Eviction Notice

Well, I'm moving out from Blogger by my own initiative. The construction at my new home, Bloggerina.com is not complete, but I'm moving there. I haven't ported my blogger entries to the new home, but I'll do that sometime soon, and in the mean while, I'd appreciate y'all if y'all could change your links accordingly. For now, all other info would remain the same, such as e-mail addresses and whatnot. This move is a BYOCH event -- Bring Your Own Construction Hat -- because there will be loads of stuff being constructed and moved around and heavy machinery involved. Thank you.

By the way, this means that I probably will not be back here unless nostalgia moves me to... but the archives will remain.

Just Finals Remain

I finished my last day of class for the semester -- all that remain are the final exams, which will take place, starting Thursday. The Thursday after, I will have a personal day -- I always have one at the end of each semester, where I completely refrain from school and work! I'll probably be working on WP, MT, and EE though. I will be working on them intensely over this weekend -- I know it is exam week, but I am usually not one to sit around studying for final exams. In fact, final exam week is more relaxing than any other point in the semester, because there usually aren't homework or projects assigned. Therefore, no work to do, other than actually sitting in the classroom, taking the exam. Going through the motions, I s'pose.

Overall, I am quite displeased with this semester. I know most of it is my fault -- I took procrastination to new heights (started writing a research paper 3 hours before it was due!), and I don't think I read any of my text books, other than the Shakespearean plays. To say that I could have done better would be an understatement. I botched up this semester, and the grades will reflect it. That isn't to say that I would be failing any of my classes; however, I was interested in raising my cumulative GPA, and I should have done as well as my last semester from which I ended with a 4.0.

Not all of the disappointment is my fault. I am very displeased with my political science course. The concepts explored in class are hardly reflective of what the school catalogue dictates -- this is a required course for almost all college graduates, regarding the US government. However, because the instructor has other agendas to cover (i.e. brainwashing us into becoming liberals), I feel as though I have not received the adequate education I deserve and paid for. Most of the classroom learning took place on-screen in class, where we were shown clips of recent television news, as well as some historical/political films regarding certain administrations. Most of the class was spent listening to the instructor disprove Ann Coulter and how the media is actually biased to the right, not to the left. In fact, in today's class, he stated that Ann Coulter was stupid and has no brain. Hmm. So much of the semester was spent talking about Ann Coulter, (who I think is a very intelligent and vocal woman), and how utterly wrong and lost she is. That isn't the course I signed up for! If I wanted to get left wing propaganda, I'd go elsewhere, thank you very much!

Ok... enough yapping for now. I've got a lot to conquer before the year's up, and time's ticking... (photoshop, paint shop pro, MT, WP, EE... and practice CSS also...)

Notice

Blogger was not cooperative last night, so I posted my entry in Bloggerina.com, although I hesitate to say it... it hasn't been "tweaked" yet, so it looks really plain. But even plain is better than waiting around for Blogger, I suppose...

Chatting with Christopher

Just came back from meeting Christopher. Started out with casual conversations sitting on the ground at the local Barnes and Nobles, between the Fiction & Literature and Mystery shelves. It continued onto a marathon talk fest which carried onto some coffee (for me) and choco-milk (for Chris) with excellent cusine a la Denny's. Never knew I could be so gabby! Would go into more detail, but I simply must get to the Statistics homework. Procrastinated WAY TOO LONG as it is, and even now, I am really pushing it by blogging instead of homework-ing. So I am going, even if I have to pry myself away from my computer with a crowbar.

www.Bloggerina.com

Bloggerina.com is open for business. I thought I'd never figure out Movable Type, but I finally did, with the help of some Divas, I made it out alive. I will still be here for at least until the end of 2004, while I prepare for the move (I'll need a U-haul or something!).

In other news, I have started using Wordpress at Nightingale.fierceblogs.com. The spam zapping plugin was installed (thank you Ria!) and now there are no more spam in the comments! I have reverted to the dull, generic template, because I was trying to do too many things on it and deleted too many things, and I wanted to start from scratch again...

I'm going to need a construction hat for all the building and re-building I'll be doing...

Just Came Back from Death

About an hour after lunch, I had a inkling feeling in my tummy. It wasn't bad, but uncomfortable, and also indescribable. I never felt that kind of way in my tummy before. I came home, and I felt alright. I had some food, watched a movie, and toward the end of the movie, my tummy started acting up. Then it got real bad.

I thought I should just go to the bathroom, but that wasn't it. It was weird -- a radiating pain that pulsated in the top part of the abdomen. The pain escalated faster and faster, and I decided that it was time to do something about it. When I went to get some sort of medicine, my mind went blurry, and all I could think of was the Tylenol. But before I grabbed the bottle, I collapsed onto the floor, clutching my stomach and crying out in pain. I don't think I had ever felt so much physical pain in my life. Even that time when I got acupuncture. I finally got the bottle of Tylenol, opened it, and swallowed it, but it often takes some time before pain is alleviated.

