A brief explanation. The office network, you see, was not designed to have quite so many computers connected to it. The routers are surly. The hubs are surly. The wiring itself is surly. So occasionally something will go bad, and the standard response is to randomly un-plug and re-plug wires until it starts working again. Which is sort of my response to software engineering, as well, so I can't complain too much, but damn, it's annoying when you've got things firm-coded to your IP number, like, say, Eyrie's ssh program. This makes, what, the fourth time this year I've had my computer's IP number changed? Yeesh.
What else... oh. The company's doing a roll-out of our software lately, so last Friday we were taken out to lunch on the company account to commemorate all our hard work. Or something. We went out to a little cafe known as "Cool Beanz", which contained entirely too much of a perky atmosphere. The windows were 'painted' in the method where you dip a square sponge in paint and then splort it right on, making for a surreal, checker-boarded view of the world. The exterior and interior were covered with design work that reminded one of nothing so much as a Kindergarten, only perkier. On the other hand, they make a good fried catfish. Mmm. Catfish. And gingerbread cake for dessert. Mmm. Feel those calories piling up...
Of course, on Saturday, I went out to eat with my parents (and my sister), because my birthday had taken place recently and, hey, excuse to eat out. We chose a French restaurant, for no particular reason, which meant not a lot of food, but what there was of it was very good. Mmm. Jumbo shrimp. Mighty jumbo shrimp. Also, chocolate truffon cake, which was a moussey sort of thing which was very chocolate-y.
In a few short weeks, my sister will be unleashed upon the collegiate world. This disturbs me, really. I'm not sure if the world is ready to have such an event occur. Doom! Doooooom! The fools! The mad fools!
Speaking of mad fools, I spotted Costume Boy once more on Monday afternoon, again in his 'Sporty Batman' attire. That dude is whack, man.
Hup.
What else? Ah! On Friday night, there was an anime club meeting, at which we watched one of the (many) Dragonball Z movies, in this instance, The World's Strongest. Mmm. Pure cheese. A surly brain in a jar attached to a giant robot trying to steal Goku's body! Gohan's hidden powers unleashed! Bulma being surly! Krillan getting slapped around by pretty much everyone (poor Krillan; he even remarks, bewildered, "Why does this always happen to *me*?" after the villain, after being whomped on by all the heroes together, recovers just in time to smack the hell out of him)! Goku calling upon the power of the Earth to form a mighty Spirit Ball and whomp on the bad guy! Random wilderness shots for dramatic effect (meanwhile, in another movie entirely, the sun was setting...)! Oohlong revealing the reason he wants to get his hands on some Dragonballs (it has something to do with women's panties; no, we're not sure what...)!
Sadly, it was 'dubtitled', which means that essentially, instead of making a real subtitle script, the company which released it basically just slapped the dub script onto the raw Japanese copy. I don't know much Japanese, but even *I* know that's not what they're saying. Especially when they're not sayhing *anything* in the Japanese version, but there's dubtitles indicating that they're saying things in the dubbed version...
I almost would have preffered the dub, for one reason - in the Japanese DBZ, they use the same voice actor for Goku, apparently, that they used int the original DB series. The only problem, of course, is that Goku has aged at least ten years since then... So you get this big, surly guy with a little squeaky kid's voice... No. That just ain't workin', guys.
On the other hand, the movie was so bad that by about half-way through, people started making the snippy comments. Especially at the dubtitle script's cues to the voice actors that had been left in (like '[Evil Chuckling]' or '[Whimpering]'). Mmm. Surly otaku.
After the movie, we got to watch a short feature. Namely, a little student film from some college somewhere, entitled 'George Lucas in Love'. It... it was surreal, indeed. Think a parody of... well, pretty much everything George Lucas ever did, with a little 'Shakespeare in Love' thrown in for good measure. Basically, George Lucas is in college, and all around, people are acting odd... which he seems not to notice, as he has a script to write, an agricultural SF tragedy! He meets a girl with buns on her head who suggests that he give up on agricultural tragedy and just write what he knows... which in this case is really whacky people. Naturally, he falls in love and the girl turns out to be his sister. Or something.
Hup!
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