Lunar Scribbles v2

Dum dee dum. Nothing new

Dum dee dum. Nothing new here. This is my plan for the weekend. NO COMPUTERS!

<And 20 minutes later, after a DDR session...Mickey Mouse version of course since I suck, and don't want to be insulted by the game>

So as I was saying, no computer starting at midnight tonight until midnight Sunday. I've been on this darned thing too much as I have been trying to fix my little FTP downloading mechanism. On top of that, my Love Hina part has finally appeared on google, which means that I'm getting a ton of hits. I think I'm going to leave my web page at that for now at let it ferment. Rather disappointed no one is signing my guestbook, but that'll come in due time. It took at least a few months for people to sign my guestbook before for Jubei-chan and KareKano. In the meantime though, I think I'm going to start making my anime pages theme-able like this little journal here. Database design and implementation will be a pain in the butt, but in all honestly, that's what I enjoy more. Good ol' software engineering. Toodles till Monday.

"Good evening, this is the

"Good evening, this is the California League of blah blah Police blah blah. How are you doing this evening?"

"I'm fine."

"That's good...You have a youthful voice. Are you over the age of 18?"

"Sorry, my parent's are out right now."

"Oh, I'll call back later."

It's 8:40, and yet another call for donations. But at least this time, my blood pressure didn't have to rise. I'm rather flattered that I have a "youthful voice" too. =)

Some people think they're so

Some people think they're so smart... So I'm still dealing with the guy who wants to mass download all my Love Hina MP3s. I changed the directory structure a bit, so that the directories aren't the same as last time, but apparently the guy knew how to mass change all the directory names in GetRight or whatever he's using, so he changed them accordingly too (I know this because he also changed them for the Love Hina video files, which I keep in a DIFFERENT directory). So now I just flat out banned his IP address.

You see, I really don't understand why the guy wants to hoard all those MP3s encoded at 16kbps/11kHz. They're for sampling purposes only. I wonder if he's tone-deaf since the songs sound like they're coming through a cell phone. Anyway, since they're not of decent quality anyway, I don't really have any feelings towards it nor do they take up that much bandwidth to transfer (as opposed to when I hosted KareKano fansubs...that's a differnet story!). Take all you want, I say! However, I do like learning how to use my computer, especially the Linux OS and consider a challenge to see if I can prevent someone from doing this type of stuff. So along the way, I figured out how to use "ipchains" which is a simple method of preventing a certain IP (or a group of IP addresses) from accessing the computer. While I can't secure my computer entirely (nothing can ever be secure on the Internet unless you're using a computer without a physical network wire or wireless card), I sure can play around with people. >=}

(If you happen to be the one who's massively downloading, I congratulate you on defeating my system for 95% of the time. But really, have you listened to the files? Are they worth it? So how's Austria?)

No one deceives this master

No one deceives this master identifier of fake IDs. A person comes into the store wanting to buy two 24oz. of MGD. When the guy got to the counter, I noticed his was watching me suspiciously. If you don't seem confident in purchasing alcohol, I will get you. I ask for ID and the guy takes out this Oregon ID. The first thing I notice is that the picture isn't him. The second thing is that there was no signature on the card. With all these red flags, I ask the guy a simple question, "What's your address?" The guy pointed out to me that it was on the card, but I asked him to do me the courtesy of repeating the address without looking. He failed the test. The lesson in all of this is that if you're going to have a fake ID, remember the information on it. Please.

Weekend Recap. Friday night I

Weekend Recap. Friday night I had planned to go to see Minority Report with my sister (which would be the second time I've seen a movie with her). However, because the people who were installing the new laundry machines for my parent's business ran a *little* late (meaning they finished at 11pm), I had to take one for the team and supervise the installation while my mom took my ticket. I have not seen that movie yet.

Saturday, found out that one of the dryers wasn't hot. I go in the back of the dryer to see that the burner wasn't lighting. While I would usually try to debug the situation, I thought back to the events of the night before (look at previous journal entries) and using my better judgement, decided against doing it. I probably saved myself a few second degree burns.

