Apple

Greetings from an Apple store at Shorthills Mall in NJ =). I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving. I barely caught my train yesterday since I was up till 5:36 a.m. catching up on anime, mostly R.O.D. and by the time I woke up I was like “Nenene? Nununu? Arara?”. I caught the train with one minute to spare (it came early!), but everything else went smoothly. This year’s turkey was super juicy and tasty. Apparently it was a free range bird or something. This is my first experience blogging on a Mac, and with an insane ungodly-sized mega-monitor too. Interestingly enough, the custom little favorites icon works on this computer, so that really made my day. I talked with someone about FFXI in the Gamestop and picked up the strategy guide, as well as FF-X2. So, all in all, it’s shaping up to be a good Black Friday =).

Heavy Dose

Yesterday I made the mistake of watching episodes 5-7 of Kimi ga Nozomu Eien all in a row. There should be a Surgeon General’s warning against this. KimiNozo is one of my favorite series at the moment, but I had been putting it off for a while since it’s so depressing. I finally took the plunge yesterday, and afterwards I was really really sad. Then I flipped on the TV and they had the end of Jerry Maguire on, where Tom Cruise makes a speech to Renée Zellweger telling her how he misses her and she completes him. It was almost more than I could take and I was just like *SOB* *nod nod* *SOB*. I swear KimiNozo makes a complete sap out of me. I’m downloading episode 8 right now, though =).

I was thinking about how I needed to work on my cosplay picture when I happened upon a series of articles at Boing Boing dealing with creepy anime dress-up. I’ll just come out and say that some anime fanatics really frighten me. I really love many anime and manga series out there, and I can see how cosplaying might be fun for a group of friends at a con, but I think some people take it too far. Besides cosplaying, there is apparently the cosplaying subset of Kigurimi, which involves wearing masks, among other things. To me, this is FREAKY; just read some of the bizarre comments that Kigurimi-enthusiasts make! Sadly enough, a very large number of these enthusiasts are also cross-dressing males *shiver*. I’ll wear a Konoha headband, but keep that scary latex mask away please! Note that in my picture, everyone is cosplaying, and not engaging in Kigurumi. Not even Sakaki.

I finally took the car to the auto shop today. Driving around with leaky fuel line is dangerous, and more importantly ^__~, expensive. Smelling gas all the time is unpleasant as well. Hopefully everything will be fixed when I get back from Thanksgiving, and I’m praying the financial damage won’t be too bad. Fingers are in crossed mode.

The bad news parade continued this weekend as FunbariHotSprings battled (then) second place Tijuana Bibles to a 4-4 tie. I was shorthanded already, with Keith Van Horn’s back injury, but I only needed 1 sree pointah from zeh cornah, and 2 leebounds to take a 6-3 lead. Of course, then Jason Kidd takes a week off, and so I go down 4-4 instead. I guess I should be glad I held off a strong team (and I still lead the league by 2.5 games), but it would have been nice to win big =). I play current second place team BK Monkeys this week, and I’m already playing catch-up. Thankfully, his star player T-Mac has the flu ^__^.

Here is some more comforting news. Apparently Dell has gotten a flood of complaints regarding their Indian Customer Service Call Center, due to the heavy accents and obviously scripted responses. This is only for certain corporate customers, but I think it is an important step. While I understand Dell’s desire to keep customer service costs down, I think that all customer service agents should be easy to understand and deal with, regardless of country of origin. It’s just a skill that is integral to the job.

Photoshop no Jutsu

I don’t know why, but I have this fascination with Photoshopping various FFXI screenshots. I’ve been experimenting with ways to render lightning and how to use various blending tricks, and here are the fruits of my labor:

– Ichi: Chiriri experiments with some lame fire jutsu. This one didn’t come out as cool as I would have liked.
– Ni: This one isn’t a copy. It’s Chiriri’s original technique. I’ve heard that gathering the chakra for this technique makes a noise like a thousand birds.
– San: When you’re really short, sometimes the only way to get people to recognize you is to dress in orange and become Hokage.
– Shi: Finally, Chiriri weighs in on this Naruto-Final Fantasy madness.

I wanted to do a Mog silhouette with a picture of those chakra paths, like how Neji sees people with his Byakugan, but I figured this might be more trouble than it’s worth. Nenene could have been a Tarutaru too, now that I think about it.

Anger Management

You know those sweet homey cross-stitch things you see in peoples’ houses with wholesome messages? Well, if these decorations are too wholesome for you to stomach, you can now purchase a kit to make your own… subversive cross stitching. I think these could really make interesting conversation pieces, especially if your grandmother comes over to admire your arts and crafts skillz. The lady who runs the site got the idea as part of anger management therapy; who would have thought! This one is my personal favorite =).

Here is yet another form of creative anger management. Apparently iPod’s unreplaceable battery lasts only 18 months. The stenciling looks quite good against the original iPod ads. It just goes to show that violence is not the solution, and that arts and crafts can be used as a vehicle of revenge. While watching the protest video, the WM dumpster quickly caught my eye. When I first arrived at Williamsburg, I seriously thought that the WM stood for “William & Mary”. It even has the school colors! Their dump trucks love to stop in front of the (unmarked) cottage driveway and prevent me from pulling out in the morning/afternoon.

I was browsing through various emoticons when I found these funny computer emoticons. I really like the one where the smilie throws the computer after getting the Blue Screen of Death. My computer has been acting rather ornery as of late, and even the keyboard is acting up (the CTRL buttons are all worn out!!!). I’m starting to question the quality of Dell products. I think I have my heart set on an ABS Awesome system once I can come up with the $$$. Their home page was crazy hard to find on Google.

Ever since reaching level 8 and discovering the auction house (Arg!!! Everything I was selling to NPCs sells for at least 5x the gil at the auction house!!!), Chiriri has been cosplaying as a badass biker-taru. Full Leather Panic Alchemistaru >__<. She also forcibly calmed down a Mad Fox for the first time, yesterday. With a sword.

BLARG, somehow my Sunday post got deleted!! Now, the tale of the project interview and the engorged python of an omelette has been lost *weep weep*. I guess that makes it the very first **LIMITED EDITION** post here. Um, read the rest now before they disappear. I’m not sure how this happened, but I think I’ll need some anger management therapy too. Someone pass the popsicle sticks!