Today is the first anniversary of the day I joined DreamWidth... wow.

How did DreamWidth manage to probably be the first social network I was still using a year after I joined it?

LiveJournal - Of course I've been obsessed with LJ since 2009, but back when I actually joined it on August 19, 2007... not so much. I didn't do a whole lot on it for a while and went on a long hiatus early on. August 19, 2008 happened to be during that hiatus.

Facebook - I don't remember when I joined it, but probably about the same time as LJ. But like with LJ, I kept losing and regaining interest in it for a while. I also remember my first Facebook account being suspended because no one would verify the high school I went to (since there wasn't even an option for the high school I actually went to), but I don't remember when that was. So I may or may not have been using Facebook a year after I joined it.

Blogger? - For a dual-credit computer science class (the same one that Ours Will You 1-Up spawned out of, I believe), one of the assignments was to create an account on Blogger... at least I think it was Blogger. So I did, but I only ever made one post on it. Even if I wanted to update it now, I can't because I don't remember my username (and who knows if it's still up, anyway).

Miiverse - I joined it when I got my Wii U on December 25, 2012, and was active on it for several months, but then went on a hiatus from it and December 25, 2013 happened to be just before I came back from that hiatus - and then posted regularly for several more months only to go on an even longer hiatus.


And despite my having been on DreamWidth for over a year, I still only have 736 entries fixed :(

(music tag should be: Snippets of Mario, Kid Icarus, SSB, BtVS, Enya, Dido, Céline Dion, Sarah McLachlan, Moya Brennan, Matchbox 20, Rascal Flatts, & Savage Garden music thrown together randomly in Audacity)

This has been kind of a disappointing April Fools' Day because:

1) Homestar Runner didn't update at all today, even though they did for April Fools' Day 2014, 2015, and 2016, and April Fools and Halloween are almost the only times they ever update nowadays.
2) I don't think many people noticed my April Fools prank at all.

For reference, my April Fools prank was this entry; however, when I first posted it (on March 31 in my time zone, but late enough that it was April 1 already for some of you), it was an exact copy of my first entry. Then I waited a few minutes or so and changed it to a copy of a different past entry in the same way... then changed it to another after a few more minutes, and so on - basically, if I was at my computer, I'd change the entry anywhere from once an hour to once every few minutes. (At first. I gradually updated it less and less often because it seemed like no one was noticing...)

By "exact copy", that means including the subject line, repost button, userpic, tags, mood, music, location... basically, everything except the timestamp, the comments, and friends-only status [though, of course, the only friends-only entries I used were ones that probably would've been fine being public]. And anything that I intended to change each time but accidentally forgot sometimes. Though if I used an entry I'd posted in _dreams_, autism, or asperger, I added a notice saying that it was cross-posted (even though I don't think copying a community entry to my own journal years later for April Fools' Day actually counts as cross-posting).

I chose the entries semi-randomly, sometimes by going to my Calendar for random years and months and picking a random entry I'd feel comfortable posting again, and sometimes by just putting in notable entries that I remember and wanted to include in this prank at some point. Some entries were used more than once.

And just to mess with your heads even more, I thought it might be fun to come up with a hypothetical FUTURE entry and add it into the mix! That's what the 2023 year in review is for. It ended up being my favorite thing about this prank, so I left that one up significantly longer than any other single entry.


Now that April Fools' Day is over, all the entries I ended up using are listed below for posterity. (Don't expect the repost buttons to work correctly, though...)


( The entries that you could've sworn that you'd seen already and/or that they said something completely different a few minutes ago, in order of their first use in this prank )

Lately I've just had SO MUCH to do that not only do I not get much time to relax, but whenever I do get to take a break, it's usually not actually that relaxing because I still end up thinking about the stuff that has to get done soon.

As I mentioned a while back, I've been working on that physics research project as a part-time job. The conference that I have to attend is coming up soon (it's from March 31 to April 2), and at some point before that (probably THIS WEEK), I'll have to completely wear myself out putting together the information for the poster so I can present it. Hopefully this is the last time I ever have to give a presentation about this project... but with my luck, there will probably be about three more conferences I have to present at. :(

Not only that, but even though I have a part-time job already, I'm now required to look at two listings for potential full-time jobs every week. And I've been having to do more of the chores at home... which I'm not very good at remembering to do. AND recently there was a whole bunch of paperwork I had to do, AND I had to update my résumé recently, AND there's probably more things like that that I'll have to do soon... and so on and so forth.

