I looked at my assignments for next week, and even with the added one that’s due on Tuesday, it should be much more sane. (Since I’m already halfway done with two, and about a quarter done with the other.)

And no programming for Computational Biology next week! *screams of joy*. Last week’s program was !fun. It wasn’t a very hard program, but when you haven’t done anything but extremely basic javascript and php for 4 years — well, the pool is cold when you jump right in. I fortunately realized quite quickly that my knowledge of Java file I/O was not up to the task, so was forced to write the damn thing in C. It compiled. It ran. It took 25 minutes to finish. (What? Optimization? Exponential runtime? Never heard of ‘em!) It looked right, and I wanted to go to bed, so I did not test it further. The problem is I -know- it would have been a better program if I’d written it in Java. Perhaps not faster, but at least more comprehensible. I need to buy a textbook.

Times hit snooze: 3
Japanese tests taken: 1
Police investigations driven by: 1
Actual work completed: 10 questions written
Actual work that should have been completed: um… a lot more
Amount that I care: not much
Wasted time: ~4 hours (66% of work time! :P)
# of livejournals discovered for people I know linked to other people I know — who I didn’t know knew each other: 3

In other news, I have somehow managed to accumulate $50 of credit on amazon.com. I think it may be time to pick up a box set… but which one? Jeeves and Wooster? TNG? Buffy?

Sen (sub): I am still going to have to say that I like Mimi o sumaseba better, but… it just improves on every viewing. ^_^ The subtitles were there. I could read them. It was the same movie except BIG and CLEAR. I think I have to go see it again.

Sen (dub): Hum. I tried to go into this with an open mind. I really did. Daveigh Chase is a good voice actress, and most of the rest of the cast did a really good job too. But… something was off. Or rather, several things were off. The whole Ha-KOO thing was giving me Sa-KORE-a flashbacks and it distracted me from enjoying the movie. (The funny thing was, whenever she was excited or talking quickly, Chihiro didn’t overemphasize the second syllable.) And then there was not only the additional explanation — but additional explanation before it was necessary. It was like they were making an effort to give the plot away, because otherwise the audience would be confused and unable to follow it. Perhaps it just irked me in particular, because I grew up watching television with my brother, who was unable for five seconds to allow the plot to unfold in a natural manner. (“Why did he do that? Where did that come from? Who is that guy?”) It’s a story! Just have a little patience and things will become clear! I don’t need to be beaten over the head with it. I am sure that there are subtlties in the movie that I didn’t pick up on; mythological references which my sparse knowledge of Japanese history and culture wouldn’ t help me to catch. But the thing is, they didn’t really elucidate those. They just pointed out the obvious. Which generally has the effect of making me want to hit someone.

Kingdom Hearts: We bought this last Friday before we went to see the subtitled Sen at Coolidge. Wai~~~! I’d been waiting for this to come out for months. And it’s mostly met my expectations (though I haven’t been able to play it all week, because I’ve been too busy.) As one can probably guess from above, I am not usually a fan of dubbing things out of their original language. Which is why I’ve watched with some dismay the trend away from purely text dialogue in RPGs; I don’t want to listen to the dubbed over voices of the characters. Half the time the text translation is bad enough! Kingdom Hearts is an exception for several reasons — one, about 50% of the cast is Disney characters. They should be speaking English. (Though I have to admit… I want to hear Donald Duck in Japanese.) Two, the non-Disney characters have, for the most part, very good choices in casting. Haley Joel Osment is the main character, and he turns in, as usual, an excellent performance. And I have to admit I fell over laughing when Squall showed up and started talking and I realized it was David Boreanaz (to be honest, he was a little flat. But then he usually is. It fit, sort of, and it was still funny as hell.) I looked up on imdb after that, and while I have yet to get to the part with Sephiroth, the fact that Lance Bass is going to be his VA… it frightens me to say this, but it almost makes sense in a very twisted and crackheaded sort of way. Anyway… the characters and the VAs are really what make this game, because otherwise it isn’t all that special. So far the plot hasn’t been all that engaging, and I really hate the battle system. (I hate all battle systems where you can only equip a limited number of items, and I’m not too keen on real-time battle either.) It also drives me nuts that the game forces you to use the analog stick to move and the directional pad to select things from the menu. That means I have to use my left hand not only to control my character’s movement, but also to choose what command I’m going to execute. My hands are not that big! If I’m moving my left hand around that much, I sometimes drop the controller. It’s not good. They should have at least let you use the right analog stick to move.

I have stuff I want to write, but I am just too tired to sit down and collect my thoughts on it all.

My schedule sucks, but I can handle it, barely, if I don’t slack off like I am wont to do.

If you are terribly observant you may see that I have adjusted the links on the right. Part of what I have to do for school is keep a sort of journal of my observations on teaching. It’s kind of lame and will probably be boring, and I decided to make it a web journal because it will be easier for me to update (my hand cramps horribly when I attempt to write any amount of long hand.) Anyway, it’s not public because I don’t want it showing up in a search, but poke me if you want the password. There’s nothing there as yet.

Maybe later I will have some response to this that doesn’t just boil down to: what?

Spirited Away: Since J has yet to see this at all, and I think she should see the subtitled version before the dub, I will probably be going to Coolidge Corner on Friday night, unless someone can confirm that Kendall did manage to get the subtitled print. (Or I get off my butt and call them myself.) Anyone else in the area interested/planning to go there then? If Waltham is going to play the dub, I think I’ll just go there to check it out. Maybe on Sunday afternoon.

