News & Updates in August 2002

Fixed a lot of little corrections, added a new page with more pictures of yours truly, and changed the feedback page. I also added a new story to Various Pacesetter Corporation Experiences page.

I just got the new PS2 network adapter plus SOCOM on Thursday, and on Friday I got a wire that would actually reach from my computer all the way around the couch and over to my PS2. I'm not sure how I'm going to hook it up permanently, but it'll probably involve getting a really, really long wire and crawling through the attic. Anyway, Metal Gear Solid 2 can kiss my ass because SOCOM is awesome! Online play is great, or at least it seemed to be. It was kind of hard to tell since I kept getting shot right away. The controls definitely take time to get used to. The included headset makes it a snap to chat with your teammates, although you can also communicate using an on-screen keyboard.

We didn't watch many NetFlix movies this week, but we have three of them to watch tonight (K-Pax, The Queen of the Damned, and Not Another Teen Movie). We did watch Bruiser on one of the movie channels, and that was just a really strange movie. I can't really even say if it was good or bad... just strange. The MTV Video Music Awards was on this week. It was about three hours long and took me about 15 minutes to watch (oh how I love you, TiVo).

The opening skit with Jimmy Falon was quite hilarious, although he seemed to be out of breath way before it was over. Then there was Michael Jackson, whose voice is starting to sound semi-normal, but whose face still looks like it was reconstructed after some horrible accident. Eminem seemed to be in a crabby mood, but still gave a good performance (although there seemed to be some kind of sound delay going on). Triumph the Insult Comic Dog made an appearance, but just wasn't as funny as he usually is. And then show ended with an absolutely horrible performance by Axl Rose and his decent sounding band Guns 'N Roses.

Added the anime profile of Silent Möbius, added the character profiles of Chibodee Crockett, George de Sand, Sai Saishi (all from Mobile Fighter G Gundam), and added additional content to Argo Gulskii (from Mobile Fighter G Gundam) and several Sailor Moon character profiles.

Although I had to go back to work this week, Treeses still isn't heading back to work until sometime next week. She is feeling much better now, both her eating and breathing are both back to normal, but walking is still a bit painful. She has a follow up appointment next week, but so far she seems to be healing fine.

Last night we went out together for the first time since the operation. We went out basically looking for a certain type of wall mounted antenna (so we could tune in UPN and get ABC to come in better, both of which we don't get through satellite). Well, we didn't find it, but we did cave in and get The Simpsons: Season 2 DVD box set. Plus we also got Super Bust-A-Move (for PS2) for Treeses when we saw it on the clearance shelf (along with Gungriffin Blaze, grrr) because she loved the original.

Okay, has anyone noticed how there is virtually nothing on television anymore? I've been reduced to recording American Idol, 30 Seconds to Fame, and Boot Camp just to get my weekly reality-fix. I can't wait for Amazing Race and Survivor (although they really need to start shaking things up on Survivor if they want make it as exciting as Amazing Race) to return. And why are they using Andy Richter Controls the Universe as a mid-season replacement? That show is hilarious!

Alright, enough ravings. Last week we watched a few movies. The two Netflix DVDs, Specimen and Beyond the Movie: Lord of the Rings, were both pretty lame. Specimen stared that dude from Saved By the Bell, Zack (Mark Paul Goesselaar), and the movie itself was very, very cheesy. And tell me if this doesn't sound familiar: muscular naked guy appears out of nowhere and beats up some dude to steal his clothes, including leather jacket. Or this: young kid starts fires by using nothing except mind powers. But hey, it did have a naked chick walking into a lake at night and getting impregnated by the water via some sort of alien magic, so I wouldn't call it a total loss.

While Treeses was sleeping, I watched Metropolis (on loan from Victor). Although a little slow in parts, overall it was a great movie. Anyway, together we both also saw various movies recorded on TiVo, but other than Crimson Tide, I don't remember what they were. The week before that (when Treeses was in the hospital) I watched Journey to the Far Side of the Sun and Ocean's 11. Journey to the Far Side of the Sun I watched with my mom, and we both agreed that it was extremely boring. It had virtually no action at all, and wasn't even a good cheesy movie to make fun of. Ocean's 11 on the other hand, although a little slow getting started, was very entertaining and had some really neat characters.

Let's see, what else has been going on? On Friday I ordered installation for my Afterburner light kit for the Gameboy Advance. I was considering trying to install it myself, but figured it wasn't worth the time and effort. I wasn't really worried about damaging my Gameboy, I just didn't want to spend several hours intensely working on trying to get it right and having it come out looking a bit messed up. Unfortunately, there's about a month long waiting list for installation, but at least I get to hold onto my Gameboy until they're ready to accept it. Oh yeah, and I also cut my goatee down this week. It was really starting to bother me by being so long.

Added the anime profile Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie, added the character profile Argo Gulskii (from Mobile Fighter G Gundam), and updated the character profile Domon Kasshu (from Mobile Fighter G Gundam).

Oh, what a week. My wife went in for gall bladder surgery on Monday morning, and my mom came up about an hour before it was time to leave for the hospital to help out. We stayed with Treeses until they came to roll her out in preparation for the surgery. Her surgery was delayed by about an hour because a surgery before her's ran long. Someone came and told us when she was out of surgery, but we couldn't see her yet because she was in recovery. We were told that someone would probably tell us when she was moved to her room, but that we should also try calling now and again since it was getting close to time for the volunteers to leave.

After awhile, we called and were told she would be released from recovery in about fifteen minutes. About forty-five minutes later we called again, and were told that she was just about to be released, and should be in her room in about fifteen minutes. So we decided to wait there, right next to the phone, where the patients are usually wheeled out. Another forty-five minutes to an hour went by, and we called again. This time we were told that she was already in her room. Apparently they wheeled her out the back way, so we went to around to the room number they gave us. On the way we ran in to her friend, Rebecca, who was on her way out. We also found out later that Victor had called her to see how she was doing, and that she had called him "hun".

Although it's not uncommon for patients to go home the same evening after the surgery, the day after the surgery, Treeses was in an extreme amount of pain, she couldn't eat, she couldn't walk, and her breathing was very shallow. Over the next few days she gradually got a little better, and was finally released on Thursday evening. We spend most of the time at the hospital by her side, which was (surprisingly) very tiring. I had my Gameboy Advance with Castlevania: Circle of the Moon to help with all the down-time, while my mom had a big, thick Harry Potter book. I figure that I've gotten through about 80-90% of the game so far. I would have gotten farther, but I had spent a lot of time on the section with the poison water until I just gave up and started exploring other areas until I found the item to un-poison the water.

On the night she was released, we stopped at Walgreens to fill a prescription the doctor gave her. But when we got there, they rejected the prescription. Apparently her doctor was new to the state, and did not fill it out in triplicate which is required in California. We finally got a hold of the doctor and he phoned in a new prescription which I then went and picked up. By the time I got back, though, Treeses was just about asleep so she didn't take the medication until the next morning. My mom also had to leave that morning, but before she did, she made some homemade chicken noodle soup (which was quite delicious).

Added the character profile Domon Kasshu (from Mobile Fighter G Gundam) and updated the description for the anime profile Mobile Fighter G Gundam.

Added the anime profile Armitage III: Dual-Matrix, the character profile Android 17 (from Dragon Ball Z), and added additional descriptions to the character profiles of Gwen Khan, Ron MacDougall, and Harry MacDougall (all from Outlaw Star). I also added pictures to my Transformers top-ten list (found on my profile).

We watched Collateral Damage and Crocodile the other day. First off, I have to say that just because you own a computer, it doesn't mean you have to use CG (computer graphics) in your movies! This is just getting absurd! Collateral Damage, a big-budget action movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, had some of the worst CG I have ever seen. And while I can understand having bad CG in a movie like Crocodile, the director tells us that he wanted to take it to the next level and show that it could be used seamless with the live action models. Well guess what? He failed!!

Okay, I feel better now that's out of my system. Collateral Damage was a bad, bad movie. The acting was extremely weak, the "adventure" to get revenge took forever to get started, there were very few action sequences, and those that did exist were not exciting. The two most interesting, promising characters in the movie both stayed around for about five minutes. Oh yeah, and it was also weird to see that Casey Jones is going bald! He had such cool hair in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie.

Crocodile, although a bad movie, it did have some very good acting from most of the teenagers. But other than that, it was not interesting to watch. There was once scene (which dragged on forever) where they group was walking through the woods in the dark, and we couldn't tell if they were walking in circles or if they were just recycling footage. And to make things more confusing, some of the group thought that they were going in circles, although it turned out that they were not.

Added an anime profile for Mobile Fighter G Gundam , updated the anime profile for Zoids Chaotic Century, and added an option on the configuration page to let you choose your preferred bullet style. I also offset the id number of the color configuration options by one, so now the id number is between 1 and 24 where before it was between 0 and 23. I did this because JavaScript recognizes a null string and the number zero as the same thing in some comparisons, so if your color option is different from what you set, that's why.

On Sunday we watched Rock Star, which was just average. Later on I continued playing, and finally beat, Eternal Darkness. The main boss wasn't very difficult at all, just like the rest of the creatures in the game. And there was only one ending boss, which was unexpected. I was sure I would have to fight something else. Still, the game itself was enjoyable, and now that I've been through it and got the basics of the story, I think I'll be able to understand what was going on a lot more when I play through the next path.

Treeses and I tried playing two-player Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter again, but like the last time we played, it locked up in mid battle. And it was in a battle we had already beaten, but for some reason on two player mode it often makes you replay the mission, even if you achieved the bonus objectives. I have no idea why this is, and haven't seen anything about it online, but it sure is annoying. Oh yeah, and I got a Gameboy Advance yesterday, with Castlevania: Circle of the Moon. I'll let you know how it is once I get the back-light installed so I can actually see it.

Added anime profiles for Dirty Pair: Project Eden, Dirty Pair: Mission 1, Dirty Pair: Mission 2, and Dirty Pair: Mission 3. Added a character profile for Vicious (from Cowboy Bebop). Added a Dirty Pair Image Gallery. Added some more top ten lists, with pictures, to my profile. Added new options to the configuration page, tweaked some of the colors slightly, and made it so the page wouldn't automatically reload when a setting was changed.

We just finished our TV diary for Neilson on Thursday. They gave us five bucks just for keeping track of what we watched (and when) for one week. There was no mention about TiVo or DVRs in general in the help section of our diary or on their website, so we wrote down the times that we actually watched the shows rather than when they were recorded. I mentioned this in the notes section at the end of the diary.

This week we saw the sequels to Skulls and American Pie. Skulls 2 was pretty much like the first one, no real action or suspense, just kind of blah. American Pie 2 was just as funny as the first. We also saw Fatal Error, apparently a made for TV movie. It was about a computer virus that would kill by sending certain light into your eyes, and it was STUPID!

At work, I'm still pounding away on Growlanser II. We've already made a lot of changes, like increasing the maximum saves per card from 15 to 97, adding dual card and dual controller support, adding an option to lock the overhead map cursor to only the points where your character is allowed to walk, increasing the resolution for the static character graphics, animating cursors and menus, adding the ability to sort items by name or quantity, and many others.