Why I Prefer Tuesdays

“Lucky Star” episodes are subbed (thanks yous a.f.k.!) and available for viewing (read: torrent lovin’) every Tuesday (at least, that’s what I’ve been told and I don’t bother checking on Monday night). This series, although consisting mostly of conversation between a group of teenage Japanese schoolgirls, just does it for me. I don’t know whether this is a schoolgirl-fetish in the making or just the fact that this show is so different from the other stuff I like to watch (see Mythbusters, The Colbert Report, and anything conspiracy fanatical).
Last week’s tribute to otaku and anime convention behavior was a real laugh for me because I sort of identify with that kind of stuff. Have you seen my Gundam collection? What about my Yu-Gi-Oh card collection (before they got steal-ded)? I’ve always wanted to go to Anime North and maybe I will next year if I can get veterans (Queenie and Joshua, I’m looking at you guys) to take me there so I don’t get spawn-pwn’t.
This week’s episode was also quite good (not as funny as last week’s IMO) but I simply loved the ending video that played during the credits. I even uploaded a copy (and I hope it doesn’t get taken down since it’s not my content). It’s Minoru Shiraishi, a male voice actor/minor character from the show, singing (and karate-ing) to “Hare Hare Yukai” from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (yes, the “Haruhi-Dance” song). Here’s the original song and dance from the anime too.

Vista Fraggers

Remember a couple months ago when I went on and on about my mail-order gaming mouse? Well, when I got my Logitech MX310 I had to tweak my driver files (read: overclock my mouse) before I could take full advantage of the mouse’s abilities. Ever since I migrated to Vista, I’ve never gotten too much into the FPS games since my mouse ran at the average polling rate of ~125 Hz which just doesn’t cut it when I’m trying to blow a baddy’s head off with a 50 caliber sniper rifle.
Up until today, my searches for a way to overclock my USB ports on Vista turned up nothing. I don’t know whether it was my searching or people not having invented some way of doing it yet. Anyway, long story short, for all those fragging on Vista, check out this thread (you need to register on Overclock3d.net to download the zip file) to overclock your own ports for better and smoother fragging all around. I am now happily chugging along at ~450 Hz.
In related news, Battlefield 2142 is fun. It was fun even when I could hardly aim but now that I’ve got almost 4x the sniping power, well, it’s great fun and I’d suggest it to anyone with even a half-decent machine to give it a go. I just can’t wait until Gears of War comes out for PC. Curbstomping and chainsawing can never be a bad combination.

Sermon Junky: Taize’s not for me

My dear Pastor Arthur (now Reverend), God bless him, has taken to doing “taize” (pronounced “TI-zee” I think) style services for mostly scattered and sporadic occasions. Lately, however, it seems as if we’ve been having more and more of these very mellow and very different services at TJCAC and I’m not too sure I think this is a good thing.

Geekdom

So today’s little trip down south was a fruitful one and my feet are effectively sore-ish from all the meandering. Anyway, one of the stops for our party of three lightly seasoned with a hint of otaku was the Silver Snail. This, of course, is a comic book store, but so much more! It’s located near Queen Street and St. Peter Street (southeast corner, if I’m not mistaken) and it’s full of all the things a nerd could ever ask for. There are busts (as in the “shoulders and up” statues, not fun-bags) of anime, movie, and comic book characters, modeling kits (Gundam, Evangelion Neon Genesis, and even a giant submarine), comic books of course, figurines, pre-built models for display, toys, etc… They even had a Samurai Champloo Zippo that I would totally buy if I had the money. Needless to say, the place left some of us in a mutliple geekgasmic state.
We saw a lot of stuff downtown and you can find the photographic evidence at my flickr. I’ve been using flickr for the last couple months and I’m quite fond of its convenience and clean look and feel. I especially like the nifty description and image name editing that are quick and simple (i.e. doing these things on other service providers such as Mediamax is a real chore). For image hosting (like the image you see at the start of this post) I use Imageshack. Queenie told me to use it and I finally got around to it (I never bothered to try it out for no reason before… FTW).
Anyway, flickr and Imageshack honourable mentions aside, destinations of today’s trip all over downtown include the three floors of the Eaton’s Center (the Coast Mountain Sports there had three floors worth of Nalgenes but sadly, not a single one that was pleasing to my eye), up and down Queen Street, Burrito Boyz, the Silver Snail, all down what I think was Neville Street, a closed Bay-Bloor Radio, and Ginger for dinner (a little Vietnamese restaurant beside a strip club). After dinner, we just started strolling along Yonge and walked off all the food we had (burrito was decently sized but dinner wasn’t super heavy). All in all, a fun day.
I don’t know why but I felt very anxious at times (mostly the quieter times on the subway) and it’s a stirring feeling. Fun though. It was funny when I received a 2007 calendar full of, what I think was, Hugo Boss or Calvin Klein (or something to that effect) male models as a gag gift. I didn’t bother taking a picture but I was genuinely relieved when Queenie busted a Shrinky Dink “bones fish” out of her purse. This one was to replace the one I’d made myself (and snapped accidentally months ago) and serve as the actual gift (or bonus… to the very homosecular calendar). Very sweet.

