Becoming a real life guitar hero, one chord at a time

I got an acoustic guitar for my Birthday this year. Usually I get socks and underwear from my parents, but this year I encouraged myself to ask something bigger. I have wanted to learn how to play guitar since pretty much forever, but the faith never threw me one. I know this sounds weird, but I kinda expected to get a guitar without ever asking or buying one. I'm so lucky and usually things just go my way, sooner or later. I'm still quite confident that I would have gotten the guitar eventually, I just got tired of waiting. I wanted to start practicing when I still have time for it.

So, I asked for a guitar and to my surprise my parents actually got me one. Or to be more precise, they gave me money for it and asked me to buy one for myself. I had never held a guitar before, so it wasn't easy to start thinking about what kind of guitar would be good for me, but luckily my dad and my uncle had already done some Internet researching and encouraged me to buy one that was on sale at the time and according to some guitar forums sounded like a practical fit for someone who knows absolutely nothing about playing a guitar. That was enough to convince me.


Showing off the socks actually. They are knitted by J.R.

And now I have a guitar. I have had it for months and I love it. So far I have only practiced one song, Desert Garden by my favorite band, VAST. I already play it quite perfectly, but I'm having troubles with the vocals. I'm a really lousy singer, but I don't feel like I'm done with the song unless I'm also able to sing it while playing. Anyway. I think it was really easy to start learning how to play guitar, because I already knew the notes and chords and stuff. I may be a guitar noob, but I know my music theory. I just had to figure out how to work with the guitar. And then there's Youtube and all the how-to videos, hooray for that.

So, why I'm bringing this up now? Because this Christmas I got some nice guitar accessories! It was impossible for me to tune my guitar by ear, I always had to ask J.R. to do it, but now I got an electric tuner. I don't have to rely on J.R. anymore and I'm perfectly capable of tuning the guitar by myself. I call that a very good Christmas present.


The lights tell it all.

I also got a stand for my guitar. Before it was just lying against the wall and waiting all kinds of accidents to happen, but now it's standing securely on its own. I don't have to worry anymore. The stand also match my keyboard stand and chair, so together they look pretty professional. The guitar is also a lot more accessible now when it's not stuffed behind an arm chair!


Standing there.

I really appreciate people who can play one instrument or more. It's just an awesome skill and an awesome way to be creative. I started to play keyboard because my dad played a keyboard too, so I hope that my kids will have an equal chance to find their instruments too. Meanwhile I need to practice more to be able to express myself better through music.

Spam problems

I've started to get spam comments on a daily basis, and I'm too tired to delete them manually. For now on, there will be word verification. Let's see if that helps with the problem. I'm really sorry that I have to do this, because it makes commenting more difficult. And I hate the word verification system myself, but Blogger doesn't offer many tools to solve this problem.

But hey, here's a cute video of Papu. I left a digital camera to record what she does while I'm away... and Papu didn't seem to like the idea.

Papu's new winter coat

Papu has a very thin fur, so if it gets really cold, she definitely needs a winter coat. And it can get really cold quite often, because we live in Finland. You know, we have polar bears and penguins and other stuff here. But dog coats are expensive here. Like ridiculously expensive: I saw one nice that I liked, but it cost 60€ in Papu's size. That's almost more than I'm willing to pay for my own coat! Though we never planned to buy an dog coat in the first place. We wanted to make one by ourself.

And for this project we needed material. And since fabrics can be quite expensive too, we decided to be environmental and recycle an old coat. We went to a flea market with this project in mind, and we find this nice coat:


The "before" picture.

The coat cost 2€ (that's like 3 US dollars), which is already a lot cheaper than 60€. The fabric was in good condition and it had a nice silvery lining. Not to mention the fake fur and some small details we definitely wanted to keep. We had a pattern for a dog coat, but it was made for a pug so we had to modify it.


The buckle in the back was the first detail we wanted to keep.


The coat looked less warm after I cut out all the pieces.


