Someday I’ll be able to use these lines

I’ve tweaked my blog even more, and I’ve learned the power of the “noscript” tag… so now my blog is functional (though with a significantly reduced set of links on the left—66% less linkage!) on javascript-less machines. I feel better about my site’s javascript addiction, now.

Today I learned that my probability class grade will consist entirely of homework and a take-home final. Neat! I suppose that’s the benefit of being a not-essential-for-graduation upper-division class; the professor can set the rules how he/she likes. I should probably make sure I can do the homework before the night before it’s due, from now on.

We watched the first half of an HBO movie about the RJR Nabisco company in my strategic management class. It had a boatload of hilarious “we’re too damn rich” lines, such as the following:

“We’re making so much money we’re shitting green!”

“Even God rested on Sunday.” “He didn’t make my salary!”

[After a game of golf] “Let’s see… we each owe Don three dollars.” “I hope that puts the SOB in a higher tax bracket!”

James Garner played the CEO of the company, and the guy who played Colonel Juan Perón in Evita was some other guy. I had to physically restrain myself from chanting “Perón! Perón! Perón!” in class.

In other news, my parents have taken a shine to calling our new dog “Yoshi.” I, being a child of the Nintendo generation, already have a very strong association with that name. I’d go so far as to say that that name is reserved, and not available for common use.

I’m pulling for Menchi, myself.

Bizarre Adventure

My blog has become a JavaScript junkie. Like most junkies, I never intended for it to end this way… it just sort of happened. Now—and this is actually a horrible thing to do, since it means those without JavaScript enabled are really hosed—my navigation links (on the left, above the picture) are written by a tiny bit of JavaScript code. The reason for this? So that, if I ever need to change where my links point, or add more links, I only have to edit one JavaScript file as opposed to changing the HTML for every single month’s blog. A more elegant method would be to make use of CGI, but Comcast won’t let me run scripts—so I’m forced to resort to this. Oh, and I changed things around again with the picture loading code… hopefully the sidebar picture will now appear faster for modem users.

In today’s news, I ate lunch with UHC office Tammy at American Dream, and later ate dinner with Eric at Arby’s. Yum^2.

And, in a case of Fate having extremely poor timing, my family is once again with dog. Marin and my mom had been looking for a dog for ages, but never found one that would work in my family… until today. Meet Jo Jo:

(Picture blatantly ripped from the Heartland Humane Society website.) He actually looks cuter in that picture than he does in real life; his legs are a bit long for his body, and his face a bit shorter than I would have expected. Anyway, he was neglected, and found his way to Heartland… where Marin and my folks found him. He’s awful quiet right now, but I suspect he’ll come out of his shell eventually.

Oh, and he doesn’t actually know his name, so we can name him whatever we want; Jo Jo apparently was just the name the humane society used. Suggestions?

Errata Again

So I ended up staying up until 3:30 am last night, getting all my math homework done. And that’s with passing on the business case study I was also supposed to write up for today. I then got up at 6:30 am to get ready for class.

When I told a coworker this, she commented that “[she] could never do that!” I told her that I couldn’t, either—and that that was a problem for me.

This afternoon I talked to the head advisor of the math department, and verified that I will graduate this March. Yay! It was odd waiting in the hallway, because I saw at least a half dozen different math professors I know (fairly well, even) walking around, doing their thing. It was rather neat, actually; after all this time (and, right as I’m about to leave), I’m in my element once again. OSU is home to me now, as CV was home to me back in the day.

Last night, while putting off my homework some more, I noticed that my //links page was seeing extremely heavy traffic (for my site, anyway). After sleuthing around, I determined (erm… there’s a bit of guesswork in here, too) that my “anime.jpg” picture had somehow attained a fairly high ranking in Google’s Image Search, and so Googlers were pounding my page for the pictures. Since that’s not really the idea of my link page, I was forced to change the URL slightly (“link.html” as opposed to “links.html”) and give all of my images extremely unreadable names (“anime.jpg” is now known as “a.jpg”). With any luck, that’ll both stop the current insanity and prevent future reoccurrences…. Stupid Google image search.

Heaviness

Today’s officially the 20th anniversary of the Macintosh. But that’s not really all that important.

We put Maxi to sleep today. Apparently she started walking in circles about 3:30 am, and by 4:30 couldn’t stand at all. When I woke up, her body kept trying to curl into a ball; we had her lying on the side she wanted to curl towards, so that she’d be resting relatively flat (albeit with her head dug into the sleeping bag we had her resting on). Although she couldn’t do much of anything, and her eyes even seemed to have trouble focusing, she still did her damndest to look at you. That hurts the most—though her body completely failed her, she was still there at the end.

My family now has a whole bunch of thirteen-year-old habits to unlearn.

I feel oddly heavy right now, as if I’m carrying a twenty-pound burden everywhere I go. I also don’t feel like doing a damn thing, which is the absolute worst thing I could feel right now: yesterday I turned in probability homework with only one problem (out of five) solved, and my professor kindly gave me an extension* to Monday. I also have a business case study, and a different math homework, due Monday, neither of which I’ve done anything with.

[*An extension, of sorts: I told him I’d take my 20% grade, since that’s the work I turned in by the deadline… that I’m most interested in making sure I can actually do these problems.]

Yeah. Yesterday wasn’t so hot a day either, mostly because I had stayed up quite late to get nowhere on my probability homework. As I told Brian, it’s not too often that homework finishes me.

Argh

Things were starting to look up. I’d chatted with Eileen and survived extreme laziness with respect to my homework. I’ve scheduled Today I basically caught up my scanning responsibilities at work—so pretty much everything was going swell.

Then I got home, and realized I couldn’t do my probability homework that’s due tomorrow. And then Maxi started (we think) stroking again.

Her hind legs seem to work this time, but she’ll only travel short distances before collapsing for an extended period of time. She’s also become quite vocal; we can’t figure out if it’s due to pain, or for some other reason. If it’s pain, then our path is pretty well set out for us.

Bullet time

I’m too tired to come up with more than two coherent sentences on a subject, so I’ll resort to the non-bullet-point bullet-point method of updating tonight.

Had an enjoyable chat with Eileen today. Missed probability because of it, though.

Got good grades on both math and business homework, despite deliberately ignoring special cases and typing my paper in the two hours before class (respectively). I obviously spent too much time on my work, in the past.

Kicked it old-school with Scott and Mandy in Strategic Management, where we had to code various threats to a business as H: high, M: medium, and L: low. We independently elected to grade on an H/M/J scale, just so we could say our code stood for “J: low.”

Stopped by the UHC office and chatted with Andrea (me: “yeah, so I should be in probability right now…but I’m not”) and Joe (“Oregon Farmer’s chatting with Idahoan Farmer. Says ‘Idaho wolf got on my land last night.’ Idahoan Farmer asks how Oregon Farmer knew the wolf was from Idaho. Oregon Farmer says ‘Because he got stuck in a trap. He gnawed three legs off, and was still trapped.'”).

Saw Elizabeth (from OB and tax classes last term), and chatted with her on the shuttle ride back to my car. Both of us are happy last term is over with.

Got A&W for dinner; ate with Eric. Yum.

Looked at my probability homework, due Friday. Was extremely confused, so I elected to update my blog and go to bed early.

Yay

In major news today, I finally finished coming up with lame titles to pair with new sidebar pictures. What will be known to future generations as the “rerun phase” is over! haha.

Yes, the titles are supposed to be bad. Stop looking so nonplussed!

Scanned a whole lot of batches at work today. I’m now actually current in a few corporations, and aim to be current in the others before too long. Came home to watch the State of the Union address (a new annual habit I’ve picked up, for whatever reason), and then to read my Strategic Management text. Thirty pages never felt so long. (Kinda sad, as it’s actually not the least-interesting textbook I’ve ever read through.)

I actually haven’t done any homework since last Thursday. That’s not so hot, since (I intended to do homework over the weekend) I have probability homework due on Friday—I can’t goof off any longer without seriously paying for it.

I hate paying for it.

Rawr

Do you have any idea how long it’s taking me to come up with a bunch of sidebar pictures and suitably lame blog titles for this new rotation gig? I don’t either, and that’s because I can’t count that high. Even after all this time, I only have four finished picture/title pairings. I have a whole bunch of other pictures, but I’m falling short in coming up with titles for them. Argh!

In other news, I think I’ve been remiss in not noting that the extremely unlikely has happened: there is another Brent in my MTH 434 class. I think we’re going to have to resort to “Zima Tom”/”Sunriver Tom”-esque distinctions to keep us separate. The most obvious titles, to me, would be “Math Brent” and “Physics Brent.”

I have the sneaking suspicion that there was something else that I should record here, but I’m drawing a blank as to what it was. Hmm.

Sakaki’s Awesome

Check out this Azumanga Daioh animated gif that somebody (I wish I knew who, but the source was rather intelligible) put together. The one cowering is Chiyo-chan, and the one saving her is Sakaki.

Quiet weekend. Andy, Myles, and Betsy (Myles’ girlfriend) came down, and we joined Darren to watch the Beavers play the Huskies (basketball, this time). We watched in disbelief as the Beavers took a sixteen-point lead, with five minutes to go, and pissed it away—having the Huskies tie the game with a three-pointer right at the buzzer. In overtime, the Beavers’ crushed spirits allowed the Huskies to clean up. It was sad, sad, sad.

We mourned (well, OK, Andy mourned) with burgers at Clodfelter’s. Andy and Myles became obsessed with the pinball machine hidden in the corner of the main room, while Betsy, Darren, and I shook our heads. This pinball machine was particularly boring to watch, in my opinion.

That evening, Marin and I watched the first disc of Rahxephon. I’d seen the first disc before, quite some time ago, and found it thoroughly entertaining. I’m looking forward to seeing where this show goes.

Sunday was even less notable than Saturday was. I burned a fourth pair of DVDs archiving data at work, but that was about it. Woo. Exciting stuff, ne?

Crikey

Maybe having a two-hour salsa class on Fridays isn’t such a hot idea. My 8:00 am class, combined with my insistence on being nocturnal, takes everything out of me during the week… and then I get to move around for two hours straight. I was lucky to make it to work today, and I only managed to make it there relatively late.

I was so tired last night, when I was trying to write up my math homework, that I saw that there were some special cases that I needed to address—and I didn’t care. [I should give props to my professor, though. The homework was actually quite cleverly constructed—much moreso than most other assignments I’ve had.] Of course, the first question asked of us today after we turned our homework in was, “did you all cover the special cases?” To which I said “ha.” (No, no… I really kept my mouth shut. I’m getting extremely lazy, but I’m not that dumb.)

Oh, and I thought about the reason I maintain a blog some more. I suppose a primary reason I keep updating this thing is that my memory is so bad that I eventually forget much of what gives my life its flavor (“bland”), so this acts as some sort of log of events, for me. Making it available to others is pretty much out of whimsy. Having a few people checking in from time to time does give me more incentive to update, though—much moreso than I would if left to my own devices. (I’m forced to recognize this, as I once tried maintaining a journal without outside intervention. It lasted maybe a month, and only got updated about seven times… not even close to the 3/4 of a year this blog has lasted.) So you might say that you all serve as the English teacher checking in on my work from time to time.

Of course, an English teacher would probably have a heart attack over my spelling and grammar (hell, Brian frequently does—thanks, B! I hate those mistakes, but I’m just too lazy to reread what I’ve just typed most of the time….), and wouldn’t think too highly of the content of these posts, either. I suppose I’ve traded a bit of quality for quantity.

Update: No. No, I did not trade quality for quantity. Gawd, no. I had a few pieces in my journal that were mildly insightful, and one that was almost poetic—though, perhaps, didn’t actually make sense. None of it was up to the overall quality of, say, my sly reference to Final Fantasy II from last June. (Yes—sad, but true.)

Let’s Be Clear, Here

I blog because it saves me from having to actually talk to you all. All two of you.

Hahaha.

Seriously, though, I don’t know why I do this. It was really more a project to cut my HTML and CSS teeth on, than a serious attempt to broadcast my pathetic little life to the world. I hear that I actually have some readers who are friends, though, so I guess that works out in the end.

But, no, I don’t have any illusions about my import on the internet.

I Love Business

Today in my strategic management class we did actual stuff, but we ended the class by watching a fifteen minute excerpt from the made-for-TV movie about the fall of Enron, hilariously entitled The Crooked E. The first scene we watched was Ken Lay giving the troops a “we will not go quietly into the night!” speech, which Our Protagonist (the fresh up-and-comer who originally bought into things but now sees the light) walks out of. He then goes through this hilarious scene of anguished driving, where you can see out his windshield while also seeing his reflection in the glass. He looks like he’s constipated, and the scenery includes multiple LED signs with messages such as “Enron is CORRUPT” and “Enron is TEH SUCK” flashing on them. I suspect this was supposed to be a drug-induced dream for Our Protagonist.

Upon returning to Earth, we find Our Protagonist listless in his apartment. He receives a phone call (from the Enron higher-up who originally hooked Our Protagonist up with his sw33t job, my professor informs us), and goes to visit This Old Guy (the Enron higher-up). This Old Guy constantly pours himself drinks throughout the scene where he blathers on about how he, and others like him, were responsible for the cans (“and cans and cans”) of worms about to be dug up on Enron. He then makes some comment about how he’s actually looking forward to prison.

At this point temptation was too much for me, and I turned around to Scott and commented “yeah, that’s because he’s not going to federal pound me in the ass prison.” Scott cracked up, and mentioned something about conjugal visits.

Anyway, Our Protagonist then realizes that money isn’t where it’s at; rather, his girlfriend—Shannon Elizabeth (EH?)—is where it’s at. He drives up, apologizes, tells her that he called her father to apologize for hurting her (EH?), and then hugs her. The movie then fades to black.

I, in confusion, turn around and tap Scott with a fist, and then tell him that I’ll apologize to his father later today.

To-Do List

[X] Call Eileen

[   ] Call Lee and John

[   ] Save work (postponed until I graduate)

Poor Choices

It seems that, given the choice between adapting to a morning routine and dying, I choose dying. Check the timestamp if you don’t believe me. I took an unscheduled three-hour nap this afternoon, and woke up still feeling tired…go me. I’m on my way to great successes, at this rate.

Actually, this evening I got stuck between (note the passivity, implying it wasn’t my fault) actually reading the chapter and the case I’m supposed to write up, and engaging in a group chat with Brian, Eric, and Miwa via the magic of IM. Needless to say, we had quite the conversation.

Luckily, I get to drop my two lowest grades…so I’ll try writing it up in my two-hour break tomorrow, and then just drop it if (when) that fails. I don’t think I’ve ever been this cavalier about assignments, ever…probably not a wise path to start down, now. Ah well.

A Lesson

I’m either going to switch from a nocturnal to a morning schedule, or I’m going to die. It’s that simple. I came quite close to expiring today, embarrassingly soon after my 8:00 am class ended (I staved off death by taking an hour-long nap in the SLUG…not my finest moment, since it was then nine in the morning).

Probability felt like it might make half-sense, if I really knew what I was doing. Strategic Management, though, co-stars Scott (a previous partner from my fabulously-successful—in every way except actually running our bank—financial institutions group project) and Mandy (old acquaintance from Ballroom III). It’s a small class, too, which might make it interesting. I still need to read chapter two of my book for that class, so I can write a 3-4 page paper to turn in on Wednesday. I hate writing-intensive courses (which says nothing, really, since this is the only WIC course I’ve taken).

Oh yeah. And they passed out this take-home survey about WIC courses in my WIC class. It’s entirely optional—and it looked long—so I recycled it this evening. Hah! See the awesome time-management skillz I have acquired from college!

Back

I’m back, I’m alive, and I’m damn tired. Oh, and I have two chapters of some business text to read before bed. Woo.

Andy’s party was a good deal of fun. Most surprising, it was an honest-to-goodness party. There were about fifteen people total in attendance, including the guys (Andy, Nate, Neil, Nick, Kevin, Matt, Rob, Joel) and some of Andy’s M.E. pals from Back In The Day. Darren played bartender, and was quite entertaining about it. One of the gals (yes, the majority of Andy’s M.E. pals were female (?)) kept giving me her empty cups and whatnot when she was done with them, and then kept apologizing for being a jerk. I never minded, ’cause I’d just put them down on the ground.

Friday was an interesting day. Probability II was pretty much as I feared it would be…because I only audited Probability I, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense. In stark contrast, Salsa was great fun. There’s a mix of beginning and experienced dancers in the class, and the follows are a varied and interesting lot. Many follows commented that they could tell I had danced before (mostly due to the fact that I lead, while some of the others apparently did not). It was nice to hear that my years of ballroom dance have paid off.

Off to Andy’s

Going to visit Andy to celebrate his birthday and see the guys. I’ll return sometime tomorrow. Be good until then!

OK, here’s something to pass a minute of your time: When Your Picture Gets on the Internet (originally found on the AOD forums). You’ve been warned.

Hmm

Either I just made myself a whole lot of fans very quickly, or else somebody has been reloading my blog page to see all the pretty (old) pictures. Ah well; that’s the easiest hundred hits I’m likely to make in two days.

Eric’s gone to the trouble of making my javascript code more abstract, and therefore easier to update. The downside, as is usual with making things easier, is that the code is a bit larger than my highly efficient (cough) code. I appreciate my sanity at the end of the day, though, so I’ll gladly adopt Eric’s code. Thanks, Eric! (Incidentally, in the process of adapting Eric’s code, I made several changes to the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript of the page…let me know if I’ve broken something. Please!)

Today was my first day of class! My first class of the term (and only class of the day), sadly enough, was Latin I—as in the dance, not the language. I recognized two faces outside of the instructor: Robin, a gal from Ballroom III, and Kristi, who has already decided to drop the class because she already knows the dances we’re covering. Heck, even I already know cha-cha and rhumba; I’m there for the merengue and salsa. Erm…though I am taking a salsa class, too. Ah well. Credit’s a credit, and practice is practice. All we got through today was the syllabus and a little bit of practice trying to recognize the beats of the various dances.

Ran into Renee and Bryan in the Commons, where I learned that my 8:00 am math class is cancelled tomorrow. Boo yah; I can sleep in late! The Guy Sitting at the Table Next to Renee had a laptop and was watching Aqua Teen Hunger Force. This attracted Renee’s attention—she didn’t know that ATHF existed—and eventually the GSTNR and I had a mini-conversation about the show. When he mentioned the mooninites, it was all I could do to keep myself from quoting them—namely, their one quote that sticks in my head: this pornography is infinitely excellent!

I had to leave quickly thereafter, to save Renee and Bryan from myself.

Another Day Off

Today was the first time in school history that OSU closed on two consecutive days; they were only the seventh and eighth days that OSU has closed, ever. Sadly, it sounded more like the campus closed due to fallen trees, fallen power lines, and broken water pipes than due to the ice that was still around this morning. I still think OSU would have been better served, all around, if it had just postponed the start of classes another week and given me my entire frickin’ month off from school.

It was a good thing OSU closed, too, because we lost power about 2:30 am today. Though my dad somehow noticed that, and warned Marin and me, I somehow screwed up setting the alarm on my wristwatch and overslept. Had I needed to get to school, it would have been awfully tight. As it was, it was just frickin’ cold in my house.

And then I noticed the horizontal tree in the park out back. I’m glad that sucker fell away from us…upon closer inspection, we saw that several trees and plants had been destroyed by the weight of the ice. Later the temperature finally rose above freezing, and the entire neighborhood began to collectively thaw; I was reminded that melting ice can make a lot of noise.

I was so sad without electricity! How could I use my nifty electronic devices? The way I figured it, I had an almost-empty battery in my camera, and full batteries in both my iPod and PowerBook. After that, I’d be completely without electronic entertainment. sniff. I made use of the camera battery, but that was about it.

Instead I finished reading the book I’ve been making my way through—Faster, by James Gleick (it actually wasn’t that good, which disappointed me)—and took a nap. By the time I woke up again, the power was on. Yay! I celebrated by taking a shower and going in to work. Argh.

Finished the evening off by watching a little s-CRY-ed and looking at the pitiful pictures I took of the ice this morning. If I get desperate for content in the next few days, I’ll put the in-focus one (well, OK…two) up.

Last Thing, I Swear

Jubei-chan 2 starts tomorrow! (Discovered on Momotato Daioh).

And some clarification: if I were to keep the rotating pictures, I’d come up with batches of new pictures at the same time, let them run for a while, and then do a new batch of pictures. The old pics and titles running right now are just to test my JavaScript solution out.

Aw, heck

One last tweak for the night: I’ve reworked things so that there should be no double-loading of pictures and titles—which probably affects modem users much moreso than broadband, since those pictures load that much slower. The catch is, now the page requires JavaScript to show a proper picture and title. Without JavaScript, all you’ll get is a transparent box where the picture should be, and something dumb like “blog.html” for the title.

What do y’all think? Is it worth assuming JavaScript support (after all, I already assume CSS support), or should I fall back on the tried-and-true hardcoded pictures and titles?

Boo Yah

Since I finished my somewhat-functioning blog picture rotation, I set myself to the task of updating my ⁄⁄links page. And—for once—I did! You now have access to a more up-to-date peek at the sites I frequent these days. I’d like to think that these sites are some of the better ones on the web, but I’ll refrain from going that far.

Wow. Methinks I’ve spent enough time in front of my computer today.

That Was Easy

Now you can (randomly) revisit complete brent//BLOG layouts from the past, complete with their associated titles. I’m sure you’re thrilled, right?

I’m liking this better, I think. There seem to be some reloading issues (i.e. the browser will load the initial sidebar picture and title, and then replace them) that are somewhat annoying, though.

Innovation!

Yes! Starting right now, this blog features the latest in blogging innovation: the rotating picture! Every time this page loads, a random picture (currently out of ten pictures all used previously for the blog…no need to collect them all) will be chosen for display.

Yes, it’s a tiny bit of JavaScript. Yes, the page still functions normally if JavaScript isn’t enabled.

Why JavaScript? Because Comcast won’t let me run anything on their servers: as far as they’re concerned, I’m lucky I can host HTML and CSS files. Incidentally, that’s also the reason why this blog has no viewable comment link (I really miss that feature), or that mysterious TrackBack link I see in so many other blogs.

I dunno if I’ll keep my rotating images—I’m somewhat partial to having the title of the page linked to a particular picture. Next, I suppose, is to see if I can change the title of the page depending on what picture is selected. Anyway: what do you all think? It ain’t much…

Whaddaya Know

OSU appears to have hopped on the clue train, and has cancelled classes today. Too bad this only affects my Latin I dance class.

The weather people now say the “freezing rain” presently falling (it actually seems to be more hail than freezing rain, if you ask me) will last most of the day, rather than just the morning. Most amusingly, to me, was the last line of a weather alert from the National Weather Service (now, sadly, removed): IF YOU DECIDE TO LEAVE THE SAFETY OF INDOORS, YOU ARE PUTTING YOUR LIFE IN DANGER.

You don’t have to tell me twice: I’ll be kicking it in my basement again. Right now I’m watching/listening to a streaming broadcast of the newest MacWorld keynote address, where I saw (live!) the introduction of Apple’s newest iApp: GarageBand. If it lets me do basic music editing, along with the rest of the stuff it does, I may have to tap that.

Today’s Mission…Failed

They just don’t make mail-people like they used to. This snow appears to have stopped my current courier dead in his tracks.

Ah, heck. I can’t complain; that guy delivers my packages without kicking them, and I didn’t bother going to school myself today. I didn’t really get anything done today, either. Did chat some with Eric this evening, which was fun.

…and now I see that Andy is challenging Nate and me to our version of the Love Hina Trading Card game. Since we can’t read the (Japanese) directions, we just take turns drawing a few cards and trying to convince each other that our cards are superior to those of the others.

