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12-17-2002:
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Got 92% on Electronic Spreadsheets Final Exam!
<12-17-2002> - First
off, Ellis is putting up a couple albums on her site. Catch is,
she's putting up a song per day, so you'll have to visit frequently. ;)
Some pretty good stuff so far, I'm looking forward to hearing the rest
of what's to come.
As mentioned earlier, I'm actually in my
Electronic Spreadsheets class taking my exam! Sometimes I'm too
much of a multi-tasker for my own good. And also mentioned was my
"Spider-sense" which means that while I'm thinking this is a great idea,
I've got a feeling that it's going to turn out badly... ah well, what's
college with just a little more stress added on top? Gah!
blargin' PivotTables!! "Hhhhhhate".
Okay, only an hour or so to go and then I can
concentrate on getting the rest of my Christmas gifts finished. Of
course with both Usagi and soon Liz in town again, I'm going to be
stretched pretty thin again. Oh, but such a nearly satisfying
stretch it is. And I do say nearly because of the whole
unrequitedness of it all. As Janeen has frequently said...
"Patience, Grass-hoppa. The time will come." -_-,
Sigh... As I'm sure it will, and I'm sure everything will work out
wonderfully. But after playing the patience game for upwards of 11
years now... You'd think someone would get used to the waiting by
now, but it's still no less painful than it was a decade ago.
Sarah once asked me, "If I could be anything and
have anything I wanted, what would it be?" I said that I wanted to
live forever, and be a tree. Of course, this was quite a shock to
her sensible mind because she never imagined a response as fantastical.
I love to observe, and when I enjoy something, I take my time with it.
I build things to last. Be it my computer, my crafts, or my
relationships, it doesn't matter. A tree can be around for what
seems ever. It is strong, sheltering, peaceful, and nurturing.
Why wouldn't someone want to be like a tree? Of course, I'm
referring to the large Maple tree in my back yard coupled with the
humorous antics of the Ents in "The Two Towers", but converting the
attributes to humans isn't that far of a stretch. I think Sarah
learned a little bit about how I think and view the world that day.
Why bring this up suddenly? Because I want to live forever...
<12-16-2002> - Sorry
folks, I've finished two of my exams, and have one more to go tomorrow
night, but I'm feeling exceptionally social tonight so I'm going to go
watch some Bakuretsu Hunters with Mancer in a few. Haven't quite
finished up with the 1st volume DVD that I picked up a few months ago.
Then it's off to a wonderful 21 hour day tomorrow starting at 7:30 in
the freaking morning. -_-,, Why doesn't time just stand
still when you're having a good time? Oh well. And since my
"Spider-sense" is telling me that tomorrow's exam is going to be
ridiculously easy, I'll update the site WHILE I'm taking the
exam! How's that for dedication? Alright, alright, I'm off.
Gotta pick up some nash, and maybe some drink. I'm not sure what
our stash of Sprite looks like over there, maybe some rootbeer while I'm
at it. See you guys tomorrow night!
12-09-2002:
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<12-09-2002> -
You'd think I'd learn by now. Planning to take a short nap after
10:00pm is just asking for trouble. Three times in just as many
weeks I've laid down for a twenty minute nap only to wake up 10 hours
later with the lights and tv and music still on. And here I am,
tempted to do it again. Oh well, not as fun to take a nap by
yourself anyway. I think that was half the fun of pre-school naps
was the fact that it was a communal affair. All 50 of us lying on
cots pretending to sleep for half an hour or so. Cat naps are
great, but even better when you have someone to occasionally look over
to, ever so slightly graze their fingers with yours, smile, and go back
to sleep.
I do have a favor to ask all of you, more
specifically, any of you who own the 2nd volume of Kare Kano (His and
Hers Circumstance). It seems the 2nd volume also contains random
images on the discs like the first volume did. If there is someone
who isn't concerned about what picture their disc has, I would like to
find one with PeroPero (the dog) one so we can keep our discs as part of
a set. I will trade the disc that I have for the Pero Pero image.
So, if any of you have it, and would be willing to trade, I would
greatly appreciate it!! Just let me know at
mcguirm@mbx.nmc.edu
Thanks in advance for your help!
So far the casualties at work have been minimal.
Although the shopping bug hasn't swept through our area yet for some
reason. Personally, I think is due to the extremely late snow and
wintry weather, people just aren't ready for Christmas yet. On
the plus side, it's kept business steady, but not terribly overwhelming.
Not yet anyway. We've still got 18 days to go. The more and
more I work in retail, the less I care to be part of the commercialism.
Maybe I'm just getting jaded, but I really would like to see things fall
back to apprenticeships and bartering. I know there is a lot that
we would miss out on, but is our desire for entertainment really worth
the cost of our planet? Perhaps there are just too many people on
this world to figure that question out. Or maybe we're all just
afraid of what we would gain if we changed our ways. Some people
say that it only takes but a single voice introduced to an
impressionable mind to leave a mark upon history... And with that, I ask
you "Naze?"
When I have the energy (or even when I don't),
I've found myself heading towards the Grand Traverse Bay and watching
the snow storms blow in from Lake Michigan late at night. The
Breakwall (my old hangout) has conveniently been cordoned off due to
some reconstruction of the Marina, so I have to park near the T.C. Light
and Power building and walk along the "Open Space" to get near it.
From there, I can still watch icicles gradually form along the
guardrails as the waves crash up onto them from time to time. Yeah
it's cold, but it's peaceful and alleviates most of my self-borne
worries. That's where I go when I want to work out the occasional
quagmire in my emotional existence. Winter at night is truly the most
beautiful of all of nature's scenes.
<12-06-2002> -
Omeditou Gozaimasu Usagi-chan!! Way
to kick out the papers! For those not in tune, there are five
papers due tomorrow for Writting. You get to pick three of the
five to submit, then a board of professors picks those three papers
apart and give you a single grade for the entire semester. Not a
big deal for some of you, but a nightmare for others. In this case
for us procrastinators... a decent week long cram session writing a
butt-load of papers. ;) So, for all of us willing to forgo even
more sleep and time for self, Congratulations! I'm right here with
ya. ^_^ Ya hear that Ellis? Even though I know you don't put
things off nearly as long as some of us, we're all here together.
12-02-2002:
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<12-02-2002> -
91.7%... That's how fragmented my primary NTFS WinXP hard drive was.
And I was wondered what those grinding noises were coming from my
computer. Not too shabby when over a dozen of your files are split
into over 12,000 pieces each. <sigh> 14 hours later, my
computer is finally up and happy with itself again. And with the
purchase of another 50ct. spindle of CD-R discs, I was able to clear off
a few gig off my hard drive, and I've been playing with the idea of
doing some more WarCraft III while I whittle my time between jobs when
friends aren't in town anymore.
Oh yeah, Thanksgiving. I hope everyone had
an enjoyable time. Mine was something of a mixed bag. I had
my typical Totino's frozen pizza which I nuked in the microwave at work
for about 6 minutes. Okay, that's my typical Thanksgiving and
Christmas dinner for the past 7 years or so. The movie theatre
stays open 365 days a year and I am normally the one to work those days,
so hey... you go with the flow. It really isn't all that bad once
you get used to it. Anyway, After I got out of work, I headed home
and had the Dinner with my folks and my brother and sister who came up
for the weekend. Then I picked up Liz and Sarah and we headed over
to a friend's apartment along with Dawn (His girlfriend), and Mancer and
we watched the extended edition of "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of
the Ring" which pretty much kicked butt. Okay, there was one
moment with licking a dagger which just didn't work at all. But
the rest of it was so very much worth adding in. Go Aragorn and
Legolas!!
Due to the weather this weekend, I went over to
Usagi's house on Sunday instead of her visiting me and we watched the
Lilo & Stitch DVD. While it doesn't come in the cool 2-Disc sets
that most of the newer Disney's have lately, this one was pretty much
worth the $20. We agreed that movies like Atlantis and Emperor's
New Groove and Stitch give us hope that Disney could get out of their
rut, but then they release crap like "The Country Bears" and honestly,
even Christopher Walken couldn't save that movie. Anyway, we got
to spend more time together than we had originally anticipated and that
made me a tender happy monkey. Happy she was here, but sad that
she had to go away so soon.
As with all of my friends. Sarah left
Friday, Liz and my brother left Saturday, my sister left Sunday, Usagi
left this morning / afternoon. It's amazing how quickly time flies
when you have to work and study all the time. I guess I'm just
trying to say that you really ought to make the best of what you have
with each other. We really don't live that long, and some of us
even shorter than that. Just try to put things into perspective
and act upon that.
I had mentioned playing more ChronoCross to Usagi
last weekend which she wouldn't believe me, and I can't say I blame her.
I've said it a couple times before, and I'd always get sidetracked by
something else. So I said "Alright, fine. How's this?
Whenever I think of you, I'll play ChronoCross." Half-jokingly she
said "Ha! Then it should only take you a week or so to beat it,
huh?" My reply was a genuine smile and "You're probably not too
far off on that." So, I've gotten myself hunkered down in my bed
playing ChronoCross with my comforter warming my body, and my ligaments
cooling from my Kuk Sool Won class. So, long story short, I
basically started it today waiting for Usagi's email saying that she
made it down to GR alright, and I just got Nikki in my party and I'm
heading into the caves on my way to the Viper Manor. I'm just
taking a breather for a moment to update the site. ^__^
Okay, that was a little bit of a ramble, but hey!
I've got nothing better to do on my site than this. :P Maybe
sometime in the near future I'll have a guest writer take over the
reigns.
11-25-2002:
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<11-25-2002>
- Once again it's 3am, I sit here, in my dark room, the gentle glow of
my monitor the only source of light. I stare at my fingers quickly
and gently dancing along the keys of my keyboard as if they were
somebody else's hands. I feel so detached from my body. I
sit here, staring silently as these fingers before me frolic up and down
and sideways to the beat of some magic metronome. The darkness
radiating behind my shadow comforts my new companion, an Angel.
The creature of comfort and solace rests her head on my shoulder as her
wings gather round my hunched over form. The words fill the pages
slower as the fingers lose their rhythm. The metronome growing
fainter and distorted as though dropped into the sea, the under water
currents playing with our perception of reality. The Angel nearly
falls asleep trying to match my slow, innate breathing as two bodies
typically do when close to each other. The warmth of another...
fictional or otherwise is worth the price of sanity. The Angel
rubs her chin along my neck in an awkward nod.
Damn, what a weekend! Instead of going on
some long drawn out documentary of my adventures, I'll tell you what I
told Alicia when she asked "What was the greatest part of this weekend
for you?" "Well, the weekend itself was fun. I don't really
separate road trips into 'parts' per say. Hmmm... The best
part was actually when you were asleep, and Usagi had come back from her
shower. I rubbed some moisturizing lotion on her back and gave her
a small backrub. It was a comforting, bonding moment. And I
really liked dancing with her at the club, even if it was for only a few
seconds at a time." All of the huggles, and Tekken bouts and floor
thumping dorm mates angered over DDR madness and Olive Gardening and
lychee hunting made the weekend great as well, but on a different level.
As for me, I'm going to struggle through the rest
of my Accounting class and wade through the shite instead of just
dropping it which would be stupid easier, but not nearly as...
responsible. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there (Elly-chan)
who are having just as many frustrations with school as I am.
Usagi as well with three papers, the Spanish dialogue, and everything
else that's due in the next couple weeks. This is crunch time
people. Time to kick this thing in the butt and conquer it.
I just wish there were more rewards than patting myself on the back and
saying 'goodie'. I know that should be enough, but it just isn't
for the stress that we're expected to endure.
May not be enough, but here's my pat on your back
with some music. Enjoy.
11-17-2002:
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<11-17-2002> - Mo Munny! Mo Munny! Mo Munny!
Okay, maybe I've been playing Kindom Hearts a little too much lately.
^_^ Aside from the rather repetitive "X" button mashing, it's a
pretty solid game. And I'm going to go against the rallies from
Usagi and Liz that SQU/\RESOFT had sold it's soul to Disney to make the
game. I really think it was a wonderful extension for the guys at
Square. Other than the mostly awkward camera angles, it's fun to
play. The voice acting isn't so bad once you get used to it, and I
can see my dear Aerith alive and well again! I think it would have
been cool to allow the Japanese voices as an option considering there
are still subtitles through all of the dialogue. Oh well. No
game has been perfect yet.
I'm starting to get a sore throat which means I
might be getting sick. And since there isn't enough room in the
refrigerator for a pitcher of orange juice, I'm reduced to scraping out
spoon-fulls of frozen orange juice concentrate from a can. It's
almost like an orange popsicle of vitamin C. Only, not.
On the computer front, Hewlett Packard CD-RW
Drives suck derrière something fierce. I had an HP 9510i that I
picked up for $100 about a year ago. After a few months, it
stopped working correctly and I decided to at least get my money's worth
out of it. I finally got some semi-intelligent monkey at HP to
authorize an RMA number for me, and I had a replacement unit sent to me.
That wasn't too long ago. ...about six months as a matter of fact.
Now the replacement drive won't write or read discs so I've given up on
HP Drive products. Much the same with Creative Labs CD or DVD
drives. They just don't last with me. Thankfully OfficeMax
has some cheapy CenDyne 48x12x48 CD-RW drives on sale for $30 after
rebates and such. Not too shabby of a deal since its a Lite-On
drive which seems to be the happy magic in other people's machines.
I just hope it lasts until my birthday. But I figure for $30, I'll
give it a whirl. So far its working fine enough with "Burn Proof"
and it'll over-burn decently if I ask it real nice like.
Meanwhile, I'm going to devise some horrific means of torturing my old
HP Drive. I somehow get the notion that I'm going to enjoy that
more than I would trying to get it replaced again. Whoever can't
understand why we're a violent country obviously hasn't tried talking to
HP's tech support.
Sorry, but I'm going to have to pull a "Dead
CyberCrystal" day this week which means I really don't have time or
energy to update the music. x_x But I
promise to make up for it next week. I've just got too many papers
due this week for classes, and I'm quite a bit under the weather and all
three of my jobs have been unrelenting so I apologize for being human.
If I do get a few spare moments I'll try and put an extra song up before
the weekend to whet your appetites.
11-10-2002:
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<11-10-2002> - If
there's one thing I've missed from my Junior High and High School days,
it's going over to a friend's house unannounced, taking off my coat and
boots, and crashing on their floor. Or sometimes their bed.
I would just lay there and rest, half sleeping, half taking in the
sounds of their lives. It was a break from the norm, and it was
comforting. But that was also back in the day when I had my own
car, and I had more free time I could spend on myself.
We are diverging from the steady consoles of
autumn into the chaotic hell that is "holiday shopping season."
For those of you in the retail markets, I weep for thee. Bloody
Friday (The day after Thanksgiving) will be here in less than three
weeks. For those of you who aren't acutely aware of this
horrendous day, it's where all of us high-school kids and college kids
and their bosses get to wake up a$$ early in the morning so we can open
up our stores bright and cheery to welcome the shrieking hordes of
locusts... er "Guests" into our stores for some imaginary elusive
god-send of a sale item or somesuch. All I know is that none of
us employees are happy about leaving our cozy homes that early in the
morning for pointless consumerism. Of course, I'll be working my
wonderful 17 hour day that day. I could rant about wretched kids
and ignorant customers until I die, so I'll save you the babble.
So, please take a clue from Kevin Smith's "Clerks". Just because
we serve you, doesn't me we like you. Needless to say, I'm not
looking forward to it this year.
...on second thought, I guess I am. Usagi
will be back for the holiday and she'll be working at Suncoast a few
yards down the hall. ^__^ Maybe we'll be able to bump into each
other for a short period while we wait 25min in line for our food on our
half-hour break. I know there's something unhealthy about that,
but those are the joyous benefits of being the honored "Mall Employee".
On a completely indifferent note, the
weather these past couple days has left a wanting in me. A want
for Snow. It's been chilly and muggy and rainy. The sunlight
diffused through the clouds and the fog made all the cars in the parking
lot appear covered in a few inches of snow. Much to my dismay, it
was only an illusion. I eagerly anticipate a calm snowy night this
winter, where I can lay in a lawn chair with a blanket covering my body
while I sip on some hot-chocolate and gaze at the silent, lazy snow
trickling past the street lights. That, my friends, is how I relax.
11-04-2002:
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<11-04-2002> -
Alright. I concede. It's before the butt crack of dawn.
-_-, For anyone who has to wake up before 7:00am, I feel so sorry
for you. Of course, chances are you didn't go to bed at 2:00am.
At any rate, big accounting test today which I have to do really really
well in. Yeah, shoulda studied a bit more, but that's why I'm up
so early. Well, that and the possibility that Usagi will stop over
for some breakfast, but that's looking like a no-go.
It was bound to happen. I'm back up on top
of this emotional rollercoaster. Okay, rollercoaster might be a
tad extreme, how about a jigsaw puzzle. It seems more fitting...
(pun intended). I'm pretty much out of my funk from last week,
which in no doubt I owe thanks to friends. First off, my brother's birthday
was Friday so he came home to visit for the weekend so happy 22nd to
him. We went out to La Senorita on Saturday for some company with
Usagi and another friend of mine, but she didn't make it. Had some
drinks and some chips and then headed home for some furious Tekken4
action. Then we got sidetracked by playing Final Fantasy II and
III on ZSNES. Oh the glory. I still prefer my SNES copies,
but I'll be damned if the games don't look great running at 1280x1024
with all the fun little pixel meshing techniques ZSNES can pull off.
Friday night Usagi came over after the football
game and we hit up a Root-Beer kegger which was pretty cool. We
got to meet some friends neither of us have seen in a while, and had
some really tasty root-beer floats. After that we hit up Nick's
costume party which was a blast. We (Usagi and I) played some pool
together. Or more accurately, she played pool, and I tried to
follow her lead and brought some of my luck into it. As Merriman
said, "We've already decided that just because you won, doesn't mean
that we lost." Which is very true. The difference in skill
levels is staggering, yet for some reason I normally seem to end up on
top. ^__^ Life just isn't fair sometimes. We also fed Mitch
Cupcheck, some exotic tropical fish in Chappel's aquarium some goldfish.
Three of them to be exact. That was some fine entertainment for a
couple dozen drunken friends. Then we went upstairs, ate some
snacks and talked about life for an hour or so. I can't wait for
Christmas!
Sunday after work, Usagi stopped by and we were
able to spend some quality alone time together which was much needed for
both of us (and I'm talking about innocent quality time here
folks. get'jer heads out of the gutter. :P). We went to Mackinac
Brewing Company and had some extremely tasty burgers, lemonade, and of
course their home made Root Beer (notice a theme for the weekend here?).
Then we headed to the West High School parking lot and taught her how to
drive a stick. We only stalled out twice in the hour that we
cruised around the school and she did an extremely good job for being a
first try. She was nervous, of course, but she'll get much better
with a little more practice. After getting more gas in the car, we
headed back to my place and played some Dance Dance Revolution Max on
the PS2
Funny little story about DDRMax. I picked it
up on Thursday (Happy Halloween Everybody!) as well as a Dance Pad
Revolution 2 from Naki which is basically a Nintendo Power Pad on crack.
Here's my warning to everyone. Don't even think about getting into
too many of the songs if you have piles upon piles of crap in your room.
Because after about 10min or so, your mad jumping around (looking
strangely like some Irish Jig) is going to knock everything down. ^__^;
Just a warning. Anyway, I've gotten used to the game now, but if I
ever get good at it, I'm going to need to leave my house.
Some of these are just stupid hard even on "Light" mode. Oh well.
Definite replay value and some kick ass music. Usagi and I played
that for about 45min or so then we moved onto Tekken4. She's my
Tekken queen and she said I needed to pick someone other than
Ling Xiaoyu because that was her character of choice. So who do I
pick as my avatar? Why, Jin of course! Who also happens to
be Usagi's uber hottie digital desire. Picking Jin was not an
accident. ;) Anyway, we played about 20bouts or so, and I gave
Usagi a challenge so I'm pleased, even if she did beat me more often.
Oh well, more practice needed I say. It was absolutely the weekend
that I needed. Then I broke her. Gomen Usagi! <sigh>
You only need a wrist to type, right? ^_^;
10-29-2002:
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<10-29-2002> -
There's absolutely nothing wrong with loving a movie, or an anime, or a
game. True, they may not seem to love you back, but they're
not going to cheat on you. They're not going to do it again and
again with different people, then they're not going to dump you without
ever explaining why it is they don't love you anymore without giving you the
chance to fix what's wrong. Nope... nothing wrong in loving a
video game. Humans can be so terribly cruel.
Guess I'm in another one of those moods again.
Funny how one week can be filled with delight and the next, no matter
how sweet and sentimental you may want it to be, sucks big donkey d**k.
My past haunts me... seemingly more so now than ever. Stupid
relationships. Why can't everything just work? So many
troubling times and degrading emotions could be avoided by doing one
very simple thing. Communicate. If there's something
bothering you about someone, let them know. Don't let it be a
thorn in your side and let it devour your feelings about the person.
If you feel horribly about someone that you used to love, chances are
it's a simple miss-understanding. If you want to feel more loved,
tell them that. If you want to hear "I miss you, and I want to be
with you" even though it's implied, tell them. You'd think that
the other person would get it, but they're only human, don't give them
too much credit. They're not mind readers. But if you really want something to work out,
make sure that all parties know where they are coming from up front so
no body gets hurt.
Bah... maybe I need to watch something dreadfully
depressing.
Maybe this coming weekend will get me out of my
funk. My friends have all been there for me and I love them all
dearly, but all of life's important lessons are only learnt when alone.
Final Fantasy X? It loves me.
10-21-2002:
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<10-21-2002> - No one
wants to let friends go. Especially once you've shared an
amazingly exciting weekend together. After finishing up my
insanely easy PC Hardware Concepts Final Exam (100 questions done in
just under 30min), Mancer and I headed down to pick up Usagi in Grand
Rapids. We were running a little late, so she was much relieved
when I finally poked my smiling head into her dorm room door.
After that, we headed to Ann Arbor to stay with Liz. We watched
some Firefly and some Harvey Birdman episodes, then played some Kingdom
Hearts, which I truly enjoy. The voices could have been cast
better I think, but overall it's a solid title. I'm just hoping I
can get enough time to beat it before Christmas. We all went to
bed at about 5:00am or so then I woke up at 10:00am, brushed Usagi's
hair out of her eyes, then took a shower and sat down in front of my
computer and started my long journey into
Mega Tokyo. Yes, by the
way. I brought my computer and PS-2 with me on a weekend road
trip, I'm just that kind of person. I got through chapter 0 (first
130 strips or so) of MegaTokyo with some of Usagi's help, and now I'm
ready for Chapter 1. Eventually everyone else woke up and got
themselves ready for the Anime Ja nai con. (Not a Con.) The
anime club at UMich took control over three auditoriums and one class
room in the MLB (Modern Languages Building) and played Anime back to back
for about 14 hours. It was truly amazing. We started out a
little late in the afternoon and caught an episode of DNA2
which really wasn't that good. Perhaps it would be semi-funny had
we seen it 8 years ago, but if I wanted funny, I'd watch
Love Hina or Tenchi or something.
Anyway, after that we all went and spent a few hours shopping at
Wizzywig's which was a treat for
all of us, usagi even got a free Yohko poster. I, on the other
hand, didn't buy anything. Which is very much not like me.
But they didn't have anything that I was looking for. They didn't
have any chocolate pocky, they didn't have any Chobits OSTs they didn't
have any Lain OST's. There was a bunch of other cool stuff that I
would have bought, but I didn't have enough money either way. So I
guess it's a good thing they didn't have the soundtracks at the time.
After that we watched the first 3 episodes of Abenobashi Mahou
Shoutengai "The Magical Shopping District". I can't believe I
didn't realize what it was sooner, and that we had originally scoffed at
the title and completely dismissed it. After reading that it was
from Gainax and that it parodied many RPG's and the like. It was
absolutely hilarious! All of us laughed our asses off. It
also had the character designer from Kare Kano "His and Her
Circumstances" and music by Shiro Sagisu. Then we watched "1001
Nights" which is a Fantasia-esque approach to one of the Arabian Nights
stories done by Yoshitaka Amano (Final Fantasy, Vampire Hunter D, Amon
Saga). None of us really knew what to expect, but we all enjoyed
it to varying degrees. I'm not sure Usagi and Mancer liked it
nearly as much as Liz and myself, but if you'd like to see Amano's work
animated and set to music for half an hour, take a look at this one.
Since there was some extra time after 1001 nights, they decided to play
the 2nd episode of Excel Saga. Heh, funny as always.
Then came the moment we had all been waiting for.
Sen to Chihiro Kamikakushi "Sprited Away". Liz had already seen it
screen a couple weeks before but she was very much ready to watch it
again. And oh, dear god, Wow. I loved this movie so much.
I'm going to be ordering the Region 2 as soon as I strap up enough cash
to get it imported. I'm just amazed at what Miyazaki was able to
accomplish. The only time that I checked my watch in the entire 2
hour period was just to see how much time he had to wrap up everything
that he had introduced. It was a fantastic voyage for all Miyazaki
fans, and for anyone who likes a good fairy tale. I would say
more, but I don't want to ruin anything for anyone... do yourself a
favor and go watch it.
We got back to Liz's about 12:30 or so then we all
had hot chocolate and gingersnap cookies and played Tekken 4 until about
3:00am. And that was how I spent the best Sweetest Day ever.
I refuse to buy a card, or make special plans, or mention the fake
made-up Hallmark holiday. I just like to spend time with friends
that I love, and enjoy the hell out of that time. It's much more
meaningful that way.
10-14-2002:
Updated Main Page
Updated MP3 Page
<10-14-2002> - What a
wondrous and debilitating weekend it's been. But as always there
is a silver lining on every cloud. For example, take next weekend.
Mancer, Usagi, and I are going down to UMich to meet up with Liz and
crash their Anime screenings! I'm so psyched... <drool> some new
stuff, some old stuff, mostly all good stuff. Besides, it gives me
the chance to get out of this town for a while, and spend some good
quality slacking time with my friends.
Plus the weather has steadily been creeping into
the 30's which means... Tahdah! S*N*O*W*!*! I swear, I'm the only
one in my region that likes the stuff. I can't wait. And as
soon as the rivers start freezing up north, I'm going to talk to Nick
about taking a weekend and go Ice Climbing near Winnipeg if possible.
Who knows, maybe I'll be able to say 'Hey there' to a good friend of
mine while I'm at it. ;)
We've briefly discussed fantasies in my psychology
class and what they offer as tools to us humans. While fantasies
are not real life, they could be if we give them enough patience and
determination. They can give us goals to reach, they can give us
courage, they can set us free from the harsh reality that constantly
surrounds us. Anyway, just think about something that you would
love to do, and then set out to do it. Unless of course it's going
to hurt you or someone else... in which case, pick up a copy of newly
re-mastered "Grave of the Fireflies" then watch some Totoro.
You'll feel better in no time. Or at the very least, no longer be a
threat to anybody.
Oh, and I have a new late-night obsession.
Dipping gingersnap cookies into boiling hot-chocolate. YUM... It
makes your tummy and your throat all warm and happy at once. Oh
yeah, it's
going to be a good winter this year. ;)
10-07-2002:
Updated Main Page
Updated MP3 Page
<10-07-2002> -
The other night I noticed that my poor Athlon 1900+ was getting to about
80° C which is nowhere near good for it. Now, I'm one to try and
use one's environment to his advantage, so what do I do to keep my baby
cool? ;) I've got the window behind me open a few inches and the
curtains closed. That forces the cold air outside down towards the
floor. There I have a small 10" fan sending that cold air directly
to the side of my computer, which in turn has a 80mm fan blowing
directly onto the CPU and one of my two PSU's. Viola! I've
rarely gotten above 62° on my CPU, and normally operate at about 57°.
Which makes for a much happier computer. Now I'll just need to
remember to put some clothes on when I'm working on my computer. >.<
Michelle (a very friendly new acquaintance of
mine) has mentioned that a few years ago she used to dread Mondays (much
like all of us still do) because the weekend is over. School has
started again for a new week. And well... it's Monday. But
the thought of getting new music from here helped ease the beginning of
the week blues. I guess I had forgotten about that, so from now on
I'm going to do my darnedest to get my updates done late Sundays so on
Mondays you'll all have happy new music to download and enjoy. Of
course it's all homework permitting on my end. :)
Liz has informed me that there's going to be some
kick ass free anime screening at UMich on the 19th of this month.
Funny, that happens to be the weekend that I plan on kidnapping Usagi-chan
and taking Mancer along for a road trip down to Ann Arbor. Can we
say, LUCKY!? (Yay!) We're talking
Cowboy Bebop Movie, Spirited Away (subbed), Tokyo Mew Mew, Initial D
Battlestage, Grave of the Fireflies (weep), Child's Toy, Angel's Egg,
Hana Yori Dango Movie, Nausicaa, Tokyo Babylon, 1001 Nights, and the
list goes on and on. I'm gonna be in heaven. So if you know
Usagi-chan personally, don't even bother to ask her if she's free for
that weekend. ;)
On another positive note, "The Ring" starts up
next Friday! If you like thoughtfully scary movies, I've got a
feeling this one should fill the quota for the rest of the year.
I'll let you know this coming Friday with my Yay or Nay vote.
Now... I'm off to devour my potato that's been
baking at 400° for the past hour and a quarter. Yummm...
9-30-2002:
Updated Main Page
Updated MP3 Page
<9-30-2002> - To my
kind and knowledgeable visitors, I pose this conundrum; Can Kool-Aid go
bad? Because this particular amalgam of artificiality named "Blue
Moon BerryTM" is tasting rather a bit
on the funky side. My body has recently decided that an insatiable
desire of fruit would most appropriately commence with the Autumnal
Equinox and the end of most fresh fruit's "in season" status.
Guess it's canned fruit cocktails from the fridge for a while.
I would have updated earlier, but I just had to go
through Keiko Matsui's new album and find a song to upload since it'll
be released tomorrow. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to decide on
one, and I'm running pretty low on server space as it is so you'll just
have to wait until next week. Then I decided that I wanted to be
one of those sociable types and hang with Mancer for a while munching on
two week old Oreo cake while watching a few episodes of Bakeretsu
Hunters.
Oooohh... Tonight is a stimulating night most
assuredly. The little Weather Channel icon in my System Tray tells
me exactly what I could find out just by looking out my window not three
feet away, but I prefer to augment my technological knowledge with
actual sensory stimulation instead of the other way around like most
bipeds with opposable thumbs. But I can tell you the wind's more
powerful than 12mph, and that 74° is pretty much right on the mark.
Man, I can feel a slight storm coming on. Yaay!! The huge
Maple in my yard is just swaying back and forth... such a beautiful
sound. Just let it rain a bit so we can get rid of this nasty
humidity.
Oh, and I'm also looking for a few things.
Namely a domestic (US) copy of Kengo 2 for the PS2 and the first 4
issues of the Oh My Goddess! Manga. If anyone's got any leads,
please send them to me! Thanks to all of you who at least let this
one go through your brain and say 'Hmm... nope. don't know."
All other information should be sent here ->
mcguirm@elmo.nmc.edu
Thanks again!
9-23-2002:
Updated Main Page
Updated MP3 Page
<9-23-2002>
- There's just something about coming home from a long needed visit that
is somewhat humbling. I went down and stayed with Usagi this
weekend, and I think it was what both of us really needed. She got
to finish up the "Irresponsible Captain Tylor" and she finally watched
"Go". I was able to get away from work and school again, and we
were able to spend some great fun time together. We also had a
great dinner at Thai House in Grand Rapids with my sister. For all
you vegetarians, I'd recommend dish 'Y'. And I'm sorry to
anyone out there who hasn't learned that nothing beats a peaceful
half-hour nap in the middle of the day lying next to someone on their
room mate's bunk. On a side note, I'm sorry Mo and Trisha for
scaring you the other night. And I'm glad you decided to turn the
light on before you sat on me! ^__^
Well, another week, another birthday. This
time it hits a little closer to home, so...
Happy Birthday Dad!!
Kind of hard to believe that he's twice as old as I am.
Okay, maybe I can believe it. It's a shame I haven't been able to
make any cakes for all these birthdays. I think the next one won't
be until the end of October, so maybe Nick will get a nice surprise.
Two tracks on opposing sides of the musical
spectrum this week. One of them is happy and bouncy and makes you
want to smile. The other one is extremely slow, and relaxing, and
if I were one to take baths, I'm sure I'd want to listen to something
like this. I'll just lay in bed and imagine myself warm.
Well, bring on the Winter Weather! I'm ready
for some S*N*O*W! Woot!!
9-16-2002:
Updated Main Page
Updated MP3 Page
<9-16-2002> - Sweet criminey. It's been another week!
Three jobs and a full college load is finally starting to show me my
age. While, I've never kept it a secret that I can hardly remember
what day it is, i've been completely lost this past week. I
finally feel like a real college student! Maybe it's because I'm
actually trying to do the homework now, and study... huh. Anyway,
on to the good stuff.
Happy Birthday Mancer!! See, and you thought
I'd forget. Heh...
Liz's review of "Spirited Away" is as follows...
"and it was oh so very
Miyazaki (eek, sp?)... elements of Totoro and Mononoke...
very much a children's movie and fairy tale... and oh so
gorgeous... and funny... :)"
There you have it folks, from the mouths of babes.
I just wish I could have gotten that darn teleportation working and I
could have seen it. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to order the
R2 DVD of it when I get all my school stuff paid for. Yeah,
something to look forward to!
Now, back to my Human Sexuality homework for the
week. Anyone interested in seeing the pics of me being used for
some Photo-analysis work? Okay, that really doesn't sound how I
intended it to. They're all clean photos with me in them
throughout my life. Heh, like I'm going to post any dirty pics of
me.
9-09-2002:
Updated Main Page
Updated MP3 Page
<9-09-2002> - I know that most of you come here
for the music, and some of you come here to get an idea of what is going
on in my life, and of course, there are a few yet who come for
everything here. I was just curious what people think of this
site. So, if you have anything you'd like to say or if you just
want to say 'Heya', lemme know
here.
Erin (aka: Usagi, or my Honey Bunny) stopped by on
the last night of her Labor Day weekend vacation, and I decided that she
needed a great bon voyage. So as a final farewell, I popped in my
Widescreen Japanese Totoro DVD, and gave her a massage. She had
been craving the original Japanese version of Totoro, and I figured I'd
teased her enough over the summer to finally go through and please her.
So now she has more wonderful memories from up here, and we can both say
that we loved the Japanese version, but prefer the English Totoro and
Catbus voices. Go figure, they just sound more... animalistic in
the English version.
So this week I've got a couple Chrono Trigger
tracks, and one from Tonari no Totoro. Both of them are a little
older (14 years for Totoro!), but they're classics, and should be in
everyone's collection.
9-02-2002:
Updated Main Page
Updated MP3 Page
<9-02-2002> -
Less work this week thankfully, and more play. Liz, bless her soul
and her DSL connection, gathered all 25 episodes of the X TV series
(which pioneer will be releasing in September) so I'll be watching
through those, the 2nd Excel Saga, the 4th Love Hina, and the 9th Card
Captor Sakura hopefully all this week. It all kind of depends on
how much school wants to kick my a** this week.
I'm sorry about not updating last week, but I
needed time to unwind from our glorious weekend at Cedar Point.
The Millennium Force rocks, and I learned a very valuable lesson from a
vending cart lady with light-up fuzzy dice pens. "If there's
something you want to do, just do it. Because you never know when
you're going to get the opportunity to do it again."
It seems that both Liz and Erin (aka: Honey Bunny)
have silently urged me to play Chrono Cross. I've had it since it
came out, but I somehow got distracted and never finished it. Or
according to some people, "never started" it. So since all my lady
friends are out of town, I'll be spending my free time with my PSOne.
I wish all of you returning to school a wonderful
year, and for those of you first getting into college, good luck, don't
drink too much, and don't forget to have fun every once in a while!
8-19-2002:
Updated Main Page
Updated MP3 Page
<8-19-2002> - Work
and work and play! That's about all I have time to do lately.
Erin and I have only been able to get through 32 episodes of Inuyasha
before she leaves tomorrow night for school. <sniff> I guess
that just means that I'll be taking some road trips to Grand Rapids to
see my Honey Bunny. Plus Liz is back in town and we just got
through the first volume of "I'm Gonna Be An Angel". Wow, what a
twisted show. It's all cute and happy and fluffy, but Dispel and
Silky and 'Kyle' add an edge that makes me wonder how morbid the whole
thing might end up. I can't wait for more to figure out where in
the world the series is trying to go.
This weekend I am going to be heading to
Cedar Point for a couple days
which means I won't be able to update until the following monday.
It's gonna be great and I hope to feel quite a bit more... relaxed when
I come back. And believe me, I need to relax a bit more.
Gather my thoughts and energies, and get my ass back to school.
^_^
So, this week I wish Erin the best of luck on her
move to a new town, a new goal, and a new life. Gambatane
Erin-kun!!
8-12-2002:
Updated Main Page
Updated MP3 Page
Re-Installed WinXP for the 8th and last time this year
::fingers crossed::
<8-12-2002> - Well,
another day in the neighborhood and another installation of WinXP.
This time it was entirely my own dumb-ass fault. ^_^; I wanted to
try some tweaks with IRQ Priorities on the CMOS clock and well... let's
just say that if it wasn't for some rather nice NTFS utilities that let
you glean any and all files from a corrupt partition, I wouldn't have
been update the site for a while. But as always, I can find the
silver lining in just about any situation, which leads me to today's
lesson. "If you're going to have 96Gb of data strewn across 4 hard
drives, do what you can to keep things organized, updated, and above all
Backed Up!" Pretty much all of next week will be me cleaning up my
hard drives, and whittling away at this nifty 50pack of Imation CD-R's
that I just picked up from OfficeMax for $2. I figure at 4 cents a
piece, I could afford to spend some time on my little baby here.
I should have been watching the 4th volume of
"Love Hina" tonight, but no. We can't get it at work for some
stupid reason. The Suncoast down the hall has it, but I guess
we'll just have to wait until this Friday. In the mean time, Erin
and I have gotten through episode 24 of Inuyasha. So we're almost
1/3 of the way through the series so far! I'm not sure we'll be
able to get through the rest of them before she leaves for college.
But we all know what that means... Road Trip!! Woo-hoo!!
I would have updated late last night, but I was
somehow lulled into the comforts of Penny Arcade and chatting with
friends most of the night. But there's three songs this week to
make up for it. ^__^
Quote of the week comes from Erin when I stopped
by her house a couple nights ago. "Where? Where is it!? I
need to find your wang, McGuire!" I'll let all of your
imaginations run amuck with that one for a while. Have fun
kiddies.
8-05-2002:
Updated Main Page
Updated MP3 Page
Updated About Me Page
<8-05-2002> - Sweet.
I'm still alive, and so is my computer! I've been having some
random flakiness with some of my computer parts, mainly my CD-R drive
which should be fine. I'm using a mediocre 350watt power supply
that came with my case, but I figure with an Athlon 1900+, GeForce3Ti
200, 5 Drives and three fans, that my poor little beast needed some
extra surge. So instead of spending $100+ on a new 540watt power
supply, I opted to pick up an Enhance 300watt and splice it onto my
current one. So, in effect I've got 650watts of power. My
main 350 is powering my Motherboard while the 300watt it
taking care of my fans and IDE devices. The process was a
relatively simple one, but could have very negative effects. So just in
case I turned my computer into a $1200 fireworks display, we were going
to have a video camera ready. Thankfully the camera wasn't needed,
and my computer runs quite nicely. Of course she needs to go on
another diet now. Weighing in at a plump 40lbs. she is a bit
cumbersome to just pick up and haul around. Oh well, the price you
pay for stability.
As for my life, yet another busy week.
The highlights of course was having Erin come over for a couple mornings
so we could watch a couple episodes of All Purpose Cultural Cat-girl
Nuku Nuku. We also got 14 episodes into Inuyasha which has the
most terrifyingly cute effect on Erin. Needless to say she'll be
back for more, which I gladly welcome. The other
highlight this week was that Mancer, Rob, and I were granted some
kick-ass seats for the Kodo concert that was held on August 1st at the
Interlochen Arts Academy.
All I can say to that is 'Wow!'. They are some wonderful
performers, and some of them were downright cute. We actually got
the chance to check some of them out the night before the show since
most of the troupe seemed to be in the mall to do some shopping and
watch a movie or two. At any rate the concert was great, and their
CD's do not do them any justice. This is a show that you need to
see in person, but that's not going to hold me back from picking up
their DVD and see if I can crank enough out of my receiver to relive the
experience.
That's about all the fun stuff I can think of for
this week. Sometimes though, too much of a good thing can be a
little too much on the unsuspecting. That's why it's good to be
able to roll with the punches of life and take what comes your way.
Be it great, or be it terrible, treat everything with respect.
Just some simple advice from a simple web-master.
7-29-2002:
Added Escaflowne The Movie OST Review
Updated Main Page
Updated MP3 Page
<7-29-2002>
- No updates for a couple weeks, and I'll give you three
reasons.
1.) I'm lazy. Or more accurately,
really busy and can't bring myself to do even more than I already do.
2.) It has been really friggin' hot and muggy
around this part of the world, and gods do I ever feel lazier when I'm
all hot and sticky.
3.) Most importantly, a new motherboard for my
wonderful PC. Got myself the Gigabyte GA-7VRXP KT333. For
the first week or so I was having strange slow-down problems and the
stupid BIOS wasn't saving my settings if I unplugged it from the wall,
which screwed up everything whenever I would boot it and render my
system extremely unstable. So, a fresh install of WinXP Pro and a
new BIOS battery later I'm up and running again, albeit with a
minimal set of software and drivers, but enough to get me online and
uploading more music.
Gomen. Now for some music! Erin
(bless her heart) soldiered through the entire El-Hazard OAV and
Wanderers TV Series in about a week. Lets count that folks... 1,
2, 3,... 19 hours of Pioneer goodness. So, in honor of that, I'm
uploading the opening to Wanderers for her, and you. This one,
however, is a CyberCrystal exclusive. The domestic release of
the soundtrack has both the English and Japanese versions of the
opening song. The only problem is that the Japanese version
starts out with a weird acapella before the music starts, and just
isn't in line with the real opening. So, I hacked off the
acapella part, slid in the instrumental part of the original and let
the rest of the song flow. What does this mean? It's
slightly edited to better represent the full version of the TV
opening.
As for my power supply woes (oh yeah, I fried my
power supply for a little while as well), I'll be getting a secondary
unit installed in my case and splice it to my current one. My
main 350w will power my CPU and Mobo while the 2nd unit will power my
Hard Drives, CD-R Drive, and DVD Drive, and various fans. That
is if I don't have a mini Fourth-of-July demonstration nestled between
my DDR and GeForce3. <fingers crossed>
Long winded? Yes. Coherent? Hardly.
Happy to be online and updating again? Heck yeah!
7-08-2002:
Updated Main Page
Updated MP3 Page
<7-08-2002> - Yet another busy week! Not
only am I work work work, I've also had a few friends up this week.
Liz being one of them was kind enough to grace us with her presence if
only for a short while. At least we were able to watch the
fireworks together... windy as it was. She's back home now
finishing up downloading all of X so we can watch that in preparation
of Pioneer's release of it on DVD this fall.
Strangely enough, I mention something about
companies picking stuff up and it ends up happening. Dragon Half
a few months ago, and just recently CPM said that they have gotten the
licenses for the final 13 episodes of Revolutionary Girl Utena and
will most likely release them sometime next year. Boo-yah!
The tricky part (of course) is going to be getting a hold of the first
DVD before it is no longer in print. Time to hit up Suncoast
again. ^__^
Lastly, I am a vivid shade of magenta due to my
stupid behaviour in the sun yesterday. I guess that'll teach me
to go out in the blazzing sun for three hours without any type of
sun-tan lotion. But I have a feeling my computer is going to
feel quite a bit worse when I get my new motherboard in <cringe>.
I have a Gigabyte
GA-7VRXP
coming in tomorrow
which would have been all cool, but for some reason as soon as I
ordered it a rash of terrible reviews came forth. So, if my
computer just up and dies I might be a little late with an update next
week. Keep your fingers crossed kiddies. This might be a
bumpy ride.
7-01-2002:
Updated Main Page
Updated MP3 Page
Updated News Page
Updated Hikaru Utada CD Index Page
Added Hikaru Utada - Deep River Review
<7-01-2002> - 1= 3 4 12
|V| y |\| 4 k 3 |) l 3 3 7 5 k 1 l l z.
Sadly enough, Mancer has now been granted permission to spell-check my
l337 5p34k. It seems I'm 733l (dyslexic leet). Sad, isn't
it? What else is wrong with me? Let's see, it's friggin'
hot and muggy and the stupid air conditioner can't pump the air far
enough to reach my room, so I'm stuck with moving stuffy air around me
to delude myself that it's cooler than it actually is.
It's a new month, so there are some new rules.
Since our wonderful server (and I truly truly mean that!) Ziff
notified Ellis that we've been using quite a bit of bandwidth
recently, she needs to remove the mp3's from her site, but thankfully
I don't draw that much attention, so I should be safe for a little
while. <shrug> who knows? If anything, I just won't have any
mp3's for a while, but the site should remain which is the important
part, neh? ^__^
I am so hooked on Warcraft III and
Neverwinter
Nights, it's not even funny. And the Gainward GeForce 3 Ti 200
that I picked up from Bob makes NWN oh so much prettier. Which
is a good thing since I had to express mail my GeForce 2 GTS to Liz so
she could play NWN this weekend because her Voodoo3 just wouldn't cut
it. Shame really, I love the voodoo cards.
Alright, just a little more (it's been a busy
week okay?!). After trying to write the background story for the
NWN module that I'm making with influences from Utena, I have come to
the conclusion that Revolutionary Girl Utena is probably the most
perfectly written series ever. It might have seemed long when I
was watching it, but that's because I had 20 hours of it to watch in
four days. Now that I've had time to relax and take a step back
from it... it really is a beautifully crafted story. I just pray
that CPM or somebody
picks up the rights to the final 13 episodes that truly bring the
story together.
BTW: Excel Saga is absolutely hilarious. I
think AnimeNation puts it best when they say "Check your sanity at the
door." Mancer and I should have some decent reviews up sometime
this week. Or at least I will. I'm going to take tomorrow
to get through either Nadia Vol. 7 or the first disc in Silent Möbius.
Haven't really decided yet.
Update: Looks like I took the plunge and watched
all 9 episodes in the first
Silent Möbius volume. :)
6-24-2002:
Updated Main Page
Updated MP3 Page
<6-24-2002> -
I'm exhausted and have a huge headache. I'm going to sleep for a
few hours then upload the update. I promise. Unless of
course I die. But I command you to think happy thawts!
(yes, that's spelled incorrectly as well. It's a reference to
the film "Hook" with Dustin Hoffman and Robin Williams).
Update: Okay, so I was a little bit late on the
uptake today, but most of the headache has gone away but my room is
nowhere near getting clean anytime soon. It's a shame really.
As for this week's update. I wanted to post the live version of
Masami Okui's "Take My Revolution" the opening song for Revolutionary
Girl Utena" but after listening to it for a couple minutes, I came to
the decision that it sucked. It was just bad bad bad. So,
I'll just find a copy of the OST and get the real version.
Neverwinter Nights was finally released and just about all I have to
say is 'Wow'. I'm lovin' the game engine, and I'm drooling all
over my world builder's guide from Versus books. So impressed
with it, Ihave decided to embark an a little journey of Module
creation. If I get any further than creating a room with a
paranoid barkeep with a lisp, I'll post the progress here.
Expect a nearly finalized script done within a month. Hee hee...
I can't wait!
Also, Mancer and I started watching Excel Saga
and Silent Möbius. Now here's a hint. If you are going to
watch Excel Saga, save it for last. Because you just can't watch
anything else afterwards. The show is just too manic and plain
hysterical. Nothing sacred is spared from this series. If
you enjoyed Dragon Half at all, check this out. Speaking of
Dragon Half, ADV will be releasing it in the next few months and at a
$14.98 price tag! Whoo hoo!!
Now to get my PS2 hooked back up from my trip
down to see Liz so I can watch the rest of Silent Möbius and get some
more reviews done.
<6-21-2002> - Well,
after Episode II Liz, Emily and I came back and we finished up the
last 3 episodes of Utena. Wow. The last five episodes were
really the best out of all of them. And I have to admit that the
ones with Juri's last story arc were pretty good as well. I'm
pretty much impressed with the series and I'm glad that I got the
chance to watch them. My only gripe is that it's soooo damn
long. I mean, I was able to watch all 20 hours in four days, but
it's a lot to take in all at once. I'm seem to get the
impression that Central Park Media has picked up the license and will
distribute the next 13 episodes (bringing the U.S. release to episode
26) by the end of the world... er year. ;) Now the fun
part is to find someone to release the last 13 episodes which are the
best of the series, but are completely bizare. Now to
reluctantly head back home on 3 1/2 hours of sleep. Wish me
luck.
<6-20-2002> - My
last full day in Ann Arbor on my vacation. Gotta pack more
lines... er Anime watching in today. Only have five more Utena
episodes to watch, and damn it's getting good. I just wish it
didn't take so long to get this good. Liz and I will be
finishing them up tonight. We'll also be watching Star Wars Ep.
II again. Then some more Boogiepop. I've given up on Miyu
and Noir, they'll just have to wait for later. I guess.
Well, pizza's here again, and I need to fill up on some damn cold
beverages with it because it's friggin' hot over here! Thank God
there aren't any birds living in the A/C unit anymore! Oh, and
Neverwinter Nights was in stores yesterday... <droooool> I need
to get back home and buy that!
<6-19-2002> - Whee!
Finished up episode 32 of Utena and so far it's alright. Nothing
special, some interesting points, but lots and lots of recycled
animation. I don't mind recycled themes because of artistic
uses, but at least change the animation a bit. jeez. I'm sure
pissing some Utena fans off out there but bare with me, I haven't
watched it all yet. That will be saved for tomorrow.
Update: Didn't get
to work on the rest of Boogiepop today since Chris came over and we
watched the one episode of the original Tenchi OAV series that he's
never seen before "The night after the Carnival". He's under the
impression that the only good Tenchi is the OAV series and that's it.
Personally, I really liked all of Tenchi except for the 2nd TV
series... Sakuya was an interesting character, but the rest of
the series was just blah. Anyway, after that we watched the
first four episodes of a show called "Hana Yuri Dango" or "Boys before
blossoms". It's an older shojo series that was alright. I
would be interested in watching more, but I wouldn't be able to bring
myself to buy them. The only thing that really irks me about it
was the almost obnoxiously loud music throughout the whole series.
It's a romance show with a little bit of comedy sprinkled in to break
up the silly little insecure coming of age love triangles in school.
And I could swear that it's a Yu Watase work because the the stylistic
characters. Very Ceres and Fushigi Yuugi like.
<6-18-2002> - What
a strange day it's been. Liz came back from work at noon, and in
the middle of my ranting demonstration of the Aurora toolset from
Bioware, she completely fell asleep. I had no idea I was so
boring of a speaker. Actually we were both pretty much exhausted
so we napped for a few hours, then watched Jin-Roh in it's entirety
with Emily. Of course we were all impressed. Then she
started playing Age of Empires 2 for an hour or so and then we went
shopping at Wizzywig's.
Picked up some strawberry pocky and fran for Erin and some X cards for
Mancer. Of which, I should call them and let them know that I'll
be spending most of their money that they gave me. heh hehe.
I haven't bought anything for myself yet, but that's to be expected
when you enter a store where you could easily buy everything they have
in stock if only you had the funds to do so. And as always,
wonderful service from the employees.
Update: Back
from eating some really good Sweet 'n Sour pork and really bad roast
pork fried rice from Dinistey. Stuffed, we're going to start on
Boogiepop Phantom.
Update: Okay,
4 episodes of Boogiepop down. Emily likes it so far, and Liz is
intrigued enough to actually finish the series. Probably
tomorrow night if all goes well. I'm going to have to pick up
the Cyberia mix from Lain tomorrow as well.
