Paying up, getting lost going to ITT, bro's graduation, Harry Potter theme park, first SeraMyu, and other updates

While on the-leaky-cauldron.org just now looking for pics, I took the Hogwarts Professors Quiz and scored 90 out of 100. Not bad. Here is my little badge:



On Tuesday of the last week of May (last week I guess), I went down to the union to pay what I owed (going to the bank first so I was sure I'd have enough money to pay my debts in full on the spot). I got a little lost after getting off the bus and finally managed to get there just before they closed for the lunch hour (noon-1pm). I filled out paperwork, and the guy and I discussed what I owed. Apparently I owed a little more than I thought, since the system had tacked dues for June onto me after I received the letter. The guy said I could just skip June and then I'd just have to play catchup with the dues that would normally have come out of my June paychecks. I said that was fine and paid the $368 that I owed according to the letter ($200 initation, $168 for back dues for February, March, April, and May).

Wednesday of this last week, since I was off, I decided to go visit ITT Tech, since I talked to a guy from there that same day I went to the union and he had suggested that I visit the campus. (I had planned to go on Monday, when I was also off, but by the time I'd figured out how to get there, it was too late to leave and be back in time to take the bus home). I got up early so I could leave early. I had looked up the buses to get there, but thought taking the Coaster and the trolley would be faster in terms of getting to San Diego. I was wrong. It took me almost all day, instead of the 3 hours the bus trip planner had said, to get to ITT Tech, and after the visit, I ended up stranded cause it was around 5pm, and I was a good ways from home, so I had to call my dad and have him pick me up (since he works not too far away). So anyway, I took the FAST bus to the station and then took an express to another station to catch the Coaster, a small commuter train that runs in the area where I live. I rode this to the last stop, in downtown San Diego. From there I had planned to take the trolley and then walk a little.

That's where my trouble started. It turned out that to get to where I wanted to go, I needed to take the Green Line trolley, which could only be caught at Old Town, the stop before the downtown station. Fortunately, I could catch the Blue Line trolley back to Old Town and go from there. But I missed the first one cause I got confused with the signs (the Blue Line goes to Old Town going one way and to San Ysidro/Tijuana going the other way) and had to wait 15 minutes for the next one. Then from Old Town I had to sit on the Green Line trolley with a bunch of really loud schoolkids.

I got off at Qualcomm Stadium (home of the San Diego Chargers and the SDSU Aztecs, former home of the San Diego Padres), which I believed to be the closest stop. I got out to the street after walking through the deserted parking lot and started walking from there. I walked about a block and then asked for directions. No one was able to help me, so I ended up having to call ITT and explain the situation (fortunately, I didn't have an appointment with them or anything). The lady told me to go back to Qualcomm, catch the trolley going back the way I'd come, and get off at Fashion Valley Transit Center, where I could catch a bus to go the rest of the way.

Long story short, I finally arrived at ITT, albeit hot and sweaty (cause Mum made me wear this nice shirt) and more than a little embarassed. I ended up talking with a guy named Jay (not the guy that originally contacted me -- that guy was with someone else), who explained stuff and took me on a tour of the campus.

The programs there are intense, involving 15 quarters of classes for a bachelor's, if you're full-time. If you figure each school year has probably three quarters, that's quite a lot. The guy said you can finish it in 3 years and 9 months. Since 15 quarters would normally be 5 years, and they're doing it in 3 years and 9 months, it must be intensive and fast-paced.

My brother graduated high school on June 7. I somehow managed to get the whole day off when all I'd tried to do was get an earlier shift (since I found out really short notice when the graduation would be I knew I couldn't get the day off). It worked out ok cause I hadn't gotten a present yet, so I called the FAST bus and went to Wal-Mart to look for stuff. I ended up, between Wal-Mart, Target, and Office Depot, spending about $20 and getting together a "College Survival Kit" for my bro, including things I thought he might need, based on my college experience so far.

The graduation itself took place at the football field. There were 370+ kids in the class, so the part where the kids filed through for their diplomas got rather boring after a while. (In comparison, there were 48 people in my senior class, including me, at the private Christian school that I went to -- and that my brother went to through 7th grade -- and we were the largest senior class the school had ever graduated at that point).

Afterwards we went out to dinner -- my parents, my bro, me, and my dad's dad, my one surviving grandparent, who had managed to be able to make it. My brother liked his present very much. I think he may have liked my parents' present better -- they paid off the remaining debt he had with them on his truck (a '94 4Runner). Plus they got him a nice leather Bible in The Message version (which I know, from my work at a Christian bookstore, is a good version, especially for young people). They also gave him a check for the $1000 our deceased grandpa (died last summer) had allocated for him for education or a car (I have $1000 allocated to me too; I was planning to use it for college, but since I still need a car and am terrible at saving money, I am starting to think that having that money as a start for a car would be nice, since I want to pay cash for my first car so I don't have car payments).

I first saw it on the news box on my Yahoo page, and the Harry Potter podcasts I listen to have confirmed it: they are creating a HARRY POTTER THEME PARK. It will be called the "Wizarding World of Harry Potter" and will be located in the Islands of Adventure at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida. Though I'm not as hardcore of a Harry Potter fan as the hosts of the podcasts I listen to are, I still think I'd like to visit the park when it opens in late 2009 or early 2010 (which is what the official sources are projecting as the opening date), mainly cause I have never been to Orlando in my life and would like to go there sometime to visit the other theme parks, like Walt Disney World. Yes, believe it or not, I have never, ever in my 22-year-old life been to Walt Disney World. I have been to its West Coast cousin, Disneyland, several times though (including for Grad Nite). I haven't gone to California Adventure yet, however. I have heard it's ok.

As far as Orlando theme parks go, I want to visit Walt Disney World to say I've been there, but probably not a bunch of times. I do really want to go to Epcot though. That sounds fun. I want to see the World Pavilion and (if it's still there) that Innoventions thing I saw an ad for on a Bill Nye: The Science Guy video we have. I also am interested in Disney's Animal Kingdom, which I heard some about from a special on Disney World that they did on the Travel Channel, although it could just turn out to be just a bigger version of the San Diego Wild Animal Park. They are building that Everest ride over there which looks kinda fun and yet a bit scary too.

As for Universal Studios, I haven't even been to the Universal park out here in California, so I don't know if I'd go to the one in Florida, though I would certainly go to go to the Harry Potter theme park.

What we do know about the park is that it will feature a Hogwarts castle you can walk through and some replication of Hogsmeade (the only all-wizarding community in Britain and the second and final stop for the Hogwarts Express). I kinda hope they do some replication of Diagon Alley as well. It would be fun to see Ollivander's (the wand store), Flourish and Blotts (the bookstore), and Weasley's Wizard Wheezes (the Weasley twins' shop). I know the hosts of PotterCast are hoping they'll put The Leaky Cauldron pub in there (since their sponsoring fansite is called The Leaky Cauldron). I would definitely go to Flourish and Blotts. If they sold anything, I would buy something, even something small, just to get a bag or something that says "Flourish and Blotts." That would be awesome.

I thought of something as I listened to MuggleCasters Andrew, Laura, and Micah hash out the theme park thing for a good half an hour on MuggleCast 93: What will they do as far as money? If they wanted to make it really authentic, they'd have some place where you can change your "Muggle money" for wizard money (you can in Gringotts in the books, as shown in, I think, Chamber of Secrets, where Hermione's Muggle parents go to Gringotts to exchange money). That would be kinda fun.

Last Sunday, I had a bad day at work. Shelley chewed me out, and I hate that, and a bunch of other stuff happened that I don't remember. I came home and just needed something to get my mind off of the day. So I decided to watch the video file I had of one of the Sailor Moon live musicals (or SeraMyu as they are also known), called Last Dracul Saishuu Shou:
Chou Wakusei Death Vulcan no Fuuin ["The Final Chapter of Last Dracul: The Seal of Death Vulcan the Super Planet"]. (I had downloaded it for my Kawabe Chieco tribute video, since Kawabe Chieco played Sailor Mercury in SeraMyu for a short time; she also plays Osaka Naru, Usagi/Sailor Moon's best friend aside from the other senshi, in PGSM). It was pretty cool. Ono Hikari, the actress who plays semi-bad guy Blood Dracul Vampiru, reminds me of Michelle Yeoh. Chieco-san was pretty good too.

The musical was followed (in the same file) by the "Super Revue Show," a sort of mini-concert. This featured the special songs for each Inner Senshi ("Drive Me The Mercury" for Mercury, "Honoo no Messenger" for Mars, "Zigzag Slash" for Jupiter, and "Traditional The Grace ~Ai no Arashi~" for Venus), among other songs. Ono Hikari even had a couple songs in this revue, since she's acted in other SeraMyus. She had "Chasin' After You" as Taiki/Sailor Star Maker and "Onna Kaizoku no Sakusen" as Roof Mellow from the Kaguya musical. (She's also been Hawk's Eye and Prince Diamond).

All in all it was pretty good.

Crud. I stayed up super late again...and I have to work 12-9 tomorrow, which means an early wake-up time cause of the stupid commute. Good night.

55 days till Deathly Hallows, Jordin wins AI, union issues, CL sneak peek, missed a signing, I bought a DS, and other stuff

As you can see if you look at the Deathly Hallows/Order of the Phoenix countdown at the bottom of my main blog page (which is courtesy of MuggleNet), there are only 55 days (a little less than 3 months) until Deathly Hallows comes out. I am having trouble waiting that long. I just bought and re-read Order of the Phoenix (one of my 2 favorite Harry Potter books, the other being Prisoner of Azkaban) cause of the upcoming movie release, and that got me excited for the movie, which made me think of book 7, which is also coming oh so soon (about a week after the Order of the Phoenix movie). I have it pre-ordered, as I said before. While I am probably not going to marathon-read it (I don't have the patience), I am going to start reading it ASAP after I get it.

