All moved in

As of last Sunday, I am all moved in to my new place. I ended up rooming with a friend of my girlfriend's. It has proven to be rewarding. I am closer to everyone and everything that is important to me (not including family though unfortunately). One of the major advantages is now I have a permanent wired connection and can therefore use Ubuntu almost exclusively. I had to go get a new wired keyboard, and still can't use my Bluetooth mouse, but I'm thinking of selling them anyway. They've been nothing but trouble, and I can always invest in wireless that is not Bluetooth. I find Bluetooth, for something simple like peripherals, is quite pointless. No data is exchanged and therefore, Bluetooth is overkill. The only problem is that I want to keep the dongle for my computer (to keep it's Bluetooth compatibility) but might have a hard time selling the keyboard and mouse without it. But we'll see. I will check eBay next.

Another problem is that the internet connection is kind of shaky for the Xbox. I got dropped from a Halo 3 game lastnight. I have never dropped before. I've also been having some major connectivity problems with Lost Planet Colonies. I go to search for games, and most of the time it has told me "no matches found". This has happened to me once at home. That was a result of server problems on the end of the game server. I seriously hope my NAT is closed or something so I can fix it and be on my merry way again. I am going to be severely depressed if I can't play Lost Planet.

Another thing that's odd for me is that I have to turn off my technology when I go to bed. I am used to just leaving it on all the time. But since I will actually be paying for power, I have to be conscious of this. But I can still leave it on the majority of the days on the weekends. Just when I know I won't be using it.

I've also been stressed more. Since everything around me has changed, and I have been presented with a whole new set of expectations, I have kind of been slow on the upkeep. I will continue to be stressed until I can really establish a regular and beneficial routine. But even then it might be a long, long time before I am comfortable, due to some interpersonal problems. I've even been stressed since before school even started. Getting in wasn't a pretty picture, and neither was the whole last minute change. I thought I was going to one school up until a week before classes start. The place I wanted to go (where I am now) accepted me extremely last minute, and my stress level increased exponentially. I had to do in a week what most people had months to do, in order to prepare for classes and such. After that, of course, was trying to find a place to live. Most of the places I saw were complete shitholes. The one place I wanted got snatched out from under me a couple hours before I was going to potentially take the place. It was kind of chaotic. And now school begins, as does a whole new set of problems. Yippe skippie.

The craptacular new Facebook layout

I'm going to cut straight to the chase: who the fuck designed the new Facebook layout? It clearly has to be someone with the design skills and intelligence of a chimpanzee with a lobotomy. It's the most counterintuitive piece of shit I have used in a long time, and I hated Last.fm's recent redesign.
The wall is now all clustered together. Kind of like what would happen if you took your shoes, cutlery, pencils, pens, markers, dishes, bathroom items, other assorted household items, and threw them all into one big huge pile with all of your neighbourhood's items as well. Now find one of your spoons, and you have the annoyance I experience when using the new Facebook.
I can't look at all of my information on one page, no no, that would be too simple. I have to have minimum three fucking pages on my profile. None of the apps are on the main pages either; those are completely separate. So if, for example, you wished for someone to see one of your apps (which is generally why people install apps in the first place), they will not see it unless they make a point of visiting your "Boxes" page. What a fucking stupid name...it took me like ten minutes to figure out where the fuck all of my apps went because this title is completely irrelevant to the actual purpose of the page. How about calling it something like, oh, "Apps"?
The wall comments (even though this fits in with the first point of contention, it still deserves it's own mention) are lumped in with all other events. I don't know when the fuck people have commented on my page, because it's squished right in there between the other crap. The only way I really know is if the comment is at the top, or I happen to check my email. How is that a fucking Wall? The Wall is a place for comments only goddammit.

I could go on and on about how I fucking hate new Facebook (e.g. why does the status have to be so big in "The Wall", why does it show all comments for posted items in the news feed, why the hell did they change the right hand navigation, etc.) But I think I've made my point. I am far from the only one. I've looked around and seen that at least 75% of people whose comments I've seen have said they hate the new layout as well. How hard is it to give us a fucking option to pick which layout we want to use? Why is that such a huge deal? But apparently Mark Zuckerberg has his head so far up his ass that he doesn't realize that what he did to Facebook is absolutely retarded. The best part is, they ask for feedback on the new layout, but completely ignore when people say they don't like it. Everything short of saying "too fucking bad".