I just drew Kitsune in a towel (onsen scene; bonus points!), a trio of Naru, Shinobu, and Motoko (not trying to kill me, w00t), Mutsumi in a wedding dress (?!), and Shinobu (trying hard not to look like jailbait). Not shabby cards, though I suspect that Andy’s and Nate’s superior wordplay will send me another bitter defeat.

Wow

There is a lot of time in the day. I have more hours to while away today than I’ve had in ages.

Extended Break

Well, the inch of snow on the ground packs to ice nice and quick. I realized this too late to get to a bus in time for my 8:00 class—so I now have an extended winter break. (It’s a shame that this class I ended up skipping is taught by a professor who lives two houses down from me…makes my excuse look a bit weaker. Still, I don’t think he’s going to be able to get home tonight.)

Things are supposed to get worse before they get better…so it’s a craptacular first day of the term.

In other news, I’ve realized what my favorite screen transition is for movies and anime: the transition where the next scene’s music (or opening/ending credits) starts playing before the picture actually switches to the next scene—dramatic overlap of the music. Fushigi Yugi made good use of this effect with their end credits, and Infinite Ryvius used it on the opening of the first episode I watched last night—and the show gave me a chill, in the process. (The opening song isn’t all that happy, and it tied in quite well with the impending doom of the series itself…so, while I’m sad for having felt a chill, I’m not extremely sad.)

Revise Us

Finished off one DVD for work today—it only took four days to complete. Go me. Otherwise took a nap, helped deal with the recycling, gathered my school stuff (I repeat from last term: it’s so nice to, essentially, gather a pen and some paper and call myself good), and watched some Infinite Ryvius.

Hot damn. It’s probably because I already know something not-good is going to happen in the future, and I’m just anticipating it…but that show is tense.

Sadly for me, though, I have class tomorrow morning at eight. Consequently, I’m going to DDR and then hope I can get some sleep; my late nights are probably going to haunt me now. That, and the next snowstorm that can’t decide (according to the meteorologists) when it wants to arrive.

Cheapness

As I’m sitting here, feeling quite spacey, I’m reminded of a concept Andy introduced me to a day or two ago: the meta-cheap. Having M. Bison slide into your opponent’s character repeatedly until you win is cheap, within the constructs of Street Fighter II.

Hitting your opponent in the face while playing the game is not cheap, within the constructs of a game—but it most definitely is still cheap. Hence, meta-cheap.

I haven’t seen that used in any video game duels, yet, but I suspect its day will come. Hell, it might have been fun to meta-cheap Testament in the Guilty Gear XX battle that went down in Seattle last summer—though it’d be embarrassing to still lose.

Ah, yes, Seattle. I never did get that down in my blog, did I? The noteworthy event of that weekend trip was, as you might guess, the Guilty Gear XX battles that Andy, Nate, Jon, and I participated in. (Two consoles were set up with GGXX; another had Soul Calibur II, and the other three featured Half-Life.) We held our own quite well with most of the other players…and then some guy with his own controller (a big-ass one, emulating an arcade game’s controls) arrived. He selected Testament every single time, and he kicked our asses every single time. For a long time. My proudest moment was destroying him once with Baiken (in the first battle; I lost the other two); I don’t know that many other people even got that far against him.

In response to this, Andy announced the formation of Team Anti-Testament. This coalition of the willing eventually swelled in ranks to include Gabe (of Penny-Arcade, the event sponsor) himself. Gabe admitted that GGXX wasn’t really his thing, and even he fell against Testament.

Team Anti-Testament eventually took a break for lunch; during that break, Nate devised a cunning plan. It seems that another contender had set up shop at the second GGXX console; he too had is own controller, and he usually (though, to his credit, he would actually pick other characters on occasion) would select Bridget, and he usually cleaned house. (Unlike Testament, though, we could actually win against Bridget, sometimes.)

Thus Team Anti-Testament set Bridget in an epic battle against Testament, and claimed the other GGXX console for our own, and fun was had by all again.

If you’re wondering, Bridget lost the first battle. In doing that, though, he found some weakness that he was able to exploit to destroy Testament thereafter. Hahaha.

