Lunar Scribbles v2

Quick entry...writing from the car

Quick entry...writing from the car sitting outside Yale University (my sister's old school). But I think it's fate because I found this in storage:

I've only purchased 1 or 2 magazines before last September. This was one of them. NOW ON WITH THE ROADTRIP!

Not cool. So I'm here

Not cool. So I'm here trying to finish up the web page and I keep on getting these errors on my Desktop Sakura. So I have it check the disc for the drive. IT TOOK FRICKIN' AN HOUR AND HALF FOR IT TO CHECK THE DRIVE! Luckily I have Notebook Naru to work on for now. Blarg.

Launch will be tonight or

Launch will be tonight or tomorrow morning. In any case, I'm keeping my promise that it'll be online tomorrow. It's pretty annoying when people post a date of release and then push it back. However, since I was cut short of time, I'm only going to be releasing two themes, Smiles and Shinobu. I'm going to put teasers up for the next 3 themes (just so they come back to the site). =) Long night.

Ah crappers, looks like the

Ah crappers, looks like the site might not be launched on Wednesday after all. An employee of ours wasn't feeling too well and went into the doctor's where he was told he had high blood pressure. That freaked him out, so he took the rest of the day off and he might even take tomorrow off too. That means I'll have to fill in, which means that I won't be able to finish the site. Now, should I release it half done, or delay. Hmm...

Because he got checked for blood pressure, my mom decided it might be a good idea to check ours. We have one of those little blood pressure machines around, so I went and used it. I put it on, and on first reading, I got a 109/190. Normal is 80/120. Given that reading, I should have had a heart attack already. I thought it was wrong. So I try again, and I get about the same. I start to panic a bit, but then decide to put the cuff on my other arm. I get a 78/130. So that's in the normal range. I put it back on my left arm and get the high reading again. Very messed up.

Otsukaresama deshita! Umm...I guess it

Otsukaresama deshita! Umm...I guess it might still be a little too soon to say that, however, I did finish one complete section in the new Love Hina page, and that's the multimedia section. EVERYTHING is listed now, with ALL PURCHASE-ABLE CDs, and the other DVDs and CDROMs I've acquired. Next shall be episode summaries, which if all goes well, will be done tomorrow along with character summaries too. Tuesday will be for final layout adjustments and corrections. I'd say a Wednesday release is a 57% yes.

Oh wonderful. Yesterday, I tried

Oh wonderful. Yesterday, I tried my first stab at making those "Hamburger Helper" things. It was lasagna, which you just had to add a pound of ground beef. So I follow the instructions and consume it. It wasn't half bad.

But then I read in the news today that there's a massive ground beef recall due to E. Coli. Great. If I don't respond to any more emails, you'll know what happened.

Translating dialogue tracks on a

Translating dialogue tracks on a CD is tough, especially in Japanese. Whereas songs usually have the lyrics printed, I have to go by ear on the drama tracks. Not easy. So I'm up to chapter 44 in the Love Hina manga, which is in book 6. Here's the setting: apparently Naru and Keitaro are going out to see a movie. Of course, Kitsune teases them about being a couple, which Naru utterly denies. The plan was for Naru to meet Keitaro at a designated meeting spot at 3 o'clock. Naru is late and blames it on Kitsune. So they meet up and Keitaro notices that it's a little early for the movie, so they decide to go have some food. Keitaro's idea is for the two of them to go Yoshinaya, a Japanese fast food restaurant. Naru doesn't think that's an appropriate place for a guy and a girl to go to and literally beats some sense into Keitaro. They end up going to an ice cream parlor, where she thinks is more appropriate.

The reason I brought that up is because, for those of you who don't know, Yoshinaya is a play on a real restaurant chain called Yoshinoya, which I ACTUALLY REALLY REALLY LIKE. If it were me, I would say (in a Cartman of South Park sorta way) "SCREW YOU NARU, I'M GETTING MYSELF A LARGE BEEF BOWL COMBO WITH A PEPSI AND CALIFORNIA ROLLS!" I would put a scan of the picture from the manga, but it's near the center of the book, which means I would have to break the binding, which I'm not willing to do.

I got two pleasant surprises

I got two pleasant surprises today. In the morning, I got my package that included Love Hina Process 9 DVD (which includes the legendary episode 25 as well as a bonus material like commercials and such...and it's a limited edition that comes with a Mutsumi statue), and the two other Love Hina CDROMS, the Desktop Accessory and the Digital Toybox. I am very impressed with both sets. The desktop accessory package comes with icons, Windows system sounds (my computer, Notebook Naru actually SOUNDS like Naru now =)), and a few other programs. The Digital Toybox is a collection for the anime series (the others were based on the manga). Almost all the art in the Art Book is in the CDROM, except that you have to play this game to earn them. The game is kinda like MYST, except much more primitive. You go around the Hinata Inn looking for these little trading card packages which when you get them, you get like 9 images. Took me 3 hours of clicking around just to get all of them. However, on the plus side, if a Hinata soo were to ever exist, I think I know my way around really well.

Then later in the after, I got another package (mailwoman must think I'm crazy) from Japan. This time it was for the KareKano Act 1.0 and 3.0 CDs as well as the Sakura Saku single. So that makes my Love Hina CD collection complete, my KareKano OST soundtracks complete, and my Love Hina CDROMs complete too.

Hinastar.com is now registered and will be the domain for my Love Hina site. So basically I'm done with the database engine that runs the site. If there was a rush, I could make the site live this instant. But I'll give it a week and a half while I work on the layouts a bit more. Plus, another good Love Hina site, anihina.com is relaunching this Friday...I'll see what he puts up before I take my stab at it. =)

To buy or not to

To buy or not to buy. So they're going to have a 12 CD Kenshin music collection CD set out in September. However, it's on pre-release order only, so if the order isn't placed by 7/31, you're not going to get one even though it's not released until two months later. Kenshin soundtracks have been on my to-buy lists for a while since the background music is probably the best in anime. The only thing that has held me back is that there are 4 OSTs, but only 3 are still in print. I've refrained from buying since I can't get the whole 4 CD set. Now, I have a chance at the entire collection. Problem is it's more than $200 bucks. Arg. On another box note, they're offering the US Escaflowne box at RightStuf. Thank goodness I've enlightened myself.

Time to sleep. (what boring journal entries nowadays...don't worry, things will get more exciting when I'm back at school)

Mmmm...code review. Haven't done that

Mmmm...code review. Haven't done that in a LONG time. Having hacked together the new Love Hina site, it's time to go through my code to clean it up a bit. Not that it really matters, since it's not a going to be run on-demand. If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry.

Went to Kinokuniya yesterday and snagged the last copy of this month's Animage magazine. I still can't read 70% of it, but you don't get those magazines for the articles...OH GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF THE GUTTER! IT'S A CLEAN...ETHICAL...ANIME MAGAZINE. Sheesh.

There's nothing more humiliating than

There's nothing more humiliating than being beaten by your little 7 year old brother in a head-to-head match in Dance Dance Revolution. My legs are almost twice as long as he is, but he still beat me. Yet another reason why I'll never play that game in public.

I got to talk to some friends who are currently living in New York City, and one of them recently moved from the Jersey shore to Manhattan. Since I'll be looking for a place there in three weeks, I asked him how he did it. Like many people there, he went through a broker who got him a decent apartment. The rent for his studio is $1400 a month. But if you think that's expensive, let me tell you about the broker fee. 15% of a year's rent...which in his case was something like $2500!!! Yikes. I could buy myself a new laptop with that much money. Speaking of money, I still have to send you some Chris.

I'm finally almost done with data entry for the new web page. It actually works like a charm. I type in a command and it takes 10 seconds making all the HTML files from the information in the database and builds the site in its entirety. The deadline for myself is next Thursday to get this thing up and running. I'm probably going to need help testing it though since I'll be using cookies and such (I hate client side programming).

Now I know how a

Now I know how a secretary feels like. I'm stuck doing data entry into my Love Hina web page database, and am currently entering the track listings from all the CDs. How tedious! However, I have 4 different Love Hina layouts all ready to go once the data gets put in. That's all.

I must say that I'm

I must say that I'm thoroughly impressed with the new Dreamweaver. Whereas I've had to do all the php coding for databased layouts, the new Dreamweaver has built in PHP/MySQL (database) functions built in. Saves a crapload of time trying to debug the code. However, I still think that people who want to learn web stuff like HTML and scripting languages should spend significant time doing it by hand before they start using tools like Dreamweaver because you still need to understand what's going on. But for me, it's nice to use tools rather than having to invent the wheel everytime I start a project.

So we got this new ATM-like thing in the store for the new food stamp program. You see, bums come into the store buying candybars for 55 cents with their food stamp dollar and we give them change back. They do this a few times, and they have enough quarters to buy themselves a beer. That's an abuse of the system. With the new debit card system, they won't be able to do that. I had the pleasure of undergoing training for the card swipe machine on the phone. One thing to note about this machine is that it requires a separate phone line to call the 800 number to authorize the charge.

So the lady calls me at the appointed time and I say that I have the machine all set up except that I don't have an extra phone line because I'm talking to her on the one in the office. I tell her that if she needed me to, there's an extra phone line by the cash register, but that would mean that I would be occupying a cash register for a half an hour. She contemplates and tells me to get a telephone splitter for the phone I'm on and she'll call back in 5 minutes. HELLO, A SPLITTER DOESN'T MEAN I'LL HAVE TWO DIAL TONES! But I could tell that she was reading from a script, so when she called me 5 minutes later, I was taking up cash register numero uno.