Only three pieces and the original fur collar.


Things sewn together.


Velcro is handy. No buttons for this coat.


We wanted to keep the original label too.


Opening for the harness. Made like a button hole.

I'm quite pleased with the coat. It wasn't the easiest to sew and sometimes I had to ask my mother to help me. She's good at sewing. And it took the whole Saturday to make the coat, but I think it was worth it. It doesn't fit perfectly, but I blame those stupid fat pugs. I didn't realize that the bottom part should have been adjusted too. We tried it on, but it looked OK until it was already sewn. Though it doesn't matter so much, because Papu seemed to be comfortable in it. I actually expected her to fight against the coat, but she was perfectly OK with it from the first moment. She didn't even mind the fur collar.


She looks so proud in her new coat.

I would like to make another dog coat in the future, one that fits her perfectly. I also think that Papu might need a rain coat, because she hates the rain so much. I would also like to get a sewing machine of my own one day. I'm not (yet) into sewing clothes, but I would like to sew smaller things and make adjustments and customizations. All that cool stuff.

Papu's Piggy Treats

We are going to Viiala for the weekend, so we decided to bake some doggie treats for my mother's dachshund. Papu has eaten almost all the treats I baked her last time. I thought they were too hard, but after all they weren't. They were just hard to crack into pieces. I bought a smaller cookie cutter so the size shouldn't be a problem anymore. J.R. also rolled the dough thinner this time, so they should be easier to crack too. And now it seems that we have a perfect, simple doggie treat recipe, so why not to share it with you? Here it is:

Papu's Piggy Treats

Makes 25-30 small treats

List of ingredients:

• 30 grams of minced meat (that's not much)
• 1 tbsp of vegetative oil (quite optional if the minced meat is not low-fat)
  
• 0,5 dl of consommé (about 0,2 US cups)
  
• 1,75 dl of wheat flour (about 0,7 US cups)
• 0,75 dl of cooked rice (or barley or a mix of both) (about 0,3 US cups)
• 1 tsp of oregano

Doggie treats before baking.

Making:

1. Fry the minced meat.
2. Use a hand blender or similar to chop and mix the minced meat and consommé.
   
3. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Add the flour little by little until you think it makes a nice dough.
   
4. Roll the dough (0,5cm thick is OK) and cut the cookies.
5. Bake in 170°C (338°F) for about 30 minutes. After 30 minutes turn off the oven, open it a little and let the cookies dry in the after heat.

If preserved in an airtight jar or similar, the cookies should stay good for months.


Doggie treats after baking. They still look the same, no surprises here.

They don't look so yummy to me, but Papu is crazy for them. Maybe she knows that we have baked them with love. They don't really smell that much, and I'm not sure if they taste so wonderful either, because I have not tasted them by myself (though I could, they're not poisonous).


She wants it. She wants it really bad.


Outside the picture Papu's tail is wagging like crazy.


FINALLY!

After these two experiences with DIY doggie treats, I'm very positive that I will bake them in the future too. Like why not? Papu loves them more than she loves her commercial doggie biscuits, they're cheap and very, very easy to do. Just make some Chili con Carne or any other food with minced meat and rice and take some aside and bake the biscuits later. So ridiculously effortless!

Goodbye baby collar

J.R. and Papu visited a vet on Wednesday. She had been peeing and drinking water excessively for weeks, so we wanted to make sure she's OK. And she was OK. It kinda gave us a fright, though. She's our baby and we would be absolutely devastated if anything bad happened to her. It's strange how attached you can become to a dog. They're definitely more than just pets, they're friends, family members, companions. Anyway.

Papu is now almost seven months old, and yesterday we decided it's time to pass the baby phase. We bought her a harness and a new leash. She looks so grown-up now!





