This mini-novel in brief:
First three paragraphs are about my silly life.
Next is my list of things of upcoming things for 2009.
And last, most importantly, is about a virus that has been attacking dA users.

***

I've been trying to squeeze in gaming time before I have to go back to college. I'm not going to take any games with me so I can focus on my studies and art. (Also, my mom has discovered hulu.com and has been using my laptop to marathon Highlander lately... because Sci-fi channel recently had a marathon )

I have to go back to the dorm today... Sunday! And then classes start Monday! I'm in fear! Why? Because I think this will be a more relaxed semester than the last two semesters. That's exactly what I thought before the last two semesters, and they both turned out kind of bad and stressful and overwhelming. Especially last Spring when the stress started giving me health problems. Please, appearances don't deceive me this year! *crosses fingers*

Not to mention I feel unprepared... I've never painted with oils before and it looks like the creative writing class is going to have limits. >_> Can I write a story that takes place on Earth with no supernaturualness and only has normal people? How can someone like me write about normal people?

***

Plans for 2009 (a.k.a. resolutions)

DRAW EVERY POKEMON EVAR! 8D All 493 of them! I'm going to give =Veemonsito's Pokemon Challenge a try. ^^
Show you that comic I keep talking about.
Color all those old pictures some of you are probably waiting for. There's so many! (still over 70) And they are from the summer, so I don't feel very attached to them anymore, so I'm trying to fix them up by sketching over them.
And of course show my love for Buono and Hello!Project. (I already drew two Pokemon/H!P crossovers that are full of crack).
Create more cracky drawings in general. Fanart and Original. Wait till you see the "Bidoof Box" my brother and I came up with.
I'm going to start an H!P blog and update my personal and art blog more.
Design my own website to post a selection of my art on, because most people over 30 think deviantART is a bad site because of its name. Silly old people! (Even though I don't consider my mom and professors old >_> )

And I still need to finish replying to my messages. I'm not ignoring you guys, it's just messages get buried and I get overwhelmed. I'll get to them! (And though I'll read old journals, I won't comment on the ones that are no longer relevant, okay?)

***

!!!Virus on DeviantART!!!

Despite all this stuff I want to do, I'm going to have to keep most of my visits to dA short and sweet in the near future. There is a trojan lurking in one of the ads here. Before you ignore the rest of his journal and tell me it's just my computer and that it has spyware on it: many Deviants are having the same problem. I've read too many posts in the forum, along with three journals and 1 news item. My sister has been affected, too. And it only affects deviantART pages, not any of the blogs or forums I also visit.

So here is what happens. If you have several tabs open, you may notice that the ads revolve every so often in the idle tabs. When the guilty ad reaches its turn, it redirects your page to either an advertisement (sometimes naughty) or a pdf.php site that does drive-by downloads of spyware and trojans. The pdf site freezes your browser while it injects the malicious data into your computer. The most common thing to get is the BloodHound.Exploit trojan. Well, another Deviant figured that since this only happened in idle tabs, that we would be safe if we stayed in one tab and exited it whenever we were away from the computer. And things appeared to be safe. Well, my sister proved that wrong. It happened to her while she was browsing a single tab on deviantART.

Has this happened to any of you? Because this sounds like too much of a coincedence that all these people would have the same spyware on their computer and that it only affected deviantART for them (actually, I've googled the IP of the attack, and other sites have been affected, but I had never been to them until I read their forums about half an hour ago... and it sounded like those attacks were caused by ads, too, so maybe they used the same ad provider as deviantART?). And no one seems to know the ads responsible because they freeze the browser.

Blocking the IP 76.74.239.45 might help if you haven't been affected yet, but don't want to risk it.

Please don't recommend more anti-spyware and anti-virus programs for me. I highly doubt this is my computer's problem and the university made me use their Symantec. If I use your recommendation, I might not be able to access the internet at my dorm, so please do not take it personally if I don't accept your advice.

Soo... until dA removes that ad, I'm going to have to be extra careful here (I already have over 7 BloodHounds in quarantine... and I don't want more.) I won't be able to multi-task like I normally do (having several tabs open while I'm doing school work or working on an art) so I'll be a little slower commenting and replying, and will have to set certain times to focus only on dA. At least I'm going to aim for not being gone for months without warning! (But if I start crying about my classes on Monday or Tuesday, then start worrying XDD)

***

Happy New Year!

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To-Do List: [link]
(Feel free to tell me which works you wish for me to finish first!)

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Clubs: