Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Sheridan's LiveJournal:

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Tuesday, February 13th, 2007
8:38 pm	In memory, Susan Gay Sheridan August 14, 1955 (Kalamazoo, MI) - February 13, 2007 (Novato, CA) I didn't think I would cry; I'm glad I did. I think what I will miss the most are her hugs, which she would give liberally and without question any time you needed one. So if you see me, I probably need a hug. Current Music: J.S. Bach - Lute Suite in A minor, Gigue-Double (BWV 997) (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, February 1st, 2007
3:04 am	You just keep on smiling, friend On Sunday when I went home for a day trip to Novato to visit my mother, it was reported that her tumor rather suddenly has spread to other parts of her brain, too many to do a surgery; and her condition is likely to continue to worsen at a similar rate. As of now the only possibility for treatment is chemo, hope that a majority of the tumors go into remission and surgery if we are fortunate. When I visited her, it was clear that the advance was having an effect. So, I'm going to be in Novato for at least the next 4 days, likely longer. If you read this and exist in the area, feel free to visit. Something that makes this even harder is that this comes at a time in my life when I have a lot of responsibilities that I have to manage at school and elsewhere, and it is very difficult to make necessary arrangements so that I can be with my family when necessary. If I don't complete my classes, then I probably won't be able to return to school since I already took a leave of absence, and I feel like a jerk trying to ask for special consideration from staff and faculty when it's really not their problem, plus I don't like to deliberately bring attention to myself to appeal for sympathy, pity, etc. On the other hand, I feel bad that I even am going to school at all right now. All I want to do is make sure my mom is happy for however long she is with us, and school can only get in the way of that. But if this goes on for many weeks or months, then I'll have basically quit school, and I don't think my mother would be happy to learn that she got in the way of my advancement. I think a lot of people find my idea of death distasteful. I don't really see much validity is doing something after someone is dead because "it's what they would have wanted if they were alive." The fact is doing so can't and won't bring the dead any happiness, and I feel that basing one's actions on whether or not it would have made a dead person happy is irrational. The appropriate actions are based not of the ersatz will of the departed, but off of the desire to maintain one's and others' memory of that person. One should act so that we may remember, and enjoy recalling the happiness that the departed brought. The only possible reason I can conceive of acting as the dead "would have wanted" is that perhaps, in being secure about the nature of their possessions after they die, people will not treat them frivolously, and value them more in life. This, of course, is still an irrational way to act, since when one is dead, possessions no longer affect one's happiness, however it might benefit posterity, or perhaps the economy as a whole. This brings up the question of whether something is necessarily bad if it is irrational, something I can talk about another time. Soon after my mother was diagnosed, she returned to her Christian roots and was not averse to talking to me about it. If you know me, you know that I'm not likely to respond positively to that. In the course of the conversations I had with my mother about the subject, I raised a few questions which I think did trouble her, the most notable being, "If God really loves you, why would He, when you are in heaven, forbid you to be with the ones you love who don't go to heaven when they die? Is that really heaven then?" I don't know if I should regret asking such things, even though I think they are questions that should not go unanswered if one is to believe in heaven. If it only served to make my mother unhappy, then what was the point? On the other hand, if I'm not to respond to her questions, or to just brush them off, isn't that disrespectful as well? As it stands right now, my mother is not in a condition to have a discussion about such things, so I am hoping that the topic never comes up so that I don't have to hurt her feelings by telling her I'm not going to heaven (for example), which is a question I was asked directly in the past. I don't know how to end this. Sorry to have to flood screens with bad news. Current Music: Yoko Kanno - Cowboy Bebop - Goodnight Julia (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, December 21st, 2006
4:03 am	I am an elitist jerk. Yeah I'm still up in this. "Hello" to everyone that still reads this. First a link, old or not, for mood: http://www.knitemare.org/cats/index.php?type=all It's known that I am one of the laziest people in all of Marin County, which would put me high on the running for laziest worldwide. I have no other excuse besides that. Long story short, nothing important has happened, and I'm still basically awesome in every way. Seriously, I rule. Lots of shitty things happened for me in the last couple years, yet I continue to do the things that I love and enjoy to make me happy. That is why I'm awesome. It's difficult to put precisely without sounding self-aggrandizing, so maybe I'll write about it later on. Happiness --> "Success." Success in quotes because I feel the need to acknowledge that the word itself in this context has been hackneyed by self-actualization books or mantras over the years. The detailed version: Generally, when I would post before it would be to report recent goings-on, or to put forth various ideas I would have from time to time. The goings-on of late are rather trivial generally (at least I would think that those who read this would perceive them as such), and I have different outlets for my ideas that have apparently usurped LJ, namely, the Smash Bros hub, Warcraft guild chat, and the boards of a community which was spawned from a GameFAQs board long ago. Why have they become the preferred places? In the past when I created this, there were 7 or 8 people, most of whom I saw in a tangible form somewhat often, who were doing about the same thing I was with this. As things progressed, steadily this decreased until basically none of the people I interact with face to face on a quasi-regular basis posted much anymore. So it seemed the circle was phasing LJ out as it did other things. I was determined to continue posting, simply because I found it personally edifying and gave me good practice for expressing ideas in an understandable manner. Yet, without the subtle encouragement to keep writing that I had derived from the very existance of posts from others, the frequency of my own did diminish; lately (excluding this interval) they have been about a monthly affair. I don't have any intent to abandon this place, but I can't and don't promise that the irrelevant drivel will begin to come at shorter intervals. Anyway, so as to not gloss over the past 3 months altogether: I live by myself in a studio apt about a 5 min walk from downtown Santa Cruz. Although over 2/3 of my income is gone after rent and bills, I am very satisfied with this lifestyle at present. Uh....what else....oh, the election. Yeah basically the Republicans got what they deserved. Somehow since apparently I'm the most conservative person around (even if it's more for fiscal than for moral issues) I end up being an apologist for the Republican Party, even though I'm not a Republican. This frustrates me. In fact, the entire political climate right now has to be the more frustrating I've ever encountered. I think probably the most retarded thing that I read about was a teacher in England getting fired for telling 9-year-olds that there is no Santa Claus. Yeah, let's fire people for telling kids the truth. Parents that put that kind of bullshit into their kids for that long should be severely uppercutted in the throat. I wish I could get a job as someone who tells kids there's no Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, etc. Hopefully in front of their parents, because they are the bigger idiots. I am an elitist jerk. I did reasonably well in my classes this fall. I only have to take them Pass/No Pass as a grad student, though I know that I would have gotten an A in my Probability Theory class. UC Santa Cruz has this weird thing where you're also given a written narrative evaluation along with your grade, and it is part of your permanent record. The idea is to personalize the grades more and try to say things that grades can't say, but really they end up being basically fill-in-the-blank sentences of cookie cutter phrases. I have to write 40 of them myself for the students that I TA'd for in my lab that I teach. Speaking of which, being a TA for a class that is basically just a GE for most of the people in it is so very unrewarding. It pays the bills, so I suppose I can't complain. Well, no, I can complain, but it puts an upper bound on the validity of the complaints. Lucky me, I get to TA the next class in the series next (Winter) quarter, which starts January 4th or so. So yes, I'm in Novato for about 2 more weeks. I spend most of my day either studying for next quarter or being on my computer in some capacity. The rest of the family monopolizes the TV and any attempt to play a 1-player game on it is met with nagging, etc, when discovered, so if I want to play, say, FFXII (which is excellent), I'm practically limited to after 10pm; so although I've had it for over a week, I have but 6 play hours on it. I spend a lot of time on Wikipedia. I'd say over this break so far I'm averaging about 2 hours a day. Yesterday for example I started at Hu Jintao and ended up at Megaliths (without any direct entries into the search). I don't remember the chain, I think Idi Amin was about in the middle, which I'm pretty sure I got to soon after Apartheid, which I think was soon after Tiananmen Square. It must have been something purely tangential in the Idi Amin article. Random wiki article I find interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowclone I don't have a Wii because Santa Cruz county sucks. 2 weeks before release, the store (THE store because there is only one in SC that sells games) representative tells me that they aren't taking preorders, so I just have to show up before however many people. Day before release, I go there trying to find out how many units will be available to gauge what time I need to get in line, and I am told that they are getting 8 units, all of which are "spoken for," which I don't know how else to interpret besides "the staff is taking all of them for themselves before they get on the shelf." Upon calling the 3 other stores in the county that sell games, I get basically the same response, so that was that. It's cold (by Marin Co. standards), and somehow it's always about 10 degrees colder in my room than the rest of the house, so my hands freeze while typing this. Almost invariably though, it's colder in Santa Cruz. It has snowed on campus a few times. If I post about something important, it will likely either be about global warming or about the theory that all forms of government naturally tend towards oligarchies, and that an intellectual elite is necessary. Current Music: Nightwish - Gethsemane (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, September 28th, 2006
