News & Updates in June 2006

Posted a cartoon profile of Lady Death. Posted anime profiles of Ouran High School Host Club, Gunparade Orchestra, Rei Rei: Missionary of Love, Midnight Panther, Private Psycho Lesson. Posted character profiles of Bun-bun, Noelle's father, Mister Dispel, Miruru (from I'm Gonna be an Angel!), Sephiroth (from Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children).

Posted aanime profiles of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, Kiba, Trinity Blood, Shuffle!. Posted character profiles of Raven, Starfire (from Teen Titans), Eyes Rutherford, Ayumu Narumi (from Spiral), Kadaj, Zack, Tifa Lockhart, Aerith Gainsborough (from Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children), Ace Hono, Jay, Makoto Aikawa, Taiyou Oozora (from Go! Machine Robo Rescue), B.A.T., Baroness, COBRA Commander, Destro, Duke, Heavy Duty, Kamakura, Long Range, Ninja B.A.T., Scarlett, Snake Eyes, Spirit Iron-Knife, Storm Shadow, Tunnel Rat, Zartan (from G.I. Joe: Sigma 6), Gabriel, Natsumi, Noelle, Yusuke (from I'm Gonna be an Angel!).

Posted anime profiles of W~Wish, Yugo the Negotiator, Jewel BEM Hunter Lime, I'm Gonna be an Angel!. Posted character profiles of Roan, Yuufa (from Ragnarok The Animation).

Posted anime profiles of Gestalt, Beat to Death Angel Dokuro-chan, Another Lady Innocent, Alice Academy, Aishiteruze Baby (update: I didn't realize I already had a profile for this when originally posted, so I have merged the two together). Posted character profiles of Kafka Sunbeam, Koko, Zofis/Milordo-Z, Won Lei, Reycom (from Zatch Bell); Anissina von Karbelnikoff, Cecilie von Spitzweg, Lord Conrad Weller, Lord Gunter von Christ, Gwendal von Voltaire, Josak, Ken Murata, Lord Wolfram von Bielefelt, Yuri Shibuya (from Kyou kara Maoh).

Last Sunday was Father's Day, so I hope all of you out there remembered that! I drove down to visit my parents on the 6th, the Friday before Father's Day, because my cousin, Thera, was having her graduation party on Saturday. I made it to Vallejo in time to go out to dinner with my parents, which was nice. My grandpa had previously asked if he could hire me to come over for a couple days and help him out with a whole bunch of computer stuff, so I figured this would have been as good a time as any. Of course, I would have done that for free, but he knew that we kind of needed the money since I haven't been bringing in much yet. So the next morning I went over to his house, since the graduation party didn't start until that afternoon.

I looked over his computer as he was telling me all the things that he wanted to accomplish. So once we had a tentative list of things to do, it was time to get started. The first step was getting Windows XP installed over the existing Windows 98, so we had to go out and buy that. We found it at Office Max for about $100, and also picked up a pack of three 512 MB USB Flash Drives for about $50 to help simplify the backing up of all his files, since floppy discs don't hold nearly enough and CDs can be a pain. When we got back, I started the XP install, and then we left that going as it was time to head over to the graduation party.

There weren't too many people yet when we arrived, and the food wasn't going to be served for like another, so after about 15 minutes we decided to head back to the house to pick up my grandpa's digital camera... since it was determined that nobody else there had remembered to bring their camera either. Back at the house, I found that XP was waiting for the answer to some question, and shortly after answering it, XP re-booted the machine, and then it crashed with the blue screen of death. After a little fiddling and it continuously failing to complete the installation, I just gave up and started the installation from the beginning. And back to the party we went.

There was a lot of food laid out, and everything I put on my plate was pretty good. We all ate outside, but it was kind of hot out so I didn't stay out there for too long. Now I said the food was good, and it was, but the cake and ice cream were great! It was marble cake, with chocolate inside, chocolate frosting, and vanilla ice cream on the side! I sure do love cake... anyway, after desert Grandpa and I headed back to the house to continue working. It took most of the day to get XP working with all of his hardware. I thought that it would have just gone online and downloaded all the drivers it needed, but it turns out that XP couldn't really find what it needed online, so we had to dig out all the CDs that came with the hardware... even the one that came with the motherboard! Until we were able to find that, the resolution wouldn't go higher than 640x480 in 16 colors.

After I finally got all the hardware set up and working smoothly, then we went and started to attempt to organize his files. Now, anyone whose ever tried to organize anything knows how frustrating it can be. Do I put all my pictures in the folder called "My Pictures", or should I put the pictures in a folder that has documents relating to the pictures? There are so many different ways to classify and organize, all I can say is thank goodness Microsoft has the ability to create file shortcuts! Still, why in the world did they decide to call the main data folder "My Documents" instead of "My Files"? The word "documents" doesn't really bring to mind music or images, it makes you think of word processor documents, or maybe even PDF files. And yet Microsoft also wants to put "My Music" and "My Pictures" inside the "My Documents" folder. Talk about a source of confusion for people who lack experience with computers!

So anyway, the next day we continued with organizing files, and getting rid of some duplicates. Then we moved on to other things, like looking at his new genealogy software, and trying to find some good freeware that would take the GEDCOM file (a standardized genealogy file format) and convert it into a nice website. We tried out a bunch, and each had their advantages and disadvantages. Unfortunately, I didn't see any that used a template system (so we could put our own headers and footers on the files), and only a very few would link to any pictures that were specified in the GEDCOM file. Of course, on those that did, I discovered that it really didn't matter anyway as his genealogy software didn't output the links to pictures in the GEDCOM file.

