I’ll write about five things I’m grateful for and will try to do this every night, trying not to repeat anything I’ve previously said (and, yes, if you’ve been watching the Mind Movies 2.0 prelaunch videos, I got this idea from video 1… I think it was video 1). I have a lot of things that I’m able to write about for now and really want to be able to keep this as an ongoing daily habit. If I miss a day, I’ll do catch-up like I did with the prosperity game, covering multiple days in one.

I’ll start it off with these five:

The first thing I’m grateful for is that I have been blessed with some amazing teachers throughout my life (from preschool through college and even all of the people whose information products that I’ve learned from) who really love what they do and made learning fun for me.

Number two is my incredible ability at remembering things. Some people might say I have a photographic memory. I wouldn’t exactly call it that, but it’s definitely really good. I love the way random things will trigger my memory.

The third thing is that Cox helped get my internet connection stable again. My cable modem has been working for 9 straight days and counting now. Thank you, Cox tech!

Fourth is Hulu. Yes, Hulu, the website for providing me with a lot of entertainment – TV shows, movies, anime, etc.

Saving the best for last, my bestest friend (if you’re reading this, yes, that’s you, Koko ^^). For as long as I’ve known her, which actually isn’t long compared to how long I’ve known my other friends, she’s always been there for me and I’ll always be there for her. I’m gonna do everything I possibly can to meet her in person (yes, we haven’t met in person, but I trust her a lot) so I can give her the hug I’ve been wanting to give her. I really want to make this happen sooner rather than later.

Until next time, thanks for everything I’ve written about so far that really make my life truly awesome.

I transferred over 6 gigs of files from my laptop to my PC wirelessly without losing the connection even once – the 2.2 always dropped the wireless connection and I had to power cycle the router to get it back up. The 2.0 was able to send 2 gigs worth of files to my Xbox – with the 2.2, I couldn’t even transfer all of Xbox Media Center which is only about 45 megabytes total without getting disconnected. With the 2.0, I was able to use Bittorrent on my laptop to download straight to my desktop – with the 2.2, it would always give this file write error and say something like it couldn’t find the network path and disconnect. My torrents seem faster with the 2.0 too. I downloaded two files around 175 MB each in about 10 minutes! Usually, it’d take around half an hour. I was also able to stream an episode of Bleach and an episode of Naruto to my Xbox without either of the episodes getting cut off towards the end (and having to start over ).

I have no idea why the new 2.2′s are crappy compared to the 2.0′s. Must be some pretty shoddy hardware on the new 2.2/3.0′s. If any of you out there are stuck with a frequently disconnecting 2.2 or 3.0 WRT54G, do yourself a favor and exchange it for a 2.0 if you can find one. Here’s a 2.0 box compared to the 2.2 and 3.0 boxes.

Anyway, I finished watching a couple of completed series. The first being Azumanga Daioh… animenfo.com sums it up nicely:

Azumanga Daioh is originally serialized in a very popular “Electric Shock Daio” manga. The story revolves around high school girls. Each main characters have colorful and attractive personality for comic fans, such as gifted 10 years old highschool girl, cool highschool girl, natural highschool girl, highschool girl with glasses and weird older teachers. Based on four panel comic, each episode is rather short around five minutes.

Azumanga Daioh also appeared as a short online movie, know as Azumanga Web Daioh. Apparently they were also giving out free DVD of a short movie in March and April edition of Dengeki Daio magazine.

That’s a pretty accurate description, I think. I thought it was pretty funny… goes to show that you can pull off a funny show without it being perverted (well, Kimura was a bit strange, but there’s always gotta be that one character, I guess). Had some cute characters, all likeable in their own way. I enjoyed it.

The next thing I watched was Samurai Champloo. This was a bit different from all the other fighting/action anime I’ve seen because of the little hip-hop elements in it.

Here’s the description from animenewsnetwork.com:

Age rating: Mature (May contain sex, drugs, and extreme graphic violence)
Genres: Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Historical, Shounen

Plot Summary: Mugen is a fierce animal-like warrior with a unique Bboying (break-dance) inspired fighting style. Jin has a more traditional style but don’t think of this as a weakness because his skills are amazing. The two contrasting samurai warriors are far from friends, yet their separate paths seem to cross anyways. Mugen is wandering aimlessly through the city when he stumbles upon a teahouse where he meets Jin and Fuu (A ditzy waitress, but don‘t think she doesn‘t have anything hidden up her sleeves). Fuu convinces them both to come with her in search of a mysterious samurai that smells like sunflowers and their journey begins. This modernized hip-hop tale breaks the barriers of the common, historical, samurai anime.