(Update 9/18: The MIT Anime club president posted on Nausicaa ML that Kendall has the dub only. So. Coolidge it is!)

First, there was Vanilla Coke.

Then, there was Pepsi Blue.

Did you ever wonder what would happen if they mated?

This is for Okina, who claims he didn’t leave his cell phone in my bag.

Congratulations are due to Jun for her new job. W00t. ^_^

Shoujocon should begin recruiting new staff within the next week or two. So anyone who might be interested in that should keep an eye out. I need to start putting together the database for staffer info tonight, which means I need to dig up some form of Office to install on the new laptop. (Oh, yes, we got a new computer last week, which made me very very happy. It’s pretty and shiny and it unfortunately runs Windows XP but we can forgive it for that.) I’m pretty sure I have a CD around with O2K on it, but it’s the Japanese version. I don’t remember if we have an english one around or not.

I also need to figure out where I can get an X-windows server/emulator/thingamajigger so I can tunnel in to school and work on things from home. Hanging out in the computer labs is going to be !fun.

I guess first, with school. It hasn’t been a ‘full’ week of classes, since we had Monday off, but I’ve now been to all of them at least once.

Algorithms: There’s not much to say about this. I took it as a senior at Wellesley. I took it as a grad student at UMN. And now… I’m taking it again. Technically I could probably get away with not doing this, but I did last take it in ‘99, and a review class will help me get back into the swing of things. The main thing of note was that the textbook for this class — of which I’d purchased the first edition way back in ‘98 — was $84 dollars at the Tufts bookstore. It was the single most expensive textbook I had to purchase this semester (though believe me, 3 others were nipping at its heels :P). When I discovered that you could buy this book at frigging Borders for only $70, I was, shall we say, pissed. So I promptly returned the book to the bookstore and headed down to Kendall, where lo, the publisher, MIT Press, was selling it for $55. Now, I don’t know about other people, but the fact that the bookstore was trying to mark up the price at least THIRTY DOLLARS was not something designed to make me happy. At all. So I do not think I will be purchasing next semester’s books from them. Period.

Object-Oriented Programming for Graphical User Interfaces: It sounds interesting so far. I’m a little nervous, as this class involves programming in Java, and I haven’t really touched it since I left Wellesley. I haven’t touched any real programming since my C class at UMN. Random php and Javascript do not count. I think it should come back to me pretty quickly, though. It’s just a matter of doing it. It’ll be painful for the first assignment, probably, but after that I should be good.

Computational Biology: I admit, while this class looked passably interesting, I’m mostly taking it because a) I needed a 3rd CS class, and b) it only meets once a week, in the evening, so it fit really well into my schedule. But I’m also taking it because I remember how my irrational prejudices against certain topics have only tended to come back and bite me in the butt. For instance — my dad was after me through all of High School to major in CompSci or EE in college. So I went to a school which didn’t even have an EE department and instead majored in Physics and Astronomy. Except I realized halfway through my junior year that I found research in those areas unspeakably boring. Through some frantic mashing of my scheduling, I managed to satisfy the bare bones requirements for a CS major my senior year. (Lyn’s comment when he signed off on my schedule: “I didn’t realize it was possible for someone to do that.”) But though I had the degree in name, there obviously hadn’t been any time to do research, or take any classes beyond the minimum, or… pretty much do anything that made me feel particularly comfortable when I started grad school the next year. And I think it was because of that, that I tried CompEng. Which also sucked. I don’t like EE! I just don’t get circuits. My mind does not bend that way. I don’t understand how an Op-Amp works, or what it does, or why we should care in the least. Integrated circuits are interesting, and assembly language I can deal with, but… you start to drift back into what can be considered CompSci at that point. (It’s a very fuzzy line.) Anyway, back to my point, assuming I had one: I’m taking this just in case it turns out that I love it. I don’t think it’s likely, but I’m not going to miss out on something cool again.

Japanese: The secret reason I went back to grad school. Well, no, not really, but it’s very convenient. I’d about exhausted the reasonable possibilities of doing this outside of a regular school setting. They use a different textbook than UMN/Harvard and BLI, but that’s to be expected. I tested out of the first level (I darn well better have :P) so I started at the second year. Thus far, I haven’t encountered anything I hadn’t seen before. They know some different vocab, but I’ve been exposed, at least, to quite a lot of words. Only three times a week, too.

I also spoke to my “advisor” (she’s kind of my advisor, because she was in charge of the Luce, but she’s also the new dept chair and she’s very busy.) and she seemed very concerned by the fact that I was working half-time. I didn’t have a great come back for her at the time, because I was fairly startled by her surprise. What planet do these people live on? 18k (pre tax!) is not enough for someone to live on in this lovely Commonwealth of ours. It’s not enough for someone to live on in the boonies of New Hampshire. Supplementing income with a low-paying 10/hour a week job is not exactly an option either. That would definitely not bring in enough money to cover expenses. Yes, I could spend less than I do. But there is a certain amount of money that simply vanishes from my account every month, covering living expenses, car insurance, student loans, car loan, etc. I cannot make less than that, and preferably I should make enough that I can save for an emergency.