rusty_halo

I've had two complaints about people getting pop-up advertisements when they visit my site. Guys, this has nothing to do with me. All About Spike has no pop-up advertisements and never will. If you're getting pop-ups, it's because you've got adware and/or spyware on your computer.

You get these if, say, your security settings are low and you visit a site like fanfiction.net, which has ads that try to automatically download and install spyware programs on your computer. Or you download a program like, say, Kazaa, which comes with a ton of spyware programs bundled in that automatically install themselves when you install Kazaa. (More info here or here or here). Or if you've ever downloaded that awful Comet Cursor thing, for example, you're pretty much guaranteed to have spyware on your computer.

Spyware doesn't just cause annoying pop-ups, either; if uses up your system resources and slows down your computer. It can be used for all sorts of malicious activity, like tracking your internet use by advertisers or stealing your personal information, which may eventually lead to identity theft.

There are many programs, some free and some that you pay for, that will scan your computer for adware/spyware and remove it for you. Do a search on yahoo or download.com and you'll find some; AdAware is a good one to try.

Lots of people liked the "Fiction by Theme" idea for All About Spike (explained here). So I'm going to play with it tonight--anyone have ideas for categories that they'd like to see? So far I've just got:

Humor
Fanged Four
Threesome (?)
Soulless Redemption (you know I have to throw that in)

Holidays:
Christmas (what's a non-denominational term I could use for "that time at the end of the year where most people celebrate and give gifts and sing songs"?)
Valentine's Day
Thanksgiving
Halloween

I'm sure I'm missing a lot of obvious possibilities. What would you like to see?

I was up all night writing a final paper. No fun. Now I have to work all day ... I'm zombie Laura. Drinking lots of coffee. (And I can't even go home and sleep tonight, because I have to study for a final tomorrow morning, too. Grrrrr.)

Of course, I should have written last night's paper earlier, but chenanceou is in town and I couldn't miss hanging out with her. Last weekend we had a Pirates viewing at drujan's place, which was very fun, although we ended up stranded there until nearly 5am because of the snowstorm.

This weekend a bunch of us (chenanceou, jerrymcl89, drujan, jaydk, and I) went to see Big Fish. I actually thought it was really good, which is rare for me, since I usually don't like movies that lack action or sci-fi. I thought it was very well done, very creative, and very sort of "heartfelt," in a real way, not a cheesy Lifetime movie way. Also, at the end, all four of us women were crying. Awwww. (I wonder if Spike redemptionists have a greater likelihood of getting emotionally involved in movies or TV?) Then we went to eat at GoBo, which has really yummy vegan food, so I was happy.

We're doing a great big huge super important urgent project at work, which, in combination with finals, is really stressing the hell out of me. So, naturally, I'm going to take my lunch break to babble about fandom nonsense.

Weirdly enough, I've been archiving a lot of Spike/Buffy on my site recently. This is coincidence, largely because I've made an effort to catch up with some older authors whose work I hadn't gotten to yet, and they've tended to be S/B oriented. (I also contacted a few slash writers, but they haven't written back to me yet *hint hint*.) I'm not back on the Spuffy ship or anything like that; I still find Buffy to be one of the most repulsive characters I've ever had the misfortune to encounter. But I do try to judge each story on its individual merits, and I also think it's easier to perceive actual human qualities like, say, the potential for compassion (for someone she doesn't see as an extension of herself or as a useful tool) in the Buffy of earlier seasons.

But I am looking to get back to other pairings and more recent stories, so if anyone has any recommendations for current writers that I'm missing out on, please let me know. The extent to which I seek out new writers has been rather limited lately, so I'm sure I'm missing out on some great fic. (I do, btw, plan to play a bit of catch up over the holidays, once finals are over, though I'll also have colloquium preparation to worry about then, too. *cue panic attack*)

( thoughts on that pairing meme )

Today is so strange.

I got all Gothed out for Halloween. I couldn't help it; it's my favorite holiday. Everyone at work looked at me weird. It's sort of a toned-down Goth, though, but still. Stands out. No one else even dressed up, and my boss forgot it was Halloween. How can you forget Halloween!?

