| "Your memory is the second thing you lose. I don't remember the first." Saturday, July 12, 2003 02:29 p.m.
So, car's better, but cat got sick again. We think she got into the weed killer that they sprayed on the lawn. Usually she gets over that kind of poisoning pretty quick, but this one had her down for a couple of days. She seems okay now, though. Because my cat is stubborn as heck like that.
I finally got through the first 30 pages or so of my Inuyasha doujinshi, "Inuyasha Sairokushuu", so I guess it merits posting my progress. I still have, like, 50 more pages to go. It's a long book. But it's got all the stuff I'd wanted compiled together, including "Gatten Shouchi" and "Dog Fight". And it was in this book that I was introduced to the kanji for "fart". A useful one to know, I guess ^_^*.
In other news, I actually made the daily high score list for Spaced Penguin with a score of about 1,400,000 points. I've been playing that game a lot recently ^_^*. It's just mindlessly addictive to fling a penguin around in space. Pretty much all my points are always racked up in the very last level, where I just sit there and orbit the planets for a couple minutes.
Oh, apparently my floor is going co-ed for this coming school year. Co-ed... with upperclass girls and freshmen guys. If that isn't a disaster waiting to happen, I don't know what is. And the Phelpses graduated, so we don't have their charisma and baseball bats anymore.
EDIT:
That's what I get for thinking that an official website is the most reliable source of information. Ever since it went up in April, the Inuyasha Movie website has had nary an addition to its already scant information. So, on a whim, I did some searching for some Japanese fansites to see if they've been staying on top of news from other sources. And, lo and behold, they have. Apparently this week's issue of Weekly Shounen Sunday is going to have an article about the movie, plus give its official title. The site I looked at said the rumored title for the third movie was "Tenkahadou no Ken", which I'm having trouble translating. It could mean something like "Heaven-Sent Sword of Rulership" or "Sword of Heaven-Given Rulership" or even just "Sword to Rule the World" (I can't decide. But, you get the point). Plus, it's also rumored that Inuyasha's father will finally get a name. Well, I'll see if I can find out more on Wednesday, when the article comes out.
"I only eat homeless fish." Tuesday, July 8, 2003 03:29 p.m.
Argh.
That pretty much sums it up right there. I just got my car back from the shop and was all happy that the air conditioner finally worked again. So, I went out to put money in my checking account so I could pay the bill when it came. I got to the credit union, when suddenly... SQUEEEEEE--sputter sputter--smoke smoke... Yeah, that was not good. Thankfully, I was in the parking lot and could turn the car off right away, but considering the thing was just tuned up yesterday, that was not something I was expecting to happen.
Thankfully, I'd had the need to listen to a CD. I'd removed all the electronic accessorries from my car yesterday when it went to the shop (this being the CD player and cel phone) and just set them on my dresser in a tangled mess of wire. I was just going to head to the bank this afternoon, but decided to bring my CD player along with me at the last second. Since the cel phone was tangled in the same mass of wire, that ended up coming along, too. Lucky... (I use my cel phone maybe a total of three times a year, so never really think about having it with me).
Anyway, so I called home to get the number of the place I'd taken my car to yesterday, then called them to gripe them out, and they sent a tow truck to come get my poor broken car. My sister then came and picked me up a little later. Did I mention it was storming this entire time?
So, um, yeah. I'm carless again. Hopefully it was just something stupid, like them forgetting to seal off the coolant tank (that's the part of the car that was burning). If not... wah.
On the brighter side, I've been doing a more thorough translation of my Inuyasha doujinshi. I've gotten through about the first 20 pages right now. I'll post it once I get a little more done, plus some media to go with it, like scans and stuff (at the moment, all I have is song clips. If you're wondering why I have song clips with a doujinshi translation... you'll just have to wait and see ^_^*). But stupid Miroku keeps using weird slang and grammatical forms that I don't understand. He's, like, ghetto monk or something.
Well, I should go sit by the phone and wait for a word on my poor car. At least my poor cat is better. The hole in her arm closed up, and she's back to her old self. Except she came inside last night with a very happy and fat mosquito attached to her nose. Now that mosquito is sad and flat.
Oh yeah! Big O started last night! They showed the opening, in all its trippy, Queen-scented weirdness. And it really was uncut, with the alcohol, blood, and "God" left intact. Whee, I like that show. I can't wait to see the new episodes, although I've heard that Norman's voice actor changed (but apparently everyone else's is the same). I liked Norman's voice. His actor seems to be typecast as butlers, but he's so butler-sounding, it can't be helped! Okay, phone. Car. Make it better. La.
"What's up, Kanna? Did you do something fun today?" Thursday, July 3, 2003 04:37 p.m.
Wheeeeeeee! I got my Inuyasha doujinshi! It's as goofy as I had hoped, and it does in fact contain BOTH the Pocky story AND the Rin's-questionable-choice-in-men story. Plus a bunch of other silly ones that I hadn't seen before. There was one that started out with Naraku watching TV on Kanna's mirror ("Detective Conan", actually) and vegging out on junk food when Kanna suddenly changed the channel to Kikyo bathing. Naraku freaked out, and somehow Kikyo could sense that he was watching her, so with one-frame speed, Kikyo busted into Naraku's castle and punted him through the ceiling. Kanna thought this was pretty funny, so showed Kikyo an image of Inuyasha and Kagome together to see how she'd react. Kikyo did a little more property damage before running away screaming. The last panel was of Kagura and Kanna eating dinner together, with Kanna looking all smug, and Kagura making the comment in this entry's title.
