This is my first time posting here since Blogger updated their interface. This updated editor is so much better. It utilizes all the space available in the browser window, which is what it should always have been doing for such a single-entry form.

Kind of like how SimpleText does it. I have been using it for the past year or so. I have it as a Chrome App shortcut that opens it in a clean small sized window, which is just perfect for its minimalistic, super-resizable interface. I like having a little notepad-sized thing for lists, rough drafts, and paste snippets. Making memos in this app is so simple and easy to do—I love it. I just noticed today that it was "deprecated as of October 31st, 2011", however... this makes me sad. Fortunately, it is open source, with public APIs to at least get my text files back before it self destructs, which hopefully won't be this week... they didn't note the grace period, which is a little disconcerting. Looking at how to host my own SimpleText on nuggit.nu lead me to Google App Engine, which I'm not totally sure what it is, but it seems like something I would've loved to look into much sooner than now. Certainly not right before dead week with a backlog of tasks to do, but I digress.

At least if I can salvage my text files from SimpleText, I won't worry about setting up my own SimpleText until I can immerse myself in the probably fairly simple process of doing so. Probably over winter break. I may even use Google App Engine with my senior project. That is entirely another topic, one I should not ramble into at the moment. I want to be zen like Writer, which is something I found today. It's similar to SimpleText, yet so different—instead of medium black Arial on sprawling white, it is small lime Courier on contained black. I think these serve different purposes, too. Perhaps Writer would be good for writing bad poetry and long private journal rants. But here is Blogger, with small black Courier on sprawling white. Something in the middle?

It's cute—at the bottom of Writer, it links "Writer's block?" to a thesaurus and rhyme finder utility that Big Huge Labs also made. From there, there's also this little page for blog ideas. A short list that changes on each refresh, it's actually pretty good. Almost enough to make you wonder how you could have blogwriter's block.

It's not writer's block keeping me from updating the blog so much as having the time to keep it up. There are so many distractions. So much happening in life on multiple levels that I could lose myself. Yet, I continue living. Life and identity being thoughts and experiences, is it stored if I don't record it somewhere? This blog is mostly for myself, to try to store myself. It's just one of many outlets; each for different purposes. But if one of the outlets are lost, do I lose that part of myself? There is too much data, yet I covet it. Information overload. But I have to have it, store it, back it up and make sure it never dies; make sure I never die. I'm not the only one that cares about this data. There is an entire blog about Data Liberation. At least that one is for Google products; I've seen other blogs on the topic, one that showed me how to liberate my Facebook data. I've got that zip file of my Facebook tucked away, outdated almost as soon as I clicked the button for it. My accrued social identity between August 28, 2007 to 3:30pm, July 16, 2011.

My computer froze and crashed, because I have a bad RAM stick in this computer—of course the 2GB stick, out of the 3GB I have in here. After restarting and opening Chrome again with all 23 tabs, I got distracted and forgot where I was going with this post. So I set up Google Apps with nuggit.nu, which also got me to create yet another email for myself. I have 3 active email addresses already. It actually makes sense considering each email address serves a different purpose: personal, school, work. What will this one serve? Probably one to update my business cards and resume with, if my student email closes sometime after graduation. Nagisa Day, nagisa@ (this domain). There, my real name, on my website for the very first time.

I would need to spruce up my website to actually represent me, though. For the past few years, nuggit.nu just points to this blog, which has a lot of personal stuff on it—not necessarily things that should professionally represent me. Really, though, how much of myself am I supposed to hide or change to get a job? I am just hoping that despite my crazy late-night ramblings, periodic depressive grumblings, and other mundane generic personal blog posts, they will accept I'm human and not all the facets of myself I show online are my proudest. Maybe I am naive. Maybe I worry too much. It probably depends on the company, and I think I just need to find the right place for me. But maybe none of this matters, since they probably won't look so deeply into all of the information there is of me online. They will just look up my LinkedIn, which is mostly blank.

Blank like the document I didn't save before my computer froze. At least nothing was lost. Time to get back to work—I know I can do this. At least I feel this now, stronger than ever: I know I can do this. Like my old boss from the kitchen used to say: "How do we know that we can do this? Because we have to." This is my senior year.

