Current Ramblings

Tuesday, August 31, 2004

More Upstart!

Okay, I got a chance to take more pictures of my Upstart custom, and I've uploaded them all to my photo blog. HE IS TEH AWESOME! :D

posted@1:39 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments  

Monday, August 30, 2004

Upstart!



More pics later. Much later. I'm just about to head to work.

posted@1:26 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments  

Friday, August 27, 2004

Can I have Alternators Jazz now, please?



(I have the guns for the G1 one somewhere. Probably in his box. In the closet. And I don't know where the G2 one got off to.)

(Also, I'm posting like mad tonight. Sorry. I promise I'll go to bed soon. And don't let it interfere with comments about my bit of fanfic.)

posted@1:53 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments  

OMFGLOLOL ITS NIGHTBEAT!!!!!!!1

Yes, I know we've heard about it already from Simon, but there's nothing quite like the cover art for Transformers: The War Within #3 which clearly has TWW Nightbeat in it to drive it all home. I've been giggling like a schoolgirl all day.

And on the subject of spooge, I don't think I'll ever be able to seperate Sledge-the-Constructicon from Energon: Powerlinx Battles from this porn involving someone apparently called Sledge from some Brave show or another.

posted@12:21 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments  

Thursday, August 26, 2004

Now I Force Fanfic Upon You

So for the last year or so I've been mulling over the idea of doing my own take on Armada. I've even mentioned it here once or twice, though I usually try to spare my blog from quite that level of geekery. I don't know why, my blog is certainly supposed to reflect me and I have certainly achieved that level of geekery. I don't like the idea because the Beast Machines backlash made me absolutely hate anyone who rewrote an existing series because they didn't like how it came out the first time. But I don't want to do this simply because I think I can do it better. I want to do it because of the massive wellspring of Armada-inspired ideas welling up inside of me, and because I know the only way to get this stuff out of my head is to get it on paper (or the computer screen). So I'm posting one of my early "scenes", just a little semi-contained segment of the story that I wrote out tonight because it had affixed itself firmly in my head and I wanted to sleep tonight. It's really not that big a departure from some of the canon, but it's exactly this sort of fleshing out that I think the series as a whole suffered from a lack of. So have a quick snippet of fanfic.

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Dust flew up in clouds from Megatron's feet as he crossed the desert landscape, illuminated only by the half-phase moon. He paused as the scrub-covered landscape fell away in front of him into a dry riverbed and checked his internal tracking sensors. The Decepticon commander had sent his troops out to train on the lunar surface barely an hour before to win himself the privacy he needed to carry out a certain project and now, here in the Earth desert, only a few hundred miles from the Autobots' own base, he was already near his goal. Even with their powerful mainframes it took the Decepticons and Autobots alike days, weeks, even months to scan possibilities and pinpoint a single Mini-Con's unique energy signature. But if one already knew the signature to feed into the computer...
Megatron slid down the cliff with the grace of a skilled warrior to the riverbed below. He consulted his readings once more, then reached into the ground. His metal fingers parted the packed Earth like it was little more than water. From under several feet of dirt he plucked a Mini-Con panel.
A smile of victory and sweet anticipation curled Megatron's lips as he watched the sparkling green lights play over the surface of the tiny panel lying in his palm. There was a reason he had sent the others away before undertaking this hunt in the dead of night. There would be no bickering between his soldiers to lay claim to this Mini-Con. No, this one was indisputably his. Rainbow lights played on the air above the panel, coalescing into a shape he had been waiting to see again for millinnea. And as the tiny form became solid, as the Mini-Con awoke and instantly a look of abject terror filled his face, Megatron laughed with a malignant joy. "It's so good to see you again, Leader-1!"
"No...not you..." muttered the Mini-Con as he instinctively tried to back away from the specter of Megatron's laughing face. But the Decepticon's hand closed into a tight fist around him before he could even think to escape. "NOOOOOOOOOO!"

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In other news: Today I bought the fancy pocky. Mmmmm.

posted@2:26 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments  

Tuesday, August 24, 2004

Updated the Photo Blog with the first of my England trip entries.

posted@7:17 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments  

Monday, August 23, 2004

Update to the Photo Blog about today's domestic projects. I really, REALLY need to get up my pics from the Kerry rally I went to, like, a month ago, England, and OTFCC.

posted@8:31 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments  

Thursday, August 19, 2004

In honor of my birthday in a month, I am posting...

My Birthday Wish List



Okay, I'm done.

posted@1:08 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments  

Tuesday, August 17, 2004

Some random ramblings for today:

After I finished dreaming about work last night (*sob*), I dreamed I was watching some new episodes of Transformers. I guess it was supposed to be Energon: Powerlinx Battles, because there were some shadowy hints at the new combiners, but it seemed to have a lot to do with Prime trying to find people to race with the other Autobots. Maybe they were racing the Decepticons. I'm not entirely sure what this would accomplish. But the part that stands out in my mind more was the part where it was revealed that the Transformers had learned more of their history and could remember their own creations (which I guess they couldn't before), and that the Mini-Cons were baby Transformers. There was some really weird part with a spaceship full of multicolored Sparkplugs standing immobile in rows, all in the colors the toy has been released in (yellow, green, blue, and red). And then there was Sideswipe, just plain ol' G1 Sideswipe, who had two sons who were just Sparkplug and Atlas. Possibly because they were all Lamborginis. I think he might have also had a wife. SO WRONG. Sunstreaker was also in it. He could turn into a big black bird for some reason. Not transform, just sorta morph. And not a robot bird, just a big crow. I know not what any of this means.

