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b>Title:</b> Truth, Lies, and Misdirection
Author: Alim Siemanym

Universe: CSI: Miami
Pairing: Horatio Caine/Rick Stetler
Rating: R
Genre: Drama, Slash

Summary: Twenty years before CSI: Miami, Horatio Caine went undercover in Miami, where he met a young beat cop named Rick Stetler.

Part: Chapter 1
Words: 3993

( TRUTH, LIES, AND MISDIRECTION: CHAPTER 1 )

Title: Truth, Lies, and Misdirection
Author: Alim Siemanym

Universe: CSI: Miami
Pairing: Horatio Caine/Rick Stetler
Rating: R
Genre: Drama, Slash

Summary: Twenty years before CSI: Miami, Horatio Caine went undercover in Miami, where he met a young beat cop named Rick Stetler.

Part: Prologue
Words: 1118

( TRUTH, LIES, AND MISDIRECITON: PROLOGUE )

Well, things aren't going quite so well as I had hoped. They started out awesome -- I had (just about) finished my csi_bigbang fic, I had a summer internship that not only was in my field of study but was also getting me college credit, I had found a decently-cheap place to live.

And then things got not-so-awesome very quickly.

I work for a software development company that has developed a piece of software that is, pretty much, an all-in-one asset management application for the mining and construction industry. Pretty cool stuff. I got a job with them doing half development, half support.

As a support person I was paired with two programmers who are the main support people for Tanzania. Cool biz. Then something big happened -- I can't go into details because of the non-disclosure agreement -- but the entire Tanzania support team had to fly out forthwith. (And by "the entire team" I mean the entire full-time team; that is, not me.)

Then the unthinkable happened: one of the guys got very sick and was hospitalized. And since big emergencies half the globe away don't really disappear on their own, I was pretty much called up in the middle of the night, asked if I had an up-to-date malaria vaccine, and told there was a plane ticket waiting for me the next day.

OK cool. Tanzania, exotic, right? Yeah, no internet. In my rush to leave I totally forgot to submit my csi_bigbang fic, much to my chagrine. I didn't remember until we had left Johannesburg and civilization, and were on the chartered turboprop on our way to Dar es Salaam. Not, of course, that I could do anything about it: due to weight restrictions on the luggage, I had only brought my corporate laptop with me.

But I talked to the mods and that was OK, because I was going to get back to the US on Monday 15 June.

But this being me, and me being such good friends with Murphy, it didn't quite turn out that way. So we took the turboprop back to Johannesburg, and just as we're landing we get a frantic call from the mine foreman: they just had a catastrophic failure, and their entire server setup has just been completely wiped out.

So we get back on the stupid little plane that I'm really starting to hate at this point, go back to Tanzania, requisition new servers, rebuild the entire system from a week-old backup, and then spend the rest of the time fixing everything. And by everything I mean pretty much updating by hand every single aspect of this highly complex software.

Finally we board the turboprop for the last time and keep our fingers crossed all the way to Johannesburg. Then the interminable Johannesburg-Frankfurt-Denver flight -- and let me tell you, 28 hours across three continents sure as hell qualifies as "interminable" -- and I am finally home.

Just in time to find an email from the Big Bang mods: sorry, it's too late to accept a submission from you; maybe next year.

Great. I think I just want to lay down and sleep for a year.

The final versions of the CSI Big Bang fics are due in on June 28. I'll start posting my completed fic here, at FanFiction.Net, and at CSI-Forensics. (Not to mention a half-dozen different fanfiction communities here on LJ. Yay for ficspam.)

So yes, my most sincere apologies to micki_malheur, my assigned beta.

I don't have a television, so I watch my tv online. That means that I usually end up seeing episodes a few days after the fact.

I just watched the season finale of CSI: NY.

And all I can say is:

Oh. My. God.

OK, so I saw Jess Angel's death coming from a mile away. When the episode summary said that one of the CSIs was going to die in the episode, I immediately drew the connection.

I never expected that final scene, with the car pulling up and shooting out the bar.

And dude, that ending was just cruel. A gunman opening fire on the group of main characters with an assault rifle is not a good place to finish the season.

Just... God.

Is it September yet?

Attendance requirements in college classes are the stupidest things ever invented.

Let's take my Algebraic Structures 358 class for example.

Algebraic structure is, in plain terms, formal logic. Now, when I was in the fourth grade, I went to summer school and took a course called "Reasoning, Logic, and Formal Proof." Algebraic Structures didn't cover anything new.

So I never bothered going to class. I got a 95% on the midterm, and a 100% on the final.

And an F in the class.

Who cares if I never showed up? I know the material. The saying goes, "everything I needed to know in life I learned in kindergarten," but in my case I learned it in 4th grade. Sheesh.

