Ein Komma an der falschen Stelle kann viel anrichten.

(tell me about it)

so alas, this post is NOT on my shiny new iMac (i have not had a chance to pick up my check, plus verizon is still screwing me over on the internet in my house) but my macbook is in the mail so that's a start, right?

it's a time of beginnings and endings. tomorrow is my last day at my temp job and the first day of orientation at peabody. those, in themselves, are two very interesting things. all of a sudden, the streets of mount vernon are alive with peabody students (and my friends) like they had been they're all along. i'm still nursing a grudge (against no one in particular) about being alone all summer so i'll just sit on my hands like a five year old until someone gives me a call. it's pathetic, i know. but peabody itself is all a bustle with activity which is great...well until wednesday.

the beginning of large ensemble auditions. i have decided that i just can't care the way i did before, which really shouldn't be anything new because this is how i ALWAYS get. i was so worried about haffner and hyped up that i was making myself crazy. i had to sit myself down and say "you are not the only one who's going to have trouble with the mozart. play it as cleanly as you can and just make sure the other excerpts are rock solid." i can't do any more than that. and if that doesn't get me into PSO then what(the fuck)ever. i've been making myself consciously nervous to see what kind of mistakes i would make under pressure. it's eye-opening. a lot of work.

but yeah, who looks forward to that?

as word spreads about me finishing my final days, people are saying their goodbyes which really took me be surprise. i mean i've been here for a month but i didn't think people were going to miss me. well, i'm going to miss them, too. i don't know if i'm surprised by that, either.

i've got a lot on my mind, as usual. that's how you can tell the fall has started.

our anxieties about life and the passing of time and our emotional life … love lost.

so just an update on the adapter situation from yesterday...so my adapter shorted out for like five minutes. so now i have an adapter that works and another on the way. i couldn't be more furious. but we have to look at the upsides, right? and the upside is, this adapter is on the way out and as soon as this one comes, i'm going to stop using this flimsy apple adapter. my god, you'd think they'd know better.

my teacher called me today from her new house upstate. she had been meaning to call me all week to say thank you for the card i wrote her. she told me how incredibly sweet it was and that it moved her. and she read it out loud to her husband who was also moved. of course, i got choked up, as is my way. i'm ridiculously sentimental and i have a tendency to make adults cry (which only leads to me crying and it's a whole vicious cycle) so this is par for the course for me. apparently, people don't thank her --- at all. that surprised me. everyone i talk to loves her. but whatever to them, i definitely let her know how much of an impact she's had on me over the past four years. so of course after we talked and she talked about keeping in touch, i let out this faux cry/whine to which she laughed. she sounded a little sad, though. but she doesn't have time to be sad, she's too busy.

so yes, i changed the layout, color-wise. it was getting a little too dark for me and i usually end up gravitating towards white for my blogs. greater color palette, i suppose. i really should change the song (not that i don't love v/e's recording of the saint-saens), to what i don't know. and the screenshot isn't even right. yikes.

the floor lay paved with broken hearts

you know, apple, i'm really not happy with you right now. yes, the iPhone came out today, we are all aware. but playing the commercials every 30 seconds does not make me any more able to buy it than before. but that's not even why i'm angry. i'm angry because my notebook adapter just shorted out and the replacement costs $80! i'm tired of giving you my money on replacement stuff. thank god there are non apple brands for this sort of thing so i'm buying one that's more than half of yours. if stuff like this keeps adding up...

oh yeah, another thing. itunes store? don't offer only some of the tracks from an album and not all. i went to buy the tracks i was missing from britten's the turn of the screw and i was missing the last track from disc one, the one i had been LONGING to get (oh ian bostridge, even the reviews talk about how seductive you are --- even if in this case it's a thinly veiled description of someone's homosexual overtures towards boys wrapped up in james' guise of evil from beyond the grave) and i have to buy the whole album to get that track. are you kidding me? i'm on the fence about all of this.

moving away from the corporate, i've been talking a lot to people about (them) moving out of new york. too many blackouts. not enough trees. it does me good, partly because i think i'm ready to go. i think as you become an adult, the more stability you crave. i refuse to believe that new york can ever be stable. and that's not a bad thing, just my opinion. good thing north carolina is always waiting for me.

