Thoughts

[J. T./Jessica]

You know what I've been thinking?

While Palpatine was a manipulative, evil, cruel thing... the Empire itself wasn't necessarily a bad idea. Think about what the Trade Federation Blockade and then the Separtist War proved - the direct representation method of the Old Republic - one Senator for each system, directly to the Galactic Senate - was simply too ungainly and unbalanced towards the more powerful systems (Alderaan, Corellia, Coruscant, etc.) to be effective. Think about it; there were some what? 10,000 systems represented in the Senate? Yet every problem had to be brought before the full Senate where most of them didn't care about anyone on the other side of the galaxy from them.

Though many of the people appointed into the positions weren't the best - probably because most of them were Palpatine's people like Tarkin - the Grand Moff system of military governors allowed situations to be handled on a level closer to where they were happening, the systems and sectors instead of having to bring them before the whole galaxy. Consider how the Trade Federation Blockade would have happened under the Moff system - instead of having to go to the Senate, Naboo could have gone to the local Moff, the sector governor, who because they're responsible for a smaller area would have more interest in the events happening in their territory and could have handled it without a Senate vote being shot down because Naboo is a small world so far from the Core (since it's close to Tatooine, it's logical to conclude that Naboo is likely a Rimworld.)...

[J. T./Jessica]

Well, a good sign for the new "Battlebots" - at least four of the teams are returning from the classic series. Warhead, Nightmare, Tentomushi's creator is fielding a new bot called 'Plan X' (interesting little thing; it has a light-up brain), and the creators of Wahachi and Son of Wahachi are fielding one called "Warrior Clan" (Though the father/team captain is supposed to be retiring from robot combat after this tournament.)

The interesting thing is that there's a new twist - multibots. Both Warrior Clan and Plan X have 'minibots' (yes, Gibb, I made the Transformers joke already), smaller robots controlled by the team members not controlling the main bot that are used for harassment, distraction, hitting the flanks, etc... They seem to be fairly effective, but from watching two out of the four I saw take serious beatings and end up little more than scrap, they're not something to pin your hopes on if your main bot has a problem...

[J. T./Jessica]

Man, it can be annoying when paranormal investigation shows tell you what the investigators think they heard or saw - thus shaping your opinions to match theirs - before letting you actually see or hear it...

A perfect example, I was just watching an episode of "Ghost Adventures" and the show kept focusing on what they hear in a Spirit Box session after having a house's owner asking the question "Do you want us to sell the house?"

What they heard was "Not sure", but after listening to it a couple times with my eyes closes so I couldn't see the subtitle where it showed that, I - personally - think I heard "Not yours"; like the ghost of a member of the family that built the house was saying that it wasn't the current owner's house to sell.

[J. T./Jessica]

I feel almost sick... literally, physically sick...

There was a problem with my computer, so I saved my open files - my open stories that I was working on - and went to back them up... everything appeared fine, so I didn't know that somehow the files hadn't saved properly and had been corrupted when I... when I thought I was updating my backups, I was actually replacing the 'good' files from a few days ago with the files that were corrupted today (yesterday? It happened Saturday afternoon, but I haven't been able to sleep yet, emotions are still running high) so I not only lost my primaries, but also my secondary backups... and I ended up discovering that I hadn't updated my tertiary backups (my emergency backup, whatever you want to call them) in over a year...

A good eighteen months worth of work... no, actually years worth of work considering how long I've been working on some of those files, especially since one was my "Deleted Scenes" file of notes and scenes that I had that weren't for any particular story, just brainstorming... all lost...

God, please let the computer repair place be able to recover those files, at least recover something from them... it's bad enough that I won't even have the money for it for at least a month or two because of bills, but having to wait until Monday to find out if they can even do it... I feel like I'm gonna throw up...

[J. T./Jessica]

They said... 'maybe' they can't be sure if they can recover anything and if so how much they'd be able to recover... it'll cost seventy dollars, can't be done for at least a month and I can't be sure if I'll get anything back from it... I'm still going to save money to give it a try, but at this point I'm expecting to have to pretty much start over from scratch, eighteen+ month old notes and backups, whatever I can remember, and bits and pieces and chapters already posted either here or elsewhere as references...

[J. T./Jessica]

What J.T.'s not mentioned is that they also told us that anything he does on his computer, especially things that have to be saved like writing stories, decreases the chances of them being able to salvage anything because the computer might overwrite what's there.

*Winces* That's because I'm trying not to think about that part, Love. Scylla and Charbydis - do nothing and risk losing everything, do something and risk losing everything, either way, I'm like to have to revert back to November '13 backups and find myself going from there with older stories and starting from the beginning with anything written after that... not something I want to think of, not really...

