May 2005 Archives

I've been taking part in the wonderful Senior Week activities here at GAC. Its a time where seniors can reconnect with all those other seniors that they never knew existed. Which would be a lot. It also means a lot of somewhat silly college mixers, and a lot of off campus drinking. I seriously think a lot of seniors spend all of senior week completely drunk. But not us here in 202! Oh no. We find other ways of spending our remaining free time. Like board games, and cards. Yeah.

As mixers go we've had a Luau, a fancy pants Senior Dinner, and a Western Dinner. Yeah, they're as much fun as they sound. Now the unofficial senior activities are a lot more fun. These would be Bar Crawl, a Fondu Party, and a Wine Party. Tons of reasons to eat, drink wine, and just hang out. Maybe I'm enjoying these because day by day I'm becoming a wine snob. Or maybe its all the free drinks. One or the other, its a good reason to hang out.

Props to Zach and his new awesome $15,000 viola. I even got to play it for a second. I know, I will try to contain myself from being overjoyed. Its a really nicely crafted viola, and has a wonderful sound. Now if only Zach will put it to good use.

I'm still not packed yet and the parents will be here tomorrow. I should probably get on that one. Not that i have a whole lot to pack up. nothing but a bunch of clothing and computers. And all the massive dust bunnies that have accumulated over the last semester.

This will be my last post before I graduate, and before my webserver goes offline tomorrow. I doubt anyone will actually read it by then, but its nice to have something there for when I get the old server back up online.

Thats right, as of 5:05 pm today I am done with college. I just turned in my final paper, which means I'm getting a nice big sheet of paper on Sunday that only cost me 100 grand and four years of my life! And its leaving me in massive debt! Yeah! Now the only thing in front of me is a week of heavy partying, moving all my stuff (twice), and sitting through an entire graduation ceremony. Of which I will once again be the last damn one to walk in my class. Reminds me way too much of High School.

I've been reading up on JET advice on BigDaikon.com and I found a great quote that sums up JET. "Its like being a student again with less responsibility and more money. Just enjoy it and have a ball." The site has also given me some good info on my new home city of Fukuyama-shi, some handy teaching advice, and just some random Japanese stuff that I should know ahead of time. Plus it gave me a bunch of links to other cool Japanese sites!

I hate college mixers, yet I enjoy free food. Which is why I went to a hawaiian dinner thingy tonight. Hmm.... a bunch of seniors standing around. Except no one was drinking. How odd. Anyways, I have a week of these things to look forward to, but at least it easy on the pocketbook, and totally beats eating caf food.

The webserver will be down for about two weeks as it gets moved to Milwaukee and eventually gets internet access. That is if it survives. Lets hope it does.

The best part about the end of the school year is all the free food that is given out. Every club, department, and organization spends a good deal of cash feeding its members. Friday night our wonderful Orchestra conductor threw the seniors a massive dinner. Oddly enough Warren decided to cook it himself, making us a traditional Minninitite meal. He made enough food to feed us all over twice, the 27 odd people that showed up were all full after one helping of everything, and it was soooo gooooood. Warren also took it on himself to buy us all drinks for the evening. Some $200 worth of drinks to be exact. Zach, Jolene, and I were sent on a 'drink' run within minutes of me getting there. It was a good thing I went along because someone had to pick out a few bottles of good wine for the party. I mean, beer with a classy dinner! No way! (Yes, I was being a wine snob) Anyhow the food was super good, and we all had a fun time, and I told my coconut story which went over well at the dinner table. I also found the dinner rolls to be super good, so I ate something like 6 while I was there. I need bread seeing how I will be on a white rice diet for the next few years. After the party I went over to Loren's pad and played some video games and had a few more drinks. Good times.

Saturday I decided to tag along with the Anime Club for their Japanese dinner trip to the Twin Cities at a place kalled Fujiya (ふじや）, seeing how they were going to have a lower then expected turnout. Which ended up being all 5 of us (including me). I felt it was a good excuse to spend time with John, as I had not seen much of him this semester. Good thing I did. We had a budget of around $300 for dinner, and only 5 of us to spend it. We had some great appetizers, and shared a big plate of sushi, and then each had a massive dinner. All I can say is I had a tempura overdose. Massive overdose. What were we thinking.

My Japanese final on Friday was only ちょつとむずかしい much to my relief. 金曜日に日本語のテストはちょつとむずかしかつたです。This means I only have a paper to finish by Tuesday, and I only have about 6 pages left to write on that. Not too problematic for me. Once that is done I'm home free to graduate a week from today. Who would have thought, four years have passe by quite quickly. Now its real world time. Well, real world Japan style!

I'm killing my photoblog today. Completely killing it off in favor of Flickr services. First off it'll cut down on bandwith useage off my webserver when its at home, and I can also send photos from my cell phone directly to my Flickr account. Something that will be very handy when I'm in Japan and will have a cell phone with me at all times, whereas my camera will not be. I'll still post photo albums, which will be hosted off my account, just the daily weird pictures I take will now have a new home.

Speaking of transitions I'm torn between switching to a .mac account through Apple for e-mail and other services, or using a conjunction of other online services such as gmail. My current e-mail account will only work for a set period of time after I graduate, and I would like to start making the transition as soon as possible. I'd use my webserver for e-mail, but I don't trust it for something as important as e-mail.

You might also like to see my new Japanese themed desktop. Its not completely themed, but I switched over a lot of the icons in my dock, and found a nice picture I took in Kyoto for my background. Its silly, but fun. I'm trying to get in the mood.

I just found out today that I'll be spending the next year of my life in the Hiroshima Prefecture, in the city of Fukuyama. Its in southern Japan, which means I'll never need a coat. At least not a big coat, it'll be above freezing all year around. I did manage to find some basic info on the area, which lets me know that I'm 40 minutes away from Hiroshima City by train and about and hour and a half away from Osaka. It also tells me that the city of Fukuyama is about 400,000 people big, and I can only hope that there is a movie theater somewhere in town.

Star Wars was interesting. We went and saw a midnight showing, which included the large number of strange peoples with their Yoda masks and their light sabers. Zach almost had to kill one of those people due to some badly flashing saber beams. The movie was good. Not great, but good. Its a three star movie. Worth seeing at least once. Or something like that. What I can say is the $7 I paid for a drink and popcorn was completely not worth it in any which way.

Friday is my Japanese final. 日本語のテストです. Which will be totally むずかしい。 Then its just a few more pages on a History paper and I'll be completely set for the end of college. Good times. Now all I need to do is survive Senior Week on campus and then start the moving. At least I can keep myself occupied with annoying Jared in the mean times. Theres never enough time to annoy Jared in any one day.

I do hate gym class, but I can say that my time doing forced labor is now officially done with. As of today I've completed all the required gym classes needed to graduate college, as well as completed half my classes for the semester. Now all I need to do is pull off a Japanese final and write another 7 pages on my history paper before Sunday. Not a bad time indeed.

After hearing a whole lot of talk about why the TV show Firefly was so good I got Dale to get me a copy. Sure, Fox screwed over the show by giving it a bad time slot AND showing it out of order. I guess this is why they only made 12 eps of it. But seeing as how the internet allows tons of pissed off fans to get together and bitch about a dead TV show it has gained a very wide fan base. Oh, and a full length feature film which should come out in a month or so. Every review I've heard about the movie says it pure gold. The show, and movie, are one part sci-fi, one part western, and one part dirty rotten thieves. I like to think of it as 'What would Han Solo do' type of a TV show. I'm enjoying it was too much. I hope that such a great show will be brought back after the success of the movie.

I've been really unmotivated to do much of any work right now. More so then I usually am at any given point in a semester. I'm taking a break from writing my 15 page history paper to drink some more Dr. Pepper, and also to annoy Ben. Oddly enough I'm working on a paper, Ben is doing some comp sci homework with Vicki, and Zach is in his room doing a programing project for class. Meanwhile Jared is off getting completely drunk (drunk off his sorry white as) at a physics party. Isn't this just ironic for a Saturday night?

Thursday night I went out to Cocomo's for the History banquet. Its a 'grill it yourself' joint that the history department has a love-hate relationship with. Its not so bad, I mean, I got a whole lot of toast and a nice 10 oz. steak out of it. Thus marks the end of my time in the Gustavus History department, you know, beside this paper and all. Which actually is the end of my time in the History department. If I ever get it done.

Looking ahead to my time abroad (again) I keep thinking how I should actually use it to my advantage. I keep thinking I should write a 'College Student's Guide to Japan.' Something I wish I would have had. Seriously, something aimed at the young person traveling and living in Japan. Way too many of these books are marketed towards business trips and the casual tourist. Also they tend to be quite dull. Then again I guess I could write 'Confessions of a Gaijin' which would also be quite funny. I always enjoy what JET people have to say about their time in Japan. Japan is so weird.

Sometimes irony just writes itself. Thanks Microsoft.

So Monday night I was trying to sleep when I heard this very loud 'clink clink clink' coming from somewhere nearby. At first I though the people above me were being a bit friendly, but it was going much too fast to be that. After a bit I got out of bed and went into the section where Ben gave me a strange look. What I found was Matt sitting on the bathroom floor with a hammer in one hand and a screw driver in the other, and a coconut between his legs. He was feverishly pounding away on it in an attempt to make a hole so he might drink its sweet liquid. He eventually got a hole and left, though within minutes he was back for the hammer and screw driver, seeing as how he needed two holes to actually get anything out. I could actually hear him two floors down in another bathroom pounding away at it. So very odd.

I had kept making empty threats in Social Dace that I would bring in a copy of The Hustle and we would all have to dance it. To my surprise our teacher was completely down with it, though it had been some time since she had actually taught that dance. But when I'm avoiding homework and papers I often find ways to make my threats come true, which is why I found both directions and a nice mp3 of The Hustle. A quick burned CD later and we were doing the dance in class. Much to the surprise of everyone.

My external hard drive is being bad. I'm trying to get it replaced, seeing as how its under warranty still, but Maxtor is a horrible hard drive company to use. Before I can get through their webpage to send it in I need to run a program to 'test' my hard drive. Its Windows only. Not only Windows, as Nat and I found out, but it require a floppy drive, which Nate's laptop does not have. But I have a USB floppy drive and got that working. But after booting off the damn floppy the program can't see the external drive. So tomorrow will be me on the phone bitching someone out.

Its a sad world when the only beer that fills up the Cheer's mugs we bought in Boston is root beer. Its so good.

Also known as "Oh my God! My parents are coming to visit" weekend. Mine sure did. That right, I had the fun filled please of having my entire family up at GAc for honors weekend, where we hung out and well, did family type stuff. Like fill out forms. I ate one too many times at Whisky River, the only decent place to eat in town, and now am feeling a tid bit ill. Anyways the orchestra played a concert on Saturday night, and wowed everyone with a stunning rendition of Appalachian Spring. It actually brought tears to people's eyes. Or maybe it was that bad.... Nah. It was good.

Lets see... I've not been sleeping well due to the heat wave we've been having. Or should I say heat + allergies + Whisky River Food. Not a good combo. I hate allergy season.

We're all enjoying Scrubs way too much in the section. Even Jared is enjoying it, which says a lot.

Thinking to the future of me being abroad I've had to figure out what to do with a lot of important things. Like my DVD collection. I could take it all with me, but I'd need some big ass binders. Though if I was abroad for a couple of years they would come in handy. A lot. Even more of a quandary is what to do with my file server. I could leave it with my parents, but the connection at home sucks. I'm leaning more towards leaving it with Zach, who would take care of it and also have access to a super fast connection. So many decisions. Thank goodness my car is being sold....

Finals are in a week and a half. Maybe I should study my butt off. Something like that.

I've been a big fan of Ghost in the Shell. I've read the manga, I've seen both movies, and I've also watched the anime serries. All are quite good. Well written, well drawn, and well acted. Today Ben bought the new Ghost in the Shell PS2 game, and I have to say I'm not impressed. First off the game looks a hell of a lot like an old computer game favorite of mine, Oni. To tell you the truth it looks like a super new updated version of Oni (which is over 4 years old at this point). Its not surprising that they look alike, Oni was inspired (and drew heavily on) the Ghost in the Shell manga and anime. But a lot of little things in remind me on Oni, like the 3rd person view, fighting style, and gun control. Heck, the Health bar is the exact same. But this new game sucks in several ways. First off its basically all gun play. Sure you have some very cool hand to hand fighting skills, but your control is limited to smashing one button and watching some bullet time effects happen. One of the reasons I loved Oni was that hand to hand was your first choice and you had tons of fun moves. The next thing is that the controls for jumping and fighting suck, and you can't change them. Lastly the voice acting is bad. Why can't we just have the original Japanese voices with subtitles? That would be so much better. A lot of the text and pop up messages are unreadable due to bad graphics overlay, which is annoying.

