Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Josie's Dall Maker
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On Sunday, October 11, 2003 at 2:05pm Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

I have been a slug. A great big ol' slug. It's been Fall Break for me since 10:00pm Wednesday, so there have been no classes to worry about. It also helps that the weather has been wet and damp and dreary, thereby keeping me inside playing Disgaea. I should be writing. I should be cleaning. Heck, I should be unpacking (lalalala... I know it's been over a two months... lalalala... I can't hear you). Instead, I am playing video games.

This such a good game especially if you are a compulsive level-upper. Which I am. It also has the strangest sense of humor. For instance, I recently fought Power Rangers in the game. Yes, the Power Rangers are an enemy. Oh the game makers didn't call them the Power Rangers. I think they gave them the name "Prism Rangers," but everyone could figure out who they were supposed to be. I laughed as I proceeded to kick the red ranger's ass. It was great. Just great.

The new laptop harddrive has arrived! This means that soon I will be able to access all my old stories. JOY! RAPTURE! I can work on what I want to work on when I want to work on it! You cannot imagine how happy this makes me. Right now I'm waiting for Miome to do computer voodoo to it to get all my files from one harddrive to the next. Just in time for NaNoWriMo this year. This means I won't have to download the Excel file again which will keep track of the word count. This also means I won't have to fix all the formulas in it again. Woot!

So I let a few people look at the thing I did for NaNoWriMo last year. I'm always kind of nervous about such things. I don't know why, I just am. As soon as I let them have access to it, I started rereading it. And promptly found about 6 mistakes just in one part. I hate it when I do that. They agreed that it's really good and that I must send the next part to my ML. Which I will as soon as my laptop is fixed. Then I want to send them the next two parts of it. I especially want to see their reactions to the tear-jerker scene. Wheeee! I'm excited about working on it again.

Which begs the question: should I post this year's NaNoWriMo up somewhere? On one hand, I want to publish it and putting it up for everyone to see kind of kills that. On the other hand, I like getting feedback as I'm writing. Mostly because everytime I do an edit, I tack on an extra 1,000-2,000 words. In fact, one day last year was spent just editing and I managed to surpass my quota of words for the day. Decisions, decisions.

Another thing to consider is that my intial draft is always very, very rough. I have notes and comments all over the place. Sometimes I'm just trying to move the plot along so I'll leave out whole scenes. All that gets finished as I go through the editting process. People might not want to read the rough version. I, personally, almost never feel comfortable letting people see the unfinished product. Am I really going to want to post stuff as I'm writing it? And will I have time to post stuff as I go along or will writing take up too much of my time as it is?

I think I'll just wait and see what happens. That's my usual strategy.

Finally, I had to shut off comments to one of my LJ entries. It had spawned a huge political discussion. I'm not fond of political discussions, but usually don't mind them taking place. Especially where I can ignore them if I choose (like the comments of my LJ). However, LJ was acting up and sending me doubles of each comments email or people kept messing up their comments and reposting them. Anyway, I got over 50 some emails about the LJ comments. And since the original post wasn't that small to begind with, I was getting 50 some 10k LJ comment emails. Not only did this clutter up my inbox it also was eating up my hotmail space. The quickest way for me to stop it was to bar comments.

I didn't realize it would delete all the comments already made until I did it. Sorry guys. I think in the future if I make a political statement (which will not be often), I'll just go ahead and make it no comment.

And now, off to read the NaNoWriMo forums!

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Marvel Comics' Break with the Comics Code Authority
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On Tuesday, October 7, 2003 at 01:14 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

The article for the link of the day is about two years old. I had to find another article about the same thing that actually had a date on it to find that out. Marvel decided to drop the Comics Code a couple of years ago. According to the article, it was because an issue of X-Force with a nude tub scene. Anyway, this was reported a lot at the time it happened. I also found another more news oriented (ie not as opinionated) article.

I haven't been an avid reader of comic books (with the exception of the occasional manga series) for many years. When Marvel started producing as many series as possible to try and make more money, I got out. I was fed up with it. However, I still keep tabs on what's going on through other means. Usually, this is in the form of movies *cough*X-Men*cough*, cartoons, news articles, etc. When someone brought to my attention the current kerfluffle in comic book word, I had to say something.

Now, for those of you who don't know, the Comics Code was created in the 1950's as a reaction against a book which basically said comic books were causing deliquency in the young. This page has a pretty good overview of what happened. The Senate even got involved at one point. This book is also probably where the idea that comics were "just for kids" and were "not real literture" got started. The original version of the adopted Comics Code is really quite a funny read. You can just feel the 1950's mentality oozing through the words.

I read most of the comics when Marvel was still abiding by the Comics Code. It was really amusing sometimes. You would have characters who cussed like a sailor, but because of the Comics Code, all they could show was a string of characters (the standard @#$%^&!). Then you would play mystical guess trying to figure out what was being said. At times it was just pathetic. So when I heard Marvel dumped the Comics Code, I figured this would be mostly why. There would be more cussing and more variety in their villains. After all, now we can have villains who make evil look fun!

Then I heard about the latest issue of Avengers who's release date was moved to Oct. 15th due to content. It is being reported at the first time Marvel has really gone against the Comics Code since they dropped it in a mainstream comic. I don't know about "first time" but oh dear god, the subject matter.

Not only does it involve sex, it involves kinky sex. If you'd like to see exactly what kind of kinky sex, you may go here to a thread about the subject which has links to the pictures. I haven't looked at the pictures myself because... well... I'm in a public computer lab. I imagine they are not work safe.

I am all for less censorship in my comicbooks and movies and cartoons and such. I really am tired of being told that the stuff I like is "just for kids." It's not. I'd like to see more adult stuff in such things. But I understand some of the concerns being raised. I mean, if Marvel told everyone "We will not change the rating for a series" and then did, you've kind of got a problem. Because people and kids started collecting the series with expectations of content already in place and those are going to get hosed when you suddenly change the rating. Also, someone pointed out that a lot of people get their comics through the mail. If they don't go to a store or don't get on the internet, they're going to be in for a rude shock when they read this issue.

On one hand, yeah for more adult content in something that has for the most part been considered a "kid's thing." On the other hand, boo for how Marvel implemented it. Bad Marvel. No cookie.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: The Boohbah Zone
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On Sunday, October 5, 2003 at 09:05 a.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

If I remember right, Twig sent me this link. It's just... bizarre. Not as bizarre as some of the stuff I'm found (trying to get giant french ameoba like things to procreate still wins that contest), but its right up there. The colors are pretty. ^_^

So it appears I'm taking a page out of Thorne's book. By saying that I'm going to continue a entry "right after my class" what I really mean is I will wait two days and then be sitting in my living room on a Sunday morning before a realize "I forgot to update my pitas page" quite out of the blue. Then I will go update my pitas page. Only by this time I have completely forgotten what other things I wanted to say in the last entry. Figures. So you'll get my wandering thoughts on a Sunday morning.

Last night my roomie and I caught Army of Darkness on TV last night. That is such a cheesy ass movie. And yet, it remains one of the best campy movies I've ever seen. The only one I can think of that beats it is The Mummy. It's not a zombie movie, and the claymation and plastic skeletons are just hard to take seriously. It's just a great, great movie. One that we really need to show Cneko sometime. Sounds like a good reason to get together to me.