Workmen are drilling outside, very, very loudly, and almost in our office. They're redoing the front of the building, right outside our windows (and one wall of our office is all windows). I mean they're so close that you can see the workman's butt crack when he leans over to drill--he's about six feet away from me. It's so loud that it's impossible to talk, so my boss (who's usually really picky about this stuff) told us that we could get headphones and listen to music to drown it out. So I'm listening to the Cruxshadows' album Wishfire at top volume to drown out the drilling.

This is an unbelievably brilliant record. Everyone should go buy it now (try amazon or isotank). This band is just so smart and thoughtful and creative and interesting. I never hear this kind of thing on the radio anymore; music that's really innovative and lyrics that actually make you both think and feel. They're so interesting; they incorporate lots of mythology (esp Greek and Egyptian), various literary sources (Poe, Lewis Caroll, etc), all these ideas about maintaining your individuality and how to survive in a conformist society, as well as the usual love and relationship type songs. There's real heart and real passion and real hope in this music. I mean real, not the pre-packaged bullshit that you get from MTV and the radio.

The song I'm currently obsessed with is Resist/R, which you should be able to get from Kazaa or other file-sharing places. If you want to try some of their other music, everything on Wishfire is great. Tears is very powerful. Go Away and Return (Coming Home) are slower, if you're into quieter music. And not from this record, but a wonderful song and probably their biggest hit, is Marilyn, My Bitterness, which is totally heart-wrenching. Some other good ones are Eurydice, Leave Me Alone, Cruelty, Heaven's Gaze, Love/Tragedy ... well, lots. Also, since these guys are not on a major record label, if you like what you hear, please do buy the actual records as well.

Their official site, where you can find out more about the band, is Cruxshadows.com, btw. (No, I wasn't paid to write this. I really just haven't felt this strongly about music in a very long time.) Also, they're playing Philadelphia tonight (alas, I'm not going) and NYC tomorrow (I'm definitely going). And they're playing the east coast all month, so check out their list of tourdates here. I first saw them in ... 2000? 2001? with Uranium 235 in this tiny club in Connecticut, and since then I've seen them several more times (most recently at DragonCon). They put on an amazing live show, especially because they're so interactive with the audience (their singer, Rogue, comes into the crowd and sings as he walks around, and climbs on balconys and stuff).

I've also realized how much I miss listening to albums. There's just something more powerful and real about listening to the whole record, in the order intended, that you miss when you download MP3s and listen to them out of order. Most albums have a unifying concept, a theme, a progression; the songs and ideas relate to each other in different ways. You get more out of the experience by listening to the full record; if you're just listening to MP3s, you're missing something. I'm so dependent on MP3s now that I don't even own a CD player, but I'm thinking I really ought to buy one.

Oh yeah, and happy Halloween, everyone. I still haven't been able to catch up with my friends' list; I feel so out-of-touch! But I did archive some Halloween stories today; check out the All About Spike homepage for the list. And don't miss the list of stories that wiseacress is compiling.

I've sort of been in a paper-writing daze lately. Yesterday I finally turned in my colloquium rationale, which is a paper outlining the topics of discussion for my colloquium -- a two hour conversation with three professors that determines whether or not I graduate college. It was absolutely terrifying to write. I'm glad I got it out of the way, though ... temporary reprieve until the actual colloquium, which is in the spring.

I've also been keeping up with all my current classes (lots of midterms and midterm papers lately) and, oh yeah, working 25 hours a week. So mostly, I'm existing on lots of coffee and very little sleep.

Which is mostly just a big excuse for why I've been lazy about keeping up with fandom lately. All this stuff I have to reply to and deal with ... LJ comments, email, story submissions, etc. I suck. I know. I'm sorry.

So, if you're an author and you submitted a story to All About Spike six months ago and haven't heard back, it's not that I'm ignoring you. It's that I'm busy. If it helps at all, I feel really guilty. But I still probably won't be getting to your story any time soon.

(Which is not in any way an attempt to discourage people from sending recommendations. Recommendations help me out a lot, so please do keep sending them. Just don't be offended if I take a long time to reply.)

I also put a moratorium on friending people back automatically on LJ. I'm being really picky about who I add to my friends list, because I don't really even have time to read the people who are already there. So, if you friended me and I didn't friend you back, it's probably nothing personal.

Anyway. Mostly just posting this because I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. I'm probably being horribly rude in all kinds of neglectful ways, and I don't want anyone to think it's personally directed at them. I do plan to catch up ... at some point.

