Wolves' Lair

Okay, for those of you who haven't downloaded the new version of Firefox yet, I would strongly advise you not to! There are several reasons:

• Not all the add-ons work with it.


• It is *not* any faster than the previous version (in fact I've found it to be in some cases slower)


• It keeps crashing - it has crashed on me twice already today, and I've only had the computer on for about 20 minutese


• As far as I can see, it's not as user-friendly as the previous version.

Now, I will admit that the first and last are my opinions, but the middle two are fairly important, and are facts. Also, for some reason, it is refusing to finish loading Hotmail accounts - it just keeps going with the little circles. I can access things in Hotmail, but I don't know why it doesn't finish loading.

So, my advice is don't upgrade until all these bugs have been sorted out!

Also, I just did a quick search on the Mozilla site to try and find a way to contact them to complain (because every time Firefox crashes, I don't get a 'send error report' box. Instead I get a 'Windows will try and find a solution to the problem' and subsequently 'Windows has not found a solution, but will let you know when it does'.). The one time I actually *want* to send an error report and I can't!!

Before I start, I should say that I HAVEN'T READ DEATHLY HALLOWS YET AND IF ANYONE MENTIONS ANYTHING IN THE COMMENTS, I WILL HUNT YOU DOWN AND CRUCIO YOU!!!

Okay, so this morning on the breakfast news, they showed clips of people who had queued for up to 36 hours to get their hands on 'Deathly Hallows'. This was in between clips of the flooded areas in England.

It suddenly struck me (mainly now because I hadn't really been thinking about it before) that this world is really very strange, and a lot of people have some very strange priorities!

Now, I fully admit that I will read 'Deathly Hallows' sooner rather than later, although that's mainly so that there's less chance of me getting spoilt than anything else. If I could leave it for a while without being spoilt, I would.

But there were people, kids and adults, fighting over a book. A book, for goodness' sake! Seriously, people! It's only a book! It's not the end of the world!

I know quite a few of you on my flist have been similarly apathetic towards Harry Potter, and I think it's quite refreshing. (Of course, once I get the book in my hands, I won't put it down until I've finished reading it, but that happens with a lot of books.)

I did have a longer, more intelligent post in my head a few hours ago, but it's late now and my brain's a little fried.

In other, sort of related news, the one good thing about the OotP film coming out and the book as well is that it's got my creative juices going again. I've been making new notes for 'Wood & Wild'.

Also, I've just rewatched 'The Craft' on Channel 4, and it didn't end the way I remember at all!

So, it appears that we still have no internet at home. It's very annoying to say the least! Virgin Media are being total w*nkers - they charging a HUGE amount for the useless service that they provide, and apparently 'their system is down' at the moment. Probably due to the humungous amount of people calling up to complain!

Anyway, I shall have the house to myself this weekend, so I hope it's working tomorrow. *pout* Otherwise what shall I do? I won't be able to update LJ with my new icons (that I haven't made yet because I was tired last night and went to bed reasonably early) and about climbing. I won't be able to use my groovy new climbing icon! *wail*

However, lack of internet may mean that I'll do other stuff, like actually do some writing! *g*

In other news, my ears are still playing up a little. Yesterday the pain stopped in my right ear and immediately moved into my left. Then by the late afternoon, there was no pain.

Now, I can feel a twinge just starting in my right ear again. Grrr!

Catherine thought it might be wisdom teeth, but I'm more inclined to think it has something to do with the flying I did on Monday. However, it's obviously getting better, because the pain was less yesterday than it was the day before, and it's even less today (so far!).

I'd better go and check my bank account now. *sigh* I wish there was even a slight chance of there not being a "-" sign in front of the figure in my account, but there isn't.

I'm currently recording old LPs onto the computer and having a great deal of trouble. I've spent the last hour and a half doing one LP. The stupid program either stops working halfway through, or else I started recording it at too high a sound level, so that when it's played back, it sounds vile.

It's nearly finished now, and fingers crossed, it'll work out all right! Then all I have to do is start writing them to disk, so that some space is freed up on the computer.

I'm also browsing JK Rowling's site, but everything's happening very slowly at the moment. Combined with my feeling rather chilly, I'm not overly happy.

Hurrah! It's worked! Only 5 more LPs to go.

Man, I wish I could use magic here. It totally sucks that I've had to hand my wand in, just in case I get tempted.

Why, well, lat night I recorded Chapter One of my Harry Potter fic, Wood & Wild, onto my computer. Then this morning, I was planning on recording the title music from Chamber of Secrets to play over the beginning of my reading. All very cunning, right? Well, whilst experimenting a few days ago with recording stuff from tape onto computer, I discovered that I could plug in my stereo to my computer using the line-in with a cable that I've got to connect my portable CD player to a littl hi-fi. (You with me so far?)

Okay, so I thought that I'd try the same thing with my television, since it has a headphones output, and that would save me having to hold the microphone next to speaker. So, I plug it in, and my computer makes this horrible, buzzing noise, and Audicity refuses to work. So, I think, okay, maybe the computer just didn't start up right, so I restart it.