About 117 days until I get to be happy again...

I'm definitely not even close to being ready to be an adult, even though I'm SUPPOSED to be because I was in college for 4½ years. :(

This entry does not get a repost button because it is friends-only. I decided to make this and the next one public because of later public entries that mention this conference.

I said in a friends-only entry earlier today that one of my classes today made me feel so uncomfortable, I felt that nothing that could possibly make my day any better.

I WAS WRONG.

While being reassured about what I mentioned in the entry itself also helped me feel a little better, what REALLY improved my day was:

TODAY, I FOUND OUT THAT THERE'S A NEW ENYA CD COMING OUT ON NOVEMBER 20.

http://enya.sk/2015/10/enya-talks-about-dark-sky-island/

http://entertainment.ie/music/news/Enya-is-releasing-a-new-album-next-month-hear-the-lead-track-Echoes-in-Rain-here/371397.htm

http://enya.sk/2015/10/dark-sky-island-deluxe-edition-cover/

SHE'S BACK. SHE'S BACK. SHE'S FINA-LULLY BACK.*

Those moments lost, forever gone, can never be again... UNTIL NOW! It's easier to remember only good days... BECAUSE THOSE DAYS ARE BACK! :D

I missed that beautiful lady so much... ♥


The only problem is now entries like this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, and this one seem even weirder in retrospect than they already did (is that even possible?) because many times have prooty passed* since the last time I knew for a fact that Enya is still alive and that her hiatus wasn't because of anything weird I said on LJ four years ago. I've forgotten what it was like to not be so worried about those things! :)


*Yes, I threw Homestar Runner references into a post about Enya. Enya and H*R both went on long hiatuses that began within a year of each other and ended within a year of each other, so why not? :)


Echo this post in rain

Earlier today, I had what is probably the best idea I've ever had since... something that was a very good idea.

I've had this same journal style ("Pale Yellows" recolored to have a black background with the colors that the letters and digits in "matt1993" have in my synesthesia) since before the Forbidden Comment Threads - about 0;139 BFCTE, to be precise - long after I eventually discovered that seeing red and green text on a black background all the time started to hurt my eyes after a while. Before that, beginning at some point in 2009, it was "Pale Yellows" recolored with tetradic colors, which made it yellow, purple, blue, and bluish-green, if I remember correctly - and the entries had black text on a white background. And even further back, it was "Pale Yellows" with no changes to the colors. I know I changed the font at some point but I don't exactly remember when.

Anyway, even though I knew that the synesthesia version (at least the way I'd implemented it) started to hurt my eyes after a while and has probably been hurting your eyes for even longer than that (unless you're relatively new here), I put off changing it again for a REALLY long time. I don't really remember why.

Well, now I have a second reason to change it: I'm considering changing it back to the unmodified (palette-wise) version of Pale Yellows! It would hopefully feel like a new beginning or a return to the good old days in 2009 when my journal was actually interesting and not just a whole bunch of "It's been 3½ years and what happened in asperger still makes me feel like every word I say will be seen as racist, sexist, and homophobic..." entries! (speaking of, I feel that it's important to show you guys the newest reason I have for feeling that way... [EDIT IN 2019: Well, apparently the video is no longer there (probably for good reason), and the closest thing I could find to an archive of it is this (and I'd completely even forgotten what video I was talking about until I saw the title and was like "oh yeah, that thing"), so I guess I'll reluctantly have to describe it: ( though I'm cutting it because this was supposed to be a positive entry )

]) And I never did finish updating all of the images that are broken now that Ours Will You 1-Up is nope more - maybe seeing my old journal style will help motivate me to work on it!

I haven't changed it yet, though. I just feel the need to give you guys some sort of heads up that my journal might suddenly have a "new" style. :)

EDIT: Forgot to mention (in case anyone is like "Aw, but I liked how you worked your synesthesia into your journal style!"): It's possible that later on, I will find some other way to work my synesthesia's colors for "matt1993" into my journal style, but I will still take care to avoid having light text on dark backgrounds. My CS professors have made it all too clear to me that it's hard to read. :)


In other news, despite getting Tomodachi Life for my birthday last year, it wasn't until this month that I started getting really addicted to it. I'm saying this because the first step to finding a solution is admitting that I have a problem, so I will: My problem is that Enya probably still has feelings for Mario even though he's with Peach, and Zelda probably still has feelings for Strong Sad even though he's with Dido. LOL

STRONG SAD AND DIDO ARE DATING?!??!