Sunday, did the usual chauffeur thing for my mom as we did our weekly ritual to San Jose. I stopped by Kinokuniya to see if they had the July edition of Animage, but to my disappointment, they didn't. However, I did spot the new Hikaru Utada album (fellow Columbia U. student, FYI). I don't really listen to J-Pop and my previous J-Pop purchase has only been listened to once. However, Hikaru is one of the biggest singers in Japan, and the CD was a limited edition initial pressing. I thought about it for a while...and now have another CD on my shelf that probably won't be listened to ever again. =) Speaking of shelf, I rearranged my Japanese related media shelf again, this time, I bought a brand new shelf, went to Sam Goody to get CD/DVD cases for use as stands (bought 3, which was 24 bucks total and paid for it entirely with my Replay coupons. The clerk had to call out the supervisor because she had never encountered anyone using only coupons to buy something. I still have 20 bucks of Replay coupons...tells you something about how much I buy, ne? =)). Here's how it looks now:

(note: the length of the shelf is 6 feet long)

Water is back to normal

Water is back to normal and I can go to the bathroom again. Note to self: Never do plumbing again. At least it wasn't gas, otherwise the house would have burnt down.

Yes, it's 4am now, and

Yes, it's 4am now, and I just had one of the stupidiest events of my life. I'm going to write to you and then put the email on my journal. So my mom tells me around 11pm to see if I can fix the bathtub because water keeps on dripping. So I feel the dripping water and it's hot water...okay, so it has to do with the hot water spigot/handle. I unscrew teh hot water fauct handle off and inspect the innards. I then tighten the innards and all of a sudden, the whole thing explodes and hot water is spewing from the handle place. Craps, I think and then realize that I don't know where the main water turn-off valves are in the house. So fortunately, this was in the bathtub, so I could buy a little time before it overflowed. As it was spewing out hot water, I quickly run around to house to find a valve. I go to the water heater and see there's a valve there, so I quickly turn it off. I return to the bathtub and see that the hot water stopped running. Geez, I'm such an idiot, but at least the disaster was averted. OR SO I THOUGHT!

Feeling like I got the situation under control, I decided to proceed with some investigation as to how to replace or remedy the hot water faucet by looking at the cold water faucet. I take it apart, making sure that I don't turn on the water or anything. Look around, and see not visible differences. So I put the cold water faucet back, but as I was screwing the thing in, I feel that it seems to be getting looser...and looser...AND BLAM, the cold water is gushing out of there! Now I'm really in a jam because I have no idea as to where the cold water valve was AND the water pressure was almost twice that of the hot water, so it was filling up the tub kinda fast. My sister was helping me the whole time, so like before, I told her to find a valve (I found the hot water valve before she found one). A minute or two later, she comes back saying she couldn't find it. So I tell her to call 911. She wakes up my mom and they go call 911. Meanwhile, I'm in the bathtub trying to keep the water from spraying to the floor. The water in the tub is rising faster and faster. I call out to my mom to help get a bucket and dump the water into the toilet. That works for a while, and about 5 minutes later, the water suddenly dies down and then I see my sister walking in with 3 firefighters (this was at 3am, god bless them firefighters!).

Boy do I feel like a real idiot. And so here I am, still filled with adrenaline from almost flooding my entire house. That's why I'm still awake at 5 in the morning (it took me about an hour to write this).

I guess I have to sleep and go to the hardware store to buy the parts to fix the faucet early in the morning. Crap.

AND BEnder, remember to go to the campus bookstore and see if you can get me Dreamweaver MX.

Please disregard what you read

Please disregard what you read yesterday. I never said anything about not working on my web page. Anyway, I added another theme to Lunar Scribbles. Check it out in the themes gallery. I'll keep the Summer Night theme the default theme for a while though. Still have to work on getting cookies to work so that it'll stay on the theme that you choose.

No web page work today.

No web page work today. No web page tomorrow either. Must stop. If you must know what I'll be doing, I'll be getting fat in front of the TV watching Kenshin that just came in today (which puts me at 4 DVDs backlogged). Oh, minor change is that I've updated my favorite song to "Egao no Mirai e" from Love Hina (available for download on the side bar!). (So I lied...but I swear, no more work from NOW).

One peculiar thing is that my little page on Luna's Boat Song is being accessed A LOT. I can't figure out why since there's no referer info either. If you came here by going through the Boat Song description page, could you drop me an email as to where you came from? I would like to know why such an insigificant page is so popular. Gracias.

I am an idiot. Thinking

I am an idiot. Thinking that I could go to sleep at 3am, I decided to do a last check on my web access logs. I find that this guy is grabbing the shinobu blinking image once every 5 seconds or so and so my access log is really LONG with this guy always getting that image. Then it hits me that I'm the idiot. Shinobu blinks in the Love Hina pages. But the way it blinks is that it grabs the half-close and closed eye images from my site and replaces the open-eyed image...and it does that indefinitely. It just happens that the guy left his web browser on my page and went to sleep or something. Stupid stupid. I've fixed the pages now, so it doesn't come looking for me everytime shinobu wants to blink.

