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2009 Apr 26 garnet


Guy Blade Guy Blade---00:23:00


Back to Start
They've finally allowed us to return to our gate. Here is a picture of segway cop before I leave.

Segway Airport Cop

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Guy Blade Guy Blade---00:03:00


Backing Slowly
They had us move even further away from our gate. Given theat we'd already moved twice, I decided to try to just walk out of this arm of the terminal. Apparently, this wasn't allowed as I was stopped by a cop on a police segway (he had a helment, so he was a bit difficult to take seriously). Happily, they allowed me to sit in the nearby gate instead of, say, tazing me. It looks like they also moved at least one airplane which had been at that end away from its gate (I saw it go by the window, then turn around and wait).

I'm still going with the "lost bag" option, but I suppose this is all part of "standard procedure" or perhaps a dog got a false-positive on it. Unfortunately, I suspect that I'll never know the ultimate reason.

It looks like they're going to check the plane at this gate with dogs. It seems strange since this gate isn't even near the ones that we've been evacuated from. Then again, I'm not a plane in-security expert.

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2009 Apr 25 elly


Guy Blade Guy Blade---23:34:00


Waiting
So, I'm currently sitting around at LAX waiting for my plane to start boarding. I'm flying to Toulouse for the yearly review that we have for OSTM. I'll be there for about a week, though I only have meetings for 3 of those days. I may try to do a bit of sightseeing when I arrive, but I'll more likely be too jetlagged to give it a try.

For some reason, pepole at this end of the airport keep setting off the door alarms. They are very loud and very annoying. This has resulted in a large number of the airport police showing up. Just as I was writing that sentance, the airport police evacuated our end of the terminal. I suspect a mislaid bag, but I suppose it could be a real threat. This made me give up my otherwise nice seat on the floor by the electrical outlet. They had been fiddling around for nearly 20 minutes, so I presume they didn't consider it much of a threat.

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2009 Apr 21 rinoa


Guy Blade Guy Blade---10:43:00


Staying Power
Last weekend, at CAS, I ended up in a discussion about what anime have staying power. At the time, there seemed to be a consensus that it was possible to pick things out now that would continue to be relevant in the future. Once such pick was Baccano!, another was Irresponsible Captain Tylor. All of this made me start to thing about what I've seen are still worth watching today, especially things that I watched back in high school or from older eras.

Going over this, it seemed like there are definitely some things that have aged poorly. I would probably not recommend someone start watching Love Hina today, it hasn't aged very well. In fact, I'd argue that most of the harem anime from the mid-nineties to early aughts haven't held up well. I also probably wouldn't recommend someone start watching the Original Macross. I watched it at CAS and time has not been kind to it. This is made all the more noticable when you realize that the show is now set in the past (SDF Macross launched in 2009 inside its continuity).

There are even some recent shows that, as I've thought about it, will almost certainly not be relevant in the future. Despite how much I enjoyed the show, I doubt that Lucky Star will be important in 5 years due to its density of pop culture related in-jokes. There may be some core entertainment remaining, but it probably won't fall into the "old classic" that gets shown. I'm also willing to bet that Dennou Coil, another show that I enjoyed quite a bit, will fail to be lasting. This is primarily due to my belief that the show's futurism will diverge from our own future enough so as to be unrelatable. I'd argue that this has even begun to happen for shows like Serial Experiments Lain.

Nevertheless, there are some shows that appear to have lasting power. Just recently CAS showed Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, a show which was initially relased in 1993. This show has aged incredibly well and, despite its age, is probably the pinnacle of shounen fighting anime. I'd argue that when a new shounen action show appears, Jojo should be the yard stick against which it is measured. Another show that I think will continue to resonate is Revolutionary Girl Utena. It has always been a personal favorite of mine and, despite being 12 years old now, was well received by CAS.

I think all of this brings to focus two questions that I've spent some time thinking about:

What anime from 5 years ago is relevant today?
What anime from today will be relevant in 5 years?


Perhaps even more deeply, it is interesting to consider:

What gives a show staying power?
What resigns a show to obscurity?


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2009 Apr 20 aeris


Guy Blade Guy Blade---10:43:00


Spiral Power
So, I just finished watching Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. I had previously seen a few episodes at CAS' summer showing and they showed it this year during the fall on the night that I don't go. I finally picked it up from Right Stuf a little while ago and it arrived yesterday.

Fundametally, the anime is about manliness and freedom, but it also includes mecha, drills (remember: "A drill is a man's romance!"), and bouncing breasts (it is a Gainax peice). Gurren Lagann has taught me that the solution to every problem is to hit it (or drill it, as appropriate). If this plan doesn't work the first time, the solution is to repeat while yelling louder and being more determined.

The show makes a point of doing things if only because they would be awesome. As an example, in the third episode one of the main characters ends up in close quaters combat. He gives a speech while drawing his sword at the start of this combat; however, his speech is longer than the amount of time that it would take to draw said sword. Solution? Make the sword continue to pull out of the shieth for the entire duration of the speech despite the sword reaching ludicrous lengths (far exceeding its holder). The show sort of continues like that for 27 episodes.

I would recomend GL to anyone as it is fun, fast, and has a little bit for everybody. Also, you can pick it up rather inexpensively subtitled only. This is due to the fact that Bandai initially put out a "speed release" of the show where they sold sub-only dvd 2packs for about $30. There were only 3 of these packs for the whole series, and now that dub/sub disks are out, the older releases cost around $22 per two pack.

Choice quotes:

"Don't believe in yourself. Believe in me who believes in you."
"Reject common sense to make the impossible possible!"

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2009 Apr 08 aya


Guy Blade Guy Blade---10:47:00


Breakfast for Breakfast
So this morning I took a stab at making an Omelette for breakfast. I often buy eggs because they are a necessary ingredient of making cookies. Unfortunately, I rarely manage to use all the eggs (even when I only buy a half dozen) before I doubt their freshness. This time, however, I decided to at least use some of them to make myself a tasty breakfast.

Omelette

It came out pretty well I think. It was a bit underdone on the far right side, but I'll attribute that to my not yet being very familiar with the technique. Should I try this again, I think it might be wise to obtain some bacon to create a real balanced breakfast. This is, of course, due to the rule of universe pork improvement: any meal can be made better by the inclusion of bacon.

The only downside with the omelette is the sheer amount of time necessary to make one. It took me about 25 minutes from start to finish to make the omelette. This is generally more time than I'm willing to waste before work, but since I was taking a telecon from my apartment at this same time it wasn't so bad. I have at least one early morning telecon a week, so I may experiment a bit more with this.

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2009 Apr 05 terra


Guy Blade Guy Blade---12:14:00


Obligation Fulfilled
So, as of today, I have no student loan debt. Both my Perkins loan (through RHIT and administered by ACS Education) and my Direct Loans (through the Department of Education) have been completely paid off. I made my final payments on both earlier this week and they finally cleared today. In anticipation of this, I've begun to change my paycheck allocation. Since I won't need to be able to pay a few hundred per month to my loans (though really I only needed a bit over $100 at minimum rates), I'm redirecting an additional $100 per month straight to my 403(b) account. I'm also going to bump my savings rate slightly from the current 10% to either 13% or 14% with the goal of using that savings to eventually buy a home. It's hard to say when such a thing will be viable because I'll have to do some hard number crunch with respect to how loan interest tax deductions end up fitting into the monthly recurring cost of a home.



I will continue to have debt as I make liberal use of my credit card, but so far I've been very careful so as to always pay off my card at the end of each month (if not earlier) and have thus never incurred any interest on the card. It is nonetheless nice to be able to say that I am (mostly) debt free.

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2009 Apr 04 elly


Guy Blade Guy Blade---14:01:00


Service Interruption
So, at about 6 am this morning, I lost power to my apartment. The outage lasted until 9am, but it led to most of my website being off until a few minutes ago as I couldn't bring equipment back online until I got back after work. I hadn't realized that the DSL modem was in an unpleasant state until a few minutes ago, so things like the link were down until then. Everything should be working again now.

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2009 Apr 01 terra


Guy Blade Guy Blade---18:37:00


Minor Injury
Somehow I managed to do something bad to my ankle yesterday. I'm not precisely sure what I did, but it has been somewhat painful to put weight on my left foot since yesterday when I was climbing the stairs in my building. There doesn't appear to be any bruising or swelling, so I suspect that I merely overextended some muscle. Thought it does hurt less today, it still hurts. Since I don't want to make it worse by either biking to work or hiking the half mile from the parking lot to my building, I'm working from home today. This will be the second time ever that I've worked from home rather than coming in. I may end up turning some or all of today into a sick day and just trying to sleep it off depending on how productive I find myself being.

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