News & Updates in July 2003

Added the anime profiles of Ruin Explorers and Narue no Sekai. Added the character profiles of Dr. D (from Zoids Chaotic Century), Kazuto Iizuka, Narue Nanase, Kanaka Nanase, Maruo Masaki, Yagi Hajime, Tadashi Nanase, Bathyscaphe, Haruna, Tale Messer, and Ran, Rei, & Rin (all from Narue no Sekai), Andy Bogard (from Fatal Fury), Gren (from Cowboy Bebop), Rokusho (from Medabots), Scarl and Dr. Issac Gilmore (both from Cyborg 009), Malik Ishtar (from Yu-Gi-Oh!), Kouga (from Inu-Yasha), Matt Ishida (from Digimon), Mitsuko Komyoji (from Android Kikaider: The Animation), Mukuro (from Yu Yu Hakusho), Hanamichi Sakuragi (from Slam Dunk), Kurapica (from Hunter X Hunter), Meowth (from Pokemon), Taikoubou (from Soul Hunter), Hitomi Kanzaki (from Escaflowne), and Roronoa Zoro (from One Piece). Updated the description for the character profile of Queen Serenity (from Sailor Moon). Added two sound files, one for Trigun and one for Revolutionary Girl Utena. And that takes care of all of the profiles that had been waiting since June. All right! Now I'm making some progress here! Uh, except that I just received twenty new profiles today alone... oh, there's there sound of new mail... make that twenty one profiles. I wonder if it would be possible to hire an intern...?

Wow, look at all the updates today! But it's Tuesday! What happened? Well it seems as if there's something wrong the air conditioning at work. Yesterday we all went home when the internal temperature reached 86 degrees, and this morning I got a call (or actually my wife got the call) saying that the office was already over 90 degrees. So everyone got today off as well. And it's not just because it's uncomfortable to work in. That kind of heat is really not good for the computers.

Last night our TiVo stopped working... sort of. It worked fine except that it wouldn't change channels to HBO, Showtime, or The Movie Channel. When we would try to switch to one of the movie channels, the screen would go black for half a second like it was normally changing channels, then the banner bar and program info would show up like it correctly changed channels, but it was still displaying the show from whatever channels it was previously on. So I tried changing channels directly with the DirecTV satellite box, and that worked fine. So we fooled around with that for like an hour, but nothing we did would make it work. Then this morning everything was back to normal. Weird. Very weird.

Oh yeah, and about the springs on our garage door. I forgot to mention that they the two springs we had on there were small springs, and they replaced it with a large spring, so that's why we didn't need two of them.

Added the character profile Shizuru Kuwabara (from Yu Yu Hakusho).

Added the anime profile Angel Sanctuary. Added the character profiles of Daizu, Almond, Spice, Sansho, Nikki, Ginger, Turles, Kakao, and Raisin & Rakasei (all from Dragon Ball Z), and Tsubame Otori (from Cyberteam In Akihabara). Added an additional description to the anime profile .hack//sign. Added an additional description to the character profile Videl (from Dragon Ball Z).

Made a few more corrections, keeping my Inbox empty once again.

The garage door people called today while Treeses was home, and so they came over to fix it. Apparently it just came lose, but they said that we will need to get a new garage door soon. We kind of knew that though, as it is something like almost 15 years old. Oh, Treeses had horrible hours today. She worked from five to nine in the morning, and then she had to go back and work from five to nine in the evening. They seriously need to hire more people over there, cause this just ain't' cool.

We watched Final Destination 2 last night. All of the death scenes were way cool, but I still didn't like the story. If you were supposed to die, and death itself comes after you to fix its plan, why the hell doesn't it just give all the people brain aneurysms or something? Why does it let them keep living and instead try to kill them with "accidents"? It just makes no sense. Hey, but the deaths were cool. Way better than the first movie.

Yes, yes, made some more corrections. My Inbox is empty again! Yippie!

Treeses hasn't been feeling well for the past few days. She's had a sore throat, which was swollen a bit, but it didn't look like strep, so that's good at least. She just got her first test back for the Tax Preparation class she's taking.... and she got an A! She only missed one question. Now she's just about ready to send in the second test. Oh, we just found out today that we had lawn moths, and that's why our lawn hasn't been looking so hot... not that it's been looking bad, it just hasn't been that nice, even tone of bright green. But everyone's lawns has been looking similar to ours, and now we know why. Oh, and we haven't seen any ants since last week. Every time I saw an ant, I would call Clark and have them come out, so they were coming every week. Now I can actually put my honey in the cupboard instead of the fridge, where it gets hard and looks like it crystallizes or something.

The day before yesterday we put up some new blinds in our bedroom, and they work extremely well. In fact, the first morning they were up, it was so dark in our room that Treeses woke up and thought that we had slept though to 9:00 that night. Then when I woke up, I though that something must have happened to the clocks. It's amazing how they can block out all the light. They are the accordion-style blinds, not the horizontal kind. It's cool, too, because they can be opened from either the top or the bottom, where our others could only be opened from the bottom.

Made a few more corrections. Yep, I'm trying hard to keep my Inbox clean now that I finally got it emptied.

Well yesterday our garage door stopped opening again. We had new springs put on it in April, although for some reason the dude from Overhead Door only put one spring on. It originally had two springs on, and we wanted them both replaced. He was out there for awhile, so I went out once to check on his progress, and he had two new springs installed, but said he was having a hard time getting them to work. So later on he finally came out and told us he was done, and then took off. We went to check it out, and saw that he only put one spring on. At the time we just thought that he must know what he was doing, but now it appears that it most likely did need two springs. So I called this morning, and they said they'll have someone call on Thursday. It kinda sucks, because we really can't use our garage door until it's fixed.

Made a whole bunch of minor corrections. I would have liked to have added more profiles, but I really needed to get my Inbox cleaned out instead. Oh, and there's someone called Kiah who's sent me something like eight messages, but they have an AOL email address and it keeps getting bounced back. The only reason I mention this is because it sounds like this person is getting pretty ticked off that I'm not answering. So if you're this person, go talk to your parents and have them fix those stupid AOL permissions so that I can respond to you.

Added the anime profile of His and Her Circumstances. Added the character profiles of May (from Pokemon), Garlic Jr. (from Dragon Ball Z), and Rei (from Android Kikaider: The Animation). Added new/revised descriptions for the character profiles of Serena, Amy, Lita, Mina, Raye, Amara, Michelle, and Trista (from Sailor Moon), and Android 17 (from Dragon Ball Z).

Added the character profiles of Cyborg 001, Cyborg 002, Cyborg 003, Cyborg 004, Cyborg 005, Cyborg 006, Cyborg 007, Cyborg 008, and Cyborg 009 (all from Cyborg 009).

Made a few minor corrections, and added a picture for the character profile of Jodi (from Gunsmith Cats).

Added the anime profile of Cyborg 009, and added an audio file to Magic Knight Rayearth.

Busy, busy, busy! I have been extremely busy these last couple of weeks. But first things first... Treeses birthday was last Tuesday (July 8), so Happy Birthday! I had already given her one of her presents when I got back from my trip to E3, which was The Emperor's New Groove special edition DVD. The other gift I got her was The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers PlayStation 2 game, which she seems to like a lot. I gave it to her on Friday so she could play on the weekend if she had time. My parents got her a really fancy backpack, which she also really likes a lot.

So both of us have been really busy at work, both working late and seven days a week. Sorry, but that's why I haven't been able to do very many profiles these last couple weeks. Treeses lost a few employees at her work, so things have been frantic there. And she started taking a home tax preparation class, so now she has to study during what little free time she gets. And at my work, I've been programming my butt off trying to get this "thing" up and running, fixing error after error after endless error while running off a slow-ass Japanese Linux 6.2 machine. And if that's not bad enough, try doing it while hauling boxes up and down stairs in 100+ degree weather with no breeze. Oh c'mon, is that all you got?! Where's the earthquakes? Bring on the floods! You wanna take me down?! Send in the tornadoes! Light up the fires! We'll see who's left standing! Bring it on!!

On Sunday, June 29, we went to see 28 Days Later. This was a well-acted, well-filmed, extremely boring zombie movie. The twist with these zombies is that it only takes 20 seconds to become infected, and they are quick moving, not slow like most other zombies. The problem is they are not scary at all. They look crazy, but not fierce or frightening, and they don't attack very often at all. And the whole thing at the end with the horny military guys was just stupid. The original preview didn't look scary at all, but the next preview I saw actually made it look pretty good. It basically showed the entire opening sequence, which was pretty much the only interesting part in the movie. They movie wasn't frightening at all... oh, well Treeses jumped once when a car alarm went off, but that was it.

So right after watching that disappointment, we headed over to Movies 10 and caught Finding Nemo. I don't know if it was just because the other movie was so boring, but this movie seemed extremely hilarious. There were many parts that were laugh-out-loud funny. Children made up a lot of the audience, which I though might be annoying, but they were all fine and didn't take away from the movie experience at all. The only thing this movie was missing: outtakes. There were a few funny things shown during the credits, but some outtakes would have been very nice.

The Tuesday after that we went to see the premier showing of Terminator 3. I had no real desire to see it, but Treeses did, so she got us tickets. Now maybe it was because I wasn't expecting very much, but I enjoyed the movie. It was nowhere near as good as the original, but it kept me entertained the whole time. There were no noticeable slow, sappy parts, although I would have liked to see more of the Terminators' endoskeleton than the short glimpse we get at the end. Treeses didn't enjoy it as much as I did. She said that she was expecting a lot more story, which is probably why. I was expecting no story whatsoever.

And now for the DVDs we've seen these past few weeks. There was The Guru, K-19: The Widowmaker, National Security, Gangs of New York, Spirited Away, Treasure Planet, Paid in Full, Reservoir Dogs, The Outer Limits, Catch Me If You Can, Castle in the Sky, Tears of the Sun, Old School, Die Another Day, Get on the Bus, and Drumline.

The Guru was a typical, predictable movie, but it kept me entertained. I can't really say it was good, but it didn't suck. K-19: The Widowmaker, on the other hand, was pretty good. It was well-acted, and the sets really made it feel like they were in a Russian sub, but occasionally it seemed as if some of the actors would lose their Russian accents. National Security was a fairly stupid movie, with Martin Lawrence's standard stupid comedy situations, like him running down all the cardboard civilians while trying to become a police officer. It was only slightly better than Big Momma's House. Gangs of New York was very, very long, and very, very boring. There was one gang battle at the beginning, then a whole lot of talking, and then an attempted gang battle at the end. It was neither exciting nor interesting.

Spirited Away was a great movie. Wonderful animation, a neat story, and interesting characters all made it a joy to watch. Castle in the Sky had been one of my favorite animes, but I think that Spirited Away might have just pushed it down a notch. Treasure Planet was also pretty good, but nothing really special. It had some well-blended CG mixed with the traditional animation. Paid in Full was a movie that neither of us remembered putting in our queue. It turned out to be about some drug dealer's rise to power. It was alright, but there really wasn't much story there. Reservoir Dogs is still a good movie, although a little slow in parts. It has a great cast of characters and the flashback style tells the story well. The Outer Limits was just a few of the newer television episodes, but we remembered seeing all of them so we just sent it back.

Catch Me If You Can was a cool movie, except for the opening. What the heck was that about? It was something about a game show, but they never came back to it. The whole movie I was expecting them to go back to the game show to tie up something, but they never did. That was kind of annoying. Tears of the Sun was a decent, but bland movie. Bruce Willis was pretty good, which I didn't expect after seeing the commercials for it. Old School we just rented for the extra features, as we had already seen the movie on our Chicago trip. Die Another Day was another bland movie. Lots of action and explosions, but never did we feel there was a purpose behind it all, and we didn't care about any of the characters. Get on the Bus I didn't watch, and I'm not sure if Treeses actually did either. I also didn't watch Drumline, as we had already seen it when we visited Treeses' mom.

Added an additional description for the character profile Tien (from Dragon Ball Z).

Added the anime profile of Android Kikaider: The Animation.