Felocity

Basking in the "TV Afterglow" of Viewtiful Joe, I can say I left with a very satisfied experience. I still have more dificulties to play and more things to unlock, but on the whole, I am much happier with the outcome than I thought I would be. Part of my disappointment in the game came from me starting on the harder of the two difficulties, not quite knowing it was the harder of the two. This resulted in a horribly frustrating first level. I then read the (gasp) manual, discovered my folly, and started anew. Things went fine until I was swiftly introduced to the Capcom learning curve. Since this computer lacks any sort of graphical editing program, I must instead use a simple textual explanation. See, if you were to number the levels in a Capcom game from 1 to 10, the difficulty spikes about level 7 or so. In the grand tradition of Capcom games, it spikes and spikes VERY hard. I sat there on Viewtiful Joe's "Level 7" and I think I burned about half of my playing time and 99% of my lives and continues on that one boss. From there on out, the rest of the game was relatively easy. The final boss was a snore, and the final stage was simple, but just long. I don't know why they insist on doing that, as there is very little satisfaction in the game from there on. I'll spare everyone the detailed review this time around.

If you remember from the last entry, my Disneyland tickets were put into the mail courtesy of Welcome Magazine. It safely arrived, and so now I have my little yellow ticket of hopper joy. They did a winderful job with it, and it was even cheaper than getting the ticket at the gate or through Disneyland's web site. That means I am set to go come January. Now all I need to do is budget time and money (more the later than the former) so that I will have enough money for food, shopping for groceries, and books. I doubt I will have any books this semester, but there is that chance, and so I figure it best to leave some money set aside, just in case.…

major coding, 15 hours building templates and implementing xoops coment system built index.php, built 3 primary functions for it added to xoops_version.php added to language file added configuration options for module started to learn xoops DB class started to learn xoops TextSanitizer object built function.inc.php to include NetProject functions - added a way to select distinct based on a column in a multi-dimensional array

6 hours, built template structure, looked through xoops wiki, became familiar with config files drew ER diagram (including xoops tables) drew example block layouts began drawings of interface layout image creation brainstorming

I've braved a few years in retail, blogged on the Internet for far too many years, almost graduated from college, flown to the midwest (without the parents knowing), but never before have I faced a task so daunting and impossibly difficult as buying tickets for the Disneyland Resort online. This process requires you to apparently work some sort of magick, and unlike Hogwarts, magical words just aren't going to cut it. I was openly denied by the Disneyland web site, being told the tickets were not available for purchase. This was funny, since I could also buy expired tickets without a problem. So, I accepted the fact Disneyland's site was broken and began hunting elsewhere. I finally settled on tickets through Welcome Magazine, and I shall see how this goes. I made a point of requesting the 1 day California overnight, since it was A) only $6 more than priority mail and B) is next day by noon service. So if the tickets aren't there by noon on Tuesday, I will have some serious bitching out to do of people. Things seem pretty squared away, and the site was using a halfway decent shopping cart script, so I think everything will be okay. Doesn't keep the worry down though.

Chris J. and I have been playing large amounts of golf, and before anyone says anything, golf is fun in person, and a video game that does a decent job of capturing that experience is also equally fun. Golf is an odd sport in the sense it can absolutely piss you off and you will still come back for more. This has been the case for both Links 2004 and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004. We have played both games very tirelessly, and in the end it is a really hard choice about which game is better. And so, here is the best summary any one man can make, especially when not being paid by a game magazine.…

For the first time in all my memory, my brother and I weren't waking my parents up at 5:00 in the morning to traipse out to the Christmas tree. Our college student nature won out, and we rolled out of bed when our mom knocked on our door at nine. I guess we just accepted that the presents would be there when we got up, and that sleep was something you couldn't put in a box with a bow. Apparently, the adults liked it as well, since they had a nice quiet morning. My brother got a guitar of the toy kind, and was then presented with a shiny new (real) guitar, tuned and everything. He was simply beside himself with joy. As for me, somehow fate (and what was apparently an amazing deal) smiled upon me, and the last thing I opened was a digital camera. A Cannon Powershot A70 no less! Sure it isn't as shiny as a Digital SLR, but it is a decently priced 3 megapixel camera, perfect for about 95% of all the pictures I would likely end up taking. It's small and lightweight as well, making things a tad easier to manage. This couldn't have come at a better time, so I am going to simply have to take pictures at Disneyland of our trip! I have already began to use my digital camera, as is immediately apparent on my photo site. Tread lightly though, as all the digital camera pictures are all in the family album. And nothing is scarier than my family at large family gatherings. All in all, things finished very nicely, and I am pretty happy with the way everything went.

