I showed her around the city and made sure she saw all the major monuments. We even tried our hands at shoe shopping and I was forced to remember the vocabulary from training that I was convinced I’d never use. The shopkeepers were helpful and more amused than irritated with our bumbling about.

Of course I took her to school. I wanted to show her around, to meet the students, and to meet the teachers. We had a few lessons the past two days where she answered questions and let the students gawk at a new person. I wish I could remember if that’s what happened to me a year and a half ago when I showed up. I’m sure it was, but it is all hazy now.

Today, we had class with the 10th graders whose teacher is Nelya Dmitrivna. She’s a sweet woman and she’s more than proud of her students. She’s absolutely convinced that she has the best students in the school. They are rather good at English and always very talkative when I’m in their lessons. Anyway, today they had a treat for Lizzi and I (more for her than me, I suspect). They invited us to the library for the lesson and when we walked in, we found tables covered in food and some of the boys and girls dressed in the traditional clothes of Ukraine. It was a surprise. They sang for us while we ate.

However, it all came at a price. One of the students asked if we could sing an American song for them. We did our best to decline, but they wanted to hear one. So we asked for a minute to think it over, hoping they’d forget. They didn’t. We settled on The Star-Spangled Banner because it was the only national song we knew all the words to. When we were done, I promised them that it was the last time they’d hear me sing.

Some of the girls wanted to speak with Lizzi a little more and asked if we could meet with them tonight. After tea with my landlady, we’re meeting the girls in the center.

All in all, the visit has been good thus far.

I’ve been looking forward to Victory Day for some time now because it means there would be a party/celebration in the city center. Celebrations in the city center mean one thing that’s otherwise hard to come by unless you make it yourself: shashlik. It’s basically marinated, grilled meat and it makes me salivate, without a doubt. I might question the number of celebrations, but I never question the access to shashlik. It’s delicious.

But more importantly, we had our own party yesterday. Kim leaves tomorrow, so we gathered at Jeramie’s place to say our goodbyes. Sahra, a student at Rose’s former school, made schawarma, Jeramie made carrot cake, and I threw in a pan of homemade lasagna.

The lasagna was a feat in itself, if I do say so. I can’t find lasagna noodles here so I was forced to make them. I also can’t find ricotta cheese here, so I had to find a substitute. I thought back to the days of soccer and track banquets in high school and realized that the chefs of Whitewater would use cottage cheese (and then smother it in mozzarella to cover for it). I thought, why not. I’m certain, now, that it turned out better than ever a track banquet could produce because of two reasons. First, the cottage cheese here is much drier and therefore didn’t create a soupy, sloppy mess. Second, I followed my mom’s recipe (with the obvious substitutions).

All in all, I done good.

The first came from the contact page. I had the first person ever send something through it. Not only that, it was a business inquiry. I was asked to do a sponsored post and to possibly host a banner/link back to a site. As I mentioned in Stupid Ugly Flashy Things, I really have no intention of having advertising on my website. If I want to make money from what I do here, it will be through my content, not the promotion of other content. You’re welcome.

Anyway, here’s the email I received (edited to avoid unnecessary promotion of the site):

Hi,

I’d like to inquire about doing a sponsored blog post – about 150-300 words that talks a little bit about fashion and links back to our site http://[a women's fashion site].com. We sell womens casual clothing in Berkeley and Los Angeles, Califonia and are looking for more exposure on http://sassyhacksaws.com.

Here’s a list of some blog post titles we’ve done in the past:
- What is Indie fashion?
- The Latest Styles In Vegan Purses
- Cute Indie Dress Styles For the Perfect Occassion
Our budget is around $15 for the post. Is this something you’d be open to?

Also we might be interested in a small banner ad if the price is right. Our budget is $40/year – something like this:
http://postimage.org/image/[link to a banner image]/

Let me know if you’d be open to either or both of these.

Also if you have some other sites just send them over and we might be interested in doing a sponsored post on there as well!

Regards,

Jeff

My response was as follows:

Jeff,

Thank you for your interest in a sponsored post on my website. I have looked into your offer and I feel I must decline. My reasons are as follows.