Or, at least, I try to. It freezes on me. And I mean completely. There's the light to show that there's power but nothing I do changes anything. I hold down the power key, nope, nothing. Ctrl+Alt+Delete = nothing. Eventually, I unplug it and take the battery out. Then I put the battery back in, and everything's hunky-dory (I can tell you, I breathed a sigh of relief at that, since *everything* is on that computer, and I don't have backups.) until Windows opens.

Now, my sound scheme is (or I should was) a Harry Potter one, and it should say "Welcome to Hogwarts" when it opens up. Well, it tried, but there was a huge amount of noise and the quality was crap. I only understood what it was saying because I knew what it was meant to sound like. I tried changing the output (because for some reason, it was set to headphones, instead of laptop speakers) but it made no difference. I tried playing music - nope, still the same noise and distortion. It was exactly the same when I put the headphones in.

So, on thinking about, I'm guessing that I overloaded the speaker system when I plugged it into the tv, although I don't really know how. I mean, assuming that it works exactly the same my stereo system, the volume wasn't that high.

And Audicity isn't working anymore. I press record and, instead of the line moving with respect to time, it just jitters in one spot.

So, I think, great, wonderful. This now means that until it's fixed (or God forbid, I get a new computer, which, seeing as mine is less than a year old, I don't really want to do, especially since I can't really afford it!) I can't watch any videos, listen to any music, and all my recording ideas have to be put on hold. (Unless, by some miracle, I get home and it's all sorted. That has happened in the past, although I have extremely had luck when it comes to sound cards.)

So, I'm wandering about the flat at a loose end, since I was going to finish my report today (I only have about 2 pages left to do), and I want to leave my computer alone for a while. And, despite the fact that it's Easter Sunday, there is *nothing* on the tv! (Although, I don't have a TV guide at the moment, but still.)

Eventually, I decided I had to get away from the flat for a while. So, that means coming to uni and getting Internet therapy. Of course, I haven't taken 5 steps outside when it starts raining! Oh joy!

The only good thing about the whole escapade is that the rest of the computer is working fine and I haven't lost anything. What's weird is that I was thinking last night when I'd gone to bed that I should save some stuff to CD, since my computer's been slowing down. :(

I don't actually have anything good to say at the moment, I'm severly depressed about my computer.

Although, I did get some great reviews for my fic! *g*

Right, as I'm sure you're well aware, I intend on applying to do a PhD in New Zealand next. Now the chappy I've been emailing, who's the Head of the Department over there, has been very helpful and told me what I need to read up on etc, including a journal that he and a PhD student of his wrote.

Can I bloody get hold of the stupid arse thing? Can I hell! Sure, I can find it easy enough, but I need to be registered as someone to download it. My university library is meant to be incredibly helpful when it comes to downloading e-journals for free, but can it find *anything* remotely to do with the topic I'm investigating? Of course not! It can find loads on the topic I did in my *second* year, but *nothing* for my PhD research!

I'm getting seriously hacked off about it, because everywhere I look on the Internet leads back to the place where I started, where I need a password!

Argh!!!!!

Bah, have just discovered HUGE disadvantage to using a laptop. You can't use the mousepad whilst wearing gloves! As you may have figured out, it's FREEZING in here! It also slows down your typing, since you can only use two fingers, otherwise nothing makes sense, since you hit about 3 keys at once.

Just had a run-in with Queen Bitch from Hell, otherwise known as Genuvieve. Great name, truly horrible girl! She used to be in our year but she took a year out in second year and then came back, so she's now a year below us (thank God!). Anyway , no-one likes her, but I hadn't ever really spoken to her before (mainly due to the fact that she *really* didn't like kyizi). So, she comes into the student library today and asks about getting a key, because only the computer technicians and the Astrosoc Librarian have keys to the student library. So I told her that only Andy had the key. She promptly said that she didn't know who he was (although I know that she hung around with him, okay, so *clung* might be a better word, since Andy hates her too!) and that she didn't talk to Physics people since she took it. I told her that he was an Astronomy person, and she returned that she didn't to them either. (I suppose it escaped her notice that she was talking to two of those people right there (loriel_eris was there, too)! And she was asking us advice! Cheeky bint! But wait, it gets better!

Since she didn't know who Andy was, I said that he was the short one (which he is, in fairness, he's not much taller than me) and she said, "That's rich, coming from you." Now, I could take that if it was actually coming from someone that I know, and am friends with, but not some stranger, who, in addition was pretty much slagging off all Physics & Astronomy people, despite being one herself. Also, I don't like her anyway, but if I'd been prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt (I wasn't really, but if she'd been nice to me, I might have considered it), she would have totally blown it there and then!

loriel_eris just mentioned that she could almost see me explode when she said that. I didn't, though, you should be proud. I kind of blanked her, instead. Put it this way, she can try talking to me again. In fact, it might be fun if she did!

loriel_eris just said that if she was on fire, I wouldn't spit on her. I said, "No, I would just through alcohol at her instead." On second thoughts, no, I wouldn't. That'd be wasting perfectly good alcohol! Hmm, paraffin, yeah, that works!

Ugh, anyway. I think I've finished ranting. Time to go back to work! Bye!