Longtime readers of Ayarane Project would be aware that my birth name is a really, really bad joke/pun related to my birthday and sometime in ’99 I’d started to abandon it in common usage. And my original surname gets mangled 90% of the time… “Ayarane” too is a botch of it, but happens to be an AWESOME corruption.

I’ve yet to make the changeover to Yoshi Ayarane official and don’t really feel a rush to (because in California, it holds just as much water as my original name on everything but things like my state ID/social security card, and on the former it’s listed as an official alias). In real space, I leave it up to the other person as to which name they wish to call me by; that said, Yoshi is finally sticking within family. :)

I rarely get any weird questions about it (you know, the obvious ones asking if I’m in any way named after the Mario character), which is much, MUCH better than the obnoxious questions about my birth name (FFS yes, it IS about my birthday, which happens to be the worst day EVER to have a birthday on, tied with Christmas). There was, however, a post on fandomsecrets a few days ago in which someone was getting a ton of flak about naming her unborn daughter Yoshi, and this made me sad. Why the hate, doods? Yoshi is a perfectly fine and cute name and last I checked, there’s nothing that says you must be of the same ethnicity that said name comes from. Hell, there was a Yoshi on TechTV and he was this huge white guy. :P

If you read Ayarane Project through the main hub, this is probably irrelevant to you since AP sticks my tweets on the sidebar. I don’t do a daily Twitter round-up in the LJ/Facebook feeds as a courtesy to those who, understandably, don’t care to be tweet-bombed (though I would like to think that the Twitter hate has died down since then… hopefully).

That said, I would like to apologize in advance to those reading through LJ who harbor a seething, deep-seeted hatred of the Twitter and would advise you to skip this post for the sake of your blood pressure. :P Hell, if you’re reading this on the LJ feed, I’ll even cut it for you.

—

Dear internet, I am a twit. I tweet the peeps. I am anything BUT a Twitter Quitter. I even own Twitter-related shirts! (Seriously, proud owner of this shirt and next time I make an offering to the ThinkGeek gods I am SO getting this.)

I made a post along these lines when I first opened my Twitter account last year but for some reason I’ve not plugged it much if at all since then.

You should follow me! Here, my Twitter handle, let me show it to you:
@ayarane

“But Yoshi,” random internet dood says, “didn’t you say you hated this self-promotional business and denounce it as pointless vanity?” Yes, of course. I still have a pathological fear of vanity that no doubt gets me REAMED in the job hunt (this alongside my equally-pathological fear of cold-calling) but this is one of those freak moments in which I’m on a snark streak and I’m going to roll with it. o_o I know, it’s really weird. Please put down the bootstrap whips, doods who would lecture me about applying this elsewhere, as such talk is still generally not welcome here.

AHEM.

Why should you read my tweets?
Well… you know those fun-sized candies that we tend to decry as a rip-off but are, in fact, kind of awesome if you need a bite-sized sugar fix? Yeah, that’s what Yoshi-brand twitter is.
Imagine these little Yoshi Candies with Twitter-colored wrappings, and when you pop one you get a little burst of Yoshi-ness that would otherwise be too small to justify a post (most of the time… sometimes they are links to WIPs/finished arts, replies or, gasp, RETWEETS).

Just as I have been told that I have this thing about making the most mundane, daily nothings interesting enough to read about in blog form (whether or not this is true, well, that’s on you to decide), Yoshi-brand tweets are the same way, just… bite-sized. Omnomnom.
To continue with this horrible candy analogy, the Forrest Gump rule is also in effect– contents are randomized and may contain nuts. NAUGHTY LIBERAL NUTS. That is, I can, will, and often do shoot my mouth on politics and, NOT ONLY THAT, also let my raging voice actor fandom (particularly of one Yuri Lowenthal, who, by the way, is absolute hilarity on Twitter and MORESO when he and his wife Tara Platt are up to no good :3 :3 :3) fly free as a little tweety-bird without fear of having a fireball flung in my face. :D

Oh, and as if you didn’t need any more incentives, this is also what you want to follow if you want to see pictures (and, hopefully more frequently, VIDEO) of my big orange furball. So, in a way, Kestine gets in on the Twitter action, too.

I promise I’m not drunk, internet. I don’t even drink. I’m just naturally this smarmy.

So, internet doods, please follow me on the Twitter machine. I don’t have an awesome Robot Skeleton Army like Craig Ferguson does but… hm… maybe I can amass a Tweeting Prinny Legion. (Dood.)
Well, you could just read the tweet-feed without having to actually sign up for Twitter, but something about having a follow list that isn’t littered with bots and MLM-shills and other not-people-who-are-legitimately-interested just kinda tickles me pi… blue. Twitter blue.