Speaking of Cneko, guess what? Sugah has put the fifth chapter of Bind to Thee out. It's good. Though I can't beleive she left it there! AHHHHHH! Must... know... what's... going to... happen... ARG!

And in the random way my mind flits from one topic to another, Sugah reminds me of Digimon which reminds me of my latest post to the DaisukeKen ML This is in response to a piece of SPAM mail that was sent to the list. It's editted and added to here.

My favorite types of SPAM are the ones that scan your webpages for words/names you mention. Then they try to and trick you into thinking that the email was sent by someone you know. I know they do this because I've supposedly "recieved" several emails from people who's nicks I mention in my blog or with their nicks in the subject line for diet drugs, viagra, free vacations, penis enlargments, etc. I'm smart enough to know that Sugah's or Miome's or Sheltem's or other people I know on-line's email address is not iudhrtv8q76459879@somedomain.com. I ignore them for the most part.

Except when I get such great spam with subject lines like "Ken and Davis want to make sure you please her in bed" or "Duo knows how to add inches to your penis" or even once "Hajiki heard about last night."

Never knew anime characters were so concerned about my love life. ^_^

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Biggest Fish Ever Found
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On Friday, October 3, 2003 at 01:08 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

You know its pretty sad when you tell the paleontologist "the tail is missing" and he's releived. That is one big fish.

School continues. Fall Break is next week (thank god). I'm going to be using my time productively. That is, I'm going to be working on school projects and writing fanfics. I have also cursed myself by signing up for this year's National Novel Writing Month contest. You'd think after doing it one year (and winning) I'd run screaming from it. But no. I'm going to try again. Only this time, I'm going to be doing it while taking classes and TA-ing. I predict very few entries to be made here for the month of November.

More later, sometime after class.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Anime-Myth
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On Tuesday, September 30, 2003 at 01:05 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

Several interesting things to note. First off, on Sunday (Sat.?) a link to my pitas page was sent to the Arkansas MENSA Chapter's mailing list. i'm not exactly sure why a link was posted to it, but I recieved a hit from the list as well as a higher number of hits from emails. This coincided with my last post about geology, so I assume it had something to do with that. Alas, I am not a part of MENSA nor am I in Arkansas. Therefore, I can't read the actual post that was made linking to this page since the archives are not open to the public. Still, I wonder what was said about it. At the very least, I hope the people reading got a good laugh out of it.

I'm not sure if this was respoinsible for the sudden influx of anonymous comments in my LiveJournal. On one hand, the coincidence factor between the two events is a little high for me to say they're unrelated. On the other hand, not knowing what the original post said or even if people cared enough about what I said to bother finding a way to leave comments, I can't say for certain the two events are connected. Ah, feel the ambiguity. Wish... wash... wish... wash...

Ann, I never thought about it but I imagine the opposite would be annoying. That is, everyone assuming that your degree was really useful when in reality it's only really useful when in connection with something else. I bet you hear/will hear a lot of "I don't understand why you can't find job. You can speak Japanese." I don't know if that's better or worse than my relatives telling me "We're so glad you found a real job" when I took data entry positions because I couldn't find any geology work. Relatives. Why is illegal to get rid of them again?

In other news, thanks to some advice and general direction from Silver Thunder I now have the first five episodes of Digimon 02 in my hot little hands. In Japanese! With subtitles! This is cause for much fangirl squee-ing on my part. I'm hoping that more episodes will be forth coming. I'd feel worse about getting them off the internet if they were available comercially. The problem is, they aren't except for the few random episodes where Ken goes back to being Ken and not the Digimon Emperor. So I am getting them the only way I can. Yet somehow, I doubt I can chalk this up to educational purposes.

Watching them I really wanted to take notes. More than once I almost had my roomie stop the episode so I could get pencil and paper out. I had forgotten so much about the series. Like the fact that Ken (when he was still the Digimon Emperor) actually did kick a puppy out of his way! I'd forgotten that T.K. lived in the same apartment building as Yolei and Cody. Davis has one poster on his wall and a yellow plaid comforter on his bed. The Digidestined only tripped when coming out of the Digital World and into the real one. The Digital Emperor tied Davis to a cliff not once, but twice. So many things that I'd forgotten or didn't notice the first time.

People were right. The dub is a lot different from the subbed version. I know people had told me that in the Japanese version, the other Digidestined didn't pick on Davis nearly as much. I didn't realize just how drastic a difference it was. In the first five episodes of the Japanese version, they actually ribbed Davis once and yelled at him once. In the dubbed version, he gets picked on and yelled at in the first episode. Multiple times. No wonder people who had seen the Japanese version first talked about it being so jarring.

In honor of having now seen parts of both the dubbed version and the Japanese version of Digimon 02, I will now do a section called "Good News/Bad News." Anyone who has seen Animaniacs and the "Good Idea/Bad Idea" will recognize this rather quickly. Just think of it as a way for me to put down my initial impressions of the Japanese version. Here we go.

Good news: The change in the voices of the Digidestined did not jar me nearly as much as I'd feared it would. This really surprised me. Usually, if I see the American version first, the Japanese voices sound wrong to me, and vice versa. I have a really hard time transitioning between the two. That wasn't the case for the Digidestined. Even though the Digimon Emperor sounding a lot like Kurama from Yu Yu Hakusho throws me every once in a while, for the most part I transitioned smoothly.
Bad news: The changes in the Digimon voices drove me up the wall. This was not as bad with Veemon or Patamon, but Gatomon (Tailmon) about drove me nuts. I don't know why, but everytime she spoke I twitched. Same with Hawkmon and Armadillomon. I know the fake Texan accent they gave Armadillomon in the dubbed version was bad, but the d'gyu at the end of every sentence is worse. And the Wormmon voice! I miss the Wormmon voice!

Good news: Evidence for Davis/Tai slash found. I find it highly amusing that in the Japanese version, Davis wants to go through the Digital Gate because Tai is there, not because Kari just went through.
Bad news: Matt still sounds like the only guy in the series to have hit puberty. Even though it's supposedly three years later, the only guy who speaks with a truly masculine voice, is Matt. This was vastly amusing to me when the 01 kids were younger, and its vastly amusing to me now that they are all older.

Good news: I got the Japanese joke. "Chu" is the sound for kissing. I got the joke!
Bad news: Cody's grandfather was the one who made the joke. Oh dear god, there was a mental image I could have lived the rest of my life without.

Good news: I don't have to listen to the "Digimon friends to the boys and girls" song everytime the 02 Digimon evolve. Deep hate for that song. And I had to endure it so many times during the series.
Bad news: I don't get to listen to the "Digital Monsters" song everytime the 01 Digimon evolve. I liked that song!

Good news: I get to see the parts of the episodes that were cut out because of the multiple commercial breaks Fox put into them. Yeah! More Digimon goodness.
Bad news: I get to be even more confused about the names of people/digimon/attacks. I'm bad enough with names as it is. This is going to drive me nuts and possibly bite me in the butt at some point. I just know it is.

And now, I must get some work done for classes. Until later.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Aftershocks still shake Hokkaido, Japan
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On Saturday, September 27, 2003 at 06:57 a.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

Do you want to know what the most annoying thing about having a major in Geology, a minor in Business Management, and getting a Master's in Paleo-ecology? People keep asking you why. People keep asking you what you're going to do with those degrees. People keep revealing their complete and utter ignorance about the world around them and where the things they use come from.