So, someone please tell me, why the fuck are they forcing this change when there's no reason to do so? Does it not matter anymore what users think? What was wrong with the original Facebook layout? I found it to be perfectly usable and pleasant.

My browser speed

That is how fast my browser is. Note the right hand column, and how the different browsers compare to each other. Not surprisingly, Internet Exploder is like a special Olympics athlete running against non-special Olympians (oh, I'm horrible, I know). It looks like I'll be downloading Google Chrome soon, well, when I feel like going back to Windows.

Want to know what your browser speed is? Click here and it will tell you (you have to take a screen shot if you want to record it).

Ubuntu after a long time

My brother has gone back to school for the fall, and that means I get my wire back. Since I cannot get Ubuntu to work on wireless, I can only use it when I have the wire. I decided five months was too long and that I had to use Ubuntu again. But with that comes having to update everything, and possibly taking another crack at the wireless and Bluetooth problems. It took about 45 minutes to install all of the updates available. It's been almost an hour and my music collection still isn't updated. I'm pretty sure more problems will come. Considering I still cannot print. Unfortunately getting rid of Windows is not an option yet. But we knew that five months ago.

So, as I said in my previous post, kick back, relax and wait for the stress to set in. If my cortisol levels aren't through the roof, I don't want to know how it feels when they are.

Moving sometime soon, Win XP SP 3

I have concluded as to where I am going for school this year, and therefore am moving sometime in the near future (hopefully next week, when I decide on a place). So, if I seem more frustrated, jaded and pessimistic than usual, you know why it probably is. And with the beginning of school goes my free time, and therefore less updates. Not that I update very often as it is; most people update every day. But the less I update, the longer my entries tend to be. So, it's up to you whether that is a good thing.
Anyway, I am looking at a couple places, one of them I saw yesterday. It was a basement room with nice new hardwood floors and new walls. It's a townhouse I would be sharing with another girl, and it's definitely reasonably sized, although my room wouldn't be huge. I could fit a TV and a bed in there, and I'm almost sure my gargantuous desk would fit in there as well. The only problem would be fitting a couch. I am not playing videogames on my bed. The place is definitely a possibilty. I would be paying like $400.
Another place I am looking at is the basement of a bungalow made into a separate unit. It definitely sounds nice, and the guy who owns the place sounds nice too. I would also absolutely love to not have to share a space, considering how much of a picky person I am. But I also wish for my significant other to move in sometime at a later date.
I got an email from someone today about a 1 bedroom and a 2 bedroom he/she has available, and the possibility of subletting the 2 bedroom, possibly to my significant other. I emailed them back pressing for some details, but haven't received a reply quite yet. I hope whoever it is didn't go away for holidays or anything. That would be annoying, since I want to get this crap done.
There were one or two other places I emailed people about, but I haven't received a response yet, which kind of indicates to me that these people don't really want to sell it. Besides, they aren't the most appealing sounding anyway. One of them, I'm not even sure why I considered it, it's like 5 people in one little house. Fuck that shit.

On another note, why the fuck did Microshaft design the update system the way they did? You cannot dismiss the restart notification if you are opting not to restart, which absolutely infuriates me. I can't type a fucking blog post without getting interrupted by this fucking notification that I need to restart. I am fucking aware that I have to restart! I do not want to restart since I just restarted ten minutes before this update was installed because of another fucking update! Seriously, get your shit together and co-ordinate this crap! I don't want to have to restart every goddamn half hour because Microshaft is too goddamn stupid to do something sensible like maybe sending all the updates at once, or just plain forgoing the useless crap they send.

Service Pack 3 was the second update involved in the above rant. I look online for details of this thing, and cannot find a detailed breakdown of what I am inflicting on my computer by installing this Microshaft update. That seriously pisses me off, why can't I have a changelog? Am I not allowed to know what new bullshit Microshaft is raping my computer with? It's a very common problem with everything but the most l33t software, that I can't find out what's being changed. How am I supposed to enjoy (or possibly hate) the new features if I don't know what they are? Unless it's a security update.

