March 16
I still wasn't used to the dumb Daylight Saving Time, so I slept in a touch later than I meant to. But at least I didn't have any Wednesday morning classes to go to.
I decided that today I'd just work my legs and let my wings rest, so I trotted around the neighborhood. There were a few robins who had already returned, and they were busy poking at the bare patches of ground, looking for food. Some of the smarter ones had set up their territory near houses with bird feeders. Probably when the alpha birds were gone, the other robins would fly over and get something to eat, too.
It was kind of sad seeing winter dribble away as meltwater, but it was time for it to go. Time for the flowers to poke their heads above the ground and farmers to plant their crops.
The English helpers were in a classroom, and all of them had folding computers that they could use. My computer doesn't fold, and I was told it would be very difficult for me to take it with me, because there were lots of cables that all needed to go in the right places or else it wouldn't work.
I found my helper—rather, he found me—and he got my essay out of the internet and onto his computer. Humans call where it's stored 'the cloud,' even though it isn't really a cloud but just a giant room full of really big computers. They have a room like that in Dewing Hall, and I got to look through the window at it but wasn't allowed inside.
It looked a lot like a library, but instead of shelves of books it was shelves of computers.
He went through and showed me how to correct a bunch of things that he found wrong with my language. He showed me how to make the margins all line up, which made it look a lot neater, and how to add page numbers to the bottom of the page.
He also wound up making most of the changes, because he said that it was painful to watch me type one letter at a time with a pencil held in my mouth. It's not my fault that his computer won't let me talk to it.
When all the corrections he'd suggested had been made, he sent it to a printer which was a whole lot bigger than the one Peggy had. It was faster, too. Hers slowly feeds the paper out as it prints; this one spit out entire complete pages one right after another.
I stapled it all together with a sense of satisfaction, then went down to the classroom to turn it in.
After that I was a free mare.
The feeling of all that free time stretching in front of me made me giddy. I wanted to go out and play in what was left of the snow, or fly around, but I didn't, because then I'd have to take another shower before going to the salon.
But I did have a piece of pie and a brownie for dessert.
I met up with Meghan after lunch. Instead of an Uber car, a beat-up yellow taxi came to get us. It looked newer and sleeker than Winston, but smelled bad inside and was really bouncy. Just the same, it got us to the salon.
When we went inside, Maura was waiting for me. She showed me to a private room. I wasn't sure why the salon had a private room, and Maura said it was for when they did Brazilian waxing. Meghan's face got kind of red when she said that, so I guess it was something private. Maybe I'd ask Peggy about it later.
Maura put a long shirt over her nice clothes and opened her bag, bringing out a shedding blade. She asked me if we used them, and I told her we did, so she started scraping it through my coat, getting out the loose underhair.
Maura took her time and did a really good job. She had to ask me for guidance around my wings; she said that wasn't something she had to worry about when she groomed her horses.
Meghan just looked at the growing piles of loose hair in amazement. It gets a lot fluffier when it comes out, though, so it looks like there's more than there is.
I laid on my back so that she could get my belly—which was something else that her horses wouldn't do for her, she said.
She went over my legs with a coarse curry comb, then used a finer curry comb to get my coat back in order. She had clippers, too, and asked if I wanted to thin out my coat any more than she already had, but I thought it was good the way it was. There was still a bit of winter coat that would be working its way out over the next couple of weeks, so I set up an appointment for after I got back from Spring Break. By then, I'd be ready to have the rest of my winter coat groomed out.
Then it was my turn to wait as Meghan had her hair trimmed. I probably could have had my mane and tail done, but I decided that I might as well wait until my next appointment. It wasn't going to grow enough to be an inconvenience before then.
I felt a lot lighter and sleeker when we stepped outside, although I was also a bit chiller. That was the drawback to taking shortcuts; rather than a gradual lightening of the coat as the weather warmed, it was sudden.
She had the taxi take us back to her dorm, and we went to her room. She wanted me to stay and watch another Harry Potter movie, but then we decided that there wasn't enough time before dinner, and after dinner I had to go say goodbye to Peggy for a week and a half, and then I was going to spend the night with Aric.
Meghan was disappointed in that, but then suggested that we could watch something short instead. She thought I might like Over the Hedge, but before we started to watch it she made good on her promise to teach me to microwave popcorn.