and yes, there are other reasons to leave new york. i'm reminded of this every single day. i went out to the island last night and had an encounter with a beautiful man. of course that did not come to fruition in any way imaginable. it just wasn't possible. i was in bay shore and i wasn't white, blonde and wearing a skirt. i wasn't meant to be.

okay, i should shut off my computer before it completely dies on me.

what have you done for me lately?

so my alarm didn't go off this morning (or i didn't hear it) and i was sleeping, too busy dreaming about the release of leopard os 10.5 (and someone giving me an 17" apple cinema display for free) and when i woke up and went immediately to macthemes and macrumors, i realized that i've been spending too much time on the forums talking to developers and programmers.

i know i've mentioned about being a nerd here --- i don't think people really understand how deep it goes. i was out with some of my friends the other day and i was talking about way back in the day when my first computer was a tandy and i was typing out all of this dos stuff on a black screen. what a childhood.

there's nothing like learning about human nature and the state of your society as a whole by being in school, namely a political science class. and not because of what's being taught but because of what's coming out of people's mouth. i should learn to stop being so surprised at what people say. sometimes i worry. sometimes i'm amazed at the things that i don't know (which of course saddens me), i'm never amazed at what other's don't know (which also saddens me) and i mean i guess that's what college is for blah blah blah but i really wonder.

going back to the beginning of this post for a hot sec, i got my graduation present --- a new battery for my laptop. i know that sounds silly but it's making my life so much easier right now i can't even tell you. and i'm watching free stuff hoping that maybe just once in my life i could get some free stuff. maybe that's what my dream was for! i'll update you on that one.

in other very random not-tech news, the real world (mtv not the actual real world) is ridiculous. i used to be an overly dramatic person, like to the point of sheer mania. thanks to experience and some people with a knack for tough love (and being jackasses) i grew out of it. to think that people could be that dramatic is beyond words to me, like serious. how do people make it through life acting in such a way? oh yeah, i guess by being on tv.

and i would have no problem having dinner with an ex. it shows a certain level of maturity. and though i hate to admit it, my exes are all pretty good good guys...

those of you who know how i talk and my sense of humor will understand that immediately. and for those who don't, i'm being serious, just with a smile on my face.

you're seriously blowing my mind right now.

i have one word for you: iPhone.


it's like all of my dreams coming true --- sex, ponies, stardust and ice cream. now i am anxiously waiting the upload of the Macworld keynote address from yesterday on apple's website. i mean, i went to the website looking for the release date of leopard and instead this is what i find (what a happy surprise) so i signed up to get more information and all i can say is this --- as soon as it's released and i find out how much it is, i am switching from sprint to cingular and using all of my money to buy this phone. EDIT: it is $499 with a 2-year contract at cingular. i'll have to think about this, but i have till june. it's so so so tempting.

i suggest you all go and check out the specs here, it will blow your mind i guarantee it. (god, the nerdiness never ends, does it)

your trip hasn't been very computer-friendly, has it?

there are upsides to having OCD. okay, maybe not. but one of my most harmless and most fun obsessions are organizational things through the way of technology. school does not start for another month and yet, i'm up till 3 in the morning finding new things to put on my baby (PowerBook G4 Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.8 1.5 GHz PowerPC G4 512 MB) to make learning easy.

so a couple of the new faves:
Schoolhouse: an assignment manager with GPA calculator and customizable charts with a beautiful interface (i'm all about a beautiful interface)

gDisk: this has so much potential (for some reason, i can't figure parts of it out) but if you have a gmail account you can use it as a hard drive and store files there. for someone who uses multiple computers that are not mine (that's right, work computer and ACSM media lab --- i'm talking to you), it's great.

there are others, but i'm not going to bore you. onto the screenshots!
here's the dirty:[theme: "somatic by david lanham; programs on screen: Finder, MacFun Sudoku widget, Adium; dock (from l to r): finder, dashboard, system pref, stattoo, mail, adium, firefox, gDisk, iTunes, quicktime, VLC, acquisition, iCal, schoolhouse, microsoft word, journler, appzapper, snap n' drag, preview; menubar (from l to r): virtuedesktops, adium, weatherdock2, growltunes, menuet, growl, quicksilver, bluetooth]

and the clean:
[desktop picture: lacoste stripes by black diamond studio]

well that's my nerdy post for the day. i'm sure there will be more. ;)