Or even every other day. That’s not to say nothing’s been going on, though. I’ve just been working on other things, like, well…finding a job, which by the way, is not going so well. But more on that later.

Taking my cue from old friend dotk over yonder on the East Coast, I’m gonna hit ya’ll up with a mega-update post. True dat, yo.

The job search. Oh, the job search. Hopefully something turns up in about nine weeks or so, because I don’t know how unemployment extensions work. I’m still looking, every day and have even given up the job site emails in favor of that crazy new-fangled RSS. I’ve gone pretty ape-shit over RSS, but that’s not for this part of the mega-update. A friend of mine from the bookclub I belong to gave me a tip about an employment agency a couple weeks ago and yesterday I had an appointment. The online testing I had to complete prior to the appointment kind of pissed me off: for the Word and Excel portions of the testing, I was unable to use keyboard shortcuts that I know work because I’ve been using them for fifteen years. Oh, that made me so mad that for those questions, I didn’t even fuck around with going through the menus. I just skipped them altogether. My emm was a bit concerned about it, but I told her my scores would be high enough for it to be apparent I knew what I was doing. I was given my results yesterday and am pleased with them overall, although I know both would have been closer to 100% had those goddamn shortcuts worked the way they’ve always worked in the past. I might be all about open source, but come on! I cut my teeth on Microsoft products. The typing test results shocked me so badly that I asked the woman with whom I was meeting if she was certain that was accurate. I do not type 62 WPM and I never have. I think maybe 50 WPM was my previous high score. The best part about the testing was this: although the testing website said a Mac could be used, upon scrolling down a bit further, I was informed the test was only available on Windows machines. Wha…? Whatever. I had to go to 101 and use the emm’s laptop!

This isn’t a well-publicized bit of intel, but I am getting ready to go out of town in a couple of days for a week. Star Tattoo Girl turns three today and since the emm and I were not able to attend last weekend’s birthday party, we thought visiting afterwards would be grand. I talked to Birthday Star just a little while ago and she is very excited about seeing Grammy and Auntie Mickey, but who’s more excited out of the lot of us, I’m not sure. It’s probably a tie. I still remember so clearly three years ago when the sister called the factory to tell me about the baby (no one knew what Smudge would be prior to birth), the (wo) answered the phone before I’d even had a chance to process it had rung and from around the corner, called to the brand new Auntie Mickey to talk to the sister. Those types of things I miss about the (wo). I’ve been giving a lot of thought to sending her an email, and from what Betty told me, the (wo)’s been thinking the same thing, but just doesn’t know what to say. Neither do I, naturally, even almost three months later, so perhaps it’s just better if I let it go and walk away totally.

The second part to Sarah Jane Smith - Fashionista Fever! has been written and posted here, but is waiting in the wings for some final edits to come from Wes at scary-crayon. This installment is much more image intensive than the first and although the opportunities to totally dis Sarah Jane regarding her clothing were not as numerous this time around, I managed to write about a thousand more words, give or take. It’s still snarky, though; I wrote to a friend of mine in New York and told her about it, saying, “…for all its snarkiness, I hope a sense of my absolute adoration of (Sarah Jane) comes through, too.” And I’ve utilized Lightbox this time around, since I really like the way it looks on other websites

More news on the Doctor Who front: I have officially bought my first Doctor Who toy - Dalek Sec! I don’t count the sonic screwdriver as a toy, per se, since not only can I scare the straights when I press the buttons and it makes noise, but I can also write notes to the straights and leave them on their car windows. In regular ink or invisible ink! I really hope he arrives before I leave so I can play with him on the airplane. If there were any air marshalls to be found on my upcoming flight, what are the chances they may be fans of Doctor Who and wouldn’t taser me into submission if I started saying, “EXTERMINATE! WE ARE THE SUPERIOR BEINGS!” in my very best Dalek voice?

And even more news, via a few different sources: The Brigadier will be appearing on The Sarah Jane Adventures next season. YES! I can’t even express how excited I was to read this and am now waiting even more impatiently than before for the new episodes.

I’m not sure when it happened or why, but I totally heart the Brigadier. And I fer realz heart Harry even more.

Around the villa, there’s not too much to report at all. The toy box project I was so stoked about a few months ago has pretty much stalled for the time being. Right now, it’s acting as my dining room table/workbench/desk away from the TARDIScloset and because it’s in such sorry shape, I don’t feel badly when I nick it with a box cutter or my water glass drips on it. I suspect that will all change once I get it gussied up, so I’m really pulling back on that right now. I made a lightbox this morning just because. It’s certainly nothing fancy and I still need background paper for it, but all in all, it came out quite well. I’m very happy with it and as soon as I get Dalek Sec, I’m going to give it a try.

strange cousin susan continues to be tweaked; I updated to Wordpress 2.6 just this afternoon, after backing up the files and the databases with a handy little plugin I found, since the directions found here about database back up might have been written in Greek for all I was able to understand until the plugin saved my bacon, so to speak. I’ve added an RSS feed and found a random image generator so I can showcase the collection of lady pictures my friend Anneke gives me trouble about. I’ve also finally gotten a PGP key, although it was generated from GPG, since that’s free and from what I can tell, the same thing. Searching for my public key on a few different key servers turned up some old keys I’d forgotten about, not to mention a couple on Mysterious Stevenson. It’s hard to believe it’s been almost eleven years since then.

I’ve realized how painfully long this post has become, so I’m going to hold off on the recent trials and tribulations with various open source programs, not to mention the overall love affair I’m still carrying on with it, despite those disappointments.