Dani's cacklings

What's going on? Three wrong number calls today to my phone. This last one went thusly:

Lady: Is [struggles to start name]--
Me: Definitely not.
Lady: ...?
Me: You've got the wrong number.
Lady: This isn't 619- [mine starts with 858!]
Me: Nope.

Maybe I was a little brusque, but dude. All over me today...

You might have heard of the case of the Texan man who was executed for a crime that, based on all conceivable evidence, he did not commit. There have been other cases where it kinda looked the person might have been innocent (and fringe elements harped on it to themselves), but in this case? Even scientifically proving that a crime--any crime at all!- occurred has proven difficult if not impossible. The Texas Forensic Science Commission says, basically, there was no arson. You know. AFTER they executed him.

But then I read this: The jury took barely an hour to return a guilty verdict, and Willingham was sentenced to death.

WHAT?? I found that alone reprehensible, even if he'd actually been guilty.

In my case, we had whiteboard flow charts (multiple!) and reviewed our notes in detail and argued -- and it is just inconceivable to me that there would be such a dearth of content to discuss. I feel like the jurors wanted to go home (to do what -- watch TV?), so they came up with a verdict.

It is time to stop revising (GRE *shudder*) for the night when you are staring at hypocritical and think to yourself, "I've never seen this strange word before! What is it?"

You guys.

I even highlighted it.

...

I have accrued 24 paid days off (incl. sick time) due to my inaction with regards to vacationing. Give me something to do!! Places to see? People to stalk?? HELP.

Dudes. Remember 'real America' where Palin spoke? Obama actually WON that county. Um. Oops?

It was at Guilford County, North Carolina... that Alaska Governor Palin first implied that some parts of the country were more patriotic, more American than others...This just in: Turns out that Sarah Palin's "Real America"... was in the tank for Obama, too. He... took... Guilford County.

ALSO, Morrissey (who I like!) has been pwnd. I was listening to his album on the way home today and had completely forgotten about this song, which I had liked a lot.

In America,
The land of the free, they said,
And of opportunity,
In a just and a truthful way
But where the president,
Is never black, female or gay,
And until that day
You've got nothing to say to me

Do we have something to say now?

In other news, I actually have time off for the holidays-- half-day on 23 Dec - 1 Jan vacation. w00t.

I fail at updating this, which is odd because I actually read my flist obsessively every night. I rent a condo with cindelius and a straight guy we found on craigslist.

Poor guy. He attempted to work slash into a conversation at dinner one night and was extremely mistaken about...uh, everything. At least he tries! The first month of living with him was basically culture shock for him, I think. Cin and I had extremely lengthy rants (er, discussions) about social justice and culture in which I usually ended up saying "No, you're just--wrong! Wrong! I will hear no more of this!" and leaving the room clutching my hot cocoa. I don't think those were particularly constructive social interactions.

Work is interesting. I actually get paid to use my degree for the most part, which is extremely rare these days. A lot of the applicants for the newbie position have graduate degrees, and all I can think is, "Uhhh, I do not think you want this job as much as you think you do," but it's hard to justify that reasoning to someone who's been in school for so long that they know nothing else.

Had to move everything like crazy for the pro carpet cleaners coming tomorrow. At least, they better still come because my room is insane crazy bad no, no, no.

My computer bluescreened yesterday when I tried to manually install Service Pack 3 after all the automatic updates failed. ... I have since disabled ALL automatic updates because clearly they are bad. My favorite part was when its troubleshooting material suggested that I might have missed a critical auto update--I'm just like, uh, no, in fact your update is the source of the problem, not the solution. Evil.

Lots of recs and guilty pleasure fics archived at my delicious, which proves that I am still with the living more than this journal certainly does.

So I composed this summary of things that went wrong with some hardware installation this morning to a higher-up researcher...and his reply began with, "Wow. Okay." *dies* You know it's bad when... Mmhm. Also of note was someone encountering me just after I'd failed epically and them pausing to say, "you look tired." Accurate.

I keep having to replace these units over and over again out of nowhere. Grr. Argh. At least I am getting better at it?

I am more than a little obsessed with David Cook right now. Also still on a Naruto binge--after realizing that the manga had taken an INSANE turn, I have been unable to look away. OMFG YES. plsbealive? no? woe. There are many holes, and I want there to be AU fixes or canon explanations to FIX things and waaah.

...But at least I still respect it all, which is more than I can say for the last three books of HP. Those books? NOT REAL. Everything in my HP canon ends with some of the glossed over backstory in OotP. People who take HBP and whatever the last one was called seriously are dead to me. dead!

Naruto canon has now turned into a fic I wanted to read once. I need to read like 100 chapters back to see what all is being referenced, but whatever. This stuff is of the "SAY WHAT?" variety.

Anime fandoms are so goodfic deprived, people. Woe. Even my usual savior, del.icio.us, makes the angry face at me. Bleach continues to have the most awesome flashback sequence ever, whee.

In the past month two different people have expressed disbelief and confusion about my age. I need some anti-aging cream stat. Plz send hlp. (Although, I guess, my "actions and manner of speech" might influence this--but I still have to be able to "pass" as like ten years older than I am! That's no good!)

So, 600 years later I finally caved and bought an iPod classic. I have begun my nine days of conversions for the 2,900 files it found (and counting). Skimming the list now I see videos that I am so not going to put on the iPod, like, uh, of the pet turtles eating and hunting fish... *facedesk*

cindelius (roommate): I looked through our porn magnets to see if one said "clean" on it, but there wasn't one.

True story. There was a totally logical, sane reason for that conversation. Hee.