Now. Must go write another paper. *sigh* I really can't wait for school to be over.

I always find this amusing. People have typed these terms into search engines and arrived at All About Spike:

( search phrases )

( fic archiving thoughts )

( my weekend, with Angel spoilers )

Totally random:

I think I'm the only one who doesn't get what's so special about the extra Smashed footage. There's no more Spike than we already had; it's just SMG humping the ground. I care why?

I have four Spike/Wesley stories on the AAS home page. I didn't have any Spike/Wesley stories a few days ago. Interesting coincidence, totally unconscious on my part.

Very fun Spike/Xander collaboration in wiseacress's journal here. If you haven't read it yet, it's definitely worth it.

Another stressful day. Last night I was on the phone with my dad and brother from about 8pm to 1am. Turns out the way my brother installed Windows XP (way back when he set up my computer) prevented me from downloading Windows updates, which prevented me from installing the patch to fix the security vulnerability. So I had the worm that everyone else has (msblast) and apparently another one on top of that. So the hours of familial tech support involved: getting rid of the worms, changing my whole configuration to allow me to get Windows updates, trying to get the updates and discovering that one worm was still there, finally actually getting the updates, then running Norton and having it say no viruses. But the worm is still there. Gah. *kills Microsoft, and Norton, and virus writers everywhere*

I'm going to download the Symantec removal tool when I get home. *crosses fingers*

Then when I came in to work today, my boss announced that our biggest web client is going to leave us. It's not our fault; they've got some fancy new program to integrate their website with their entire book database and have it all in one place, so they won't need us for anything except design. (Right now we run their whole site from our own database). So my boss was all upset, and talking to me about what we can do, and what if all our publishing clients move on to programs like this, blah blah blah. I had some suggestions, but basically I think he just wanted to complain. It makes me particularly nervous because my coworker is gone all week, so I have to deal with my boss alone. And because if we keep losing clients, I could lose my job, and that would, y'know, suck. (I think we should move into other areas--yeah, publishers might not need us, but plenty of places still need database-driven websites.)

The new roommate came by yesterday and dropped off her deposit, so that's a relief. (Please let this work out!) I'm glad I don't have to keep putting up ads everywhere. Although she's really strange: she's all dour and suspicious and she doesn't smile. But then, I usually don't smile either, so I guess I shouldn't complain. (But I was trying to be all friendly and stuff, and I know I'm not that good at it, but she could've at least tried to smile back.) I don't think she's the type who wants to be friends; she's obviously just in it for the location and the room. That's okay; I'm not really looking for a friend either. But it would've been nice to be friendly, like I am with my current roommate. We don't hang out, but we say hi when the other one walks in the door, that kind of thing.

And I'm really, really worried about school starting in September. And graduating, and maybe finding another job, and maybe having to move. But I'm really trying not to think about that right now, because it'll make my brain explode if I dwell on it too long.

Anyway, I know it could be worse. In much better news, I've been compiling a big list of stories to archive, and I just contacted a bunch of the authors, and now their confirmations are coming in. Which means I'll have a whole ton of good stuff to archive in the next few days. The new server has been going fine, so as long as it stays that way (*knocks on wood*) I should be able to get a lot done. Speaking of which, I need to go send out my "daily update," that I haven't sent in like four days.

While I was reading fic, I had such difficulty deciding what to archive. I think I've gotten so into fanfic that I can't tell what I'm doing anymore, like what's good and what isn't. Like, is this a PWP, or a beautifully written character exploration? I've read so much fic that I'm losing all perspective as to what's 'in character' or not. It's like, I'll think something is a reasonable extrapolation of the character, but then I've probably read hundreds of other fanfic stories that built up that possibility in my mind in a way that someone who's only seen the show wouldn't see at all. Like, I imagine jaydk reading it and being horrified at the out-of-character-ness. (She's a stickler for canon). Or I imagine my mom stumbling across it and going "Oh my god, this doesn't make any sense at all! And it's porn!" (My mom recently went back to Indiana, where I grew up, and saw my best friend from when I was seven, who's a really serious Christian now, and gave her my website address). Anyway, it's weird. I'm not sure where to draw the line. But I do tend to be infinitely more forgiving when the language used is beautiful or interesting.

And now, back to work ....