Sleepless in Scotland

*whacks things with sticks* Okay, So. I'm trying to convince LJ-Archive to export my entries, with comments, to XML so I can upload them to my on-site blog. It does this without complaint for mounthelicon and craftybrain, and will happily do so for bubosquared without comments, but trying to export bubosquared with comments makes it crash on July 2002. Now, granted, this is seven years worth of entries, plus comments, so maybe it's just choking on the sheer volume, but it keeps crashing on the same month, which makes me think it's something specific in that month that's causing the problem. Anyone have any ideas?

( Error/crash message. )

A scene from this morning:

Someone: *knocks on door*
Melle: *was asleep, wakes up* "Gnurgh?" *gets up, walks to door*
Melle: *hand on doorknob* "Wait, what am I missi--CLOTHES! Right! Augh!" *scrambles*

Turned out to be the gas people checking to make sure we'd all switched our gas off so they can work on the connection today. Still, I guess this shows the perils of sleeping naked. >_<

Wow, first call of the day and already with the assholery. Calling me "darling" or "sweetheart" every other sentence is bad enough, but then trying to haggle on the price for a replacement GPS receiver (yes, it's expensive, but as I pointed out to you, you can get one for much cheaper, and we seriously don't care if you do, I promise), going so far as to try and get it replaced under warranty? No. In fact, fuck no. What the hell is wrong with some people?

After a lot of back and forth with my host's Tech Support, they "ran some updates," and what do you know, suddenly my disk space usage is displaying correctly. (There's a small discrepancy of a few MB, which is about what I expected -- probably some logs or something that's outside my home directory, which is fair enough.) Coincidentally, "running some updates" was what they did to get the e-mail quotas to display correctly as well. Not too impressed here, because I still don't know WTF was going on, and it took four hours of song and dance trying to explain that no, see, a) I've already deleted all the logs in the home dir, and b) those would (and did) show up in the Disk Usage Viewer and thus aren't part of the 488MB that's not in there. So in short, I still don't know WTF was wrong, but at least it's fixed for now.

I now really want to redo my website, and mirror my LJ there and stuff. I know, rationally speaking, that this is me procrastinating on NaNo planning, but I'm not sure I care. Anyway, anyone know of a way to import/export from LJ to Wordpress with comments and tags intact? And if there's a way to friendslock entries in WordPress?

*noodles about with content management software* *pokes things with pointy sticks*

Could everyone please do me a favour and pray/hope/light a candle/knock on wood/whatever that my card will be in tomorrow?

Please?

Payday is here! That means I'm now having to decide something. So, obviously, I'm asking you lot for help.

[ETA] I should note here that the first question is not an either/or situation. I am perfectly willing to buy several bits of new electronics with the excuse of "Livejournal told me to!" :D [/ETA]

Because my friendslist really does know 42: I need some random recommendations.

First of all, I'm looking for interesting podcasts. I presume you know me well enough to know what I'm interested in, but I'm mostly looking for ... I dunno, discussion-y ones? Feminist and generally political podcasts and knitting ones, and interesting personal ones and stuff like that, rather than music-centered ones.

Secondly, in light of my impending birthday (and more on that later), Christmas, and New Year's, any recommendations on a printer/scanner(/fax/copier) combo? I'm looking for something that's available from Amazon UK, ideally in the £40-60 price range, so I can put it on my wish list and get it from my dad or something, and ideally ideally something with not-costing-an-arm-and-a-leg ink cartridges, although I'm perfectly willing to get down and dirty with those ink refulling kits if necessary, so yeah.

(Dear internet: please deliver my flight booking confirmation for Christmas already so I can stop wigging?)

So, my birthday. Considering my current mental state (which has stabilised at least, which is good, but isn't really consistently improving, and isn't likely to until after Christmas at least), I was thinking it's probably better for me to not throw a big party, and instead just have a few people over for food and drinks and general hanging out. There will be chocolate mousse, of course, and I will be sending out invite e-mails ... soon. Ish.

My birthday, as some of you may know, is on 20 Decmber. I'll be having a birthday do on the Saturday before (16 December), and I think I should start doing some minor planning. So, poll:

Wisdom of the day: It's amazing sometimes what you can accomplish if you don't believe anything is impossible. This goes for knitting as well as life in general. :D

Happy birthday to kenovay! Welcome to the adult world, and remember: it's your turn to decide what that means.

I realised this weekend that I need to do something about my bag situation. I have about half a dozen bags, more than I have pairs of shoes, and unlike my shoes, I actually use most of these on a semi-regular basis. But I still don't have a good everyday multi-purpose bag, one I can take to work and carry all my stuff in.It should be big enough to hold one of these, plus assorted writing stuff (and ideally also my alphasmart, but not necessarily), my knitting stuff, my tobacco and other things, and have lots and lots of little compartments to keep especially aforementioned knitting stuff in. Much as I like my tote bag, I often have to really dig around in it to find what I need, and while I still prefer shoulder bags, I think a backpack style is probably better for my back and shoulders. Any advice?

I have an elfiepike! (Also a shiny new phone. It takes photos! And I can surf the internet on it EEEE!) I also have annoying neighbours who have loud fights in the middle of the might in our very echo-y hallway, which is less of the yaye. HOWEVER!

I've been thinking lately about if/how to write about a minority I'm not part of. Specifically, about me, as a white girl, writing about non-white characters. This could apply both to fanfic and non-fanfic, but I'm mostly thinking about the latter, because in fanfic, if the canon glosses over certain aspects of racial differences, for example, it's easy enough to follow its lead and not bring that up in fanfic.

But when I'm creating my own canon, that's a decision I actually have to make, and it's one that keeps making me wibble like there's no tomorrow. On the one hand, I don't want to write "colourblind", but on the other hand, I also don't want to fuck up if I do write about the more touchy subjects.

(And that's not even mentioning the "How the fuck do you show-not-tell race?" issue, which is something else I wrestle with, and augh.)

So, yeah. Thoughts? Opinions? Pointers? Swats upside the head? Anything? Like I said, this is mostly a non-fanfic thing, but opinions pertaining to fanfic arealso welcome, as I do write non-white characters in fanfic as well. *vague handwave at Lee and Mickey* (This is not a crossover bunny!)

Okay, while I've been a lot less angry about my job lately, there is one thing that still drives me insane, and that's noise. I don't deal very well with loud noises anyway (music is different, because that's not noise, but even so I prefer that to be loud for me and quiet for everyone else, except at a concert or something, because I'm neurotic like that), but it's magnified by a factor of ten when I'm on the phone. I have a hard time concentrating on a phone conversation when anything is going on in the background, especially conversation, because my brain starts listening to the background conversation and then I get confused. So when I'm trying to do my job, which involves lots of telephone conversations, and people are standing right by my desk talking rather loudly, or even jumping up and down (so kidding!) halfway across the floor, it really annoys me, and I don't appreciate having eyes rolled at that annoyance. I'm all for enjoying your job, folks, but that's no reason to impede my ability to even do mine.

In more pleasant news, the (spoilery, natch) new companion photos are very pleasing. Well, in that New Companion is hot, anyway. I'm somewhat less convinced about Tennant's shirt.

Also, have asked CO if she'd like to come along to Pirates, and she was v. enthusiastic, whee!

[ETA]( V. important poll. )

[ETA2] ... CO just drive-by chocolated me. Um. Wheeeeee! yes, i'm a dork, shaddup. [/ETA2]