Finally updated this page...I was

Finally updated this page...I was getting a little tired of my Love Hina site just because too much of a good thing isn't always good. I'm still thinking about slowing removing myself from the anime scene as stated yesterday, but then again, that would mean I would have to get all the Love Hina media from Japan. However, that's not possible right now cuz I am out of money now...and my CCs have balances that I'm uneasy with. Just ordered a camcorder for mom and a digicam for my sister. Both Sony brands = very expensive.

End of the line? I'm

End of the line? I'm thinking of weaning myself away from anime because I believe I've finally found the anime series so complete that I don't think I have interest in anything else. As you probably can guess, it's Love Hina. What I mean by complete is that I don't believe there's going to be another series that I'm going to like as much and offers as much as Love Hina. This is why:

1) It's relevant to me. As someone who made something like a (stupid) promise in high school about going to the same college and then not getting there, I can completely relate to Keitaro's situation and the premise of Love Hina. Compare that to, let's say, Escaflowne or Evangelion. Yeah they're good series, but I've never been sucked away to a distant moon, nor have I ever been a "chosen" child called upon to save humanity. I understand how I feel, but that's completely different than actually having gone through the same situation.

2) It's a romanic comedy. As I look at my shelf, I see SMJ, Sailormoon, Oh My Goddess/Mini-goddess, Tenchi Muyo, Magic User's Club, Hand Maid May, and so on. I've never been a big fan of "serious" plots in anime because having real live actors is always better ("Grave of the Fireflies" comes close). Animation is best for comedies and humorous situations.

3) The music. Having a good story is only half of it. The other half has to be the music, and good music at that. While Sailormoon is okay as a series, the music in there is wonderful (I have both Memorial and Song Boxes). Kenshin also has great background music, but lacks in the vocals. Love Hina has 2 of my most favorite songs and the others songs are good to listen to also. There's not too many CDs to buy, but enough to keep me satisfied.

4) The manga. After watching the series, there's always the manga to continue on the story. While it's usually the case that the anime follows the manga, there are a few exceptions. In fact, my #2 and #3 favorite series, Magic User's Club and Hand Maid May don't have manga. I think Magic User's Club was made for TV first and then made into some books, and Hand Maid May came from a weekly magazine series.

5) The nail in the coffin is the concerts that are available on DVD. I don't believe there are any other mainstream anime series that have the voice actors on stage singing the songs from the show AND is licensed on DVD/Video. I know Sailormoon had a special way back when, it's only on LD and is hard to find. I love music videos (you're talking to a guy with 2.7 gigs/60+ anime intro/endings/music videos MPEG files readily available on his hard drive). Usually the music videos are just random videoclips spliced together, which is nice, but can't beat a real live concert.

So yeah, I have SMJ J->X #2 and CCS #9 sitting on my shelf unopened. Usually, I watch the DVDs the day they arrive, but now, I really don't have the motivation to. But if I am to retire from anime, that doesn't mean I'll stop buying. I'll finish all the series I've already started such as Kenshin, SMJ, CCS, Mini-goddess, etc...but just not be so active in hunting out new series. However, if I retire on Love Hina, that means I'll probably be getting the entire R2 (Japanese Release) DVDs as well as the OVA. That's going to bust my wallet by $500 bucks, but it'll probably be the last.

And suddenly, I freed up

And suddenly, I freed up $100 bucks. My advice to you, don't order directly from Rightstuf (www.rightstuf.com). They're not that reliable. You see, I placed an order for a limited edition metal box for Evangelion back on Feb. 16th, the very first day it was up for pre-order. The release date was April 23rd. As of today, I still have not heard anything from them, nor have my emails been looked at and answered (all I got was some generic thing pretty much saying "you'll get it when we get it."). So I just canceled that order, which freed up 75 dollars. And then, I canceled my order for KareKano (His and Her Circumstances) from Amazon because Rightstuf are the guys who are redistributing it (when I blacklist someone/some company, I *really* blacklist them). Boxes aren't that important to me anymore (repackaged stuff is what I think, if you've been reading my journal), and as for KareKano, I can always get the authentic Japanese copy imported. While it's probably more expensive to buy it overseas, I'm more than happy to give money to someone who respects me as a customer.

I cut off a highway

I cut off a highway patrol car today. I was minding my own business driving in the slow lane, not noticing the on-ramp. So as I'm driving, I turn my head and see a highway patrol car on my right trying to merge in. Apparently, it tried to get in front of me, but I was driving the same speed as it was, so it had to slow down and get behind me. Just as he was getting behind me, he turned on his sirens and lights! OH NO. But fortunately, I think he was rushing to catch this other car, so he kept on merging to the left and sped away. I decided not to drive for the rest of the day...