The harness and the leash are both black leather. I guess some other color would have stood out more nicely against Papu's black fur, but black is pretty much the only color that suits us. They are made in Finland, and considering that I think they were quite cheap. They both cost 28.90€ in Stockmann. And I guess that since they're made in Finland, they are also designed for Finnish climate. It gets really dark in here on the fall and the winter, so it's definitely a good thing that Papu's harness is almost completely covered with reflectors. We can be sure that all the drivers can see her before it's too late.



And since Papu's a bit pampered, we bought her a new toy too. Stockmann has a good selection of toys by Kong company and we got her a Kong Wubba. Papu loves it and I'm glad it seems really durable, like other Kong company toys too. It's absolutely perfect for fetching (it's easy to throw) and tugging (it's easy to hold and I don't have to worry about my fingers). And it SQUEAKS! I also read lately, that dogs can differentiate many shades of blue, even though they're bad with all the other colors. So I guess I picked the best color for her too.



And to keep this Papu stuff coming... I also baked her doggie biscuits by myself. I got the recipe from a dog food book, but I modified it a lot. Who has some Worcestershire dressing by default anyway? I used white rice, minced meat, oregano, some oil, consommé and flour to create these:



Looks quite healthy and delicious, right? Unfortunately I made them way too big for Papu so they're quite impossible to serve. I don't want her to have a whole biscuit at once, but they're too hard to crack in to pieces either. I'm going to try some other dog biscuits later, maybe they are more suitable for Papu.

The bluebird of happiness.

I started to use Twitter on April. I had created my account a few months earlier, but I didn't know what to do with it. It was quite lame to tweet without any followers or anyone to follow. I didn't know how to get started with twittering so I buried the idea. But then months later I found Ravelry's Twitter Knitters group. Suddenly I actually had plenty of interesting, like-minded people to follow! Fearlessly I decided to hop in. I also persuaded Elina to start twittering with me, because I thought it would be something fun to do together.


Here's my first tweet. Very exciting.

And twittering is, first of all, something fun. And something easy too. It really doesn't require much imagination to write 140 characters, though sometimes you need to work your best to fit your message in just one tweet. 140 characters is not much, but it's just enough to post ideas, thoughts, links, pictures, news... You name it. I mostly tweet about my daily life, school, knitting and of course about Papu. Other people use fancy apps to Twitter, but I usually tweet directly from the website or Flock's People Sidebar. Nowadays I would like to have some high-tech kick-ass communicator to tweet on the go, but unfortunately I have no reason to get a new phone.

And yes. It's that addictive that you want to tweet all the time. Or almost all the time. Though I'm not so into tweeting myself, I just want to see what other people are up to. The stalker lives strongly in me. Anyway. I wrote this post to promote tweeting. It's definitely something that everybody should try. And by "everybody" I mean people who like to blog, surf the Internet, exchange ideas and meet new, cool people. Yeah. That could be you.

If you're a bit harder to buy, I thought I could make a list of things I have "got" from Twitter. They are also the reasons why I have fell in love with it.

• It has given me more confidence. Usually I'm too shy to even write comments on other people's blogs, but I have no trouble to tweet with new people. It's like the beauty of it, it brings people closer. If you can follow them, they're friends. If they follow you back, they're even better friends.
• It has given me good advice. People can be really helpful if they want to. For example I forgot to take cable needle to school, so I was unable to continue my knitting. I tweeted about it, and @villapeikko guided me a tutorial how to knit cables without extra needles. I was able to continue my knitting after all. It made me really happy.
• It has given me new friends. First they were strangers, now I tweet with them in a regular basis. It's really cool.
  
• It has given my blogs a bunch of new readers. Twitter is a great place to promote your new blog posts, and it's perfectly OK to do so. You can use Twitter for whatever purposes you want. Many companies tweet about their new products, and that's not considered as spam, it's considered as good marketing. I follow bunch of websites and companies on Twitter, because I like to hear about new products, updates and other news.
• I'm never alone if I have access to Twitter. I'm a lousy knitter. I don't know any fancy knitting terms, I don't go crazy about some super expensive super exclusive yarn, I don't go to knitting meetings, I don't even know knitters in real life... but I'm still able to be a member of a very large community of knitters. It's quite awesome.
  