We went off to the little lounge together and she took the bag out of its outer wrap and showed me how to set it right-side-up on the glass dish. She said that the microwave had a button for popcorn and that was the smartest thing to use.
The buttons weren't very hoof friendly and it took me a couple of tries before I got it, and then the microwave started making an unpleasant hum and a light came on inside so I could watch the bag of popcorn turning around and around inside.
At first it didn't do anything, and then it made one pop, then another and another and pretty soon it was a continuous popping that was almost louder than the microwave hum.
The microwave made a beeping noise when it was done cooking, and then to spite it, a couple of more kernels popped.
I had to fumble around to get the release to work, and Meghan insisted that she ought to be the one to pick it up because there would be a lot of steam coming out of the vent in the bag.
She shook it up to get all the popcorn seasoning mixed around, and then we went back to her room and she dumped it out into a bowl so that we could share it.
I wasn't sure how I was going to eat it without sticking my whole muzzle in the bowl, until she offered to scoop some out and let me eat it out of her hand.
The movie was about a bunch of wild animals that all lived near a human settlement and tried to get food for the winter from the humans and in the end they all worked together to defeat the mean humans and bear and get all the food that they needed.
It was a really good movie, and not too long. After the popcorn was all gone, Meghan put the bowl away and I stretched out on my belly by her leg, and she petted my mane and back. She said that I felt a lot sleeker now that my winter coat had mostly been combed out.
I promised her that we'd go watch Zootopia together after Spring Break was over, and we walked to dinner together.
I probably should have eaten dinner with Christine and Sean and Joe, but I stayed with Meghan instead and the two of us ate together in the front room. I waved at Cedric, who was sitting across the room from me, and he gave me a friendly nod.
We said goodbye for the week on the sidewalk in front of DeWaters, and I stood up and hugged her, and she leaned down and kissed me on the forehead and told me to be safe and have a good time.
There was a little party going on in my room when I got there: Ruth and Rebekka and Kat who is Rebekka's roommate were all there, playing a game of euchre and drinking to celebrate the end of the quarter. Peggy poured me a drink and I sat down and watched them play until Rebekka and Kat lost, then Rebekka said that she'd sit out the next game so I could play, and I got partnered up with Kat.
We played a couple of games and I had a few more drinks than I ought to have had, then I hugged everyone and told them that I was going to miss them over the next week, and went out into the streets to Aric's house.
I was a little bit unsteady on my hooves, which meant that I really shouldn't be flying, or at least not too high.
I came pretty close to clipping a lamppost, but avoided it at the last second, and made it the rest of the way without any trouble at all besides falling into one snowbank by mistake. Then when I got to Aric's I kept trying to pick up the key for the front door that he kept in a desk on the porch but I couldn't manage to get my lips around it, so I had to knock on the door until he opened it.
He wanted to know if I was drunk, and I nodded and told him that I was because Peggy had introduced me to White Russians and they were really good. Then he shook his head and let me in which was good because I really had to pee.
I really wasn’t in the mood to do anything other than cuddle (and that made me feel guilty and sad) but Aric said that was okay, and he said that we could watch a movie and snuggle on the couch like we had after watching the Super Bowl.
So that’s what we did. He played The Perfect Storm, and I brought down a blanket from his bedroom. I leaned up against him and he put his arm around my withers, and then when I got really sleepy I finally laid down on his lap and tried to stay awake for the movie but wound up falling asleep instead.
Speaking of new #1 YouTube videos.....
"Drunk Pegasus Flying!"
Smart of him. Newfangled "voice assistants" are horrible security and privacy holes.
It's ridiculous that "Cortana" is tied into the explorer front end and you can't purge it without disabling the entire start menu.
Fortunately, Start Menu Classic works fine. You just have to install it, then kill the Cortana system process and purge the system file quickly before the damn thing restarts itself.
(And before people say "Just shut it off!", that would still be wasteful since it's still using precious storage space. For every unnecessary "app" or subsystem that's allowed to stay, that's a bit less of your porn/funny reaction pic/anime fansub/steam library/music collection you can't fit on. For all their virtues in durability, speed and low power consumption, newfangled solid state drives are still quite limited in capacity. And don't talk to me about the whole "cloud storage" racket).