There was another one-page story that was a parody of Rin and Sesshoumaru's first meeting. Rin tried giving him a fish, to which he replied that he didn't eat human food. Obediently, Rin returned the next day... with a bowl of dog food. ^_^* There are a couple of four-panel comics that I don't really get, but I also haven't taken the time to really attempt a translation yet. The entire book is just plain goofy (and clean, thankfully, which is what I was most worried about), aside from a story at the end about how Miroku met Hachiemon (that tanuki that sometimes hangs out with him), which was just kinda cute and sentimental. But hooray for gag doujin! How I love thee. ^_^
On another note, I've started updating my Slayers Sounds page fairly regularly (the BGM section, at least), so new stuff's on the way. I have no idea how long the regular weekly updates will last, but the fact that I now have a bunch of music on the list is giving me more of a drive to get through it all. I need to keep working on SGB, too. I have a pretty good idea of the rest of the story, but the only thing holding me back is I have no idea how to transition from where the story's at now to where it needs to be. Inspiration, come to me!
I feel so special. Wednesday, July 2, 2003 04:21 p.m.
You know how back on April 16th, I mentioned I drew that really silly picture of Jaken from Inuyasha. Well, apparently I just won a fanart contest with that image (check the right side of the page). Go fig. The image's complete randomness probably won the judges over. I'm probably Jaken's only fan in the world, too. I know that site's kinda popular, but its general content is kinda shoddy. It has a large collection of episode screencaps, but they look like they were made the lazy way by using a program that takes screencaps from a Divx file at one-minute intervals (I mean, who would take a screencap of Kagome's foot?). Thankfully, their character image section has more... thoughtfully-captured images (although they were also apparently donated from an outside source -_-), including this one, which I've never seen before and it thoroughly weirded me out. I have no idea what episode it's from (although it's obviously part of a dream sequence, judging by the background. And content ^_^*).
Oh yeah! They've announced the dub voices and spellings of the FFU cast. Apparently Nav is now "Knave", Ru is "Lou" (isn't that a boy's name?), and Cid is ::shudder:: "Sid". Strangely, Kaze is still Kaze, Kumo is still Kumo (and "Makenshi", from the looks of it), and the Demon Gun is left untranslated as "Ma-gun". It also gives one-line character profiles, and Lisa's reveals her to be an agent looking for the kids' parents, which is information that isn't revealed until the LAST episode (although, it doesn't really make a difference to the series at all). I'm not terribly familiar with ADV's voices, but at least Spike Spencer isn't Yuu.
Oh, and apparently Big O starts up this coming Monday instead of the beginning of August. Yay! That means I can see the new episodes! I'll probably tape them, since I know there are certain people who are currently not in the country who might want to see the new episodes.
"Well, now I have a holy cat." Monday, June 30, 2003 12:11 p.m.
Since it's been over a week since I've said anything in here, might as well give the run-down of the past week, which was actually somewhat eventful. Okay, actually... Wednesday was eventful.
So, Wednesday I was meeting my dad for lunch up in Allegan. About 15 minutes before I needed to leave, my cat came home with a limp. She ate, then went and hid under the bed (as cats tend to do if they don't feel good). I figured she'd sprained something, so paid it no mind, and went to lunch.
Lunch was uneventful, so I won't get into it. So, I came back home, cat was still under bed, but I wanted to wait a day before getting too worried about her. In the meantime, I learned that about an hour after I'd driven down US-131 to come back home, the whole road from M-43 to M-89 had caught fire. That's just weird.
But, anyway, Thursday came, cat wasn't any better, so we took her to the vet. It was there we discovered that she had acquired a rather large hole on the inside of her leg. The general consensus was that she had been bitten by something, so the vet cleaned her up and put her on antibiotics.
Unfortunately, we're supposed to keep her inside until the wound closes (and something that large is gonna take a looong time to heal). After a couple of days, she was back on her feet again, and now spends most of every day pacing in front of the door and meowing that she wants to go outside. But, since she's still got a hole in her arm, we can't let her out, so we just have to put up with her whining.
Yesterday, my mom and I went up to Grand Rapids, so we were able to see all the burned-out sections of the road from the fire last week (I usually don't have any reason to travel US-131 north of M-43, so I hadn't seen the damage until now). People think it was caused by someone dragging a chain behind their car, and the friction with the road sparked all the fires. Of course, now there's all these people screaming "Arson!", so I doubt we'll ever figure out exactly what the heck happened.
My mom bought a grill, so my task today is to assemble it. Ah well. It gives me something to do, since I still have no job.
On the plus side, Inuyasha and co. have finally made it back to his father's gravesite in the manga (after, like, 20 chapters of TRYING to get there), so hopefully the story will pick up again (it's been going reeaally slow since the end of the Shichinintai arc). And hopefully episode 115 will be subtitled soon as well. Same goes for Wolf's Rain 22, but I think that only aired, like, today.
"Has anyone seen my keys? I'd like to get my Pocky out of the trunk before it melts." Sunday, June 22, 2003 09:09 p.m.
Hooray for anime-conventioning weekend of driving-ness. Um, yeah. So, I've spent the weekend driving to and from and attending JAFAX up at Grand Valley State University. It's pretty small as far as conventions go, but it's FREE, which is a happy plus. So, on to my report of the event.
The weather was nice and sunny, although a tad on the hot side today. I seem to remember it being even more oppressively hot than this last year, though, so I guess I shouldn't complain. But last year I also had a functioning air conditioner in my car, so it kinda evened out. Anyway, on the drive up there was happy construction, so getting to Allendale took about a half hour longer than I was expecting (this is a pretty big chunk of time, considering the drive's only an hour on a good day). Turns out the real cause of the traffic was a bunch of rubberneckers ten miles up the road who were looking at a motorcycle that had wiped out on the other side (again, it's always on the other side. It's just that my side was feeling the effects of it).
Anyway, the traffic and weather report really has nothing to do with the convention. I got inside and wandered around the dealers' tables for a while and noticed that the cool guy who doesn't sell bootleg CD's wasn't there this year. I was kinda mad. It's not that I was planning on buying anything, since I have no money, but it just makes me happy to see someone selling legit stuff, even if it is more expensive. There were a bunch of cosplayers, most of whom were surprisingly good, given the size of the convention. There were twin Vashes who were always wandering around with each other. There was also a Hatsuharu, complete with a plushie cow. My favorite was the guy dressed as... uh... the main guy from Metal Gear Solid 2 (whatever his name is). I liked him because his costume included a cardboard box labeled "There is no one under this box" that he would occasionally hide under. It was cute.
So, the first event I went to was Anime Pictionary. The people selected to play this don't actually get to draw anything, they just get to guess what the hosts are drawing. There was one girl who kicked total butt at that game. She was able to correctly guess "Kiki's Delivery Service" from a horizontal line, and "Inuyasha" from a wedge shape. I went home after that, since I was hungry.
Day 2 (today), I got up bright and early to head back to GVSU so I'd be sure to catch the AMV contest. Now, with a convention this small, they don't pre-screen entries before competition, because they don't get enough to warrant making cuts from the lineup. This year they got 16 submissions and showed 15 of them (the other was apparently recorded at the wrong speed on the tape they were sent, and thus they were unable to copy it over to the master tape). And, so, since they showed whatever was thrown at them... there were some reeeeaaallly sucky ones. One even had subtitles on it. There was a Macross one with Kamujin, so it got props from me simply because it was Macross and Kamujin (tormenting Minmay, no less ^_^), but the video itself was horrible. The only good ones were a Jin-Roh video, a Kenshin OAV video, and a funny DBZ video that I ended up voting for. After that I watched some Fruits Basket, since it was showing immediately afterwards, and then I came home again. Woo, that was exciting.
So, la, that's what I've done. Well, I did get together with some friends for dinner on Friday, and then we all went over to Derek's house to play DDR (well, they played DDR. I shot some pool). None of them came to JAFAX, though, as they were all eagerly anticipating the release of the latest Harry Potter book, and have spent their weekend reading it. Considering I've only read the first book, it didn't make much sense for me to think about investing in the latest one at the moment ^_^*.
"That picture of the WTC is a tad small. Can we blow it up?" Tuesday, June 17, 2003 09:00 p.m.
Laaaa for the not-very-excitingness of being at home. Let's see... I went to a wedding over the weekend in Chicago. I think the bride was a cousin of my dad's or something (in other words, she was someone I had probably only met once in my life, and most likely when I was about three years old -_-). There was hardly anyone else there that I knew aside from my aunt and uncle. And the wedding went pretty much like my sister's graduation ceremony: various people spent the first hour talking about absolutely nothing relevant, and the actual guts of the ceremony took about five minutes. Maybe I wouldn't mind events like these if they were done a tad more efficiently. My sister threatened me that she wants to get married just so she can make me a bridesmaid and force me to wear a dress and makeup. That would sure be a sight to see. I look like I'm crossdressing when I'm wearing a dress. I just don't have the figure for one.
Then there was the whole reception thingy afterwards that was mildly interesting because they'd hired a swing band for the event, and since this was Chicago, they could actually find a good one. We shared a table with the photographers, and they talked about how they were taking pictures of President Bush in a hotel kitchen last week. And my sister got hit on by some of our other cousins who didn't know who she was (I guess that's what she gets for insisting on wearing provacative clothing all the time).
Then, the next day we went to visit another one of my cousins who lived about five minutes down the road from the hotel. We chatted for about two hours, during which his cat was asleep on my lap the entire time. I hadn't seen him in years and years, so it was nice to talk again.
So, then, yesterday we randomly went over to my high school to watch the DCI competition, since we had nothing better to do that night. I went to that competition a couple years ago, and it was pretty interesting. I think the Cavaliers won that year. They won this year, too. I'm pretty sure I saw Graeme amongst them, too. He wasn't wearing glasses, so I wasn't absolutely sure. I yelled his name and made a weird face and he smiled, but I'm not sure if that was because he recognized me or if he was just some random guy who looked like Graeme who thought I was simply some random lunatic.
Which brings me to today, during which nothing of note has happened. Well, I figured out how to connect my laptop to the home network, so I can actually connect to the internet on my school computer again (which is nice, since most of my internet-worthy stuff is on this computer). Inuyasha 113 still hasn't been released by the subbers yet, so I'm waiting around for that to happen. I did get Wolf's Rain 19, though. I skipped all the recap episodes, and it looks like I didn't miss anything, since 19 picks up right where 14 left off. But 19 has Kiba puppy! Well, I guess "cub" is the correct term for a wolf, but it was still cute. But it also had a random cat-girl, which made me scream "Nooooo!" because random cat-girls are rarely a good thing. Her name was even "Mew". However, Wolf's Rain 20 isn't available yet, either, so I'm just sitting around twiddling my thumbs until I get my double dose of dog. I don't even really like dogs, but the two series I'm into right now both center around them. Huh.
"Make sure the button is depressed."
"I think mine was a little too depressed. It just committed suicide." Tuesday, June 10, 2003 09:36 p.m.
Well, haven't said hi-ho in this thing for a week, so might as well say... hi-ho? Since I'm back home, there's not a whole lot of exciting stuff going on. I still have yet to find a job, and I'm on call for jury duty this week. I got called in today, where I proceeded to sit around and read Lord of the Rings for three hours, before being sent home without doing anything else besides drinking a cup of cocoa. There were probably a dozen other thing's I'd rather have been doing between 9:00 and noon, sleep being at the top of the list.
So, Crysta, I got your postcard in all its Engrish goodness. Thankee. Makes me wish I could take a trip to Japan, but since I currently only have about $200 to my name, that's not likely to happen anytime soon.
I want a sto-orm! Wah! There was one on Sunday, but the actual rain-y lightning-y tornado-y goodness completely missed us, and all we got was a dorky microburst that knocked out power for five hours. I played Scrabble with my mom, since for some reason I feel I must play Scrabble when the power is out. I have no idea why. Scrabble is a fun game, regardless.
Oh, and I fixed the light on my car. Turns out that all this time I had been looking at the wrong lightbulb. I guess I should be happy that my reverse light does not in fact blink when I turn my turn signal on. So, once I had replaced the correct light bulb, everything was peachy. The air conditioner still doesn't work, or at least takes about an hour to warm up.
I'm finally getting to see and tape most of those Inuyasha episodes I missed, too. Except the elusive episodes 8-14. Guess what episode it was on when I got home? Episode 15! I keep hearing that Hiten was voiced by Dilandau's English voice, and that he actually didn't suck, so I wanna hear him! But nooo, I just keep missing those episodes. Oh well, at least I'll be able to hear Kouga. And Kohaku and his manly voice. I wonder who's voicing Kagura? There still hasn't been any word on when they're going to show the episodes beyond 36. Not that I haven't seen them already (heck, I'm getting episode 112 as I type), I just always like to see how it comes across in the dub.
Speaking of the later episodes, I'm gonna rant about season four. The writers seem to think that the Inuyasha viewers have a memory span of approximately fifteen minutes. Why oh why do they insist on giving everyone little captions so we know their names EVERY episode?! I mean, Kohaku has been in practically every episode since they started captioning, but they STILL re-introduce him every time. Heck, I think he got introduced TWICE in episode 111. And although I applaud them for trying to cut down on filler episodes by expanding plot events or dabbing in filler events here in there to an otherwise plot episode, sometimes it goes a little too far. Was it really necessary to have Sesshoumaru show up in three separate episodes just to comment that he was following Kohaku? And apparently they added a confrontation between Kikyo and Bankotsu in episode 115, which is just kinda... um. As much as I'd like to see Kikyo skewered on Banryuu, I'm not terribly sure what purpose that meeting would hold.
"If you put a hot dog in a flashlight, it doesn't work. Duh." Tuesday, June 3, 2003 09:30 p.m.
Blah. Now that I'm home, not much happens that's worth talking about. Still on the job hunt. Not much luck so far. Need... money. Christy said that she got me a souvenier from Japan, but won't say what it is. Grr, she's gonna leave me guessing for a month and a half -_-*. Hopefully it's not something perverted, but I think she knows me better than that.
On the bright side, Final Fantasy Unlimited Thumbnail Theatre has seen an update today, with not one but TWO new episodes. It would have been three new episodes if I hadn't saved episode 10 over episode 9, forcing me to re-write episode 9 from memory -_-. But, it's there. And there will probably be more in the near future, seeing as I don't have much else better to be doing.
I caught a chipmunk yesterday. When I was, like, eight years old, I used to chase chipmunks up the storm drains at our old house, then detach the bottom and trap the chipmunk in it. Our second house didn't have chipmunks, so I was unable to do that, but this house does, so I caught a chipmunk the good old way for nostalgia's sake. I've probably traumatized the critter for life, but... eh. My cat'll eat it eventually, anyway. That is, if she ever stops sleeping. Seems like that's all she does nowadays. She tends to get sick every summer, too, so maybe her latest illness is coming on. Or maybe she's just getting old. She is 10, after all.
"Pillage my orange!" Saturday, May 31, 2003 12:07 a.m.
So, school's over yet again. Back at home to do some job-hunting so I can gets the moneys to buys the stuffs that I needs. But, first off, I went to my sister's high school graduation and saw some of my old teachers from high school, plus some other people from my class who also had siblings graduating. Heh, and we'll get to do this whole graduation thing again for me next year, when I finally get my degree that says, "Yes, I am BS!"
So, with nothing better to do with them, I set up the TV, VCR and SNES in my room. So, this means I can tape lots and lots of Inuyasha episodes and hear all those oh-so-familiar Ocean Group voices in their latest roles ^_^.
So, yeah, the drive back was not all that pleasant. I-70 is currently a construction warzone, so that route wasn't much of an option. Plus, Indianapolis is currently undergoing the dreaded "Hyperfix", during which BOTH freeways through town are shut down, so EVERYONE is diverted to I-465. On the bright side, I did see a rather amusing piece of grafitti on a bridge that very vulgarly exclaimed, "DRAT".
Anyway, now I'm back at home for three months, and most of my Kazoo friends are in Japan for the summer, so I've got nowhere to escape to when my family starts annoying me, which should start happening in about two more days. Sigh... this is going to be a long summer.
"Shall we go for the mascara?" Monday, May 26, 2003 11:22 p.m.
I had a really strange dream last night. Not in that it didn't make any sense (on the contrary, it was strangely coherent), it's just that it was hardly the norm for my dream patterns. First off, I remembered specific dialogue from the dream. Now, usually, if someone talks about something in a dream, I just remember the gist of what they said, not their actual words, but this time I remembered both. Including the ever-popular "it made perfect sense in the dream but now that I'm awake and thinking about it, that was just plain stupid" dialogue. Including my dream's reasoning as to why the dialogue should make sense (well, in one occasion, at least).
Anyway, if you're curious to read about this dream, the link to my dreams site is in this entry's title, since I don't feel like re-typing the whole thing here.
I played more Monkey Ball this evening. I'm starting to kick butt at the target and dogfight games on that. I probably should have been doing other things, like packing, but, meh. I also did my first Photoshopping of an anime picture ever today. Someone on the message board commented that it sounded like Richard Cox (the English voice of Inuyasha) was doing the voice-over for a Baby Bottle Pops commercial. So, of course, it had to be done. Not too shabby for a first attempt, but it's not really anything that complex, either.
"That was excellent... until it sucked." Sunday, May 25, 2003 11:54 p.m.
Wheee, Monkey Ball! What a way to spend an evening. I zoned out during the afternoon and missed Pie-a-Prof, though. Foo. I really wanted to see Mutchler get creamed. It might have made OS worth the pain.
Instead, I was working on the site's new title graphic. Yachouon has gone on hiatus in favor of Akuto, the resident bad rabbit. Okay, see, we were sitting in a Design meeting waiting for our third group member to show up, and I said I wanted to draw something on the white board. Heather suggested, "How about evil bunny boy? Playing video games!" And, so, the picture you see above is a more or less accurate Photoshopped reproduction of the one on the white board for the remainder of the meeting.
So, anyway, yay, I'm done with that take-home test, plus all the labs, plus anything else class-worthy. All I've got left is a presentation and a test, but none of that starts until Wednesday. And, I guess I should probably start packing up the room, too, since I'd like to get out of here Thursday evening if I can.
Gah, no one on Kazaa has "Cave Dwellers"! That's, like, the best MST3K episode ever! Okay, granted, I've only seen about six episodes of that series all the way through, but "Cave Dwellers" was by far my favorite. No one on campus who has MST3K episodes has it, either. I need my Ator and his magic hang-glider! Besides, now that people are leaving campus, internet usage is down so download rates are up. There won't be a new Inuyasha episode up for at least a couple of days (and it turns out episode 109, which I had complained about earlier about being late in getting posted, actually WAS posted on time, but they never mentioned this on the update page. So, it was just sitting there on the download site and no one knew), so I need something to watch to pass the time. Laaa.
"On the third hand... wait, are we talking about Shiva or something?" Thursday, May 22, 2003 11:38 p.m.
The efficient part of my brain is crying right now. For our Design class, we're required to turn in the final presentation on a CD. That's 400KB... on a 700MB disk. All because the freshman laptops have CD burners instead of floppy drives. Granted, I'm not terribly sure how many people in the SENIOR DESIGN CLASS are FRESHMEN, but since the prof has one of the freshman laptops, and thus does not have a floppy drive, we have to turn everything in on CD. ... Geh, fer cryin' out loud, we could just E-MAIL the thing to him, and it would hardly put a dent in his inbox!
At least I'm becoming more and more thankful that I got a CD burner for Christmas. And grateful that I thought to bring my scanner to school this year, since many of my classes decided that handwritten lab reports should be submitted electronically. And grateful that I didn't upgrade my software suite to Windows XP, since all of said lab reports are also required to be in PDF format, and the XP suite does not have a PDF writer (but I still do! Ha ha! Just goes to show that you should always wait awhile when something new comes around).
Ah, and I'm officially on campus for next year. They finally got around to sending out the confirmation e-mail, so it's all set. And apparently the ACen group got the news five minuted before they left, so I actually wasn't the only one who knew about it all weekend. But, Loree is still moving off campus anyway, so I'll be back with my roommate from freshman year (and, in the process, saving her from the roommate potluck and the chance of getting stuck with *cough* unpleasant people).
I picked up the first two volumes of the Inuyasha manga yesterday, just cuz. I kinda wanted it anyway, and I still had my Waldenbooks gift card to use. Plus, the Waldenbooks in Terre Haute just has the Wall o' Manga, which is even nicer. But, it was simply to appease myself because Sengoku o-Togi Zoushi has yet to post the latest Inuyasha manga chapter, and Fangirl Friday has yet to release the latest Inuyasha episode. ::grumble:: And both of them are usually updated by Tuesday, but it's pushing Friday now and there's been nary a peep from either.
I have the sudden urge to watch Final Fantasy Unlimited again. I have no idea why. Speaking of which, I need to keep working on the Thumbnail Theatre for that. But, I've gotta finish the schoolyear first. Just one more day, one more class. And that darned take-home test. Grr.
"Then you have to yell 'partial fractions!' here, and everybody dies." Wednesday, May 21, 2003 04:43 p.m.
Bamp-ba daaaaaa! No more OS lab! Wheeeee! It was finished, it worked, it was all happy. Except for the random, you guessed it, segmentation fault! We couldn't figure out WHY it was seg faulting, nor why it only did it SOME of the time, but we managed to get it to run the whole program when it was tested, so it was all good. It was probably more gremlins, like that whole c+1 thing in the previous lab (this one tended to barf if it needed three more frames than were available. It was fine with two. It was fine with four. It was fine with any other number except three. This irritated us).
Buuuut, even though the OS lab of happiness is finally OVER with, I'm not in the clear yet. One of my other profs gave us a take-home final, and informed us that it was "relatively short. It should only take about six hours." Now, I'm not terribly sure what six hours is "relatively" compared to, since not even our labs take that long in that class, and the last test only took a half hour. Plus, the test is over stuff we've never worked with before, and we're not allowed any help on it. Blaaahhh. Plus, there's a report due in that class on Friday that we still haven't written, but that's probably the easiest of the things I've got due by the end of the week. Writing is hardly ever a problem. I just need the right inspiration, and when it comes to lab write-ups, it's usually pretty obvious what you have to say.
And then, of course, there's the proposal presentation that we'll be writing tonight. The presentation's not for a week, but the prof wants it done by Friday because... um... because that's when he wants it. But, since the proposal is already completely written up, we just have to transfer the basic ideas over to slides, so that shouldn't be too big a deal. I even made pictures. Ph33r my AutoCAD skillz!
Let's see... anything else keeping me from being a lazy bum this week? Oh yeah, test tomorrow in my World Religions class. I have to prepare some essays for that. I swear, one of them is going to turn into a Monty Python skit, no matter HOW hard I try to make it serious. Because I can't do serious. Honestly, I've tried before and... it wasn't pretty. So, that means that presentation, essay, and possible take-home test are on the schedule for tonight, report and take-home test for tomorrow, and Fast Track taught me never to do homework on Fridays, so that's out. That leaves finishing up the take-home test on Saturday. Laaa.
So, we had the recording session last night. It was... okay. I still sucked at my solos, but not as badly as I was fearing. I sound like I've only rehearsed some of those for five days. Oh, wait, I have. Hopefully, they don't wait TWO YEARS to give us the recordings, like they did last time. I'd kinda like them before I go home for the summer next Thursday/Friday.
... I need food.
"Good communication skills are what every neader leeds." Monday, May 19, 2003 11:21 p.m.
Well, the group's back from ACen. Loree got me a moogle pin, so at least I can pretend I was there ^_^*. And I got to see pictures of the cosplayers and the people wandering around with Ragnarok signs ^_^*. And that guy in the safari outfit carrying the fishing pole with Sailor Moon plushies hanging off it. Does he go everywhere or something, because I've seen him at Otakon for the past two years, too.
But, now that people are back... it's OS time! Grrr, I thought maybe we'd get a break the last week of class and not have a programming assigment, but nope! We got the program to the point of compiling without any errors, which is a start. We have still yet to run it with inputs to see if it actually does anything, though. But we'll probably get the glorious segmentation fault, because we always get segmentation faults! Die, segmentation faults! But not Segmentation Fault. He's still a wimpy little mage. Speaking of which, I didn't play Ragnarok all weekend. Probably because everyone else was at the con and I had no one to talk to ^_^*. Impending Lawnchair's at the point where leveling up is a long, boring process, so disractions are welcome.
We have a recording session tomorrow night for band. I hope I can figure out my solos. Silly solos. Why do they always go to the clarinet? Especially the clarinet who doesn't know the fingering for anything above a high E? Wah.
"Sara no sarada no sara da." Saturday, May 17, 2003 02:51 p.m.
Hooray for my first opportunity of in-charge-ish-ness. All of three people besides myself showed up to anime club last night. But, that's still a meeting, so we watched stuff. And the stuff we voted on ended being the stuff I wanted to watch, anyway, so it was all good. That being Slayers Premium, The Emperor's New Groove, and the Inuyasha movie. People's reactions after seeing Emperor's New Groove were pretty much the same as everyone else's upon seeing it for the first time: "Whoa... that was weird and random and very not-Disney in a good way." The greatest part of the evening was when the security guy poked his head in to see what was going on. He noticed we were watching the Inuyasha movie, and exclaimed "I love this show! I watch it on TV all the time!" He then promptly sat down and watched it with us until he was radioed away to do something else. Aw.
Oh, happy news that came at a somewhat inopportune time. Apparently everyone who submitted housing deposits made it on campus for next year. Unfortunately, this news came about an hour after everyone had left for ACen, so I'm currently the only one that knows about it. Also, since everyone who tried to make it on campus made it, that's going to bring up some serious problems with the whole apartment plan that people had already laid out, since they all assumed they wouldn't make it on (I, on the other hand, didn't have a backup plan, so it's a pretty good thing that I DID make it on ^_^*).
So, now that I'm temporarily in charge of all things anime club, I can yoink a couple things out of the closet that I've been curious to see (like the special features on the Slayers DVDs. And the end of Those Who Hunt Elves, because I never did get to see the last few episodes of that due to the musical freshman year).
I'll probably go see the play this evening since, well, with no one else around, I don't really have anything else better to do. Besides, it sounds funny.
"I've developed an intolerance to MSG. Guess that means I won't be eating any more Gundams." Thursday, May 15, 2003 11:21 p.m.
Whee for lunar eclipses. I've spent the past hour and a half sitting outside watching the moon go bye-bye. It actually wasn't all that exciting, but everyone was outside, so at least there were people to talk to. The moon didn't turn red, though. I was mildly disappointed.
So, tomorrow everyone's leaving for ACen, and I get to be in charge of the anime club meeting, being the only officer still around. And, probably the only club member still around, too. But, just in case there are one or two people who still come, I'll be there, ready to take requests. If there aren't any more people there... well... then I can hang out and watch stuff on the super-big screen, anyway ^_^. Or play really big Ragnarok!
I have the Mario theme stuck in my head. Pity me.
"Um, I've been turned into a cow. Can I go home?" Tuesday, May 13, 2003 11:14 p.m.
Ragnarok eats my life! Especially since the OS project for this week was cancelled. Woo, more time to Ragnarok! We had some interesting adventures, like bot-hunting. Honestly, I swear half the people on the mjolnir_07 map are bots. We selected one obvious bot, summoned our acolyte, and had him warp the bot to Morroc (simply because he wasn't strong enough to have a warp point in the middle of some unfriendly dungeon, which would have been preferable ^_^). Unfortunately, we discovered that the bot had returned a few hours later. It was still amusing as heck.
There was also the mystery Poring, which I targeted, but could not hit. It wasn't due to lag, since I could walk away from the Poring (but it still remained targeted). So, I just sat next to the Poring for about five minutes, during which point it just bounced in place, with my target marker still over its head. I called Heather over, and she commented that she could see no Poring sitting in front of me. A few seconds later, the Poring spontaneously combusted, and my target marker remained pointing at thin air. It must have been a ghost Poring.
We had a tornado over the weekend. Well, at least the county did. It missed us by about five miles. Yay for weather. We still need the traditional massive storm the Wednesday before finals. We've had one the past two years. Both knocked out power, but the one freshmen year also dumped nine inches of rain and deposited a tree on our dorm.
So, the others are making their cosplay costumes for ACen this weekend. I'm not going, simply because it means missing class. Dunno, I just don't like the idea of taking that long a trip during the school year. Plus they have three hotel rooms for twenty people. Yikes.
I still don't know whether or not I've made it on campus next year or not. I really hope so. I'm short on money as it is, and if I don't get much of a job for the summer, I won't have anything to pay for rent, much less gas.
"It's nice, but does this proposal have any justification?"
"Left?" Thursday, May 8, 2003 11:54 p.m.
Took a break from Ragnaroking to watch Trigun tonight. Thankfully, although CN has been anal about gun-to-the-head scenes, the Legato scene was left completely intact, as far as I could tell. It was done pretty well in the dub, although Legato's dub voice still just doesn't do it for me. He sounded sadistic in Japanese, and he just comes across as sedated and bored in English. Knives is pretty good, though. I still get chills every time I see the end of that episode.
And that means that Monday's episode is the "This soup is terrible!" episode! I don't think I'll ever be able to take the beginning of that episode seriously again because of that, but I don't really mind, because it's funny.
For some reason, Ragnarok has decided that I am not a worthy party master, and thus cannot share experience with the rest of the party. Dumb thing. I might have to expel everyone from the current party and make a new one to see if that'll make it work. In the meantime, I can continue helping little lost novices who think it's okay to take on a Poporing. I need to build up Segmentation Fault some, too. He's still a little lost novice, himself (strangely, the novice I helped was in Geffen trying to get to Payon, and Segmentation Fault is in Payon trying to get to Geffen).
I have an OS test tomorrow. I haven't really studied, but, aside from one topic, the subject matter is a lot easier than the previous test's. I also don't have any other classes tomorrow besides that, so I'll be done at 10:45. Hm, that means I could spend the rest of the day playing Ragnarok, or maybe take a break from that and work on a video or something. Impending Lawnchair's at the point that it takes a day just to gain a level. Blah. That's why I'm starting to think experience share is a good idea at this point. Then I can do lazy level-ups (it's so amusing when you're just sitting talking to someone, and the big level-up icon explodes over your head).
"Company no likey givey money to not-happy groupie!" Wednesday, May 7, 2003 11:48 p.m.
Wow, I've been neglecting this thing. In favor of Ragnarok and labs, for the most part. Impending Lawnchair is... still kinda borderline wussy. I don't remember what kind of abilities Issei had at that level. But he definitely seems to be kicking butt earlier than Issei was able to. I also made a second character named Segmentation Fault, as a homage to the ever-present error in the OS lab.
Got Inuyasha episode 107 and Wolf's Rain episodes 13 and 14, but have only watched the former. Jeez, what's with popping up captions under everyone and informing us of their names? I mean, it's not like we don't know who Kouga, Kikyo, Sesshoumaru, and Kohaku are. And then they introduced Suikotsu in this latest episode by saying "That's Suikotsu!" and then showed a picture of him with the helpful caption "Suikotsu", just in case we couldn't tell which guy out of the one sitting there they were referring to, or perhaps thought that we missed them saying his name two seconds ago. And, no, it's not the fansubbers doing this captioning (although the subbers do tend to subtitle the captions).
And, of course, what's a blog entry without a lab rant? And, what's a lab rant without complaining about the latest miniscule dumb mistake that kept the whole thing from working? First, in the Embedded Systems lab, we had a program that ran fine in the simulator, but not on the chip. Turns out the problem was that somewhere along the line, the last line of code had been backspaced up one line to be included in the comments of the previous line (thereby pretty much erasing its existence, from the compiler's standpoint). And, you know, a line that tells the program to restart and perform a function indefinitely tends to be kind of important.
Then, of course, there was the ever-evil OS lab. I did most of the coding this time, and got the darn thing working except for two functions. And the errors we got could only be attributed to gremlins, because there is no reason for them to not be working in the way they are (they're basically somehow finding commands that don't exist). Also, it was discovered that an array of size c+1 is too large for the compiler to handle, but c+2 is just fine (and c itself is usually equal to about 2 or so, so I have no idea why it would be too large in the first place).
Oh, and something disturbing happened today. I won a prize in a raffle. Let me repeat that. I. Won. A. Prize. In. A. Raffle. This is an event that has NEVER happened in my 21 years of life. Actually, when it comes to random drawings, my status in them has been, up until now, strangely predictable:
If it's a raffle-type random drawing, in which names are selected to win a prize, and not every name will be drawn, my name will inevitably be one of the not-drawn ones, even if it's the only one not drawn.
If it's a drawing to choose rank (such as the order of presentations) in which all names will inevitably be drawn, I will never be first nor last.
For 21 years, this has held true, but for some reason, this year both have occurred. I've been drawn first for a presentation, and I've won a prize at a raffle (it was a jar of pretzels, by the way, which is even scarier, for a different reason). Also, my infallable luck with driving has started to wane slightly with the onset of my car's turn signal light and air conditioner problems. AND I got in a traffic jam going home on break! The normal functioning of my fortune has been altered somehow. This could very well mean that I won't get on-campus housing next year, since I've been quite lucky in that area up until now (although the good luck tended to mostly be in the area of who ended up as my roommate rather than where I was on campus). I guess only time will tell what fortune has in store for me.
"Oh, I'm sorry. My ghetto came out." Sunday, May 4, 2003 07:53 p.m.
Whee, Ragnarok! Impending Lawnchair is a Swordman. Heather is a Thief named George W. Ninja, and Loree is an Archer named Instant Ramen. What a party of strange names we make ^_^*. Although some of the other guys have shown interest in the game, so we might be getting even more additions. A goofy name is a prerequisite, though.
The creepy thing was that, even though this is a new client for the open beta (I'd long since uninstalled and deleted the older client), when I started it up, it still had my username saved to the startup screen. Plus, when I started up the game, my hotkey window was still open, and the hotkeys were still pointing to the same items and abilities that they had during the previous beta. I guess some config file never got deleted. There were some issues getting it to run on Heather and Loree's computers, but it turned out they didn't have their screen resolution set right (and, as a note to anyone else playing this, if you get some sort of "init d3d" error, make sure the color scheme on your monitor is set to 16 bit).
So, after the blessed downtime, there's finally a new OS lab. And... we have no idea what it's even asking for. Seems it makes the incorrect assumption that everyone in the class is Linux-savvy, and therefore neglects to actually define the functions we're supposed to implement (I guess we're just supposed to know what the & sign does and how to use it).
We have a recording session for the band on Tuesday, so that leaves even less time to get this mystery OS lab finished (especially since our prof hasn't explicitly told us this project even exists yet. Someone just checked the website and noticed it was there).
"For the sake of this example, assume the horse is a sphere." Wednesday, April 30, 2003 09:33 p.m.
Archived again. Lah de dah. They finally took the scaffolding away from our window... and put it up on the other side of the building! So, there will still be jackhammers at 7:00 in the morning, just a few feet further away.
Well, I'm all registered for the open beta of Ragnarok, but I can't download the darn client! Probably because everyone else who wants to play is trying to do the exact same thing. Doh. Someday... it will be mine... Especially since servers go up tomorrow. I need to get it before OS weighs me down again! I wonder what class I should make Impending Lawnchair. I'd rather my first character be someone who can heal easily, like a Swordman or Acolyte. But... my first character has always been a Swordman. So, should I go with tradition, or make him an Aco? Hm... Impending Lawnchair sounds more like a Swordman name than an Acolyte name, but an Acolyte named that just seems even sillier. Agh, I don't know!
I finally got the fifth set of Berserk outtakes! Man, they're long, too. Griffith breaks into song AGAIN. Seems that just about every outtake involving him has something to do with him singing. And they finally started doing parodies of that darn narration that opens every episode. "In a world of tiny red objects, one man held one... for a long, long time." Just one more set to yoink, but that DVD doesn't come out until next month, I don't think.
Bad car. Stop not working right.
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