julad

Hi to anybody still following me on LiveJournal, and a heads up: I'm about to disable Dreamwidth to LiveJournal cross-posting, so no new posts will appear here. The reason is that I'm mainly being quiet on Tumblr rather than Dreamwidth now, and I don't want to maintain three things any more.

Here's me if you want to follow on DW: julad. And on tumblr: http://julad.tumblr.com

If I had you able to see locked posts here and you don't see the same locked posts there, let me know (and do me a favour and tell me who you are on LJ&DW because I just have no freaking idea what people's names are any more).

Oh god I'm doing it. To be edited once I decide what on earth I'm actually doing.

OK, details under the cut: ( Nirvana in Fire, Sense8, Faking It, Obernewtyn Chronicles, Miss Fisher...Collapse )

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

OMG, my last DW post was for last new year's day. /o\ And it's not like I posted much to tumblr either, but I did post more than I thought. I was more pissed off at Teen Wolf than I realised, apparently. But I also still find this as funny and awful as I did when I put it together.

Anyway, Happy New Year to all. I've been enjoying your posting even if I've been quiet.

( rambling about fannish prime time, and time, and 2014, and 2015Collapse )

All the best for your own 2015, whatever you want it to contain!

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

I hope everybody has had a good holidays (or a tolerable holidays, if your family is like that), and wish you a happy, productive, exciting, rewarding or other-desired-attribute new year.

It's predicted to be 41C here today (106F) and at 10am it's already 35 (95). And I have so. much. freaking. housework that I have to do today. This is going to be gross.

My New Years Stuff this year is pretty straightforward. All I planned for 2013 was renovating and moving in to my new place, and then relaxing the rest of the year, with no other drama. The renovating and moving was, of course, about five months of stress and bad sleep, but it got done, and I got to take it easy the rest of the year. The only non-relaxing thing I did was change jobs, but that was done for the sake of stress minimisation - there was a project trainwreck coming at the old job, and I elected to mix my metaphors and leave the sinking ship.

This year I also want a low-drama year, and one that includes more fannish interaction! Wouldn't that be a novelty! My resolutions this year are:

- finish and post at least one unfinished story
- get all my stories into A03
- half my plate is always vegetables

That's it. 2014, sorted. (Famous last words, I know. :P)

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

I know, I know, I'm the slowest person in the universe to move their stuff to the archive. But I've done two fandoms: The Sentinel and Numb3rs. Up next: Smallville and Due South.

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

Many, many years ago, I officially resigned as my parents' tech support. I don't mind doing tech support per se, but I got so fed up with them ignoring my advice and then expecting me to deal with the consequences of ignoring my advice, I kind of snapped. It worked to a small extent - they now listen to me about 10% of the time and say "please" and "thank you" when the other 90% goes wrong.

Four hours this evening was spent on trying to locate my dad's lost iPhone, the day before they go overseas for a month. Two hours was travel, two hours was trying various stuff on their computer, and on mine when theirs didn't work properly. I couldn't locate the phone online, but since I hadn't set up the iPhone-finding-stuff on Dad's iPhone (which I had set up, of course, because it was my old phone), I probably only have myself to blame. I am not to blame for the fact that it took more than an hour to track down all the passwords to all their accounts and unravel the thread of accounts back to their iCloud account in order to finally log in and verify that nope, iCloud did not know anything about the whereabouts of any iPhone.

So then I said to my parents, "how about I set up a thing for you where all your passwords are saved in one place and you just need to remember one master password to unlock it, instead of your current strategy of using the same few passwords for everything and writing them down on scraps of paper that float around your house so that they are both completely insecure and completely unfindable in a crisis." And they're like, "Nooo, that sounds horrid. We don't want anything like that and will refuse to use it."

On the upside, I'm feeling incredibly motivated to have kids of my own, so that they can look after all my technology when I get old. I feel entitled.