Last week, as part of an assignment in Speech class, I rewatched The Mummy and watched The Ring for the first time.

Turns out that my prediction here was actually wrong - The Ring is, in fact, a lot scarier than the parody of it on Annoying Orange.


But you know what's even more terrifying than both combined?

A horror movie I watched yesterday called Worse than the Forbidden Comment Threads.

Have any of you heard of it? It's the sequel to that one movie about the guy who reads a cursed flame war that makes him start seeing nightmarish visions of his friends misinterpreting everything he's ever said and hating him for it, and seemingly, the only way for him to get rid of the visions is to make a list of everything he's said and done that might be misinterpreted and post that to his LiveJournal in friends-only entries.

I found both that one and the sequel REALLY disturbing... It's almost impossible to remember that either of them is just a movie. Maybe it's just because the main character looks kind of like me. Actually, come to think of it, he looks almost exactly like me... and he even has a lot of interests in common with me: same celebrity crush, same favorite video games...

Even the phrase "Forbidden Comment Threads" sounds familiar for some reason... Didn't I hear it somewhere before about three years ago? I remember thinking up a phrase kind of like it that had something to do with a--


O___O

...

Uhhh...

Guys...

...

I...

I just remembered...

The first one in that series was no horror movie...

I... I think I remember... the Forbidden Comment Threads...

...actually happening...

...as part of my own life...

...

I don't think the sequel was just a movie either...

...

There really is...

...something that's probably worse than the Forbidden Comment Threads...

...and I read it yesterday...

...

...

Okay, now I'm way too scared to even care whether or not going from actual horror movies to a controversy that I pretended was a horror movie is too sudden of a topic jump...

*hides and curls into the fetal position in a clearly horrified manner*


(short version of this entry: What?! The Forbidden Comment Threads are evolving!)


Somehow summon enough courage
and/or foolishness to repost
this terrifying entry

I'm done with History II! I feel like I still don't know as much about history as I should, but I knew enough on the final exam today to get an A or a B in the class! :)

I still haven't gotten to catch up on my friends page or finish making my older userpics more legible, though (though I did work on the latter at one point) :(

The rest is history

Well, Spring Break's over. Not that I can really tell, since I had to work on a group project for Software Engineering for most of the break and it's still only almost done. If I'd known how much time it would've taken up, I'd have checked my friends page before Wednesday, because after that, I once again had so little free time that I ended up preferring to spend it procrastinating over checking my friends page. Sorry :( At least this time I only sometimes spent my procrastination playing video games - I did write down some new userpic ideas, and I did work on the list of things that kinda (or really) remind me of the Forbidden Comment Threads!

Speaking of userpics, continuing to try to make my older userpics more legible was another thing that I would've worked on before Wednesday if I'd known that the rest of Spring Break would be so tied up...

Be too busy with your group project
to repost this entry

In case I don't post some other new entry between now and when this scheduled entry goes live, sorry I went a week or so without checking my friends page (finally checking it once more on the 24th, and hopefully more times after that) - I had to get two programs for Game Graphics class almost finished.

But anyway, it's finally time for another quiz rerun! (Well, actually the first quiz rerun, since the one before that was a survey.)

Originally posted by matt1993 at Shy guy (Mario reference not intended...OR IS IT?)

And 5 years later...



Yep, same thing. The only difference is at least I'm finally smart enough to know that I should've referred to her as my crush and not my girlfriend.

Finally summon up the courage to repost to your journal

Well, looks like my Psychology class (while possibly not as reminiscent of the Forbidden Comment Threads as I was worried it'd be) is A) still going to be pretty tough and B) not yet guaranteed to never turn into a heated debate, even though one hasn't happened yet. Software Engineering and Game Graphics look like they're gonna be pretty tough too.

Things usually don't turn out this way until after I make a post saying that things are going well so far, so why isn't that the case this time? :(

Also, a meme I got from cactus_rs:

( 5 of My Userpics Explained )

And it wasn't even real cream cheese,
it was light cream cheese! And now
you want me to run off and
repost another entry?!