About five years ago, Nate spearheaded an effort to gather a bunch of friends to (in his words) “pretend we’re hardcore by watching all of some Japanese cartoon in a single sitting.” The idea, and name, were inspired by a series of features on Insert Credit where a couple people would sit down and play a Final Fantasy game in a single sitting. These grueling video game marathons were called Project FFDOG.

The show he selected was Neon Genesis Evangelion. That event, dubbed Project Shinji-Dog, pretty much ended in tears. Too many people had seen the show before, too many people weren’t actually committed to the central reason for gathering together, the show (26 half-hour episodes) was just too long. The event was also held during the day on a beautiful summer day, which didn’t help anything.

Shinji-Dog II, held about a year ago, improved on the first event’s flaws in many ways. The December weather in Oregon is generally rather gloomy. Far fewer people had seen the show we were going to watch, and it was only (“only”) a 13-episode series. The guest list was limited to people who had actually watched anime before.

It also took place four years after Shinji-Dog I—giving people time to forget the burning sensation we had all experienced.

Most importantly, though, was that we selected a can’t tear your eyes away from the trainwreck show to watch: School Days.

Project School-Dog, as the event became known as, was a complete success.

…

Now Nate is looking towards holding Project Shinji-Dog III sometime soon. Problem is, we don’t have a show that is as perfectly suited for marathon viewing, with our particular group of friends, as School Days was. Our best guesses, so far, is to watch a couple arcs of Higurashi or (more promising, since fewer people will have seen it) Umineko… but neither Nate nor I am totally sold on either one—especially since there’ll be no satisfying conclusion to either show with that plan. Decisions, decisions…

I just finished watching episode 8 of Umineko no Naku Koro ni. I did not expect the seven deadly sins to appear in this show. I also did not expect them to be personified by cute girls—though I have no excuse for not predicting that one.

The light hawk wing sword battle also came out of left field.

In summary: Umineko is awesome.

The primary software we use at my office was upgraded over the weekend, and part of that upgrade was enforcing more-strict password requirements. You know, so people can’t use passwords like “mydog’sname” or “mybirthday.”

To make sure everyone had a password that complied with the new rules, our old passwords were wiped out and we had to enter a new one the first time we signed in. Not that hard, right?

Wrong. So very, very wrong.

The office was a zoo today: some couldn’t type their password correctly (and they had it written down in front of them), others locked themselves out by typing the wrong password too many times. Still others couldn’t type their new password within a minute of having set it up.

Usually I can help people work through their computer woes. Since I have no interest in knowing everyone’s passwords, though, all I could do today was stand by helpless and watch people flail. Flail flail flail. It was rather gut-wrenching, for being so pedestrian.

Most confusing of all, though, was how many people forgot other passwords today. One couldn’t remember her Windows login, even, and spent some twenty-odd minutes making random guesses.

…huh?

Had an absolutely delightful evening at the ballroom dance practice. Janis and Daniel made a surprise appearance (they’re usually in California), and Robyn brought her husband Joe for the first time—add in the regulars like Barry and Sarah, and my side of the dance floor was unusually bumpin’.

Janis somehow decided, early on, that I was going to propose to someone at the practice this evening. At some point she was going to guess who I was going to propose to, and I was supposed to let her know if she was close or not via the “hot or cold” game: before she could point someone out, I let her know she was cold.

I also was able to further impress Barry with my knowledge of Top 40 music (last week we covered Lady Gaga), this time in the form of lyrics to the Pussycat Dolls’ Don’t Cha and identifying the Backstreet Boys’ Larger Than Life before a lyric was sung. Yes, before you ask: I am ashamed of what I know.

Janis also decided that “Don’t Cha” was perfect proposing music. I assume she really meant perfect proposing music for me. I’m still not sure how to react to that.

Barry was wearing a bizarre shirt advertising “yakisoba,” and noted that his friend who speaks Japanese laughed because the hiragana above the English was wrong. The text in question was やきそぼ (being generous about the “や”, ’cause it really didn’t look right). I’ve been trying to pick up hiragana, and knew enough that this read yakisobo. Janis asked if that was the masculine form of yakisoba.

I griped to Janis about how painful it was to watch the nightclub two-steps, because a good bunch of the dancers are either off-beat or missing the entire point of the dance. (Of course, they were better this week than in previous weeks—Janis theorizes that I’m just bitter because I can’t dance with my bum foot.) In response, Janis proposed I make something like this. [11/23/09 Update: yes, there aren’t supposed to be any YouTube videos on the site. It’s a mockup, not a real blog. And, really, I’m not so mean that I’d actually single out people for ridicule… I’m just mean enough to talk about doing it.]