3:16 am	Unfamiliar Ceiling Finally all settled in back at Santa Cruz. I'm very glad to be having a place all to myself, it's not very big but it's all the space I need. I like being able to do what I want when I want without someone bugging me about it. And I finally have a TV that I can use, because back at the folks house someone is ALWAYS watching TV and I pretty much would only come out to watch Jeopardy. It turns out that super fucking huge TV I got from my mom broke soon after I got it; either the high-voltage supply or the flyback transformer is fried, and either way it's like $200 to repair, so I got another old TV from my dad. School started 1 week ago, I'm taking 2 classes (Classical Mechanics [bleh] and Probability Theory [very excited about this, I need a strong background in pure math to do theoretical stuff that I want to do]), which I learned last year is more than enough to keep me busy combined with being a TA. My first day to hold lab is Monday. It seems that TA's get paid a bit more than they did 2 years ago, so that makes my life a lot easier. On my old paycheck I'd be spending about 2/3 of it on rent, and now it's more like 55%. Somehow even without any homework or other obligations I've been able to moderate my play on the timesink known as World of Warcraft to about 15 hours a week, a length that many have often achieved in one day. Despite this, today with my guild we did this for the first time: http://www.lfgkfc.com/forums/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=157 I really have to give a lot of credit to Blizzard. The boss encounters are often unique challenges that require careful planning and execution as opposed to simple 'everybody whack it till it's dead before your healer runs out of mana' fights, and often that is more important than having the "right" gear or party composition. I very much enjoy being part of a team (I have the somewhat masochistic responsibility of being a healer) and the fact that these challenges in Warcraft require a lot of teamwork and communication and coordination gives me a lot of satisfaction. Even more so when it's our team vs another team in PvP battlegrounds. What else...a bunch of Norcal Smash people made a rankings list, and I was ranked as the 10th best player in Norcal. Not bad. I hadn't really even had steady access to practice partners the time I lived in Novato, and there are a lot of strong players in the Monterey Bay area, so I'm confident I will improve. I have never really cared much for metal, but I have realized that this wasn't a problem I had with the genre, it was that I hadn't found the right band yet, and that band is DragonForce. I appreciate the clean vocals, the thematic elements of the lyrics, and blatant influence (which the band confesses to) of 80's and 90's video game music. I still am not too fond of the blast beat drumming, but it's far from being too detrimental. So, as is apparent, that's really all there is to report, so that's my excuse for the lack of posts. Current Mood: accomplished Current Music: DragonForce - Fields of Despair (Comment on this)
Monday, September 4th, 2006
12:08 am	getinthevanihavecandy Fucking, Comcast can't install internet at my Santa Cruz place until the 13th. This is unacceptable because I need it to study, etc. So I'm stuck in Novato until I can work something out. The move itself was arduous. I got my mom's old TV which is the heaviest fucking TV I have ever come across. My dad's big screen is definitely lighter than this 34" or whatever CRT TV. My dad and I had to spend like 15 min coming up with a plan to lift it onto the stand. In the end we just brute force'd all 150+ lbs of it. We also had to take 2 sofas to the dump, which apparently costs $50. The dump I find is quite interesting; the whole science of landfills, that is. If you do it, (by "it" we mean decomposition and packing the ground, etc), once it's full you can just build a park or golf course on it, and you can get energy by collecting and burning the methane gas. Hmm...so there was also drive across the country, mark 3: We left around 11pm the first night, the plan being to arrive at the first hotel in the afternoon. I drove first because I usually stay up late. A shift basically consisted of a tank of gas. 1st shift: Novato to Tehachapi, CA 2nd: To Kingman, AZ 3rd: To Gallup, NM 4th: To Taos, NM --- 5th: To Amarillo, TX 6th: To Fort Smith, AR 7th: To Jackson, TN 8th: To Asheville, NC --- 9th: To Durham, NC 10th: End in Williamsburg, VA Highest point: 7335 ft Lowest temp: 53* F, Mojave, CA, 4:15 AM Highest temp: 95* F, Williamsburg, VA, 2 PM Wow, Taos, and all of Northern New Mexico, is pretty amazing. Santa Fe is really nice, and almost all of the city is in the pueblo style architecture. Go there before you die. We took a tour of the Taos Pueblo which had been settled by natives thousands of years before whitey came, and there are a lot of people of native ancestry doing things there. Asheville was equally incredible. The Vanderbilts' residence, Biltmore House, which is basically a castle, is there; we took a 3 hour tour of it, complete with the huge rose gardens and greenhouses with weird plants. The Great Smoky Mountains are beautiful. The other famous building in Asheville, the Grove Park Hotel, has a huge back porch view of the many ridges and valleys around Asheville. Later we drove up to Mount Mitchell, which you can drive all but the last 100 ft or so of. The detour to get there requires a good amount of driving on a road called the Blue Ridge Parkway, which was very well-maintained, though it was slow driving because it was winding, but affording of many great views. A lot of it actually looked like the Santa Cruz area with different foliage. Later on, my Mom wanted to stop in some town because apparently there's this huge mall that is 100% furniture, and is the biggest of its sort in the country. Luckily they were only open for 1 more hour as we got there, so by the time my brother and I were bored playing with the massage chairs it was time to leave. Moving my brother's stuff into his apt wasn't too bad, though for some reason he had packed his friend's beer bottles in his hockey bag, and as I was uninformed of this, broke most of them as I carried it, thereby subjecting my pants to soak up a good amount of the beer. Studying for quals...doing about 300 pages of text reading / day. I rarely study for anything ever so this is serious business. Current Music: Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, August 20th, 2006
4:03 am	One for the road Drive across the country starting tomorrow. Get to VA on the 24th. Smash in Orlando. Get back the 28th. Move to Santa Cruz soon after. Will post new address. I found a studio for $850/month, pretty close to downtown and not much farther from the school than my last place. I have to move soon because I need to start studying for the quals with other people. Tourney in OC was incredible. Playing the Japanese was great. 13th in teams (again) out of over 100. 49th in singles out of about 240. I'm sleepy. Current Mood: packing (Comment on this)
Monday, August 7th, 2006
11:04 pm	Hi. Busy summer, of sorts. Away in Michigan for about 3 weeks in July. 2 Smash tournies involved. I had an adventure getting to Chicago: One of the tournaments was in St. Charles, IL, which is about 30 Mi W of Chicago. I got on a Greyhound from Grand Rapids to Kalamazoo, and got another to Chicago, but it happened to arrive too late to get the one from Chicago to Aurora, so I was basically stuck in Chicago for the time. I called up some other people I knew going to the same tourney who were arriving in O'Hare to see about help. While in the bus station on the phone, a random guy, who I'm pretty sure was a Jamaican immigrant, asked me where I needed to go, and told me his brother was an "ex-cab driver" and they'd take me to St. Charles for $50. The cab drivers wanted about $110, so I took this guy up on his offer. Plus I figured that if you were going to rob someone, the patronage of the Greyhound Chicago bus terminal wouldn't be prime targets. Also I think my long hair was a boon because they'd assumed I was "cool." So yeah, that was interesting. It was good that I could make it to that tournament too, as it is run by a company called MLG (www.mlgpro.com), and having placed 13th (out of 84 and 110+, respectively) at the previous 2 MLG events, I was 29th in standing for 2v2 points, thus gaining me "pro" status. Which basically means free Red Bull, free lunch on the first day, and a bunch of couches to crash on. My partner this time was the best Yoshi player in the U.S., so it was really fun. Yoshi is one of the worst characters in the game, but we beat a couple very good teams, one of which was the 2nd best Falco and 2nd best Samus in the Midwest. One thing about the Midwest players, every single set we played against a Midwest team, their counterpick stages were Poke Floats and Rainbow Cruise, aka weird stages (which aren't legal at some tournies) that move around. Jiggly does just fine on them but Yoshi doesn't. Yet again, my partner and I got 13th in teams out of about 100. What else happened in Michigan...OK so a lot of my family on my mom's dad's side have Model T's, so my grandpa and his brother drove from Grand Rapids to a Model T meet in Iowa somewhere in their Model T. Of course this had to be done all on surface streets, at like 30 mph, so each way was 2 days or so. They reported having 4 flat tires in one day once, so clearly repairs on the go added to the travel time. So, while they were away, we had to look after grandma, who has short-term memory issues, e.g. putting shit away in places where it doesn't belong, feeding the cats multiple times and especially telling the same story about X piece of furniture every day. Every dinner without fail it was related to us that the table was made out of a surplus casket. Also grandma can't really watch any TV programs except for sports because by the time the half-hour is over she's forgotten what happened to drive the episode. I think she was thoroughly bewildered by Shaolin Soccer. Fortunately, there's a pool table in the basement, and I got hella good at 8-ball. So, since I've been back, I've mostly been working on getting setup for the move back to Santa Cruz. Tomorrow I'm going down with my mom to find a place. On my TA salary I can't afford more than about $900/mo in rent, so I'll almost certainly end up getting a studio. I could try to find a roommate, but I don't want to deal with that and worrying about what if the guy is weird (or, more likely, thinks I'm weird), etc. 2 years ago, living alone would not have been good for me, but now, I'm very excited to be able to do my own thing completely. It will be nice to have a TV to myself again; I haven't played any console games for almost 3 months (except for 30 min of Smash practice a couple times a week) because there is always someone watching TV, and if I try to get game time in I get pestered. The only problem with the studio is that I have a lot of furniture that I "inherited" from other moves, so I'll either have to get rid of it or convince the 'rents to keep it around for at least a year or more. After finding a place, I'll have everything set up so I'll be able to relax for a couple weeks before I move. This week I'm going to crack open the old textbooks to study for qualifying exams the 2nd week of September. School starts the last week in Sep. Only thing I have between now and the exams are a tourney in Orange County, it will be the biggest ever, about 350 people including people from Japan, Sweden, Brazil, and Puerto Rico; and yet another cross-country drive to Virginia to drop off my brother's car. This year we are taking the Southern route and visiting Taos, NM, and Mount Mitchell, NC, which is the highest mountain East of the Mississippi. I would have guessed Mt. Washington but it turns out that's the 3rd. The 2nd is Clingman's Dome, TN. Mt. Washington has the highest recorded wind gust speed at the surface, at 231 mph. Current Mood: accomplished Current Music: Basil Poledouris - Conan the Barbarian - Anvil of Crom (Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 4th, 2006
3:16 am	Iron Blue Intention Greetings. My latest area of research has been the issue of global warming, so I'm expecting to make a post about that relatively soon. In the meantime, I'm leaving on vacation from Jul 6-24 for Michigan for family visiting. Also 2 rather large Smash tourneys are taking place not 2 hours from where we are staying, so I'm expecting to make one of them. I got 13th in 2v2 again at the last tourney, MLG Anaheim, where there were over 200 people (over 100 teams), so now I'm ranked #28 in teams points, which gives me some kind of 'pro' status for MLG, which doesn't really get me much except for a T-Shirt and free Red Bull at the next event. I happened to be at the SF J-Town Kinokuniya last Saturday, and behold, the fucking Pillows were there taking autographs before a show they were doing later that night. At the time I was taking a bunch of Socal Smash friends on a tour of the city, and one of them happened to be a huge Pillows fan and had a friend to stay with in SF, so luckily someone got to see the show, which was apparently awesome, except they pretty much only did the FLCL stuff. Which is all good of course, but there's a lot of quality on the post-FLCL albums e.g. Penalty Life and My Foot. --- I really think about 95% of people are more attractive with glasses. Sometimes I wish I needed glasses. Silly, I know. Current Mood: awake Current Music: Thunderforce 3 - The Grubby Blue Dark (Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 20th, 2006
4:54 am	Capitalism and the Rights of Man There is no actual entity called "society." Practically, "society" does not exist, only a number of individuals do. As such, society can not have any rights, or be placed above any individual's rights. At its creation, the true achievement of the United States was the realization that man is not a means to the ends of society, man is an end in himself. I would personally argue that all people act in their -perceived- own self-interest 100% of the time, whether they are cognizant of it or not. The path to happiness and freedom is learning how to dispel collectivist-altruist notions in one's head, and discern what is in one's true best interest, as opposed to society's. What are rights to begin with? A right makes permissible a freedom of action, guaranteeing its freedom from interference or coercion to do otherwise. A person's right does not impose any obligations on anyone else except to NOT violate his right. A right cannot force something into action; it can't compel anyone else to action under the guise of supplying another with his "rights." Observe then that many so-called rights are not really rights at all. Education is not a right, as it must be provided by someone else. Guaranteeing the right to education at the expense of another IS, practically, slave labor. Social Security is not a right, if you did not save all the money yourself, Social Security gives you the money of others. Guaranteeing the right of Social Security at the expense of another IS thievery. What rights do we have? I would argue that "natural rights" do not exist in any sense and that all are by Social Contract. What rights are given to us by Social Contract then? I believe that there is only one fundamental right, and that is the pursuit of happiness. As I said earlier, perceived gain in happiness is the motive for all actions, whether we are aware of it (or even if we do not know what makes us happy) or not. So, Social Contract must have come about by a desire for happiness, and so it must be THE right that it exists to protect. Rights are not a gift of society, they are there to protect individuals from society (and those who rule it who would be exept from moral law), which has no rights because it is a nonentity. All other rights are simply consequences of the one true right: You have the right to pursue your own happiness as far as possible without infringing another's right to seek his onw happiness. What follows: happiness requires being able to sustain oneself, so you have the right to any self-sustaining activity of your own power. We can see that the only possible way to implement this right is to have exist property rights, as you must have the right to the product of those self-sustaining activities in order to live. Again, property rights are rights to an action, and not rights or credits to any specific object. Quoting Ayn Rand, "a right to action...It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values." "...to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men." is part of the Declaration of Independence. It is the true great achievement of the United States to change the government's role from ruler to servant. The Constitution and Bill of Rights are more to protect us from governments than from criminals. As I have shown, deliberately misrepresenting things as "rights" when they must entail obligations on the part of another is equivalent to slavery or theft. It is under this guise that tyranny is permeated in the US today. An "economic Bill of Rights" makes absolutely no sense in the context of this definition of rights. There can't be a rights to a job, to a home, to "a fair wage," etc. The only possible economic rights are those of free trade and property. Capitalism is the only system that advocates the rights of man that are defined and explained here, as it is the only system that places property and free trade rights as higher than all other pseudo-rights. (Comment on this)
4:29 am	Avertuneiro Antes Lance Mão Well, it's almost final, I should be returning to UC Santa Cruz next year to continue my studies. As far as I know the free ride and TA job are still there, securing those are all that is left to do. If the case is such that they aren't then I'm not going back, but this is unlikely. So now comes the annoying part of finding a place to live and...ugh...moving.... I've done the moving thing many many times in my college career. I'm not too averse to the idea of a studio, I kind of like the idea of everything being in one room. The last 3 years at college I'd keep my compy in the living room, so my bedroom was just a bed and some storage. Next year it seems I'll be living by myself for the first time, I think I am able to handle that now; I was lucky I didn't have to last school year, I definitely was not in the state of mind for it. Big (150ish) Smash tourney in Anaheim this weekend. Road trip with Norcal's best, should be fun. Current Music: Led Zeppelin - Bonzo's Montreaux (Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 7th, 2006
9:38 am	Everything You Did Generic "stuff I've done lately" update. Expect a short essay of substance soon. MLG Dallas: Smash tourney in Dallas. In singles I got 49th out of 144, but I had a really tough pool, I'm convinced I will do better at MLG Anaheim (June 24-25). Doubles, my partner and I got 13th out of 72. 13th means I'm automatically qualified for the 'pro' bracket at Anaheim and don't have to play in a qualifier, woot. This tourney was so fucking fun, I met a lot of cool new people, which is always half the reason I go to these. Something clicked right around the day after the tourney, suddenly I feel a lot better at everything I do, at least in the competitive sense. Al and I rolled new chars on Black Dragonflight in Warcraft. My Priest (Holyorders, kudos if you know the reference) is incredibly fun. It's a new server so it was easy to get into a guild on the ground level. There are like 40 people on in the afternoon usually. The game is a lot more fun when you have a personal network. Finally been able to play Civ 4 online with JT; Civilization, to me at least, is one of the greatest series ever, seriously on par with the likes of Final Fantasy, and almost anything Nintendo can throw at you. Fanime: Well, nobody really stepped it up this year. I went for 1 day on my own accord, as some friends from Smash were going. There were a LOT of good cosplayers this year. There was a really tall black male Sailor Moon, it was great. One of my Smash friends made this vid called "True Naruto Style," which was insanely popular (I missed it because they played it earlier than they said they would -_-), like, on par with Eva: Re-Death and Nescaflowne. What else....I played a lot of Smash and Guilty Gear with random people. I dislike noobs. Note that newb =/= noob. The newb is simply new/not good at the game, while the noob, in addition to that, usually exhibits certain ass-hattic behavior. It was suprising though how many people were actually interested in learning some of the advanced techs (L-cancel, Wavedash, DI), and it was fun teaching them. Now, as a self-proclaimed turbo-nerd, part of the fun and appreciation of Fanime is a sort of a 'enjoy the show' mentality regarding the excesses and fringes of nerd-dom. And boy were they in Full Force this year. There were a few Captain Planet summonings. They reminded me that it belongs in forums. There were people dressed in all-black and fishnet shirt carrying around and making out with their fox/raccoon/etc plushies. That is near where I draw the line. School: I'm going to say there's about a 65% chance that I return to UC Santa Cruz next year. The fact is that while I'm definitely qualified enough for engineering grad school, I need 3 letters of rec, and right now I can only get 1, so I'll need to make some contacts next year. That or I'll just tough it out for another year as a TA before I can become a Research Assistant with a group. I wasn't really feeling too well last year in a lot of ways; I feel pretty good now; Handling full-time student + 15-20 hours of TA-work/week should be easier to deal with. The drawback is that unless I find a roommate or something, I'll probably live in a studio apt, which is actually more expensive than sharing a 2-bedroom. Current Music: Suikoden - 108 Stars of Destiny (Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 30th, 2006
1:41 am	Musings. Coincidentally, a rock station here was also doing its own top 500 list over Memorial Day weekend. I don't recall the details except that #1 was the Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want." Whenever I hear of lists like these, I always wonder what could possibly be the criteria other than 'what sounded good to us that day.' Sounds silly, but what real criteria are actually valid? If you want to go with strict popularity, you'll get a whole mess of generic pop songs in the mix, and virtually nothing of bands like Steely Dan. If you go with strict critical review, you'll get a lot of esoteric tour-de-force nonsense and votes based on what music "should" be. A compromise of the two will just result in a list garbled with 2 extremes. What then? In my opinion, the lasting quality of a song is its ability to make you completely forget that anything else in the world exists except the music. The way this is often accomplished is to elicit emotions, though also the simple listenability of the melody and harmony can do it. To be truly great it must have a combination of both. I compare it to the search for a life partner: it is the aesthetics that first draw us in, but only something deep enough will have us stick around for more than a few months. Now, 'Emotion' in this context is often understood to mean 'love' or 'sadness' or 'whistfulness,' that sort of thing, but I'd say that music that makes you want to, for example, rock the fuck out, also qualifies as highly emotional. Another stipulation: I don't mean simply being associated with something emotional (e.g. a song played at a funeral), I mean the inherent ability of the composition to evoke feelings, independent of prejudicial associations. Those attachments are hard to consciously escape however, so it's difficult to evaluate even one's own favorite songs. Of course, no list based on such things can ever be created. The best we can do is hope that each person weights their favorites in this way and compare lists. Last point that can't go without mention, is the by virtue of the fact that emotions are volatile, so must be one's own list. I'll probably wake up tomorrow and disagree with this. I'll abstain from a rock and roll list, however, here's my personal top 30 VGM songs, according to the idea above. 30 seemed like a good number, there was a distinct top tier of about that number: 30. Yasunori Mitsuda - Xenogears - Grahf, Emperor of Darkness 29. Suikoden - Black Forest 28. Michiru Yamane - Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - Crystal Teardrops 27. Nobuo Uematsu - FFVI - The Decisive Battle 26. Yu Miyake, Masayuki Tanaka - Katamari Damacy - Katamari on the Rocks 25. Nobuo Uematsu - FFVI - Coin Song 24. Michael Giacchino - Medal of Honor - Attack on Fort Schmerzen 23. Daisuke Ishiwatari - Guilty Gear XX - Writhe in Pain 22. Nobuo Uematsu - FFVI - Terra's Theme 21. Gradius 3 - Sand Storm 20. Hitoshi Sakimoto - Vagrant Story - Limestone Quarry 19. Hideki Tobeta, Yui Asaka - Katamari Damacy - Katamari Taino 18. Yasunori Mitsuda - Xenogears - Bonds of Sea and Fire 17. Daisuke Ishiwatari - Guilty Gear XX - Holy Orders 16. Kouichi Sugiyama - Theme of Dragon Warrior 15. Mega Man 2 - Ending 14. Michiru Yamane - Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - Requiem for the Gods 13. Soul Calibur II - Destiny Awaits No One 12. Castlevania 3 - Evergreen 11. Daisuke Ishiwatari - Guilty Gear XX - Suck A Sage 10. Yasunori Mitsuda - Chrono Cross - Scars Left by Time 9. ICO - Castle in the Mist 8. Yasunori Mitsuda - Chrono Cross - Le Tresor Interdit 7. Daisuke Ishiwatari - Guilty Gear XX - Still in the Dark 6. Hirokazu Ando - Super Smash Bros. Melee - Fountain of Dreams 5. Michiru Yamane, Keiko Fukami, Masahiko Kimura - Suikoden III - Exceeding Love 4. Nobuo Uematsu - FFVII - Cosmo Canyon 3. Michiko Naruke - Wild ARMs - Into the Wilderness 2. Nobuo Uematsu - FFXI - Ronafure 1. Nobuo Uematsu - FFVII - One-Winged Angel My top 5 OSTs: 5. Medal of Honor 4. Katamari Damacy 3. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night 2. Guilty Gear XX 1. Final Fantasy VI Current Mood: cogitating Current Music: Mega Man X - Storm Eagle (Comment on this)
Thursday, May 25th, 2006
1:36 am	Eighteen, nineteen...ten...ten ten...ten ten one... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plSfKHZZwZ4&search=k1%20k-1%20comedy%20gaki%20tusukai%20gakino%20hoost%20ernesto PS, I like the guy's shirt. There is a wealth of Japanese TV to be found on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wzMJ_RdgHg&search=k1%20k-1%20comedy%20gaki%20tusukai%20gakino%20hoost%20ernesto (Comment on this)
Sunday, May 14th, 2006
2:47 pm	I like cats http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV6DQuEh4UQ&search=cat http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cCdoXIlKMw&search=cat http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ90bnROfks&search=cat Too good. (Comment on this)
Thursday, May 11th, 2006
12:26 am	Super Smash Bros: BRAWL! Featuring.... Meta-Knight Pit Wario Zero-suit Samus And....Snake? SNAKE? SNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE! Complete with cardboard box! Trailer: http://media.revolution.ign.com/media/748/748545/vids_1.html Main theme, by Nobuo Uematsu: http://www.smashbros.com/en/music/index.html Wow, wow, wow, wow. I watched the trailer like 34985798732 times. --- Also, I sent in a job application, yay. It's for this: http://cjo.lbl.gov/LBNLCareers/details.asp?jid=18891&p=1 It's very possible, but I think I'll be lucky to get it, I don't -quite- have that much XP, but I have the skills. Current Mood: awake Current Music: The Pillows - Gazelle City (Comment on this)
Sunday, April 30th, 2006
4:20 am	Animal rights - What's the point? Here's an example: http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=24&art_id=vn20060427015856895C666201 What do we, as humans, stand to gain by granting animals "rights"? Animals won't organize to "overthrow an oppressor" or whatever. Nor will granting them these rights make them contributors to society. The point is, nothing is gained by doing this. The only possible case that you could make is that not having animal "rights" is somehow a slippery slope that would erode human rights. I think that slope is about as slippery as sandpaper. The only winners here are overly militant/litigious environazis who get a foot in the door. Another example is that in California, a law was passed in 2000 making the sale of horse meat illegal (or the raising of horses for slaughter, something to that effect anyway). Clearly, nobody benefits from this other than people who lie awake at night because somewhere a horse is being killed for meat. But surely we can't be allowed to randomly torture animals (not that "we" do, but some freaks do)? Well, I certainly wouldn't advocate it, and I'd purposely avoid any contact with anyone that did so. But the only laws that should be made are those that protect the interests of humans. I think that indiscriminately legalizing torture, etc, of animals would ulitmately affect how life is valued in society. But "torture" means different things to different people. Is research or hunting torture? The definition isn't all that relevant; the only relevant issue is: Would legalizing the act affect how human life is valued in society (and is that effect outweighed or not by whatever stands to be gained by legalizing the act in question)? I think it is self-evident that allowing mutilation for the sole purpose of delighting in torment does not benefit society and can only cheapen human life, and so therefore should be illegal. Research on animals has substantial benefit to society, especially in the field of medicine, so I believe that the benefits of allowing any kind of animal testing outweigh whatever devaluing of human life might come along with it. Hunting is difficult though, because it has diverse motives, some of which I probably am not even aware of. Hunting for food isn't an issue. Hunting for other resources like fur has economic benefit, and historical impetus, that is to say it is more or less acknowledged as a thing that is often done, so the question in this case is, 'would outlawing the fur, etc, trade give us more appreciation of human life such that it outweighs the benefits that the trade brings us?' I honestly doubt that it would. Exceptional cases would be made where hunting and poaching are dramatically affecting a necessary ecosystem or threatening a species' population. One thing to point out is that all of this is subject to attitudes towards different animals. I mean, no one cares about fruit flies. In general it seems that the more recent the common ancestor, the more its life is valued, and of course, the cuter it is, the more attention it receives. Both are somewhat ingrained into human nature already, though I dare say the latter is less rational and certainly more arbitrary than the former. Don't get me wrong: though I may not be an animal-lover in the sense of enjoying the presence of all animals (I don't really care for any except for cats, of which I have 2 that I hold dear), but I do love animals in the sense that I enjoy shows about wildlife and natural history. Eh, perhaps that's not saying too much, but I don't think you can appreciate nature without developing a certain respect for it. Oh well, I've accepted that I'm a heartless bastard already. Current Mood: awake Current Music: Hirokazu Ando - SSBM - Fire Emblem (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 26th, 2006
4:08 am	I have shit to post, rest assured, I just need to stop being lazy. Current Music: Blind Melon - No Rain (Comment on this)
Sunday, April 16th, 2006
11:18 pm	Christian Easter Challenge My mom wanted me to go to church with her this morning, so I did. That got me in the spirit for this. Part I: In each of the four Gospels, begin at Easter morning and read to the end of the book: Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, and John 20-21. Also read Acts 1:3-12 and Paul's tiny version of the story in I Corinthians 15:3-8. These 165 verses can be read in a few moments. Then, without omitting a single detail from these separate accounts, write a simple, chronological narrative of the events between the resurrection and the ascension: what happened first, second, and so on; who said what, when; and where these things happened. I submit to you that it is not possible without glaring unacceptable contradictions, that are unable to be resolved without concluding that parts of the Bible are outright false. Part II: Explain the contradictions in the genealogy of Jesus: Matthew 1: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew%201;&version=31; Luke 3: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=49&chapter=3&version=31 TBH, I find it hard for any Christian to get around the idea that humans have only been around for 6,000 or so years given the genealogy above. Then again, it seems that one of the two above is wrong, so who knows. Part III: There are 14 apostle names given in the Bible, not even including Matthias, who replaced Judas Iscariot (so 15 altogether) instead of the supposed 12 (or 13). The ones that don't match up are Thaddeus, Nathaniel, and the other Judas. Current Mood: apathetic Current Music: The Clash - Rockin' the Casbah (Comment on this)
Friday, April 14th, 2006
4:41 pm	I wish they were this crazy about games in the US: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2905649938648163433&q=starcraft It's a sold out concert hall to watch Starcraft matches, FFS. I watched the whole thing, though I have never played Starcraft in my life, just because of how strange and awesome the concept is. It's the same as any sport, there were commentators, fan shots, etc. I demand this in the US. I believe it will happen eventually, probably first with stuff like Halo 2. In fact: http://www.mlgpro.com/proplayers.php That's the gaming league whose events that I attend. The people there are people that are paid by MLG. Only 3 Smash people so far but I expect more this year. Last year I was like 77th in points out of 1,000 or so; it will be harder this year because there's only one West Coast event, and 3 East Coast ones, and then One in Dallas. Retarded. But the company, MLG, has just got a lot of advertising deals, so I think this year and the next year is when stuff like this will start to get big. --- I personally can't get enough of the rain, even though our rainy season has been going on for like 4 months now. Only problem is that it is difficult to play tennis. Luckily, hockey starts next week for me, should be fun. Speaking of hockey, the Sharks are amazing. Joe Thornton is amazing. He has 94 assists this season, and the next highest person has 69 assists...that's incredible. That's like 5 standard deviations. Thornton is tied with Jaromir Jagr for #1 in points. Meanwhile Cheechoo has 53 goals, 1 behind the leader, Jagr. The Sharks have won 7 games in a row. If things go well the next 2 games, the Sharks will have the #5 spot and a huge amount of momentum going into the playoffs. I've gone to a Sharks playoff game every year since '99 that they have made it and this year should be no different. Current Music: Daler Mehndi - Mojaan Laen Do (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 13th, 2006
1:10 am	Moskau in Japan I always wondered what fanimutations were like in other countries (e.g. Japan), and now I know: http://pya.cc/pyaimg/pimg.php?imgid=16420 Bonus: Seatbelts - TANK! Live video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=eoh2-XFcHb0&search=Tank%21%20Bebop Jon Stewart on The Daily Show following 9/11: http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZfO-Z1CuJ6w&search=jon%20stewart%20911 --- Another week, another Smash tourney. Lately they have been happening every 2 weeks at SJSU; a lot of people have been coming, and Norcal has been getting pretty skilled. That's why I was honored to represent Norcal in the 10 v 10 Norcal vs Socal crew battle last Saturday at the tourney in Long Beach. The last 3 tourneys I have won money (in 2 v 2, not singles yet. 2v2 in Smash is like the most fun thing ever), not much, but enough to pay for my meals for a day. Anyway, long story short, Socal won. Ken, the undisputed #1 in the world (even including Japan) resides in Socal. I ended up going up against him in the crew battle. I did better than I thought I would do, I definitely saw where I could have done better, but I was reasonably satisfied with how I did. Jiggly has a pretty hard time with Fox anyway. The drive there and back was great, riding in a van with 7 of the coolest people I've met in the last year (not to mention the dozens at the actual tourney; there were almost 100 people there). I laughed my ass off about 2398457293 times. I was glad to find out that pretty much everyone else enjoys the comedic value of throw-up. We took a scenic route back at my behest and we found this amazingly beautiful valley, thanks mostly to the green from all the rain lately, on CA-198 about 10 miles East of San Lucas. And of course, the first thing we did when we got back to Norcal after a weekend of Smash, was play more Smash. I'm hopefully going to post some vids of my matches eventually in case anyone cares. Current Music: The Pillows - MY FOOT (Comment on this)