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

So I should probably post about pretty much the only fannish show I've managed to watch all year, which is Teen Wolf. I've been half hating it and half loving it and mostly not knowing what to think about it and reading a lot of fic. As you do, for 90% of fannish TV shows. I probably didn't need that whole sentence, in fact. It practically goes without saying.

I'll eat most of the shippy meals at the very shippy buffet over there, but it's very fertile OT3 land. Scott/Allison/Isaac - yup. After the last couple of eps of 3A, I also want an OT3 of the parents - Melissa McCall, Chris Argent and Sheriff Stilinski. I think Melissa should get ALL the hot dads. Also, how awesome would it be when they pool their knowledge and put together the whole picture of what's been happening the last few years and then go off at their progeny as one outraged threesome-tastic parental unit. And also how much Scott, Allison and Stiles would not be able to handle it. And how Scott's dad reacts when he finds out. Beautiful.

The other OT3 I would like is Stiles/Derek/Lydia. I think Lydia needs two men to keep up with her, and to entertain each other when she has more important things to do than deal with men. The problem is, I can't see how it happens. I can see the Stiles/Lydia and the Stiles/Derek, but I feel like Derek needs to do several years of levelling up as both a werewolf and a human being before Lydia would consider him worth her time.

But I want a way to get there because I want a scene where Lydia and Derek have been tormenting Stiles for hours, and finally they say to him, "which one of us do you want to blow you?" And Stiles is desperate and incoherent and says "Derek! Derek! Please!"

And Lydia's taken aback - "Oh. I see," she says, very icy. And Stiles is like, "Lydia, you are everything I've ever wanted in a woman but Derek has werewolf strength in his mouth." And Lydia thinks about this for half a second and then waves a hand and says, "True. Continue."

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

Aaugh, so I didn't even make it to day two of ten posts in ten days. But I did try! I got home stupidly late last night after going to see the Basics at 7pm, and they were so good that I had to buy a ticket for the 11pm show.

This is The Basics:



So after getting home at 1am I tried to post but there was a Internet Outage! And I started writing a post but couldn't make links which drove me crazy so I belatedly did the sensible thing and went to sleep.

Today's Yesterday's content: what are people using to post to Dreamwidth these days?

I used iJournal for a long time, but it doesn't look like it's been maintained for years. I just downloaded a trial of MarsEdit which has many fine qualities, but apparently not user links and cut text, which sucks because I never remember the code for those.

I used to have an iPhone app but it's disappeared, possibly due to neglect. And there doesn't seem to be a Dreamwidth-specific iPhone app - they all seem LiveJournal-centric, and I find LiveJournal scary and strange these days.

Tips and suggestions would be very nice!

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

Hi! I'm a bit late to the conversation renewal party, but I've had a chaotic couple of weeks - helping sister pack up and move interstate, my own birthday, family birthdays, $800 hot water system dramas (*cry*), seemingly endless car problems, and a run of medical appointments.

But that's finally settling down, so I can probably spend some time doing this internet thingy that I used to do.

I have about ten posts backed up in my head, which makes astolat's Ten in Ten challenge a bit timely. It's not stories, but I'll try to do ten posts in ten days, and see where that gets me.

Today's actual content:

( Persuasive technology, behaviour change, new habitsCollapse )

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

emerging briefly from the The Cave of RL to wish a happy birthday to the birthday-wishing-est of them all, frausorge  This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

I HAS A INTERNET!!

omg omg omg a real connection for the first time in weeks! pages are loading! i can play videos! i can download music! i can see animated gifs! wow, some of those people in the new shows are actually quite pretty when the pictures display!

so, anyway. hi! I probably missed some stuff. I might update eventually, but first, skip=20000000000000 here I come.