There are a few good things about it. Its pretty. Very pretty to be exact, and the levels are well designed. The game stays true to the feel and look of the manga and movies. You do have cool moves, like throwing knives, hacking into peoples cyber brains, and jumping off walls. The guns you do use are cool, though I seriously would like to see more hand to hand because the small amount of hand to hand that is in the game is very cool. Overall the game isn't bad, its a solid game. The plot isn't the best, but its sufficient. Anyways the game is ok, but lacks a few key aspects that could really make it shine.

Oh, look at this picture of Oni and then look at some screen shots of Ghost in the Shell. Tell me, please tell me that they don't look a lot alike. Then play the game and tell me that someone should do a remake of Oni using this new graphics engine (but it a lot better hand to hand fighting). Maybe they could do some network play. Now that would be fun. Bungi... we knew ye well.

Widgets are fun. Tiger has only been out like 2 weeks already its raining Widgets. Alright, its more of a drizzle. But give it time. Lots of people are cranking out some fun filled widgets to make my life easier. Like that Pac Man one. I mean everyone need some Pac Man fun in their lives on a day to day level. Right? If nothing else I can find out TV listings for the two or three random shows I do watch during the week... or what the weather is... or something...

The weather for the past two weeks has sucked. Majorly. Heck, it showed last Sunday morning. So I guess I can't complain that its finally turned nice outside, and it'll get nicer soon enough. It'll probably even reach the mid 70's by this weekend. The downside for me is that its allergy season and I hate allergy season. Well, I don't hate it, my body does. I've been stuffed up, congested, and weezy. Not a fun combo. At least I won't have to put up with it for a whole heck of a lot longer.

School is ending. Only two weeks left of it. I guess I would be bummed if not for the fact that I've been ready to be done with it for a year now. I'm just ready to move on to a real job and partially just to get out of the darn country. Japan isn't too far off and I'm already making preparations. My car has been officially sold, and I'll be losing it at the end of the school year. I'll miss driving around.... and seeing how I'll probably not be driving for a couple of years. Curse great public transportation in foreign countries. Then again I guess whatever car payments I would have had can now be put into getting my soul back. Otherwise known as me paying back the massive amount of money I owe Minnesota, the Federal Government, and Gustavus. You think I could just disappear into Mongolia? I mean, sure, it's the middle of nowhere, but I do enjoy yaks.

The network here on campus is so bad. I mean its a black hole for time. First it was Ben and me watching News Radio full time, now I've gotten way to into the TV show Scrubs. Its extremely funny. I guess I missed out on watching it the past 4 years. If nothing else it'll keep me company in Japan. Japanese TV is messed up man.

So in Japanese class today we were to recite some conversational sentences with another student in front of class. Nothing new, especially with my horrible mistakes.

What I was trying to say: かわいですね。
What I ended up saying: こわいですね。

If you can read that, and know what it says, you know why I was a bit angry with myself and also why I was made fun of.

Shaulin Soccer is a damn funny film. Having watched it this weekend I must say that I may have found it more funny then Kung-Fu Hustle. I know I know. But this film was just so very silly, funny, cute, and full of kung-fu! Just what everyone needs! I must watch it again this weekend with the guys. Such a great buy from Best Buy. Stephen Chow is such a great director/ kung-fu man. Note to self, take some martial arts classes in Japan. You know, to kill time.

I finally got a letter from Samantha. It took 15 days for it to get here from Central America. Which was still probably faster then those posts cards I sent from Japan. There are certain merits to getting a hand written letter every now and then.

Speaking of time, I'm about out of it for college. Which also reminds me, I should do all this homework and study for my Japanese final. Man... I do have a tough time finding motivation lately.