It has been a while. Internship in Ashland, car stuff, bank errands, washing the dishes, cleaning up code, thinking I should document a little better.

Just found this blog Pat Maherr artworks along with some dark ambient music.

Totally random. Just browsin what.cd's forums. I'm inspired, though I was before, too. Good way to end the day.

Although is this music really Richard Wagner classical music paulstretch'd and tinkered into creepiness? I don't give a rat's ass whether this took less effort than Radiohead took on their best albums. I'm still listening to it.

I need to go to bed. It's always like that... work, veg, sleep. I was out til 11 tonight though so there wasn't much vegging. When will I have time to start working on my senior project? I'm still not totally sure about the project I picked, an online collaborative IDE webapp, minus the IDE part, it'll just be a syntax colored notepad, because screw that I am not that awesome. I'll make it one-click download as a VS solution .zip file though. It's going to be complicated with all the little parts involved. I tend to get hung up on little parts and their places in overall things so I end up refactoring, reworking, all the time. Like today. It's enjoyable but it doesn't get the job done very quickly. But beauty and art takes time and it's all art, isn't it?! if only that brought the bacon!

I like to think I have good reflexes; I've had a lot of "Phew! Nice save" moments when something was slipping and so on. But there are other times. Something starts slipping, and time slows to a crawl. I shift my eyes to look at it. I think about what the item is and why it is falling, where it is going and what could happen next. My entire body decides to take up zen for the moment and let it be, let it be.



Time speeds up again as my favorite ceramic bowl makes a surprisingly dull thunk against the carpeted floor contrasted by its shattering, with pieces large and small scattering in a short radius.

I want to turn back time.

I need to clear off my tabs in Chrome. These have been open for a few days, to remind myself of these projects I want to do (since simply bookmarking them will put them out of sight & out of mind--not what I want!) but at some point, I do need to clear out my tabs and close Chrome and shut down my computer. I haven't done that in a few weeks. My poor lappy.

After my other projects (some more important than others) like cleaning my room, clearing extraneous data off my HD (or buying this... someday), doing homework, and starting/doing some sort of programming project this summer--I want to do some nice cooking. "After" is a bad word to use there though. More likely "during". Cleaning my room is like 10 projects in one, anyway. I am terribly backed up on stuff I want to do/need to get done. Summer's going pretty quickly! But anyway, the cooking (images © other people):

Granola.



I made some makeshift granola a couple times already, with Grape Nuts, oats, raisins, peanut butter, and a drizzle of honey. The E-How article is a good base for actually baking some sometime, for that nice crisp that granola's usually supposed to have. Probably in my toaster oven! Easy peasy. As long as I don't burn it, it should be delish. Think oatmeal raisin cookies, but not in cookie form and crispier. I'm too lazy to actually bake cookies. I don't even know if I have the right tools for that.

Corn Potage.



I was describing how delicious potage is to someone and decided to google it quick to show a picture, not that it looks like a whole lot, just a plain creamy soup. It tastes really simple too. In a good way. There's pumpkin potage, and corn potage--I love both, maybe pumpkin more since I've had it less often so maybe it's more of an interesting treat. Or maybe because it's sweeter. I don't know. But this is corn potage and I figure it's easier to find/deal with corn anyway. This recipe is dirt simple. I got a can of creamed corn the other day. I wish I had a blender because I do love a smooth texture, but we'll try this chunky--I'm sure it'll still be alright.

Now that I can close these tabs... I need to write a few papers and study for a physics test happening tomorrow. ay caramba

Class at 7:30am. Snagged some free tea. Went to math at what I thought was 1pm, but it was 11am, and the same teacher was teaching a math class in the same classroom returning tests from the same day that my math class took a test on. I thought he'd lost my test. I was fooled until a while after I returned to my room, when someone told me to look at the clock. Felt dumb, but hey, more time to work on an assignment due at 5.