That's all, folks. Feel free to follow me on Twitter. I'm @amoenaonline.

I'm sensing something new... A blog post!

Apparently people are starting to loose their patience with me. You know, with me still not blogging. Except I'm blogging right now because I got tagged by Minttusuklaa. She's clever! She probably knew I can't resist any blog memes. I simply can't. They are a fabulous way to blog when you have absolutely nothing to say. I kinda miss having a life.



OK. Let's start. Here are the rules:

1. Laita tunnustus blogiisi. Put the button on your blog.
2. Kirjaa sinne myös nämä säännöt. Tell the rules to the world.
3. Linkitä blogiin, josta sait tunnustuksen. Link to the blog that tagged you.
4. Listaa viisi aistia ja kerro mitä ne merkitsevät sinulle. List five (5) senses and tell what they mean to you.
5. Haasta viisi muuta blogia jättämällä niihin kommentti. Tag five other bloggers and let them know about it.

Here are my five senses:

Sense of hearing: I can always hear when J.R. is biting his nails, even when he tries to hide it from me. But sometimes I have troubles hearing what other people say, when they don't speak loud enough. It's very annoying! Speak louder, people!
Sense of sight: I can't see anything without my glasses, and even with glasses my sight is poor. I wouldn't want contact lenses because I think my glasses make me look smarter and prettier.
Taste: I'm really bad at tasting things. Seriously. If the difference between the tastes isn't strong, I think they all taste the same. For example I can drink five different cups of tea and think they taste the same.
Sense of feeling: I get shivers down my spine when someone touches my hair. I like to touch things that are warm, like Papu and J.R. Otherwise I rather watch things, not touch them.
Sense of being heard: I like to talk and I like to be heard. Sometimes being heard is more important than the things I say. I like blogging and twittering for the same reason.

I tag J.R. and Elina because I want new blog posts by them too.

PS: I'm old! I turned 23 like a week ago.
PPS: I forgot there's actually a thing called "sense of smell". Silly me.

There will be Kongs!

Papu's been quite destructive lately, so we decided that she needs more activity toys. We visited two pet stores nearby, but the selection of active toys for dogs was quite narrow in both of them. Of course we use empty toilet paper rolls and stuff to keep Papu busy in a more economical way, but we don't have enough toilet paper rolls to keep her busy for hours. We definitely needed more toys. We ended up buying another Kong toy for Papu. She loves her Puppy Kong, but we though she's big enough for Classic Kong too now that she has her new pearly white teeth set. Now she has two Kong toys, which means she has twice as much to do while we are away. That will probably prevent her from getting bored.


Papu totally recommends Kong toys!

We also bought her a mini Molecuball. The package said "the product should be slightly larger than your pet's mouth", but there were no "small" or "medium" Molecuballs in the stores. Just these mini Molecuballs and quite large-ish Molecuballs. We decided to try mini Molecuball, even though there is a big change of it being too small for Papu. On the other hand, Papu is a MINIature pinscher, so maybe it is the right size. We haven't tried it yet, but I let you know if it works with minpins. We tried it. It's OK as long as there are treats inside, but once they're all out, she starts to chew it. And it's not strong enough for chewing. But Papu seemed to like the toy, so we will let her play with it. We just have to supervise her really closely.

There is also another dog toy I would like to recommend: Flossy Flappy. It's definitely Papu's favorite toy. Seriously, she loves it. It's perfect for retrieving, tugging, chewing... And it squeaks in a way that won't kill your ears, I promise! Papu's been playing with her Flossy Flappy a lot, so I have had to fix it three or four times by now, but I still think it's very durable. No dog toy is indestructible (except Kong toys maybe). Papu also has a Fleecie Flappy, but she doesn't like it as much as she likes Flossy Flappy. It's just not as... flossy.


Fleecie Flappy above, Flossy Flappy below.