I guess I'm spoiled by linux deamons, config files and metapackages. But really, Windows 10 is ridiculous in not letting you get rid of their intrusive default shit. It's offensive.
http://www.howtogeek.com/224798/how-to-uninstall-windows-10s-built-in-apps-and-how-to-reinstall-them
https://github.com/Nummer/Destroy-Windows-10-Spying/releases
Good I hate when that happens, it makes me feel like I didn't microwave it long enough
...
Those late popping ones are also why I seem to always have burnt kernels.
D'Awwww
7206383
You can't beat an old-fashioned air popper and actual butter melted in the microwave with seasoning added in and drizzled over. No scorching or faux-butter oil-stuff.
I usually use chili powder and a bit of basil in the butter. Or sriracha.
7206382
You have valid points but I'm pretty sure Silver would look at you like you were lecturing her on the finer points of quantum physics.
A cunning plan to ensure maximum cuteness!
She wouldn't be a teenager if she didn't try
drivingflying home drunk after a party, right?I did try the "using my bike in a snowstorm while drunk" once, weird experience.
It's a little more complicated than that.
Makes sense. After all, human women have the longest hair in the animal kingdom, so long as they let it grow out. Other sentient species probably wouldn't need hair cuts as much.
YES!
I also saw a couple spelling and grammar errors if you want me to PM them. Thanks for the chapter.
7206449
You can just put the spelling and grammar errors in the comments.
7206449
Not really. Server rooms full of logical volumes is pretty much it. Unless you count a personal NAS or set up an old rig or beowulf cluster for server work.
Ever college dorm should have at least one kid with one of those. Unless the school network has bullshit restrictions, in which case, it's every student's responsibility to rebel and defy with tunnels and TOR relays.
Seriously, my sister's campus wouldn't let you connect unless you had the (Windows only) school-provided security package installed.
Also, it's not a dorm unless there's at least one ham radio enthusiast improperly using spectrum and hiding equipment under dirty clothes in the closet when the FCC Fuzz come searching.
Oh my god man eating popcorn out of her hand that's just adorable
White Russians, the gamblers drink. Do you trust that their milk is good? Roll the dice.
7206454 Um . . . this is awkward. Now I can't find the ones I remember seeing.
The luxury!!
Seriously dude, Silver's just to cute
Ah, the triumph of successfully getting through finals. It's a very good feeling. Silver definitely deserved all she did to celebrate.
Damn you with your talk of microwave popcorn. Had to make something better. Microwave bacon. Delicious.
7206382 Amen about windows 10. Been sticking to Win7 after the awful Win8 update I got and MS is really trying to force their spyware laden Win10 onto everyone now. They're even forcing Win10 on people again.
I've been wanting to get used to Linux and switch permanently, though gaming is the problem. Dual booting is time consuming and using a VGA passthrough with a virtual machine is incredibly difficult since I'm not used to using config files and the terminology is pretty dense. Biggest problem I found is many of the programs don't have GUI's and you're pretty much forced to go back to using the CLI. I haven't used that crap since the mid-90's.
Also, FTP servers really need to make a come back.
7206527
How's that different from regular bacon with a drip rack?
Also, this is looking to be a good year for Linux. GoG and Steam are offering more linux titles. AMD and Nvidia are both cooperating more on open graphics frameworks and libraries. Even though Wubi has ceased development, Microsoft is cooperating and allowing Bash and Linux binaries semi-natively on Windows. While binary blobs are still horrifying to the sensibilities of the "Free as in Freedom" crowd, it might be a great boon to the movement by getting more people comfortable with unix-like computing.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/ubuntu-16-04-proves-even-an-lts-release-can-live-at-linuxs-bleeding-edge/
http://www.zdnet.com/article/torvalds-im-still-working-on-year-of-the-linux-desktop-ill-wear-them-down/
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/12/amd-embraces-open-source-to-take-on-nvidias-gameworks/
http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-and-canonical-partner-to-bring-ubuntu-to-windows-10/
When I was in training, we used OpenSuse and were forbidden to use any GUI. Command lines aren't that bad, but then, I'm old enough to have used DOS and Windows 3.x
http://www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/LinuxTutorialSysAdmin.html
7206553 It's in plastic wraps with a paper towel already inside to absorb the grease. Just gotta be careful opening the ballooned plastic or you'll get steam burns. Comes 4 bacon slices per pack out of 4(?) packs and you throw away the packaging after taking the cooked bacon out. So no cleanup or grease to deal with.