Homecoming

It’s almost been two weeks (actually exactly two weeks including today) since Moyee and Herman (and the rest of the STM @ Longlac Team) left meaning that they will be momentarily home if my calculations are correct. I can’t wait until they get back because then I can book Moyee for some day to go have lunch.
Speaking of food, I’m about to head downtown with a couple friends to get stuff and eat. We decided to “just hang out” but I’ve also got to check out Coast Mountain Sports for a nice water bottle and take them to Burrito Boyz (yeah, the place is actually named with a zedzorz). I’ve been sans water bottle (and burrito too) for the past many months and it’s about time my old one got replaced.
I’ve gone through a few in my time but my last one was definitely my favourite one (so far). I got it at TC two years back, oddly enough. I think I downed all the water and then, because my backpack’s bottle pocket is shallow (funny/plug line: “There’s more to you than meets the eye…” – Sam, Transformers the Movie) it fell out. Being empty, I didn’t feel the tiny difference and thanks to my ear buds I didn’t hear it fall either (“Oh when she breaks your bottle falls down and makes a sound you’ll never hear her your damn bottle falling and making a sound!” – Howie Day, She Says). Oh well, it’s not a big loss. There will always be other bottles… but not many TC bottles. Sigh. I’m hopeful in the slimness and curves of Nalgenes to more than make up for the minor loss. Photos to come if I’m successful in my search.

Domestic Violence

Psalm 55 : 9-14, 19-21

9 Confuse the wicked, O Lord, confound their speech,
for I see violence and strife in the city.
10 Day and night they prowl about on its walls;
malice and abuse are within it.
11 Destructive forces are at work in the city;
threats and lies never leave its streets.
12 If an enemy were insulting me,
I could endure it;
if a foe were raising himself against me,
I could hide from him.
13 But it is you, a man like myself,
my companion, my close friend,
14 with whom I once enjoyed sweet fellowship
as we walked with the throng at the house of God.
[...]
19 God, who is enthroned forever,
will hear them and afflict them—
Selah
men who never change their ways
and have no fear of God.
20 My companion attacks his friends;
he violates his covenant.
21 His speech is smooth as butter,
yet war is in his heart;
his words are more soothing than oil,
yet they are drawn swords.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this (i.e. disputes within church walls) for the last little while and I honestly don’t know what to do, or whether what I’ve already done or said was correct. To my rescue comes this passage brought randomly to my attention as I searched for passages on a completely different topic on BibleGateway.
I’m one of the most confrontational people I know and if you don’t think so, you’re wrong. Even though it’s generally accepted that we, as adult members of a civilized and modern society, ought to settle disputes in a manner as diplomatic and courteous as possible, meaning that people like me are generally labeled “inconsiderate” or “insensitive”. But I think sometimes (not always, for sure) certain subjects require a certain degree of “I think you’ve got it all wrong on this one” — even more so within Christian-à-Christian relationships.
This, of course, is because within the community we call the Body of Christ we are to fellowship with one another through the Spirit. We ought to be able to encourage as well as criticize, teach as well as rebuke, and share as well as disagree with one another all in a loving and God-fearing manner. We ought to be able to confront one another and not have to beat around the bush with nice words or flattery to get our point across. That kind of tactic (i.e. excessive tact, ironically) is dangerously close to manipulation if you ask me. Sure, it might work for people outside and inside the Body but it’s not something a godly person should stand for (v. 21). Convincing and persuading others to an opinion treated as objective truth would go along with this too.
It’s a tragedy when conflicts break out in the “Outside World” but when it happens within the walls of a congregation, it’s a shame. The psalmist here is archaic-ranting about just this all-too-common phenomenon: infighting between people of God. Really, we (you and I both, along with the rest of Jaffray) should do better if we remember why exactly we gather and why we do the things we do. Well, we could change our ways, or we could end up like those who don’t (v. 19). Aside: I don’t think we do enough threatening (to match Biblical content levels) within our walls.

My Latest Look

I got tired of my Samurize dock and decided to tweak a little. I ended up making a whole other one from pseudo-scratch. That’s what you’ll see in the bottom left corner. As usual, there is the Winamp track progress bar (the larger blue stripe) and my CPU Idle percentage (I made two smaller semi-circular stripes that meet together at 9 o’ clock for this one). The overall effect is pretty sweet I think. There’s also the album art, current track number, and artist + title scroller. As you can see, my “dock” is mostly just a Winamp stats displayer replacement with an idle bar.
For the rest of my functionality requirements I’ve still got my tabbed Objectdock at the bottom of the screen and my invisible’d Vista start menu. A random thing I discovered about Vista (not sure if this works in XP) was that pressing Ctrl + Esc also brings up the start menu just as if I pressed the Windows key. Neato.

A "Do Whatever the Hell I Want" Badge

I went and saw Transformers the Movie today with Allen at the Famous Players/Cineplex at… I don’t know exactly, but I think it was around Yonge and something to the north. Anyway, it turned out to be a rather good movie for someone who is a fan (but not hardcore fan) of the stuff. Al had lukewarm thoughts about it all but that’s because he was more of the die hard fan. Anyway, I didn’t do anything else much today except go home afterwards and just relax in the comfort and the companionship of my trusty radiation bombarding computer set up. I chowed down on a few Bagel Bites and they weren’t half bad so I’ll have the other ones tomorrow for lunch. I’m still looking forward to practices for LoaH and retreat this Tuesday and Wednesday nights.
Speaking of movies, I got around to watching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire last week and there’s something about Emma Watson’s look that I just can’t place. She’s definitely not ugly or anything, but I just can’t decide conclusively whether she’s got a delicately amiable or ever so slightly annoying face. I mean, her character’s hair (I’m not even going to attempt spelling the actual name for you off of memory) Hermione is, by nature, quite a put-off, what with being long-ish and frizzy. But the rest of her (as in the way she looks, acts, and speaks) doesn’t really bug me all that much (I’d always imagined her character Hermione to be a real know-it-all while reading the book). At least, that’s how I felt until near the middle or so of the Goblet of Fire. That one shot of her all dressed up for the ball settled it for me: not annoying looking.
I also spent a good chunk of my evening listening to a lecture/workshop given by John Piper about living by faith in future grace. I regret to say that I had been slightly distracted while listening for the latter half of the message so I didn’t catch all the little gritty bits as I normally like doing but the general gist was quite stirring to say the least. I’m not even going to attempt paraphrasing or summarizing the message. If you’ve got the longing and craving for it, check it out for yourself here (whereas the larger set of links and pages of his work can be found here). It’s cool stuff to me, but in random bursts at best. Too much of a good thing (in this case, over-saturation with new ideas on divine matters) too fast is probably not the best–cramming such things all at once proves to be a bad way to really reflect, consider, discern, and internalize well and properly.

God’s Jackpot

I don’t mean to associate God with gambling or anything but today’s date is exactly all made up of sevens — 07.07.07 — and I think it’s also strangely fitting to have my 490th post on such a day (490 = 7 x 70 of course). Seeing as how seven is supposedly God’s number, I figured today would be a holy jackpot of sorts… I don’t really have anything specific I want to talk about so I suppose I’ll write about my comings and goings of late.
As mentioned before, I decided to write about one Clive Staples Lewis for a pretty big paper. To date, I’ve read all of “The Magician’s Nephew” and approximately thirty-four pages of “The Pilgrim’s Regress” which is a bit of strange book to say the least. It’s not a novel or narrative per se. It is sort of like an allegorical story but on crack where everything is very obviously representative of something else, and dabbling heavily in Christian and Biblical themes. It’s a slower read than “The Magician’s Nephew” — the likes of which I thoroughly enjoyed, mind you.
After reading just the first book of “The Chronicles of Narnia” series, I’ve grown quite fond of Lewis’ writing style and quirky humour. I’m beginning to understand why he’s so admired by so many people. It has something to do, I think, with his almost childlike demeanor in viewing, constructing, and describing his ideas.
Anyway, this coming week is looking packed with LoaH and Summer Retreat practices and I’m quite looking forward to them. IMO the best part about serving in a musical capacity is the practice and fellowship time I get to have with my peers/teammates. I mean, playing and actually leading is exhilarating too, but I don’t really take more joy in that part than one should (since it’s leading and not soaking that I’m supposed to be doing). LoaH songs are sounding pretty good for the most part after our intense practice the other day — Eric (vocals and guitar), Stephen (drums), Adwin (electric guitar), and I (bass) practiced without Melissa Kwan (second vocals) this Thursday morning for three hours. Retreat worship is also looking pretty good so far, but that is to be expected with the competent leadership of mainly Katherine and Gabriel. I think playing my bass in these kinds of settings is pretty much the best part of my summers nowadays. With no job (part-time or otherwise) in sight, I’m going to make playing my summer (pre)occupation for this year pretty much.
My aunt and uncle (Monique and Jock respectively) are over from the states with their young son, Philip. Before you go “Haha, sucker!” because of the addition of an extra young’un (my sister + Philip = 2 little and potentially annoying kids) in my vicinity, I want to sneer at you because with Philip here, my sister is officially sleeping over for the duration of their trip. And with them (my aunt, uncle, and cousin) staying with my grandparents, I am virtually un-childbearing. This means I can do all the things I couldn’t do at home (with my sister around) before, like leave my stuff out without fear of annihilation and play with my more dangerous toys (like my totally hot Zippo and… I don’t have any other violent toys actually). Of course, this liberation comes at the price of having my aunt and uncle randomly coming over to borrow my wireless Internets… That leads to me thinking “GTFO my Internets before I telegib you.” but saying “Hi, welcome! Feel free to use it as you please.”

Gotta Love It

Oh the fun times never end when you’ve got weed… Gotta heart weed. I’ve never had any myself, mostly because I’ve yet to contract a serious and extremely painful medical condition or had the urge to blast my teenage brain to hell and back in a shopping cart (why aspire to what’s already been done?).

I blurred out everything since I need creeps prying into my private life like I need aneurisms. It’s not to hide the name of a secret pen pal or anything sinister like that though.