I’ve been ginger’d!

It’s a UniFaction thing.  People sent me Gingerbread people and other stuff!  I’ve decided to post the cuties here, so that I can show the world how nice my friends are. XD  All gifters in order of gifting X3

(After Christmas I’ll be putting this in the About section or something… )

Gingers from my lovely friends!

Donth , shaked  , StarryGirl , Tinker , Butterflyeffect , XoticNinja , Vespah , Critter , fishweave ,Doodles , Guargouille , EnvySenpai , Dragongirl02 , Kateri , Avain Aredos

.

Candy Cane Grams and other neat things by: Donth (CCG), Jeff (Heart), Butterflyeffect (Heart & Star), Tinker (Heart), Vespah (Double Hearts & Star), AvainAredos (Star)

x2

The star from Butterflyeffect came with this neat little message:

“When twilight drops her curtain down and pins it with a star, re member that you have a friend though she may wander far.”

And she also sent me a heart with the following note:

“Friends are like bras, close to your heart and there for support.”

Now it’ll be my turn to spread the love! <3 <3 <3

~ ~ ~

So… I’ve sent a couple things to my friends, but I keep on getting more! XD

Wb, Amadeus!

So… he’s finally back together with me!  “Who?”, you might ask.  Well, of course my loveable Amadeus, macbook numero uno and my darling.  Sorta.  Maybe that’s just the euphoria talking.  It has been nearly 11 weeks since I saw him, and nearly 15 weeks since I brought him in for repairs!

And apparently the guy I talked to today actually knew what he was doing, surprise surprise.  I mean, if you followed this blog for a while, you know what I think of the competence of Future Shop’s computer and tech department…  Aaron, that was his name, apparently fixed it and he could even explain to me what was wrong.  So apparently my user data (as in, the login I used all the time) was corrupt, hence the death before login screen.  I got my harddrive replaced (at no charge) and he manually copied my files onto the new one (since with the corrupted drive he couldn’t have done it any other way), which is basically the thing I ended up paying for.

~ ~ ~

Now, I think the important stuff is on there, but I haven’t had time to check.  A bunch of things like Firefox will have to be reinstalled.  I haven’t had the time yet to see what’s there and what’s not… I did see a couple familiar picture folders though, and those are what I wanted saved the most.  After all, I’d have no way to get all my pictures back if not by this backup…

I noticed however, that I have 96GB free space.  So a lot must have not come over.  I dunno how much of that stuff was things like firefox, and I saw a bunch of my downloaded vids, so it’s not them either… Now I could be wrong, but I think I only had 4 to 13 or so GB free… I was in the midst of clearing space myself, so I’m not sure.  Could have been 30 already.  Either way, there is a large chunk missing, but if it’s important or just the junk space for remembering passwords and conversations, I do not know.  He did tell me he couldn’t copy my emails saved on the computer, but I think I’ll survive that.  Maybe.  (Which reminds me, I haven’t checked my German email account in ages… last time, and that was definitely before Amadeus died on me, I had 800 to 900 unread  – mostly junk -  so I do not dare look now XD

All important people know my Canadian email already, so it’s not like I’ve been missing out on anything… I think.  I should check it before New Years though I suppose.

~ ~ ~

Anyways, I’m sure that you guys can remember that my logging in trouble wasn’t the end of it.  As previously mentioned in an entry (now 15 weeks old XD), my battery could have exploded and killed me.  It was swollen badly, and since I had a (last) chance today, I went and sneakily made a pic of it before it was tossed forever by the FS guy.  Hurray for DSi, they make pretty decent pics.  Though I was holding it with my left hand to hold the battery with my right, alas the background is quite blurry…

Either way I think you won’t have any trouble seeing the swelling.  Today I once again realized how thankful I should be that Amadeus died on me like that.  I mean, just look at that thing!  And I kept on using it like there was no issue… fact is, it bothered me, because the swelling obviously deformed the bottom part of my comp, but I thought I wasn’t under warranty anymore anyways, and money was tight at the time… (still kinda is)

~ ~ ~

So yeah…   However, I am not full of sunshine and rainbows now (though I am happy, I won’t argue that).