"Why didn't you just go ahead and get a business degree? Or a law degree? You're smart enough to have gotten either one of those." Implying that somehow, you don't need to be smart to get a Geology degree. Funny, haven't see them falling from the sky around here. Maybe I need to move to another state. Or maybe I should pull out one of the charts we have for crystallization of magma and see if they can read it. Even better, I can let them try to do a stress/strain problem. One of the ones that had the civil engineering students crying when they saw what I had to do for class. Or maybe they could do the iteration necessary to find the shear stress on a bed of quartz.

I KNOW! They can spend 6 weeks living out of a tent, eating camp food, and mapping non-stop from 8-5 in the Southwestern US while trying not to pass out from hypoglycemia! That will show them how easy my major is. And they can loose 40 pounds they really couldn't afford to lose in the process. Just like I did.

"What can you do with a geology degree? Is there any work for geologists?" I hate this question. Hate it. Hate it. Hate it. It implies that my degree is in the same league as a Philosophy or a Political Science degree *. That I'm getting it because I couldn't cut it somewhere else and it really doesn't have any use beyond academia. Which is not true. You can use your geology degree to look for oil, mine various minerals/ores, find the date of Bolivian Silver mines, try to predict earthquakes or volcanic eruptions, figure out how to lessen the impact of underground gas tanks on underground water supplies, study subsidence in buildings, become a civil engineer in geologist's clothing, work for the Dept. of Transportation, study the effects of spills on marine sediments, go to court as an expert witness, or my personal favorite become a paleontologist. This is the stuff I can think of straight off the top of my head.

"Why is geology important anyway? It doesn't effect me in anyway." IGNORANCE! Let's start with a very simple concept. The saying goes "If it's not grown, it has to be mined." This is absolutely true. Anything that did not come from a plant or animal, came from the ground. I once had a student, who when asked where all the non-organic parts of plastics and televisions and computers came from, told me "a laboratory." Where do the raw materials to make the stuff in the laboratory come from? "Another laboratory." That's right. According to this person, every thing that wasn't grown was magically produced in a "laboratory."

WRONG! It comes from mines. MINES! Those horrible things nobody wants but we can't live without. Every time you pick up a thing of blush, you're putting 4-7 minerals on your face. Everytime you use your computer, you're using approximately 121 different minerals. Everytime you eat a Pop-tart, you're ingesting a mineral. Every see kid's toothpaste with little sparklies in it? Or white paint? Or every felt the need to use something like kaopectate or peptobismal? MINERALS! ALL MINERALS! From mica in the toothpaste to titanium in the white paint to the kaolin clay which settles your stomach, they all came from the earth at some point.

So why do I love geology so much? I have always loved to read. The Earth is a book, the largest and oldest book that people have access to. The layers of the rock are pages laid down one after another in a language few have bothered to learn. It records the history of a world, from beginning to the present and will some day record the end of Earth. The Book of Earth holds the knowledge of life that has come before, written one bone at a time, one life at a time. True some of the pages are missing or torn, we don't know all the words, and there's no pictures except those that we paint in our head. That doesn't stop those of me from being fascinated by it.

You want to know why I love geology? I want to know why you don't.

* DISCLAIMER: Tsaiko thinks that Political Science and Philosophy degrees are perfectly fine degrees to get. They are challenging degrees that involve a lot of stuff she has doesn't know about. While they will demonstrate to people that you can think, they are not known as degrees that will get you a job other than as a teacher in that field. No insult was meant to people holding these degrees. Thank you.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: World's Largest Rodent - Guinea Pig the size of Buffalo
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On Wednesday, September 24, 2003 at 10:22 a.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

That is one big guinea pig.

So after the debacle with Fred's Beds recounted by my roomie, I feeling kind of blah. Not good, but not bad. This morning I finished my Marine Sediment homework. This included such wonderful problems as "If a little critter took a dump at the top of the ocean, how long will it take its poop to reach the ocean floor" (question is paraphrased here, but that's the gist of it). Answered some emails.

Speaking of emails, I got an explanation back from one of the people who had sent me a large file. In fact, I got this the exact same day (or soon after) I made the last post. Mmmm... the taste of sticking my foot in my mouth. Yum yum. So I felt like a moron, because in my experience very few people who find my pitas page through search engines and contact me continue to read it. Usually, I get "I saw your entry about (some topic) and think your site is great! Please link to my site Joe's Schmoe's rock shop." or "I read your fanfics on FF.Net and think you should join my Sailor Moon message Board." or even "I see you have an LJ. You look pretty cool. Can I have an invite code?" I usually try to respond to these emails either in email or on my site, and have never gotten anything back. This is the first time I've encountered anyone who responded.

So guy with the amber? I'm sorry. I looked at the picture and emailed you this morning. Hope the links I sent you help.

I got a few comments over on my LJ about it. Kemmy had a pretty good theory. Sometimes people get viruses and the virus will randomly send out large files with itself attached to them to people in their address book. I had never thought of that. And I should have since I know of at least one author who was working on a book, and had several chapters of it distributed around the web before publishing because of a virus that did that. He was not pleased.

I also got a few people telling me "Well, this is the internet. People are going to respond to anything you put on the internet." Which is true in a way. I don't mind people emailing me telling me they loved/hated/found an error in my website or stories. I'm usually thrilled. I'm kind of bad about responding sometimes (bad, bad Tsaiko) because how do you respond to a one line compliment like "I loved your poems!" I guess with just a "Thank you!" I really need to not be so lazy about such things. Anyway, back to my point. I don't mind those kinds of email. It's the random large files that bother me.

Now, I'm back to the blah feeling. And slightly bored as well. I think I'll go work on a story or something. Or read. Reading is good.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Wikipedia - The Free Encyclopedia
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On Monday, September 22, 2003 at 05:36 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

Did my good deed of the day and wrote a short article about Historical Geology for the Free On-line Encyclopedia. Okay, I have a question for all you people in internet land. Do you get people randomly sending you stuff? Now I don't mean spam. Everyone gets SPAM. You create an brand new email account and 80% of the time, the first email you get will be SPAM. So that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about these random people who send you pictures or stories or poems or links to webpages or even the webpages themselves. You don't know them well. Hell, you don't even know them at all. If you're lucky you might vaguely recall getting a "UR SO COOL!" email from them once before. More than likely you don't know them from Seymour Butts.

And they randomly send me huge files! I don't know these people, but that doesn't stop them from filling up my little free hotmail account with 250K pictures of 400K stories. A 400K word document? I don't even have time to write 400K worth of story much less read some stranger's 400K story. Besides, I don't know what kind of macro viruses might be attached to that thing. Why do they think I'm going to open some random attachment from some random person? Isn't the first rule about not spreading viruses that you don't open attachments from people you don't know?

It's not even like they asked me if I had time or the inclination. Their email basically consisted of "I came across you page today and thought you looked cool. I especially liked title of story/post about something. Here's a story/picture that you might like." They don't even introduce themselves. They just send this stuff to me.

I guess it floors me so much because I'm one of these people that can't imagine just randomly sending something to someone. Heck, I have enough problems getting up the courage to email someone saying "I liked your stories." Even if I've talked to people on the internet for a while, I still pause before I send them something I've written or drawn. There's always that momentary uncertainty of "What if I'm just annoying them? What if they're just being polite when they say they want to read something of mine?" I can't even begin to imagine what it takes to randomly send someone a file.