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

I've been trying to be a good financial girl the last few months, because I really needed to get my shit together about saving for buying my own home and then, you know, paying a mortgage for the next thirty thousand years. In aid of this mighty quest, I've ended up switching to some budgeting software called You Need A Budget (YNAB). If budgeting and/or budgeting tools are relevant to your interests, please allow me to tell you all about it. ( I wrote half of this down just to get my thoughts straight in my own head, but I figured I might as well share it with anybody else who cares.Collapse )

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

So. I had an awesome trip the US with kaneko, which I will probably post about eventually. While I was there, cesperanza did her best to pimp me into Person of Interest. She wasn't really successful (sorry Ces!) but I feel compelled to demonstrate how one could pimp me into Person of Interest, because, having been laid up with the flu and watching another dozen episodes, she was clearly emphasising all the wrong things.

( image heavy but not hugely spoileryCollapse )

And that's how I'd pimp Person of Interest if I was going to pimp it. :)

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

I love this font, and it comes with an interesting article for both typography geeks and connoisseurs of transformative works:

This is the story of the creation of a new font, Avería: the average of all the fonts on my computer.

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

I am on holidays on the NSW north coast with many other lovely fangirls. I've also very cleverly gotten horribly sick for three days and then, after finally getting over that, breaking my toe this morning. So I'm sitting on the couch with my foot elevated and iced, and trying to get some long overdue LJ posts written.

Post the first: things I keep meaning to recommend and never get around to it.

( Four software applications and one bank...Collapse )

Finally, a very quick and heartfelt anti-rec: just say no to Vodafone. For the love of all that is holy, just say no. I went there last year, and then I spent two months and a complaint to the telecommunications ombudsman getting out of there. And then my sister did the same thing. Just don't do it, mmkay?

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

I mentioned a while back that starting to do meditation was the most unexpected thing that happened for me last year. I've been meaning to do a post about it, but took longer than I thought, because I found it quite difficult to put this stuff into words. Finally I've got something down, though, so here goes.

( The backstoryCollapse )

( The benefits: More amiable five-year-olds; Less mental friction; Obvious thing is obvious.Collapse )

( What didn't changeCollapse )

( Yoga and meditationCollapse )

( Future plansCollapse )

I am clearly an absolute beginner at this. It's almost daunting - it's so obvious that I only know a drop in the ocean of this stuff. But that's okay. The good thing is, I really like what I've done so far and I feel very sure of the benefits. Even if all I do for the rest of my life is a daily ten minutes of watching my breath, I think it has already demonstrated that it's worth doing.

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

A few drive-by notes while I try to find time to post something substantial:

1. OMG OMG White Collar was awesome yay!

2. It probably won't have escaped your noticed that the Candadian Shack thing is on again. I haven't written a new one, but I did put up my old ones on the archive: http://archiveofourown.org/users/julad (The remainder of my stories will eventually, one day, at some point, follow.)

3. A huge thank you to everyone who gave me advice in October on the stupid $800 hospital bill saga. I went after both the hospital and Medibank using the advice I got, and eventually the hospital halved the bill and Medibank covered the remaining half. It all got finalised yesterday.

The advice and knowledge that gets shared in this space is so valuable, but you can't often put a dollar value on it. Well, this time I can: $818.75. Thank you again and again, people.

4. I finally bought a slow cooker. I've gone nuts filling the freezer with shredded beef and shredded chicken and massaman beef and green chicken curry, but now I'm running out of inspiration. Any recommendations for books or websites? It really is about inspiration for me - I rarely follow an actual recipe when I make anything - so I'm especially looking for beautiful pictures, interesting ideas, stuff that makes you go "wow, I want to make that!"

5. So there's this project that I used to work on, and the project manager (who is awesome) is leaving, and I just found out who they appointed in her place. This guy is a freaking idiot. He's one of those guys that runs around spouting lots of ideas that are completely fucking out of touch with reality, and then people he talks to come to people like me because they want me to implement an idea that this guy had, and people like me have to explain that no, that isn't actually technically feasible, and that actually if you think a bit more about it, it couldn't work how he says it will anyway. This guy used to get paid the same as me, and he was largely useless at what he did then. He's now got a huge leap up the corporate ladder and about 25K more a year to manage a very costly and complex project that he is completely and utterly unequipped to handle. He has no expertise in the subject matter. He has massively insufficient project management experience for a project of this size and scope. And this guy is really obviously an ideas guy, but this is not a project in the ideas stage; it's a project in the delivery stage. I'm not sure this guy delivered anything more difficult than a pizza in the entire time I worked with him. It's absurd that this guy got appointed.