I finally managed to get to bed, and I couldn't even lie down because of the pain. I was in near fetal position, groaning and moaning, and tears started to well up in my eyes, and I could feel them soaking my eyelashes when I shut my eyes tight. My mom prepared a heating pad, and I seriously contemplated going to the nearest emergency room. The pain was so great that I may need some sort of intervention. The pain continued, but the heat from the bag of corn seeds (Not sure what this is called, but it's a cloth bag filled with some sort of hard seeds -- you microwave it for 3 minutes and it gets hot, and you can use it for heat therapy) relieved some tension. Here I am, now, nearly an hour later, and I feel like I'm back among the living. The pain is still there, but obviously, not bad enough to hinder me from blogging (although, I admit, very few things in the world would hinder me from blogging).

What was the cause of this pain? I don't know. Will it be back? Hopefully not. I feel lightheaded from the suffering, so I apologize if I haven't been coherent or very interesting.

**UPDATE: Not feeling too much better, evidently. Barfed. Twice.

Written Last Night

I was trying to post as usual, but I got this message from Blogger:

Error
We apologize for the inconvenience, but we are unable to process your request at this time. Our engineers have been notified of this problem and will work to resolve it.

It's Saturday, December 4th, 1:12 AM. I didn't do much today, although I've been sitting at my desk almost all evening. I've moved wordpress into the correct directory, so that the blog resides now at Nightingale.fierceblogs.com, rather than /wordpress/index.blah blah blah. And I'm trying to re-do CSS and the layout so it would look nice. I can say for one thing though -- WP is MUCH easier to install than MT or EE. I looked over EE quickly before deciding that I will need more advanced skills to work it. I am struggling with MT, but it's coming along, tiny baby steps at a time. Wordpress, although I am having problems figuring out all the codes that go along with it, I have installed it and it looks good. I have even installed a plugin as suggested by Ria (who must be like webmaster goddess), Tinka's cousin. It's called Spaminator, and it is supposed to get rid of all the SPAM that comes inside the comments. (Thank you Toni, for your concern regarding the amount of SPAM that I was getting!) And I started fresh, so no SPAM remains, as well as real comments and such. Hopefully I won't have to do anymore destructive work on it!

I wanted to initially go for a sanitary look -- a layout that just screams, "HEALTH GURU!" But I couldn't find any images appealing to me that provoked images related to health or nursing, so Tigger will adorn the page until then. I need to get to bed immediately. Brain power is diminishing at a fast rate, and I may just collapse onto my keyboard. Also, I need to get some sort of cushion for my chair, which is made of wood with no cushioning whatsoever. After sitting here for hours after hours, my rear end feels like it's been flattened. And I need to stretch. And yawn. And sleep. Mmm... sleep~~~

Blog Addiction

I just can't stay off the computer, it seems. I am now at work -- I will be stuck here until 6:30PM. I wanted to fit in working with my blog stuff, but I can't. Despite the fact that I've been working almost continuously and ardently on this, I can't remember any of the passwords for anything. I can't remember passwords. It is one of my biggest flaws -- you would think that something so small would have little impact, but it's huge.

In Jr. High school (which we called middle school), we had to use a combination lock for our PE (also known as gym) lockers. We didn't use other lockers, but we had one solely for storing PE uniforms and tennis shoes. Well, that was definitely tough. But it was one combination of three numbers, so it wasn't that bad.

In high school, we got regular lockers, and also PE lockers. Which meant TWO combinations to memorize. I had to resort to sharing a lockers with a pal, just in case. And during this time, e-mail and the internet started to boom, which meant I had to make e-mail and set a password for that. I had AOL then, and it was suggested that the user frequently change the password for security. And being a good follower of direction, I did. I tried. And I forgot my password frequently and had to write them down and tape it on my desk (beats the purpose of secrecy but oh well).

When I got off of AOL, I started to use Yahoo and Hotmail, and because of the amount of SPAM, I had to keep one that I used to contact people I actually knew, versus another one for signing up for things and newsletters and such, which meant that I had more than one e-mail and more than one passwords. Then I got a bank account, and the ATM card had a PIN, and I opened a savings account, and that ATM card also had a different PIN. Then I had a pager, which had a voicemail passcode, and later, cell phones which had voicemail passcodes as well. And now, I have my blogger and its password, and it's gotten pretty bad that since I can't get the same login name for every single thing I sign up for (i.e. e-mail, blogs, etc) I have to remember which login name goes with which password. And keeping track of that became especially hard. I have to login to everything frequently or else I'd forget it -- like online banking. I only use it when I need to, which is about twice a year, and I always forget the login name and pw for that!