Papu doesn't have so many toys after all. I would love her to have more toys, but I'm really critical with her toys. I want her toys to be durable and safe, and many dog toys aren't. Especially plastic squeaker toys look hazardous. Anyway. Papu also have a rat softie we bought from Ikea about month ago. As you can see, it's still very much in one piece. Hooray for Ikea quality? Papu likes her rat, sometimes she even uses it as a pillow. You know, when she's not killing it. Papu also has a basic rope toy for tug games.



Yes. A dog has replaced my life. This blog was supposed to be about me, Amoena, but nowadays it's mostly about my dog called Papu. I hope you're not disappointed. Papu is just much more interesting than me. But if you're fed up with Papu-related posts, please let me know. I could try to blog less about Papu.

What's new in Amoena's exciting life? NOTHING!!

Every week I decide to blog more. And then I end up posting less. I should decide to blog nothing at all, and then I would probably post every day. I have all the time in my hands but yet nothing to blog. Nothing interesting, I mean. It sucks to have a such a normal life. I wonder how other, normal boring people deal with blogging. Is there some trick that I'm not yet aware of?

Anyway. We spent the last weekend in Viiala at my parent's place. Papu was super excited to meet her best friend, Minni the dachshund again. They play-fought through the whole weekend. Their fights can look quite rough sometimes, but they're both still in one piece. We have to watch them constantly while they play together, though.





We also let Papu to run free so she could sniff everything as much as she liked. And she liked to sniff a lot. And I think Papu looked gorgeous with the autumnal background. She's just so beautiful sometimes. I'm so happy that we have her and we can watch her everyday.









We also took Papu to a walk one warm day and borrowed my sister's dog retractable leash. There's not much traffic there so we wanted Papu to be able to explore things more freely. Here in the city we keep her on a short leash. There's too much people and cars here.



I sewed a Barbie doll dress while J.R. was picking mushrooms with my mom and aunt. I would like to sew Barbie clothes more often, but my niece doesn't really play with her Barbie dolls so she doesn't need so many clothes either. I'm not so happy with this particular dress, I've definitely made better ones. The fabric was very forgiving, though. I literally sewed it on the doll and it still turned out OK.





We also visited few flea markets and I found and bought a really cool board game, Bombay Bazar. It cost only 5€ so it was a real bargain. And we played it many, many times during the weekend. Even my aunt and mom liked to play it. It's a shame we don't play board games so often at home.



And that's pretty much it.

Fail semester... sorry, fall semester

My school started on Monday and it feels good to get out of the house regularly again. I missed seeing people and having conversations without the trouble of inviting friends to come over. Though I don't have many friends at school, due to my weirdness, but at least I think that I have all the right friends around me. I wouldn't even want to be friends with everyone in my class. By the way, there's some changes in our class dynamics. There used to be more girls in our class, but now there's only three of us. I kinda like it. When I studied dentistry, there were only girls in my class and it made me feel quite insecure. I feel better now when the vast majority of our class is boys, because I don't have to care about how they feel about me. Girls are more critical and gossip-y and they easily create an unhealthy study environment. Or at least that's how I felt studying with only girls.

Anyway. I have four new courses to study. On Mondays I have a course called "Developing Data Network Services". We don't have any lectures in it, just a few seminars. We should watch some virtual lectures independently, but I still haven't installed that vpn-client on my computer which makes it possible. I read the instructions for Linux OS and there was an end-note which said it doesn't work on Ubuntu. And currently that's the only operation system I have in hand. J.R. said that there is a change it might work, because my Ubuntu is a newer version than the one mentioned in the instructions. We'll see. And oh... of course we have to do some big project. Laurea is all about making projects. We still don't know what our subject will be, though.

On Tuesdays I have some bullshit called "Managing Business Performance". I know I shouldn't be so judging, since our teachers probably mean well. But the last time we had the same teacher it was real pain in the ass. Seriously. Some people just shouldn't be teaching. Thank God we have two teachers in this course, and the other one is more pleasant. We were actually able to a) understand what he was trying to say and b) listening through the lecture without falling asleep. That's really special in Laurea.