Which is why I try to be polite when I reply to these things. If I reply. Most times I simply don't know what to say. What do you say to these people? It boggles my mind. I can't imagine that these people think that sending stuff to someone they've never even talked to is polite. I mean, I'm glad they think I'm cool and like my writings and want my opinion. But at the same time, if they read my pitas page they'd know I don't have a lot of free time. And as of this entry, they'll also know that I really don't like being sent stuff by random people.

I guess I'm still just... confused about the whole thing. Like why these people do it, and does it happen to other people. Oh well. Until I figure out something better, I guess I'll just delete the files. I really don't know what else to do.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Internet Simulation
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On Thursday, September 18, 2003 at 05:50 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

Hurricane is still going over. My mom's house got hit by a tree. She says the roof and siding have been damaged, but rain is not coming into the house. Which is a good thing because it hit near my old room which has a lot of stuff I still want. We've got branches down all over the place. We keep losing power for 30-60 minutes at a time, but it always keeps coming back on for now. Usually, the power goes out just as I'm starting to write smut. Isabel is not a yaoi fangirl.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is:
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On Thursday, September 18, 2003 at 08:04 a.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

Holy...

Classes are cancelled today due to the hurricane.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: The Internet Movie Database
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On Wednesday, September 17, 2003 at 10:49 a.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

Okay, you know how a lot of people can trace back parts of their dreams to what happened to them that day? Like someone will mention the new Freddy Krueger movie and they'll remember how they thought his name was Freddy Cougar when they were a kid and in their dream that night they'll be back attending their old middle school who's mascot use to be a cougar, only now the cougar is real and running around the school killing people and they're trying to get their friends out of the school without getting killed? Stream of concious stuff like that where when you think about it, the connections are all there but they only make sense to you?

Well my dreams are on a 3 day to 3 week time lapse. Meaning I'll have dreams about with that kind of stream of concious connections, only it will be tied to events that happened usually three to five days ago. Sometimes as far as three weeks back, those that's rarer. I think my subconcious has a backlog on processing the stuff that I encounter.

Anyway, my dream last night was one of those. I know where the components came from: Digimon from the Digimon marathon a couple weeks ago, school stress from stress last week, the internet from all my time on the internet, discussion about how you can't get all the Digimon episodes on DVD or tape, working on Ken/Davis fics etc. All of it makes sense when you pick it apart and analyze the dream. It's just how my subconcious decided to present it to me in one neat little dream package that makes me go o_O.

So, it starts off that I'm in a class with this lady as a professor. I have no idea what class it is (I don't think that's ever mentioned in the dream). Anyway, one of out assignments is that we've got to watch various Digimon 02 episodes for class. She gives the assignment to the class, but I'm the only one who knows that you can't buy all the episodes on DVD. I raise my hand and mention this. She tells me that I'm mistaken because she's seen a tape of episodes in stores (it's true, they do have a few episodes on one tape) and therefore she knows that all the episodes are out. No amount of explaining will convince her otherwise.

Class ends. A few days go by and we're supposed to have watched one of the episodes assigned. Only no one can find it. The entire class comes in and tell her "The Digimon 02 episodes are not all out on tape." She insists that if we really wanted to we could find them and that we're not looking hard enough. She suggests the internet.

I go to the internet and start trying to find the episodes for Digimon 02 using some kind of program. I find one site that's got a bunch of the episodes (though not all of them) up along with summaries and screencaps. I take out the list of episodes I'm supposed to have for class and start downloading them. I'm also looking through the screencaps they have, and reading through the summaries. This take up a large part of my dream.

Now, I don't know what version of Digimon 02 my subconcious was watching, but dammit, I want a copy of it. You see, in my dream Digimon 02 didn't just run for 1 season (about 52 episodes). Oh no. I supposedly ran for several seasons. The Digidestined were in HS when it ended! So there were hundreds of episodes (something like 250+), and there was a bunch of them my dream self hadn't seen. This meant I was catching up on the lives of the characters and waiting for episodes I needed for class to download.

Then I discovered the make-out episode. Not a kiss, the summary said, but a five minute make-out session with a fade to black at the end. Guess who this was between? Ken and Davis.

So now I'm really happy because here is a canon makeout scene between Ken and Davis that I somehow managed to miss. I don't remember what the summary said happened to cause this in the episode. I was too busy looking at the screen cap which showed Ken and Davis kissing with their arms wrapped around each other's waist. Only one of Davis' hands was drifting lower than Ken's waist. I checked the list and, lo and behold, that's one of the episodes I need for class! Wheeee! I have no idea what the teacher could possibly want us to get out of this episode, and I don't care. I'm downloading that sucker!

Unfortuneately, I woke up before the episode finished downloading. No make-out scene for me. But at least I still remember what the screen-cap looked like. Mmmmm... Ken and Davis.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: National Hurricane Center
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On Tuesday, September 16, 2003 at 01:14 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

Well, for those of you who are not on the East Coast (and for those of you who are but don't pay attention to such things), there's a hurricane in the Atlantic that expected to his North Carolina sometime Thursday. In fact, it's expected to go just east of where I am. I'm not worried about Raleigh. Usually if it comes this far inland, it's already a tropical storm. Not always, but usually. I'm worried about my and my roomie's family, which live farther east and will get the brunt of the storm. I hope I'm not called back home to help deal with storm damage, but it is a possibility. At least I don't have to worry about my sister. She's down in GA. Hurricane Isabel is expected to head more north.

So if I'm suddenly quiet after Wednesday, it means that power is out and I can't get on the internet.

Hopefully, this storm will not be like Fran. Hurricane Fran took out power to my house for over a week. Same thing with my school. The thing about Fran was that it remained a hurricane long after it made landfall. The wind speeds didn't drop, the size didn't decrease, and thousands of trees got taken out in the process. This clogged roads and took down power lines. Even though Hurricane Floyd, which came through three years later, was more destructive it didn't come as far inland. It was desctructive because of the amount of flooding it caused, not because of the winds.

Anyway, hurricane bad. Coming this way. But maybe if it hits later enough on Thursday, I won't have to teach my Friday class. There's the silver lining.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is:
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On Tuesday, September 16, 2003 at 12:51 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

Just because.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Rocket Mania Game
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On Monday, September 15, 2003 at 10:57 a.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

This is going to require some explaining. Please bear with me.

So I'm attempting to do my GIS homework last night. GIS homework is due at 4:00pm every Monday. I had finished over half of the homework, but had put off doing the actual map stuff until the last minute because a) it is a pain in the ass to do and b) it sucks up time like nobody's business. I prefer to get the easier stuff done early so I can concentrate on the harder stuff. Also means if there's a time crunch, I have a good chunk already done. Now GIS not only involves maps and projections, it also involves quite a bit of database work. I've worked with databases in jobs for over four years now, so this is usually no problem. I know how to get around in them and how to use the absolute basics of SQL. Enough so that I can get the information I need out of the databases with a minimum of fuss.

Well, for this assignment and all other ones from this time forward, we have to keep a log. In this log we record all the steps we went through to get to the answer. The reasoning behind this is that by doing this, we can see where we made mistakes and people coming behind us can reproduce our results. In theory, this is a great idea. In practice, I know this is useless. It's almost the same thing as comments in HTML or documentation in programming. It's supposed to help you understand what's going on. Instead, it usually confuses you even more.

I'm making my little log, and it's going fine until I come to one question. What I'm supposed to do is find all the soil zones that have a certain feature, and then add up their areas. Okay. So i do my little SQL statement to find all the soil zones with this certain feature. I run the statement, it returns seven entries, and I get the database to display those seven entries. Then I try and figure out how to get the database to add up the areas.

And try...

And try...

I use the Help file. Nothing. I check the message boards to see if anyone else has had this problem. Nothing. I try to find the SQL "wizard" that the professor was talking about that was supposed to make this thing really easy. It was supposed to take you through something like this step by step. I don't know what my professor was smoking to make the wizard pop up on his screen, but he needs to share because I couldn't find squat in the help file about it. It was like beating my head against a brick wall. I could not find anything in the program that would perform simple math.

Finally, after over 40 minutes later, I said screw it. I took the areas (which were already given, I didn't need to even calculate them just add them together), and added them using the calculator program. In my log, this is what is written:

Next find their combined area

Target layer: soils.shp
Method: Show selected entries in database
Selection: Enter values of the area in displayed entries into calculator and add them together.
Result: Combined area = 3045189 feet

This was probably not what he was looking for. Do I care? Not one bit. I got the correct answer and that's all that matters. Let's here it for going around you ass to get to your thumb!

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Cosplay- Katana from Gad Guard
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On Saturday, September 13, 2003 at 08:07 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

How to do Marine Sediment Transport problems in 10 easy steps

Step 1: Stare at problem until your brain begins to leak out your ears.

Step 2: Go get something to drink, stop by bathroom, wander upstairs and clean up some. Alphabetize your CD collection.

Step 3: Go back to problem. Substitute in what you think is the correct numbers.

Step 4: Do mind numbing math. Make sure to use 3 sheets of paper to do this. Repeatedly forget minus signs, to square numbers, and accidently divide instead of multiply

Step 5: Get an answer 100 times larger than what you expected. Scream in frustration. Decide you need a break.

Step 6: Read fanfic to relieve frustration. Make sure the fanfic you pick has 10+ chapters with over 30 pages each.

Step 7: Try problem again. Waste another 3 pages of paper trying to do it. There's more forest in North America now than when the Pilgrim's landed. No one will miss a few trees.

Step 8: Get a answer that is way, way to small. In fact, your calculator will pitch a fit when you try to calculate it.

Step 9: Stab paper with pencil. Repeat as necessary.

Step 10: Set paper scraps on fire. Dance around small bonfire. Once done dancing, write hardcore Digimon smut (or smut in the fandom of your choice) on the laptop by the light of the dying embers.

How to do the problems in 10 easy steps.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Mac Killed my Inner Child
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On Thursday, September 11, 2003 at 08:57 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

A link of the day for both Kalil and Thorne, both of whom share my love (hate) for the smiling computers.

And now, because it is late, I am tired, and my roomie found it hilariously funny (although, it should be noted that the original version of this was said at something approaching midnight, and we were both very tired drunk), I present a small fragment.

---

The professor was a tall man with glasses and hair that was a medium shade of brown. He never wore a suit to class. It was always khakis and a dress shirt, khakis and a dress shirt, each shirt being a different color for each day of the week. Monday was blue. Tuesday was tan. Wednesday was green. So on and so forth. Once, due to a accident with a coffee before he'd left his house, the professor had switched colors for the day. His students had noticed. They couldn't remember what he had lectured on that day to save their lives, but they remember that he wore a different colored shirt.

"Everyone, may I have your attention please. Welcome to Eng 431, Great Works in Fey Literture, 1500-1800. My name is Dr. Avery," the professor said. A few people were still speaking in the back corner of the lecture hall, but he had most of their attention. This was good. There were more people in the room than seats. That was fine. Avery knew that people there would be room for the extras all too soon.

Next came the difficult part. Dr. Avery sighed, taking off his glasses, cleaning them, and the putting them back on before he spoke. His tone stated more clearly than words that the following speech was something he had made a thousand times before, and would make a thousand times again. And yet still someone would screw it up.

"The 'Fey' in the title of the course means elves and their close relatives. It does not mean homosexual. This class does not count towards any of you trying to get a major or minor in Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender studies. For that, you want Eng. 341 and not Eng. 431. If you were mistaken about the nature of this course, please leave now and make room for other students."

Fully half the class got to their feet. Dr. Avery rubbed the bridge of his nose as muttered questions of "Why are people leaving?" travelled through the lecture hall. He knew from experience that he would need to repeat this statement every class period until the Drop/Add period was over. Even then, some idiot would come whining to him the day after he couldn't drop the class complaining that he hadn't know this was a class about elves.

Students. Some of them could never seem to get anything right. Teaching would be so much more pleasurable if he could just get rid of the students.

---

Not that this little piece is inspired from just having graded two sets of Geology 101 labs or anything. More about that tomorrow.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Things People Said
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On Tuesday, September 9, 2003 at 02:10 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

Hard Drives: 2
Tsaiko: 0

So it appears that the reason my laptop isn't working is because something is screwed up with the harddrive. This means I will have no access to any of my older fics and stories until my roomie can get a new laptop harddrive and get my stuff off of the old laptop harddrive. Sigh. So I guess I'll be working on the AU Digimon story and various other newer stuff a lot. This is the second hard drive that's gone on me.

In other news, I have found a way to completely abuse the poor Space Macs. You see, there are several folders on the Macs 50 gig harddrives that are cleaned up every once in awhile. One gets cleaned out once a week, another once a month, and yet another once a semester. As long as you get on the same Mac each time, you can access the folders and the stuff you put in them. 50 gigs of free space that doesn't clog up my tiny campus account. Even better, these things have CD burners in them. 50 gigs of free space and a way to get whatever I want to put in it off. Even better for a Geology/Paleo geek like me, 50 gigs of space, a way to get the stuff off, AND free access to thousands upon thousands of journals on the web through my school library system.

I have literally done a weeks worth of research in 30 minutes. I think later on, I'm going to do more and burn it to CD. And I didn't even begin to scratch the surface on the number of articles I wanted to get my hands on. Paleopathology reasearch! Paleoecology journals! They have stuff on everything! More articles than I could possibly read in a lifetime! This is by far the nicest thing setup ever.

Right, right. Big dork.

I should have a very interesting pitas page entry on Thursday or Friday. You see, I've been grading the Intro. Geology labs from the first lab. Oh lord, the bad answers. It should be good for a laugh and possibly a rant once I get all of the papers done for my two sections.

Finally, I seem to be on a major glut again. I did this last week with Lunar's stuff. That is, reading huge amounts of what she's written until my brain is about to explode and I've my craving for it subsides. This week seems to be Sug's turn. Nevermind that I've already read Body Heat three times, and am now working on my fourth. I finished my third reading of Bind to Thee as well. Now I'm working on her one or two part fics.

Next week, my mind will want me to read large amounts of Talya or Keelywolfe or some other fairly prolific author. Just as long as it doesn't start wanting me to track down half-remembered fics I haven't read in years. YYH is the worse for this, and a lot of the archives have gone down. Which usually means I go on a whild hunt across the internet looking for the stuff.

I don't ever actually leave fandoms. I just put them down for awhile. -_-

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: All-Fruit Smoothie
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On Monday, September 8, 2003 at 06:21 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

Do you know what revenge is? Revenge is when your professor asks for a final report and gives you three days to write it, you then turn around and hand in a 11 page monstrosity complete with pictures, maps, and tables. I also get to be a smart-ass in there, but did so in a way that I got away with it. I hope. If I have to give up part of my weekend to write the damn thing, I plan on making my professors have to give up part of their day to read it. Take that!

Today was an interesting day. Usually, I ride with my roomie to campus. It means I don't have to cough up the $200 for a parking permit that will force me to walk two miles a day to get to my classes. However, this morning Miome was sick. So sick that she was having dizzy spells. This meant that I was on driving duty for the day. I spent most of the day running between campus and the townhouse, because my roomie was not good to drive to lunch. Heck, I even drove us to dinner. This might not sound like a big thing, but I hate driving so it's usually my roomie who is the chauffeur.

Anyway, she seems to be feeling better now. Not as dizzy and actually getting up instead of just lying on the couch. If she feels good enough to drive tomorrow, great! If not, I will be coughing up another $4 for temporary parking.

What else... what else... oh. I've written more on a AU Digimon fanfic I'm working on. Ken/Davis is the main pairing, with various other implied ones. Parts of it are in my LJ stretching back for a month or so. I doubt anyone who reads my pitas page actually reads Digimon fanfiction. Most of the Digimon fans who read this come through LJ and therefore, already have seen the entries. But hey, it's worth a shot.

Also, I tried posting a picture on the Oekaki Board of the Great Conjunction, but it wouldn't post for some reason. I wound up screencapping the thing. I need to remember to get it over to tsaiko.com and post a link. Show off my chocobo.

And I think that's about it. I've been busy and kind of blah. But don't worry, I'm sure something rant worthy will make itself known to me eventually.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Gad Guard
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On Sunday, September 7, 2003 at 08:06 a.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

Okay, who ordered a clone of Motomiya Davis? Who was it? Because in the anime Gad Guard there is a Davis clone. They might as well have had Sonada Hajiki introduce himself like this "My Name is Motomiya... er... Sonada Hajiki."

Now, I don't mean this like in Gravitation where you first see Ryuuichi and go "Duo?! You cut off your braid?" Or even when you see Tohma (also in Gravitation, show of the anime love children) and yell "Quarte? Did the whole GW cast move ot this show?" This takes looking

I mean Hajiki not only looks like Davis, he somehow inherited Davis' fashion sense as well. How many people actually wear fur collared jackets in Japan? At least two if anime is to be beleived. And goggles? Is this a new fashion trend? They both are goggle boys. Hajiki is even clumsy like Davis. He has a habit of tripping, stumbling, or falling over at the worse times. At times the animation style even matches that of Digimon. It's scary.

The only real difference between the two characters is in their personality. Hajiki tends to be more moody, slightly more depressive, and more of a realist than Davis is. I can understand that. It doesn't take that much of a stretch of the imagination to see that Davis would also have been those things had he had what happens to Hajiki happen to him. Vague enough? Good. Because Hajiki's past is one of those things that needs to be revealed over the course of the series and not spoiled.

There are characters other than Hajiki that are equally as fascinating. My favorite is Katana. And not just because he could concievably be the Digimon Emperor/Ken of the series *cough*. He's a very interesting character on his own. After Hajiki and Katana comes Takumi. My roomie and I spent the first 12 or 13 episodes of the series debating the gender of Takumi until a very *ahem* revealing shower scene settled the matter. Another favorite is the little blonde girl that hangs around Katana. Sweet child who he is obviously protective of.

There are some problems with the series. The gratuitous (and I do me extremely gratuitous) fan service is one of them. I don't think I've ever seen that much T&A coupled with sexual innuendo before in anything that wasn't classified as soft core porn. At times, the fan service is kind of subtle like the large amounts of nudey and sexy posters in the background of scenes. Other times it is blatantly obvious that it (literally) is all you can see. I could have done without some of it since it really doesn't move the plot along at all.

I'm also not fond of the design of the mecha. They look like big toys. I would have been happier if they had a more... Eva or even GW looking. Another problem I have with the series is the very episodic nature of it. I'm on episode 15 of a 24 episode series, and the people STILL aren't working together in any form of cohesive group. They just keep running into each other and agreeing not to get into each other's way. I also don't like how the creators will occasionally try to pull some nifty plot tricks off to varying degrees of success. Trying to tell a story through bits of flashback was not one of their more successful attempts.

My other slight problem (ie really more a quirk than a real annoyance) was with the translators. At one point, they called a minor character "him." Understandable, since its is hard to tell the gender sometimes (like Takumi). However, later on in the episode, we once again are shown a scene which settles the matter and the character is definitely female. Either that, or that guy has better legs and boobs than I do. I wish they had gone back to fix that when they did subtitled the episode.

Some of the scenes in this series were priceless. Watching Arashi kick Black's butt in the first episode because Black propostions her is priceless. See Hajiki react to his iron man (mecha) the first time is equally good. Realizing that the character Aiko named her mecha "Mister Schmitt" is good for a laugh. Any scene where Katana has screentime is good in my book. Ms Catherine sending a potted plant as a get well gift. Watching Arashi break a pencil with her fingers. Discovering what one of the female police officers' "other job" is. Katana and Hajiki being forced to spend time together. It tends to go in cycles with a enjoyable, but forgettable episode and then a really good episode.

In the end, I recommend this series. It's amusing and fun and interesting, and even if it has some problems, they aren't anything you can't live with. The characters gain depth over the series. They keep you interested even as the main plot is trying to get off the ground. Besides, it has a Davis clone! You can't go wrong with that.

A warning: the last episode translated (15 at this time) is the only episode to end on a cliffhanger so far You may want to hold off watching it until 16 comes out.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Rood Awakenings
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On Thursday, September 4, 2003 at 07:16 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

Everyone ready to hear a couple of rants? Yes? Good. Because I've got a couple that I am really in a ranting mood.

First off, let's talk about computer labs. Now some of you who have had the pleasure of working in computer labs in college and high school. I've had some bad experiences with computer labs. This includes chemical warfare (people's perfume/cologne should not announce their presence ten minutes before they arrive), broken computers, printers that wouldn't cooperate (can we say postage stamp sized resume?), unflushable history files full of porn sites, and pages that loudly announce to the lab that they are porn sites. However, there is one thing that annoys me above all else.

One of the biggest rules of a computer lab is that you need to remain quiet. The reason behind being quiet is obvious. People are trying to do little things like studying or reading or maybe working on homework which can determine whether or not you fail the class. Sometimes you have to talk. Like if you are collaborating for a group project or something. If you need to talk, you should do so in a library tone of voice.

What you should not do is come in and hold a loud conversation across the lab. Then, when the person you are holding a conversation with leaves, you should not sit down next to someone and try to loudly start a coversation. This is especially true if the person you just plopped down next to is staring at the screen trying to read. If the person you are trying to talk to/with is not talking back, the proper response is to decide that they are busy. It is not to then make loud, inane comments about every fucking thing that comes up on your screen.

I would like to impart a hard, cruel fact upon people. Just because I am an anime fan, and you are an anime fan, does not make me your friend. Sad, but true. I am not your friend. You are not my friend. At most, we have a common interest. You are not more important to me than my education. I have not invested several thousand dollars into you and therefore, you are not as important as my classes. Sucks, but it's true. The only person more important than my education is my roomie, and once again, I have several thousand dollars (in the form of rent) invested in keeping her as my roomie.