• From what I can tell, http://[a women's fashion site].com is women’s fashion. This is not a topic I have ever written about on my blog and feel that the content would be out of place. I’m more likely to write about men’s fashion.
• I cannot remember a time that I have written about fashion of any sort, and again I feel this would make the post out of place.
• Finally, I’m not in the business of sponsoring posts at this time. My website is for my own pleasure and to develop my writing voice.

Again, I thank you for your interest and I hope you have a good day.
Sincerely,
Danny Zawacki

I think I handled that well. I’ll let you know if there is any followup.

The second thing that came as a surprise was a sudden influx of traffic on Calvin Inspired Peanut Butter Dilemma. The post is three months old, for Pete’s sake, and it must be buried in the archives of my website. But there were about 30 hits more than usual on the post. Naturally, I had to investigate. As it turns out, someone posted something about peanut butter on Reddit and then someone posted a link to my post as a response. I think I’m being discovered.

If you want to check out the Reddit link, you can find it here. Just know, if you see it now, you’ll have seen it before I become the next big thing.

Not only was the food a complete success, we also walked away with a little extra. A man was tending to his garden near where we were grilling and he came over to us. I thought he was going to ask us to stop, but instead he gave me some fresh green onions and parsley from his garden. I offered him some chicken, but he declined.

I guess there’s really only one person around who minds when we grill and fortunately she hasn’t bothered us this year.

As usual, when I start looking for things like this, I got distracted. I cam across other scripts that I wanted to try to I ended up messing with those. The most interesting one was the first one I found and it promised to turn portraits into National Geographic looking shots. I installed it and let it run. It was a processor intensive script on my little netbook and took some time to process. Here is the original photo next to the processed:

I rather like the result. So then I took it to a decent photo I have of my dad, and here’s the result:

Also, not too bad. It’s inspired me to try to improve my digital photography and eventually write my own script, even if they’re basic (like the batch resize that I never ended up finding because I was too distracted).

We started by having some of Pat’s students explain the game and the rules in Russian. The presentation was just enough for comprehension but not too much to bore. A lot of the students didn’t follow everything from the presentation, but we told them we’d play and then it’d make sense.

After the presentation, we did some practice skills. We taught throwing, catching, running some simple plays. Some students picked it up faster than others but all seemed to enjoy it.

All in all, we played about four hours of football and now I’m beat. But the day isn’t over. Remember last year when we tried grilling, only to get grilled by an old woman wanting to know why we were cooking food, disturbing her peace? We’re going to try that again. Except this time, I’ve got burgers and a slightly new place that should prevent the same woman from having to smell our disgrace of a meal. Yeah, right.

How many of you out there knew that the person who repairs shoes is called a cobbler? Most of us know that a tailor mends and alters clothes. What about the guy who fixes pots, pans and other metal utensils? Did you know he was called a tinker? I did. Useless knowledge, for the win.

But, the question remains, why is this useless knowledge? When was the last time you had your shoes repaired? Isn’t it easier to buy a new pot or pan to replaced the old, gouged ones you use? Personally, I enjoy taking my clothes to the tailor because they come back looking nicer on me than when I brought them in.

The fact remains, I only know of one place in Wisconsin where I could find a cobbler and the shop looks rather rundown. I can picture the man sitting out on his bench, dirty apron on, hoping for customers. I don’t know of any tinkers but I could imagine them sitting near the cobblers, waiting for business. Why do we have to be such a throw-away society? They don’t make things like they used to, that’s part of it. But when it’s cheaper to get things repaired than buy new ones, why do we feel the urge to upgrade?

For at most, a tenth of the price of a new pair of shoes, I had the heel of my shoe glued and sewn back together. It also saved the time and agony of having to enter a shoe store and buy shoes using my sparse Russian. Plus, Ukrainian style is far pointier in the shoes than I’d prefer.

So, if you have an old pair of shoes you want to throw out due to a small tear in them or a scuff, do yourself a favor and save some money by taking them to a cobbler. While you’re at it, bring the cobbler a cobbler (peach is best) and take a photo of it for the awesomeness it would create.

P.S. I am aware this post has nothing to do with spies. Sorry.

Bert: A client left here unhappy yesterday because you have a little girl running everything.

Don: My department is fine. We just need more bodies but Lane won’t let us.

Bert: You’ve been on love leave. It’s amazing things are going as well as they are with as little as you are doing.

Don: It’s not your business.

Bert: This is my business.

I’m talking about this season of Mad Men (and Game of Thrones, but I’ll get to that in a minute). I’ve felt thus far that this season has lacked something that could put it on the level of the earlier seasons. I spent many dinners alone, watching YouTube videos of clips from the show and I think I’ve narrowed down why I’m dissatisfied. The show lacks Don, being Don.

I don’t care that Don is a new person now who seems to have sworn off cheating on his wife (there’s clearly still problems with Don and relationships). What’s missing is Don being the excellent salesman that he’s been in earlier seasons. We haven’t seen Don pitch anything with the force that he used to.

Remember last season when he threw the clients out of the boardroom because they didn’t like his bikini pitch?

Or way back when he told us that Lucky Strike cigarettes are simply, toasted?

And my personal favorite, the Kodak Carousel:

Get Don back in the boardroom and I’ll stop thinking that this season is ‘meh’.

On a related note, Game of Thrones is doing the same thing–they’re not sticking to their strengths. What are their strengths, you ask? The fact that season one stuck so closely to the book is what made it so damned fun to watch. This season seems to miss that point.

Take, for example, this week’s episode. There was a whole scene between Rob Stark and a nurse after a battle. While I certainly think Rob deserves a little more focus here and there, it wasn’t in the book. We never see Rob alone, we only see him through other characters. There are things we’re not really meant to know but to find out through the other characters. It bothers me. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

So, sadly, I don’t want Mad Men or Game of Thrones to change. I want them to stick to the shows I originally enjoyed. Television, get on that and by that I mean making me happy.

Back in high school, I took two semesters of photography. The first semester was 35mm and the second was digital. I loved 35mm far more than digital. Something about the process of it all appealed to me. It was a man-made work of art to me and digital was a machine-made.

35mm photography found me loving a camera. I bought an old Kodak Retina Reflex S, manufactured in the late fifties or early sixties. Its only fault after all these years was that the light meter didn’t work. I bought an external light meter even older than the camera itself. But I digress.  I loved the feeling of the camera. It had weight and it felt good. I loved the sound of the shutter at 1/30th of a second. There are times when I’ll take the camera out, no film loaded, and I’ll just snap away photos at 1/30th of a second just to hear the music of it. I fell in love with the process of turning the exposed film into negatives and the negatives into prints. I’m certain most of them weren’t any good, but the process was soothing.

So, while I was in Spain, I found myself snapping photo after photo to get the best shot. It got me thinking that it shouldn’t be like this. I miss the uncertainty of taking photos. Maybe it’s good, maybe not. I only have 36 exposures on this roll so I’ll hope for the best. It’s a game of chance, roulette, and often ends with craps.

Half the time since then, I’ve found myself debating whether I should write home and have my old Kodak brought to me with a half-dozen rolls of film. But in the end, I always decide against it. My excuses range from wanting to protect my camera (which is hardly something you should do if you want to get some good shots) to not being able to really develop and share my photos until I’m home anyway. However, my mind keeps going back to it.

So today, I started wondering about the possibility of things if I did switch from digital to 35mm again. How would I share my photos? Would I have better photos or would I just walk away thinking crap. The biggest thing for me was the sharing of photos. Why should I take pictures just for myself? If I see beauty in something, I might as well let other people try to see it too.

Since I’m about 5,000 miles away from the nearest Walmart, I can’t just roll up and check my exposure options. Half of me remembers there being an option to have film developed and to receive digital copies from that same film but I really don’t know. My mind makes things up, often. It got me wondering, what if I can’t get the digital copies of my photos? Would I actually spend the time to sit down and scan every photo I take just so I can share them? I doubt it. From my experience, traditional scanners take too long, and the results are rarely as high of quality as I’d like.

But then I thought about, searched for, and found this: Canon CanoScan 9000F Color Image Scanner. It’d allow me to load up ten negatives at a time to scan into the computer. I could archive and share a lot of photos this way. I could even steal my Mom and Dad’s old negatives and load them in there. Oh the possibilities. I could really make a dent in my dream of recent years to archive all my family’s photos. I could do it easily and quicker than I ever imagined. Would you?

I think I’ve found my next photo project. But when do I start? I’m torn between having my sister bring me my old Kodak and a few rolls of film and waiting until I get home to go nuts.

I want your thoughts on the camera. Should I have my sister bring it so I can load up a few rolls of film with images of Ukraine?

So, out with the old:

And in with the new:

I swear, there is a difference.

I think there’s something about the curves of the body that appeal. The attention to (or lack of) detail the current owners have in keeping their cars presentable. It speaks for a person. I love the smell of the old cars. They have a distinct smell you just can’t buy these days. Looking at the cars, I lament what has become of “style” these days. Where are my sharp edges? Where are the cars that scream POWER?

Anyway, enjoy these photos I took:

I did this last year and it makes me wonder why I did it this year. That’s early for me. But everyone else seemed to be doing it too, so I just went with it. Fortunately, Jeramie lives right across the street from the church so I didn’t have to make my usual twenty-minute trek to get there. We just had a sleepover.

Just like last year, the priest gave a brief mass (during which Jeramie and I both heard him say “milk and eggs” in Russian and we giggled because we didn’t really know why he said it, just like last year). Then he walked around the outside of the church with his entourage of incense guy, money collection guy, and guy holding a basin of holy water for him to repeatedly douse people with it. He blessed us, in essence. Just like last year, I was drenched.

Unlike last year, I was invited to Jeramie’s neighbors’ dacha (small house on a plot of land nearby where they grow and eat their vegetables) for Easter lunch. Jeramie and I made a pizza to bring (which is one of my families Easter traditions, or sometimes it’s calzone). There was a typical Ukrainian spread of food for a holiday. Jeramie’s neighbor tried starting the meal as Jeramie had taught her, by holding hands and saying a prayer but the others were not having it so we started the meal Ukrainian style, with a healthy shot of samagon (strong homemade vodka).

We didn’t get the memo, but apparently Cousin Nina wanted to make sure that I ate enough and didn’t get drunk (not sure where she got that idea from, honestly) and Jeramie was on duty to keep food on my plate. We laughed every time she was instructed to add some potatoes or salo (raw pig fat) to my plate. Eventually, Jeramie just started piling food on my plate for looks so when Cousin Nina looked over, she’d be happy. It didn’t work.

All in all, it was a great day (I forgot to mention that we went home and slept for a while after going to church in the wee hours of the morning). I’m happy I was included in the festivities.

While I was vacationing in Spain, I mysteriously broke my glasses while I was sleeping. I took them off when I returned from the bar, set them on top of my bag inside my locker the hostel provided, and went to sleep. When I opened my locker in the morning, I found the broken glasses. My guess is that they either slipped off my bag and were smushed against the locker, or they were caught in the hinge of the locker, causing them to snap. I doubt if I’ll ever know for sure.

Tradtional eye exams in America consist of the eye doctor putting some fancy glasses in front of my face and asking me which is better, one or two. He’ll flip back and forth between the two a couple of times but honestly, it’s not enough for me. When I’m looking at one, I can’t remember what two was like and vice versa. I don’t know which is better so I guess. I think this affects my prescription, if only a small amount.

In Ukraine, I sat in front of a machine, rested my chin on a small ledge and my forehead on another. Then the machine was lined up with my eye and I watched as a red barn in a field came in and out of focus. It took about two minutes for each eye and somehow it determined my prescription. It was easy and there was no anxiety over choosing which was better.

The last time I bought glasses, I opted for the cheapest, most generic black frames I could find. The frames alone cost $50 and then there were fees for the lenses. Today, I did the same thing, opted for the most generic frames I could find. The frames, along with the lenses cost 260 UAH (roughly $32.25). Other volunteers joked that they were going to stockpile on frames in Ukraine and then just get lenses as they needed new prescriptions when they’re back in America.

