I don't get mad over my fiction very often. (Okay, that's a lie.) I usually get angry about what I feel is pretty valid stuff. But twice (!!) already this week I've been presented with little details about upcoming Things I Care About (or Kinda Care About) that are making the nerd in me rage - and rage hard.

First: Star Trek.

( potential spoilers for rumors surrounding Into Darkness )

Second, the first trailer for Ender's Game was finally released. While I have no intention of seeing this film any time soon (Orson Scott Card is not getting ANY financial support from me in the foreseeable future and possibly beyond that), I do still have fond memories of the first time I read the book and am vaguely curious about its translation to film, so I clicked on the trailer.

( Rage about Stuff in the Ender's Game Trailer; spoilers for the book )

FURTHER BECAUSE I CAN:

( Ridiculous moment of Nerd Rage towards Iron Man 3. )

Yesterday was the 46th Anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire.

Today is the 27th Anniversary of the Challenger explosion.

This Friday marks the 10th Anniversary of the Colombia tragedy.

I think it's safe to say that this is not a happy week for NASA.

But all is not lost, I feel. Every year around this time I tend to sit back and marvel at just how far we've come. In just over 60 years we went from our first manned flight with heavier-than-air craft to putting men on the moon. For humanity that was - literally - a giant leap. And though we have retired our space shuttles and reduced NASA's funding, since these tragedies we have put rovers on Mars - two of which even continued to function and return data long after their expected lifespans. We are discovering exoplanets at an astonishing rate. Private companies have successfully launched what may be the precursors to a whole new generation of space shuttles. We watched a man fall to earth from the very edge of space - successfully!

Though we have not returned to the moon in decades, we are not done exploring the stars. No, we are not done. And it is in part because the brave, bold, fiery spirits that inhabited all those astronauts are still here, still burning.

I salute our astronauts. I salute the brave men and women who are willing to put their lives at risk for the advancement of our species as a whole. The future is out there, and my opinion has always been that astronauts - people like Gus Grissom, Ed White, Roger Chaffee, Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, and Judith Resnik - will be the people who push us towards it.

It is my hope that we will go back to the moon someday, and then go on to Mars and the solar system and the stars beyond our own.

And we will go there because our astronauts will make it so.

Okay, LJ, I see what you're doing.

But I think we can compromise. Give me the option to customize the colors and at least some parts of the layout on my new, infinite scrolling friends page (I'll grant that the new layout isn't the eyesore I expected it to be. Good job on that one, at least) and I think I can (grudgingly) accept the infinite scroll. Most everyone I know is abandoning ship as it is, so I don't have many blogs left to scroll through to begin with.(Take that, I suppose.)

But, really, I'm disappointed. You used to be relatively unique and original, LJ. You used to actually be a site I wanted to spend time on. Now I'm here only because so much of my life is recorded here and because I have a few friends who cling to this site and haven't yet migrated. Otherwise, I'd be done with you.

Stop emulating other sites. This isn't Tumblr. I like that it isn't Tumblr.


(As she posts from Dreamwidth lololololol)

Two posts, one day. Sorry guys

Can I just express a bit of Castle-related frustration for a minute?

( Read more... )

Okay so I was browing io9 today and I saw this and then I scrolled down to the bottom to the awesome Portal-themed office and naturally my brain decided HOW DO I ONE-UP THIS AMAZING PAINT JOB

The answer, obviously: theme an entire room to look like a test chamber.

( Cut for musings and brainstorming and PERHAPS I WILL JUST BUY A HOUSE SO I CAN DO THIS )

Clearly there needs to be a geek-oriented room makeover show, like Room Crashers for Geeks. BECAUSE AWESOME.

And for my next trick I will do this same thing for Mass Effect because, uhm. Yes. Shepard's quarters on the Normandy would be super simple for a master bedroom, I mean come on.)

Not much to report here, sorry to say. Last week was a nightmare of unending stress and right now I'm just hoping that the stress does not carry over (and given that my phone has just decided to go all wonky, I am not currently optimistic about that).

I've been mourning Neil Armstrong right along with the rest of the scientific, space-oriented community since yesterday. I...really don't have words for my sad, other than I have it. I never really entertained the idea of becoming an astronaut - the math and science skills required were a bit beyond my comfort zones, to say nothing of my complete inability to handle spaceflight (I can't even do roller coasters, how am I supposed to survive SPACEFLIGHT) but Neil Armstrong still made me dream about putting my feet on the moon's surface someday.

He will be missed.

And my phone! It's almost a funny story. Basically the thing has a hard time with certain updates - mostly the necessary system update kind. Last time it decided to spontaneously reboot between the hours of 3 and 5 in the morning, and would inevitably shout DROID at the top of its wee little lungs until I got tired of hearing it reboot and turned it off.

Now it's doing the reboot thing again. Only this time, it's freezing with its little red Droid eye looking out at the world. I cannot turn it off. No amount of button mashing makes it respond. I can only stare at that cold, red eye.

(And hope it doesn't come to slaughter me in my sleep.)

BECAUSE THIS IS MY AVENGERS POST!

...er, MY QUASI-AVENGERS POST.

I say quasi because I am A) am not actually going to say anything about the movie in my post and B) WILL BE SCREENING COMMENTS, so if you have seen the movie say so and we can squee!

I figure this is the best way to both say my piece about the movie and keep spoilers away from everyone else. :D I was lucky enough to go in almost entirely spoiler-free, and I'd like to make sure I don't ruin anything for anyone else.

As if to celebrate my victory in writing, my AIM decided to cut out and kick me off. IT COULD NOT HANDLE THE SHEER FORCE OF MY WIN.

Sorry, cannedcoelcanth and take_the_good - I swear I didn't walk off on purpose. Now AIM won't let me back on. ;_;

OTOH, hey, I got stuff done today! Ish. Nothing incredibly important, just incredibly victorious and now I think I am going to drag my aching head to bed. Perhaps I will be even MORE productive tomorrow!

<3 you all

I JUST FINISHED A CHAPTER OF A FIC THAT HAS BEEN FIGHTING ME FOR ALMOST TWO YEARS

I WIN, YOU LOUSY STORY, I WIN. ME. YES.

Behold, almost every celebratory gif I have in my collection:

( CUT FOR GIFSPAM )

Aaand now onto chapter 6!

cannedcoelcanth, would you be willing to beta this one for me, too? Same fic as the first four chapters you looked over. I'd be forever in your debt.

Two doctor's appointments, a haircut, and a trip to the fabric store later, and I am le tired folks.

But before I drag myself off to bed for the night, I wanted to post this link. It's mostly for future reference, but some of you lot are gamers and above the legal drinking age, so:

Six Video Game Cocktails

The Arkham City ones I've seen before, but the others! THE UNCHARTED ONE YES PLEASE.

...I wonder what a Resident Evil drink would be like? (I've seen movie-based ones with a blue or green twizzler wrapped inside for the T-Virus, which is cool, but they're not game-verse drinks)

(also shush I have not routed around to that fandom yet. Not wholly. Yet. Oh god help me. I've gone back to making crack theories and I really need to just make up my mind about making a comm to hold them all [I was right the last time I made a bunch of crack theories, but no one will ever know because I never wrote them down] and fhdsifhdsfjl)