Uhm…
7206564
It's a shame to let the grease go to waste. Use it in stock or gravy or for ammunition like they did in WWII.
Or mix it with cornmeal, roll the dough into snakes and fry it on your ramrod while waiting for the damn Johnny Rebs to show their coward faces.
derpicdn.net/img/view/2013/1/17/215004__safe_pinkie+pie_too+many+pinkie+pies_linux_terminal_ponysay_fork+bomb_denial+of+service+attack.png
derpicdn.net/img/view/2013/1/24/222138__safe_twilight+sparkle_text_computer_laptop+computer_trolling_linux.png
7206589 It's good for me then since I don't make cornmeal or gravy either. But they really made ammo out of bacon grease?
OpenSuse is good, but it was a little buggy when I tried it a year or two ago. I'm not totally unfamiliar with command lines since I can remember being 4 or 5 and using a Commodore 64 for gaming, but not much else.
Typing in the program name is easy in a CLI, but there's the switches and chaining commands together that's the problem. Found this one batch file online and I still don't know how it works. It takes 7zip, uses max compression and zips every file in the directory.
for /D %%A in (*) do "D:\Program Files\7-Zip\7z.exe" u -t7z -m9=LZMA2 "%%A.7z" "%%A"
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/04/reluctantly-turning-bacon-into-bombs-during-world-war-ii/360298/
7206566
Oops.
Correction made, thank you!
White Russians are good Black Russians are better but a Long Island Ice Tea? That will tear you up. Looks and tastes just like tea without actually having any. Basically a mixed drink with a splash of coke.
7206489
She'll get that Freshman 15 one way or another.
7206527
Yep. Emulation eats resources and there's just nothing in the *nix world that can manage gaming well, at least that I'm aware of.
(And it's not like I care about command lines that much- I taught myself BASIC as a kid and learned FORTRAN and Pascal in high school. And yes, I know I'm dating myself here. )
Woah, woah, Woah, WOAH! Somepony's loosing her wild side! She better slow down; I don't think the human world's ready to meet this crazy new Silver.
"We do Brazillian waxings in here."
"What's that?"
"Don't worry about it; it looks like you've already got one."
Did, uh, Megan enjoy the show?
7206382 I refuse to call them apps. Especially with expensive professional stuff.
7206843 Steam does help since there's a linux, but it can only do so much and it's proprietary. The problem would be more about the various dependencies or quirks each game has. (Team Fortress 2 doesn't have audio on Linux for example. Seriously, there's 13 different audio driver things for Linux.)
And from the way your programming experience is like, I think you're a child of the early 70's who probably had access to the early home computers. FORTRAN lost in popularity decades ago, so you're definitely not a part of the hip young crowd who use Java, Python and whatever version of .js scripting they have this year. (Long Live C++.)
i have some issues with microwave popcorn ... it either burns or not everything pops
Reminds me of Brownie Bun trying to use a microwave.
Having done this for real horses (not with popcorn though), I can tell that this was the high point of Meghan's day. So adorable, velvety smoothness, such cute poni.
7207495 Science oven!
7207686 Yes!
7207195 Fortran's still a thing among some older meteo programmers. They claim it's better than C et al for heavy data crunching in their interpolation code, and other modelling tasks.
7206408
I've used an air popper and a popper that stirs the kernels in hot oil, and while I'd take either over microwave popcorn, the stirring popper seems to get better results. I like to use olive oil and not bother with butter, or canola oil and some flavored salt.
7207686
Just don't put metal in it.
Science ovens don't actually care about metal in them per se (hell, some of them come with metal racks), but metal with thin edges or pointy bits (e.g. metal foil or forks) is bad juju, and if you enclose food in metal it's not going to be heated up at all
I usually follow the directions on the bag and ignore the popcorn setting. I've never met a popcorn setting that could actually cook a bag right.
Of course this is a work of fiction.