The American Idol finale was this week, split into the usual two nights of performance from the top 2 (Jordin Sparks and my favorite contestant, Blake Lewis) and results. It was hard to get into since I haven't had the opportunity to watch most of the season cause of work, even though we've been DVR'ing it (which my mom says is the only way to watch it, since that way you can fast forward through the zillion commercials they have during that show). The results show was Wednesday, and was 2 hours. Mum had it recording as usual so by the time we got home after she picked me up from work, we were so far behind (we were actually at where she paused it, which was at about 8:30) that we were able to fast forward through most of it. The fact that the results show was two hours long (as the Survivor finale reunion show always is also) is stupid. All anyone cares about is who wins, and announcing the winner takes like 5 seconds. The rest of the show is dedicated to people performing -- mostly celebrities, some performing solo and others with members of the top 12, as well as all of the past American Idol winners except for season 3's winner Fantasia, who was busy in New York acting in The Color Purple. So this meant there was Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard (who looks just as overweight as he did when he was on Idol, based on pics I've seen), Carrie Underwood, and Taylor Hicks. Then Clive Davis, who is the main producer for all the albums done by Idol alums, gave this long Oscars-esque speech about how well the franchise is doing, although he totally ignored Taylor Hicks's success CD-wise (focusing instead on how the first CD by Daughtry, the band led by season 5 fourth-place finisher Chris Daughtry, outsold Taylor Hicks's first CD) and babbled on continuously about Carrie Underwood, who appears to be his favorite Idol winner. Then he gave Carrie a plaque for selling 6,000,000 units of her album Some Hearts (which means it hit Platinum 6 times...wow). Anyway, as a result of this speech and the ridiculous amount of commercial breaks, the show ran over its time slot, meaning that Mum had to record part of the next program (Fox Evening News) so the part when they announced the winner wouldn't be cut off by our DVR system. Apparently this happened to everyone; I saw something on some other person's blog that said something about the show running over too.

The point is, the winner was finally announced, and it was...JORDIN SPARKS. Not my fave, Blake...wah. It's okay though...at least Sanjaya didn't win (Mum says she doesn't want to go see the AI live tour this summer, like we did last summer, for the sole reason that she doesn't want to see Sanjaya sing), and Blake seemed cool about getting runner-up. He'll record a CD though. I'm sure of it. Seeing CD's by past Idol runners-up, namely Clay Aiken (from Ruben's season) and Katharine McPhee (from last season), convinces me of this. Oh which reminds me. I saw at the Barnes & Noble by me the debut CD for season 5 finalist Paris Bennett (who is about the same age, if not the same age, as Jordin), and by one of the songs on the back was written "featuring Kevin Covais, aka Chicken Little." I found that quite funny. This refers to, for those who didn't watch season 5 of Idol, a bit of an inside joke. In that season, there was a guy in the Top 12 named Kevin Covais, who was 16 and kinda scrawny and short. Also, the Disney/Pixar movie Chicken Little had come out around the same time he was on the show. So the other contestants started calling him "Chicken Little," and the name stuck.

I received a letter a little while back about joining the union, which said I had to pay the money I owe them to join by June 1, or I will be terminated. I didn't have an opportunity to go over to the office to sign the proper paperwork until last Tuesday (the local union office is only open Tuesdays and Thursdays), but the day before at work I was having second thoughts. I have been considering looking for another job, and it doesn't make sense to join the union and then quit soon after. Plus, as I found out later, I won't qualify for benefits (i.e., medical insurance) until my 13th month of employment. So it will be awhile before I can get the benefits that I hoped to get when getting this job. This seems hardly fair...that you have to work there a year before you get benefits. I mean, what person my age expects to work for a grocery store that long? I was looking into other jobs, but now I am running out of time before the deadline, so I am going to go ahead and join the union after all. At least that way I can keep my current job while looking for a new one. I'm going to go this coming Tuesday, which I get off, to sign the paperwork for them to deduct the money I owe for monthly dues out of my paychecks, which seems to be the easiest way of paying them. Since I owe them quite a bit of money up front (initiation fee for one, which is I have no idea what, though probably not the whole $200 or so that they say I owe them), my checks might be a bit skimpy for a few weeks, but I've got quite a bit of money in the bank, so I'm ok.

Yesterday the Barnes & Noble by my work had scheduled a signing with Ben Schoen and Emerson Spartz, as part of the book tour for Mugglenet.com's What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Falls in Love, and How Will the Adventure Finally End?, to which they contributed along with some other MuggleNet people. I was going to not take a first break on purpose so I could take a 15-minute last break (which I think is how the break system works) and rush over there to get my copy of the book signed, but in the rush to get out the door to catch the regular bus yesterday morning, I forgot my copy of the book. I didn't realize this till I was already near work, and since I take the bus, I couldn't go home then or on my lunch to go get it. I wasn't too disappointed, since I only bought the book cause the MuggleCast people mentioned it so much, and I didn't even agree with everything in it. Plus I had assumed that I would probably be closing by myself and wouldn't have time to get over there anyway, and even if I had time, the line for getting books signed would probably be extremely long, and not worth risking going way over on my break to wait in. As it turned out, I had plenty of time, since our new guy Filiberto (or "Phil" as he likes to be called) was there to close with me, and things always get done faster and earlier when he's there, but with no book to have signed, going over there seemed pointless.

Since I had sprayed the floors with the foam gun (how they clean the floors here, rather than mopping), shortly after coming back from lunch (normally I sweep first, but Phil got ahead of me there and was already sweeping when I came back from lunch), by the time I got the dishes done (the last thing that needed to be done), it was only 7:40, and I was scheduled to be off at 9:00. So I tried to think of things to do. First I cleaned the three white floor drains (two of which are in the back under our prep and dishwashing sinks respectively, and the third of which is in the front in an accessible area under the cake case), a time-killing activity that my coworker Joseph had suggested. This involved taking out the grates and debris-catching trays from the drains, spraying out what was in the drains (which I used the sprayer gun for), and then putting some Block Whitener (a bleach-like cleaner that we use when the white blocks we use for counters get really dirty, hence the name...it also works on walls and on the drains) in them and letting it sit. Then I cleaned the grates, sprayed out the Block Whitener, and put the grates and trays back.

By this point it was 8:00. The only things left to make up on last week's sanitation chart (another time-killing pursuit I've been doing on the nights Phil and I have closed together, namely Monday and yesterday...normally when I'm by myself I don't have time to do that stuff) were "Ceilings, Fans, and Lights," "Proofer Box Filter," and "Freezer Floor." The first two I didn't know how to do (I don't even know where the filter is on the proofer). But the Freezer Floor I knew from working at the other Stater Bros. just means to sweep the floor, which often gets cluttered with dust and bits of ice from the door flaps. Granted, the bakery freezer at the Stater Bros. I'm currently at is about twice the size of the one at Sycamore (probably cause we share it with deli). I decided to do this task, since it would take some time (I was trying to kill time, remember?), and last night was a good night to do it since there weren't a ton of racks and 6-wheelers (6-wheeled carts we use for carrying large amounts of boxes, also called "U-boats" cause of their flat bottoms and U-shaped handles) in the freezer. So I grabbed the communal department jacket (since to go in the freezer for longer than a few seconds without a jacket or sweater is not a good idea, since it gets pretty cold in there), and was delighted to discover that it does in fact zip. Thus insulated, I got a broom and then started pulling all the racks and 6-wheelers out of there. This took some time, since there were quite a few racks and not a lot of room near the freezer to put them, and also I had to move some La Brea trays cause Phil (who had graciously done the La Brea breakout for me at my request) had put some of the La Brea breakout on the rack that the deli uses when they clean their salad bar at night and put the rack in the freezer. Then I finally got to sweeping and a customer came. So I helped him, grabbed a different broom (we have a large, wide broom that works best for sweeping large areas, better than the small broom I was going to use since it's easiest to use the small broom to get the stuff in the dustpan), and went back to work. By the time I'd finished sweeping and gotten the racks back in the freezer, it was 8:40. So I wrote a couple notes (one to Heather asking about an earlier dilemma Joseph and I had had over whether a customer who'd ordered a 1/4 sheet Tres Leche cake got free ice cream with it -- normally when you order a cake that is a 1/4 sheet or bigger, you get a free half gallon of Stater Bros. ice cream with it -- and one to Karen, who was scheduled to bake this morning, explaining about the La Brea racks I'd had to move). After this, I didn't have anything else to do, so I leafed through a book of kits by DecoPac that was on the cake decorator's table in the back (I figured if I was just going to stand around, I better do it in the back, where I wouldn't be seen by customers or any managers passing by--unless the manager in question poked his or her head in the back, which they rarely do--plus I think we have security cameras in the front, and I didn't want to be on camera).

Today I went to the mall, since it was my day off (my first Saturday off in quite a while), and I was bored. (I had planned to go out anyway to see a movie, but nothing I wanted to see was playing -- I don't really feel like seeing the new Shrek and Spiderman movies, and I haven't seen the second Pirates of the Caribbean yet so I don't think I'd understand #3, plus at movies like that it's always nuts on the day after it's released, as I found out when I went and saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on the day after its release). Before going in the actual mall, I went to a nearby Christian bookstore (namely Family Christian, the only real Christian bookstore chain out there), where I got a key chain for new house key (I lost mine--along with my treasured keychain featuring a super-deformed version of Ayeka/Aeka from the anime Tenchi Muyo, which I got from Comics n' Stuff, a store that no longer exists, at least at the mall near me--and Papa got me a new one, which I paid him back for) that is red and looks like a street sign. In white letters it says "Born Again Blvd." I felt this appropriate cause of what "born again" means (as I think of this I can't help but think of the song from Psalty's Kids Praise 10 called "Born Again"), and also cause my real name (which I won't reveal here) means "born again." Once I got in the mall, I wandered around mostly, only stopping in a few stores, as is my usual habit when I go to the mall. I saw EB Games and went in to look at the Nintendo DS games, since I'd been thinking the last few days about getting a DS, with the Code Lyoko video game coming out this weekend for DS. I looked up at the systems. They had some DS Lites for the usual $129.99, some used Lites for $119.99, a lone used regular DS for $99.99, and some "refurbished" DS systems for $99.99. Finally, I made one of my rare impulse decisions (the kind of decision that made me buy Hilary Duff's newest CD, Dignity, which is pretty good actually), and went out to the nearest ATM and took $200 out of my savings account, which I figured was more than enough for a used DS and a couple games. It ended up that the only non-new DS systems they had were the refurbished ones (the boxes above the games are for display only, as most people reading this probably know). The guy assured me that this still meant they were in good quality condition. So I said I'd buy one. The only one they had was in a bright red, but that was ok, since I didn't really care about color anyway, and plus it would match my GBA SP, which is in the slightly less bright red color the Nintendo people call "Flame." So, long story short, buying the system, two games (the Code Lyoko game and another game I'd been wanting to try called Pokémon Ranger), and a $10 1-year warranty that the guy talked me into getting so I could replace my DS if anything happened to it (they always try to talk you into this stuff; I got talked into a 6-month warranty on my used GameCube which did me no good cause I didn't have problems with it until long after my warranty was up), cost $182.36 with tax. I paid the guy the $200 in cash and got change back.