When I went to my actual math class, it took a whole hour, not the 15 minutes I thought it would take since it was just a test returning day (the class I mistakenly went to was like that). I had to go to a work meeting at 2:30, which fortunately didn't take long. I went to the library and got to work. I felt like a good student.

But I wasn't working quite fast enough. I polished my assignment at 4:59pm but I didn't give up; I saved it, and uploaded it so I could print from a library computer. The computer took about 4 minutes to log in. I anxiously looked back and forth from the clock to the computer, and greeted Officer Miller as he came by. He observed that the computer wasn't doing anything, and walked away chuckling. I chuckled and covered my face and breathed deeply, peeking through my fingers until it finished setting up Outlook Express configurations and loaded my desktop. Fuck library computers. It took another minute for Firefox to open. Whatever. It was 10 past the hour... I started to lose hope. I printed the document, and the printer made a sound, but nothing happened. I gave it a minute. Nothing. I tried another printer; same thing. Fuck library printers. I gave up. Fine. Can't be mad, it was still mostly my fault I didn't work as efficiently as I could've.

It felt so warm outside--it was a beautiful sunny day. Despite my frustration I planned forward: I had my car parked across the campus from the dorm due to construction in the parking lot, but I figured since I was halfway there, I could fetch my car and park it closer so I wouldn't have to walk as far for carpooling to Baskin Robbins at 7.

Jesus Christ it was a long walk.

It was long and I was tired and my laptop and textbook were heavy.

I got to the car and realized I didn't have my keys.



I made it a few yards back towards the dorm across the vast field before I dropped to the grass, defeated.



defeated.

I wrote this last year and they never responded. I wonder if I have to be meaner. Or maybe just less tl;dr.

Also, their Passport portable hard drives suck.

Hello,

I bought a 160GB WD Passport over a year ago. I stored many precious documents on it and used it very often. I should have been more careful to back up the most important ones on my main drive, but I did not have much disk space back then. After a few months, my computer no longer recognized it at all and made a beeping noise when I plugged it in. I lost all the data. I looked on the bright side and got a replacement drive. WD sent me a 320GB of the same product, which was very nice and appreciated. I took more care to not store unbacked data on it this time. In less than a year, this one has failed too. Although there was not as much data loss this time, I don't think I have a use for this particular unreliable product anymore.

I understand if money refunds cannot be given, but after much grief with these WD Passports, I wish for compensation but not another replacement. Would a refund in "store credit" be at all possible? I have more faith in WD's internal drives, and would be satisfied if I could purchase one for a lower price instead.

Sincerely,
[Nuggit]

You don't need long, intricate lyrics to make a touching song.

You and me melt away
Forever holding hands

Sunbeams all round us now
Sunbeams all

Hold my hand
Be with me
Hold my hand
Melt with me

I wouldn't even call "Gross Magik" the best song on this album, although so far all the songs sound similar (which is not a bad thing, since their tunes and sounds generally all kick butt). For example, "Dirt" featuring Aesop Rock is what got my attention in the first place when some random forum post linked to it.

I don't even know why I started this post by pointing out their lyrics. Since we're talking music now, not me and my emotional life, it's almost totally irrelevant since most of their music is instrumental and tune/beat/sound-centric, and you can barely make out what they say anyway. I almost want to compare this sound to Boards of Canada. It's got that electronic yet lo-fi, warm, and nostalgic sound, with a beat you can readily chill to. But this is more upbeat and involved and "hip". I put it in my Alternative Rock folder since it fits in with others there like MGMT, Why?, and Mr. Meeble though it's (they're?) not Alternative Rock at all. Yeah, my system is flawed, whatever.

More importantly, how did I not find out about Tobacco earlier?! I like this. These all came out in 2008, from their debut album Fucked Up Friends. I'm listening through for the first time right now. Favorites so far are probably "Side 8 (Big Gums Version)", "Dirt", and "Tape Eater". You can find these all on the jew tubes.

They already came out with their second full album this year called Maniac Meat, and it's got a song on it that features Beck. Yum! I can't wait to listen to it after I cozy myself into Fucked Up Friends some more.

Yeah, so, school.

I enjoy the stuff I'm learning. I should be a better student.