Graham and Walky went to Wizard World without me thanks to a scheduling snafu, but I did get the new hyper-hard-to-get She-Ra figure out of it. I deserve it way more than the unwashed male masses who have been paying way too much for her. For one thing, I fully appreciate the wonderfulness that is her comb. Feel the power of the comb! It was awesome enough that they gave her proper rooted hair, but that they gave her the comb complete with the little notch for her to hold it... I was the happiest girl in the world. And I was even happier that I actually got one.

I had to give my cat - my 17-year-old cat - a bath day before yesterday. I don't know how she got fleas, since she never leaves the apartment, but there they were. And then yesterday she stayed in the bathroom just about the whole day. And now today, after I kicked her out this morning so I could take a shower, she decided to hole up in a cardboard box and has only come out to eat. She's weird.

I actually signed up on a Tamagotchi message board. I think I'm the oldest person there. No kidding. In other news, Xevoz are awesome. For the, like, 4 toy-inclined people out there who don't know yet.

posted@7:37 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments  

Wednesday, August 11, 2004

There's one good thing I can say for Wal-Mart: Their employees' apathy toward strict-on-sale dates for toys is a happy thing for those of us who, say, didn't want to wait until this Sunday for the new Tamagotchi Connection. Now I just need some local friends who will breed with mine...or at least some friends who'll stop into town long enough for some digital pimping.

posted@12:05 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments  

Monday, August 09, 2004

I really like Energon Tow-Line. He's like the illicit love child of Thunderclash and Skids. Maybe if I'm feeling cruel I could whip up a fanfic to that effect.

Coming up on my 26th birthday, and in light of all the problems I've been having at work, I have decided to go back to school part-time and learn computer programming. My mom has been generous enough to offer to pay for my tuition and books (assuming I don't try to go to some pricy-as-fuck school like OSU), and I've started the process of seeking out information from local community colleges and tech schools about their programs. I probably won't start until winter quarter, which will give me time to feel confident about my plans and brace myself for the work. Computer programming is something I've always kind of envied people for knowing, but for some reason it never occurred to me, despite being reasonably clever and generally good with computers, to pursue it as a career, and I didn't know where to start learning it as a hobby. When I graduated from high school, Computer Science seemed like a somewhat frivolous degree choice. Even my friend Chip (Hi, Chip!) started as a CS major and changed to English. But culture has started keeping up with technology, making computers not just a niche but a necessity, and the IT career path seems to have stabilized.

So I ask of those of you in the know: What advice would you give someone looking to start a computer programming career? What sorts of courses should I look for, what languages would be best to focus on and which are on their way out? Is web programming a good way to go, or is there too much competition? What Would Mainframe Do?

posted@1:12 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments  

Thursday, August 05, 2004

Since I'm already up and feeling pissy, I suppose I might as well start what will pass for my OTFCC report. Being staff means I can't really do a proper one without it consisting largely of "So then I sent a text message to Malin...", so I'm just going to post about a few particuarly interesting moments. I'll start with one that actually happened on the way back out of Chicago, which I will call...

OTFCC '04 Moments #1: Pulling Off On The Highway

We started the drive back from Chicago around 2:30PM on Monday, and traffic was already getting heavy. We made it through Chicago proper without incident (other than me trying to desperately text Bluestreak7), impressive for a caravan of three vehicles in heavy traffic. We were probably about 20 miles from I-65 and I was starting to fret over my gas gage when this old white Tacoma pick-up pulled in front of me, blocking me off from Phil. Normally it wouldn't be a big deal to have one car cut between us like that, but then he started driving erratically. He never turned his blinker back off, he was swerving a bit, and he was going slowly enough that a worrisome gap was growing between us and Phil. As I pulled around him, Windy (who was the only other person in the car), said that it looked like he was dancing to his radio or something. Great, some drunk freak. I caught up with Phil, made sure Forky's Trukk of Doom was still with us, and went back to worrying about my gas. And before we knew it, here comes that ugly old Tacoma again, getting in front of us and driving like a retard. What's wrong with this guy? So as soon as I got a chance I got around him again and caught up with Phil. But this guy was intent on his game of leap-frog. Spewing curses, I went to pass him again, and this time Windy and I made the mistake of looking over to see just what this guy's problem was. And there he was with his cock out, holding it up for all the world to see while he masturbated with the hand that wasn't on the wheel, presumably keeping up with us so he could watch us in his mirror. Fucking perv.

posted@10:07 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments  

Nothing makes me more disgruntled with my job than coming back to it after a weekend of being respected and appreciated for my work. Let's take this morning for example: I've caught some of the cold Graham brought back from the convention (also, my colitis is acting up and I can tell if I had to try to deal with customers my voice would be gone by noon, so I'm just generally fucked up today), so I decided to call in sick lest I become even more fucked up this weekend. It turned out this one shift leader who has some sort of undefined issues with me (I can't do a damn thing in that store when she's around without her telling me I'm doing the wrong thing) got to the phone first and before handing the phone over to the store manager put a bug in his ear that I had been going on about how I was planning to call off today. Well, yeah, I did mention to one of my friends there that I felt like shit and that I might not make it in today if I didn't feel better this morning. And anybody who knows me knows that when I feel sick, which is about 90% of the time, I bitch constantly anyway, and I hardly ever actually call off. So she can take her snarky shit out of my business and learn to fucking sort. And now I can't sleep like I should be doing right now because they've got me too riled up. So I'm going to make some more of this wonderful Sainsbury's tea and see if I can't calm down my wide assortment of throat problems.

posted@9:19 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments