Since Asahiya is closing, there is only going to be one supplier of weekly comics in the area now, and that's Kinokuniya. So to guarantee myself a fresh comic every week, I signed up for a subscription. For 3 month's worth of comics, it's costing me about $80 bucks, which comes down to a little under $7 per week. Compare that to the $4.60 I used to get at Asahiya...but the again, they're going out of business, so it can't compare.
Got my Ai yori Aoshi box today! That makes box number four for Ai yori Aoshi! There was a problem in there that kind bugged me though. In the intro song, the translation for it starts out as "The face of pale, blooming flowers..." While it sounds like that, the actual lyrics (I have the CD) translates to "The scent of pale, blooming flowers..." which makes more sense. It's a shame that despite being the official distributors, they still have to translate by ear, not by something on paper like official lyrics or scripts.
I'm currently doing some homework that requires me to log into the school's computer to run (programming assignment). As I'm testing it, the entire Columbia system dies on me, and so now I can't work on it there, nor can I check email and such. Fortunately, I was able to finish running the program and generate the results before they cut me off. Given that the program in itself takes 20 minutes to run at least, I would have been pretty P.O.ed had it cut me off during the execution.
Spent basically all of today reading manga. So there were two new series that started this week, Ken Akamatsu's Magic Teacher Negima in Shonen Magazine as well as CLAMP's XXXholic in this week's swimsuit edition...err, Young Magazine. Full coverage of Negima is always available in my Negima reading log. However, I would like to explain a bit more of XXXholic.
So the story starts out with a guy who is being chased by a phantom that only he can see. As he is running away, he arrives at this very strange looking house. As he approaches, a force clings to him and he's dragged into the house. Inside, there are two little midget/fairies (they resemble the bodies of a few clow card characters in CCS) and they lead him to the woman of the house. She explains that he was dragged in there because of "inevitability." She then asks for his name and birthday, which is Kimihiro Watanugi, born 4/1. He asks her the same question and the response is Yuuko Ichihara, but that's just an alias. The two midget fairies are Maru and Moro. Just then, Kimihiro is about fed up and tries to leave, but the door slams shut. Yuuko says that in this world, nothing is by chance. Everything has a purpose and is inevitable. Kimihiro comes back and Yuuko asks for the watch he has in his pocket. She takes a look at it and takes out this mystical disc and starts telling him about his life. How he doesn't live with his own family, but lives with people who don't share his same last name. How he's a diligent worker. How since he was young, there was always something that bothered him. How he's related to the occult and how he can see apparitions because they're attracted to his blood. She tells him that she got all this information from just his name and birthday. The watch was only a gift to her. After all that, he asks what the heck is the house he's in. She response that it's a store where dreams and desires and come true.
Messed up, isn't it? I was really hoping for something like Chobits. Light and funny. Not this dark and messed up. Well, at least I can drool at the women on the cover and the first few pages.
Due to finally being fed up with spam entries, I've put a spam protection system into my guestbooks. About every other guestbook entry I get nowadays is from a spammer, who figures that he can get attention to his site or cause by posting to people's guestbook. It's usually the online casino or online viagra pharmacy type too. It's such a sorry sorry state of affairs.
I finally finished manga book 1 of Mahoromatic after two weeks. I resolved to look up every unknown word in there, and so that's why it took me so long. I actually have two sets of manga that I read at a given time. One is to study words from, the other one is to just read. Usually the latter is something simple with furigana (which right now is Cardcaptor Sakura book 1).
By finishing this book also enables me to finally watch the anime that has been sitting on my little books since a few weeks ago. Hoorah! One more to eliminate from my backlog.
A few days ago, I accidentally knocked my air freshener candle off my table and it shattered on the ground. As much as I cleaned it, I guess there were still little shards of glass on the floor. I stepped on one today, dammit. Now I got a bleeding foot. Fortunately, the candle wasn't lit when it hit the ground, otherwise, something worse might have happened.
I realized I haven't written much, so here goes. A bunch of random and scattered information awaits.
So I was cleaning out my wallet today of all my credit card receipts. I do this about every month, since I keep all my CC receipts as well as ATM receipts, and they make my wallet fat if I don't remove them. Anyway, I'm looking at the J&R Electronics one (they're the biggest electronics retailer in NYC) and on the receipt it says "J&R Electronics/Columbia University." Hmm...has my school bought out the store? I know that J&R has a little room at school where they sell computers with a student discount, but to think that they own it. I think a better explanation is that they just borrowed the credit card machine that they used to use at school. Yeah, that's it.
Speaking of schools, Cornell (my undergrad) is ranked #2 in the national polls this month for hockey, beating out the usual gang of North Dakota, several schools from Michigan, Maine. Pretty exciting!
I had to lead a class discussion last night, and got pretty stressed over it the night before. So in my stress, I did something quite typical of me, I procrastinated. I decided that instead of preparing for the class discussion, I would work on my database project due next week. So from 10pm the night before to 6am, I worked and finished my database project. All the meantime, I still hadn't prepared my class discussion stuff (at 4pm). I took a quick nap from 6-9, and then got up, read the papers I was supposed to discuss. Turns out no one else bothered reading, so it wasn't much of a discussion. Good for me, since that's the only time I'll need to do it.
Sucks that Asahiya is closing, since that's where I usually buy my comics. Asahiya usually gets the weekly comics in the same day they're released in Japan (express airmail I guess), and only charges 4.60 per issue. The other bookstore in town, Kinokuniya gets them at least 2 weeks late, and charges 6.80 each. But that's probably why they're closing. :) Well, hopefully I can get my Ken Akamatsu fix, given that Negima is coming out next week (check Hinastar.com for details). Actually, better yet, I'm starting a reading log of the manga. Since I don't know how if I'm going to have a consistent flow of the manga after 3/21 (when Asahiya closes), I've kept the page pretty hush hush. I'll release it when it has more content.
I got the last disc of Strawberry Eggs today. As a true eggs fan, I wore my limited edition Strawberry Eggs shirt. Ah, I love that show. Anime story-wise, it's better than Love Hina. Same can be said for Ai yori Aoshi. However, Love Hina is still the best series overall if you take into account music, manga, etc...
You thought I forgot, did you? Heh, heh. Well, to tell you the truth, I almost did, but I still have 18 more minutes to go.
Despite the fact that even school is canceled from the snow dump, despite the fact that it's a national holiday, the mailwoman just came by to deliver my package containing two Junko Iwao CDs from Japan! I have a newfound respect for the USPS, depsite the fact that they're still holding on to my Hand Maid May box because stupid online shop decided to send it "first class" last week which means I'll probably get month.
I thought it wouldn't happen, but the University canceled classes today! This kinda sucks though because two of my classes today meet only once a week, so this is going to set us behind a bit. Plus, I was also supposed to get some research papers from the prof. today for a Wednesday presentation, which I won't get to until tomorrow. Sucks. But that means more manga time!
And so as I'm going back to CNN.com as my startup page for Mozilla, guess what I read. N. Korea talking how they could win over the US in a nuclear war. That leader of NK is crazy.
I am a few hours away from exactly one week of boycotting the news. I think I'll end it for now to see how the world has changed in this week. Another reason is that apparently, there's a huge storm/whiteout that started today and is supposed to get bigger tomorrow (I've been indoors all day reading, and doing homework, so don't know what's going on outside). By watching news now will save me the suprise tomorrow.
Got .Hack, the game today and spent the last hour playing it. It's a pretty neat game, although I spent most of the time the reading and doing the little intro walkthrough. The game is supposed to mimick a online multiplayer game, so there's a lot of text to go through, as well as a simulated message board to read. It's kinda neat that by listening to the Japanese, I could tell that the speech was telling me to press the "O" button, but the text (in English) was telling me to press the "X" button. I guess that's a difference between the two versions. I am still very excited about FFX-2 next month. Yeah.