.... aaaaaaand I failed Computer Organization and Assembly Language 341. Whatever. Not like I care, except I'll have to take it again. Maybe this time my teacher will actually speak English....

So while I should have been teaching myself all the semester's material from Computer Organization and Assembly Language 341, I was watching CSI: Miami. It's all my roommate's fault. As an end-of-the-semester gift she gave me the Season 1 box set.

*sighs*

*wanders off to watch some more*

*after all, it's only 3 AM and the exam isn't for another 7 hours*

As a side note, has anyone else noticed that CSI: NY has suddenly found religion? Are they trying to cater to the conservative Christian, Republican audience now?

Drinking beer after an exam is understandable. Drinking beer after an exam at 9:30 in the morning, not so much.

Title: Impundulu
Author: Alim Siemanym
Rating: R
Pairings: Albus Dumbledore/Harry Potter, Ron Weasley/Hermione Granger
Genre: Action/Adventure/Drama

Summary: The Golden Trio go back in time to save the world. Time travel, slash, vampires, werewolves, and basilisks, oh my. Not to mention Boers, Zulus, Nazis and all sorts of interesting stuff. All the clichés like you've never seen before. ADHP, RWHG.

Part: 0/?
Words: 1293
( Click to read. )

Good news and bad news and worse news.

The good news is that I got a 95% on my Algebraic Structures final. That's very cool, especially because I taught myself the material the night before.

The bad news is that I might not pass the class. Apparently attendance is not optional, no matter how well you do on the midterm and final.

The worse news is that I'm still sick and am showing all symptoms of swine flu.

So it only took two years of gathering dust on my bookshelf and being carted around the globe, but I finally got around to reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. From start to finish, six hours. Not too bad.

In the meantime, my copy has travelled the US from coast to coast, visited Hawaii and Japan, and has lived with me at college. Oh and I bought it in Poland. I think it's the most well-traveled unread book I ever owned.

Of the three major strains of the flu prevalent in the United States, how many did I catch?

That's right — all of them.

Two during midterms, the last one this past weekend when I would have otherwise been studying for my finals this week.

I really, really think fate hates me right now.

Stupid flu.

So... I got distracted this weekend and had a horror movie marathon. I watched Jaws three times, because, frankly, I love that movie. It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. And I always thought Chief Brody was kind of cute.

Anyway sometime between viewings I ran across this parody. It's very short, but it covers all the main parts. Since Livejournal won't let me embed the movie, here is "Jaws in 60 Seconds": http://www.eatlime.com/video/Jaws-in-60-Seconds/yt/hZgMJ-WFzPg

Wesołego Alleluja

Easter greetings, my lovely stalkers. I hope everyone had a good Easter, whether you're Christian or not. Plenty of chocolate for everyone.

Personally, I had a date with my collection of the scariest horror movies of all time. What else am I to do? I'm the only one (other than my RA) left in the dorm, and my family decided that this would be a great time to go to Argentina to visit family. Without telling me. Fun.

Dude, why couldn't I go to elementary school in Colorado? One of the local schools is doing an egg drop contest -- you know, the things where you try to build a box so that the egg inside doesn't break after being dropped. Anyway, so this school is doing an egg drop contest. Only, unlike my elementary school, they're not dropping it from the roof of the building; they're dropping it from a helicopter.

Why do they get all the fun?

How sad is it that it's 4:45 AM and I just wrote the last chapter of the unwritten sequel to my unfinished csi_bigbang fic?

In my defense, I woke up at 4 AM with it completely written in my head. But still....

If nothing else, being imprisoned in a hospital while recovering from severe hypothermia is a great way to get a lot done on your csi_bigbang fic. Not that I recommend it in general, as severe hypothermia is very nasty, but at least they were able to save my fingers.

That unpleasantness aside, the cardboard canoe race was awesome... up until the part where I ended up in the water. I'm still trying to figure out why I ever thought that canoeing down a whitewater river in a boat made of cardboard during a snowstorm in high wind was a good idea. Our boat won "best structural design" though, and if I hadn't been dragged away by the fire fighters, we would have tried for the next competition: "most people to fit in a single boat."

And I'm fast approaching the word goal for this project and I'm still not even halfway done. I hope my beta doesn't mind going above and beyond the call of duty....

I'm finding it a bit difficult to work on my CSI: Miami fic when there's a foot of snow outside. Oh well. ^_^

So the day of the blizzard, my cardboard canoe team decided it would be a good idea to scout out the river and estimate the effects of the snow melt. After we did that, we participated in the age-old tradition of "throw the team leader into the icy river." I suppose it would've been more fun if I wasn't the team leader.

Since I've already written approximately 5000 words, I'm going to take a break from my csi_bigbang fic and help my team finish our canoe. After all, finished or not, we've got to race it next Saturday down an internationally rated whitewater river course...

There's a blizzard raging outside and I'm attending the only school in the state that isn't closed.