In other words, little fanboy with no social skills, next time you plop me down next to me and decide to hold a conversation with your not existant friend while I am trying to do my homework, I am going to rip your head off and use it to play football in the hallway.

Another one of my pet peeves today is one of my classes. This class is disorganized beyond all reason. I ask one instructor when something is due, and get told one thing. I ask the other and get told another due date. The amount of work I am having to do for this class is more than the work I'm doing in my other two graduate level classes combined. Every single class period we have had something due PLUS a reading. And I'm not talking about a few pages. Or even a chapter. Oh no. I'm talking about 60 pages EVERY CLASS PERIOD.

Do you know why we need to have this reading done by that class period? Because then what happens is one of the professors pulls a name out of a hat and that person is then required to give a ten minute presentation on the reading. No preparation. No beforehand knowledge of who's doing it. No nothing. The first time he did this (last week) we didn't even know he was going to be doing this. He just decided "Hey, this is a good idea!" We've already had four papers due in the class. It's the THIRD WEEK OF CLASS and we've had FOUR PAPER DUE and the professors see NOTHING WRONG ABOUT THIS.

Today was the last straw. We found out today at 5:00pm that the professor was a complete and final report on two soil samples we collected. Our class meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but he wants this final report in by noon Monday. The professors also want us to go to a field trip tomorrow that will take the whole morning. I have classes in the afternoon. This means that these two professors want me to dedicate my entire weekend to this final report.

Nevermind that I might have plans this weekend. Nevermind that I worked my ass off this week to have all my other assignments in before Friday so that I could have this weekend to myself. All my hard work was for nothing come 5:00 on Thursday. And then, next week I get to do it all over again when they assign something else at the spur of the moment. Fuck that. I'm not going on the field trip tomorrow. I'm using that time to get this report done. It's called time management.

I was going to chage this class to credit only. I can't. It's too high a level class. I can't drop the class either because the drop/add period has already passed. I'm stuck in a incredibly stressful, non-useful class that has the potential to screw up my GPA and financial aid royally and there is not a damn thing I can do about it.

I hate my life right now.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Rinkworks
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On Tuesday, September 2, 2003 at 10:49 a.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

Okay, what is it with me and plumbing? As anyone who has read this journal for awhile knows my roomie and I have not had the best of luck with apartments and plumbing. to date we've had: two mold gardens on the bathroom ceiling due to leaking pipes, Niagra falls in our kitchen, one collasped ceiling, one burbling toilet which eventually lead to one nasty over flow, continously running toilets, and more clogged drains than you can shake a stick (or a bottle of Drano) at. I thought all of that was behind me. I was wrong.

Now I love the new townhouse we're renting. very nice neighborhood with very few kids and very little noise. In addition, I have yet to see anyone in the parking lot/street chugging beer. One of my few complaints stems from the fact that even though we have three bathrooms (well, two and a 1/2 bathrooms) none of them have a medicine cabinet. It was decided that this would be fixed by heading to Wally World and picking up a hanging cabinet. My roomie and I put the cabinet together. It's done! It looks great! I am pleased.

Then we go to put it up on the wall. I want it to hang over the toilet. We get the support bracket things (yeah, technical terms here) in. We've got the mounting screws ready. I lift the cabinet into place and accidently bump the toilet. There's a loud *crack* and water starts leaking onto the floor. Seems when I bumped the toilet (we're not talking about a slam either. This was a gentle bump) one of the bolts connecting the toilet bowl to the tank on the back broke and fell out. When it fell out, it left a nice hole in the bottom of the tank. This allowed the water to promptly drain onto the floor.

We stopped this by first plugging the hole with a finger. Then we took off the cover to the tank and plugged it from that direction. I got towels to soak up the water on the floor. We tried letting the water drain into a bucket, but more water got on the floor than into the bucket. So my roomie plugged the hole again and I scooped water into the sink. We also adjusted the float so that the tank would not automatically keep refilling and dumping more water onto the floor.

The sad thing is, we were doing all this because we were trying to have our apartment clean by Thursday. On Thursday, our landlady is coming in with a repair man to get an estimate done on some loose tile in one of our other bathrooms. Sigh...

PS - To the person who got to this page with the search engine hit "i ate sephiroths balls". Yeah right. You and 50,000 other fangirls wish.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Classic Game fonts from codeman38
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On Sunday, August 31, 2003 at 09:02 a.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

I have been involved with mailing lists for years now. Not only that, but I tend to be one of these people that flits from ML to ML until I find out that I like. Only then do I stay for any amount of time. The more I like the people on the ML, the longer I stay. This has allowed me to encounter many, many types of moderators. Some of them have been good. Some of them have been... not so good. Some of them have been almost non-existant (there was a moderator?). But every once in awhile, I've come across moderators that behave in ways that simply boggle the mind. I have seen moderators behaving badly.

First off, a disclaimer. The stories I am about to tell are not about any mailing list I am currently on. I've left the mailing lists I talk about. So please, please don't think these stories have anything to do with the moderators of the ML's I'm on. They don't. And if you think you recognize a ML I'm talking about.... I'm sorry. Have a cookie.

Moderators Behaving Badly: Off Topic Hell - A couple of years ago I decided to attempt to enter a contest for original fiction. The deadline was far into the future but to keep interest in the contest, the person holding it had created a ML. Great! I signed up to see who else was working on this contest and what kind of ideas they had come up with. For the first month traffic on the list was light, but steady. Maybe 1-3 posts per day. There was some discussion ot stories, talking with the moderator about contest rules, etc. Everything was going fine.

Then as people stopped signing up and went off to do their own thing, the list practically died. No posts were made for well over a month. To be honest, I had forgotten I was even on the list. The moderator obviously doesn't like this and makes a post saying that since there's really not been that many posts made, she's thinking about just closing it. Cue a bunch of posts that basically say "No! Don't close the list we love it and can't live without it." Fine. The moderator then says that if that's true, she'd like some more traffic on the list.

This means that we, the list members, are now responsible for keeping the moderator happy enough not to close the list. What are we supposed to talk about? Original fiction is not like fanfiction where you can just gush about the characters for posts upon posts. So someone posts something about getting together with their friends on Saturday. One of their friends, also on the list, replies about how this is a great idea. Someone else asks where these people are. Another person starts inquiring about what shows they like. Yet another friend of the first poster starts wondering wht time they should meet. You get the picture.

By this point I'm watching this list with all the fascination of someone passing a fatal car wreck. I can see what's coming a mile away. I figured the moderator (not the relaxed and well made of cookies to begin with) would jump all over these people's cases. A day goes by. Two days go by. A week goes by. I am now getting something like 10-20 emails a day from this list. All of it is this inane drivel. The moderator is no where to be found even though these people have turned her list into their own personal social list. I eventually have to set this list to "web only" because it's filling up my inbox.

Finally after two months, two freakin' months, of Off Topic posts the moderator speaks up. She throws a huge fit about how people are abusing her list and she's shutting it down and how you people do this to her. Funny, I thought as the moderator it was her job to prevent this stuff from happening.

Moderators Behaving Badly: Where'd our moderator go? - This story comes courtesy of my roomie. She was on a ML that was mostly an update list. That is, it was for the most part the moderator telling people when her site was updated with limited discussion on stories and such. Again, a fairly low traffic list. Well, the moderator was going on vacation for a month. Thet let the list know what was going on and went on vacation. The problem was... they didn't appoint anyone as a temp. moderator while they were gone.