Other than this, my trip to the mall was uneventful. I finally found a plug for my laptop (which I had with me in its new bag -- a lovely laptop bag that I bought at Computer Circulation Center for $35 -- my first purchase with my debit card) on a pillar near the seating area next to the rather out-of-place indoor carousel. I used this opportunity to add more music to my mp3 player, since I'd only had time to add 17 songs before I left home. Then I worked my way back to where I'd come in to get to the small bus station at the mall so I'd get back in time to catch a bus from there to a station closer to my house, where I could catch a bus home. I played a bit of both games on the way home, once I figured out how to get past the save file naming screen for the CL game. I got home around 6:00.

I did not tell my parents that I bought the DS, mainly cause I don't think they'd want me to spend my savings on something like that. Strangely, though, I don't feel bad about it like I did when I bought the webcam, probably cause in that case my mum had specifically forbidden it. I've mentioned to my parents in passing about some of the CD's I've bought lately (in my quest for new music to listen to on my mp3 player, being bored with the music on my computer) and they didn't say anything, so they might not care about the DS, but just to be safe I am not going to say anything unless they see me playing it or something.

One frustration I have as far as the DS goes is that cause it is refurbished, it has some spots on the front where the paint's worn off. I was going to put some of my stickers on there to cover them, but I can't find my stickers. Then I decided it might be a good idea not to put stuff on there till I make sure the system won't have any problems or glitches.

Gah! It's already 10:30. What have I been doing up here? I've been on the computer I guess, playing my DS games when waiting for some program to unfreeze. I'm gonna go and eat some dinner. Tomorrow I don't work till 3:30pm, so I'm gonna go to church in the morning. Then I work Monday too the same shift, and I need to figure out if the buses for Shadowridge will run (since it's a holiday -- Memorial Day -- and so they may not run).

Oh and I saw the CL sneak peek ep, "William Returns." It was, um, interesting. I'm still holding my excitement till season 4 officially starts on June 5th though. Actually, I have two premieres to look forward to next week. The dub of Pokémon Diamond & Pearl debuts June 4, and season 4 of CL debuts June 5. Yay!

Anyway good night.

Thinking about college, not much sleep, kitchen remodeling, wanting to break free, debit card, etc.

I was thinking about college again this afternoon on the way home from work (I got off early cause I was covering at the Stater Bros. near me since the employees got to go to a special luncheon cause some customer won the lottery, so I was only scheduled 10-3 cause nobody was going to be there then). I think I was thinking of this cause today I just started reading the fourth and most recently released book in the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series, called Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood, which chronicles the summer after the Sisterhood's first year in college. I got it for Mum for Mother's Day (she's gotten really into the series; I lent her the first book and she really liked it) and she just finished it and passed it on to me. The more I thought about it, the more depressed I felt, and I even felt choked up.

Once I got home, I decided to take a nap. I got home around 5pm, and set the alarm to go off at 5:45. I felt like I slept for longer than 45 minutes though, which was nice.

I have not gotten much sleep lately, due to going to bed late and having to get up early to get to work at noon. So having a nap was good.

My parents have been remodeling the kitchen. They got new cabinets, a new dishwasher, and a new refrigerator. So all the appliances are stainless steel and match. Very nice.

These thoughts got me thinking about independence in general. I really want to move out. Even if I could rent a room or something. But the cheapest those go is like $400/month. That's a lot. I would have like no money after rent.

I started a checking account a little bit ago and ordered a debit card, which I received a few days ago. I really like it cause now I don't have to take out $20 if I want to spend like $2 and have no cash on me. I was just on my bank's website to try to figure out how to order checks, but I couldn't find anything. I did set up my BankOnline account though.

I'm really tired...it's been taking me forever to write this cause Tammy IM'd me and she can keep going forever, literally. Good night.

Oh one last thing...a sneak peek of the new Code Lyoko season airs tomorrow night! Yay! I have it set to record, since I'll be working tomorrow night. It was shown as airing twice, so I set it to record at both times in case it's a two-parter. If not, then I'll just be doubly sure it'll record (some of the stuff we set to record on DVR doesn't get recorded cause there's so much under "Recorded TV"...mainly my brother's numerous recorded eps of The Ultimate Fighter and my mom's many eps of Intervention or Grey's Anatomy -- our DVR didn't record the special premiere of Pokémon Diamond and Pearl cause of this...wah).

Oh and as far as college goes, I am seriously considering the game design B.A. program at ITT Tech. They have a campus relatively close by (in San Diego, about 45 minutes to an hour away from where I live) and yet far enough away that were I to move down there I would feel like the atmosphere was different. Plus they have job placement, which makes it easier to get a job after you get your degree.

All right...good night now.

Work changes, they finally fessed up!, appointment at Drake Institute, and other updates

A couple weeks ago, I got so stressed at work I had a breakdown. I really hate when I do this cause it is very unprofessional behavior. So I took my break so that I could calm down, at my co-worker Aja's suggestion. Then Marta (one of the managers, well actually a key carrier) came and asked me if I wanted to talk, which I was a little afraid about because usually when you go into an authority figure's office to talk, they chew you out. Plus, I had just been crying and that is a very unprofessional way to look in front of a manager. But it worked out cause I was able to tell them how working the late shifts I had been working (2pm-11pm or even 3pm-MIDNIGHT!!) had been not working out too well for my parents, who have to pick me up cause I can't take the bus that late and I don't have a car. They said they would look into it.

Initially, I thought I might end up just with earlier hours in the deli. Then Marta said (when I went with her into the office to get a band-aid on my lunch break one day) that she needed day Courtesy Clerks (a fancy name for baggers). If I did that, I'd be working 7-4 or 8-5. I said I'd think about it, then talked to Mum and Papa about it, and they said to go for it. So I wrote Marta a note (since she wasn't there when I got to work) telling her I'd do it. When I came to work the next day (my day off) to get my check so I could take it to the bank, Diana (the store manager) and Marta told me they were going to try me out in the bakery. I'm fine with that, since I did bakery for a little bit at the other Stater Bros., but it was a surprise.

So this week was my first week there, and it's ok, but I'm basically doing breakout all day, and it takes me half the day to do, which is not good. I should be faster. But then they only showed me how to breakout French bread at the other Stater Bros. (Toya showed me) so I didn't know how to do the other stuff (plus I pretty much always closed in the bakery over there). Oh well, hopefully I'll get better with time. The people who have been "supervising" me with this though (Karen, the main baker, and Shelley, one of the other morning people) are rather bossy about it. The other people in the department are nice, though. There's Katie, the bakery manager, who is nice and rather gentle; Heather, the Bollywood video-loving, homosexual-supporting cake decorator; Elizabeth, who's nearly-6-months-pregnant and was suffering some kind of back pain the other day (likely as a result), but who has (according to her) not gained any weight from pregnancy (which I find odd); Sara, a Hispanic girl who usually closes (thus I don't see her much); and Joesph, the only guy in the department and another usual closer, and who seems to have a stutter.

The rest I'll do really quick cause I've decided I'm going to go out and get myself dinner, so I should leave soon before it gets dark.

• A Confession: Remember how in my last post I was complaining about the MuggleCast "DH manuscript" joke and how they wouldn't confess that it was a joke? Well...in MuggleCast #87 (their April 15 podcast), when Andrew was (conveniently for them) unable to make the show, Laura and the others finally fessed up that the thing was a joke. I AM SOOOOOO HAPPY ABOUT THIS. Laura did a great job hosting that show too.
  
• Drake Institute Appointment: I had an appointment today with Mum and Papa at the Drake Institute to have a orientation about their treatment options so that maybe I can get diagnosis and treatment for my supposed Asperger's Syndrome. We had to watch a video for like an hour, and then we talked with a clinician. I was worried from the video that we didn't know much about what they did for the "autism spectrum" (which includes Asperger's), since the orientation video mainly focused on the Institute's work with ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) and ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). We said we'd go home and talk about it before scheduling an evaluation (which, for me, would include diagnosis). They gave us a price list. Just getting what's called a "brainmap" (where they map out 19 spots in your brain and measure the brainwave cycle) is $625!! The whole treatment thing, with the evaluation and stuff, is like $7,000. Sheesh, tuition and room and board combined at a Cal State school is that much. For treatment, they use neurofeedback (basically the same as biofeedback) rather than medication (I don't know what medication they give you for Asperger's anyway; I know they use medications like Ritalin for ADD/ADHD). I don't know much about biofeedback, but it sounds interesting. I know it can help with stress, thanks to some paperwork from Health Services at school.
  

Okay, I'm gonna go now. Bye.

Mad at MuggleCast, MC Hotline off the hook?, facing the music about the webcam, French in Action, my "karaoke performances"

I am rather mad at the MuggleCast hosts. On their April 1 show (which I finally listened to the rest of today, having started to listen to it last night), the main host (Andrew Sims) said that he had managed to obtain a copy of the Deathly Hallows manuscript from Scholastic and had photocopied it and sent it to all the other hosts. They then proceeded to talk about the plot (issuing a spoiler warning beforehand, which I ignored cause I was suspicious that the whole thing was a joke). Things mentioned included that Snape and McGonagall make out, Harry defeats Voldemort by putting some inflatable heart over his head to suffocate him (and the heart is thrown to him from the other side of the Veil by none other than Ginny, his supposedly fated love -- despite what people say about the lack of evidence for Harry x Hermione, I still support them, and apparently some other people do too...you can read an excellent article on their relationship here), Harry uses FaceBook to find the Horcruxes, and that when it all ends, Harry loses his magic and becomes a basketball coach.

As funny and utterly outrageous as these things (and the others I didn't mention) all sounded, the hosts acted as if they were being totally serious. Me, I was waiting and waiting for them to announce that it was an April Fools' Day joke, but they did not. I was pretty mad, so mad that I decided to call their U.S. hotline (1-218-20-MAGIC) to tell them I thought the whole thing was baloney. I tried calling and got a busy signal. Later, I was listening to episode 85 (this week's episode and the first regular episode after the episode with this incident -- they did a special mid-week episode in between), and they started off the show reading a couple e-mails from people who were as furious as I was about their little spoiler-filled book 7 (pseudo-)discussion. Then Laura (one of my fave hosts) said, "You know, a lot of people thought it was an April Fools' Day joke" and somebody (I think Andrew) said, "But I'm sorry to say it's not," or something like that (I was having lunch at Popeye's so it was kinda hard to hear the podcast on my mp3 player). I was SOOO mad. Not only did they spring the worst April Fools' Day joke I've ever seen or heard on the net (except for the infamous "Sailor Stars dub" April Fools' Day joke, which I actually believed, sadly, until I found out it was a joke) but then they refuse to admit that it is a joke. Seriously, people are starting to not listen to MuggleCast anymore because of this! Just admit already that it was a joke!!!

I think I am going to check the episodes for PotterCast for the same timeframe and see if they have any mention of this stuff. If MuggleCast is the only podcast mentioning these ridiculous things, then I'll know more or less that it's a hoax. (I will know for sure if they come out and confess, but it doesn't look like that might happen any time soon).

Just checked PotterCast's website, only to find out two things: I'm way behind on listening to it (more than I am on MuggleCast), and there is no mention of these supposed Deathly Hallows revelations (now, granted, they likely did not get a copy of this "manuscript," but since PotterCast's trio of hosts -- Sue, Melissa, and John -- are good friends with and friendly rivals of the MuggleCast crew, I'm sure they listen to MuggleCast and would've said something if the info was true. Plus, the news would've covered it, as the mother of this 8-year-old from Glasglow, whose e-mail on the subject was one of the two featured at the beginning of episode 85, said).

Anyway, I tried to call MuggleCast's US hotline four or five times throughout the afternoon and evening today, only to get a busy signal every time. So either the line (which is probably at Laura's house in Georgia, since she handles voicemails...the message has Andrew's voice though, which I know cause I've called the line before, even though none of my voicemails have appeared on air yet) was off the hook or something, or it was flooded with people voicemailing their angry complaints about this book 7 thing along with the usual people who call in with DH theories and what-not. This second option seems more likely -- I've gotten busy signals on the American Idol voting phone lines sometimes, especially right after the show ends when most people vote.

As for my webcam, I felt sooo bad about it, particularly after I opened the box at the encouragement of my friend Gilbert, who thought it was dumb that I was letting my mom dictate whether or not I could have one or not. So last Sunday (as in 2 days ago), I told my mom straight up that I'd bought it. She said she was thankful that I'd told her and that she was serious about not wanting me to have one. So the next day I took it back (fortunately I still had the receipt, since I'd bought a DVD on the same trip that I wanted to return also). I don't regret it. I wasn't exactly sure what I was going to use it for anyway, except for a stupid comedy thing involving a plush Sailor Mercury doll I bought a few years ago for $10 at ComicCon and a youma represented by the large geisha doll I have that was my grandma's till she died, when it came to me. A later version I'd come up with for this had Strawberry Shortcake come and save the day, along with PGSM Sailor Jupiter (who was to be played by me, since I physically resemble Jupiter more than any of the other senshi). Un-transformed Mercury was to be represented by my "Monaco doll" (another doll that used to belong to my grandma). I even bought a Strawberry Shortcake doll for the express purpose of using it in this comedy. (I couldn't decide between Strawberry Shortcake and Blueberry Muffin for a while...I think they had a doll there of Crepes Suzette also). Now that I look back at the thing, which was to be called "Mercury and Jupiter vs. Super Geisha," it seems dumb. (I'm keeping the Strawberry Shortcake doll though...it looks cute, and plus I'm not sure if I still have the receipt for that purchase...since I don't usually buy things I think I'll end up returning, I don't usually save receipts; the one exception is of course with clothes -- sometimes I don't try things on cause I tried on a thing but it was the wrong size, so I just exchange it for the right size without trying it on).

I was just thinking about "French in Action" for some reason. This is a video series I started watching on learner.org a while back (having learned about learner.org from my Human Development teacher, who pointed us to the "Seasons in Life" series) that is an immersion-style French course. I also borrowed some of the episodes on VHS from my school's library. I haven't watched it in a while. I may watch it again soon...I've missed Robert, Mireille, and Marie-Laure (Mireille's little sister).

To end this post, since there's nothing to really talk about besides that (my life is basically the same as it was), I'd like to present some "karaoke performances" I recorded tonight in Audacity using the lovely headset mike I bought a little while back. They are really just two songs, but there are three versions of one of them.

• W.I.T.C.H. U.S. Theme Karaoke Performance -- using a instrumental version of the U.S. "W.I.T.C.H." theme from the witch-united.net forums, I sing the song from memory. Go here to download: http://www.sendspace.com/file/g0ko20
• Mezase Pokemon Master: This is the theme to the first season of "Pocket Monsters," the original Japanese version of "Pokémon." I got the music from a site called the Pocket Monsters Repository. It's the officially released "karaoke" (instrumental) version of the song from the "Mezase Pokemon Master" single. I found lyrics in both Japanese and English on animelyrics.com and just sang from those. There are three versions:
• Dual Audio: This version has me singing in English and Japanese at the same time. This was accomplished by mixing the English audio track and the Japanese audio track, along with the music, in Audacity. It may sound a bit confusing (a lot of the time the English version overpowers the Japanese version...I had the mike a little farther away from my mouth when doing the Japanese version so as to prevent it from being really loud and also to avoid having my breath from getting picked up in an obvious fashion -- I have a habit of breathing through my mouth, so I have big breathiness issues when recording stuff). Download here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/k94yjc
• English Version: Just single audio this time, and in English. If you have translated lyrics for this song and they sound different from the ones I sing here (which are from Naoko of animelyrics.com), don't freak -- different people translate things differently (for instance, I noticed that the subtitles for the songs in Kirari Super Live seemed to be worded differently than the translated lyrics I'd seen on Sailormusic.net). You'll notice if you compare the English and Japanese versions that I make less pacing mistakes with the lines in the English version...in the Japanese version the first line of the first verse I mess up on cause it's supposed to be sung really fast. Download here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/6u3n29
• Japanese Version: Single audio like the English version, but this time it's in Japanese. My pacing with the lines is a little off here and there in this version cause for some reason I can't sing at quite the same speed that Rica Matsumoto sings this song. Download here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/6zjxt

Hope you enjoy these files! I'm gonna go now cause I have to get up early tomorrow to get to work at 11am.

Transferred, Gina's gone (no!!!!), Keepsake, Deathly Hallows cover, and other updates

Lots has happened since my last post, so much that I am still processing the biggest of the things.

First of all, I found out last Saturday that I was being transferred to another Stater Bros., this one in Encinitas. It is not the greatest situation for me transportation-wise. I've gone within a few days from a workplace I could walk to to one that it takes me 1 1/2 hours by bus to get to. Erika (the store manager at the store I was at) had told me last Wednesday she'd have me working at the Encinitas store the following week, but I did not realize that this would be permanent. I thought maybe they were just having me help out over there (they have people help out at other stores sometimes for a few days). No such luck. No reason given, no asking me if I wanted to transfer, a brushoff statement of "it's a reasonable distance" when I expressed concern about it being a long way for me to go.

My mom was saying I should look for another job since this transfer isn't very good transportation-wise, and so I'm going to look, keeping my current job for now. I hate to just quit now, even if there was another job opening, because it seems humiliating, after a little less than 3 months, to give up. Maybe it's just my pride or something, but I am the kind of person who will stick it through in tough classes and work environments even if they grate on me. I try to make things work until I can't do so anymore or I get through it.

I told Gilbert about it on IM not long after learning of the permanent nature of the situation, and he was saying the transfer was unfair and that I should just quit. I agreed that it was an unfair situation but was reluctant to just quit, for the reasons I already said.

I started at Encinitas yesterday, after a day off and the next day spent at another Stater Bros. for the General Merchandise Clerk class, which I must admit was ridiculously boring, filled with information I pretty much knew anyway from job experience, training videos from Wendy's that talked about food prep, and the county Food Handler's class I took, and 3 absurdly simple true/false tests, which you could ace no problem if you paid attention to the info being presented, since it gave you all the answers. I missed 2 on the first test cause I was tricked by the wording and put "false" when they were true, but the other two I perfect scores on. I had to be at work at FIVE A.M. Ouch. Not fun, especially since I'd gotten up the previous day at 4 a.m. to take the bus to the training, spent a whole hour getting ready, and then found out my dad was going to take me anyway, which left me with a couple hours to spare and no point in going back to sleep. Fortunately, getting in early means you get out early too, so I got off at 2:00. The strange thing was going to "lunch break" at around 9:30 AM, when pretty much no place that serves lunch and that is not a fast food place (or the almost-always-open Starbucks) is open.

Today was a slightly later day; I was scheduled to be in at 11 a.m. Unfortunately, I was 20 minutes late cause I missed one of my bus connections and thus had to wait half an hour for the next bus. So I asked the deli manager (that's where I am at Encinitas, btw...back in the service deli, after being in the bakery for about a month in the other store) if she wanted me to stay late to make up the time, and she said it was up to me whether to do so or not. I did stay the extra 20 minutes to make up the time, but I had to clock out right on time to avoid going overtime, which meant I had to hand off my task of putting fried chicken in the hotcase to Michelle, who I met today. The thing was though I was all hurrying over to the timeclock cause the clock in the deli said I had a minute before I was supposed to clock out, and I got there and the timeclock said 8:17 PM, which meant I had to now kill 3 minutes I could've spent doing something more productive than staring at the timeclock or looking at cigarettes (the timeclock's right by the cigarette/cigar/chewing tobacco case). This has happened at least once in the last two days -- the clock in the deli must be fast compared to the timeclock -- there's at least a 2-minute difference at all times, it seems.

The people in the deli are really nice. So far I have met only a small fraction of the half-page-worth-of-the-schedule amount of people who work in the service deli at this store. There are two guys I have met: Daniel, who usually opens (meaning he comes at 3am) and who is loud and obnoxious, and the more gentlemanly Alex, a CSR (Customer Service Representative; at the store I was at they act as checkers, but in a few stores like Encinitas, Alex told me, they are trying out having at least one CSR in each department). The rest of the deli crew are girls, as far as I have seen. Nely is the deli manager and doesn't look that much older than me, although I have often misjudged the ages of people I've worked with since I started at Stater Bros. (Michelle, the newest person in the bakery at my now old store, is around 40 but looks like she's 20). Since I am used to working for managers who were more obviously older than me, this is a new experience for me. Then there are Myrisha (not sure if I spelled that right...she's a talkative woman with a foreign-sounding accent), Clara (who transferred from the same store as me at the same time I did), Alicia (who doesn't understand much English), Diana (who is talkative and fun), the aforesaid Michelle, Celia (a nice lady who is very helpful), and a quiet but sweet Cambodian girl named Lang. There may be others that I forgot, but it's tough to remember them all.

As the title says, Gina Glocksen, my favorite girl in this season of American Idol, is gone. She, the "resident rocker" of this season's American Idol, was voted off last night, after landing in the bottom 3 with Phil Stacey and Haley Scarnato, both of whom could've been eliminated a whole lot easier this week if people actually paid attention to the contestants' singing rather than more shallow things -- Phil wasn't so hot this week with the song "Night and Day," and Haley is the model beauty pageant contestant but she honestly cannot sing at all and she shouldn't have even made it this far. Gina, on the other hand, sang a song called "Smile" that was written by Charlie Chaplin for his 1936 movie Modern Times (famous for being the last film to feature Chaplin's "Tramp" character and being the first Chaplin movie with sound, although it was not an official "talkie"), and she did it very well. She received good comments from the judges also. But even this did not help Gina when she was in the bottom 2 with Haley, who has somehow managed to get this far although her singing's not that great (Mum thinks it's cause she wears short skirts and such all the time, which I assume means Haley attracts a lot of votes from men who care about that stuff). And once again, surprise surprise, Sanjaya was safe. That kid is just weird, and his singing's not really that great, plus he picks very strange outfits (and hairdos, like his slicked-back hair this week and the faux mohawk last week). This week he wore a white suit, which looked sooooo wrong on him (his outfit last week was ok but the faux mohawk threw everyone off, including the judges -- Simon said "There must not have been a mirror in your dressing room"). It's a shame cause he sang a great song ("Cheek to Cheek") but that suit kept bothering me. But anyway, he is so darn popular that he keeps surviving on the show, even though he doesn't deserve it.

It's getting late, so I'll be quick on the other stuff.

• Keepsake: Keepsake is a computer game I bought a few weeks ago which I have finally started playing recently. It's an action-adventure sort of game with lots of exploring, though the story is more fantasy RPG.
  
• Deathly Hallows cover: Yes, ladies and gents, it's here -- the covers for the U.S. and UK versions of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows were revealed last week. You can see the U.S. front cover below, and more cover art here.

• I got a webcam the weekend my parents were gone. I finally opened it at Gilbert's encouragement, but I don't know what I'll use it for yet.
• I've got a big list of videos to do, which I hope to make soon.

That's all. Good night!

Weekend alone

This is the second version of this post...my computer got unplugged.

My weekend alone is almost over. I am a little sad...the independence is nice. And yet, I'm looking forward to not having to not always be downstairs all the time.

I was going to type more but now I'm too tired. Good night.

Weary but ok 5 days after the Ides of March

I know, the subject line is a little weird but I couldn't think of anything else (the Ides of March, by the way, is March 15...the date is famous as the date Julius Caesar was murdered and through a line from Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar that reads "Beware the ides of March"...also happens to be my old English teacher Mrs. Palmer's birthday, I think...which was funny cause it was in her class that we read Julius Caesar).

I have been closing a lot lately, so I have been tired a lot more than usual. I actually worked 8 days in a row (Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday of one week and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday of the following week) before getting a day off. Actually I was supposed to get all of last weekend off, but I had to go in on Saturday for 4 hours cause Gail (the bakery manager -- oh yeah I'm in bakery now I'll explain that in a minute) forgot to schedule someone to close. (I checked the schedule for this week, when I'm also supposed to have the weekend off, and she has people scheduled to close all those days so I shouldn't have to go in, which is good especially since my parents and brother are going out of town, so I won't have a ride home, since the buses don't run that late in my neighborhood).

In news since the 1st...I have changed departments at work. Erika (the store manager) thought I might do better in the bakery, plus this girl from the bakery named Samera wasn't getting along with the bakery manager and I wasn't getting along with Lily from my department, so Erika switched us. Samera really likes it in the service deli, at least from what I have heard from her. I do like the bakery, but I have finally worked with my boss, Gail, and well...she is somewhat strict and no-nonsense, which is a little intimidating for me to say the least. The weird thing is, when I was working in the service deli, I thought Gail was really nice, not strict at all. I guess things change when you actually work for a person. She reminds me of my high school French and 11th and 12th grade English teacher, Mrs. Burnworth.

Warton, Gilbert, and I are making progress on our "project." I still can't say anything cause this blog is linked on not only my websites but on the two forums I frequent as well, so I'm afraid if I say something the word will get out prematurely, which wouldn't be good.

This weekend I get to myself since Mum, Papa, and Andrew will be out of town (they actually leave tomorrow). Mum is meeting her friend from Oklahoma and they are going to Sedona (a city in Arizona) together, and Papa and Andrew are making their annual trip to Phoenix to see our local baseball team in spring training. Knowing this was coming, I made sure to ask for early shifts on the days they're gone, so I don't need a ride home. I put it on the deli calendar far in advance, but then I had to rewrite it on the bakery calendar (each department has some kind of calendar, as far as I know, for employees to write when they need to switch shifts or get days off) cause of my department switch. I wrote it on there first thing on my first day there, so Gail would have plenty of notice. She did give me early hours on Thursday (11am-3pm) and gave me Fri-Sun. off (which wasn't necessary but is nice...actually I expected to get Sunday off cause I had put on my application that I didn't want to work in the morning on Sundays cause of church, and so they couldn't give me an early shift). Tomorrow is still in limbo though. Gail apparently forgot about me needing an early shift that day and scheduled me to close. I called her yesterday morning and asked (politely -- she is big on politeness) if it was possible that I could switch shifts so I got off earlier. She said she would change it, but as of tonight, I saw no change on the schedule. Plus, she wasn't there when I came into work today (which is odd cause she was there when I came in at the same time yesterday...maybe she was off?) so I couldn't ask her about it. I'm going to have to call her early in the morning to see when I should come in. I'm guessing it's not super early, or she would've given me more notice. It might be as early as 9 though cause she said she was going to try to get me a shift where I got off at 6, and 9-6 is not an unusual shift to work (at least in the deli...don't know about bakery).

I guess I should go to bed soon so I can get up early to call her. Some brief notes on other stuff:

• Wizard rock: Still checking it out. I figured out how to download songs off of the bands' Myspace pages (yay) so I got a bunch of songs from bands I'd looked up. I like Philosopherock (their song "The Real Mad-Eye Moody" is pretty good...I think in general they must do parodies, cause one of their other songs, "Eulogy, Book IV," is clearly a parody of "Skater Boy" by Avril Lavigne, at least in the tune. The same goes for "Eulogy, Book V," which is clearly a parody music-wise of "Fallin'" by Alicia Keys). I also like Dumbledore's Army (their song "Voldemort's Return" is funny cause it parodies "I Will Survive") and a one-woman band called The Half-Blood Princess (I really like her song "Please Remus," which is unique in that it is from Tonks's point of view, a POV you don't really see in wizard rock songs). I still listen to The Hermione Crookshanks Experience (I finally got a few of that band's songs from its "supplemental" Myspace page), Harry and the Potters, and Hollow Godric (actually them not so much lately cause I've heard all the songs they have available for download on their site). I also checked out some other bands, like The Weasleys and The Wands. The band I really wanted music from was The Weird Sisters/Switchblade Kittens, but they didn't have anything to download.

I was gonna add more, but I really have to use the W.C., and plus it's getting late. Good night.

Laptop internet works once more, runny nose, work incident, wizard rock, back on YouTube!!!, and other stuff

Yeah you read that title right. The internet on my laptop works once more!! What happened was last night I got an IM from a friend of mine from Tech Links who knew I was having problems with the net and that I'd just done a full system restore on my laptop. He said, "Let's get on TeamSpeak [a voice chat program] and I'll try to help you fix it." And so I grabbed my laptop, some earphones and my mike and logged onto TeamSpeak. And we tried different stuff. Or rather I tried different stuff on my end suggested by my friend (I'll call him by his TeamSpeak nickname, Kakeru). Finally, he asked me to open up the wireless networks window and have it search for networks. I tried connecting on the first network available, and this stalled in "acquiring a network address." So he asked me if there were any networks I could get onto without needing a WEP key and such. I said yes and tried one. It connected, and I opened Internet Explorer. It worked! Then Kakeru, who thinks IE is a pretty bad browser, insisted I download Firefox. So I did that. I tried a few other sites, and found the internet worked fine. Yay!!!!!

I am worried cause I have had a constant runny nose today. I hope I'm not getting sick -- I have been sneezing some too. Well, spring is coming up, so it is probably the pollen in the air (I'm allergic to pollen). Plus the weather here has been funny as usual.

I had a stressful work incident today. To make a long story short, I ended up getting to work 1 hour and 45 minutes late because I misread my calendar and didn't realize when I needed to be in. I also ended up working like 10 minutes overtime in order to try to finish cleaning the cheese slicer, and right now they don't want us to work any overtime. It was only 10 minutes though so I don't think they'll be too mad. Since I came in close to noon (11:45), they'll probably be ok with me being clocked out by 9. The good thing is, I finished the tasks assigned to me for closing (cleaning windows, breading chicken and prepping quarter legs, and cleaning the two deep fryers). So I'm happy.

I am investigating the fascinating world of a genre of music known as wizard rock. Basically these are bands who sing about nothing but Harry Potter. I've gotten songs by 2 bands so far: Harry and the Potters, the sort of granddaddy of all wizard rock bands (I wasn't totally thrilled by their song "Platform 9 3/4," but I like their song "Save Ginny Weasley" -- it has a really catchy chorus) and a folk/Celtic wizard rock band called Hollow Godric (who I haven't listened to much yet). I went to wizrocklopedia.com and looked at the band profiles there, and then checked out a few of the bands listed in their complete band list. Not all the bands in the complete band list had profiles, unfortunately, so I mostly had to resort to listening to songs on the bands' Myspace pages. I only listened to one full song ("Song for Sue" by Sue and the Hufflepuffs) -- the rest I'm going to check out later (I'm too tired now). I did find a music video though on wizrocklopedia.com for a band called The Hermione Crookshanks Experience, which was recommended on some other wizard rock band's Myspace (I forget which one). The song was called "Float Away" and was done really well. The girl on there (who appears to be the only member of the band -- lots of wizard rock bands are like this, I found from my research) has the cutest little stuffed cat, which looks just like Crookshanks, and which even has a little Gryffindor scarf! Kawaii!!!! (You can visit The Hermione Crookshanks Experience's Myspace page, where you can hear some of the band's music, here).

Speaking of videos, one of the first things I did after getting the internet again on my laptop was to re-signup for YouTube. I had to create an account, delete it, and create a new one because I couldn't remember how to get into the Hotmail account I'd set up for YouTube. So I linked it to my new Gmail address, created for something Kakeru, Wartonchan from Tech Links, and myself are doing (we're trying to keep it hush-hush right now, so I won't elaborate, sorry). And now I'm in. You can find me at: http://www.youtube.com/AleraofRavenclaw

Well I said other stuff, but I'm too tired. I haven't been doing much. I downloaded some stuff from sailormoonfansubs.com tonight while waiting for YouTube to finish its scheduled maintenance, but so far I haven't done much else tonight except eat dinner. I just finished uploading all the videos I had ready to upload, now that YouTube's out of its maintenance period. This is aside from my videos that are on Putfile, which I am downloading one by one from there so I can upload them to YouTube. I also need to get the MovieShaker ones from our family computer. Then I'll be up to date. Plus I have some new vids planned, mainly "Code Lyoko" ones. I just have to get the CL eps again cause I lost them in the system restore.

Plans for tomorrow (or today, rather, since it's past midnight) are mainly to go to work on time (I'm working 2-7). I may go out before that and get my brother's birthday present. I'm going to get him some Xbox game. I don't know which yet. I may go to the mall so I can check to see if I can find a couple books I want. One is a book that is either out or is coming out called Brainiac. The book is about trivia and is written by Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings. I read a review of it in some magazine (Time I think). The other one is one I've been hearing about on MuggleCast a lot called Mugglenet.com's What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Falls in Love, and How the Adventure Finally Ends. It's written by staff people from Mugglenet, including MuggleCast's own Ben Schoen.

Speaking of MuggleCast, Jamie the Brit is back...yay. He was out sick for several weeks, I guess. I missed him, since he's one of my 2 favorite hosts (Laura Thompson, the sole girl on the show, is the other).

On a related note, I have found a fellow Harry Potter fan among my coworkers. It's Matthew, a 40-year-old homosexual guy that works in my department. (He doesn't call himself "homosexual" though...he says he prefers the term "queer"). It's nice that we have something in common to talk about...it takes my mind off my uncomfortable feelings about his sexual orientation. (For the record, I've never worked with any homosexuals before...at least none that admitted it). I just feel uncomfortable because, from my Christian point of view, I view homosexuality as a sin. I don't want to act like I accept his behavior, and yet I don't want to insult him by saying I don't. So I just say nothing.

Ok I'm tired. G'night.

Finally back on here

I haven't been able to post on here for awhile because I was having problems logging in, since the Blogger people wanted me to update my blog to have new features and stuff. To do so I had to make a Google account. Today I decided to just go to Google and create an account there, and it turned out I already had one, cause I'd made a Froogle wishlist. So now things are set up.

Anyway, not much happening here. I took my laptop into Staples today to get a diagnostic done, so depending on how long it takes them to do the diagnostic, I won't have my laptop with me. I am happy I finally got around to it, cause of something I'm working on that I'd rather not talk about quite yet.

I pre-ordered the last Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, from Barnes & Noble the other day. I am excited about getting it.

Speaking of Harry Potter, you'll notice that when I played around with the page elements for my new blog page, I added a Harry Potter countdown to the footer. This countdown is courtesy of mugglenet.com and counts down the days until the release of Deathly Hallows and the Order of the Phoenix movie, which premiers a week before DH comes out.

I also changed the blog description, since with my new format the description ended up in the header. It now says "Because even gym leaders (and college students) need a place to sort out their thoughts...". I think it's clever.

I am very tired tonight, maybe cause I stayed up really late last night (till around 1), probably cause I knew I could sleep in cause I had the day off. I was mainly trying to type up as much of this one thing I'm doing as I could, since I knew I would likely not have my laptop for a few days.

American Idol is coming on now but I don't think I'll watch it. Although I do need to stay downstairs to watch the dogs...well, either way I'll see it, cause it's recording for my parents and brother, who are gone (bro at work, parents at the gym). There isn't anyone who immediately catches my fancy at the moment. I may know better once it's down to the top 12. But last season I had faves as early as before the top 24 (Kat McPhee for girls, and Will Makar -- who narrowly missed the top 12, being one of the last pre-top 12 guys to be eliminated, along with Gedeon McKinney--for guys).

Speaking of reality shows, The Amazing Race has started again, and it's All-Stars this time around, bringing back teams from previous seasons. A few of them are pre-season 5 (when I started to watch the show) so I don't know much about them. But my fave team from season 5, Charla & Mirna, are back, which I'm really excited about. (You can see video of them here). I hope they win, cause a girl-girl team has never won the race before. Also, they got eliminated along the way in season 5, so for them to win would be great. I was just watching a video on cbs.com and there Charla says if they win she will spend her share on financing her and her husband's attempts to have a baby via in vitro. That's interesting. Mirna wants to use her share to help her and her new husband finance their new life together (she just got back from her honeymoon right before starting this season!).

Anyway, I hope they win. Basically anybody except Dustin & Kandace (the "beauty queens" from last season) and Rob & Amber (the "engaged couple" from season 7 who met each other on Survivor: All-Stars...they're married now though).

I'm tired, and Mum and Papa are home now, which means I can go upstairs if I want...I don't have to be at work till 5pm tomorrow, so I may stay up later tonight too. Not too late though.

Harry Potter, weekend off, long days at work, video making addiction?, got Kat McPhee CD...and other stuff

Yesterday, I finally got up the nerve to rent Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the only currently available Harry Potter movie I hadn't seen yet. I rented it at this little video store called Videos for You that is located near my work, along with Pokémon: Mewtwo Returns and an Olsen Twins movie called Getting There. I set up an account there last week and so far I've rented movies there twice now (including yesterday) on Fridays because those have been my early days (7-4) and I've had Saturdays off the last couple weeks.

I have to admit the movie was good and followed the book well. They cut out a lot, like the entire Quidditch World Cup match. But at least the events went all in order, whereas in Prisoner of Azkaban they had Harry get his Firebolt at the end rather than the beginning, for instance. However, it takes its time to get to things, not getting to the first Triwizard task until about an hour into the movie (since the movie is 2 hours long, this is like halfway into the movie). Also the beginning of the movie is a bit different. It starts with the scene of Voldemort and Wormtail in the old Riddle house where they are discovered by Frank Bryce, who is subsequently Avada Kedavra'd by Voldemort. This is from chapter 1 of the book. Then the movie cuts to Harry waking up from a bad dream and he, Hermione, and the Weasleys leaving for the Quidditch World Cup. They don't leave for the Cup until chapter 6 in the book, and Harry is shown in chapter 2 waking up from the dream that is the chapter 1 scene at the Dursleys', not the Weasleys'. In other words, they cut the Dursleys out entirely, as well as chapters 2-5 of the book. Chapter 8, which details the events of the Cup match (including the Weasley twins' bet with Ludo Bagman) is cut. In the book, Harry tells Ron and Hermione about his dream while they're heading back from the Cup to the Burrow via the Portkey. But the movie makes it seems as though he told them on the Hogwarts Express, since it cuts to the train right after Crouch and the other Ministry people run off to investigate who conjured the Dark Mark. Parts of chapters 10 and 11 seem to have been cut. The scene of Moody turning Malfoy into a ferret is moved to after the scene where he tells them in class about the Unforgivable Curses, whereas in the book the ferret scene happened before the Unforgivable Curses class. A bunch of the stuff leading up to the revealing of the champions (parts of chapter 14 and 16 and pretty much all of chapter 15) are cut, except that the arrival of the students from Beauxbatons (who are of both sexes in the book, not just girls) and Durmstrang, which doesn't happen till chapter 15 in the book, is moved in the movie to the opening feast scene, which makes sense anyway. Parts of chapters 17-19, like the Weighing of the Wands, are cut. Chapter 20, which covers the first task, is pretty much intact, except that the part where Hermione helps Harry practice the Summoning Charm is cut (her appearing in the champions' tent to try to help Harry right before the first task is probably their attempt to show her trying to help him). Pretty much everything leading from there to the Yule Ball (chapters 21-22 and part of 23) aside from Ron and Harry trying to get dates is cut, probably because it is not viewed as important. Chapter 24, where Rita Skeeter writes a defaming article about Hagrid, does not appear, although they kept the idea of Bagman talking to Harry because he wants to help him with the tournament, although Harry refuses the help, moving the scene to right after the 2nd task (instead of before the task). Chapter 25, where Harry tries to solve the egg clue in the prefects' bathroom, is pretty much intact, except the Marauder's Map parts don't appear. The 2nd task chapter (26) is basically intact, except that Harry gets the gillyweed from Neville rather than Dobby (since they cut Dobby from the film), which actually kinda works because part of the fake Moody's plan was to get Harry to learn about the gillyweed by planting (no pun intended) the plant book Harry could've found info on it in on Neville. Chapters 27-29 are cut, except for the brief part where Harry finds Barty Crouch and then reports to Dumbledore's office (supposedly to tell him about Crouch, rather than about his dream about Voldemort as in the book). Chapter 30, with the Pensieve scene and Harry and Dumbledore's discussion afterward, is intact, as is most of Chapter 31 (the chapter dealing with the Third Task) except for the stuff about Skeeter being an animagus, Mrs. Weasley and Bill arriving to watch the third task, and the part with Harry and the Sphinx and the spider. Chapters 32-35 (the graveyard scene and the immediate aftermath with the fake Moody and the Veritaserum) is pretty much exactly the same, just made faster-paced with less of Voldemort's monologue. Chapter 36, where Dumbledore and Sirius (who only appears in the movie when he and Harry talk via the fire) hear Harry's story and Dumbledore and Fudge disagree about Voldemort's return, is cut. Chapter 37, the final chapter, is basically the same -- it has Dumbledore telling the school the truth about Cedric's death and everybody leaving. The parts where Hermione shows off the captured animagus Skeeter, where Malfoy and company try to taunt the trio, and where Harry gives his winnings to Fred and George is all cut.

(Thanks to the Goblet of Fire Chapter-by-Chapter Guide @ The Harry Potter Lexicon for summaries of the book chapters that I used for info in the above paragraph).

Overall, though, it was pretty good but not really worth buying. So far, I have figured that the only Potter film currently available I would feel like buying is Prisoner of Azkaban, which I actually already own cause I bought it on VHS while Christmas shopping soon after it came out.

In other Harry Potter stuff, the release date for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (the 7th and final book) was announced this week, which I just found out last night when I went to mugglenet.com to download the latest MuggleCast. It is July 21, 2007. I am just excited that the book is coming out soon. Some people, according to MuggleCast, aren't happy and think the date is too soon. I think it's a decent date. Why wait till 2008, especially since it was just released that J.K. Rowling finished Deathly Hallows in an Edinburgh hotel about a month ago?

After working 6 days straight, 5 of them closing, I have today and tomorrow off, which is very nice. I watched the other two movies I rented this morning (the Mewtwo Returns one was interesting, but Domino--see picture below--is kind of annoying) since I had to return the movies by 6 p.m. today.



The days have been long at work though - 8 hours a day for so many days is pretty tiring.

I was thinking today that I am getting addicted to making videos. I think this because I have trouble when listening to music. When I hear a song, I find myself thinking what kind of video I could make to it. I find myself doing that on my laptop more than anything else. I haven't been working on updating my sites like I planned, working on planning what my University Studies A.A. will be in, stuff like that.

Today I went to Wal-Mart to get a couple extra work shirts, after Papa told me I should after seeing me going to work on Friday with a shirt with stains on the sleeves (from cleaning the oven). I bought the shirts, a $25 pair of pants, shampoo and conditioner, and...drumroll...KATHARINE MCPHEE'S DEBUT CD!!! I heard that it was coming out, and Mum and Papa were planning to get it for me for Christmas but it wasn't out yet. I got it for $13.88, a pretty good price.

Here's a pic of the album:



Other than that there's not really anything to tell, except that I've been making "mixes" of music on CD-R's I've been buying from Big Lots (there's one in the same shopping center as Stater Bros). I have 9 now, and they are basically made up of songs that were on my computer and songs from CD's that I had ripped onto my computer. Now that I have my Kat McPhee CD, I am going to listen to that too.

Good night. I'm tired. I stayed up really late last night.

First day at a new job

Well, I got the job at Stater Bros. and today was my first day. I am working in the service deli, as I said. Papa gave me a ride to work, where I was to report at 8 a.m., which isn't that bad except that for the last couple months I haven't been waking up till then.

I started out the day receiving my apron, name badge, and cravat (sort of like a tie) from the manager who hired me, Erika. Then I waited for the other person who was going to be trained to show up, after having gone to the bathroom to put my cravat and apron. Once the other person, a guy named Chris (who I think is the 6'7'' guy I met at my orientation), showed up, Erika took us up to a room and told us about safety stuff and some other things and had us sign off on that stuff. Then she took us to our departments. She left me in the service deli and went on with Chris to the bakery, which is located next to the service deli. I was then entrusted to the tutelage of Tami, the service deli manager, for the rest of the day. She gave me a second apron made of plastic to wear, and later while with her I got a visor from Erika.

The day was mainly spent following Tami around to learn stuff. Tami took me on a tour of all the back area. It's pretty cool and sort of like a secret passage. It goes from behind the service deli counter through the area behind the bakery into a big storage area with some freezers and the trash compactor and stuff that empties out onto the other side of the store.

The time went surprisingly fast, mainly cause there were a lot of customers. The oven-roasted turkey was particularly popular, probably cause it's healthy and on sale. I made a few mistakes -- accidentially not selling the roast beef and oven-roasted turkey for the sale price because I pressed the wrong button on the scale, and cutting too much roast beef for a guy who wanted a pound of thickly sliced roast beef. (I cut 1.96 lbs).

They asked me if I wanted to stay later (I think cause some guy called in sick) but after some thought, I said no, since I had developed a headache mid-morning that wasn't going away. So they let me go.

So the first day went ok. I work 7-4 tomorrow. Yeah, that's right -- I have to be at work at SEVEN A.M. Since I plan to walk, that means I have to get up at the crack of dawn basically, since it takes about an hour to walk there.

After getting off work and waiting for some manager so I could get my stuff out of the office (since I didn't have a lock I couldn't put my stuff in a locker in the breakroom) , I sat down somewhere to eat the lunch I'd brought (a sandwich and apple slices) and then headed home.

At least I'll be working a lot of hours tomorrow. 7-4 is 9 hours I think. Do I get overtime for that? No, probably not cause it would be technically 8 hours cause I will most definitely get a lunch break, which is an hour. I will have to figure out what to do with all that time, because I'm used to having half-hour lunch breaks, so I have trained myself to eat lunch in like 20 minutes. If I had the money I would get something from the deli. The chicken looks really good. The chicken includes quarter legs which are huge legs that look like the kind you see people brandishing in paintings of medieval scenes.

The breakroom is kinda nice. You approach it via a flight of stairs from the sales floor, and it's a big wide room with lockers down the hall and a couple big tables pushed together in the center with chairs. There is a microwave, a bulletin board with all the things businesses have to display in the breakroom, like OSHA laws, minimum wage info, and so on, possibly a small fridge (the microwave was sitting on something that I assumed was a fridge) and two very outdated-looking vending machines. I mean, they are like '70's-style. One of the people I met while up there on my break, Meg (who works in the bakery), said they don't get much use since people usually buy stuff for their break out in the store. At least this way I don't have to make sure to attach the receipt to stuff (something they require when you buy something, even a magazine). Plus the soda machine sells cans of soda for 50¢, a real bargain. The other machine is a coffee machine that charges I know not what. It probably doesn't get used much because you can get a cup of coffee at the store for 69¢, and plus there's a Starbucks next door. I don't care about the coffee though. I'm fine with 50¢ soda cans (or 80¢ if I go to the donut store on the other side of the shopping center), and if I want a bottle, they sell them there, and there's also a soda machine over by Big Lots.

I may not have much money for soda though. Mom says once I get my first paycheck I am going on a budget. Hopefully, though, I will have some spending money. With my first check, combined with a $25 check from my grandpa (from Christmas) that I still need to deposit, I am going to get a bus pass for February (it's too late to get one for January), a nice jacket I can wear when walking to or from work, and some other clothes item my mom told me to get that I forget now. I may buy a spare pair of black pants and a spare white shirt for work also.

I found out today I have to go to a class to get my Food Handler's Card. There's one this Sunday, so I was told to go to that. The nice thing about this is that I get Sunday totally off because of it, which will be good after four days straight of work, three of which are full workdays (8 hours). The bad news is that the class is at 8am and lasts three hours, which means I'm going to have to miss church to go to it. I was thinking it was after church, but apparently not. Shoot.

Well that's basically everything. Bye for now.

Team Rocket origins, 2 job ops, fanlisting craze, I'm thirsty...

I have sort of liked Team Rocket since I first got into Pokémon...in fact Jessie (one of the members) was my favorite character at first. The cool thing is that more and more about their origins (how they met, etc) has been coming out over the years. One episode that really does that is "Training Daze," an episode of the Pokémon spin-off Pokémon Chronicles. I just watched it online via Toonami's online cartoon viewing spot, Toonami Jetstream. It's a great little ep which shows how Jessie couldn't keep a partner, and then when she got James as a partner things finally worked out.

You can watch the ep here: http://www.toonamijetstream.com/dlink/index.html?episodeID=8a25c3920f629d31010f6458c77700fa

Speaking of Toonami Jetstream, I don't know if I already mentioned this, but I've been getting into an anime called The Prince of Tennis. It was originally only available legally in the U.S. via Toonami Jetstream, but just before Christmas 2006 it made its debut on the Cartoon Network's Saturday night Toonami lineup. The show is basically about this 7th grade kid named Echizen Ryoma who is really good at tennis. That's the best I can figure out at this point. It's an interesting anime to bring to the U.S., since sports anime like Prince of Tennis, while very popular in Japan, don't usually get legally brought stateside. But I guess the Japanese animation companies have decided to take a chance on us and bring it over.

More than likely it has been brought over because of a trend. There has been a recent trend of success with shounen (young boy-targeted; animes like Outlaw Star that are targeted for teenage boys and older are called seinen) anime, like Naruto, Inuyasha and Fullmetal Alchemist, in the U.S. Hence the market is ripe for more shounen anime, and The Prince of Tennis, being shounen, fits the demand. Plus, since it is a sports anime, the likes of which haven't really been seen in the U.S. before (the Slam Dunk manga, which, like the title suggests, is about basketball, is the only other example I can think of), that makes things even better. To please both genders, Toonami paired The Prince of Tennis, which is sports and action (the kind of things boys like) with another shounen anime of the fantasy variety called MÄR in the same hour block.

I think the anime appeals to both boys and girls though because both boys and girls watch tennis, and tennis is a sport played by both men and women, unlike baseball or football. The action and great use of animation effects like slow-motion, use of greyscale frames, stills of characters with voice-overs of their thoughts, and the like are enough to attract someone of any gender, even if they can say, as Sakuno does in episode 1, "I don't know much about tennis, but I love it!" You could not even like tennis or know a thing about it and still like this show.

Now, in my case, I do like tennis and have had for a long time a basic idea of how the game works. Now, thanks to having done a speech about tennis, I know far more about types of shots, scoring, positions, and other tennis stuff than I really need to to understand the game from poring over about 8 books on tennis for research. Having knowledge of the game helps me appreciate The Prince of Tennis even more.

Personally, I think the animators make it relatively easy for even the tennis novice to understand the show; after all, although Japan has many good pro tennis players (mainly women) and even hosts its own pro tournament (the AIG Japan Open Tennis Championships, held in Tokyo), tennis is still a imported sport in Japan. It's not like sumo, for instance, which is distinctly Japanese.

Anyway, I have 2 job opportunities that have gone as far as the interview stage and beyond. I am just waiting for a drug test result on one, a job as a General Merchandise Clerk at Stater Bros., working in the Service Deli department. The other I had an interview for and am supposed to hear back from early this week. That's as an employee at Babies R Us.

I have gotten back into the craze of joining fanlistings, having joined enough to fill about 3 or so Microsoft Word pages just in the last 2-3 days! (I keep a list in a Word file of the fanlistings I've joined, so I know when it comes time to put the link button on my site what to link to, and also so I don't try to join one I've already joined). There are so many fanlistings listed at thefanlistings.com that it's almost overwhelming. Most of them are rather random, like the ones for the program Notepad, for breakfast, or for DVD commentaries. Some are really specific, being for certain characters from books, movies, or TV, or certain relationships (platonic and romantic) from the same. There are even ones for items, from Nausicaä's Mehve (flying contraption) from the movie Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind to the Ginzuishou (Silver Crystal) from Sailor Moon to Zakuro's Cross Whip from Tokyo Mew Mew.

I may create a fanlisting for the Sailor Moon live-action show Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, since there doesn't seem to be one though there are many Sailor Moon senshi-related fanlistings that include the senshi's PGSM incarnations under their subjects, and fanlistings for some of the actors of PGSM (I joined the ones for Kitagawa Keiko, Komatsu Ayaka, and Chieco Kawabe, who play Rei/Sailor Mars, Minako/Sailor Venus, and Osaka Naru respectively). The only problem is that fanlistings are tough to keep up, and I've got two sites, a blog, and a video hosting account to attend to. Plus making one requires at least one page with a form, the script for which (JavaScript I think) is not exactly easy to do.

I'm thirsty and jittery from sitting so much at the computer. I'm going to go for a walk. More later.

Job stuff, website updates not going so well, podcasts, boredom, etc.

I actually got going on some job stuff today, writing several cover letters for newspaper ads and filling out one of the two applications I decided to keep. (I threw out Submarina and Domino's because the first is a sub sandwich place, which I've already done bad at -- getting fired from Subway after 3 days -- and the other is only hiring drivers right now). I've not been in much of a good mood though, after having a discussion with Mom (well, not really a discussion so much) about my overweight condition hurting my chances of getting a job. Uh, hello, I've had three jobs since my senior year of high school and I was overweight all that time too. She mentioned that when my dad came up to me when I was going to Wal-Mart the other day to get my cell phone (since he was changing out our phones) that I was barely moving. I said this was because my feet hurt a lot, which is true. My mom thought it was because of my weight though. She brought up (once again) the fact that I lost so much weight when I was walking to school during the time after I'd lost my bus pass until I got a job at Wendy's. I should mention that this walk took TWO AND A HALF HOURS each way and required that I wake up at the crack of dawn to get to school on time for my 8am class.

Ok so I am overweight by about 40-50 pounds. Yes, I am at risk for cancer and diabetes from family history. Heck, maybe Tay-Sachs too given my Eastern European Jewish history on my dad's side, coupled with cystic fibrosis from the other Caucasian relatives and the chance of passing on to one of my kids whatever this weird social disease I have (still not sure if it's Asperger's). But I do not think that will prevent me from getting a job. Yeah, employers can be discriminatory if they want to. But if they can't discriminate you if you're a woman, a homosexual, of a race other than white, disabled, over age 40, or a wealth of other things, and can't automatically deny you employment if you say on your application that you've committed a felony, you'd think they can't discriminate against you because you're overweight, right?

Granted, I probably should exercise more and stuff. I know it may better my chances of getting a job since this world is so appearance-conscious as to prefer thin people over heavy people. But that shouldn't stop me. It's the inside that really counts. A guy applying to be an accountant might be the best qualified candidate around and get hired, but then slack off at work or be a crook and get the company into major debt or tax fraud or something (kinda like the Enron scandal).

In other news, updates on my personal website, Silvanmare, aren't going well. I tried to make a new drop-down menu for the side menu, but when I typed in the code (which involves unordered lists and CSS) it didn't show up right. I am thinking of trying a different method. The new site will have "mini-sites" on various subjects. Although maybe I will limit the amount of them, cause I went a bit crazy on making mini-sites -- making 35 in all.

Sorry there was a bit of time delay...I went on a site called Into the Pensieve to find some Harry Potter video clips (I discovered when making my "Dance to Me" video that that site is a great place to find those) and ended up creating a My Pensieve account. You get a blog and the ability to add content from the site to your "media gallery" and control over what kind of news appears on your page (called your "pensieve"), which you control by checking what "subscriptions" you want, etc. Sorta like MySpace I guess, but not. (I'm still resisting the urge to get on the Myspace bandwagon).

Anyway about the site...I'm going to continue playing with the drop-down thing, and see if my HTML books have anything about them.

As for the podcasts part of the subject line, I'm still into MuggleCast, and I decided to give PotterCast -- another Harry Potter podcast for the site The Leaky Cauldron -- another chance and I actually like it.

I found three travel podcasts on a site called Podcast Alley (which I heard about from MuggleCast, since they're always telling you to vote for them there) and got eps. One is the podcast for Rick Steves, who does a travel show on PBS. Hard to hear (I couldn't hear it over the water when doing dishes last night) but good. Another is one on Athens that I haven't listened to yet. The last one was called Josh in Japan and promised to be interesting, but episode 1 was just the guy griping about how much Western fast food there is in Japan and about how he hates seafood and swearing quite a bit. So I decided not to listen to that one anymore.

As for boredom, well, with lots of time and nothing to do, life has been boring. I did manage to do some new videos over winter break so far to try to rebuild my video collection after the YouTube fiasco. I also created an alternate e-mail account with Hotmail so that hopefully I can get back on YouTube. Not that Putfile isn't bad but it's not as nice as YouTube and plus I have friends at YouTube. The only good thing about losing my YouTube account is losing the abstinence video. I'm not saying I regret making the video, but I got sick of all the flaming comments I got on it from people who prefer safe sex to abstinence. I just stopped answering the comments after a while.

As for new videos, what did I do? Well I have a Yumi-Ulrich-William love triangle video (called "Somebody to Love: Ulrich or William?") to Anne Hathaway's rendition of Queen's "Somebody to Love." I have an Outlaw Star video (called "A Space Free-for-all") done to the song "Rodéo" from the Code Lyoko Subdigitals album that I mentioned before. I have a Sailor Saturn video called "Soldier of Destruction" set to a song by Saturn's voice actress.

I gotta go. More later.

Edit: The song sung by Saturn's voice actress, Minaguchi Yuko, is called "A DIEU." The other videos are a Code Lyoko-PGSM battle vid (called, "Hit Me With Your Best Shot," set to Pat Benatar's song of that name) and yesterday I did one about Usagi's struggle with the power from the Silver Crystal and the destructive desires of Princess Sailor Moon called "Addicted" (set to the song "Addicted" by Kelly Clarkson, which I got from the Kelly Clarkson CD my dad got for Christmas, which I borrowed).

Today I went and returned the socks and the shirt to Wal-Mart and got two pairs of trouser socks and a new hat (a denim baseball cap) as well as some foot spray and shampoo and conditioner. I also got several applications for places in that area.

That's basically all I've done today. As for other videos, I think I'll do a Harry Potter video. I had done one but I lost it in losing my account.

That's all I really have to say. Bye.

Post-New Year blues with some good parts

Christmas and New Year's have come and gone. Christmas was all right. I got mostly clothes from my parents, which I knew I was getting cause I went with to buy them. I also got some underwear, which I knew I was getting, plus a 6-pack of glass-bottled Coke. My brother got me a new GameCube (which is great cause my other one has having problem) with one controller, and four 12-pack boxes of soda cans, a Life Savers Sweet Storybook, and I think some other stuff. My parents gave my brother and I a Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Shower Cleaner with a couple refill bottles. I got a little box of candy and a $25 Wal-Mart gift card from my aunt and a $25 check from my grandpa.

New Year's was uneventful. I spent New Year's Eve day applying for a couple jobs online, and using the computer mostly, getting some video files to make a Sailor Moon video. I also downloaded the New Year's show for MuggleCast, a Harry Potter podcast I've recently gotten into, which I listened to late on New Year's Eve night so I could stay awake late enough to watch the ball drop on Dick Clark's Rockin' Eve. Fortunately the podcast ended at 11:52 (probably cause it was almost 2 hours long, but also cause I paused it a lot), so after that I watched the program till the ball dropped. Then I went upstairs, wished my parents Happy New Year and took a shower and went to bed.

Today Mum wanted me to get out of the house and not just sit around. So I walked to Wal-Mart to use my gift card. Unfortunately, I wore one of my new pairs of shoes which I hadn't broken into yet, so walking was a rather painful experience.

I got two packs of socks, a plastic box to store the CD's that don't have cases, a nice cotton shirt, and the book The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. My mom said I should've gotten nicer socks to wear with new clothes and that the shirt could be worn under a blouse, which means it's not nice enough to just wear by itself. So I am going to return the shirt and the socks and get nicer stuff, if I can. I'm keeping the box and the book.

The 2-year agreement on our cell phones ended today so my dad changed out our phones. We got Motorola W315 phones. Here's what one looks like:



My brother pointed out it doesn't have a camera like our old phones did, which means my dad can't take pictures of our dogs all the time like he usually did. I like the phone though, even without the camera. Since it's Motorola, it'll be easier to get custom ringtones.

Speaking of Motorola, I saw a really funny Chinese Motorola commercial on this show called Funniest Commercials of the Year 2006. Here's a link where you can see it:

http://veryfunnyads.com/ads/25096.html

I'm pretty tired so I'm going to end here.