<6-17-2002> -
Alright folks, here's the deal. I'm out of town this week
visiting Liz in Ann Arbor and making sure she gets her healthy dose of
anime (X TV, X Movie, Boogiepop Phantom, Metropolis, Noir, and Jin-Roh)
of course while she's away at work, I have the assignment of watching
the entire Utena TV series before it leaves with one of her co-workers
to Japan. So I have to get started on that. I'll probably
abuse Liz's DSL connection to upload a little something a little later
on today. Not entirely sure what it'll be, but I'll try
to post something. Ahh, the wonders of Pizza House.
Update: It's almost
4:00pm and I've just finished 13 of the 39 episodes of Utena.
It's alright so far, but I could use more humor, and I'm not talking
about that Chi-Chi thing. But at this point I need to take a
break because I'm starting to get light headed. Maybe a walk to
Davinci's would do me good.
Update: Liz and
Emily insisted that we watch Spriggan tonight which was fun as always,
but Liz got caught up in a game of Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds
so we only started on Jin-Roh tonight. I'm sure we'll finish it
tomorrow, as well as a few more episodes of Utena. Why am I
telling you guys all this? I don't know, maybe some of you care.
If nothing else, take it as an excuse as to why I haven't updated yet.
If anyone is interested, I posted a review of the
3rd Love Hina last week,
but forgot to mention it. Happy days!
<6-10-2002> - We
need to get some romanji speaking people working in the software
development department at Microsoft. I tell you, 'baka' should
be in any spell checker. Of course, half the fun of
re-installing Office software is plugging in all the words that you
use so commonly that you can't figure out why in the world they have
red squiggles under them. Some excellent news this past week.
My Boogiepop Phantom OST finally came in and I finished up the first
half of Noir. Pretty cool series so far. I want to see how
it ends up. And Liz keeps going on about the Utena series so it
looks like I'm going to have to watch that as well. Maybe it'll
explain a little about that completely Messed up movie.
Erin graduated a couple days ago and I was
invited to her commencement ceremony which was held at 10:00am.
Waking up at 9:00 sucked so much. Of course it didn't help that
I couldn't get out of work until 2:00am and I just caught the Diablo
II bug again so I had to play for just a <little> bit so I got to bed
at 3:45am. Nope, didn't help at all. But I was able to see
her walk with 500 of her other classmates. Weather was good and
I brought along "Golden Sun" for my Gameboy Advance so unlike her
boyfriend, I wasn't too bored before the show. ;) It pays to
think ahead sometimes.
6-03-2002:
Updated Main Page
Updated MP3 Page
Updated Oh My Goddess Video Index
Updated Video Index Page
Added Cowboy Bebop Video Index Page
Added Cowboy Bebop 1st Session Review
Added Steel Angel Kurumi Index Page
Added Steel Angel Kurumi Volume 1 Review
Added X Video Index Page
Added X Movie Review
<6-03-2002> - So
much happened in the last week.
Ellis had a car accident and almost died. The Redwings
mopped the ice with the Avalanche in game 7 of the playoffs. My
computer is still running smoothly even after a couple months worth of
abuse. And Erin's Cowboy Bebop DVD set came in from Hong Kong
just in time for her graduation. Ye gads people! How am I
supposed to keep up with all of this?
On the plus side, Ellis is doing fine if not a
bit jostled. I'm not sure how I would have taken the news that
she wouldn't be with us any more. 4 years later and our sister
sites (we created them basically at the same time) are still going
strong, and we both enjoy running them. Although it does seem to
be a bit of a hassle sometimes, we love the opportunity to spread the
word about anime, and give our opinions on things. It's just
human nature that last bit.
It's close to 4:00am and I'm really hoping that
I don't have to work early in the morning tomorrow. I guess I'll
find out if my phone rings at 10:00 and I get reamed for not being
there. Ah well, enjoy the Opening clip this week. I just
wanted to try something a little different for a change, and this was
a worthy title to bring up. I love good comedic anime.
Well, here's to the anticipation of what this
week will bring to the table.
<p.s. Thanks for the obvious tip from "av98" for
the OMG DVDs. I've actually got the link here on my site, and I
completely forgot about it! ^_^ <baka>
5-27-2002:
Updated Main Page
Updated MP3 Page
Updated About Me Page
Updated CD Index Page
Updated Video Index Page
Added Hikaru Utada Index
Added Hikaru Utada - First Love Review
Added Hikaru Utada - Distance Review
Added Cowboy Bebop Video Index
<5-27-2002> - I did it. I poked
myself in the eye with my thumb. It hurt. I don't know why
I expected otherwise, but it hurt. I don't know whatever
possessed me to do it. Maybe I was trying to get an eyelash out of
my eye, maybe I was rubbing my forehead, maybe I'm just a klutz, maybe
I'm just tired. Whole slew of stuff coming in during the next
couple weeks, and with summer starting up, that only means one thing:
summer jobs! Yay! Now, if only someone would pay me to
play video games and watch anime, I would be all set. I'd be
working 24/7 all summer. Now wouldn't that be nice? Liz
was kind enough to send her review of the Cowboy Bebop movie but she
forgot to leave the movie, so I can't scan it in quite yet.
Hopefully in the next couple days or so, we'll remedy that problem.
Ellis' is finally
completing some of her tougher exams so we should all give her a round
of applause!
My plans to purchase the Cowboy Bebop box set
has been waylayed due to the unavoidable excuse of non-existence.
Some joker thought it would be fun to only make a couple hundred of
them to taunt all the people who didn't quite have the cash for them
when they were available. That pretty much goes with the Oh My
Goddess DVD's that were sent away 36 hours (36 hours people!) before I
came in to pick them up. "Oh those? I think we sent them
away a couple days ago. Looks like they've been deleted from the
system. Sorry." Grrrr... Thanks Sam Goodie. If
anyone knows where I can pick up the OAV DVD's of Oh My Goddess,
drop
me a line. Thanks.
As for you guys, my visitors, are there any
concerns with the site that should be brought to my attention?
Feel free to let me know!
<phew> That's a decent rant. Until later, I'll be bringing
myself joy in the form of Final Fantasy VII on the PC.
5-20-2002:
Updated Main Page
Updated MP3 Page
<5-20-2002> - Almost didn't get an update
today since I was having some strange problems with the server, but
after a few redials and reconnects it all started working again.
Remember when I was bitching a couple weeks ago about the bloody
weather? I'm going to do it again. We had snow again this
week. <grumble> It's Friggin' May already!! Gah! This past
week was stupid busy. What with Star Wars being released and
with Liz coming back to town for a short 24 hours, it's been
wonderful. Heck, she even brought back some Grand Marnier
Liqueur in Swiss chocolate from Quebec. You gotta love a girl
who's gonna treat you right. ;) So, I lent her the Revolutionary
Girl Utena movie, the Escaflowne movie, and she kinda scampered off
with Metropolis while she was at it. Thankfully I hid Jin-Roh
before she could get her paws on that one too. As far as the
anime scene goes, I watched the 1st volume of Brain Powerd and I'm
still trying to make up my mind about it. Having 9 episodes per
volume is kind of nice, but the story is just kind of... hummm... for
me at the moment.
Also, depending on how the
Aurora tools turn out
(and so far they are just tasty) I may have an ungodly side project to
do this summer. It might cure my boredom of not having a female
companion around constantly. Of course, I am just the type of
person to keep a companion, and do this project at the same
time. I'm greedy that way. ;)
5-13-2002:
Updated Main Page
Updated MP3 Page
Updated Video Index Page
Updated CD Index Page
Added Ranma 1/2 CD Index
Added Ranma 1/2 Opening Collection Review
Added Ranma 1/2 Closing Collection Review
Added Spirited Away CD Index
Added Spirited Away OST Review
Added Spirited Away Image Album Review
<5-13-2002> - Damn these Doritos, they're
just too tasty! I can't put them down. Two large bags of
chips and 3/4 gallon of milk later, I'm ready to start typing.
It's been a hellish week for me. I'm absolutely exhausted and
honestly, I haven't accomplished one single thing this week. I
mean, I've gone to work, I've ran around to do things, but nothing
ever seems to get done. Anyone else have this problem lately?