I finally got around to updating the thanks page on my web site, as I realized I had still not done it, even with the site having been up for some time now. I'm really lazy when it comes to my own web site. I suppose that's why I consider my blog "content", it makes me feel like I should be updating it on a semi-regular basis. It also many times saves it from being a terrible bore.…

So now I am at home. I want to send a big hug down south to Annie for the uber-awesome Christmas card. I tore into it within 5 seconds of being home and helped to make me smile on what had been an otherwise really ucky day. I can't really object to the free food, nor can I object to the bed with pillows and a place to hook up my game consoles. In fact, I am especially enjoying the privileges one gets by being in a house under which they have relative dominion. On that basis, I find it important to say: There is nothing fucking cooler than running up and down the halls of your own house screaming wearing boxers and a night shirt. If I did that at my place in Monterey, I'd probably have three roommates eager to smack me for my stupidity. Oh, and I can get a glass of water at three am and since everyone here is such sound sleepers I don't have to creep across the second floor. It's the little things that make being home such a wonderful little experience. I'm sad to say I won't be staying for as long as I would liked to have though, as capstone, MacWorld, and Disneyland all call me back to the bay a full two weeks earlier than I had really planned. That's okay though, I've been procrastinating plenty on my projects for graduation. That's not to say projects have been neglected on the whole though.

The Dotsumi web site is up for the Bay Area Animation Society, although it is desperately lacking in the artistic department. I will probably start hounding people on the mailing list in order to get art, content, and most importantly, feedback. Additionally, the Kaizoku-Fansubs migration has begun, although I am keeping most of the scripts on the down-low. While the Dotsumi site is almost perfect for the Invision Power Board idea (currently used for K-F), the K-F site grew up. It's content needs went deep beyond just a community aspect into a more complete and integrated (and universal) solution.…

The most satisfying thing was to walk out of my Math final and exclaim "I am done with all my damn finals!" It was a feeling different from every other semester, probably because the number of semesters left can be counted on one finger. I took advantage of the lapse in time to do some major work on the Xoops system for Kaizoku-Fansubs. All I need now is someone with artistic talent to help make pretty pictures of pirates that shall then be converted into yummy CSS for layouts. As the site gets closer to completiion, I will probably post some links to get some feedback. Once K-F hits episode 79, they are taking a break, which will give me more time to update and transfer things. The more I use Xoops, the more I appreciate it's simplicity. While not as robust as something like PHP-Nuke, it is powerful enough for a small scale site that does more than just news. One really nice thing about the Xoops API is the ease of including the basic Xoops template. The template itself consists of three files in the wrapper, and then 1 stylesheet for the theme specific colors and images. What this means is, existing pages for the older K-F site can be modified for Xoops very easily. From there, adding on links, navigation, and things like that are very easy. For basic portal needs (plus more than just a message board) Xoops comes highly reccomended.

I went to see Return of the King tonight, something I am sure everyone has seen at least once by now, unless you are waiting until the weekend or don't really care for the series. I ended up crying through most of the ending, much like I did back in 5th grade when I read the books. It's a mix of emotions plus the knowledge that the journey through the trilogy has come to a close. The trilogy was more than I could have ever hoped for it to be, and was simply stunning to witness and be a part of. It will be like Star Wars for our children, only we will be the ones saying "I remember when the Lord of the Rings trilogy came out in theaters, and we were all fangirly over the dripping hot Orlando Bloom..." Won't that be scary?…

I think the most satisfying thing is to have Internet again. I've been without it for far too long, and there is only so much actual work I wanted to do in the confines of a campus lab. As much fun as reading my PowerPoint narration would be (all seven or more minutes of it) I don't think the people around me doing "real" work would appreciate it. On the down side, this also means I need to hook up my microphone to Hikaru and make sure everything is still working like it is supposed to. Then and only then can I complete my capstone planning final: a narrated PowerPoint. I shit you not, apparently we are too good to even do a normal presentation. And people wonder why come capstone nobody is able to entertain a crowd for ten simple minutes. Oh well, I suppose in the end I should be thankful for having taken a speech class back in high school. And I got to play chess with a person who was much cooler than I gave them credit for. Maybe it is because graduation is coming up so quickly, but I find myself looking back at high school a bit more. I see now some people who were genuinely interesting and those who I thought were (and were really flat and shallow). I suppose it caught me by surprise that I missed a chance to know some really cool people. Though if all turns out well, I'm sure they will show up in life again at some point.

I've been doing a lot of work on the Kaizoku-Fansubs web site ever since I got Internet back, in an attempt to catch up on everything that I neglected. Most of the modifications were asthetic although I have been playing with a few mods for the centralized management system. The K-F site, for those not into One Piece, revolves around a message board, and the primary web master opted for Invision Power Board. While I like phpbb a bit better, I went ahead with Invision since that was what was installed and running. I am still torn on message boards having "portals" is a good idea, or if the world is better off using a portal with a message board module. While Message Boards with portal modules allow for faster setup and integration, they have a difficult time becoming scalable solutions. There is no content management, there is no versatility, there is only a static definition as defined in the portal. However, Invision's portal mod can be up and running in under 20 minutes, message board included - no joke. Post-Nuke style portals require installation of both the portal and the board, as well as adding in a "module" for the portal. Of course, since portal software such as Xoops, Post Nuke, and PHPNuke were designed to be scalable, it becomes more readily apparent how more data can be added easily. But that's a battle and discussion for another day. It's time for a final!…

I didn't realize how dependant on the Internet I was. Not just for mindless entertainment, but also for important things like WORK, SCHOOL, and WEBMASTER jobs. My life as a student is far to tied to the online world. It's something I need and use on a daily basis without even knowing it. I took it for granted. It rained or a fly coughed or something equally stupid, and like that the Internet at our house in Seaside vanished.

Oh, I need to check my online account statement. NO I can get my assignment off of the campus- NO E-mail? NO AOL Instant Messenger? NO Online Games?! NO IRC?! NO…

It's been a quiet day at work, full of cancelled appointments. There is something satisfying about knowing that when someone cancels but never tells ASAP, a small piece of their student fees pays for me to sit square on my ass doing nothing. It makes the frustration of them flaking out just a little more managable. Today was also the potluck, though I didn't eat anything. I'd be lying through my teeth if I said I wasn't hungry, but I didn't feel right eating when I didn't bring anything for the potluck. I instead opted for burying my face in my computer to get some work done on my web site, blog a bit, and take care of some errands on campus. For "free food" there sure wasn't anyone here. I think that in part it has a lot to do with the general apathy at ASAP. It's been growing all semester, and now it shows. With a tutoring staff of over 40 kids, maybe half showed. There were more staff and faculty than tutors, which is quite counter to every other potluck I remember having here. It makes me wonder what kind of turnout we are going to have for the spring's "Mandatory Training" we always seem to have. I am guessing numbers that are about the same, if not a little less.

The Internet is still out at our place, which has made doing anything even closely resembling homework difficult. Thanks to the miracles of campus networks (and shiny G4 powerbooks) work is getting done though. Now all that remains is to turn in as much of the work as possible in the shortest amount of time. I doubt I can take this baby home with me. (Edit: Marc just said I could, but it would have to be back bright and early Monday morning. While not opposed to this notion, I just can't bring myself to do work on this at home. I'd play games. Lot's of games...) The technician at SBC offered to come out an inspect our lines, for the wonderful price of $60. I must say, this is one of the few times I am thankful to be renting, since in the end it won't matter whose fault it is, because it won't be ours. Either the house phone lines aren't adequate, or the CO is messed up. Either way, we aren't paying to fix it because an inadequate phone line isn't the problem of ours, it is the landlords. Until then though, I need to cough up to Kryn money for next month's bills.…

Instead of doing something productive at the chipper 1 am hour, I often times find it best to waste time online. That being said, I am glad to see you have also decided to waste some time too. Now that we are both mutually wasting time in some sort of time-wasting harmony, let's waste. I live in an interesting neighborhood, for those that missed the memo about my change in locale (and zip code). It's a neighborhood with people that are possessive of their sidewalk parking, where sirens blare in the night, raging disco parties, houses holding far too many people than they should, and did I mention the raging disco parties? Anyway, the man across the street from us is Frank, who is not only the local neighborhood watch but also hates beer, loves liquor, and will inform you that if you post "No Trespassing" signs, it becomes a felony to trespass. And this is all within the first 5 minutes or so of conversation. I was waylaid to my Logic and Computation class since I had caught him outside and said hello. Apparently one of our neighbor's kids is driving without a license and so we should be constantly checking our cars every time we park in front of the house. I really should have asked him about my car vandalism, but I was pressed for time and was already going to be late to Hongde's lecture. I see him around though, and he's pretty fun to talk to, so I am sure I will get a chance to find out about the "no parking" sign up the street from us. I also mentioned disco parties. Apparently a few nights ago there was a wild disco party complete with a mirror ball! Latino disco at that! (Though I did make out the sounds of Whitney Houston at one point.) This is the sort of crazy neighborhood I have decided to make my home in!