The best part of my day, following the realization of having to return to Kiev next week just to pick up my new glasses (a six-hour round-trip), was setting it up so the glasses could be delivered to me. We have our Meet Your Neighbor meeting next Thursday in Sumy, and my regional manager will be there heading it. Fortunately, she’ll be in the office the day my glasses are ready and will bring them with her to the meeting, saving me a day of travel. The only way it could have been better was if my glasses had never broken in the first place.

I took a trip with a couple friends to Spain. Eight days split between Barcelona, Seville, and Granada. Eight days a week is expensive. But I enjoyed it, for the most part. Instead of rewriting what I already wrote in one of my super-secret-newsletters, I’m just going to post some of the better photos. Deal?

Deal.

I took about 600 photos, so this really is only a small sample.

Okay, hate might be too strong of a word but finding the exact information I need and then interpreting the wording is no walk in the park. I feel like it’s the kind of thing people go and study for years before earning their degree in it.

Seeing as how my time is winding down here (in the next two months, the group that arrived before me will make their way back to the States making my group “The Old Guard,” if you will). It’s got me, once again, in the mind-frame of, “What am I going to do when I get back and what will I have to do that with?”

More specifically, I want to know how much money I’m making monthly and will come into my bank accounts when I get home. We are volunteers, but Peace Corps makes sure we have money to make up for the things we sold or will need when we get back to America after our service. They call this our “Readjustment Allowance.” After about twenty minutes of searching, I finally came across MS 223 Volunteer/Trainee Readjustment Allowance, which outlines how much money I make for different things. It’s paid in two lump sums at the end of service, which is nice because I’m not spending it while I’m here (could be the reason it’s called “Readjustment”).

Anyway, the wording still has me a little confused and it makes it unclear about how much money I’ll be getting. I’m almost dead set on one number but I can’t help but question it. Here’s the wording:

The Readjustment Allowance is set at $275 per month during a Volunteer’s first full tour of service. The Readjustment Allowance is set at $275 per month for Trainees. For Volunteers who extend their tour of service beyond 24 months from their oath date, and for Peace Corps Response Volunteers, the rate is $375 per month.

Since a “tour of service” is twenty-seven months (three months of training, twenty-four months of service), I would assume it means I’ll be given a total of $7,425 when I return. But it’s the part about the training that has me confused because we always hear things about trainees going home and what that actually means. Maybe I misheard, but it always sounded like trainees didn’t start accruing their readjustment allowance.

Either way, it’s a difference of $825. Not exactly a ton of money but it would be nice to have it. That $825 is $825 less of student loan debt I’ll have to figure out when I get home. If I get that $825 and then compound it with the money I have in a CD, that means I’ll only have somewhere around $6k in student loan debt to worry about. It’s all good, I plan on selling out the man when I get back and I’ll be a millionaire by the time I’m 30, but I’ll settle for half of that in cash. Either way, I like my prospects.

I had ~15 200UAH bills, ~25 100UAH bills, 60 50UAH bills and then whatever is left made up of 20UAH bills. I wanted to throw it all in the air and take pictures as it floated down over me. I wanted to spread it out in my hands and tell people I felt like a bootlegger. I wanted to do so many things, but I was at school.

I had a thought-provoking chat with one of the teachers at school today after our class decided they could collectively show up ten minutes late to class. I was quite furious with this partly because I was sitting in the classroom waiting for them (they’re notoriously late to English classes and their classroom where they spend their breaks is right next door), I even checked my watch to see what time the bell rang so I could mention it when they showed up late (11:47:21 AM). So there I sat and waited for them to trek less than twenty meters to the classroom. I heard them, outside the closed-door, discussing if they should enter. I turned and looked as one of them opened the door, stuck her head in, and then pulled out to close the door. She saw me.

Then I waited. A couple of minutes later, the English teacher in charge of the class shows up (she was running late to class). I explained to her what had happened and she went off to find them. They filed into the room, ten minutes late. Then, completely out of my usual character, I started scolding them for their behavior. They had excuses, but as far as I could tell, they didn’t match up.

The lesson proceeded with their heads hung low. Then, I got to do something I’ve wanted to try as a teacher but never had the opportunity. I held the students after class. They wasted my time, I explained, so I’ll waste theirs. It’s like what my teachers used to do if we disrupted class and wasted time (if I counted the minutes my Ukrainian students disrupted class some days, teachers would be complaining about their classes not showing up at all).

