News & Updates in January 2003

Added the character profiles for Fololo and Falala (both from Kirby: Right Back at Ya!), Excel Excel (from Excel Saga), Gyunei Guss (from Mobile Suit Gundam), Wong Yun-Fat (from G Gundam), Jingle (from Hamtaro), and Kenny (from Beyblade). Also added an additional description to Jubei Kibagami (from Ninja Scroll), and made a few corrections here and there.

Well, TiVo automatically reset on us once again last night, and this morning when I turned on the TV everything was black. The light on the front of the TiVo would respond to the remote, but nothing would happen on-screen, thus came another manual reset which fixed it once again. This is getting quite annoying. I mean, we haven't even owned it for a week yet! I'm gonna have to call them Monday morning, and I expect they'll probably end up sending a replacement.

We watched three movies last night. The first was Double Jeopardy. I was expecting this to about a woman who tries to kill her husband after he framed her for his death, but this isn't quite what happens. She does spend six years in prison for the murder of her husband, but upon release she immediately begins breaking parole in order to find her son. All the stupid lady had to do was wait three more years and she could go track down her son without being a fugitive. And then when she finds her husband, she says that all she wants is her son. What the hell? Yeah, you framed me for your murder which got me six years in prison, you slept with my best friend, you moved away with her and my son without telling me, and then you kill her, change your name, and move elsewhere... but all I want is my son back and you can go live a happy life. That's about as lame as whoever wrote it. The bottom line: watch it if you've got nothing better to do.

The second movie we watched was Deceived. This was about some sound wave that was received by a station listening for extra terrestrial sounds. That catch is that the sound was not coming from space, and that it made people go crazy. Toward the end of the movie they try to make you believe that the sound is literally coming from Hell. This movie has very little action, very little mystery, and a lot of bad overacting. The bottom line: a waste of time.

The third and final movie was Windtalkers. This was a great World War II movie directed by John Woo, and it shows. It was over two hours long, but it didn't feel like it at all. The action sequences were really intense, with bullets flying everywhere and men on both sides constantly getting mowed down and stabbed. Even when there wasn't any action happening on screen, the characters would keep you interested in what was going on. The bottom line: see this movie.

Added the character profiles for Arsene Lupin III, Daisuke Jigen, Goemon Ishikawa, Fujiko Mine, Inspector Zenigata (all from Lupin III), Momiji Fujimiya, Mamoru Kusanagi, Daitetsu Kunikida, Ryoko Takeuchi, Azusa Matsudaira, Kome Sawaguchi, Yoshiki Yaegashi, Sakura Yamazaki, Shunichi Sugishita, Kaede Kunikida, Murakumo (all from Blue Seed).

We didn't see any movies this week, but we did get our new TiVo Series 2. When we were in the part of the setup where we select which channels we receive, channel 21 (KRVULP- the UPN affiliate) didn't show up. This was weird because it showed up on our other TiVo, and it downloads all the channel information (supposedly from Zap2it). So I went to Zap2it's channel verification site, typed in the same zip code I did for TiVo (96002), and it verified that the station exists. So what the hell's wrong with TiVo? I tried to redo the TiVo setup with two other zip codes, but it still never showed that channel. Now, I can manually go to that channel and watch shows, and I can press record to make the channel show up on the guide list, but for some reason TiVo just won't download any information for it.

We've also had other problems with the new TiVo. So far it's automatically reset itself at least four times. Once I turned on the TV and everything was black and no guides or menus would come up, so I had to manually unplug it. Another time I was on live TV and hit the menu button and everything froze, thus requiring me to unplug it once again. I would have thought that since they are now on series 2, all these serious glitches would have been worked out, but I guess they're not.

Added the anime profiles for Lupin III and Slam Dunk. I have almost 30 more profiles just sitting on my desktop that I still need to get to. I also updated the PacesetterSucks.com site a little.

We got a couple estimates for fixing our fence, and it looks like it's going to cost a lot. Insurance should pay for most of it, but there's still that deductible. Treese and I went to see The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers last Sunday. It was even better than the first time I saw it... perhaps because I wasn't sitting in the second row from the front this time. Treeses really liked it too.

I see that it's been a while since I've listed all the movies we've seen recently, so I should probably do that. Let's see, there was The Powerpuff Girls Movie (good, but just too long), Halloween: Resurrection (enjoyable), The Score (long and boring), The Real Andy Kaufman (not long, but boring), The Dimension Travelers (unsure, we both fell asleep less than 15 minutes into it), XXX (way cool), Reign of Fire (weak story), Tomorrow Never Dies (more boring than I remembered), Fangs (a dumb movie, but fun to watch), Barbarian Queen 2 (not enjoyable), Extreme Days (just okay), Creepy Crawlers (I don't even remember this one), Mr. Deeds (not very funny at all), Donnie Darko (weird, just weird), Death to Smoochy (average), and Ali (way, way too long).

Added character profiles for Lady Like, Sir Ebrum (both from Kirby), Hiead Gner, Erts Virny Cocteau (both from Pilot Candidate), Ross Sylibus, Dr. Rene D'anclaude, Julian Moore (from Armitage III), Togusa (from Ghost in the Shell), Sara Mudo (from Angel Sanctuary), Makoto Shishio, and Misao Makimachi (both from Samurai X).

First update of the new year! Added character profiles for Myotismon (from Digimon), Tiff (from Kirby), and Nappa (from Dragon Ball Z). I also made a bunch of much needed corrections that I had been putting off, plus a few new ones that I just received. I also optimized the script that I wrote to automatically create all the indexes. It used to take over five minutes to create all the different combinations for the Anime/Character with English/Japanese Names indexes. Now I got it down to 50 seconds.

Almost everyday I still get people asking me where they can buy a certain anime, even though that's the first question listed in the Frequently Asked Questions section, which just happens to be on the exact same page as the feedback form. So, in a most likely vain attempt to stop people from asking me this, I added a "Buy DVD" and "Buy VHS" section at the top of every anime profile. This section contains links to the part of a store where the anime can be purchased (although some have a message like "availability unknown"). So far, I only linked to Anime Nation and Amazon.com, as they are the stores I use and they seem to have the best selection with decent prices. There is also an occasional link to The Right Stuf, but their prices tend to be a little higher and their selection not as good.

I compacted the three file sections that I had (Webpage Files, Image Files, and Sound Files) into one All Files section. Now the frame that shows up to the left of the page is separated into three segments. The top segment is small and is used only to close the frame. The segment under that shows all the available directories. Clicking on one will put all the contents of the directory into the third segment of the frame. I've found that this method just makes browsing the files a lot easier to use.

For Christmas, Treeses and I stayed at home. My parents got us a crock pot, which Treeses had been wanting. She tried it out the day after Christmas, cooking a pot roast, and it turned out pretty good. I got her The Game of Life, Sly Cooper (for PlayStation 2), the Wal-Mart exclusive Star Wars Holiday Edition (C3-P0 dressed like Santa and R2-D2 with reindeer antlers), and the enhanced Star Wars trilogy on DVD. The DVDs didn't arrive until just a couple days ago, though. We just watched the first one (episode IV) tonight, and it was pretty good. Not quite as crisp as standard DVDs, but still much better than VHS.

Treeses got me Metroid Fusion for Gameboy Advance, Transformers season 2 DVD box set (sort of), and chocolate. I say "sort of" on the Transformers season 2 because that's what she meant to get, but she actually got me season 1 (again). She got it at Circuit City, and told them while she was in the store that she thought it was season one, but they kept insisting it was season two because it had a sticker on the back that said season two. When she went to exchange it, she explained what happened and asked if they had any of season two. Once again they gave her a season one with a season two sticker. So she picked up a season one (marked as season one) and showed the guy that they were exactly the same, regardless of what the sticker said. So the guy went into the back, and returned with what he thought was a season two. Guess what? Oh, c'mon, just guess. Yeah, you know what's coming. You know. Wait for it... wait for it... and... it was the exact same one! They seriously need to drug test these people, and make them pass some kind of elementary school equivalency test.