On Wednesdays I have "Managing Information Security". It's the first course that actually sounds important and useful. And the teachers seemed OK too, like they actually know what they are talking about. We also got some books for free in our first lecture. That was cool. Free stuff is always cool. And it's quite amazing that finally some teachers actually believe that we're capable of like a) reading a book, b) learning something and c) being truly interested. Whoa!

On Thursdays I have a second part of an "Analysis and Design" course (I couldn't find a matching course in English and the Finnish name was absolutely impossible to translate), in which we are supposed to continue our project. In the last course our team designed a booking system for a hotel and in this course we should execute it. On the first lesson our team found out that we were the only team who managed to pass the last course completely. Talking about having the right friends... It feels good that everyone in our team is equally motivated. Or motivated in general.

And on Fridays I have NOTHING! Hooray! Anyway. You could probably hear my negative attitude towards my school through my post. It's justified. If my school was a person, it definitely wouldn't be the sharpest Crayola in the box. It wouldn't even be in the box, it would be too second-rate for it. I think the main problem with my degree program is that anyone can get in. Even monkeys. And monkeys aren't motivated to study, which doesn't make teachers exactly motivated to teach us. We do projects after projects without proper guidance and the end-results are poor (except in our team, of course). And the monkeys also have low moral "oh, let's plagiarize everything, that's why we have Wikipedia in the first place". Argh. Enough said.

And now you probably wonder why I keep studying in Laurea. Here are my reasons:

a) It's very close to my home, it takes only 15 minutes to walk to school.
b) I have a few good friends in my class that makes it worth the whine.
c) Despite all the bullshit, it's still about computers. And that's what I wanted.
d) It's only 3,5 years, 3 years if I keep myself busy. And I just started my second year.
e) Business Information Technology sounds good. I might actually get a job after I graduate.

EDIT: I have changed my mind. I said that one of our teachers is real pain in the ass, but now she's quite good at teaching accounting. I have absolutely nothing to complain about her way to teach in this course.

Papu doesn't give a rat's ass...

...because she most likely eats it.

Hairy happenings

There are things happening in Amoena's world. First, and most importantly, Papu has lost her first canine tooth. Our hairy baby is growing up!


Canine tooth of a canine.

Secondly, we've been hitting dog parks. We like to visit them more than Papu does. She's very wary around strange dogs, especially if they are bigger than her, but we want her to get socialized. Dog parks are pretty much the only socialization option, because we don't have any friends with dogs. Anyway. Sometimes Papu is feeling more brave and she might actually try to play with other dogs. You know, if and only they happen to be almost the same size as she is.


She's gonna catch you, J.R.

Sometimes, quite often actually, the dog park is empty so J.R. has to play with Papu. They run around in circles. It's nice to watch, because they both run so fast. Papu obviously runs faster, though. She's a little lightning. And when she's not running around, she's jumping around. She's good at that too.


Jumping off the picture.

Sometimes, not so often this time, I'm worried that the other dog owners won't like us. Papu is not a good playmate for bigger dogs or for dogs that are too eager. They make Papu scared, and when she's scared, she does nothing but hides behind our legs. And we let her. She can choose if she wants to play with other dogs or not, we're not pushing her into anything. Anyway. If the other dogs get too near her or try to approach her too eagerly when she's scared, she shows off her teeth. I don't know how the other dog owners feel about that, even though there's a very good reason for it. Papu's not aggressive. She just wants the bully dogs to leave her alone.


Papu looks funny when her eyes are closed.

Hmph. I can't believe I just wrote another Papu-related blog post. I wasn't supposed to. I was going to blog about the My Little Ponies I bought for my mom from the flea market we visited today. She collects them and I'm a good daughter. Here they are:


I'm pretty sure she doesn't have these ones yet.