Upon getting him back and, for the first time in such a long time, taking a closer look, I had to discover in sheer horror the scratches on top of him…  I think it’s kinda hard to see on the pic, which was also taken in the store, but I might upload a better one later, but for the sake of showing you dat sticker, I had to take the pic in store.  The reflection kinda helps for you to see it in the first place… but I hope you can all see the scratch going all the way from lower right to upper left, through the apple logo and the sticker…

Now, upon asking Aaron and Jason (yes, that douche was around too, with his stupid “king-of-the-world”ish smile D:<  ) about it, neither could quite explain how this had happened. I can; obviously customer property is neither stored nor treated right. I mean, those scratches are huge.  Long and deep.  From the looks of it, something heavy and somewhat pointy must have been on top of him.  I myself had things on top of the computer the one or other time.  However, nothing I did could ever result in that…

Now the good news is, the scratches were so long, they went through the damn sticker.  If it wasn’t for that, I probably couldn’t even have proven that they did it   >_>   But, since it had obviously happened at the store, and I was clever enough to voice my observation, Aaron left me with the following options:

1. Replace the top part, completely, and free of charge.  (I didn’t want Amadeus in this Tech House of Horrors no longer…  who knows what else he’d need replaced after… )
2. Give me a comparable amount off on the new battery (Fair enough, that’d mean I’d spent less money on you @ssholes… )
3. A Future Shop Gift Card with the amount (No f*cking way in hell I’d actually come here again, even if it was to redeem some gift card !!!)

Now, apparently those parts go for around $100, so either option meant a complimentary 100 dollars…  need I even spell it out for you what I went with?  Had I taken #3… I’d hope someone was there to kill me on the spot.  Figuratively spoken.  As for #1…  I dare not imagine how he’d look like upon return.  I’m sure Amadeus would not have forgiven me either… DX  So #2 it was, of course.  And so I got a $189.99 battery for $75 + tax.  And they tossed the time-bomb.

~ ~ ~

If you must know why I’d call my macbook Amadeus in the first place… well, it sorta came to mind.  I’ve always found that all things operate better when they have a name (helps with coercing them into working too ), and that name just sorta sprung at me one time.  I’ll be taking some time to fix him up back to, but I’ll be cautious to the paranoid level with him now (wouldn’t wanna have to go back to FS yet again…).

For most of the time, I’ll now probably use my dear Hikari-chan, or just Hikari.  Yeah, surprisingly enough, despite looking for a male name, I ended up giving my Toshiba a girl name… (I was pondering Toshi at first, but that just brings up memories of a possessive ex… ^^: )  But oh well.  I’m sure Amadeus and Hikari will get along great. And if they don’t, it’ll inspire me for some anthro-laptop comics. XD

Which reminds me, I promised my mother to write a story for her.  It was a challenge to myself and my writing skills.  I asked her for three words that I’ll have to use in the story, and I’ll try to make a story with them, though I do not know the importance of each one just yet…  That story will be my Christmas present to her.  And if she ends up liking it (somehow I doubt she’d ever hate a story of mine though ), I’ll do the same thing for my sis’ b-day (which is just after Christmas).

