Writing Machine Refuge

been awhile

Sat, 22 Feb 2014 03:29:27 GMT

but I'm working at a place that has lj blocked, but they don't know about dreamwidth lol.

anyway, have some Psy/Changeling fanfic. Slash, because this series needs some slash imo.

Erin sat straight, his posture consciously Psy-perfect. He tried to empty his mind of thought, visualizing still water, drifting clouds, distant mountains and rain. Anything that might calm his churning emotions and mask his broken-Silence. Nothing worked.

Beside him on the bullet train his mother sat in icy perfection. Not a twitch or a flicker of excess motion passed through her despite the swaying of the train as it sped toward San Francisco. Even after three years Erin still hadn't gotten used to it, it was as if her soul had been sucked away by the Center leaving behind an empty shell. She stared straight ahead, oblivious to the changeling family sitting across from them. Erin kept his gaze lowered, so as to not accidently challenge the predatory male. Probably a leopard, although wolves also frequented the city by the bay. He could feel the families' predatory minds, as slick and hot as well-sharpened knives pressing against the tender flesh of his brain. He wasn't supposed to of course, to most Psy changelings were naturally shielded, their minds simply too different to manipulate or read without tremendous effort.

To most Psy. To Erin they were like open books, easy to read and vulnerable to intrusion, as if they weren't shielded at all. It was an ability he had guarded carefully for most of his life. Stronger, more powerful Psy would seek to control him if they knew, and the changelings would kill him. Erin had no intention of becoming either a pawn or weapon.

The changeling male glared at him over the head of a toddler curled protectively in his lap. Erin was aware of the mother breast-feeding and infant, and he wondered what had made the family decide to travel with such young children--predatory changelings were notoriously over-protective.

You don't need to worry about me, he wanted to say to the changelings. Pure-Psy hunts us too.

His mother's organizer dinged softly and she answered it, her movements neat and precise. "Larsen has agreed to meet us at the station," she said, her words as precise as her movement. She spoke as if she were speaking of a business associate, not a potential roommate.

"Good," he said, and went back to shoring up his eroding shields. He hoped that Anthony Larsen wasn't a changeling, he wasn't sure he could he could handle the pressure.

It was illegal to filter housing ads by race, however. And it wasn't like they had a lot of options, housing prices being what they were. He just had to hope that he could find a solution soon, before his deteriorating shields took all his choices away.

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Testing ScribeFire

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 23:17:44 GMT

So Opera has an integrated all-blogs and journals thingie. I should have expected that, I guess. Yay.

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Fishies

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 03:11:04 GMT

Moved the ten gallon planted tank yesterday from the metal rack by the window to my dresser. It's sitting next to my betta breeding tank now. My male breeder has been very bad and refuses to make a bubble nest. I put the female in with him for a few days to try to inspire him, but all that resulted was domestic violence. So, she's back in the ten gallon to heal up. I tossed some extra java ferns into the breeder tank, so hopefully the extra cover will make things easier next time.

Annnd I made an impulse buy the other day, and got a Petsmart betta for my vase. It looks really nice, if I do say so myself. I tried to give him a mini heater, but even the little ones they make for betta tanks over-heated it. No damage done, but good think I was keeping track of it. This one is a light blue 'dragon scale'. I think I'll call him Little Boy Blue. Still not sure what to call the other two.

Moved the last two cardinal tetras to from the shrimp tank to the ten gallon with the others. Took me over a hour, the stinkers are great at hiding. Anyway, they're back with their school, so hopefully they won't be spending all their time hiding.

The endler's livebearers have spawned several times. There's tons of fry in the shrimp tank.

I'll take some pictures eventually. I'm really proud of my tanks. They look a bit messy because I'm not big into aquascaping (my approach to planted aquariums is to throw a bunch of stuff in there and see what survives, which is usually everything), but i don't care. I think they actually look more natural then some of the aquascaped ones, how many stream beds have you seen that look like a landscape?

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I had too much coffee today :(

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 00:04:00 GMT

Fuuuuu!

I feel like I'm going to explode.

At least my teacher called in sick today, so no school. :D

In other news, I fuckin' LOVE my nook. OMG it's the best thing ever. I'm going to get rid of ALL my books and replace them with digital editions ~~probably by downloading illegal content lulz~~.

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Three in one review: the Barnes and Nobel Nook and two books by Mercedes Lackey

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 20:55:13 GMT

Note: I'm actually pretty horrible at writing book reviews so there will be spoilers. Those not wanting to read them should probably just stick with the Nook review.

