News & Updates in January 2009

Posted the character profiles of Sorunaru (from Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki), Fujimasa (from Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki), Baguma (from Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki), Ming-Ming Love (from Beyblade G Revolution).

Posted the character profiles of Uub (from Dragon Ball Z), Yuukimaru (from Naruto Hurricane Chronicles), Sakumo Hatake (from Naruto), Mai (from Avatar: The Last Airbender), Seira (from Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch), Sara (from Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch), Rapunzel (from MAR: Marchen Awakens Romance), Harley Hartwell (from Case Closed), 2nd Lt. Alice L. Malvin (from Pumpkin Scissors). Fixed the feedback submission form, which instead of sending your messages would just show you a page not found error.

Posted the character profiles of Carrera (from Viper G.T.S.), Simon (from Gurren Lagann), Touka Kurenai (from Grenadier- the Beautiful Warrior), Setsuna Oomido (from Grenadier- the Beautiful Warrior). Posted my review of The Secret of the Magic Gourd.

Posted the anime profile of Bokurano. Posted the character profiles of Arystar Krory The Third (from D.Gray-man), Miranda Lotto (from D.Gray-man), Ai (from Popotan), Mii (from Popotan), Yusei Fudo (from Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's), Hanyuu Furude (from When They Cry - Higurashi), Sakiko Sakura (from Chibi Maruko-chan), Momoko Sakura (from Chibi Maruko-chan), Trixie (from Speed Racer), Tsukihito Amanuma (from Yu Yu Hakusho), Peter Griffin (from Family Guy), Crona (from Soul Eater), Fasha (from Dragon Ball Z), Saga (from Sugar: A Little Snow Fairy).

Posted the character profiles of Koral Q (from Zatch Bell), Princess Sakura (from Tsubasa Chronicle). Posted my review of Igor. Posted my review of City of Ember.

Posted the anime profiles of Pokemon Diamond and Pearl Battle Dimension, Total Drama Island.

Posted the anime profile of Afro Samurai: Resurrection. Started adding some embedded videos to various anime profiles. Thought it might be useful, seeing is how animation is a rather large part of anime. Ideally, I'd like these videos to be trailers for the show, but it's not always possible to find trailers so I've also tried opening animations and the first 1/3 of the first episode. Hopefully I'll get some feedback on which is preferred.

Went to see the midnight showing of Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, though this time we went with one of Treese's friends. We got there maybe 15 minutes before showtime and already had our tickets, but still the theater was pretty crowded so we ended up in the second row from the front. In some theaters this doesn't make much of a difference because they're smart enough to put the front seats far enough away from the screen, but this was not the case for our theater. Thus, it quite difficult to get a good feel for what was going on in the fast-moving action scenes and anything that was zoomed in too much. And yet, we all still enjoyed it. I'm really looking forward to seeing it on DVD.

I woke up this morning to find our TV stations were, for the third time this month, once again nothing but a blank, gray screen. By now I know the drill, a not-so-quick reboot of the TiVo HD. So what am I supposed to do here? Call TiVo? This is already a replacement for the previous TiVo HD which had problems. And I know they're just going to blame the cable card. Call Charter? This cable card is already a replacement card for the one that originally didn't seem to work correctly. It's not like this is an unknown issue... or even a new issue. I have seen a few threads about it on the TiVo Community forums, the latest of which is New TiVo HD losing all channels since V11- getting gray screen on cablecard.

Posted the anime profiles of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Time and Darkness, Innocent Venus, Strike Witches, The Daichis - Earth Defence Family, Papuwa, Chibi Maruko-chan, A Child's Time, Save Me! Lollipop, Busou Renkin.

Posted my review of Max Payne. Posted the anime profiles of Gunslinger Girl – Il Teatrino, Toward the Terra.

Posted the anime profiles of To Love-Ru, Hayate the Combat Butler, Birdy the Mighty Decode, Katekyo Hitman Reborn!, Tales of the Abyss, Kanokon, Spice and Wolf, Shoujo Sect ~Innocent Lovers~, Blade of the Immortal, Assemble Insert, WildC.A.T.s, Ginban Kaleidoscope, Ai No Kusabi: The Space Between. Posted the character profiles of Zetsu (from Naruto), Iria Winner (from Mobile Suit Gundam Wing), Yamma (from IGPX: Immortal Grand Prix), Yui-Li (from Vampire Princess Miyu).

Posted the anime profiles of Slayers Revolution, Batman: Gotham Knight, Clannad. Posted the character profile of Lulu De Morcerf (from Shugo Chara).

Posted the character profiles of Kaiba (from Kaiba), Mizore Shirayuki (from Rosario + Vampire), Yukari Sendo (from Rosario + Vampire). Posted my review of Babylon A.D.. Posted the anime profiles of Junjou Romantica, Princess Resurrection. Updated my feedback forms to properly handle UTF-8 encoding... so now I can actually read the words that have non-ASCII characters!

Posted the character profiles of Tsubaki (from Bleach), Leo (from Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's), Luna (from Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's), Miss Mio Hio (from D.N.Angel).

Posted the character profile of Rosetta Passel (from Kaleido Star). Posted the anime profile of Azuki-Chan. Posted my review of Transformers: Animated - Season 2.

Posted my review of Comedy Central Roast of Bob Saget: Uncensored.

Although our internet connection hasn't gone down again since last Saturday, today I've been getting a whole lot of this message when clicking on hyperlinks:

Connection Interrupted

The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading

The network link was interrupted while negotiating a connection. Please retry

What the hell is going on over there, Comcast? Could you get your act together, please?

And while I'm on the subject of crappy service, let me just say that Tracfone SUCKS! If you're a frequent reader of my ramblings, then you may remember how Tracfone literally stole our minutes from us and replaced a known defective phone with another known defective phone of the exact same model. So pretty much, the phone was useless. Well, time has passed, and my wife decided to pick up a new cellphone as a Christmas gift to herself....

She got the TracFone LG 600 Pay-as-You-Go Cell Phone - TFLG600GP4. Now, the phone itself seems nice enough, having a good screen and all the little features one would expect nowadays. So the problem? Well, it only seems to receive calls about 10% of the time. The rest of the time it just goes to voice mail. Looking at the phone, it says we have four bars, so WTF is going on?! Oh wait, now it says two bars. Hold on... now four. And now zero. Whoops, back to four....

So it's completely unreliable in the house, which is crap, but at the very least she'll have a phone she can use to call me when she's out of the house. In fact, she called me just this afternoon. When she did, I asked if she had me on speakerphone, because the sound quality was so terrible. But nope, wasn't on speakerphone. Apparently all that distortion which makes the person's voice sound like electronic static is just a normal part of the phone. Or the service. I'm not sure which. My vote is for both. Isn't there any better cellphone companies out there that don't require a monthly service?

Anyway, despite any of that, I'm still happy, because today I got Rock Band 2 Special Edition! Yep, the one with the game, the guitar, the drums, and the microphone. Holy crap is that game fun! I still have yet to venture past the normal difficulty, though I did try the Freakin' Hard guitar tutorial. And yeah, it was freakin' hard! But I'm looking forward to honing my skills....

Posted the character profile of Soul Evans (from Soul Eater).

Posted the character profile of Nakita Kuramitsu (from Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki).

Today my wife and I started in on a couple of co-op games, Kameo and Marvel Ultimate Alliance. Marvel Ultimate Alliance we've already played on the PS2, but we're still enjoying it, and it looks much better on the 360. She's also been trying out a bunch of those online Yahoo games, though today our Internet connected kept going down. And actually, it's down right now as I'm typing this. And it's gotta be something on their end because we haven't changed anything. I look at the front of the modem, and the Internet light is off, the US is on, and the DS is blinking. According to the modem manual, "If the US and DS LEDs are flashing, the modem is still operating, but your Internet service has been disabled by your Internet Service Provider". So much for the great and wonderful Charter cable Internet.

Posted my review of The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea (Special Edition).

Woo-hoo, 2009 is here! And what better way is there to start off the new year than with a reboot of TiVo. For some reason, all channels below 80 would show up as nothing more than a gray screen, though a quick check revealed that this only happened on the TiVo HD which uses cable cards. Thankfully, a quick reboot fixed the problem.

New Years Eve was fun. Our original plans included joining in on a party at the bowling alley, but when my wife went to work that day, she learned that her team's offices were being moved to their new location... a move that wasn't supposed to happen for another week. Anyone who has ever moved an entire office can attest that doing so is hard, tiring work. So by the time she got home, a party was out of the question.

So instead we ended up going over to her friend's place to hang out. It was just the three of us since both of her roommates had to work that evening. We played a little Guitar Hero, followed by Mario Cart, and then Zelda. That was my first time playing Guitar Hero, and I definitely see the attraction. That game is a blast! Mario Cart was fun too, though it took some time getting used to using the Wii steering wheel controller.

Zelda, on the other hand, was a complete disappointment. That game was sooo boring. True, it's probably because we were never able to get to a part where we could actually fight bad guys, but whose fault is that? The player's? Remember in the NES and SNES games when the first thing you did was fight bad guys? Yeah, what happened to that? Why do I have to start off by knocking down a bee hive, then wander around forever until discovering I have to climb a tree and jump over on the tops of other trees to reach a patch of weeds that I pick up and play music to summon a bird that sweeps down and steals a baby basket from a lunatic monkey jumping up and down on a rock in the middle of a small lake. WTF?!

But I get to fight monsters after that, right? Nooooooo! Now I have to go fishing and spend half an hour trying wiggling the controller up and down waiting for a bite so that I can get a fish so that I can feed it to a cat so that the cat will be happy so that the cat will return to it's owner so that it's owner will stop moping and actually sell me some crap that I'm required to have in order to move on. Again, I say WTF?!

So now I get to fight monsters? Nope, now I have to meet up with some brats and practice using the slingshot on some inanimate targets. Then one of them indicates that I gotta find someone's dad, or an item that his dad has or something. I talked to every person in the areas I had access to and didn't find anything, so I just said the hell with it and gave up. This whole thing took at least a couple hours and just made me hate the game.

For Christmas, we went and visited my family, which was nice. I gave my wife a set of Tinkerbell hand towels, an Optimus Prime Mr. Potato Head, a copy of Lego Star Wars - The Complete Saga for XBox 360, and a necklace with a kind of snake-like pendant that is white gold with a sapphire. She got me a nice Rogue Dreadnought Cutaway Acoustic-Electr​ic Guitar, Natural.