In other news, my parcel arrived in town this morning at 10, or so my mother dear announced.  Since today is friday, it’ll probably come on monday.  Either way, she has come to the conclusion to use UPS in the future, not DHL.  Seeing how it must have been about a month now since that parcel was sent, I am naturally agreeing with her choice…

~ ~ ~

And, completely unrelated to this:

I had a couple additions for Wii and WiiWare, some from a while ago, which I forgot to mention.  Detailed reports will follow eventually. I think. XD

I have acquired:

• Harvest Moon: Animal Parade (Love it!  Didn’t play ToT prior to that, but this one is definitely awesome.)
• Harvest Moon: My Little Shop (WiiWare, and absolutely adorable.  If you’re into minigame rather than the typical farming & ranching Sim, this one’s for you!  And if you’re HM fan, even better.  Lots of cameos from many of the games X3 )
• Pokemon Rumble (WiiWare, got it prior to the two above.  Perfect for “rumbling” in some quick, no-preparation-necessary battles.  The closest thing to Pokemon Mystery Dungeon in 3D so far – can’t wait till the PMD WiiWare comes out though XD  The 4 year old in this house seems to have more fun than I do.  It’s one of those few games you can play co-op with a little kid without it ruining the fun   Seriously though, she doesn’t become a handicap or anything while playing this.  So if you have younger Pokemon fans around, it’s well worth the buy ^__^ )

I’d like to note that I downloaded the PR demo before I purchased it; I figured I’d like it either way, but it was certainly fun to actually test it first   I also downloaded the demo for “Nyx Quest”, and it’s pretty nice to play, but after buying two add-ons for HM:MLS, I didn’t have enough left

Question is, should I buy more points before the Harmony tax kicks in next year?o_O  Also, I preordered Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearer.  FF + Wii = win.  Too bad EB Games didn’t have any preorder bonuses running… (Apparently I missed the pre-order bonus for HM:AP; two plushies. )

~ ~ ~

That’s it for today, I’m tired now.  And I only have two weeks till it’s back to school… feels like a short time, especially considering how fast I got there…

When all is said and done…

… which basically means: “Woohoo, I am done with my exams!” XD I’m happy to report that I have finally officially finished this semester. Though today didn’t start off on the best note… as usual, I woke up with irritated throat and runny nose. (Well, at least I didn’t have a headache this time.) So there I am, getting ready to leave (I was pondering an allnighter again to cram it all, but around 1:00 I decided that it’d be for the better if I slept), and out the door… whoops, forgot my buspass. Back into the house…

Incidentally, I always lock my room before leaving (locks here are without key, at least indoors, so all you need to open the door is a coin or knife or something), so that the kids won’t get into it. I had that happen once while I was at school… NEVER AGAIN. With horror I remember how my room looked afterward… Anyways, so I had to unlock it, but of course didn’t have a coin or anything ready. After the 6th or 7th time I finally got the door open with my zipper… bus pass grabbed.

~ ~ ~

Back on the road, so to speak, I could only watch from a block away as my bus turned and left. Now I remembered how sometimes, when I had missed bus #1, I’d go 2 blocks up and 1 right to catch a different bus. So I did that this time too… However, I must have miscalculated, or missed it while I walked up. As I was standing there, 2 busses passed by from the route I usually take (you can imagine my frustration over having walked up halfway of the hill only to see I could have easily gotten on of those two back there).

Finally, I figured that the bus I was waiting for would definitely not come any time soon, so I walked halfway back to a busstation that the previous buslines would go by. And I finally get a bus, and despite being out of breath, I still make it to the exam room in time. I’d like to note that this was the only exam this semester that I had in the respective classroom, all others were all over campus… including the gym, though the usage of it for exams is rather common.

~ ~ ~

So anyways, I’m done writing my exams. Most things went pretty well, there was two or three short answer questions that I really didn’t know the answer to, and one of which I remember reading the exact answer (and the quiz in the book for it) 3 times over… but the harder I tried to remember it, the less I knew.

But oh well, I still think I did pretty good. I might not get A or A+ as final mark as I did in my two English classes, but I’m sure I’ll be in the B range nonetheless. Third time’s a charm, as they say…

I’d like to mention that this was the first time I ever doodled something on the exam. I figured maybe my teach will be awesome like those on collegehumor and give me a few helping credits for that XD But even if she doesn’t, at least I didn’t leave any question completely blank. :3

~ ~ ~

So now I’m officially out of school for this year. Can’t believe it’s Christmas next week…