But that isn't my point. This is my point: If I'd still worked at that place, I would never have applied for that project manager role, even though I had experience on that specific project, I had delivered some fairly big projects myself, I had relevant skills and expertise, and so on. I wouldn't have applied because I would have assumed I wouldn't get it. I would have assumed that I didn't have enough qualifications and experience for a project that daunting. I would have assumed that it was too big of a step up for me.

And so here's what I've learned: you might as well apply for that job that is too big of a leap for you, because actually, you never know what kind of ignorant, ill-equipped fucking fool is going to put himself forward for it. And you know what? You might not be ready, it might be a stretch, you might have to do some fast talking about how you're right for the job, but for fuck's sake: you would be a way fucking better option than that dude.

That is all.

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

At the last minute, in a strange fit of "why the hell not," I offered to write Malcolm in the Middle for Yuletide.  Then I had a heart attack when I actually matched on it, because OMG, seven seasons, a dozen primary characters, and more vicious, hilarious social commentary than you can poke a sharp, possibly flaming, stick at.  But then in the end I actually had a lot of fun writing it.  Because duh, it's Malcolm in the Middle.  How could you not have fun with those characters?

Life is a test - futurefic, Malcolm, Reese, Dewey. Written for winning hearts for Yuletide 2011.

Thanks to kaneko and astolat for beta.  All mistakes and non-baby-saving my own.  ;)
This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

OMG, hello The Internet! It is so nice to see you after four days apart. It's felt like quite a lot longer.

I've just spent the whole Christmas long weekend at my parents' place at the coast, with the siblings and the sibling-offsprings, and without the internet or TV or even, a lot of the time, phone reception. I loaded my yuletide story by holding my phone up to the window and waving it around slowly, like a person dowsing for water, except I was dowsing for that tiny patch of 3G reception that would let me load a web page without it timing out.

Yeah, I looked ridiculous, and my arm hurt, but it was worth it: I got At Heart, a Shelter (2007) story. It's a glimpse into the post-movie future of Shaun, Zack, Cody and Gabe, and gets the characters spot on, and brings back the beauty of the movie for me. A big thank you to my author, and I wait excitedly for the reveal. :D

If you haven't seen Shelter, it is most enjoyable: a surf/skate-flavoured take on an intertwined m/m relationship and family drama. It's done with a laidback style, a good sense of humour, likeable characters, is not always predictable, and for me it does a great job of laying out its more serious subject matter without getting weighed down by it. Trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKsCvcvoZcE (and then once you've seen the movie you can read the story!)

Christmas was fun overall, but my head is still echoing with the shrieks of far too many 20-month-olds for one small house. Most of the time they were beautiful and adorable and hilarious, and they were just old enough this year to be delighted by the tree and the lights and the presents, but oh my god, they were full-on to keep up with, and when they were bad they were horrid. There were six of us and three of them, but I still feel like I've worked a double shift for four days. (I suppose it wasn't really the kids, it was also, you know, Christmas, and all the shopping and cooking and cleaning and organising and everything, but somehow it feels like the kids are to blame for the tiredness. Possibly because they had us up at 4.30 most mornings.)

I have really big plans now to sleep off the rest of the afternoon, and spend a beautiful day tomorrow reading yuletide stories and watching shows and generally being a giant lazy ass, which is going to be awesome.

Happy holiday season to everybody! I hope it has gone well so far and continues well into the New Year. :)

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).

Having taken three days to make up my mind and submitting at the last possible second, I'm now running off to work! I will come back and edit tonight with details!

( ETA: Here we go with Suits, Bring It On and Shelter...Collapse )

That is all, I think. Thank you so much in advance, lovely author, and good luck!!

This entry was originally posted at dreamwidth ( comments).