Product placements, if done correctly,

Product placements, if done correctly, can blend into the movie. If it's not, it really sticks out like a sore thumb. Just came back from the Men In Black 2 movie, which surprisingly wasn't all that sold out. We went there at 10:10 to get tickets for 10:15 and we still got pretty decent seats.

Before the movie, they place this rather long animation short...really don't know what purpose it served, but I'm guessing they put down a lot of money to have it in front of the MIB movie. So on with the movie. The movie was entertaining, but there was a little feeling of superficiality in it. Sure, it's an action flick, but whereas I came out satisfied at the end of Minority Report, this movie didn't give me that sense of completeness. But what was most annoying was the various product placements, like having the Sprint Cell Phone store at a rather strange location, frickin' MARTHA STEWART on the TVs. Don't know, but it seemed like they were trying to push it on the movie viewers.

Bwahahahaha...my little FTP system successfully denied several people who used download managers such as GetRight. I know because there's a crapload of "authentication failed" in my ftp logs. Leeches...all of them.

I don't think I could

I don't think I could ever open a forum on my site, simply because it usually attracts the wrong crowd. So out of interest, I go on a few Love Hina forums to see what they're talking about. 50%-75% of the time, it's a person saying that Love Hina is the greatest anime on the face of the earth but then is wanting to download a fansub (read: bootleg...but I'll save that discussion for another day), or whole mp3 album, or whatever. While they thoroughly enjoy the creative ideas of these artists and praise them for making the best thing on the face of the earth, when it comes to the universal gesture of gratitude, giving money, they keep their hands clenched tightly in their pockets. In sports, we have people called bandwagon fans. When the team's winning, they're out there cheering with everyone else. But when the team's in a slump, guess what? They're not around. These freeloading anime fans are the equivalent. Sure, when things are free and downloads are abundant, they're out there enjoying it with the crowd. When it comes to paying for what they enjoy, they're gone and nowhere to be found. I agree that anime isn't a good hobby if you don't have much expendable income, but there's a several thousand year-old practice called "saving up your money and budgeting efficiently to obtain what you want." But I'm not the type to be an ethical police, and really don't give a hoot about how other people conduct themselves. I just want to avoid having these types of postings: "I see you have blah blah CD/DVD/CDROM. Can you be so nice as to rip a copy for me?"

No.

I'm allowed to use the

I'm allowed to use the computer again. Okay, so I allowed myself to use the computer a few hours earlier than expected...but that's what happens when you try to enforce your own rules. =) So, I finally got to see Minority Report on Friday. I thought it was a pretty clever movie. Just when I thought the movie had ended, it continued on. Very nice touch. Saturday, I got to spend some times with friends who just came back to town for the week. Their plan was to go to a bar around 10pm, drink and be merry, and wait until 4am and watch the game in the bar. While I'm usually a late sleeper, I had no intentions of being in a bar at 4am to watch a game. I did however consume some beverages and chow down on the waffle fries there. Maybe I'm strange, but even though I didn't drink too much, I chowed down on those fries like there was no tomorrow. Honestly, 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall (the bar's name) has the best fries.

So, still haven't gotten guestbook entries yet regarding the most visited site on my page, Love Hina (although kudos to those of you...and you know how you are!...who did sign it this weekend). Usually when peopel sign page, especially anime pages, it's to commend the web designer on the nice looking page and maybe the information too. So maybe I'm a bit too critical, but I infer that a lack of comments means there's something not good about the site. In light of that, I've decided to start another project, more computer science related than anime related, but nevertheless, still work on my Love Hina pages. That means I won't be updating content there for a while until I'm done with the new project.

Shopping binge has started again. I just ordered Japanese Love Hina #9 Limited Edition (ep. 25 plus goodies), and the other two Love Hina CDROMs. That was about 150 bucks right there (but it's okay, didn't spend anything during the whole month of June). On top of that, the first Yui Horie CD popped up on Anime Jungle again, so while I don't really listen to J-POP, I have her second CD so it's only natural that I get the first CD (limited edition one too) to complete the set. I also discovered that you can buy life sized posters of Naru and Shinobu. For about 80 bucks a piece. But then again, you're talking to a recovering poster addict. Did I mention that I have life-sized posters of 4 of the 5 Sailor Scouts (Mercury, Moon, Jupiter, and Venus?). I vowed never to buy posters again because they're just "stuff" (and expensive stuff, if you get the authentic merchandise, not the Taiwanese knockoffs). I feel like a recovering alcoholic wandering around the beer coolers in a supermarket.