April 2005 Archives

Its been a long while since I've actually read The Hitch Hiker Guide to the Galaxy. A really long time. But I do remember quite a few things, and I do remember the fact that i did read it, which is more then I can say for many books. So yesterday I went to see the new Hitch Hiker movie with a large group. I must say that I really enjoyed the movie adaptation, because I realized a long time ago that adaptations of books are never as good as the books but that they can be good in their own ways. The original book was written in a very dry, witty, humorous way that can only really be done properly in book format. The many long explanations of things, which were always extremely funny, would never work in a movie. This would take too much time and quite frankly be rather dull after a while. What the movie did do a good job of was show the crazy personas of the people involved in the story as well as the humor between them and the events happening around them, with occasional very witty voice overs. The actors all did a great job and filled their parts (in my mind), while the special effects were very astonishing but did not overshadow the humor or point of the story. In conclusion the movie was a god and funny watch. Not a stellar movie, not a super amazing one, but a good solid movie.

Yesterday morning the orchestra played a piece with Joe Robinson, principal oboist of the New York Philharmonic. The piece was called The Flower Clock, which sounds a lot more diabolical then it really was. Or at time, should have been. It is quite easy to imagine, if you will, a mad scientist threatening a major city with destruction thanks to the evil hands of The Flower Clock. Even more so its easy to imagine a clock overrun with flowers as it sits in your garden slowly rotting away, wishing it had all along been threatening to destroy major cities instead of being eatten by worms.

After the movie I headed back to 202 where I met up with Zach and Jolene who took me with them bowling. I scored a 123, and would have scored better had it not been for 3 bad frames. At least I once again beat Zach. Which is all I ever really ask for. After that still I went with Zach and Jolene, and a very large group of peoples to a local pub. Being the nice friend that I was I offered my services as the DD for the evening, because I know all too well the habits of Zach and Jolene. All too well indeed. Long story short it was smoky, noisy, and I didn't really know anyone. Which is why I don't go to the pub ever.

Saturday was day one of my "Study my ass off" weekend. I went down to MSU where I checked out way too many books on the conquest of the Americas and the various western diseases that followed. They have such a nice library, and the campus was rather dead, so I had no problems at all. I then went to Best Buy where I looked at some video cameras, trying to figure out which one to buy. I also saw some super cool new Cannon Digital cameras, which made me drool. Still, even more so, were the large number of DVDs for sale at rock bottom prices. These prices intrigued me more as I remembered the extremely high prices of DVDs in Japan.

I've been jealous of the new Powerbooks that have some cool new scrolling features via their trackpads. Thanks to the handy MacNN forums I found that someone had extracted the drivers for that feature and made an install for older Powerbooks. Like mine and everyone elses in the section. Also in fun mac news Apple released a Quicktime High Definition Gallery for Quicktime 7. Too bad to get such a cool effect you need a nice widescreen monitor or laptop and a G5 chip. All of which I don't have. Oh, for shame.

I went to see Kung-Fu Hustle again. Its still funny. Really funny.

I've been screwing around with a bunch of new apps in conjunction with 10.4. First off I've been enjoying Growl, which is a system wide notification program that works with a ton of apps, and is totally scriptable. I have it set up right now to work with Mail.app and iTunes and really want to see what else this little guy can do. Grant tipped me off to a program called Flip4Mac, which lets you play Windows Media files in Quicktime. Thank god. I hate using Windows Media Player, it really sucks. I also signed up for a free .Mac account, well, free for 60 days. I may want to use it for e-mail and other features while abroad. I just want to find out if its worth the $8 a month to do so. I also have heard that there are a bunch of cool new features in 10.4 that use .Mac, so we'll see.

If you're using 10.4 and haven't looked in the screen savers section yet, you should do so. Some very cool new things happening there. I can't wait till tomorrow when a bunch of new Widgets come out for 10.4.... the fun will be large, I can tell you that.

Darth Vader even has his own blog now. Whats this world coming to.

I want this Firewire Hub. Especially when in Japan. It may come in handy.

I found out that Edward Munch's painting The Scream was been reported as being burned by criminals. If I remember correctly the painting was stolen quite a while ago and no one has been able to find it. According to this article criminals burned it to get rid of the evidence. I guess my only option is to put on my The Scream tie in memory of it. So so so so sad.

Some people love their Powerbooks, others write songs. This guy has written a song about how much he loves his Powerbook. It brings a tear to my eye. Listen to it and find out why.

I turned in my JET forms today, or should I say, sent them super happy express mail to Chicago. This was the final set in my JET application, me accepting the job offer. As long as I didn't hopeless screw up the check boxes where it said " You accept the job" or "You do not accept the job" I'll be fine. I'll be leaving for Japan on the 23rd of July, which isn't too far off. Scary. Me teaching impressionable young children.

I love how I've really made no effort on thefacebook.com to gather up friends, and now I have like 15. Most of them people I rarely talk to. Gotta love this glorified personals page.

I made RSS work on my page. I guess I took out some code a while back and forgot about it. Now if only my favicon wasn't broken in Safari 2.0! Khaaaaaannn! Then again... flickr is looking really good these days... maybe thats a project for this summer.

I really need to start working on my paper for HIS 362, of which I have to give a presentation (or small talk) on it next Tuesday. Anyhow I should be doing that.

I swear I set my alarm for 7:40 am last night. I apparently set it for 9:40 am. I luckily woke up for my 8 am at 8:05 am, and then ran to class. Badminton waits for no man, and I just barely got counted present. Good thing too, because the one game I played I won. It was a 1 on 2 game, and I still beat the other team 15 to 5. In our class doubles championship. My partner slept though class as well. I do enjoy that class.

OS 10.4 broke Sim City 4. My life is pain and sadness. With or without it working. Its sooo damn... addictive...

Though it may appear to be Spring outside, you know with all the green grass and colorful flowers, its feeling like winter. We've had a massive cold front move down over Minnesota (and the entire US) for the past 5 day. So much so that the campus turned the heat back on, and this morning it was raining sleet. Curse you Minnesota!

I went to our campus Media Service center today. Three times. The first two times, which encompassed about 3 hours of real time, no one was there. Yet, to my surprise the doors were open and the cabinets unlocked. Ones that contained expensive computers, video camera, and digital cameras. Yeah, beats me whats up with them. All I wanted was some pass port photos.

Long story short I'm now using a copy of OS 10.4. I know some people who know some people who pirate some stuff.

Installation was a breeze, as usual. Just had to uncheck the box where it wanted to install 1.6 GIGs of Printer Drivers. The overall speed increase from 10.3 to 10.4 is noticeable. Its not a major speed boost, but its nice. The real nice features I've noticed so far are:

Dashboard: I'm sure when 10.4 is officially released they'll be a bunch on Apple's website. rumor has it that .Mac users get a special group of widgets all to themselves. I like it for its dictionary search as well as weather.
Spotlight: I searched for "Mexico" and it brought up my most recent papers, because it searched through the text IN THE DOCUMENT. Too bad its going to take something like 16 hours to index my external drive.
iChat: A lots of nice little features that every other chat client has, but iChat didn't. About time. I'm still waiting to see what the new video codex is like.
SMB Network Browsing: I can actually browse the windows network on campus now.
Mail: New look and feel!
Safari: RSS support up the butt. Too bad it doesn't see the RSS part of my webpage directly. Very odd, it is a mystery!

The only downside we've run into so far is the fact that its on a DVD, the install that is. See Ben doesn't have a DVD drive, as I imagine a lot of people with older computers don't. No problem. Thats what Target Firewire Disk mode is for.

Speaking of changes I'm thinking of ditching my photoblog, though cool in its own way, for a flicker account and hosting. The guy that made Ecto also made a flicker poster program, and this would save me some bandwith plus allow me to share photos with a whole other group of people. Maybe after I figure out this odd RSS issue.

Kung Foo Hustle is a very very very very very very very funny film. Honestly its a wacky fun filled kung-foo film like none other. And it is even showing in Saint Peter! Thats some distribution. Its probably the best film I've seen all year.

Only 4 weeks left of college. I'm sad... yet happy.

thefacebook.com is a horrible horrible site..... and yet everyone is using it.... I was board... and I made a profile... sigh....

