"There’s an extra space in the back if you want to park your car there."
"Thanks. Parking in the front is more convenient, but I’ll keep that in mind."

On March 3rd, 2006, an ominously rainy day, I was about to head off to work when I noticed that the hood to my car was slightly ajar. This didn’t alarm me too much since the hood was damaged in November; although this never happened before, I thought, "Oh well…" then closed the hood. I was then greeted by the following sight:

I noticed the window was broken, and the stereo was missing despite the fact that I removed the faceplate as usual. This was pretty upsetting since the radio was a gift from some of my friends. I didn’t want to mess with the crime scene, so I removed everything of value to myself from the car and asked Vince to drive me to work.

After returning from work, I did a more thorough inspection and found out that the whole ignition was absent. I didn’t notice it at first because I peered into the driver’s side in the morning and wasn’t at angle to see the damage. On the passenger’s side, the remains of my igniton lay on the floor and seat. Apparently, the bastards tried to take my car, but the car alarm had killed the starter. I thank Alex, the original owner of the car, for putting that in there; otherwise, I’d be out an entire car. I called my insurance provider if there was anything they could do, but they just said, "Well, you just have liabilty on that vehicle… other than that, I don’t know what to tell you except, I’m sorry that happened…" ;_;

It was naive of me to think that no one would try to steal my car because it’s an older car (pretty much every other car on the block is newer and nicer looking than mine). I suppose the theives thought it would be an easier car to steal, it’s in pretty good condition, and it is a popular make and model. It bothers me a lot that people are so uncaring about other people’s situations. I mean, isn’t it obvious that a person driving a car like this probably doesn’t have a lot of money in the first place?! But I digress…

Fortunately, the local auto shop was able to fix the window and ignition. Of course, I needed a car in the meantime (such is the nature of LA), so I rented a car. Total cost for repairs and the car rental – $677.88. One of these days, I’ll pop in a new stereo, but I should probably move into a nicer neighborhood; preferably one with secured parking area. I took a picture of the remains of my ignition and faceplate before placing them in storage as a reminder of "the good ol’ days"…

The worst part is that the radio was a birthday present from some of my friends – I didn’t even have it for a year.

In the meantime, I’m hoping that "The Club" will be enough to deter would-be car theives, and I should look into adding theft coverage for my insurance…

Thursday, June 30th, 2005

Even though I couldn’t actually pick up my Press Badge until Friday, 9am, I was in the area having dinner with some friends so I decided to drop by the registration. When we got there at around 8pm, the staff told us they were closing the line for the night for some reason. A lot of people who got there were quite frustrated, but my friends managed to get their badges after about an hour of negotiation, so it all turned out all right. Others were not so fortunate, and I feel for those who pre-registered only to be turned away and told to come back the next morning. The following conversation from Con Gripe was quite enlightening.

Q: What’s the point of pre-registration if you get turned away? I got turned away. San Diego Comic Con uses bar code scanners. The main chokepoint is the searching for people by name.
A: We had a problem with the database, and we realized that we couldn’t handle it ourself. To fix this problem, we hired professionals to do it; however, the typists that they sent couldn’t even type. We immediately hired another company to come in on Friday.

If it’s not one thing, it’s another. I try not to believe in bad luck, but…

Friday, July 1st, 2005

After a bit of a drive down to Anaheim, we went to register in the morning where I thought that they would have normal registration, but they didn’t have the press registration in the convention center with everything else – I wasted only about 30 min waiting so that wasn’t too bad. I suppose they did this because it is where most of the high profile guests are staying and it made things easier for them. Of course, it didn’t make too much sense because they had the industry registration in the same area as everything else.

As I was waiting in the line for press registration, I was talking to a guy who said that he "enjoyed" the Real Otaku Heroes songs (as well as someone else), but he didn’t recognize the name "The Spatula". ;_; Mada mada da ne…

The line to get into Opening Ceremonies was freakin’ huge! Fortunately, the Press Badge allowed me to go to the front – I was sitting in the third row. Curiously enough, I ended up sitting next to Christopher MacDonald, the head honcho over at Anime News Network. I said, "You’re from ANN, right?" to which he replied "Yeah". When I was about to introduce myself, he said, "And you’re The Spatula". I was taken aback – I was surprised that he recognized me. It’s probably because I pestered him so much over the years. Inside, he was proabably thinking, "Oh great! I have to sit next to The Spatula…"

Opening Ceremonies was the same ol’ thing with a curious statement from the chairman relating AX to a city. "It’s built the way that anime and manga fans would want the world to be… make sure that you eat, sleep, and stay hydrated… Oh yeah, and shower." Hah!

I also noticed a spatula in the clip from Ultra Maniac so I made a note to look for that some time in the future.

After a bit, I went to the exhibition hall at around 12noon, but I had to be threaded through a long ass line that went downstairs into room "e" (should have a map of the Anaheim Convention Center to show the movement of the line). Fortunately, it only took around 30 minutes to actually get into the dealer’s room. I went to talk to Chris from Hen da ne about setting up some sort of demo/tournament thingy, but he was busy, so we put it off for later. I didn’t want to hang out in the dealer’s room because it was a bit crowded and the KOTOKO panel was soon; it had nothing to do with the fact that I had no money. Tabun…

Venturing on to the KOTOKO focus panel, I met up with Raven and Linalys. I wasn’t really surprised to see that Raven was near the front of the line. The panel was delayed a bit, until 2:30, but that wasn’t that bad. During the panel, the usual barrage of questions

Q: You’ve made many songs over the years, which one do you hold closest to your heart?
The Spatula (to self): Hmm… her most recent song is Chi ni Kaeru, so…
KOTOKO: I love all my songs, but right now, I love Chi ni Kaeru.