There’s a lot of blood in this show compared to something like Naruto. I think at least one person got killed in every single episode. There were a whole bunch of brothel scenes in this series, but there wasn’t really any nudity or anything. They show stuff almost about to happen, but then they cut to some fighting scene or something, usually. The ending was pretty good, I think. I really enjoyed the fighting scenes in this show.

Now that I finished watching these, up next is Mai Hime/My Hime. I hope it’s good, but I’ll probably like it even if it’s not.

• Finish reading How to Develop a Super-Power Memory (to help me with my other goals and in life in general)
• Read and learn from Building a Database Driven Website Using PHP and MySQL
• Learn CSS – I’ve used a little bit of CSS here and there, but I’ve never really completely learned how to use it
• This kind of goes with the last thing: read and learn more about CSS from HTML Utopia – Designing Without Tables Using CSS and The CSS Anthology – 101 Essential Tips, Tricks, and Hacks
• Then use all that info to finally finish one of the websites whose domain I’ve had registered for forever now.

And now for the somewhat unrealistic, but ultimately attainable goals

• Since I’ve got a modded Xbox, I’d like to try to program my own game for it. I don’t know what kind of game it would be, but it’d be kind of neat to try. To do that, I’d probably need to learn some C++ and DirectX programming. This might be kind of hard for me because when I took Computer Science in high school, even though I got an A, I didn’t learn much Pascal (they didn’t have C++ until the year after I took it). Get back to me in 5 or more years, and maybe I’ll have this done by then.
• Learn enough Japanese on my own so that I’ll be able to get through an import game or watch an anime without needing help or subtitles. I should probably just take a class for this since it would be kind of hard to do on my own, but I do pick up a few words here and there from watching anime.

That’s really all for now. If I start writing up too many unrealistic ones, it’d probably take the rest of my life trying to achieve them… probably trying to be fluent in Japanese would do that too, but I didn’t say I wanted to be fluent in it, now did I?

So which would I choose? Well, I’d like to have a job that I love. Something that I would enjoy doing anyway even if I didn’t get paid to do it. And what job would that be?? I’ll let ya know when I find it. :amused:

I still haven’t bought anything. I haven’t seen anything that I really gotta have. Maybe if they had some Naruto items, I’d buy some, but I don’t think they’ll have any Naruto stuff until the anime comes out here or the manga gets more popular.

I still haven’t even taken ANY pictures. I haven’t really seen any great cosplayers and I don’t wanna take pictures of people I don’t know. I saw a couple of Naruto cosplayers… one girl as Sakura who doesn’t even remotely look like her… you don’t even know it’s supposed to be Sakura unless you know her clothes… she didn’t even have the pink hair. I’ve seen a few Sasukes, but still, it’s only the clothes that look like him. I saw one guy as a Rain Ninja… his was pretty cool. I mean because he was a generic rain dude and not anyone specific. That’s definitely the way to go. The best ones I’ve seen are of people dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean. Those are just awesome. One guy even had the Jack Sparrow walk. Two thumbs up for all the Jacks I’ve seen.

The only reason I went today was so I could go to the seminar on how to get into the video game industry. It was pretty much stuff I already knew from reading websites like Sloperama and Ed Magnin’s website. If you’ve got the talent, you’ve got better chances. It’s pretty much just as hard to get into as any other entertainment industry job out there. But Alex (Alex Jimenez was the speaker) did say that once you’re in, you can’t get out.

I ended up going to part of Cartoon Network’s presentation for their new, upcoming shows. Meh, the one I that was being presented while I was in there didn’t really impress me that much. It was called Juniper Lee or something, and it’s coming sometime in February 2005 or something. I think one of the characters in it is a ripped off a character from Naruto. There was a dog in it that looked a lot like Pakkun, but without the forehead protector and shirt. The way this dog was described was very similar to Pakkun’s personality… except that the dog has a Scottish accent.

Then after that, I went into room 1A because I wanted to get a good seat for when the video games program started. Well, it turns out, the thing before the video games lecture was a Star Wars trivia thing. But I sat down in the room anyway. I don’t think I would’ve been able to answer any of those trivia questions that were being asked. I’d probably have to watch every Star Wars movie about a million times. It was kind of interesting though, I guess.