7208581
I've still got them on my shelf alongside the Bunnicula series, most of Roald Dahl's work, most of Madeleine L'engle's work (it's a pity the Polly O'Keefe and Vicky Austin cycles aren't as well-known as the original Wrinkle in Time quadrilogy), the entire Danny Dunn series, etc.
I need to get around to rereading the Ramona and Superfudge series again.
7206356
That would adorably hilarious.
7206382
Although they're more pony-friendly than a keyboard . . . .
I envision Silver Glow having a setup like Dragon, rather than using the built-in voice assistant.
She needs to get her hooves on an iPhone and try to have a conversation with Siri.
7206383
If I'm really on the ball, I have one go off when I'm holding the bag in my hands.
7206390
7206408
Very true. I ought to get a new air popper. Way cheaper than microwave popcorn, too.
7206420
You know you'd let a MLP pony eat popcorn out of your hand without a second's hesitation.
7206430
I always stuck to walking . . . one time when I got up the next morning, there was a traffic cone on the roof of my car, and I vaguely remembered I'd been thinking the night before that my car needed a hat. . . .
7206449
Tough to say--if long hair was a rewarded characteristic, than it would be passed on. MLP ponies certainly have longer manes and tails that most actual equines (although I don't know how long those can grow on horses). So it probably grows faster, and inconveniently longer, than a real horse's would.
But I don't know. That would be a subject for more research!
7206459
My buddy was trying to network a Timex Sinclair, just for giggles. Never managed, though, as far as I know.
That same buddy built an illegal antenna for the campus radio station--it was unlicensed, so could only transmit on leaky coax, so it couldn't be heard off-campus. His antenna added a good five or six miles to the broadcast range. He disconnected it before anybody caught on, but it might still be at the top of the attic in Trowbridge.
7206486
Depending on how much alcohol you put in, it might not matter if the milk is good or not.
7206715
I know a couple of people who've found that out.
Also a friend who chugged a bottle of Malibu because she couldn't taste the alcohol in it.
7206749
Aric's not a freshman, and he . . . oh, wait, you meant gain weight.
7206853
Do you think that there might be a market for merkins in Equestria?
Maybe just a bit. . . .
7207378
Once I got good at making one brand in one specific microwave . . . I kept buying the same brand. Dunno what I'll do when the microwave quits.
7207495
Yes! Ponies have trouble with microwaves; that's a proven fact.
7207572
7208512
The one theatre group I'm in has a kettle corn cooker, the kind that's hand-stirred with a wood paddle. Best popcorn ever.
7208622
The one at the shop cooks GFS brand popcorn perfectly if you push the popcorn button twice.
7208681
Ah, Bunnicula. Got that, some of the Indian in the Cupboard books, Sideways Stories, a few of the books about the smart kid detective (blanking on his name right now). Speaking of kid's books, do you remember a book where a mouse had a toy Corvette and he could make it go forward by saying "vroom vroom" and backwards by saying "moorv moovr"? Or the one where somebody was digging for treasure on an island and dug so many holes that the island sank?
7213182
Until you mentioned this, I never knew The Mouse and the Motorcycle had sequels.
7206598
To be fair, MS batch is pretty much rubbish. A proper shell with tab completion, man pages, and pipes is a whole lot more useful than what the DOS legacy offers.
7213925
So that's what it was called! Thanks!
7213939
Don't forget decent quoting rules. It's trivial to use a bash script full of echo commands to build an html file. With command.com or whatever they're calling it now, it's almost impossible without a third party tool of some sort, because without quotes the <> symbols are interpreted as redirect operators, and using quotes to prevent that means that said quotes get embedded in the html file, because of the lack of quote stripping.
7213182
The "smart kid detective" was probably Encyclopedia Brown, who wouldn't even need a name change to fit in to Equestria. I'm sure Twilight would love his books.
Well, at least until she encountered a case of Conviction by Counterfactual Clue.
Heh, "cloud storage" means something completely different in Equestria.
And the obligatory dose of cute.
White russians? The Pegasus abides. (Sorry, couldn't resist.)
Three days? That's an acadamy record, son!
Normally they take upwards of three weeks.
The jump from possessive-singular, to possessive-plural. I- it hurts.