dear blog.

"it's a butterfly. or maybe a fella in glasses... hey everybody, hold on a second... i know, i know, it'll only take a second. come check this out. it's pretty cool."

dear blog.
how are you? hope things are going well.
it's interesting. sometimes i wonder who's reading you, and imagine people in far off lands wondering what an american psychology student does with his time. it's pretty exciting. maybe a bit frightening. maybe you've a reader who's a friendly herb doctor in the southwestern united states reading about my new album. perhaps another is a small pakistani boy from islamabad wondering about what i asked santa for christmas (and let the record show, you really did have a hit from islamabad reading your "dear santa" post). maybe a swedish hacker who's ip address is traced to singapore, but who is really in ireland. or perhaps another psychology student in russia, comparing his own blog to you and thinking his is much better. if he's right, i apologize.

at any rate, i'm glad we can see at least where in the world people are that are reading via the geo-traffic link on the right side of the screen, even if we can't see who it is. then again, if i knew who it was, it may weird me out... maybe that's for the best. either way, it's good fun.

well blog, need to finish a paper for psychology now. but i just wanted to write and say hi. hope all is well. i'll do what i can to get you some new readers, but i think we've already a few all stars in our fanbase. see you next later!

--the little lund that writes you.

when the bee stings.

sometimes we all just need a good pick me up. .we need something that will make us feel better. sometimes we need a few of our favorite things. like raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens, and julie andrews.

forgive the youtube slide show format, but it's the best i could do. take a listen. you'll feel better even if you already feel great.



and for you more ambitious types--no need to be satisfied with watching.

and taking a lead from julie, i'll now be listing some of my favorite things. and remember, these are a few of my favorite things, not all of them. in no particular order:

*jonathan coulton*

a wonderfully lighthearted musician i recently discovered and have been enjoying ever since. this link will give you a good list of his stuff on youtube. give it a listen.

*grilled cheese*

need i say more? i think not. it's the best of a bowling alley and a sandwich thrown in the frying pan til golden brown and ready to make me jolly. double cool points when using the sandwich cutting device i received from my sister esa. it turns a one grilled cheese into two dinosaurs made of grilled cheese (as seen above).

*mark williams*

suffice it to say that if you don't know him, you wish you did. if you do know him, you know what i mean. and yes, the photo is of the aforementioned paper-mermaid burning.

*surf ninjas*

how can you not have this movie on your list? it's one of virtually everyone's favorite things. kwansu!

*human anatomy*

yes, it's going to devour me this fall, but as a subject it can't be beaten. it's always crazy when you look at your text book and then look at your forearm and see the same thing. just dissected. way too cool. chemistry would probably be the same if we could readily see on the molecular level. it's also cool that my body works. that's included in this one.

*robots*

and anything that has to do with them. androids are not included in this. nor are cyborgs. and on a side note, i realize that this is sloppier than most of my posts. cry about it. i did.

*mario... and luigi.*

most anything involving these two is bound to be good. and really, the film is what sort of spoils things here, so most any game is a safe bet. the funny part is that we all look back and slam on super mario bros the movie, yet at the time, we all loved it. and some of us saw it more than once. more than three times, actually. and really, it should be noted that the film is included in this favorite thing just because of the nostalgia attached to it. and because it has john leguizamo.

*acoustic guitar*

fun to play, fun to hear, and bob dylan utilized it well enough to make the list of a few of my favorite things. something very soft and soothing about an acoustic that you can't get elsewhere. also wonderful to watch splinter in wrestling matches.

*h.g. wells*

i've recently gotten into audio books and wells has been a staple in the lineup. personal favorites include sleeper awakes and island of dr. moreau. definitely worth investigating.

*england*

you friends across the pond know that i can't leave england out. i love the place. i'm happy to be american, but i'm happy to have english friends. you know i love you, you crazy english folk.

*wales*

and wales, i love you too. i put wales after england because i hoped that at least a few of you would be angry and assume i just lumped wales with england. you know i don't play favorites. just favorite things. and countries. oh how i miss doing sixty in a vauxhaul down your winding roads. i also miss some of the nicest, and at times, bewildering, people in the world. but mostly the nicest. and the people that were bewildering were still friendly... just more confusing than anything else.

and now, to end my list of favorite things, i give you one that's very dear to me.

*chairs*

though we really don't make a fuss about it, chairs really are just too good. really, chairs are wonderful. i love them to death, and hope to have many wonderful chairs before my days are done. and name them all.


now don't you feel better? i do. and it's a good thing to, because i was quite peeved. take care everybody, maybe next time i'll write something worth reading.

password:**********

don't you love the unexpected? two days ago i booted my laptop and was greeted with a single error message. it locked the computer so i wound up having to manually cut the power and then reboot. this time, it didn't shut down, but boy oh boy did my anti-virus software have a few things to say to me. i was on my rather slow computer for about a minute and suddenly my desktop was a mosaic of virus alerts and messages stating that messages i had sent were not delivered because the respective recipient e-mail noted it as spam. which of course it was.

so, it seemed that somehow someone had attempted to use my computer as a spam server. i enlisted brad (my resident computer whiz roommate) and we began file hunting to try to destroy the virus. we were moderately successful. after the virus alert's ten minute cycle of alerting me that "my" e-mails were undelivered, we explored and found "s.exe", which was mysteriously installed earlier that day. i'm still not sure how exactly i downloaded this file without realizing it, but oh well. anyway, eventually we killed the file and anything touching it so we could actually operate the computer as with the file still up it insisted on keeping full demand of my processor. we cleaned the place out and were finally able to reboot in safe mode.

blessed be the computer engineer who was the cause of the "system restore" feature. he (or she, to be fair) has saved my digital heinie more times than i can count, so thanks.

anyway, it was eventually cleared off and the system was restored to 8:38 am of the same day and all was well. well, almost.

you see, because i was uncertain as to the nature of my viral friend, i was unware of it's intent. fearing it would either have ben a key stroke memory program or one that could download my firefox details, i borrowed brad's computer and flushed out all my old passwords with new ones. this all went fine except when i later tried to log back onto my gmail account.

this is my theory as to what happened: gmail was the first password i reset. i usually try to have four main passwords: an easy one for things i don't care about, a medium one for things that are important, a hard one for things that are very important or are normally especially easy to hack, and an impossible one for anything to do with money. well, gmail is the third one. very difficult. and... apparently in my haste to reset all my passwords, i forgot to write down what i changed it to, and thus i had now idea what pattern or what have you was my password, spent half an hour guessing and failing, and eventually had to wait a day and restore it with my security question. so it all turned out in the end, but what a train of events.

the final thought i had after all of this was simply that, if my computer is to be hacked, please make the hack cool enough that even though i'm mad, i'm still impressed. for example, zero cool from the film hackers. pull a stunt like his, and i'll be angry but still impressed.