarly Research Station
AAA Triptik (paper flipbook driving directions, before MapQuest existed)
Mirror (creative use of webcam!)
Alarm Clock
Calculator
Japanese Kanji Flashcards
Easel
Lightsaber (what?  Never seen MacSaber? blog.isnoop.net/2006/06/22/mac…)

...I could go on.  Better not, though.  I have to get up in the morning.

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but the beholder's daily life is not necessarily beautiful.  I had a pretty good run, all things considered.  Without adjusting my perspective to find random tiny things beautiful, which I consider a copout, or using the internet, also a copout, this exercise became impossible after a couple weeks.  Which is why I missed the last four days.  Most NaNoWriMo projects do this- crap out near the end, or even in the middle.  I was kind of hoping to do better given that I started out in the middle of November.  But I overestimated how much could be found on Calvin's campus in November.  Optimism, you know, tends to do that.  

So unfortunately, I have to declare this project a failure.  I do not feel suitably reassured that the world is beautiful.  Perhaps it's just this place, at this particular time.  That's possible.  However, I doubt I'll ever try this project again.  It was interesting, but I guess I feel the awareness of beauty should be spontaneous, not shoved upon the order of things because of some preset requirement.  

I also think that beauty does not play a large part in my life.  I like to see it in the works others post here on DA, and I appreciate it there.  But as for outside the web- it's not that beautiful.  At least in November.  This is not a terribly pleasant way to end this entry.  There's not much help for it, though.  Instead, have a link to my latest favorite song:  www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGwLna…

Friday the 26th

Four more days of this.  Huh.  I feel like only had a few really insightful days.  I guess it doesn't matter.  

Today's thing is a shop.  It's the called the Bead Bin, and though it's a small shop, it has the most incredible variety of color I've seen in a good long time.  They had shiny things, beads in all colors of the rainbow, a very nice variety of wires, crystals of various kinds.  If I'd had a camera, I'd have taken pictures.  Suffice to say that if I had the condition that makes your eyes overload from too much input, one look into that place would be enough to start it. They had one side of the store more or less dedicated to the colors of the rainbow, going from one to the next.  There were semi-precious stones as well.  Beads of all kinds.  Also clasps and earring backs and all sorts of things.  But the color's the important part.