It was a good thing I stayed for the Star Wars thing because when the video games session started, that place was filled to capacity quickly. They even had to turn people away. Wow… the Star Wars thing didn’t even fill up the place, but this one conference on video games did. Alex was totally blown away by how many people wanted to get into this program… I was too. Good thing I got there way early. But as I said earlier, it was still pretty much similar to everything I’ve read on the internet, but it was nice to actually hear someone speak in person about it… even though Alex is one of those guys who got his job by pure luck since a friend of his friend recommended him to Capcom because he was a big Dungeons & Dragons freak and they wanted to make a video game out of it. Sure, now, it’s a lot different since you need to show that you have the skills. There’s definitely a lot of competition out there, so in order to really get your foot in the door, it’s good to have contacts.

I went home after the conference, but that was a great way to end the day. From volunteering in the programming department on my first day, I heard the lecture that they gave the staff on procedures and such… they keep track of attendance and how many people leave the room during a program and stuff like that. That way they know which programs to keep for next year and which ones to not do anymore. So I hope they do another video games program next year, one that’s longer than an hour and in a bigger room because that place was SRO (standing room only) and hardly anybody left.

I hope I remember to get my picture taken with the Smallville cast or at least go to the Smallville program that they’re gonna have and take pictures. Too bad they don’t list which cast members are going to be there, so I don’t really know what to expect. I hope it’s good though!

By some slim chance, if it ever shows up, I’ll be quite surprised. :Q

So much for saving money for Comic-Con this month.

Anyway, I really like the things I got today. The first is a new Microsoft Wireless Base Station/Router (MN-700). With this, I was able to upgrade my network from 802.11b to 802.11g… finally! Well, not completely upgrade. I still need to get a PC card for my laptop, then I’ll be all set, but my current PC card will do for now.

Even though it doesn’t seem to have as strong a signal strength (in my house, anyway) compared to my old Netgear MR-314, my Xbox Wireless Adapter works a lot faster now, since that was 802.11g to begin with. There’s no more lag when I’m streaming stuff off my PC to watch with Xbox Media Center. Now I don’t have to pause the video to wait for the Xbox to download more from the PC. It’s better now… I’m happy with my purchase… and it was a pretty good price too. Since MS isn’t going to be making any more wireless products and they discontinued their current line of wireless networking stuff, this was on clearance so I snatched one up.

I posted about this earlier… and it came today! Woohoo! I mean the Samsung drive for my Xbox, not the Naruto sleeping cap. :( Anyway, I got this and installed it. It took me a lot longer than it should have, but I wanted to make sure I did everything right. Now my Xbox can read all of my burned CD-R’s! It also seems to read my Xbox games slightly faster too. I’ll put up some of the pictures I took when I feel like uploading them.

I won’t say which ones I got rid of since nobody probably ever noticed what was there in the first place. But what’s there now? Deals, Internet, and Pet Peeves.

I’ll start off with a pet peeve or two or more…

Sure, I love to get a good deal. Who doesn’t? But what I hate is when greedy bastards buy up everything in stock just to resell on eBay or trade for other things on forums. :notrust: It sucks, especially when it’s a game deal. I only ever participate in deals where I’m actually gonna get use out of something. If you’re not gonna use something, don’t buy it! Or at least save some for the rest of us who actually want or need the products. I love places like CAG, VGT, FW for their information, but I hate how popular they’ve all become that once something gets posted, the deal will be over unless you act fast.

In my opinion, bargainshare.com is still the best place for deals. Nice people, great community, and people who understand not to post things to FW and other places because it’ll kill a deal.

Next pet peeve… forwarded e-mails. I hate them. They’re not very original and pretty much a waste of my time. Since I use Outlook Express to check my mail most of the time, any time anybody forwards something, it gets sent as an attachment instead of inline text with a bunch of >>>>… so if I want to actually read these things, I’d have to open up attachment after attachment just to get to the actual message. So do me a favor and don’t forward me any of this crap.

Another one – eBayers or anybody I sell/buy/trade with who never leave feedback. If you’re a seller and I pay you fast, I expect feedback for it. From now on, if you’re a seller and I don’t get feedback from you, you’re not getting one from me… unless I have something negative to say. I’ve never ever gotten any feedback at all for all the times I’ve ever sold anything and it sucks because to other people, it looks like I’ve never sold anything.

Well, that’s all for now.