I really hate it when people abuse my web site. I specifically put on my web site that I don't want people collection the MP3s I put on there because they're really low quality. Guess what? People just download without bothering to heed my remarks. I look at my FTP site this morning, and I can see that someone just processed my music pages of Love Hina through GetRight and it was downloading every single MP3 that I had up. C'mon people! The reason web sites get taken down is because of abuse like this. Download what you need, no more. I'm really tempted to put up some anti-leeching mechanism, but that just makes it a bit more of a hassle for me.

Just a little note about

Just a little note about this article that gives evidence to what I have been saying for the past few years. Whereas everyone thinks that Tiger Woods is a role model athlete. I still say that he's a victim of child abuse.

Received two items in the

Received two items in the mail today. The Love Hina 0->14 CDROM and then the FFXI Limited Edition Soundtrack w/DVD. Let me just say that the CDROM is one very impressive collection of artwork. The quality of the pictures are so high that you can see the pencil strokes of the outlines for each of the drawings. Oh, the drawings in there are all from the manga, so they're more flowy that the anime. With most of the drawings, they also have pictures of the original pencil sketches outlines. I'm in awe of what those artists can do!

As for the FFXI music, I'm surprised that it's only 2 CDs long since all the previous music collections have been 4 CDs long. I'm in the process of encoding it, so I've only listened to the first few tracks. They're pretty good, sound very traditional Japanese music, I guess. OH, the packaging is INCREDIBLE. I'll post pictures up later. It folds out like those Japanese room dividers and the artwork on there (by Amano...that guy, I think) looks beautiful. The DVD contains the opening movie, with dolby digital and such...but I have to rip that to watch it since it's an R2.

Ahh, the day has come

Ahh, the day has come to stop using Internet Explorer. Mozilla 1.0 has finally been released. You see, I didn't particularly like using IE that much, but there wasn't an alternative. Now there is. The only problem is that my journal page doesn't work too well for Mozilla. Gotta fix!

I dissed my first telemarketer

I dissed my first telemarketer today! Rather annoying too. So he just called a few minutes ago, which was around 8:30pm. He starts off saying he's calling from some fund and, get this, the phone call was being recorded! Really, I think that he mentioned "recorded" as a scare tactic. Reason being, he blabbers on about at the good stuff his organization does for the community, blah blah blah (so he believes that I would feel more obligated to comply given that I know I'm being recorded...whatever, I'm recorded on video pretty much every day). He then discloses that he's a paid fundraiser and proceeds to say that he'll mail me something for me to fill out and return with the contribution. I listen to all this and tell him, "I'll see" implying that I'll wait for the mailing. But then he tells me that he wants a dollar amount for the contribution. Being already annoyed because I'm tired, I tell him that I can't make a commitment over the phone right now. He tries to interject something else and then I tell him, "Look, it's already pretty late at night. If you want to call, please call during the daytime." He finally gave up. God. I hate telemarketers (and spammers).

Received one of my 3

Received one of my 3 loose orders today (loose meaning individual orders). The orders I have are: Love Hina Art Collection Book from Anime Nation, Love Hina 0->14 CD-ROM from Sasuga Books in Boston, and then Love Hina Spring Special Limited Edition DVD from Amazon in Japan (hmm...I wonder what I'm obsessed with =)). Anyway, the first of those orders came, the Art Book. The pictures are wonderful, but there's a problem. I really want to scan these pictures into the computer. HOWEVER, doing that would require me to "break-in" the book and screw up the binding. Those of you who know me know that I cringe at that. I *never* bust open any of my books even if it requires me to read it half open. If you look at my bookshelf, it would look very much like a bookstore's shelf with very new looking books. So, I was contemplating whether to buy another art book to satiate my scanning desires. But then I though, nah. What's the point?

Gah! I found out that

Gah! I found out that my web page for love hina really messes up big time under Netscape 4.08 and Opera 5. Under Netscape, the thing goes in this endless loop of centering the page and then resetting and then centering the page. Opera just messes up. But it's fixed now, or rather, I know how to fix it, but it's getting late. Save the fun for tomorrow.

Went to San Fran today, but I had my attempt at going to Japantown foiled by a mom, aunt, grandma, and cousin who decided to come along. At the bookstore, I saw this CD that I would have liked as well as a few mangas. However, with my mom there, I just couldn't get myself to buy it. I guess it's just because I know she's going to ask me what I bought, and of course, I would say "oh, just some books and stuff." But in my mind, it would be like, "it's some useless stuff that I just thought looked nice and a book that I can barely read." Sucks having a conscience.