One particularly interesting question was:

Q: Would you consider being a Seiyuu for Geneon?
KOTOKO: I am often asked if I would like to try to become a voice actress, but I have no training or talent, so I think that it would be rude to become one without all of that training. I would first like to take all that training first before becoming one.

During the rest of the questions, I realized that I should’ve brought my official Kaname Chidori halisen…

After the panel, we finally had a chance to check in the Inn. Most places do this at 1pm, but we had to wait until after 3pm. Why so late? I decided to have some granola bars and a Cup Ramen. Despite my careful planning, I realized that I had forgotten one important thing… forks. Fortunately, there was a 7-11 nearby.

I returned to the dealer’s room and chatted with Chris again about showcasing some doujin fighters, but he didn’t have many of those games in stock. We agreed that it wouldn’t make sense to have people playing games there when they couldn’t sell them anything. Oh well. Since it wasn’t really well planned to start with, I suppose it was for the best. Hoping I’d have better luck at the Console Gaming Room where I knew MadTeaParty was at, I headed off to the Marriott for the next part of my journey.

The console gaming room was strangely laid out – all of the tables were occupying the back fourth of the room leaving a huge empty space in the front. I’m sure there was a good reason for it being like that, but I couldn’t figure out why. I tried not to think about it too much, and hung out with some friends for the rest of the evening.
 
Saturday, July 2nd, 2005

The main event of the day was the KOTOKO concert so I went to wait in line. There, I met up with Linalys and Team Texas led by VManofMana. I played Linalys a bit and he mercilessly beat on me – I cried and cried, but he just kept laughing and laughing and… yeah. Anyway, we got to go into the Geneon Anime Festival, but we didn’t enter until about an hour after it was supposed to start. Bleh. At least they had some neat previews.

The KOTOKO concert rocked. I got to sit up in the fourth row from the front. Unfortunately, the people in front of me thought it would be a good idea to stand up blocking the view for the row behind them, and so that row stood up blocking the view for the row behind them, and so… you get the idea. I was content to sit down and enjoy the show. Years of practice being civil barely won out over my desire to push people over SO I COULD FREAKIN’ SEE! Again, I realized that I should’ve brought my official Kaname Chidori halisen… [Edit (7-12-2005): Everyone in front of me was taller than me, so I had a much better view sitting down. I didn't dwell on it, and I was up on my feet cheering like everyone else.]

I forgot how freakin’ loud concerts were. The main problem I had was that the music was so loud, her singing was nearly overshadowed. Chi ni Kaeru was pretty cool since I was able to clearly hear her sing – too bad they couldn’t get a full orchestra for that ;_; The crowd was wild some of the time and creative at other times; some guy held up his cell phone and then a couple hundred people started to do the same. Pretty wild stuff.

At the end of the show, people were chanting "KO TO KO! KO TO KO!" – I tried to start a continuous stream of "KO TO KO TO KO TO KO…" but the guys near me just looked at me funny so I stopped. I had a feeling that they had planned an "encore" performance, so I waited around a bit at my seat while most of the crowd started to leave. When KOTOKO came back on stage, the people who were up and about rushed up to the stage and many people took pictures. This might not seem like a bad thing, but the audience was explicitly told not to take any pictures. Of course, how are you going to stop a mass of rabid fanboys?

Washing my hands of that sordid affair, I went to the 2nd floor to seek out New Challengers. I never noticed before, but they apparently gather betwen 207 & 208 of the Anaheim Convention Center. 22 curious souls gathered for a beatdown. 7 laptops. All doujins. It had begun…

I played some Melty Blood Re•ACT, I won the first round using Hisui vs someone’s Len, but I got destroyed in the second round against Linalys’ Miyako. My problem is that I still don’t know the proper timing for cancelling attacks so I lost that every time. After that, I was in the EFZ tournament and my Mishio bested Linalys’ Rumi. I think that he just used it as an excuse to skip out and head over to ADV‘s "Fanservice" panel. Damn Linalys…

I forgot that the first round was an elimination round into a round robin which consisted of, I believe, 9 people. I first played against Lovely Kitsune (Internet Celebrity), who destroyed me, but I managaed to win one round, so I’m happy for that. I then played Evospace, the mysterious owner of The Moonlit World, who trounced me using Doppleganger Rumi. Damn Kimuchi…

Earlier I had promised to go to the ANN panel, so I just left in the middle of the tournament – years of experience told me that I didn’t have to play the other people to know that they would beat me.

The ANN panel went well – they had a lot of stuff to give away for people who asked questions. I probably should’ve asked a question, but I couldn’t think of anything decent at the time. At times, I have too much pride; I wasn’t going to ask a lame question to get a DVD, but it probably would’ve been worth it. Oh well.

Sunday, July 3rd, 2005

I got up at around 7am and did the usual shower, breakfast thing then I went to get the pass for the Maaya Sakamoto concert and the Masquerade. If you look at the picture below on the right, you’ll notice that the only "MAIN EVENTS" listed on the pole for Sunday is the Maaya Sakamoto concert. Apparently, the Masquerade isn’t considered a main event. I hung out with some friends in the line for the Sakamoto tickets but didn’t stay long because I had to go to the Anime Trivia.

The format for Anime Trivia was the same as last year: trivia, name that tune, and guess the scene. The first game was at least 30 minutes; not too bad, but for some reason it felt longer than that. They really should get some buzzers so it would move things faster. Obviously, if one contestant doesn’t know it, then one of the other contestants might know, right?

As usual, the last part with guessing the video stuff takes way too long. They should cut this section back a bit or cut it out entirely; it also didn’t help that they used many of the questions from last year. Everyone who went up got quite a few prizes. It bothers me that you can simply be randomly picked to be on the show, don’t have to answer anything, and then you can walk off with a couple DVDs and a CD. This implies that being lucky is more important than actually knowing anything. Lame.

The second round was a bit faster, 24min, because the contestants actually knew the answers. At the end, they just asked a bunch of random questions for people in the audience. I didn’t get anything this time, but that didn’t really bother me as much as the fact that they didn’t really improve over last year. It pains me to write about the same problems when the solutions are relatively simple. I didn’t dwell on it since the Maaya Sakamoto concert was next.

The concert was pretty enjoyable, but it felt a bit… rushed. Something felt off. Maybe she was scared of all the American fans. I hate to compare the two concerts, but KOTOKO definitely had the better act since she had an actual show and live band to go along with her singing. This is not to say that I need to see an elaborate show to enjoy the show, just that it added to it.

Finally, the Masquerade rolled around and I had some pretty decent seats; I was in the second row from the front on the very right. The only problem was that the angle was a bit bad for taking pictures. Fortunately, the camera work was very good this year; I spent about half the time looking at the monitor. I probably wouldn’t have minded sitting in the middle or back since they covered the stage very well. There were a lot of high quality costumes and skits and there wasn’t much dead time. Great job.

Monday, July 4th, 2005

I didn’t plan too much for this day: the Maaya Sakamoto Panel, Con Gripe, and AMVs.

The Sakamoto panel went pretty well except for the fact that most of the questions started off with, "Hi, I’m your biggest fan, I love… blah blah blah. Now, my question is…" I really wish they would screen the questions so, at the very least, it would expedite the process allowing more questions to be asked. Another fan actually walked up to Sakamoto and shook her hand after asking a question – I definitely should’ve brought my official Kaname Chidori halisen…

I really didn’t have a lot to gripe about this year, but I went to Con Gripe anyway to see what people were complaining about. Most of the complaints for Con Gripe were related to registration and the Masquerade. The usual things. Perhaps the main thing that bothered me was that it was impossible for me to go to every panel/event/showing that piqued my interest. Damn schedule conflicts…

To end the day, I caught the winners of the AMVs, bringing Anime Expo 2005 to a quiet close.

As a final note, I was happy to see two Kuonji Ukyou cosplayers.

Spatulas unite!

"Do you want to go to Fanime?"
"Uh… sure… but I don’t want to pay for it."
"Don’t worry about it. I’ve got you covered. I just need you to do me a favor…"

I made a deal with a friend of mine to help run the beta version of the Manga Library (ML) during FanimeCon 2005 in exchange for a pass to the con and a room to stay. The full-featured version will debut at Anime Expo 2005 (AX) in a few weeks, so keep an eye out for it. Even though I hadn’t slept much over the week, going to an anime convention seemed like a good opportunity to catch up on some sleep.

Okay, maybe not.

After a fitful sleep Friday night, we went to get badges for the convention Saturday morning which was a relatively quick and painless process. It would be a shame to start the day without a proper breakfast, but the closest thing was McDonald’s – "I’m lovin’ it?" Not really.

It was still early, so we took our time getting to the ML. For those of you still wondering what the Manga Library is, it’s as its name implies – you get to "check out" books and read them in the room (pic above, on the left) in exchange for your letting us "borrow" your badge.

"Waiting for a panel? Tired of watching anime or playing games? Grab a manga and chill for a bit at the Manga Library!"

Now, the only problem was that the ML was pretty far away from the rest of the action. While there were signs advertising the ML, they were, as they say, "out of sight, out of mind". Hopefully, they’ll put the ML in a relatively accessible location at AX which will give people the opportunity to peruse the various titles out there. Good idea, bad location.

Earlier, we decided that we’d work in 3 hour shifts – I was on the first shift (11am-2pm) to I could catch the game show in the afternoon (at 3pm). When I left, there was still a bit of time so I peeked in the Console Gaming Room which was actually larger than the one at AX. It’s sad to note that a convention with less than half the amount of attendees has a gaming room twice the size. It would bring a tear to my eye, but there wasn’t any doujin gaming going on – they both fail at the internet. ^_^

The schedule on the door for the Game Show said that it wouldn’t start until 4:30pm – chou mukatsuku! The Program Guide said that it would start at 3pm! I try not to dwell on things I can’t control so I went to look around in the dealer’s room.

I admit that the spacing of the two pictures above depicts the dealer’s room as a small place, but it really wasn’t that big. I estimate that it was about as big as the one for AX ’99 at the Disneyland Hotel. Of course, I wasn’t interested in buying that much, so my speed through the room must have contracted the actual distances perceived from my frame of reference. I saw a couple interesting things, but nothing that would make me say, "You know what, I really don’t need to eat this month…"

With plenty of time left, I strolled around the convention center getting the lay of the land and planning escape routes in case there was a sudden influx of rabid, unwashed otaku. Always prepare for the worst.

At around 4:00pm, I went to wait in line for the Game Show, then they let us in at 4:30pm. Of course, the show didn’t actually start until around 4:45, which wouldn’t have been such a big deal, it’s just that they didn’t plan for a slow start and had people from the audience get up on stage and do lame things to "entertain" the crowd. Sigh.

Fortunately, they had a game-show type program on a computer with an actual buzzer system that displayed the questions and scores on a large screen at the front for the audience to scrutinize – a system light-years ahead of the one used at AX the past couple years. It was also neat how they gave the contestants "nicknames" like "Shiny" or "Dr. Phil". As a final touch, some of the questions had random points assigned to them ranging from 63 to 764. Odd.

Of course, with the good comes the bad, and their selection of the audience members was similar to AX – random pointing in the crowd. I’m all for giving people a chance, but it isn’t anywhere near exciting to watch a bunch of people fumble answers. At least with a screening process, if I’m not picked to participate at least I’ll know why. Even worse, the "first half" of the show focused on the May 22nd lineup of Adult Swim. Bleh. I have nothing against Adult Swim, it’s just that I never watch it; this part of the show was completely lost on me. I would’ve left at that point, but I wanted to get in to play for the second half that they said would feature questions on "robots and ninjas."

As expected, I wasn’t "randomly" picked, but I stuck around anyway to see if it would improve, which it did. The second half was 42 times better than the first half. Even though the questions were easy, it was fun because two of the competitors were fast on the buzzer. This experience only increased my urge to participate in an anime trivia show. ;_;

Hunger made me temporarily forget.

After a quick jaunt off to dinner, I returned, ready to stroll through the hallowed halls of anime fandom. I was almost run over by some Initial D fans who had dressed up shopping carts like the various cars from the series. Scary, yet funny.

Narrowly escaping, I randomly wandered the convention center, eventually ending up in various Video Rooms where they featured many fansubs and live-action Asian films. Unfortunately, the person who encoded the divx to mpeg2 for DVD didn’t resize the video – only the top half of the subs were visible. Tsk, tsk. Oh well, I give them an "A" for effort.

Later on, I hung out at the piano impressed by the small crowd that gathered around Sklathill. There were quite a few enthusiatic fans making me wish I knew how to play an instrument of some sort; I’m good at Queen of Heart ’99 and Party’s Breaker, but nobody cares about that. Oh well.

Lack of sleep started to kick in forcing me to hit the sack relatively early (~2am).

On Sunday, I took the early shift for the ML, hoping that I could make it to the second half of another Game Show; however, it ended at 1:30pm, and I didn’t get out until 2pm. Suck.

I decided to wander a bit more and ended up at the GTL panel – quite entertaining. I could talk a bit about it, but it’s better to see it for yourself if you get the chance. I was surprised that most people didn’t know the famous Konami cheat code. n00bs.

Immediately after that, there was a curious panel called "How to Talk to Girls". Girls run away when they gaze upon my hideous features, so that information is useless for one such as myself. I took off after a couple minutes and hung out in the Karaoke Room until dinner time.

I wanted to be at the Masquerade from the beginning, but dinner took longer than anticipated, so I ended up walking in halfway through the show with Sklathill. By a strange coincidence, as soon as we walked in, the speakers were blaring "Real Otaku Heroes" as if heralding our arrival (of course, no one noticed us). I believe they played all of them that night, but it seemed like the audience was getting tired of hearing them. I don’t blame them – they are relatively old and have a lot of repetition. I’d like to note that I had no idea that they would use them that much; I hope no one blames us for that.

To make things worse, the audio for the whole Masquerade was pretty bad. I could barely understand anything anyone said. Also, I wish they had two cameras showing different parts of the stage so I could take in all the action at once, especially with the larger groups. It wasn’t nearly as bad a setup as AX since there was an upper level with quite a bit of room, but I was too lazy to climb a few flights of stairs. The only other bad thing was that some of the skits seemed to go on forever. Less is more.

I wanted to hang out at the piano with Sklathill after that, but I had a bad cough at the time. I took a bit of a nap at around 10:30pm to recover a bit, but I was worse off than I thought since I didn’t wake up until 2:45am. The only reason I got up was because Sklathill had called over the walkie-talkie at the time saying what a weird night he had. I kicked myself for not being there. To make up for lost time, I went to hang out in the karaoke room until 6am. Sleep would’ve been a better choice, but Monday was pretty uneventful in the ML. This gave me a chance to catch up on a few Z’s behind the table of books.

Despite the small quibbles I mentioned, FanimeCon 2005 had a good "small con" feel reminiscent of the early days of AX.

I’d go again.

Pre-Registration

This year, people had the option to pre-register online via Paypal, I assume, to make things easier for the people running AX. It seemed like a good idea to me, so I registered myself before coming to the con, hoping that I could get my badge and thing of junk faster.

Bzzzt! I’m sorry Tony, but I can’t do that…

Those of us who were "smart" enough to pre-register had to wait in line for 1.5 hours to get our badges and stuff, while some friends of mine walked to the front of the line, waited for 5 minutes, typed in their information, and promptly walked out with all of their stuff. Yay?! I wanted to taunt them for not registering early, but the joke was on me, and apparently, several thousand others. If it’s going to be like this next year, screw pre-registering. I know you can save money, but you certainly don’t save any time…

A before and after picture while lining up for pre-registration. Pictures donated by Sklathill.

Anime Trivia Contest

I know this is being anal, but in the guide they listed "Anime Trivia Contest II" so doesn’t this imply that there is an "Anime Trivia Contest I"? What the heck is up with that?!

I went to the Anime Trivia contest hoping that it wouldn’t be as bad as last year, but it was worse. How? Not only were people chosen at random again, but only 2 people were chosen at a time. At least in the previous years, up to 5 people were chosen at a time. Also, the people who actually were chosen didn’t seem to know much, judging from the easy questions. They pretty much got cool prizes simply by sitting down. It was more like a random lottery than an actual contest. There should be a screening process and a buzzer system so we can watch people in exciting competition, rather than watching a couple of clueless fans stumble on questions everyone in the audience knew right away. Giving them both so many prizes (a t-shirt and a box set of Vandred for the "loser") after such a debacle is like a slap in the face to any fan interested in anime trivia.

On the upside, they weren’t able to do their Anime DDR competition due to "technical difficulties". I still don’t understand why they have an anime DDR section at a trivia contest. It was already prominently featured in the gaming room, and I’m pretty sure most of the people who are interested in trivia aren’t there to play DDR. Why is it so hard to stick to good, solid questions? I’ll give them credit for trying to do "Guess what happens next" where they show a clip from an anime and you have to "guess" what happens next via multiple choice questions, but the execution is much too slow to be enjoyable.

It wasn’t a total loss since the crowd was pretty lively, especially during the "Name that Tune" section, and I won some prizes on a random audience questions. I won a copy of Yu-Gi-Oh (I gave it to a friend since I don’t like Yu-Gi-Oh and I don’t have a Gameboy). Another friend was lucky enough to get a Patlabor: WXIII box set on his question, but I answered another question after that, and I won two gimpy prizes – Bast of Legend and Black Lion DVDs (I’m still debating if I should bother watching them or just sell them right away). Judging from the other prizes that were given out, the ones I got were the worst. I think there’s a conspiracy against me since the only good prize I won at Anime Expo was the Yukikaze hat that I won at the Anime News Network panel.

Too bad I don’t like to wear hats…

Anime Masquerade

As a warm-up, I went to the Chibi Masquerade, which was actually a lot of fun since it wasn’t crowded at all and everyone seemed to be in good spirits. Being able to see what was happening on the stage is always a big plus in my book. I’ll be sure to check it out next year. Hopefully, it doesn’t get out of hand like the other one…

Since we didn’t get any vouchers for our hotel room, we had to wait in line on Sunday morning from 7:30 to 11:00 to get the elusive tickets for the masquerade – it was actually a lot less waiting than we had to do in previous years, but I think that’s due to the fact that a lot of people got their tickets via vouchers. We were seated roughly halfway back in the room so we had pretty decent seats; however, there were a couple of people in front of me who were taller than me so I couldn’t see it most of the time. The camera work was pretty terrible since it hardly covered most of the stage. I spent a lot of the time bobbing and weaving, trying to catch a decent glimpse of the stage since the cameras weren’t on the ball.

The MC mentioned how we should "thank the cameramen", since without them, people in the back wouldn’t be able to see it at all. Of course, this implies that the only way that people past a certain point could actually see the masquerade was through the two monitors, which defeats the whole purpose of coming into the room in the first place. Why even bother coming in the room when they’d get the exact same experience sitting in a simulcast room?! I suppose some people enjoy being in the company of other fans during a popular event, feeding off of the energy of other congoers simply by being in the same room. Although, I don’t think it’s really worth going unless you’re able to sit close enough to see the stage.

Verdict – Overall, Better than Last Year

Hmm… it seems like I don’t have as much to rant about as I did last year. I suppose this could be considered a good thing, but it’s irritating to see the same problems arise year after year. Fortunately, I had a lot of fun hanging out in the hotel room playing games with random people and messing around at the Anime Trivia Contest with my friends. I really want to believe in Anime Expo since I still have nostalgia about "the good ol’ days" back in ’97 and ’99. I suppose this could be due to many factors: a new generation of fans, Expo growing faster than people can handle it, changing of the staff, me getting older.

There’s something missing from when I first started going, and I’m still trying to find out what that is…

I didn’t realize it was a virus at first, so I clicked on the part that says "Message.rar". Now, before you email me telling me "That was stupid." let me explain my actions. I was a bit concerned since my signature used to read "Google is watching you. If you’re worried about privacy, use my other email address – x@hotmail.com", and I didn’t want to lose my account after only having it for less than a week. Still, I admit it was a pretty stupid thing to do, especially since there are several glaring clues. I think it’s because I’m used to Hotmail; despite the perceived "evil" of Hotmail, they have a pretty decent policy of blocking one’s ability to download viruses. Gmail does scan email for viruses, the attachment still made it onto my computer – maybe they can’t scan .rar files?

Fortunately, Norton AntiVirus saved my @$$ and caught the virus, W32.Beagle@mm!rar, before it could do anything. You don’t have to worry about me adding to the problem of infected computers on the net. My friends will probably slap me around just on principle – I deserve that at least.

As a curious utensil, I wanted to know my enemy. There’s an option at the top of the email message called "More options" (Duh!). I clicked on that and the header expanded as you can see below.

I shouldn’t have expected to see my enemy unmasked at this point, but I was given the option to "Show original".

Delivered-To: xxxxxxxxxx@gmail.com
Received: by 10.38.97.3 with SMTP id u3cs10795rnb;
   Sat, 26 Jun 2004 09:50:35 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.11.120.80 with SMTP id s80mr149297cwc;
   Sat, 26 Jun 2004 09:50:34 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path:
Received: from 24.25.253.252 (HELO mkbrwufzf6vr5nx.com)
   by mx.gmail.com with SMTP id p77si195873cwc;
Sat, 26 Jun 2004 09:50:33 -0700 (PDT)
Date: Sat, 26 Jun 2004 06:50:35 -1000
To: xxxxxxxxxx@gmail.com
Subject: Account notify
From: staff@gmail.com
Message-ID:
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
   boundary=”——–spfbdvelbpwamfsylmjm”

I pasted the text instead of posting an image so people can read the content of the header directly. Tricky bastard. I’m no expert on forged headers, but I’m pretty sure that this message isn’t from the staff at Gmail. It may come as a surprise that someone who’s worried about privacy would click on an attachment and not question its origin, but I’d like to think that I’m not the only one susceptible to lapses in judgment. I’ll be more cautious from now on, but I hope Gmail fixes that security hole.

And, just in case, I changed my signature to "If you’re worried about privacy, reply to this address – x@hotmail.com"

A chain letter.

Despite the claim of giving good luck to all those who pass it along, I was worried about the consequences of not following its menacing instructions; however, I wasn’t that worried, since I eventually just threw it in the trash, more upset at the fact that it wasn’t a love letter.

I never thought much about that incident even when I received several chain letter emails (which I will call CLEs for short) later on in college. My typical response was to hit "Delete" and move on to the next email. In 1997, I received a CLE that said if I sent it to 10 other people, I could safely ignore any other subsequent CLEs for the rest of my life. I’m not particularly superstitious, but I thought it might be useful for my friends who might be (although, I still feel dirty sending it). I got a couple more CLEs since then, but I can’t even remember when, since I never thought twice about deleting them.

I thought I was finally free of this plague of the internet, but I was wrong. I received a CLE on March 11, 2004.

This message has been sent to you for good luck in sex. The original is in a room in Palaiseau. It has been sent around the world nine times. Now sex has been sent to you. The "Hot Sex Fairy" will visit you within four days of receiving this message, provided you, in turn, send it on. If you don’t, then you will never receive good sex again for the rest of your life. You will eventually become celibate, and your genitals will rot and fall off. This is no joke! Send copies to people you think need sex (who doesn’t)? Don’t send money, as the fate of your genitals has no price. Do not keep this message. This message must leave your e-mail in 96 hours. Please send ten copies and see what happens in four days. Since the copy must tour the world, you must send it. This is true, even if you are not superstitious. GOOD SEX, but please remember: 10 copies of this message must leave your e-mail in 96 hours or you will not have good sex again for the rest of your life!!!!

I am pretty sure that the person who sent this to me thought it was funny and sent it on as a "joke", but it simply boosts the ego of the person who originated the message and adds unwanted traffic to the system. In effect, CLEs are just as bad as spam! Apparently, there are still some people out there who don’t understand this. I appreciate the occassional joke, but this particular message is somewhat threatening, and I detest threats.

For those people who actually do believe in these things, I contend that someone would never send a CLE to their real friends. What if your "friend" was unable to check his email for four days (it’s happened to me a couple of times)? Don’t you think that it’s a bit harsh to deny him "good sex again for the rest of his life" for such a trivial thing? At least with spam, you can safely ignore it without worrying about having a truck hit you or losing your genitals.

Spammers may be sociopathic, but it isn’t personal, and it isn’t specifically targeted. People who send chain letters of any type to their "friends" have no such excuse.

I was never naive enough to believe that I could escape the torrential rains of the Northwest or the oppressive snows of Alaska, but I was hoping for better weather here in California. In what would seem like an apology to all those unfortunate souls who must suffer through the heavy precipitation, Subway has a special offer when it rains at a particular Subway location:

Buy one 6 inch sub and a 21oz drink or larger and get another 6 inch sub FREE!

It’s raining, I’m hungry, and my friend is over looking to grab a bite to eat, so I suggest going to Subway. I used this deal on Friday, I used it on Sunday, and I thought it would be okay yesterday. Obviously, this didn’t happen since I’m sitting here writing this rant.

I ordered a foot-long meatball sub and asked for the “rainy-day deal”. As I’ve mentioned in a previous rant, I always total the bill in my head in case something goes wrong (math is useful), and again, something went wrong. A 6 inch meatball sub costs $2.59, and a 21oz drink costs $1.29; if we add these two and tack on tax (8.25%) the total should be $4.20. So I pull out a $5 bill and get ready to pay, confident in my arithmetic. At this point, the cashier pulls out a cup, one size larger than I usually get, and says that $5.74 is the total.

Of course, this is pretty shocking since the total is way off from what I thought. I pull out another dollar and give it to her and she gives me the change. I ask her if that cup is a “medium” since it’s bigger than the one I got last time. She assures me that’s the one for the deal, so I drop that line of thought and move onto the more obvious discrepancy – the price of a Meatball sub. I ask her if the 6 inch Meatball sub costs $2.59, and she replies, “No, it costs $3.89 – it’s what the register says.”

I then look up and point to the sign that says it costs $2.59 and ask why there’s such a huge difference. She just shrugs and repeats, like a broken record, “It’s what the register says.” I’m not into harassing people who work at fast food restaurants, but I’m not about to forgive such a glaring error.

I insist that something went horribly wrong and that she needs to fix it. I pointed out that $3.89 for a Meatball sub is ridiculous since that would mean it’s one of the most expensive subs on the menu. Fortunately, a woman who seemed to be in charge came by and to helped her out with the register. It took about 5 minutes for them to work out the error, during which several people in the line seemed to be upset that I was arguing over the total. I was felt righteous in my cause against pulling one over on the average joe (who happened to be me at the moment) so I crossed my arms and put on a neutral look. The total came to $4.42. I knew that the drink was larger than needed (32oz) for the deal, but I figured I embarrased her enough, and 22 cents is a small price to pay to exercise my right to call people on their mistakes.

This whole affair makes me wonder if the people working at fast food places are simply making mistakes, or if the management is telling them to “convince” customers to order more than what they ask for. About a year ago, I ordered a “Classic Double Combo” at Wendy’s about a year ago, and the cashier asked me if I wanted a “Medium Combo”. I thought that “Medium” meant “Regular” but was proven wrong when I saw the words “Upsize” appear on the register. Of course, I questioned her why she charged me more, and she said that I “asked for it”. Luckily, I was able to change it to a “Regular” since they didn’t start working on the meal yet.

Apparently, the relative sizes of soft drinks had changed, and what used to be called a “Medium” is now called “Regular”, a “Large” is a “Medium”, and a “Super-Size” is a “Large”. I can only theorize that the whole idea of cashiers asking if people wanted to “Super-size their meal” didn’t work too well, so they conspired to subtly shift the sizes over a notch, tricking the public into buying one size larger than before. Sure this may be profitable in the short run, but isn’t America already fat enough? Perhaps there is an even more subtle conspiracy going on to make Americans obese so that in the future we will depend on the medical and pharmeceutical industries to help sustain our bloated existence. Hmm…

After all of this, I learned two very important lessons:

1. Always check the receipt.
2. Read the fine print.

I should probably avoid going to that particular Subway for the next month too…

Now, the last item I listed above seems to be pushing it. Isn’t the whole point of the Atkins Diet to get rid of or severely limit the amount of carbs that you intake? I won’t pretend that I know much about how the Atkins Diet works, but isn’t having any pasta or bread cheating, just a little? I suppose that pasta and bread makers everywhere are feeling the pains of this dieting fad to be so desperate as to reduce the number of carbs in their foods. They even think it’s necessary to slap on huge, brightly colored labels proclaiming their products to be, "Atkins Friendly." Of course, I wouldn’t be surprised if Lipton slapped a bright orange "Atkins Friendly" label on their box of tea bags – it would balance out the new "190mg of Antioxidants per Serving!" label on the front.

A billboard near Sunset Boulevard. Picture donated by idprism.

The latter may seem ridiculous, but that pales in comparison to some of the beer commercials that I have seen recently. An athletically toned man and woman look at each other and then dive into a pool. It’s obvious that they’re racing each other. Predictably, the woman beats the man, and when he looks up he sees that she’s already out of the pool, and handing him a bottle of Michelob Ultra (a "low-carb" version of their beer). I don’t know about you, but I don’t think that drinking beer after a workout is the best choice of beverage. Perhaps these people have never heard of the term "empty calories." Michelob isn’t the only one using this interesting logic; Amstel Light is apparently "low-carb" too.

Okay, so people are into it; I can deal with that. My brother even told me that he had some success with it. That’s cool. What bothers me is my mom telling me to eat less rice. Even after years of having rice with every meal, my mom has said, "Don’t eat so much rice." When an asian mother tells you that you need to eat less rice, something is seriously weird in the world.

Screw that. I need my pasta.

Over the past couple months, Windows XP would seemingly crash at random times giving me the following dialogue in my system tray:

Windows – Delayed Write Failed : Windows was unable to save all the data for the file F:\WINDOWS\system32\config\SysEvent.Evt. The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware or network connection. Please try to save this file elsewhere.

One of the recurring consequences of this failure was that the Current Transfer Mode: for Device 0 would spontaneously change from Ultra DMA Mode 5 to PIO. This happened a couple of times before, but never as frequently as in recent months. I was a little worried that my relatively new (February 2003) Western Digital: Special Edition hard drive was defective so I did a little research with Google.

Most of the links that I found warned that the symptoms that my computer was exhibiting pointed to an imminent failure of one’s hard drive and the destabilization of the internet and society. Of course, this would worry any politically-minded computer geek, so I ran SCANDISK a couple times over the past couple weeks looking for any problems; however, computers, like life, aren’t that simple. The tests said all of my hard drives were in tip-top shape, and I shouldn’t worry about the little things in life. To a person like me, this isn’t a satisfactory answer, especially since I would get the same errors. For my next trick, I went into the Device Manager and unchecked the box that said Enable write caching on the disk. I had no real reason why – I was just guessing at this point. Everything seemed fine for a bit, but the crashes would still occur. I was starting to become afraid that restarting my computer so much to go from PIO to Ultra DMA Mode 5 might cause it to implode, destroying my large collection of fanfiction that I had collected over the years and some recent pictures I had harvested from 4chan.

I really had no idea what could be the problem. Was it the hard drive? Now that would be pretty irritating since it isn’t even a year old. The motherboard? Maybe. It is a couple years old. Maybe I simply needed to reinstall Windows XP? I really didn’t want to do that though, since it would take at least one whole day to get back to normal. The problem with computers is that it is sometimes difficult to pinpoint where the point of failure is in your system. I decided to use the age old strategy of leaving it alone for a week and praying to the computer gods to make it go away.

No, you don’t get a prize for correctly guessing that this didn’t work. =P

After about a week and a couple more crashes later, I decided to revisit Google for a new solution to my computer woes. Despite my limited intelligence, I struck upon a combination of words ("windows xp pio dma") that brought me to a link with an answer I had previously missed. In it, I found a symptom similar to the one that I was experiencing.

For repeated DMA errors. Windows XP will turn off DMA mode for a device after encountering certain errors during data transfer operations. If more than six DMA transfer timeouts occur, Windows will turn off DMA and use only PIO mode on that device.

As I read on, I came across the following:

All CRC and timeout errors are logged in the system event log. These types of errors could be caused by improper mounting or improper cabling (for example, 40-wire instead of 80-wire cable). Or such errors could indicate imminent hardware failure, for example, in a hard drive or chipset.

The bold type is my own correction. It actually says, "40-pin instead of 80-pin cable," but this is a misprint. This set off alarms in my head, so I quickly turned off my computer and pulled the cable for my hard drives. Sure enough, the specially rounded IDE cable that was supposed to have 80 wires only had 40. I even found the bag that the cable came in.

As you can see, the label on the bag is wrong. D’oh! I didn’t even bother to check when I bought it a couple years ago when it was all the rage, and here I am paying for that tiny lapse in judgment. Go ahead and laugh at me; I deserve it. I was running my system at less than half its capability with many errors and crashes for the past 10 months, all because of a stupid little cable. I probably didn’t notice any errors from the bad cabling before since my previous main hard drive was ATA-66, and I was running Windows 98 SE, which I simply grew to ignore weird things happening – it’s Microsoft after all.

There is one positive aspect to this whole fiasco. After putting in the 80-wire cable, my system feels a bit faster than it used to…

I bought the original CD [VICL-60905] straight from Japan via CD Japan. It is a first pressing, limited edition version that came with a mousepad that I even got signed by Kajiura Yuki.

I’m pretty sure that she would’ve noticed if it was a bootleg. I actually stopped an ignorant fan from getting his bootleg copy signed – I try to help people when I can with my knowledge and experience in spotting bootlegs over the years.

As further proof of my ability to read and type, I present the following scan from the booklet, specifically for the song aura to refute those who claim that I am wrong.

It is pretty obvious that the lyrics in the book match with those in the .hack//SIGN section. What may not be so obvious is that the lyrics on the right are a translation of the English on the left. For those of you who don’t know much Japanese, the line says moshi anata ga yami no soba ni iru no nara. Amazingly enough, this means if you are near to the dark! I dare say that this isn’t a coincidence! The same is true for stray child, the other lyric mentioned in the post.

Finally, the claim that "I was told the the lyrics to alot of songs from .hack//sign from many different people, yet only this site says different" is quite weak. I did a search on Google and the top ten sites that had lyrics for .hack//SIGN were the same as the ones I posted. It’s amazing how so many sites agree with me. It’s probably because they are correct!

I think I have covered all of the points brought up in that post. The only thing I can’t really confirm is if that person’s claim that "Emily Bindiger says the lyrics you posted are wrong" is true or not; however, if I do get an email from Emily Bindiger, I’ll be sure to fix the lyrics.

I doubt it though…

Note: I received a curious email from a Joshua Mullin on July 15, 2004 that said

Hey, I remember reading about your rant around 2003, I think. Something about "Aura"’s lyrics? Well anyway, I have a loose-email-friendship with Emily, so I’ll ask her about that. (I need to talk to her anyway.) I know it’s old, but I’d like to concrete either side with proof for you. (Personally though, I’m pretty sure you are right.)

Now, I didn’t expect anyone to actually care enough about my rant to go through the trouble, but I was intrigued, so I encouraged him to ask. On July 16, 2004, I received the following response [I edited out non-relevant information]:

I don’t ever recall saying anything about anything to anyone regarding lyrics being correct or incorrect! Stuff gets around sometimes.
All the best,
Emily

Curiouser and curiouser…