Dear Buddha:

I was browsing Facebook and noticed a friend had joined a group for Theatron.

Those of you who didn't go to Harding or who don't live in the southern central US will likely never have heard of Theatron. It's a "drama troupe." I say that in quotes because what they really do is short, sappy, hyper-religious skits.

Guilt figures in largely to most skits. Personal, absolute responsibility for the death of Christ.

They use scare tactics. They are, at times, worse than Chick Tracts.

Gah.

At one point, as an impressionable teen, I bought a t-shirt. *headdesk*

I didn't post here yesterday. This is largely because for the second time in right at six months post-purchase, my MacBook hard drive has failed. And not just any kind of fail: EPIC FAIL.

It's annoying. I've been a Mac user since 2001, which while obviously not the life of the company, HAS been the life of OS X in the consumer market.

I love OS X. I'm typing now from an older Dell (which, I might add, I've never had real problems with other than the fact that its being old means that it's slowish, but other than that, no problems).

Anyhow, I shipped it back to Apple today. I'll let them figure it out.

I love my Macs, but this MacBook has been a pain in my tuchus. At less than 3 months, the case cracked and the hard drive failed. I took it in. A week later, I had it back: new top case, new hard drive.

Three months later, the hard drive fails again.

"Uncle Steve" owes me a new MacBook - that's my opinion, anyhow. This computer is six months old and will have spent two weeks in the "hospital." That doesn't sound like much, but when you consider that 6 months is only 24 weeks to begin with... it's a little much - especially considering this was a NIB, coddled computer.

It's unacceptable.

So now I'm typing on a 5ish year old Dell.

Easter is a time of resurrection and renewal. It's supposed to be the iconic Christian holiday, the resurrection of Christ.

Last Easter, though it fell in April, my dad died.

My dad was a Christian and I believe he's with Christ now. But that's not a lot of comfort in the immediate sense. I can't call my dad and wish him happy birthday next month. I can't tease him about not eating chocolate (which he hated).

I can't write about him in the present tense. My dad won't see his grandchild born this fall. He'll never hold the baby he wanted so badly to see before he died.

It's been almost a year, but I really can't put to words all the things I feel when I think about not having him here anymore.

We've had tornado watches and warnings off and on (but mostly on) since about 4 this afternoon. (For those not in the CDT zone, that's about 5 hours so far.) It's expected to last till about 1 tomorrow morning. Welcome to Arkansas...

Arthur C. Clarke died today. He wasn't my favorite author ever, but he was one of the first sci-fi authors I read. He was, as I said elsewhere, one of the first to bring the stars from the sky and place them in my hands. It hit me harder than I thought it would. His enthusiasm for what could be will be missed. We need more of that kind of vision in the world.

Charlie Rose, on the other hand, really loves his MacBook. Not that I could blame him. For all I try to be detached from being hyper-materialistic, I can't say I wouldn't at least give it a darn good try to save my MacBook, even at the cost of some temporary bruises. Bruises are cheap, MacBooks are not. ^_^

I wonder how long I can keep updating 4 blogs/journals. This one, LJ and two on wordpress.... (Those are the only ones I actively update but by no means the only ones I have registered. We'll not talk of the number I've got registered. I will deny any knowledge of them.)

I created a community. It's not actually for kvetching, though it can be used that way if you want. Mostly, I hope it will become a sort of meeting place for those who have come here from LJ. Friend each other madly! ^_^

ljrefugees

I've bought paid time here and on CommieJournal. I like LoJo better, but it feels empty. I don't have very much of a flist here yet and it makes it kind of pointless. I keep a paper journal just for recording thoughts. I use LJ and similar sites for interactive blogging. That's one thing LJ has always had over the other major blogging platforms is the inclusion of an active flist. It's what got me invovled and kept me involved and some of the people I've encountered via LJ are people I consider to be very close friends, even though some of them are people I've never met in 3D.

It makes me sad to think of leaving that.

When it comes to LJ-clones, my two major contenders are CommieJournal and LostJournal, both of which are nice. I'd considered DeadJournal, but it's just got a really mean attitude. GreatestJournal is okay, but, meh. InsaneJournal is ... bad. My other major contender is WordPress, but there are a few huge problems with it that will probably keep me from ever using it for journaling as opposed to blogging (lack of filters being the biggest.)

CommieJournal is definitely faster than LoJo, but there are some major problems. I'm not going to be too hard on anyone because I realize this is an out-of-pocket experiment by a couple of people on fixed incomes. However, I have to be somewhat pragmatic when deciding on a new "home," as it were, and there are some things that are definitely bothersome.

First off, very few of the journal styles actually work. Bloggish and Style Contest, which contain my favorite themes, will not render appropraitely. I know it's not my browser or computer because they render find when using those exact themes on LJ or LoJo or GJ or IJ; it's definitely a server-side error. That's obviously a huge problem because a lot of my custom CSS is built on those layouts.

Next, a lot of the links simply don't work. I realized this when I was attempting to set the default security of my journal. I actually can't because that page (viewing options) ... doesn't work. Also, I had to fish through LJ links to figure out where the page might be for setting up friends filters, since the page that would normally have a link to it... doesn't. And I noticed while browsing user-info pages that if you click the active link "account type," it will take you to a totally unrelated FAQ.

LoJo is smaller, but I get the impression that the userbase is actually about the same size and somewhat more active. It also seems closer knit. That can work for and against a site - for it in that it inspires loyalt, but against in that it can lend to it a sort of cliquish nature that isn't easily broken into. We'll have to see.

In some ways, LoJo feels like coming home to LJ 2002, which is kind of nice.

So, SUP is killing my beloved LJ and therefore I'm branching out. Chances are I'll be running lj-migrate and sending all 6 years of my LJ-life this way. Makes me sad, but they are consistently annoying the HECK out of me.

Oy.

Anyhow, thanks to larian (is the tag the same?), I have an account over here. My paid time on LJ runs out in late 2009 and I really don't think I'll be renewing.