Apparently, Ken Akamatsu writes in his journal today that they're planning something new for Love Hina and it'll be revealed in next week's Shonen Magazine. While I find this interesting, I've decided not to post it on Hina* because it might not be a big deal. It could be the announcement of the new novel coming out in March, which isn't new news. It could be that they're going to stop or finish releasing all the Iro-Hinas. Or it could be something as big as making a new chapter in the Love Hina story. In any case, too many rabid Love Hina fans who might misquote me, so I'll leave the announcement until next week. Misquote you say? Yes, if you look around a few sites, you'll see that they posted things about Akamatsu-sensei's new manga, which is based off my little news update. However, I state that it's from Shonen Magazine, which on their site magically becomes Shonen Jump. They're two competing comics! I'm guessing it's because only Jump has been brought over here, so they think that's the be-all-end-all manga, which in fact is not true since Magazine is more popular than Jump (same thing with Newtype and Animage, despite having a US version of Newtype, Animage is still bigger). And it's especially annoying then they just grab my translation verbatim and not even give me credit! But I guess that's to be expected...and is also the reason why I don't really kill myself doing accurate translations publically anymore. It's just not worth it.
And with that, I will start reading more Mahoromatic.
I've got to write up three questions from reading a research paper. Due at 4pm later today. Other than that, I think I can go to sleep. Anyhow, classes really do bother me a lot now, especially the students.
So two days ago, we had this hand-in assignments. So what you were supposed to do was just put your homework on the pile on the desk in front. I mean, how difficult is that. You go up, and put your homework down, turn around, and go back to your desk. But no, at least half the people go up, look at their paper, flip through the pile of homeworks already there for some god damn reason, and then finally put their papers down. What the hell is the point of flipping through other people's work? You have no more time to change any of your answers, so why not just put it down and leave? I'm guessing they're getting some emotional pleasure from comparing the lengths of the answers or some crap like that. That's bugger #1. The second bugger is an offshoot. It's the people who go up there, and rather than just put their homeworks on top, they decide to stick their homeworks in the middle of the pile. LIKE THAT REALLY MAKES A FRICKIN' DIFFERENCE. No one gives a crap about your homework, why the hell do you feel the need to "hide" it. Are you not proud of what you did? Do you think that other people will copy you given that the prof. is already in the classroom overlooking the paper pile? God. The super pisser is the combination of bugger #1 and bugger #2.
Now that I got that out of my system, I can continue on my homework. I'm thinking of putting up more usagi icons. Hmm.
It's also been 2 days since my boycott of the news. I feel so uninformed, but also a lot calmer.
I have decided to not watch the news anymore for the next few days, if not weeks. It's just that I always get such high blood pressure when I think about the currently global situation. No, I'm not talking about the Iraq situation directly, but about the European nations that see to just hate the US and won't do anything just because it comes out of the US government. Specifically, I'm talking about France and Germany. It just seems like they're so hellbent on going against the US that they lose picture of what the real problem is. The real problem is with Saddam (and North Korea), not the US! I will stop. My blood pressure is already rising. But it just seems like everyone's acting like kids in a playground. You got North Korea wanting attention, and then you got some European countries obsessed by their own jealously that they forget their obligation to the world, and allies.
And since that's all that they ever show on cable news now, I've decided to stop watching it. What I don't know can't piss me off.
I really love how spammers try so hard to convince us they're legitimate. From one of the spams today:
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$USERIDDon't want to receive our emails anymore? It's very easy to oppt out. And yes,doing so really will allow you to opppt out. We aren't just saying that so thatwe can put on the facade that we're legitimate advertsers, whilst laughing away,blatantly ignoring remvve requests. If you remove your name from our list, youdefinitely will be remm,oved. Your name will be marked as r,emoved in our emaildatabase, and you won't receive mail again. We don't really know how moreclearly we can explain this. Just take our word for it. Otherwise, continue toreceive these emails. Now is your chance to opp,t out. Do so by clicking this"UNSUBCRIBE"link. P.S. - It reallyworks
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Yup, I've already responded so I will be "remm,oved" from their list.
So I spent most of yesterday nuking Notebook Naru, since she got her memory erased after coming back from the Sony service center. Today, it was Desktop Sakura's turn. The problem is, that my desktop has a 120 gig hard drive, and since I only reinstalled on the C partition, I didn't touch the data partition (my C partition, which is for programs, is set at 8 gigs, the E partition is set at whatever's left over from the 120 gig drive). I decided to do a thorough check on the disc. I started it at 6pm this evening, and as of now, it is still running! Ack! And this is one of the few times that it really isn't safe to turn off the computer because he's trying to see if there's any problems on the disc. It's at 96% now, so it can't be that much longer.