And just when has being an ostrich ever worked, anyway?

It's not ignoring it, it's just... piecing it out and taking it as I can deal with it, Kella...

[J. T./Jessica]

Well... I'm taking the plunge and reverting back to my last saved backups... from 2013... I'll have a good bit of work to do in catching up... but you know what?

The two that came after it weren't as good, but 'Batman Begins' had some great lines, including this one - "Why do we fall? So that we can learn to get back up."

Of course, I also like that one quote I read once about even if you get knocked to the ground, grab a rock on your way back up. So that's what I'm doing - grabbing a rock and coming up swinging...

(Giggles)
It's always so funny when you acted determined like this, Johnnie... Half the time, I expect you to start monologuing.

[J. T./Jessica]

You know... now that I've decided to just work hard to recreate what was lost... I'm not sure I know which one to actually start with...

[J. T./Jessica]

Susan Ivanova: Have you ever heard of the hour of the wolf?
Lyta Alexander: No.
Ivanova: My father told me about it. It's the time between three and four in the morning. You can't sleep, and all you can see is the troubles and the problems and the ways that your life should've gone but didn't. All you can hear is the sound of your own heart. I've been living in the hour of the wolf for seven days, Lyta. Seven days. The wolf and I are now on a first-name basis. In times like this, my father used to take one large glass of vodka before bed. To keep the wolf away, he said. And then he would take three very small drinks of vodka, just in case she had cubs while she was waiting outside.

Ivanova was wrong on one thing... the Hour of the Wolf isn't always from three to four. It's whenever your thoughts are troubled to the point where you can't sleep, thinking about what might be, what might have been, what is, what isn't, what should have been and what shouldn't...

One of our cats has pulled a disappearing act... not the first time she's done this in the year, year and a half of her life... the problem this time, what has me facing the wolf, is that she was last seen... Saturday night, I think... it's now Sunday night, Monday morning, and there's a box full of six hungry kittens that are crying in the living room, I don't know what to do to help them, and Mother's talking about taking them to an animal shelter if the momma-cat hasn't shown up by Tuesday morning...

And that wolf has been scratching at the door all night...

[J. T./Jessica]

Final Fantasy Citys (7 onwards)

FF7:
Midgar
Kalm
Fort Condor
Junon
Costa Del Sol
Corel/North Corel
(What's the city with the ruined reactor?)
Cosmo Canyon
Nibelheim
Rocket Town
Wutai
Bone Village
Cetra (City of the Ancients)
Icicle Inn

FF8:
Balamb
Dollet
Timber
Galbadia (Deling City)
Esther
Trabia
Fisherman's Horizon

FF9:
Alexandria
(ugh... the village where the Black Mage factory is... I used to remember most of these names a lot easier)
Lindblum
Treno
(the city of rats and rain...)
Cleyra
Condie Petie
Madain Sari
(I can't remember the ones on the other two continents)

FFX:
Zanarkand
Besaid
Kilika
Luca
Djose
Guadosalam
Macalania
Home
Bevelle
Mt. Gagazet

FFXII
Rabanastre
Archades
Nalbina
Bhujerba
Nabradia/Nabudis
(Landis)
Jahara
Balfonheim Free Port

FFT:
Gariland Magic City
Dorter Trade City
(Ugh, can't remember all of these either...)

[J. T./Jessica]

Attempting to work out the timeline for a comicsverse that takes three years to cover one year, two years to cover six months, then seemingly another five years to cover three years, all while saying a character begins their career at one age while being another age now having been a crimefighter for 'X' number of years when 'X' is less than the years between the first age and the second and... augh!

Not sure whether I need an asprin or a sledgehammer and truckload of watermelons more...

[J. T./Jessica]

Ugh... so unhappy with Last.fm right now - they took a perfectly functional and navigatible site with music player and turned it into a confusing piece of crap that doesn't even work right with their latest 'update'...

[J. T./Jessica]

I just had a thought...

If the "Red Wedding" involved the bride's family massacreing the groom's, and a 'white wedding' just means the bride is a virgin... What would be involved in a 'blue wedding', I wonder...

[J. T./Jessica]

Oh, what a Catch-22...

I wish we could go on a vacation somewhere, get away and relax for a few days, but there's two glaring problems with that concept...

1. All the problems we'd be getting away from would still be waiting for us when we got back.
2. If we had the money to go on vacation, we wouldn't have some of the problems I could use a vacation from in the first place...

[J. T./Jessica]

Pre hoc, ergo propter hoc, gotta love it...

(Before it, therefore because of it, if anyone needs a translation.)