Other things we did was go through all his old manuals and throw out ones that were no good anymore. We dumped the real old 5-inch floppies, and all of the single-sided 3-inch floppies. He showed me how he scanned pictures in, which alerted me that this one folder full of Word documents were actually just pictures, because when he scans he selects "send to" and then "Microsoft Word". No wonder those files were so huge! Each one of the hundreds of Word documents was really just a giant PNG file. So I went and converted all of those over to images, which took some time. I showed him how to use the new USB Thumb Drives to back up his data, and how to export the GEDCOM file so that it could be used to make a website (either by e-mailing it to me or uploading it to one of the genealogy websites). We accomplished pretty much everything he wanted to do, so on I headed back to Redding Tuesday evening.

Posted anime profiles of Fire Emblem, Bottle Fairy, Master Keaton, Karin, F3: Menage a Trois, Hikari No Desetsu. Posted character profiles of Bull Borgnine, Lienna Vincent, Wen Yong Fa, Yamato Delgato (from Battle B-Daman); Caska, Conrad, Corkus, Gambino, Judeau, Pippin, Princess Charlotte, Ricket, Slann, Ubik, Void (from Berserk); Clow Reed (from Card Captors); Danny, Rops, Megumi, Dr. Riddles, Kido (from Zatch Bell).

Posted anime profiles of Eureka Seven, Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad, Photon: The Idiot Adventures. Posted the character profile of Susie (from Digimon).

Posted anime profiles of Once Upon A Time, A Journey Through Fairyland, Maetel Legend. Posted character profiles of Momo Hinamori, Rukia Kuchiki, Chad, Kisuke Urahara, Toushiro Hitsugaya (from Bleach); Kousuke Asazuki (from Spiral).

Posted character profiles of Duck/Princess Tutu, Fakir, Mytho, Rue/Princess Claire (from Princess Tutu).

Posed the anime profiles of Dragon Ball Z- Fusion Reborn (Movie 12), My Brother's Wife, and Sexy Sailor Soldiers. Added the character profile of Janempa (from Dragon Ball Z- Fusion Reborn). Posted our 2005 Mexian Cruise photos.

Posed the character profiles of Shino Akai (from Maburaho); Cloud Strife (from Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children).

Introduced a new field called "debut" to the character profiles. This specifies the episode of a character's first appearance in a series (or in the case of a movie, it can refer to how far into the movie that they are introduced). Posted a cartoon profile of Totally Spies. Posted character profiles for Appa (from Avatar: The Last Airbender); Elle Ragu (from Shadow Skill, the TV series).

Last week, on the 23rd, I drove down to my parents for a visit, and to paint my grandparents' house. My wife did come, as she was just starting her new job. I had picked them up a 17" ViewSonic computer monitor from someone on Craig's List to replace their 15" HP Pavilion M50, so I hooked that up shortly after I arrived. Those couple inches sure do make a big difference!

Since my parents signed up with SBC Global (now known as SBC/Yahoo!/AT&T) for their DSL a couple years ago, they have had nothing but problems, the most common being dropped connections... which wouldn't reconnect until the entire computer was shut down and rebooted. In an attempt to help put an end to all their problems, I was going to hook up my old LinkSys router... unfortunately, the DSL modem that SBC Global had originally provided was a super-crappy USB-only Alcatel Speed Touch USB. Well, a USB modem wasn't going to hook up to the LinkSys router, so I called SBC/Yahoo!/AT&T to get it replaced with a standard DSL modem. Seems like an easy enough request, does it not?

Apparently, SBC/Yahoo!/AT&T isn't set up to handle easy requests. I was told by three separate people that I would have to buy a new modem because the Speed Stream modem was out of warranty. Yep, you read that right, they said SPEED STREAM. All three people! And even after I corrected them! They don't even look anything alike! A Speed Stream looks like your typical modem, while the Alcatel Speed Touch looks like some kind of stingray. No, it's not a Speed Stream, it's an Alcatel SPEED TOUCH. If I had a Speed Stream, I wouldn't need to be calling you guys. And what does the warranty even have to do with anything? The modem we have isn't broken, it just doesn't have the ability to be connected up with a CAT5 cable.

You would think that after all my explaining, they could have gotten it. Even after I told them that I wasn't going to buy a new modem, and that if they didn't replace our current USB-only modem with a standard CAT5-capable one, then we would just switch to cable internet because Comcast would give us a free modem upon installation, they STILL refused! I thought for sure that would get them, but apparently they just don't care about having your business.

So my dad and I went out to Circuit City and picked up a DSL modem, and a wireless router so my mom would be able to have access to the Internet on her laptop while around the house. After I hooked it all up, guess what? Everything worked! For the rest of the week that I was there, they had no more DSL problems at all. So for two years and all the tech support they went through with SBC (who couldn't find the problem and eventually just said too bad, we give up, you'll have to live with it), it all came down to the crappy modem that they originally provided, and refused to replace.

Oh yeah, and I also tried submitting an email to SBC/Yahoo!/AT&T about this whole situation, but discovered that it can't be done. In order to contact them through email, you have to log in. But we can't log in, because the username/password combination that's used for the DSL connection doesn't work on any of the SBC/Yahoo!/AT&T websites. I called the number on the monthly statement, and we had got the password changed, and was told that this was also used to log into the website where you could access your account information, but it just simply doesn't work. What a horrible, horrible company! Anyone want to take bets as to whether my parents will be switching to Comcast Cable Internet once their SBC/Yahoo!/AT&T contract is over later this year?

Anyway, the painting of my grandparents' house went good. My dad helped out a lot, and we only had to do the second story. Luckily, most of the house had a roof that we could stand on. There was only one side where we had to paint while on ladders. It took two days, with one coat of paint for each day. I totally forgot about sun screen until we got finished the first day, so I ended up with a pretty nasty sunburn. It's only now just starting to look like it was a tan.