Long story short, I have the passwords for the ftp and wordpress and etc. at home, so I'm ok. Bottom line though, is that I have gotten myself addicted to working with my blog, and I'm feeling weary and suffering from withdrawl currently because I can't get a hold of my blog. Well, at least I have this blog, but this blog is already done. Already complete. Already worked on. Already templated and laid out and written in!

Can I just say... I am beginning to miss WordPress?

Status

I have sat in my chair for about 4 hours straight. Working on all this stuff, like Wordpress etc. I took a breather from working with Wordpress, and at worked on new things! I have submitted my rather meagre portfolio to Web-Divas.com -- you can see it at web-divas.com/portfolio along with the works of the original two divas, Cherry and Rachel. They took me in and attempted to supply me with equipment that I would need, along with a very warm welcome. I am regretting not saving all the work I put into my own blog, because as you can tell from the title, this is version 10, and I only have the last 5 of them saved. I made blog layouts for my brother also, and I haven't saved those either, save for one, which I must have accidentally saved or something.

I also worked on getting my own domain and getting it hosted, courtesy of Amscray.com. As I have mentioned a few times before, I am extremely commitment phobic about certain things that are meant to last FOREVER and EVER, e.g. webpage domain, and I was debating for a looooong time! Finally, push came to shove and I had to make and executive decision (my brain being the executive branch of myself) and just do it. So I did. It's www.Bloggerina.com. Initially I thought it may be too cheezy, but then I thought, well, that's what I am -- cheezy! So Bloggerina.com it is. Don't bother going there yet though, because there's nothing there.

I am trying to work with movabletype. I will continue to work with Wordpress at the location provided to me by Tinka, and hopefully I can get a layout for that and start a fresh new blog. I intend to record all my student nursing experiences... I am hoping that starting nursing school will give me plenty to blog about! And I will ultimately move this blog over to the new domain and blog about everytime else... like I'm doing now. In exactly one week, final exams start, and in another week after that, school is out! Then I'll have plenty more time to work on stuff and and get a move on.

Work With Me WordPress

I was working on Wordpress over at nightingale.fierceblogs.com/wordpress/index all night. I finally moved some stuff around, so it kinda looks like this blog. I just wanted to get a feel for the codes before I actually start making a new layout. It's still looking funky, to say the least... the writing's small and well, you can read about rest of the problems over there.

Work was tough today (or rather yesterday -- the ends/beginnings of the month are invoicing time for me, which means I sit most of the day buried under piles of paper) and I also had something of a mini-crisis regarding The Girl Formerly Known As My Best Friend™. I was talking to her younger sister to see if there was a possible solution to the problem, but we didn't come to any conclusion. Well, regardless of everything, I need to sleep. So sleep I shall.

Houston We Have A Problem

Internet service is horrible this evening, and I can't manage to stay on-line for more than 5 minutes at a time. I will be working on Wordpress and Statistics homework most of the evening. I will be blogging as usual if router decides that it would rather behave than get beaten to death. But first, spaghetti. Mmmm... carbs...

Good News from Today

Did I get an official job offer from Web-Divas.com? Yes I did! Received an e-mail from Rachel at Web-Divas.com! I am so happy that I should be jumping up and down but I can't (I'm at work). I am both excited and slightly intimidated (I think slight intimidation is good -- keeps me humble) -- it would be an opportunity to learn more CSS, HTML, all those lovely acronyms, while earning extra money (money = good), and I was going to quit my current job (selling cellphone is such a drag!) anyways!

But of course, the downside is... will I be good enough? Sure I can work my own blog, but I never had to work within a restricted time frame. Also, I just barely got stared with Wordpress -- I'd feel much more comfortable after I finish the layout and make it look complete. For now I will trust their decision to hire me and go from there.

I think I'm going to go to the bathroom now and jump out and down and try my best to muffle my yelping. Such a nerd am I.

Triumph!

When I got the necessary info from Tinka, I set up the e-mail almost immediately. Then I had to eat and take care of some stuff, also while downloading an ftp thing, and downloading wordpress. I came home after school, watched Harry Potter: The Prisoner of Azkaban on DVD (will review perhaps later) and afterwards, I plunged right into getting this host/domain/mysql/blog/wordpress thing hashed out. And within one hour, I am done.

I haven't created a layout for the blog yet, but I made a test run, and everything works fabulously! Here's proof! nightingale.fierceblogs.com/wordpress/index.php. The address is tentative as of now, but the link should work for the time being. The only problem I see at the moment is that "wordpress" shouldn't be included in the URL. But I have succeeded and conquered Wordpress. Now I can go to bed happy!

December 1 is World AIDS Day

Please click on the link in the left column that says "Treating 3 Million by 2005." Also click, Worldaidsday.org. It is important that, even if nothing else, we acknowledge that there is an AIDS epidemic. It is a serious problem and it is one that poses a great threat to all of us, healthy and otherwise.