Intermission

Thanks to having to move data to DVD at work, I had very little I could do yesterday. I elected instead to go pick up books for the upcoming term, and hope that I’d beat the college-kid crowd. I basically did, which was good; Mom and Dad report that the college kids (and, namely, their bad driving) are back in full force today.

After picking up my books, in what seems to be becoming a tradition, I ran into John. Had another enjoyable chat with him; he noted that Katie is heading to Tanzania (?!?) on the sixth. I told him I’d call him in the next few days, and—dammit, for once—I will.

Today was rather nondescript. I had difficulty maintaining my body heat, which meant that I bundled up to an extreme (for me, at least)…otherwise, not much to note. Finished off Descendents of Darkness (note to self: if you tell yourself that you can’t die now, and then laugh maniacally, you can survive any injury) this evening, and then checked out Last Exile. Looks quite pretty, and seems as if it might actually have some sort of plot, too—an unusual development for a Gonzo series, it seems.

Weather was rather bland today, but promises to get interesting again by tomorrow evening. My first day of school supposedly will feature a high and low of 27 and 26 degrees Fahrenheit, respectively, along with snow and freezing rain. (It’s interesting to see the various weatherpeople actually all agree on a forecast, for once.) I’d say there’s a non-zero chance that my first day of school will actually be Tuesday, which will feature only my Latin dance class. Boo yah, if that happens. Update: now the Weather Channel is saying that’ll all pass us by. I hate weather forecasters.

Oh, yes. True to my prediction, Brian’s gift arrived on Friday. Sigh.

Snow 2: Revenge of Snow

Another system, unexpected by the weather forecasters even yesterday, dropped another inch or two of snow today—just when the streets had become nice and clear again.

And, in a completely unrelated matter that will tie together in a moment, it seems that my office’s document server is three-quarters full. I need a tenth of the server to be able to move data to DVD, and the server itself needs some space to run itself…meaning that Priority One at work is getting data to DVD. So I staggered into work (relatively) early this morning to get the server grinding away at files (there’s an elaborate process I have to go through to get data to DVD—and then snuck home before the snow got too deep. [At the time, you might note, I didn’t know that it would only be an inch or two of snow; the radio warned of up to four inches falling by noon.]

The afternoon was spent watching three-quarters of Descendents of Darkness, a show about shinigami that go around and…do stuff. Like solve crimes and experience angst about their past. As you might have guessed, this is shounen-ai at its finest.

No, it wasn’t my pick. No, it’s not awful—so long as you can get past the fact that there are guys blushing at guys. (Mind you, I don’t find anything wrong with that—it’s just not my thing.) Yes, I am starting to lean towards Mahoromatic for the next series we watch.

In other news, Brian left one of his CDs in my computer after he finished creating his mix CD. I’m at a loss as to how that happened, as (usually) the last step in creating a mix CD is to burn a blank CD…but it happened. Wonder what Brian will be willing to cough up in exchange for seeing his precious CD again—it appears to be disc two of (at least) a two-disc set, which means it’s more valuable to him than a single disc. Heh.

I suppose that just means I have one more thing to put in the box with his Christmas gift, when that gift arrives tomorrow. It’s a shame he left today.

New Year, Same Old Problem

Happy New Year, everybody!

It’s too bad I have the same problem every New Year: I have to try and remember what year it is, again. I guarantee that my initial inclination will be to screw up every single check I write in the next two months.

It was a quiet New Years for me; helped Brian burn a CD, chatted with Brian’s parents, corrupted Brian’s mind with The Kid Show, tried to cleanse his brain with the Scrapped Princess opening and end. Sadly, I took a nap earlier in the evening and required the use of caffeine to prop me upright; now I seem to be up and running fairly well. I really should stop this screwy sleep cycle.

I’m currently fighting my routers again. My wireless router does a bang-up job for wireless connections; it fails horribly for wired machines, though. I’m now back on a functioning two-router system. Ugh.

I may have some hope for getting my wired network to see my wireless network this time, though. I just need to fiddle a bit more!

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