Anyway, I have been interrupted twice in about ten minutes from the window that tells me to restart my computer. I am getting quite sick of it so I am going to stop before I kill something.

Zoo photo inclusion

So, two summers ago, I went to the Toronto Zoo with a couple friends, and took some pictures. I submitted them to my Flickr, and they were just sitting there. I randomly get an email from someone involved in the production of Schmap Guides saying they want to use one of my pictures in one of their guides. So, I let them and now it's been published. This is the picture:

80s and 90s music

Lately I have been on an extreme "retro" music kick (retro for me at least, in my miniscule twenty something years on this earth). Instead of going through headache and irritation trying to download this stuff (some of it is extremely hard to find because the artists have fallen off the planet), I've just been simply looking up these songs on YouTube. In doing so, I have made two playlists, one for the 80s and one for the 90s. Some of the quality of the sound on these songs is pretty shitty, but some of it is really good.

If you would like to visit my YouTube channel (I specialize in ripped biology videos), click here
I always have active sharing on, I always am open to receiving messages and crap, it's fun.
Anyway, here are my playlists so far (I will update slowly). Some of the songs are from the late 70s, but it's close enough:

80s Music

1. Snow - Informer
2. Genesis - That's All
3. Eurythmics - Here Comes The Rain Again
4. Madonna - Material Girl
5. Madonna - Papa Don't Preach
6. Depeche Mode - Personal Jesus
7. Bananarama - Cruel Summer
8. Fleetwood Mac - Big Love
9. Duran Duran - The Chauffeur
10. Billy Ocean - Caribbean Queen
11. Peter Gabriel - Sledgehammer
12. Cyndi Lauper - Time After Time
13. Madonna - Into The Groove
14. Police - Message In a Bottle
15. Police - Roxanne
16. Queen - Another One Bites The Dust
17. Sade - Smooth Operator
18. Soft Cell - Tainted Love
19. Donna Summer - Hot Stuff
20. Tears For Fears - Shout
21. Yes - Owner Of A Lonely Heart
22. Depeche Mode - Policy of Truth
23. Michael Jackson - Beat It
24. Michael Jackson - Smooth Criminal
25. Michael Jackson - Dirty Diana



90s Music

1. Ace of Base - All That She Wants
2. Ce Ce Peniston - Finally
3. Savage Garden - Break Me Shake Me
4. Savage Garden - To The Moon And Back
5. La Bouche - Be My Lover
6. Mr. President - Coco Jambo
7. Livin' Joy - Dreamer
8. Gloria Estefan - Turn The Beat Around
9. Madonna - Secret
10. Reel 2 Real - I Like To Move It
11. Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit
12. Green Day - Longview
13. Smashing Pumpkins - Bullet With Butterfly Wings
14. Sublime - Date Rape
15. Depeche Mode - Enjoy the Silence
16. Jennifer Lopez - Let's Get Loud
17. Le Click - Tonight Is The Night
18. Fugees - Killing Me Softly
19. Lauren Hill - Doo Wop (That Thing)
20. Ace of Base - Young and Proud (demo version)
21. Ace of Base - Young and Proud (live) - I cannot seem to find the regular album version
22. Savage Garden - Carry On Dancing
23. Rockell - I Fell In Love - the video is kind of crap, but it's one of those rare ones
24. First Base - Can You Keep A Secret - okay, about this one, I couldn't find it on YouTube, so it's not technically in the playlist. But it's definitely an important song in my past, so it belongs here, no matter what form it's in



As you can probably tell, Ace of Base was a fundamental staple in my growing-up diet of pop music. I will freely admit that I still like them a lot. I don't care what anyone thinks. If you agree, all the power to you.

I will not be noting editions when I update this list because that would take way too much space. It would also be extremely annoying for me considering compiling the list after the fact was enough work.

EDIT: Go me. Soon after composing this list, I discovered that you can embed playlists in HTML. Why the hell do I figure these things out after I compose this shit? Well, I'm not erasing my lists. I worked hard on them so enjoy, godammit.
EDIT of an EDIT: Okay well the writing out of the songs is good because they are in order, allowing anyone to know what order the songs are in. Kind of like the track listing on a CD insert, heh