Then, when we let them go, I had the chat with the teacher which I found rather thought-provoking. She explained to me how it was a Ukrainian mentality (and asked if Americans had the same) to miss a class as a group to keep the class at the same level. One person suggested that they don’t enter the class, the class agrees and thus were late.

If anyone had suggested that to me back in school, I would have laughed at them and entered the room as I was supposed to. I was at school to learn. It’s the American mentality of the individual good and I was reading how things like that are holding American schools back, among other things. Is the Ukrainian mindset better? Maybe, but that doesn’t mean I agree with it. Even after a year and a half at this, I’m still not used to things I guess.

Turns out, the two girls are in the middle of reading the second book (A Clash of Kings). They started watching A Game of Thrones but didn’t like it, partly because it didn’t sync up with the book enough and partly because of all the sex scenes in it.

We had a chat about the books after class. I enjoyed it.

Later in the day, I was waiting for the bell to ring and was standing by the teacher’s desk in the front of the room. This was my lesson with the 10th form. All of a sudden, Rouslana rounds the doorway and clearly didn’t see me because she said:

“F–k my brain.”

Then seeing me, “Oi.”

I asked, “What did you say, Rouslana?”

“Nothing special.”

I just laughed. I mean, I probably should have scolded her or something, but I doubt it would have done much. American culture has spread and this is the effect. I could scold all day, but I’d guess it’d only reinforce how much fun the students can have saying the ‘forbidden’ words (the words that make learning a language fun).

Here’s a great picture of me with some of the 11th Form girls in the foreign languages department. They’re wearing the traditional school uniform (though most are missing the very poofy white hair ties, even the ones in the photo aren’t poofy enough) because they were getting their picture taken for official class photos. I happened to be in the library while they were taking photos for fun and they asked to take a few with me.

You may be familiar with my profile pictures. I haven’t had an actual photo in five years and my profile pictures have become personal works of art. If you aren’t already familiar, here they are:

The first one is the most recent and they go back in time from there. They’ve gotten much more and more intricate and time-consuming to create as the years go by. I wouldn’t have it any other way. In recent years, I’ve tried to resemble some work of art that speaks to me.

Now, since it’s nearing that time where I start planning my next profile photo, I’m trying to find the right inspiration. I have a couple of ideas in mind, but the execution of them I need to work out and I’m not sure than I can. That’s the reason I’m writing this post. I want suggestions for my next profile photo. Is there a great work of art that you think I should make my own? Is there something that speaks to you and it says “Danny Zawacki”? If there is, leave your suggestion in the comments and I’ll consider it.

“Books help us understand the soul of a country.”

-Anya, 9th Grade

In other news, today I talked to a student from a group I worked with all last year and she asked me to come back and teach their class. She said they miss having me as a teacher.

She wanted to show me this:

That’s right, the books we ordered for our grant came in today. Class sets of literature to use for home reading.

Granted, there are a few problems with the order (books missing and two sets being at too low of a level so we’ll have to return/exchange) it’s still nice to have something to hold for the work we’ve done. With any luck, we’ll have everything wrapped up in a month and at the latest, the end of school.

This inspired me to write a second book for every book I write. It will consist of my own interpretations of my writing. It will be marketed to explain things to readers and make sure I’m understood better and things won’t change as society changes and reads things differently. The only catch is that I’m just going to make every single thing up in my interpretations.

“She walked across the room and stroked his cheek.”

Guess what this will mean.

I’ll explain this passage as something like, “Clearly the stroke of the cheek represents the ever-looming fear of bear attacks. This can be seen in chapters three and four also where she holds the door for him and steals one of his fries off his plate, respectively. And it should be made clear that she certainly didn’t walk because she is a vet who lost her legs in the war. While this wasn’t expressly mentioned in the text, I figured you should have use the clues I pointed to in chapters 8, 11, and 43 (chapter forthcoming). In chapter eight, I mentioned that she slumped into a chair. Only amputees can slump in the way I suggested. In chapter 11 there is a glow about her, also not mentioned but implied, and this glow suggests a higher power aiding her as she brushes her hair. Chapter 43 will be published posthumously, as will the chapter 43 interpretations.”