The day was quiet, although I didn't get as much done on Fum's bro's abacus as I had hoped. See, apparently in the UK, they have challenging computer science classes that make their students think outside of the box. None of this "turn this word problem into a program" crap, but honest, genuine, hard programs. The current task is to create an abacus application. However, the challenge to this problem is that it must carry out the math like an abacus does. Meaning that 3+9 = 3+10-1 (because you need to add one bead to the next column since 3+9 > 10). It's a good brain workout, and is really challenging to do, but it is also a lot of fun. Shame I only have to the 12th to make more headway and try and produce a bit more for Fum's bro. There's a limited edition Timon on the line for it, and it is a surprise I am looking forward to giving to Tessa.…

Blech, so I took my GRE today in the morning, which was an adventure all on its own. I was up in Santa Cruz the night before since it was a much shorter drive from there, although in the end I could have probably gotten more sleep here in Monterey and just drove all the way to San Jose. Friday night / Saturday morning, I was tossing, turning, coughing, and trying to make myself sleep. I think I got an hour of sleep, but that's only because I don't remember anything between when I was stopped watching the little pilot light in H's gas fireplace and when Lea started moving around to go down to Monterey for the LSATs. So I took the GRE on pretty much no sleep and a stressful drive up Hwy. 17 in fog and rain. All things considered, I did okay, although I am very unhappy with my verbal score. Nothing like a standardized test to inform you that while you may understand vocabulary, you are an English-idiot when it comes to testing. On the path I managed a 670, which was quite adequate. The math section seemed as simple as the SATs did, the verbal seemed insanely more difficult. I need to start saving the $150 to take it again (if CSUMB asks me to) so I can improve my score.

After the GRE, I went with H to her campus anime club, only Chris (uh... one of them... there are too many people named "Chris" there) forgot his audio cable. Not keen on walking back through the rain to the car for a 15 minute trip, I opted to stay, thinking I would know someone there. Yup, I was wrong. So I introduced myself, talked for a bit, and things were okay, although partway through I was really wishing I had opted to go on the cable trip. When they asked why I was up here, I explained about the test and hanging out with friends. The conversation then took a turn for the worse.…

I'd say I'm running at about 80% or so, which means technically I am just well enough to think I am okay when really I need to plant my ass firmly in bed a bit longer. In a gesture symbolic of giving the middle finger to the past few days of sickness, however, I need to go to my senior capstone class. I also want to go to TAPS tonight, but we shall see how medication (and my body) are holding out. I've still got a god-awful crick in my neck from a few nights ago, and I am pretty certain it is directly tied to my headache. Armed with little gelcaps and Ricola (thanks Rachel!) I will triumph though.

I started trying to figure out my convention schedule for the year, and realized there wasn't any one or two cons I could go to where I could see all my friends. It used to be as simple as Fanime and Anime Expo were all you ever had to go to, and (especially) at AX you could meet up with everyone, even if only in passing. This year though, Fanime, BayCon, and Pacific Media Expo are all on the same weekend. While I have no doubts that every show will be successful in its own right, I know it would be just as hard to get me down to PME as it would be to talk someone from SoCal to come up to Fanime. I've heard there is even potentially a con in Sacramento that might be starting up in 2006 or so. Is there no end to the conventions? It was easier when not every city had a con; sure we had to drive somewhere, but at least we could take comfort in knowing everyone would be there. The conventions don't really seem to be working with each other anymore, which was how it seemed they used to be. It feels much more now like a business, like a competition for a fandom with a finite budget. And in the end, the people that are going to lose the most are the fans.…

Dear influenza: I hate you. Signed, Jakob

I feel sick, and I think it is tied to a small fear of catching cold. Perhaps I already did, as congested sinus areas and s scratchy throat have been in my day's repertoire. They are also the reason I am awake at 2:30 typing away when I should be sleeping. The pseudoephedrine is helping the sinus, but the throat is being a pain, something no amount of Life Savers candy can seem to soothe. I am open to any and all suggestions that may aid in the comforting of said throat.

On the up side, our water heater isn't cracked and leaking anymore, so perhaps I shall be able to take a warm shower.…