Okay so it's 11pm and I am supposed to catch a flight to AC in the morning. I was also expecting a friend to come by the house and pick up Keis laminator and art show pictures so I'm a bit worried. Gonna start packing up these things in some alternative arrangement just in case the original plans fall through.

Edit: He showed up, stuff is on its way to Pittsburgh.

Wow, it's like all the biggest celebrities of my childhood died this week.

Ed McMahon, Farah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson.

RIP.

As a quick followup to an earlier post about Funimation and their dubtitling. I did some searches to see if I could get a real subtitle timing track for the show, and found an article claiming that there are actually TWO subtitle tracks on the DVD's. One is a dubtitle and the other... is a real subtitle of the japanese! I am at work as I type this so I haven't checked whether it's true, but if it is then I will have to apologize to Funimation.. for the most part. They still fucked up the labeling on the DVD's.

According to this article I'm a credit card "deadbeat." I think that's pretty awesome, and I'm looking forward to seeing what crops up in the future from the credit card companies.

Went and saw "Up" last night, had beer and ice cream during the movie. Good times, fun movie; now I want a zeppelin and a talking dog. >(

I am so angry right now. First a little back story.

I've been an anime fan since probably around 1995 or so, when I first started identifying the extremely detailed animation that I enjoyed as a kid as originating from Japan. Since then I have seen plenty of movies and shows, many in "fansub" form. In the early years this meant that I mailed a VHS tape out to a "fansub distributor" who would then copy from a "master" (read: highest quality copy the distributor had, hopefully first gen or close to, from the fansubbers themselves) and you'd hopefully get a tape back that had reasonable quality.

As anime has become recognized in the United States, and popular, the quality of anime produced in Japan seems to have declined. The last notable exception I can think of was Full Metal Alchemist, whose television series FINISHED in Japan in 2003 - over six years ago. So I've been watching far less anime than I used to. Pretty much none, honestly.

Since I stopped paying attention it seems Funimation has crawled up the ladder to become a powerhouse of anime translation and distribution. No doubt fueled by the popularity of the Dragonball series and the explosion of interest for their dubbed garbage over cartoon network.

Now, a few weeks ago I saw that they had purchased and translated Yu Yu Hakusho. This was a favorite of mine from the early days. It is, as their box says, "A straight up pull no punches fighting anime."

Even in the early days Funimation was known for being TERRIBLE dubbers. They would rewrite situations and relationships to make them more interesting for an american audience (supposedly). Creating tense relationships where there were none, or adding a lot of extra dialog for little apparent reason. I had no experience with their subtitles and mistakenly assumed that the subtitles couldn't be bad; they'd just translate the japanese, right?

WRONG.

Rather than translate the japanese, they have treated the subtitles like closed captioning on their own shitty dub. This means there are scenes that are exceptionally wordy when the characters barely said anything. To compound that headache I know enough japanese to get a rough translation of what they're saying, and it's half the time it's NOT what the subtitles are saying.

Add to this the fact that EVERY ONE OF MY DVD'S WAS MISLABELED. I bought a season one box set with four discs. Discs 1 and 2 were discs 3 and 4, and vice versa.

With the shitty quality of this company it's a wonder anyone buys from them. Then again, I've seen the modern anime community and it's not pretty.

I'd almost rather be watching the old nth generation fansubs than Funimations DVD's.

Busy day of running around and getting Kei's errands done, and we forgot to go to the gym! :(

Went to visit a local Shiba Inu breeder who lives all of ten minutes away from us. The farm was super cute, she had Alpaca's and a horse and chickens and cats and ZOMG SHIBAS. They were super excited to have visitors and were definitely the most socialized shiba's I had ever seen. They weren't hesitant at all to come say hello to new faces.

The woman herself was also very friendly and it turns out she had just bought two alpaca's from the family of a close friend of mine! We spent two hours talking about her shiba's and who there was related to whom, where their sisters/brothers were, and shiba care in general. All the while I'm getting swarmed by shiba's.

Now I'm having shiba withdrawal!

So yesterday at work I developed a headache, which quickly became a migraine. It persisted throughout the evening and until I went to bed. It was gone when I woke up this morning but now an hour later it seems to have returned.

Now one of my teeth is bothering me. What are the chances these two things aren't connected? Also for the record, I never had wisdom teeth removed. Possible suspect?

Maybe I'm just over thinking this migraine. They do happen for no reason sometimes right? I'm not prone to them at all.

Why am I only a little surprised by this?

( Which Star Trek Character are You? Quiz )

Someone over at the Food Porn community posted some pictures and a recipe of deviled eggs that Kei and I just HAD to try. So last night Kei had deviled eggs ready when I got home, and I made some quick fiddleheads to go with them. It was a delicious dinner.

I also watched 21 last night, which is the movie adaptation of a book I love called Bringing Down the House. Unsurprisingly the book was better, but 21 was still good. I can forgive the changes done and understand that they were made to better fit a movie format.

Also, I guess you don't subtitle in "Based on a True Story" if you're based on a book which is based on a true story? I kept expecting them to wrap it up with that, but either they don't do that when it's based off a book OR they deviated from the story enough to draw the line and say it's now mostly a work of fiction.

Oh hey! There appears to be a Ural Dealership in Massachusetts now!

SWEET!

Had a very satisfying weekend!

On Sunday I drove to Vermont and visited my mum for Mothers Day. Brought her some gifts from Yankee Candle, talked with her a while, went for a walk, and brought her and my brother out to lunch.

On our walk she took me down a road behind her house which follows a brook in Putney. I've lived in and near Putney for practically all of my life, and somehow had never been down this road. It's barely populated at all down there, I think there was at most two residences at the very bottom of this winding dirt road. There were however quite a few foundations, flagstone walls and concrete slabs. I spotted a wooden house on the other side of the brook, and when I got closer to it I realized it was actually a very old grist mill. The attachments that would have connected the mill to a water wheel were still attached and seemingly in good condition. I snapped several pictures of the building and moved on down the stream where I found a plaque which talked about the area. The almost empty dirt road we were on had been the center of industry in putney in the late 1800's. A small map on the plaque showed that the concrete slab I saw earlier was part of a Saw Mill, and that the Grist Mill I saw was what I thought it was. Where the plaque stood had once been one of Putney's two paper mills. I got some pictures of the concrete blocks / flagstone pier and what remained of a brick wall to the paper mill before we turned back and went to lunch.

Amazing the things that turn up in towns you think you know!

Then yesterday while running around to complete several errands I decided I needed to get some DVD+R's to burn to. Picked up some lightscribe ones since I hadn't tested the drive in the new computer yet. At the same place Kei discovered that the exact printer model she had been looking to get was being sold there! So I bought that as well.

Conclusion: Lightscribe looks pretty awesome.

Finally ended the weekend with a trip out to Chunky's with a friend to see Star Trek. Good food, excellent movie. Would see again! Every few minutes something would happen that would remind me of Diane's post about the movie and I'd hear her say, "It's Totally Trek!" It was definitely a great reboot; well worth watching I think whether you're new to Trek or not. Definitely some gems in there for those of us who are very familiar with the characters and stories, without assuming that its viewers have that knowledge.

I continue to be convinced that British foods are fun, tasty, and absolutely horrible for you. Last night we made Scotch Eggs, a food that I had never heard of but is apparently so common in the UK that you can buy them at gas stations. It was very yummy! Definitely more of a Breakfast / Lunch food than Dinner though! Definitely ranks up there on my yummy breakfast foods list, next to the other british favorite, Eggs in a Basket. Of course Eggs in a Basket is much much simpler to make...

It seems that the Windows 7 release candidate is out. I've heard a lot of good things from friends who have used the Beta. I may just back up the home PC and install it in the next day or two to try myself. I did build the thing with the intention of putting Windows 7 on it (a lot of the hardware... is not fully implemented in XP which is what it's currently running).

I can't wait for kickball to start in two weeks.

This is the kind of day I love here in Boston. Bright, partially cloudy, crisp but not cold.

Definitely feeling like I woke up on the right side of the bed this morning. Had myself a breakfast burrito (a rare treat, they are fairly fatty >D) and a coffee. Now I'm sitting in my office; went through the trouble of unlocking my windows (they are like doors, they have locks and they block out the sun) so I could let in the sun for once. Going to have to take a walk around Boston a little during my lunch break to enjoy the weather.

The burst of summer like weather earlier last week has hit me with the WANT bug again for summer toys. I don't mean squirt guns and inflatable pools (although those ARE cool!), I mean drooling over motorcycles and convertibles. It has also brought back the itch to get a Westfalia. I'm so torn because IF I do get anything I can only get ONE of these three things.

Also, the strawberry plant my dad gave me several months ago is now developing strawberries. There are ever so many of them on my windowsill! Only one is really red yet, but it's not fully developed. Gonna be up to my eyeballs in strawberries judging by the number that are developing on this one plant!

I HAD to do this one, because I tend to like animated movies better than live action ones...

( Animation Meme )

This woman is amazing, from Britains Got Talent television show performing Les Miserables I Dreamed the Dream.

I still can never think of anything substantive to write in my journal. All of the thoughts that I find interesting enough to write about occur while I'm far away from a computer; maybe it has become habitual that my brain just shuts off when I'm at a computer and lets the computer do all the "thinking." Maybe one day I'll actually write down my thoughts when I'm not at a computer and later move them, but I doubt it...

( Conventions )

( Exercise )

( World of Warcraft )

PS. I saw Watchmen a second time. I still loved it. We have the hardcover comic now since I had never read the comic. I still need to pick up V for Vendetta in hardcover too (which, as fantastic a movie as it was, was a better comic).

The question was raised, "Who watches the Watchmen?" Well I did! I will start by saying that I have never read the comic (though I have intended to and still intend to), and I still enjoyed it. There was a lot of jumping around between characters but they were all unique so it wasn't difficult to follow for me. I felt the story was really solid and the characters well portrayed, not-so-super-super-heroes with issues. This was not your typical super hero flick in any sense. The super heroes were gritty, did questionable things, disobeyed the laws, and had no real super powers outside of I-know-kung-fu (with the exception of one very naked very blue hero). Kei had issues with the soundtrack not being period in what otherwise is a period movie. I for one liked the soundtrack as it set the mood of a scene during a character/scene shift. All in all this is a definite movie on my must buy on dvd list (a list that I have so far failed to actually buy dvd's with sadly).

In other news we're on our second week at the gym and it's going well. Our personal trainer for an hour showed us how to use all the machines in the gym (and boy were we sore afterwards) and now I'm working on developing my own routine of what machines I want to hit. Kei is sticking to the cardio for now, while I start at the cardio and then do a lot of abdominally targeted machines. I'm finding I'm less and less sore after workouts now, I know it's a good thing but I'm not sure if that means I should increase my weights, my reps, or just maintain what I'm doing now. I'm not looking to body build but I would like to lose weight / regain my abs.

My pocketwatch just broke. :( I hadn't even wound it that much when the spring snapped and somehow bent the hour hand / broke the minute hand off. Guess I'll need to find another one, probably won't be a Weidi again despite liking the styling.

Also not really sure what's going on in WoW. I've gotten to the point where I have four pieces of the best gear I can get for my character, and the other 12 pieces are within the top 3 pieces I could get. I try to go after the hard to find things like rare mounts, but some I need a group for (and recently there are fewer and fewer people on at the same time, fewer times still that those on are what's needed to form a group), and others I need to be extremely lucky (such as hatching a green proto drake or finding the white bear mount, which which are both around 2% probability, or running into the rare spawn time lost proto drake). I may end up grabbing a partner and going hardcore arena for a little while. *shrug*

Also, I'm in Groton, CT for a training session today. Currently writing this in notepad while I wait for my "class" to start. If I get out early enough I'm going to hit the Mohegan Sun and hopefully win me some money. I hate going all the way to CT for training. Meh!

[Added later] Got out at 11:30 so to the casino I went! My record still stands with me never losing money at a casino - Went in with $20 and came out with $73! Larry's Lobstermania didn't let me down!

I've been talking between Kei and I about the need to go to the gym for a while now; how I miss just five years ago when I was significantly more physically fit. She wanted to go to the gym to rebuild her endurance. Neither of us has really gotten much exercise since moving to the Boston area. Finally, yesterday, we signed up for a local gym near us. We didn't really know what we should do or where we should start so we got on bike machines for an hour. I burned 350+ calories and went over 11 miles; my legs are still a bit sore.

Tonight we're going back to the gym to meet with a personal trainer who will show us how to use all the machines, listen to our goals and give us a good idea of what kind of workout schedule we should do! 

Project Buffsquirrel is beginning.