Consider it a thank you to all the teachers and professors who made me do this kind of thing for grades. That ought to confuse the hell out of them.

Also, I have a problem. I’m starting to make my internet life too easy. I’ve reduced the majority of my internet activity to RSS feeds and I’ve imported all of them into Google Reader.

While this certainly makes my life easier and saves me a boatload of time because I’m not needlessly checking a bunch of websites all day, it also has left me confused and worried. My most visited pages in Chrome has started pulling up random websites I visit a couple of times a year. How am I supposed to deal with that?

Even two of those I’m considering adding the RSS feeds to Google Reader so I have even more time saved.

I need your help. Try and find websites that I will enjoy and I can’t import the RSS feeds into Google Reader so I have a most visited section that actually reflects my life.

This might be my favorite image I’ve seen representing Konotop (originally seen on a fridge magnet and I’ve recreated it from that). It’s of the Konotop Witch.

I really want to get this in a patch form to sew on my messenger bag, but I’m having trouble finding a place to do this. Does anyone know of any decent, fairly priced online shops where I can have this done? I’d greatly appreciate it if you left the info in the comments.

Then this:  

Finally this:  

Or you can keep going with this:  

And then this:  

You could keep going on and on but then I think the Dark Side starts to take hold.

I was excited until I started installing it. I’ve tried four times now and I can’t get it to work. When I was installing from inside Windows 7, it would hang at 72% completed. When I booted from the DVD and installed, it wouldn’t recognize my hard drive and I couldn’t even begin to install.

I have a hunch why it’s doing this, it might have to do with the extra OEM partition on the drive, but I’m not up to playing with it any more today.

I have to use an old hard drive because I don’t want to screw up the drive already in my laptop. I still have nine months of service left and if I screw something up now, it will make my life a pain in the ass while I wait to have access to my PC supplies.

To quench my thirst for installing a new operating system today, I decided to try out OpenELEC. I came across this a few months back and I want to use it on the HTPC I’ll build when I’m home later this year. I’ve used XBMC on my old XBOX and was quite pleased with this. OpenELEC is essentially XBMC without the base operation system. It boots fast and has a tiny footprint on a disk.

I installed it in almost no time and it worked perfectly. I was actually happier watching movies on it than in Windows 7 because my Windows install likes to start sucking system resources at random and it makes my video and audio all choppy. Not in OpenELEC. I’ve decided this is the perfect operation system for my HTPC (though I hope they expand the Blu-Ray support soon).

I might not be able to do everything I want to do with computers because I’m 5,000 miles away from home, but I certainly can do enough to keep myself satisfied.

Me: Your thoughts betray you, Internet. I feel the good in you, the conflict.
Internet: There is no conflict.
Me: You couldn’t bring yourself to kill me before and I don’t believe you’ll destroy me now.
Internet: You underestimate the power of the Internet. If you will not fight, then you will meet your destiny.

This conversation happened because of this link:
UPDATED X 6: YOU’RE RUINING NATHAN FILLION FOR ME, NATHAN FILLION. Alternate title: But I forgive you.

Photo borrowed from The Bloggess.

Last night I finally finished A Dance with Dragons, the fifth and most current book in The Song of Ice and Fire series. For those of you unaware, these are massive books. Each one weighs in around 1,000 pages.

But seriously, George, why are you always hating on the Starks? They seem to be the only family in your twisted, f—ed up world that has any amount of honor. Are you trying to say that honor doesn’t matter when you’re surrounded by honor-less men? Five books in and already you’ve killed four of them. You’ve got a lot of work to do in the last two books if you’re going to kill off the remaining four.

And, on a slightly unrelated note, is it just me or does the young Aegon remind anyone of Arthur? Taken and hidden as a baby to protect him and the realm. Raised by a man trusted by the king to be fit to rule. He’s done manual labor, lived in fear, and everything else he needs to know to rule. He knows it’s his duty to rule, not his right. I just want to know who’s going to give him the round table.

“I want to revise before I read. (hushed voice) Because I did not learn it.”

-Vika (9th Grade)