Something good for once.

I went and did something productive today! It was small, but I still got dressed (in record time, too... usually takes me so long =_=), went out and did something responsible.

I just had to go and call to cancel my health insurance in the U.S. My mom couldn't do it herself because they needed confirmation straight from me. But I couldn't call from home because the phone line isn't working right now. :(

So that meant I had to go outside to use a phone there. Which could have totally been a freakout moment (agoraphobia + anxiety from responsibilities) but I went and put on a little bit of "Archana attitude" and it actually worked. o.O I was okay!

I'm pretty content now for once... I mean, I won't say it'll last (it rarely does) but if I can have those moments more often than not, I'm doing something right.

The epiphany I had from the last post did something good for me, I think. I'm really excited about the idea of going out and buying myself my "protection charm". Even if it feels a little bit dorky, hey... if it helps me, that's nothing to be ashamed of, right?

I've even been doing more web work lately. Finally am getting around to trying to muddle through figuring out Merb. It's a MVC, model-view-controller framework for use with Ruby. Kinda a lightweight alternative to Rails. Not that I'm really DOING much with Ruby at all, but I'm very slowly trying to gain an understanding of how it works. Maybe I'll eventually actually CODE a project with it, gasp!

And I'm messing with bbpress -- lightweight forum software made by the people who made Wordpress -- which I'm pretty sure I will be using as my roleplaying forum. I suppose PHP is starting to get on the oldschool side for some people but I want to stick with bbpress because it'll have more support, community and ease of usability. As long as Wordpress sticks to its guns with the bbpress credo (lightweight forum extended with plugins) it should age well and continue to be a working solution for me for many years to come.

The "problem" of course, being that I needed a lightweight forum that my sister can access on her Blackberry, so she can RP with other people I know. The whole "mobile friendly" issue is something of growing interest to me -- that is, creating sites that are lightweight and image free for mobile phones to access without strain. Doing that for a forum (especially something as clunky and complex as phpbb3) was beyond the scope of what I wanted to fiddle with, though, so I kept researching and hoping a good open source solution would pop up for me to use and dissect.

The thing I'm happiest with right now with bbpress is that I actually found a "raw" layout for it!! No images, no styles, simple layout... I think this is just what my sis needs. I'm going to test it with her later, but I can't see it NOT being a good choice for mobiles. I've got a theme switcher on the test site, too, so hopefully it'll be easy.

I'm probably just going to modify the base layout for desktop, too. That layout is *also* very lightweight, and that's very nice. :O Sis may not even need to use the alternate "raw" one, but I figure with threads with a lot of text going on it might be less of a strain. The one thing I'm wondering is whether I ought to also come up with a "dark" alternative for those who hate reading on white. I probably will... ugh, this is usually the sucky part, though, because I totally *hate* on CSS. D:

Okay, I think I will go continue to work on my webstuff now, and also finish Hrifa's character sheet. Playing a warlord on forum is going to be odd, since a lot of warlord powers depend on controlling or aiding the movements of others (friends or foes). I think the DM is going to actually be posting graphical maps though, which sounds like it'll be a lot of work, but if he wants to do it, that's his choice!

(But I hope I am starting to get back on the track to recovery now... *crosses fingers* May tomorrow also be a good and productive day.)