not a perfect metaphor

Well, this is it.
So long, LJ, and thanks for all the fish. I'll still comment (when I can, mutter grumble) but I'm done crossposting.
Meanwhile, Fic Friday!
( fictiems )

Finally managed to post my Yuletide nom list (protip: you can temporarily plusify a basic account, ?style=mine long enough to do what you need to do, and re-basic). I'm going for Villains By Necessity, Bell Book and Candle, and Sneakers (let's get some 20th-anniversary action up in here!); I'll just have to pray one of my possible fourths makes it in.
Campaign season's gearing up, and I'm going to help Quinn do a lot of the things. Meanwhile, #FicFriday returns with a vengeance!
( Once Upon a Time/XMFC, Warehouse 13, Greek mythos via Percyverse )

You guys, how did I limp along on Hex for so long? Yes, Hex still works, but...
Okay, sample story. I made some icons a couple weeks back in a fit of glee that someone out there might have use for them, and... did nothing because I didn't want to go through the hassle of Photobucket. So tonight, once I had everything ported over, I decided to do just that. It took less than a minute! HOW IS THE INTERNET SO FAST NOW.
But then, I did name this computer after a very no-nonsense kind of girl, so.

And now, an experiment in crossposting, mostly so I have everything gathered in one place for this.
So... the time has come to replace Hex. It's still a reliable little machine in its way, but it's nearly eight years old and can't keep up with the Tubes properly anymore. Pottermore was one thing - I was expecting to have some trouble with all that Flash - but I can't load a page with a lot of .gifs or Youtube embeds and expect to see the whole thing in a timely fashion, if at all. The final straw was having to crash my browser rather than work on a Google Doc with two sentences in it the other night. I want to look into possibly getting some freelance things, and I can't do that if I can't work on anything.
So once my tax refund's in, I'll be shopping around (not getting rid of Hex just yet, but it's time for a new primary). Since I get a discount at work and it's rather cheaper overall, I'll be going PC for the first time in my life, aside from this being the first time I go computer shopping for myself; Hex was a high school graduation present.

Do you guys have any recommendations for which brands have worked well for you? My only requirement is that it be a laptop. I've heard good things about Sony and Toshiba and iffy things about Dell, HP and Acer; I'm expecting my budget for this to be around $500, not including sales tax, though it could be a bit more.

*LJ, I don't approve of this thing where clicking on the 'x comments' link bumps you all the way to the bottom of the page, as that's usually what I click on to try to read cut text. Also, why do you keep varnish-erroring my profile?
*Parents' computer is well and truly borked; it froze on me a couple times while they were out of town, and when Mom tried booting it up this evening it whitescreened and ran a bunch of 'DEFAULT blahblahblah.' My guess: hard drive.
*Meme time part one: 1. Give me a canon (or character from a canon)

2.And I will you FIVE things that, in my opinion, make that canon super special shiny and awesome. They may be characters, crowning moments of awesome/funny/heartwarming, particularly epic music or animation, or just things that make me out and out squee every time.

*Meme time part two: Four more icons courtesy of misslucyjane (who also wanted info on two from the last batch).
( further pixellated shenanigans )

So I got home from work to find that the Tubes had died sometime between this morning and then; after an hour or so of constant busy signals on the landline (which I first chalked up to 'they must know there's a problem here'), I realised that was down too. They're through the same provider.
I passed the tech support call off to Mom, and Dad got home just in time for her to say "Well, I'm not thrilled that I have to wait until Thursday..." He proceeded to step in on the call, get bumped back to hold when he asked for a manager, and... last resolution I heard was that someone's calling them back in two or three hours. So I booked it for the land of free wifi (and not-free dinner).
I mean, I could almost understand leaving just the Internet down for three days - while more people do work from home these days, it's more of a luxury than a necessity. But the phone too?
Mark points and says NO.
(jenerator, if you need to call Mom, call her cell.)

I could easily spend all of my work discount-coupon-thing on movies; there's some good stuff on the DVD rack at the moment, and it's half-price until the 31st. I probably won't, though. There's nothing there that I absolutely have to have OMG, and it'd defeat the purpose of paring down.
(It'll probably go toward a new laptop fan. I've screwed up the bit where the cord plugs into the old one, so it doesn't stay on without a lot of effort.)
Also, the website I've been proofreading for since July is looking for some more editors. It's not restricted to Americans, though the content is foreign op/eds about America, and there's some interesting stuff that comes down the pipe (I edited a translation of something originally written by Gorbachev, right before New Year's). So if that sounds like something that'd interest any of the proofreader types on my flist, check it out.

Meme, gacked from gehayi: Name a fandom, a fannish topic, or topic relating to original fiction, and I will share my unpopular opinions on the matter. Or any opinion, because I have lots of those and don't always know which ones are unpopular or not.
(You can try me on anything; if I don't know it, I'll let you go again.)
My poor iPod is starting to have massive battery fail. Word has it they're cheap to replace, at least; much as I'd love a new shiny, it's not really in the budget right now.
Contract for the short story going in the I Do anthology is on its way. (A perk of being a postal worker's kid: Being able to just walk in the back door and hand mail to the person who sees it all out at the end of the day.)
We're going to see Avatar this afternoon. Going in knowing what the Issues with the story are; hopefully I won't get sidetracked by the shiny.

So Noble Beast is my big music thing of the moment, I think. Finally listened to the whole thing after the concert, and... basically, there is nothing wrong with the world when I have that on.
(Also, in Why I Love Andrew Bird: He uses words like 'sociopaths' and 'eviction' and 'fratricide' effortlessly. I heart big words in songs.)
I'm having another of my vaguely-tempted-by-Twitter moments. Not sure if I'll give in this time.
I need to get my writing groove back, and figure out whether I'm going to try Nano (either in it purest form, where I'd probably try to focus on the Vincenia novel, or as a conglomerate of my November word count). This will take some grokking.

+ New vacuum cleaner at work! NO MORE OF THE STUPID THING THAT EITHER DOESN'T PUSH OR DOESN'T PICK ANYTHING UP.
- We got absolutely slammed in the last hour today, probably because people decided they needed stuff after the football game.
+ Speaking of, what is this nonsense where the Bengals are actually good this year? I don't know what to do with this!
- So I pulled into the driveway and went to put my windows up... and they went up v. slowly, and the stereo cut out. And then my poor car wouldn't start again. Fortunately, I'm off tomorrow and Monday, and Dad's off tomorrow, so hopefully we'll be able to get to the bottom of this.
+ ANDREW BIRD ON WEDNESDAY OH MY GOD I AM JONESING FOR A CONCERT.
+ yuletide fever lingers.
+ Working on something for jossverse_bb. Funtimes!
Aaaaaaand GIP.