As an aside, I’d considered making a Twitter feed just for the Cthulhu-like entity otherwise known as Yoshi’s Imagination but I decided against it since in most cases it’d break the 140-character limit. Sadface. :( Though, maybe I could make a Facebook fan page for it instead? HMM.

This concludes my shameless Twitter-mercial and I promise I won’t make such a horrible plug for a very long time. :P

—

Holy shit, it’s almost the end of February. March is when we REALLY get to the COUNTDOWN TO YOSHI DAY 2010 (aka “Yoshi Day Episode 26″ aka “Yoshi Day 1st Season Finale” aka “Yoshi’s Birthday But Not April Fools Day”). Sadly I have no spoilers to offer for the upcoming not-television event, aside from it likely involving cake and other tasty food.

Also, unrelated: CURLING. Listen to a curling match without commentary (and no video). Doesn’t it sound really naughty?
I’m very sorry, internet, my mind is in a very lulzy place right now. XD I’m going to bum around on YouTube until Craig Ferguson’s on.

because I am bored. Woohoo!

Dear sun: Stop playing peekaboo and make up your mind already. It’s distracting >_>;

Dear glasses: Stop falling off when I bend over to pick up my laser mouse that Kestine keeps batting off the bed.

Dear Dinah: Why are you so quick to jump to 100% CPU usage and thus maximum fan speed? WTF. (side note: do not let her hit 160F, that would be her “death” temp)

Dear Yggdrasil: Why can’t I crank your text size up to 150%? :( Yet I can do it on Blastoise and Dinah, what the hell….

Dear bed: Please stop trying to kill me, I’d rather sleep on you than this creaky-ass chair.

Dear splinter or toenail that I stepped on and got embedded in my heel: Hurry up and break down already, it stings :(

Dear router: Why do you keep dropping wireless radio? Dropping wifi but leaving ethernet alone = NOT AMUSED.

Dear self: Stop freaking out about… that. You know what I’m talking about. You know they mean well but are comple– ooh, a kitty!

—

I THINK we’re going to see 2012 today. Though with the rain this morning and such, that might have thrown things off. Hm.
Until I wake up completely and figure out which Snowscheme to do next, I’m going to wrap up in these blankets and wach the TWiT live stream for awhile. >_>;

Brr. Again.

I did a little housekeeping on the Ayarane Project hub. (read: not LJ or Facebook versions)
All of my social networking stuff occupies the black bar header… thing rather than waaaay up top as text links. There is now a mail form and a permanent page about the details of Gourmet Ramen.

And… yeah. My brain is just kinda mush at the moment. I need to text my sister to wish her a happy birthday, for one thing.

Blah. BLAAAAH.

Perhaps some caffeine could jump-start things. Yoshi’s Imagination is mired in molasses today or SOMETHING.

…and I cannot find my bloody witch hat so I can be Yoshi the Half-Assed Black Mage. Booooo!

Really, though, today’s been one gigantic lazy-fest. Well, more than it normally is.
However, I finally got to shower! And I didn’t clog the drain! Yaaaaaaay! XD

Altima Network Windows 7 Deployment: Status of the LAN right now:
- Blastoise: OK, but still hates Bluetooth. Running Win7 Pro.
- Dinah: OK, has a mysterious “Mass Storage Controller” that is missing drivers and I don’t know WTF it is but it doesn’t appear to be interfering with anything, so I’ll just ignore it. Running Win7 Home Premium.
- Yggdrasil: DOWN, no POST, deployment postponed until late December/early January barring new parts (or the coins to loot them) magically appearing in my Magic Coin Block.
- Onyx: OK (good god, mother’s desk is a MESS) Running Win7 Pro.
- Tsunami: OK Running Win7 Home Premium
- Jin: TBA (not yet transferred)

While Iggy’s a no-go for now… I can, however, burn gift cards and such on fixing my audio input issues in preparation for the AP podcast. Blastoise apparently hates Bluetooth in any form (so much that he cannibalized my Hamachi, hence yesterday’s sudden breakage of its software NIC), so I can’t use my badass Bluetooth headset for voice chat and whatnot. I imagine Dinah will react the same way, so I won’t even bother. Rather, I’ll just loot a USB headset that will be just for those two (and Iggy, eventually).

All is Quiet on the holiday Ramen Front… for now: I am… totally drawing blanks on what, if anything, to doodle for Across Halloween ’09. Denroll‘s already been done, and we’ve already had plenty of headfire and candy theft… and Numair the Great Pumpkin. Bah. November will be divided between prepping base graphics for the AP podcast and any Gourmet Ramens that come up (I’ll post a detailed refresher about that tomorrow), and December will hopefully yield plenty of those awesome Snowschemes. >:D