After almost 5 days without Notebook Naru, she has come back to me! The CDR/DVD drive was acting up strangely. Whenever I put in a blank CDR, it would just spin up and then go click, click, click, stop and then spin up again. After some research, it turns out that the particular model drive, Matsushita UJDA-710 was faulty. People who had that drive in their Apple Powerbooks had the same problem, as well as other Sony users. Since my warranty expires in March, I decided I should get it fixed now before it goes out of warranty (a standard repair for Sony computers cost a flat rate of $199). So I had to send out my computer by FedEx to the service center in San Diego, where they made my drive all good again. Now I have to spend the next few hours reformatting their pre-installed stuff and re-installing my stuff. At least I can say it's a record. I used to do it every semester, but this time, it's almost been a year since I re-installed everything.
After much consideration, I decided to let go of my backordered Sailormoon Movie Box and Vol. 7&8 + Box (R2 DVDs). Together, it would have cost over $200 dollars. Given all the new stuff that's coming out, I really couldn't justify it to myself to get those DVDs, despite the huge impact of Sailormoon early on in my anime life.
So that went. Another factor was that I was planning on getting more manga to read. I believe that reading manga will help me a lot more than watching Sailormoon. Even if it's Cardcaptor Sakura. It's also a lot cheaper.
Like I said on the news update of J*/Hinastar, my prayers and thoughts are with the family of the crew of the SS Columbia. Having worked under the umbrella of NASA, it hits home for me too.
So yeah, what a bad start to what I had expected to be a good day. I got my package today from CD Japan, with the Motoko Mini-Album (which has already been reviewed on the Love Hina page). I also got the 7th DVD of Ai yori Aoshi (first edition!) as well as another Ai yori Aoshi CD. So, like I said early this morning, today was going to be anime day. And anime day it was. I got through the second disc of PIANO (2 episodes), Ai yori Aoshi (3 episodes), and the last disc of Azumanga Daioh (6 episodes...I watched the first one yesterday). So 11 episodes of anime for today. Pretty good pace... Now for some more manga. 4th book of Nanaka 6/17!
Happy (Chinese) New Year's! Okay, so it was yesterday, but being honest and truthful, I will not alter the timestamp on this journal entry just to beat the deadline. Anyhow, this weekend will be Ayako Kawasumi weekend. Got my package from Amazon Japan with a few DVDs, including "PIANO" which stars the CV named above, and tomorrow, it will be another Ai yori Aoshi day! I should finally be getting the Motoko single tomorrow also. That order has been delayed, but it'll finally be here. I am told that a "free" poster was included in my package because it came with one of my discs, which could be the AyA Vol. 7, Motoko single, or AyA drama CD. I'm guessing it's Motoko.
TSRI, or RightStuf, one of the online stores for Anime really knows how to annoy me. Last year, it was with the Evangelion art box, which, despite the fact that I ordered THE VERY FIRST DAY it was available for pre-ordered, I never got the box even after a month had past since shipping date. I eventually canceled that order. This time, it was for the Hand Maid May box (which for some stupid reason was only made available through RightStuf). So I placed my order a few days ago for the empty box. Come yesterday, they decide to offer 33% discounts to all Pioneer Items. HMM is a pioneer item, so I should have been discounted automatically. But no, they have a lousy computer system, which requires me to cancel my order and reorder. Sure. I emailed them last night and got the cancellation notice this afternoon. I go back to try and re-order the box, and guess what? The box isn't available for ordering anymore! I find that kinda deceptive, don't you? I mean, it's like those sales in stores where they say everything is on sale, but in fact, they've hidden the high end stuff in the back so that you can't buy them for the duration of the sale. Very bad business practice.
So now, I'm out of a HMM box. Big deal. If they don't want my money (again), fine...the $25 bucks I saved will go towards something else more meaningful.