Anyway, Mancer was gracious enough to lay down a review for Oh My
Goddess! this week, and he also lent me Mahou Tsuki Tai! vol. 6 as
well. Hopefully there will be more reviews forthcoming on both
of our parts. ^_^ As for Dungeon Siege... let's just say that
the single player aspect is rather ho-hum. The engine is
beautiful, but it lacks soul. And honestly, the multi-player
needs some serious work to it. Tromping 500 units to attack
something worthy of your character takes forever and just gets
repetitive. Get going on those waypoints Gasworks! And
don't even try playing this online with a 56k dial-up. It can't
be done, even with only two players. Guess I'll continue my
training in the Force with Jedi Knight II until Episode II starts this
Thursday. <drool>
5-06-2002:
Updated Main Page
Updated MP3 Page
Updated About Page
Added Love Hina Video Index
Added Love Hina Vol. 1 Review
Added Love Hina Vol. 2 Review
<5-06-2002> - Just upgraded my CPU this
week. Of course, I kind of had to borrow a Motherboard and some
Ram that will work with it until I can buy my own, but I finally broke
the GHz barrier that I had set myself a few years ago with a new AMD
1900+. Honestly, I don't notice normal Windows operations to be
any quicker than my Pentium III 800Mhz, but so far games seem to be
working a little smoother, so Yay! I also got my replacement
drive back from IBM so I re-installed WinXP for what should be the 2nd
to last time for a while. Thankfully, I got the bulk of the
update done on my Win98SE drive which gives me the opportunity to get
my system up and running. As for the site, I was hoping to get a
bunch of reviews done, but work called me away far too often, but I
have gotten the first two volumes of "Love
Hina" reviewed, with Niea_7 soon on the way. I'll try to get
about half a dozen reviews done each week. That's my goal
anyway. As for me, I'm going to go back to playing my Dungeon
Siege multi-player character. :)
4-29-2002:
Updated Main Page
Updated MP3 Page
Updated CD Index Page
Added Maaya Sakamoto Index
Added Maaya Sakamoto - Lucy Review
Added Maaya Sakamoto - Yubiwa Review
<4-29-2002> - Whew, lots of music I want
to post, but I'm just going to
have to be good and pace myself. The reviews are slow in coming
because I'm still trying to decide on the format that I'd like to use.
Plus I found a neat table gradient effect that I'm going to slowly
incorporate into the CD track listings. As for life, well
Differential Equations could have gone a lot better, but at least it
wasn't a total loss. And hopefully the college will offer a
class on Japanese over the summer, in which case Erin, Dave and I will
be taking that together which of course will be nothing but fun and
excitement. As for the weather... still pretty crappy.
Cold, rainy and sometimes snowy. I need some sun!!
(*Side note: it seems that ADV has heard
my cries and will be
releasing Dragon-Half on DVD this fall! Thank you!!*)
4-22-2002:
Updated Main Page
Updated MP3 Page
Updated Utilities Page
Added Sakurasaku Review
Added Animetoonz presents Kikuko Inoue
<4-22-2002> - I kid you not people. It was 90 degrees for the past
few days, and just the past 3 hours, we've gotten an inch of snow.
Let it be Spring for the love of... grrrr... Sorry the update was a
couple hours later than normal, but I was feeling ill last night, and
the universe seemed to be against me posting up the 2nd song this
week. I defy you universe! Ha! Take that! Also I'm
going to be adding reviews for the NieA_7 series as well as Metropolis
and possibly Jin-Roh if I have the chance later on today, so check
back later if you're interested.
4-15-2002 :
Updated Main
Page
Updated MP3 Page
Updated CD Index Page
Updated About Myself Page
Updated and Added External Wallpaper Links on the Pics
page.
Added Jin-Roh Soundtrack Page
Added Trigun Soundtrack Page
Added X OVA Single Page
Added Two pictures to About Myself Page
Fixed Spelling mistakes on Hitomi's CD pages.
<4-15-2002> -
Yawn... <stretch stretch> How does this internet thing work
again? <blink blink> Yawn... Okay, it's been a while, I know,
but I'm back. Hopefully for more than a week or so. And
hopefully with enough resolve to keep at this as long as Ellis has
done with her site.
To her unrivaled perseverance, I bow.
Many of you have wondered why I haven't updated
the site for quite a while, and I'm sure that I've lost a few
previously content followers. For that, I apologize, but as with
almost all people, sometimes priorities get in the way of hobbies.
My priorities have always been working (multiple jobs), education, and
my friends. Currently, all of those topics are pretty much
equal, although I would have to put my friends above all else.
Unfortunately, my hobbies (watching animé, playing games, buying
music) had to be waylaid just a tad. Of course, I never quit any
of my hobbies, just had to taper them off for a while. The
transition from VHS to DVD could never have gone any better.
It's been a little costly, but the time and effort has been worth it.
Much better sound, much better picture, mostly cool extras, there's no
going wrong with DVD. And best of all, they don't wear out
nearly as quickly as my poor VHS collection.
(*Side note: ADV, would you Please!
release Dragon-Half on DVD!*)
Since my Hobbies were trimmed down a little, so
too did my devotion to this site. In all fairness,
CyberCrystal's is a bastard lovechild between my boredom, my love of
animation, and my style of design; a place where I try to drop
all my knowledge and opinions into a small pool that others can swim
around in, be informed by, and with a bit of luck be entertained at the
same time.
Well, my animé library has grown, my computer
has been rebuilt six times over (final specs will be located in my
About page), and I also have some ideas that
I'd like to try out. Oh, and I have some friends that are
willing to put their two-bits in so you'll have more than just my
opinion on some stuff. I think that just about covers it.
<stretch>
5-29-2000 :
Added Keiko Matsui CD Index
Added Keiko Matsui : Dream Walk, Collection, Full Moon and
the Shrine, Live, and Whisper from the Mirror CD Information
Added Spriggan OST CD Information
Modified Main CD Index
Fixed Spelling mistakes on quite a few pages. ^_^;
What's new you ask? Damn near
everything!! Much like my Ex-Girlfriend's computer that I
just rebuilt for her, there's not a whole lot of the old
site left.
I'll be putting
most of my bug fixes and other additions to the site here,
and of course anything that I feel like putting here. ^_^
Here is a small list of the most prominent changes that I've made to the site structure,
and why I made those changes.
- First off lies the new Toolbars, which are now
"IMAGE MAPS". I didn't use these
previously since most text browsers had
difficulties viewing them properly, and there was
no way to insert "alt tags" for
descriptions of the links. But now PINE and a
couple other text browsers can use them, albeit
not efficient. This will
cut down on the number of images loaded in the pages. If there are any problems please let me
know, and I can contemplate doing a "Text
Only" version of the site. If there is
little demand for a "Text Only" site,
however, I'll simply expend my energies elsewhere.
- A TON of new information has been added, and will
continue to be added when I either A) get new
videos or soundtracks, or B) I get lots of time to
add in all the stuff I've already got. (heh,
like that's going to happen often... ah well).
But I digress... Added 2 major sections to the
site. The AnimeIndex
which houses anime series information, such as
the covers to the tapes/DVD's, the short blurb
from the back of the tape and also added "Reader's
Reviews" which are reviews from my fans on
that particular episode or series in general. The
other major section to the site is the CD Information index
which has track listings for all the CD's and
also any pertinent information on that album, as
well as personal opinions, and "Reader's
Reviews" too. Don't worry, I've spent quite
a bit of time making sure that each category has
been interlinked between each other, and rather
easy to navigate.
- Also instead of having one MASSIVE page of links,
each series index and main page will contain
links to content-specific sites. So, if you're on
the Pics page, there will
be a list of links to other places that have good
archives of Anime pics and backgrounds. Or if you're
on the Saber
Marionette J page, there will be links to
other Saber Marionette J pages on the net. I will
still have a Links page,
but it will mainly contain general links that don't
really fit into any other specific series.
- Another change which I've made to the structure
is more of an underlying one dealing mainly with
the directories of the site. This was something
that needed to be done, to better organize the
abundance of new features, information, and media.
(images, clips, and misc). The actual re-structuring
of the directories won't mean much to too many
peoples, but it will help you get an idea of
where you are in the site on the off chance you
get lost in it's catacombs. ^_^; ie: /animerelm/video/tenchimuyo/tv1/
would put you at the Index of the first Tenchi
Muyo TV series.
- Certain images (mostly the buttons to download
the MP3's) did not display correctly on monitors
with a resolution of less than 24bit color (and
sometimes they were still screwed up in 32bit...
don't ask me why... I have no clue.<shrug>).
So, I've introduced a generic button for
downloading the songs which will look fine in
pretty much all color resolutions... except for
16 Colors, but you really shouldn't be browsing
in "Safe Mode" anyway. ^_^ This also
cuts down on loading time for the MP3 page, since
there is one standard button for each link,
instead of two separate buttons for each song.
- Trying to keep the image sizes down and having a
reasonable loading time, I reduced the little
preview pics on the left of the MP3 table from
200x200 to 150x150. This effectively cut those
sizes to about half, from about 30Kb to 15Kb per
picture. I've also omitted the "Fading Text"
in the title bars. It was a neat effect but it
added to the size of the page itself so it's gone
now.
So, what does all this mean?
Basically, the site is much better tied together and
easier to navigate. I have also done some quick math, and
figured out that if you compared the old layout MP3 page
containing three songs on it, the average would be about
173Kb total with 34 images in it; to the new layout here
with the same number of mp3's is still about 172Kb but
only loads up 18 images. So I've made another
aesthetically pleasing layout without boosting the
loading time ^_^ (I love my job)
| Simple How-To of the MP3 Page |
|
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