Just to let you know, I passed my physical. Next stop. Sending in all my forms. Then maybe a few more stops down the line I'll be in Japan. Its a long process. Lots of paper work, chest x-rays. That kind of thing.

I may be color blind, but I have 20/13 vision. Take that fools! Muh ah ha ha ha. And my parents said looking at a computer screen for so long was a bad thing.

Went to the opera Carmen up in St. paul tonight, put on my the Minnesota Opera. Eat your heart out Zach (who is now on the east coast (again) presenting his paper). Good times, good people (Heidi), and not so good of food on the way up. McDonalds isn't my favorite. But you need food to keep you going through an opera, especially one as moving and catchy as Carmen.

Apparently thefacebook.com has taken my campus by storm. "Its a great way to get you know people" they say. I go to a school with 2,500 people. Its not hard to meet them. Most everyone eats at the caf at some point during the day. Oddly enough we got a campus wide e-mail about the site, because our student senate got our school all hooked up with it. Long story short, its a glorified personals page for college students. Blah.

While writing a paper, MS Word had some curious suggestions to how I write my paper, as seen in the picture to the right. While I may think some of my writing "sucks" I must say that my first two sentences did not. This is really the first time I've ever had a program openly mock my writing and this new trend in word processing greatly concerns me. What next? Openly mocking my e-mails? Or my class schedule?

As everyone around here knows, I hate the undead. I loath them. No, I do. Many a day the lunch table conversation has centered around zombies, and many a sleepless night I have looked out my window watching for them. You never know when they might be around. Luckily all this preparation has trained me to be a super zombie killer guy, and I can say with much confidence that my group of guy friends on here in 202 would be able to hold our own against a campus full of undead creatures. I took a test online and came up with a 93% survival rate against zombies, which means I still have room to improve.

Armed and Dangerous Congratulations! You scored 93%!

You made it out, alive and well supplied. You probably even kept most of your party alive too. You know what to look for, what to take, and when to just run. You even feel a strange inkling to go back. If you did, you'd probably do just fine.

Luckily I've found several articles online, as well as some great books at my local book store so I may study up for the impending doom to come. Speaking of which, I should make the roomies take the same test. Just to see who is worth saving in a pinch.

Speaking of things being killed we lost a big ugly tree on campus yesterday. The biggest, ugliest, oldest tree on campus caught fire yesterday. No one knows how, or why. It just did. The major problem with this happening was that the tree was mostly dead and completely dried, so it was on fire fast. The fire department came, and soaked the tree. Then this morning the entire tree was removed. Oddly this happening has saddened many people. Mostly the ones who didn't see the danger of a big half dead tree in a high traffic area. Plus, it really was ugly.

I miss you Farscape. You're so good....

Because Google Maps is soooooo cool, someone made a nice blog where they catalogue cool things people send in. Honestly, check it out. Updated every day.

The file server is now a terabyte big. Hmm.... can life get any better?

Lots of viola love happening this weekend. Saturday I went to a viola/flute recital by Matthew Dane and Christina Jennings, the two who gave master classes at GAC on Friday. It was quite nice to hear some Bach cello suites and some new viola music. Seriously. Me. Concert. Go to.

Watched Hotel Rwanda, which is probably the must under appreciated movie of the year. Watched I Heart Huckabees with a bunch of Physics majors, and spent the entire night awake pondering the meaning of life.

Then Sunday I went o Jolene's viola recital where she played all of the third Bach cello suite. See! I do attend student concerts and stuff! See See! Of my own free will even!

Google maps is like the best thing ever! Clearly having super free access to satellite maps of the entire united states in super great detail of most major area is damn cool! I mean, I wish they had this thing for the entire world because that would be the bomb! Just look at this stunning detail of the US capital! Try zooming in one more and check out that detail. Super cool. You can even see stuff here at GAC. Look! Super cool. Oh, and my home back in Sioux Falls (last time I tried this the link didn't work properly). I love technology.

Speaking of tech I think I'll find some time and add some RSS support for my weblog. I should say, re-add the link for the RSS feed which I deleted when I redid my main page. Its there, but I have no link. The new version of Safari which comes out on the 29th supports RSS and I might as well have the option there for people f they really want it. Like the whole two of you out there that would use it.

I love this kind of history major stuff. Ahh, to be an Indiana Jones like person. Then again, I also have to deal with this fun stuff in historical context. Isn't Japan fun?

Another wonderful day here at good old GAC. It was nice out again. Go figure, its spring. Which means allergy season is back in full swing. I've started sneezing as well as started feeling the fun of sinus pressure again. I've been 'unmedicated' for my allergies for the past 7 or 8 months, and I really don't want to go back on the stuff. Oh well, if I suddenly can't operate heavy machinery you now know why.

We had a viola master class today. I had the fun filled opportunity of listening to several of my fellow violas (like Zach) play and get tips from our guest teacher, whose name I've forgotten. I also realized that my JET job is far more impressive then it should be. Warren told our guest teacher all our names and what we were majoring in, and what we were doing after college, and for some reason everyone was impressed. I guess it is impressive in its own way, but I think Lee getting into Penn State for grad school is super impressive. I mean, now that required a lot of work. Oh well, I might as well milk it for all its worth.

We had the Battle of the bands on campus tonight. Which means bad college bands and many a young college girl doing cat calls at various male artists. The high point for me was our favorite conductor and viola teacher Warren being in the dunk tank. In a tux (not his good one). Too bad I'm a bad throw these days, but at least Zach was able to pull of a few well earned dunks. Lets just say, a wet conductor is more fun then a dry one any day of the week.

I finally put up some Spring Break photo albums. The first one is my recovered pictures of DC, the only photos I have of my trip thanks to my hard drive failure. The second album is a compilation of Zach and Lee's photos from the trip.

So my day has been full of technology being good and bad at me. So kind of like every day.

I think my external hard drive is acting wonky. The one with all my mp3s on it. That one. So I'm moving all the files off slowly, which will be very slowly due to the fact I have so damn many of them. Its nothing that a little reformatting won't fix, but still, I just need to move this data off somehow. Its just annoying. Very very very very annoying.

As Seniors we need to have real photos taken of ourselves for the yearbook. Either by paying, or by taking them ourselves. I figured it was high time I took mine, seeing as how the deadline was last week, and I got Ben to do it. I also took some shots of Ben, because he forgot about it as well. All I know is I'll look smooth in my blue shirt and Spider-man tie.

My iPod was acting wonky today (notice a trend). It wasn't playing nice with the campus Radio Station's mixing board. Which means I had nothing to play. So I left and came back to the section where I attempted to drink wine and watch another Japanese movie. This one wasn't as good, which is why we stopped watching it.

The file server needs more room..... hmm.... hmm.... is a terabyte too much for one guy?

I've got all the photos from the Spring Break trip on my HD right now, the ones from Lee and Zach. I just need to go through them. Which could take a while. It'll be done this summer. Sometime.

Only 16 days till OS 10.4.

I watched Zatoichi tonight with Nate and Ben. Colin was right, it is a bad ass film. A blind samurai comes into a town and takes out waring gangs. Very bad ass, funny, and did I say bad-ass? Plus, on a side note, we did enjoy the wonderful dance and Blueman Groupesque song sequences from the weird farmers.

OS 10.4 comes out in only 17 days. I can tell you that I'll be up at the Apple Store on the 29th waiting in line (like last year) to buy a copy. Sweet sweet OS release party time. Apple Style.

Another nice day outside. Its Spring in Minnesota for sure now. Even a few things are in bloom. Tonight Zach, Jolene, Heidi, and I went to a Wine Tasting workshop here at school. A local vineyard from New Ulm brought a bunch of wines and we all had a fun time drinking wine, eating cheese, and learning a thing or two about how wine in Minnesota is made. Well, mostly its made thanks to some nice breeding programs by the University of Minnesota which have resulted in wines that can grow up here and not die during the winter.

My Japanese host family sent me some wonderful photos. Its also Spring in Japan and as always, the Cherry Blossoms are in full bloom. Kai was looking like he was having fun outside in the park. I feel kind of bad because I didn't get to see the blossoms while I was there (out of season and all) but I guess I'll have an opportunity soon to see them. At least one or two times. こえんにいきましょか？

I'll post a bunch of photo albums when I have some free time, which won't be for a little while. I'm a bit behind on a whole lot of little things, which means its turned into a whole lot of large things, which means I'm going crazy. Talk to me in a week.

This weekend was a whole lot of fun. Lots of stuff happened in many different ways.

Friday I was the movie Sideways which was really darn good! Even more fun the second time, and it should have won more Oscars! This was after the fact that Heidi and I tooled around Mankato for quite a while, so it was a very busy day.

Saturday everyone got ready and preped up for this years Presidents Ball! Yes, no semester would be complete without a nice big formal dance filled with good food, expensive drinks, and cool live jazz music. Much better then anything that I ever had in high school (prom is such a load of you know what). Heidi and I eventually got there after a very long detour through the middle of Minneapolis, thanks to Map Quest and some streets without proper signs. Dinner was fun thanks to good company from Laura and Loren. My dancing skills were, as always, poor. I blame my German ancestry. I do try though. Everyone was looking quite nice, and I was living it up with my very classy Spider-man tie and deep blue shirt. Nothing beats the Spider-man.

Sunday being Sunday and all had Zach and Emma giving a dual violin recital. Which was very relaxing after a busy week and an even busier spring break still in recent memory. Later on Zach talked me into picking up his laptop, and I dragged along Lindsay Fox with the lure of Indian food. Once again I was horribly lost in the Twin Cities, and after three stops for directions we eventually had a very nice dinner.

But on a happy note my laptop is back up to mostly full functionality. I'm currently in the process of getting a bunch of trip photos from Lee and Zach to replace what I lost. How I missed my little laptop. At least Zach and I both had extended warranty, which paid for itself in the past week. I do hope my lappy continues to be in good shape as I'll be taking it to Japan again, and hopefully be doing some video editing on it while I'm there. Hint hint.

My computer is actually fixed and waiting for me. Too bad its in the Twin Cities and I'm down at college. Maybe if I'm lucky I'll get Zach to pick it up for me tomorrow, that is, if his computer is fixed. All I know is that Ben is getting annoyed at me using his computer randomly during the day. I miss my laptop.

The END IS NEAR. The end of college. I picked up my cap and robe yesterday. I also found out that I will be the last one to 'walk' in my college class. Curse you name that starts with Z. I remember sitting through the 400 odd people in my high school class during graduation, and me being the last one. Sigh.....

Yesterday was also Japanese Food night. Basiclly my Japanese class, some Japanese students, and other students got together and made and ate Japanese food. Nate and John were there, and we had tons of fun eating rice that didn't suck. I hate the Caf's rice. They have to chisel it out of the pan.

I really need my laptop, I've been getting ton of e-mails from JET with info galore and attachments galore that I really need to download and store. Plus I don't trust my campus webmail. I won't find out where I'll be placed in Japan until May. Who knows, I may end up in Hikido, the MInnesota of Japan. Seriously. Anyways, forms galore to fill out. Maybe I should also seriously start studying Japanese. Yeah. Study would be good.

I'll post some stuff about my spring break trip when I have my computer back, and photos to put up.

Google Maps is fun. I mean, I can get a satelite image of anywhere! Muh ha ha ha. Even my old home.

I just got word that I got the job as an assistant language teacher! I have a job!

I should get my laptop back sometime soon. Maybe Thursday. I miss you Powerbook.

When I dropped off my laptop (and Zach's) I brought Heidi along. Afterwards we went out for some super good Sushi, and then saw Sin City. Good times.

I have a job! Hell yeah! Hows that!

I did have a really nice big blog post about my trip written up, but it looks like my laptop's hard drive has died. Which means I'll have lost all my photos from the trip. But luckily I do have backups of everything before the trip so I'll have not lost any photos or documents. I'll be traveling to the Twin Cities Apple Store to drop off my computer, I should have it back in one form or another by this weekend. In other strange news Zach's laptop's CD drive is dead, so I'll be taking that with me. And is even more sadness Ben's 250 GIG external HD is completely dead. Yeah, not a fun time around 202.