Elina's annual visit

Last week Elina visited us. She's my friend. I've known her for a long time now. Our mutual online friend introduced us. He thought we might like each other, and eventually we did. Though it took several years before we met in real life, probably because Elina thought I was weird. Anyway. I like Elina because she's a girl. And before you think "that's the most lamest compliment ever", let me explain; She's the only girl friend I have, the rest of my friends are boys. So it feels really good to hang out with a girl for a change.

I didn't do anything special with Elina. I asked her earlier what she would like to do, but she said that she only wanted to see my family. She did visit me last year, but J.R. got sick when they were supposed to meet and Papu obviously is a newcomer. So meeting one new person and one new puppy would be enough entertainment for two days.

So we didn't do anything special, but we did knit. (Knitting is cool, kids. You should try it too.) Elina chose some super bulky yarn from our stash and started to knit mittens. She's not very experienced with knitting, so we had to help her. She knew how to knit and purl, but not how to read knitting patterns or how to decrease and stuff. But her first mitten turned out great! Like seriously great. She should be proud of it. At least I'm very proud of myself , because I was able to help her to make it. I thought I couldn't even read knitting patterns. It's proved now that I'm not so hopeless after all. I'm getting there, slowly.

Elina was also very generous. She brought us three skeins of Novita's 7-Veljestä wool yarn: one dark green, one lime green and one natural white. She also brought me her old fashion magazines, because she knows how much I like to read them. They probably weighted like hell, so I really appreciate the effort.


Papu says "thank you"!

Anyway. I had fun. I always like to spend time with Elina, and I'm a bit sad that we weren't able to move to Tampere. It would have been fun. We could have visited each other more often and make some tea and knit and watch TV. That's all I've ever wanted. A friend who likes to do everything that I like to do and vice versa.

Amoena @ Assembly 2009

Last Friday I got my laptop back from Sweden again. We had to send it back because some new problems occurred. Anyway. This time they didn't just replace some components. They made a recovery. Of course I had backups of all the truly important, irreplaceable files, but I lost my whole movie and music collection. I also have to reinstall all my programs again, which is probably the biggest nuisance ever. I just keep remembering new and new programs that I had and still need. It feels that I'm literally building my laptop again. But hey, at least it boots faster now!

On Saturday I visited Assembly with J.R. And I'm once again unable to describe what it is, so I quote their website:

Assembly is a four day computer festival, in which thousands of people and their computers spend the long weekend by meeting friends, playing games, surfing on the net, talking on IRC and enjoying the great productions from the demoscene. The idea is to be there with or without your computer and enjoy the great atmosphere of being with likeminded people.

Though for me it means spending several days by myself, because J.R. is one of the voluntary organizers. I'm glad that this year he didn't have to work during the event, just before and after it. I was able to spent time with J.R. like normally. Anyway. I'm quite envy of the nerds who are actually able to participate Assembly. It seems like fun. It really does.


Click to enlarge.

I don't think I'm too old. I think I just lack basically everything it requires: nerd reliability, nerd skills and, most especially, nerd friends. Wouldn't be much fun without them. I only dream about being a nerd, as sick as it may sound. But at least J.R. makes me feel special. I get a free entrance to almost every other nerd's wet dream. How cool is that?


Even Papu thought it was cool and tried to steal my ticket.

So we visited Assembly together. We saw a prize ceremony and it was nice. Though I would have wanted to hear the winning songs completely. It's easier with still graphics because they don't take time to show. Anyway. After that we watched short film compo, which was the reason why we got there in the first place. It's J.R's favorite and I can understand why; It doesn't take much background knowledge to understand. And most of the short films we saw were funny.

And I got a new Assembly T-shirt to sleep in! It's not black, because organizers are not worthy enough to get T-shirts in cool colors. They get only this weird dirty-looking wine red. I'm not complaining though. It will look black when it's dark.


Papu liked it so much that she got an urge to lick her personal parts.