Welp, yesterday I broke down and bought a Nook. It's something that I've been wanting to do for awhile, my ultimate plan is to get rid of all my physical library (or as much of it as I can... hah) and replace it with digital copies. This is because I have way too much stuff for my studio apartment, and I think the less stuff I have the easier it would be for me to clean my shit up. Anyway, with the Nook I can now start doing that.

( The nook. )

( Changes: Colligum Chronical Volume 3 )

( Beauty and the Werewolf: 500 Kingdoms Series Book 6 )

Anyway, yeah, that's that book. Now, if you'll excuse me I'm going to go read about RIDING FUCKING REINDEER instead. Because. REINDEER.

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Hoarders: Dictator's Edition

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 23:52:16 GMT

Link

Apparently being the autocratic ruler of an entire country does not mean you have good taste. Saddam Huesain had horrible paintings of big breasted women and muscly men all over the place. Kim Jong Il loves movies so much that he had a South Korean movie director and an actress kidnapped to make movies for him, and, well, let's just say I'm feeling really sorry for Condoleezza Rice right now. Shoot, I want to take a shower right now, just reading that.

I laugh more if these guys hadn't been, you know, in charge of countries and guilty of the death of tens if not hundreds of thousands.

/heads for the shower room
//crossposted to all my journals via Semagic

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Interview tomorrow!

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 00:37:43 GMT

With Office Depot. We'll see how this goes.

I'm surprised my application was still active with them, to be honest.

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panic over

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 23:03:08 GMT

the main college disbursment will be here in a day or two, hopefully, meaning I can get my meds and fill up my car and actually get my textbooks in a day or two. Plans for this semester, hire a Chinese tutor, and start taking violin lessons again. I might get a different teacher, nothing against the one I had but there's a violin teacher who also plays the erhu, and I really really want to learn how to play the er-hu as well and I'm hoping he might be willing to teach me in a year or two. I'm not out of the woods yet, but things are looking up!

Also, Nanowrimo starts in 5 days. TIME TO PANIC AGAIN OMG OMG OMG WAT hahaha /dies

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Nanowrimo

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:07:21 GMT

JournalFen has a thread! Other journal service users are welcome as well because why not, but I'll be starting a LiveJournal Naruto communit(ies) thread later today if one doesn't exist already. Need to the shower thing and the school thing first, lol.

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Tue, 25 Oct 2011 04:17:17 GMT

Finally linked my FB account to my LJ because I am starting to use it more often. With Segmagic and livejournal's Facebook linking I'm now able to update everything in one go, which will simplify my life online considerably.

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Semagic looks good to go.

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 03:48:26 GMT

Testing InsaneJournal as well, removed the thingie that caused the duplicate entry on IJ and LJ, testing to see if that worked properly. Blogger updated correctly. Thinking about linking that... or something to Facebook because I have given up trying to keep my online and offline life separate. I'm still going to use platedlizard online, however, my real name would look weird.

So yay?

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Tue, 25 Oct 2011 03:37:19 GMT

test post for Semagic multi-journal posting. sorry about your friends page

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oh god

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 02:13:32 GMT

that $4.34 cents I just got as a refund on my disbursement better not be it for the term, or I am up shit creek without a paddle.

At least my classes are paid for, but that won't even cover a week's worth of bus tickets, let alone food, gas, car insurance, my medication (haven't taken it in a week, already feeling the depression come back, IDK what I'll do if I don't get the rest of my student loans this term... probably kill myself and no I am not joking)

oh geeze, I'm getting suicidal thoughts again already. Next up, excessive consumption of alcohol, mid-night freakouts and self-mutilation! Oh my, what fun! I can't wait!

/pulls hair out

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skipping college today

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 18:41:57 GMT

It's Earthquakes, so it's not a problem for me. I'll read the text and read the powerpoint when my prof posts it today. I reaaly need to clean the shithole that is my room, apparently the domestic rat that got in was not the only one! So I'm getting rid of a bunch of boxes of books to remove hiding places (which will make it easier for my ratter to do her job) and making sure my food is in rat-proof containers etc. This is what I get for living in a garage, I guess. It's also time to put the air conditioner away.

Also, I need to spend a couple hours practicing my Chinese... I'm not happy with my current competence, although it's a bit silly for me to measure myself against my classmate yesterday. She's fluent in Cantonese, so Mandarin wasn't much of a step for her like it is for me. She did really help me though.

Speaking of the domestic rat, I heard back from the rescuer she went to. Apparently she's getting along well with her other rats (not a surprise, if she was hanging out with wild rats) and is so skinny that she can feel the contents of her stomach when she eats. :( Apparently hanging out with wild rats didn't teach her how to find food. I'm glad I got her out, once the boxes are gone and my place is cleaned out I'm going to be setting out lethal rat traps and I'd feel bad if a domestic rat was killed. Hehe, that reminds me of the time when my sister's pet rat escaped and got into the crawlspace where rat poison had been set out. My parents had to rush him to the vet for treatment for rat poison. A rat being treated for rat poison. lol (btw, he was fine. it's actually doubtful that he ate any of it fortunately) Killing wild rats is fine for me, killing domestic ones isn't, oddly enough.

so, yeah. That's my life. Chinese class, Earthquakes class, and rats. Ug.

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Wed, 05 Oct 2011 19:39:28 GMT

Time for another Chinese lesson!

So, if you ask a random person on the street (that is not in China, obviously) about Chinese characters they will tell you several common myths about Chinese writing. The myth that Chinese characters are pictographs, and the myth that you have to start from the beginning for each character. In fact only about 2-3% of Chinese characters are pictographs! The majority of Chinese characters (about 85%) are composed of a radical, which indicates meaning, and a phonetic, which indicates sound. So all you have to do is learn the 100 most common radicals and phonetics and you'll be able to read about 85%+ of all the characters you'll run across!

Or, as my teacher says, Chinese is actually easy. I'm not entirely sure I believe her yet, but oh well :D

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Chinese character: hao

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 21:37:09 GMT

This picture shows the evolution of hao. Hao is an adjective that means 'good', 'fine', 'it's settled', or 'okay'. It is represented by the characters 'woman' (left) and 'son'(right). For a scholar in ancient China having a wife and a son is a good thing, a sign of stability and symbol of filial piety. It is spoken with the third tone, in which your voice goes from mid-register, to low register, then back up to mid register. With the third tone it is important to keep it momentarily in your throat so people can discern its third-toneness.

Here is my pathetic attempt at hao.

I'm not sure which is worse, my photography skills or my writing.

In the lower left corner you can also see my attempt at Ni, which means you, and in the upper my attempt at remembering cursive. Which I failed at. lol

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Ratty Ratty.

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 18:35:08 GMT

So, I live in an apartment above my parents' garage. This means that occasionally I get rodents. Fortunately I have a cat who is an awesome ratter so this isn't usually an issue. Usually.

Recently I came back from a camping trip to find that my bread had been chewed on. I tossed it, annoyed, and yelled at my cat for not doing her job. She gave me her usual wtf look and went back to sleep, totally unimpressed. The next day a dead rat appeared on the floor, partially eaten, and I thought that was it... for about five minutes when I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. 'Oh shit' I thought as it scampered off. 'TWO of them?'. Admittedly I'm not the best house keeper and I have people and pet food up here. An infestation could be bad. As I started ripping apart my room trying to eliminate attractants I spotted the rat again.

It was a black-hooded rat.

Black hooded rats, for people who don't know, are domesticated rats. In other words, this was a former pet rat who had found its way to my place. I live across the street from a park and people are always dumping pets there, so I can only assume that's where it came from.

At this point I had a real situation on my hands.

Part of the problem is my attitude toward rats. Pet rats, as in from a pet store, are fun cute critters. I had them as pets as a kid. Wild rats, on the other hand, are horrible little monsters that all need to diaf. It's not logical, I know, but that's the way I feel. So now I had a pet rat living in my place like a wild rat. It was grossing me out, but I also felt I had a responsibility toward it because it was domesticated. I was afraid to catch it because I didn't want to be bitten (do rat carry rabis? I'm pretty sure they can catch it)

Unlike previous rats this one made little effort to hid itself, it was active all day long. Besides its coloring that behavior is what told me it was a pet rat, as they don't show anywhere near the amount of shyness toward humans that wild rats do. Over the course of the next few days my cat made numerous efforts to kill it, but for some reason she was never able to finish the kill, unlike previous rats. I'm not sure why, but maybe the rat's coloring put her off, or the rat understood cat behavior better or something.

Anyway, yesterday I got tired of the situation and put out a call on Craigslist for help. A lady who runs a rat rescue emailed me, and after I finally managed to get the rat into a pet crate I took it to her. She picked up the rat and lo and behold it was tame, if scared. It didn't bite her or anything, and settled down once it realized that she was not going to let it runaway. The rat was very skinny, possibly because it didn't know how to find food on its own, and had an eye filled with blood possibly from my cat, but other wise looked fine. So yay, one life saved, and it's no longer my problem.

So, that was my good deed for the week. Next post, practicing Chinese.

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Can I Haz a Triassic Period Reptile?

Sat, 30 Jul 2011 00:30:23 GMT

Y yes, yes I can haz.

And her name is Amelia.

Me and Dad found her last weekend in Eastern Oregon. We are working with a professor at Oregon State University to get her excavated, hopefully this September. She might be a fairly complete skeleton... it depends on how much of her is in the talus slope and how much got shoved under the road when they made the roadcut we found her in.

Pictures of my new baby under the cut.

( Isn't she the most adorable thing ever???? )

We also went to a gravel quarry. This paticular quarry was the first place Sabertooth Salmon had been discovered. My dad found one about a month ago and had already arrainged to have another paleontologist come out with his grad students in August to get it. Well, apparently finding a Mysterious Aquatic Reptile from the Triassic Period wasn't enough for me, because I found a second salmon!

( Mmmm, salmon steaks from a 400lb salmon... *drools* )

Me and dad are going to try for a Mastodon next.

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halp

Sat, 21 May 2011 08:28:29 GMT

I have this song stuck in my head. And it won't leave.

I need help.

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Real life in an alternate universe.

Sat, 07 May 2011 07:01:45 GMT

A/N: A little something that has been percolating through my tiny mind. I'm sure my parents will see where this is coming from. In this series I'm going to be blogging as if I am a couple characters--haven't decided on their names yet, so if you have any ideas feel free to give them to me.

Preview:

did I ever mention how much I hate crawl spaces? it's insane. They are really just the empty spaces underneath houses, where all the stuff that used to exist inside a house now resides. rats. Rat poop. cat poop (because the cats tend to view any area of dry and somewhat loose earth as one giant litter box) plumbing. electrical work. Weird bits of ancient masonry and terrifying post-and-block construction (seriously, if you own a house go under it and look at the pillars and foundation, and if it doesn't look scary either you don't know what to look for or your house is under thirty years old)

dead children.

( I fucking hate crawlspaces )

Yeah, crawlspaces freak me the fuck out. I have to spend time in them (doing insulation, seismic retrofit, et, remind me to tell you guys about the time I nearly fucking DIED in a crawlspace). I always expect to find the most horrible things in them. What I usually find is showers of rat poop. OMG, don't get me started on the rat poop. :(

There will be more story to come.

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OMG I WANT A JOB IN ANTARTICA!!!11111111!

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 06:18:16 GMT

ANTARCTICA JOB FAIR!!! INFOR ANTARCTICA!!!!

I will soooo be there. I probably won't be hired. But who cares. I want to go! And if I don't go I will have 0 chance of spending 6 to 10 months in sub-zero weather working six to seven day weeks with no time off or weekends.

...

YOU KNOW WHAT? FUCK IT. IT'S ANTARCTICA. I WANT TO FUCKING GO!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Wed, 20 Apr 2011 00:11:11 GMT

My God, the pet section of Portland Craigslist is full of WTF today.

Special Baby wallaby for adoption

hermaphrodite cat named PIG needs home
This one gets me, they're getting rid of the cat because they have a second baby on the way and money is tight. Cats do not cost that much to care for! Even when they are fed premium food. Once they are fixed (which doesn't sound like a problem in this case) they're pretty cheap. People who get rid of pets because they're having a baby piss me off.

and oh yeah, they're advertising him a Craigslist, how much you want to bet he'll go to a weirdo?

I'm going to give this rabbit about two weeks before it's dumped beside a busy road.

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Mon, 18 Apr 2011 02:38:31 GMT

Changing email accounts again. Apparently Yahoo!mail wants me to spend $19/year or whatever in order to send my email to an email client. This is bothersome. Gmail is free. So all my accounts will now be on Gmail. Yay.

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Google Documents

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 07:49:20 GMT

Clickie clickie

Basically I uploaded everything that I had on my computer to Google Docs. Most of the stuff posted is unfinished/work in progress. Some of it is homework. That way when this computer dies it won't take out all my hard work. Feel free to read to comment if you like, but no stealing.

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OMGPONIES AND EGO FALL

Sat, 05 Mar 2011 20:56:22 GMT

Been awhile.

Yes. MLP:FiM really is this awesome.

I mean, we are talking about a show that has GIANT SPACE BEARS.

This is not my childhood's MLP. Oh No. This is about a million times more awesome.

Also, I have a new favorite band. Ego Fall.

Ego Fall (also known as Against Me) came out of the punk rock scene in Inner Mongolia. Which really says it all about them.

They combine trash metal with a lot of traditional elements. In this video you can hear them using Mongolian Throat Singing as well as traditional instruments.

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