It started with one spam post. Then another. Then another. Soon, because there was no moderator to delete them or block the sender, the ML became one continuous stream of SPAM. This list members were getting swamped with it. Enlarge your penis, come see hot esbian porn, viagra for pennies, that kind of stuff. Some of them had to drop the list. So a bunch of the list members contacted the admins. of list hosting site (probably Yahoo!Groups or something similar) and explained the situation. The admins. fixed the problem. They did so by deleting the ML. It seems they have a policy of deleting a list whenever they get a certain number of complaints regardless of what those complaints actually are.

The moderator comes back. The list is gone. The moderator throws a fit and blames the list members for getting her list deleted. The list members were upset at her for leaving them to get spammed. It was not a pretty thing.

Luckily, one of her real life friends was on the list and explained to the moderator what was going on and why the list was deleted. The moderator sent an apology, but was still (justifiably) upset that the list was gone.

Moderators Behaving Badly: Airing their dirty laundry - I had the misfortune of watching this whole sordid tale of a moderator behaving badly happen as it was going down. I was active in and writing for this one fandom. This fandom was huge before it got picked up by a cable station, and triple if not quadrupled in size afterwards. Before it was picked up, there was a very large ML I was on dedicated to the series.

The moderator was not what one would call... sane. She (at least I beleive it was a she) tended to think that the people were plotting behind her back to take things from her. Paranoid up the wazoo, and from some of the stories other people tell me about her, she needed to be on medication. Even though it was a large fandom, this person was so prominent in the fandom that you couldn't really help but run into her. She and others clashed leading to the creation of another large ML with another list hosting site. Eventually, this other ML became fairly popular. It didn't quite rival the first ML, but it was getting there.

As you can imagine, the moderator was not at all pleased about this. She then made a post to the list talking about how this other list had been saying all these lies about her and how could they do that and they were ruining the fandom. Of course, everyone on this I was on rallied around her with the exception of a few of us who decided to go look at these supposed "posts." We (Miome and I) joined the other list, looked through the posts, and found no lies or even anything really harsh about our moderator. We weren't the only ones.

Some people confronted the moderator about her lie on the list. Some confonted her in private email. People on the list are really not happy about being lied to, and a bunch now go to the other list to confirm this for themselves. After several emails about this incident the moderator makes an announcement to the list: if people want her to step down as moderator she would, but if anyone else made a comment on the list about this matter she'd ban them from the list. That's right people! First she brings this OT matter up on the list, and then when things don't go the way she wants them to, she decides to forbid any further talk about it.

My roomie is not amused. She sends a post to the list saying that given the moderator's past behavior, she would like the moderator to step down. Miome never mentions the past incident. That doesn't stop her from getting banned. I swear, this chick had her finger poised over the ban button just waiting for posts. So obviously, not only were the list members not to make posts about the whole "incident" we were to not make posts about asking the moderator to step down even though she had asked for that very thing.

Eventually, the moderator got enough people asking her to step down that she decided to do so. She resigned up everyone who she had banned, appointed a new moderator, and left. Or so we thought. Come to find out a little while later that she never actually gave up the moderator position. Instead, she was now co-moderator of the list. She signed up using a different email (but the same sig. like we couldn't figure out it was still her) and was soon up to her same tactics. After a few months I just left, tired of the drama. I still write a little for that fandom, but you couldn't get me back on an ML for it for all the money in the world.

I have another story, but this post is huge as it is. I guess I shall just save it for the next time I write about... Moderators Behaving Badly

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Etiquette Hell
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On Saturday, August 30, 2003 at 07:37 a.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

I am a dork.

I know I am. I am a complete and utter dork. I'm a geek as well, but that's become more acceptable over time. At least to the outside world. Hell, I think I went to the only HS where if you weren't smart you were looked down upon. You know the sterotype of the smart kids all sitting around at a table and being laughed at? Didn't happen. In my HS the dumb kids were the lowest rung. So being a geek is nothing new to me and has never been something to be ashamed of. Being a dork is a whole other story.

As a dork, I tend to over enthuse about stuff. I want to be liked by others. I enjoy things and want to share them with others, sometimes to the point of extreme. I worry when I post something and no one responds. I worry that I'm easily ignored or secretly laughed at or am just annoying people. I worry that I've offended people somehow by not adhereing to some unspoken rule that everyone else knows, but I don't (this has happened to me before which is why it remains one of my worse fears). I worry that people will see me for what I really am. A dork.

It's worse that I'm also on the internet. With just people I know, I have physical cues. I also have a much more limited scope of people I interact with. I do not get out much. I don't like parties. Don't like drinking. I hate clubs. In fact, most of the things that people my age are expected to do for fun, I don't. I feel out of place there. I prefer watching anime and going to club meetings, easy companionship and movies, watching people playing computer games and long winding conversations. All of these restrict the number of people I interact with to a managable level for me.

It's different with the internet. I can't rely on physical cues. All I have is words on a screen. I interact with a 100x more people. Most times this is fine. Occasionally, I want (or have to) interact with someone I admire or in a fandom I really love. This is where the problems arise. Because I know I'm being too enthusiastic and I know I'm trying too hard, but it doesn't seem like I can help myself. I want to be liked. I want to be accepted. And instead of being either, I wind up just being a big dork.

Eventually, in a fandom or once people actually start talking to me, I do get better. And sometimes, in some fandoms or with some people, the dorkness never comes. I remain calm and intelligent and don't babble. I don't know why talking to some people triggers it. All I know is that I'm left with the feeling of having greatly annoyed someone, and the urge to slink away until the next time I make a complete fool of myself.

Or maybe I'm just over reacting. Sigh...

And now time for something completely different. Thanks Changeling. It was one of the few times I actually got to see the results of trying to get a plagarist. Most times, I wander into something like this long after the plagarist is taken down and can't help. I genuinely like helping people and I genuinely hate plagarists. It's a win-win situation for me.

Rissicat, I feel much the same way about meeting people sometimes, although mostly I feel that way when they come to visit me. I don't know why I get really tense and nervous when they do. I just do. And long work hours never help the situation. As for the ex-employee... I bet it makes you wish she had kept the company laptop. Then you would have been perfectly justified in calling the police on her and letting them deal with a situation of stolen property. ^_^

Is it someone over at the Mews that does intaglio in amber? I would swear someone over there had a site or a link to a site with some pieces on it. I remember the chinese dragon piece especially. Maybe I'm remembering wrong...

Vel I keep remembering (and then promptly forgetting) to mention that I took archery for awhile. They only gave one course in it, so after that one semester I couldn't take another class. I think I started out with a 29lb pull and eventually made it up to 35lb pull. I loved archery (for reasons other than the fact it was one of the few PE's you could take and not have to change clothes). Wish I could do it some more.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: The Lake Monster x Hogwarts
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On Friday, August 29, 2003 at 04:09 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

It is the end of the week and I have survived! Teaching went very well for both sections of lab. What a relief. Found out that one of the new graduate students in Geology was a guy I TA-ed as a senior. He told me what section of mine he was in. All I could think was "Oh God, that was the section I hated." Luckily, my internal editor was actually working and those words didn't come out my mouth. Although this certinaly explains why he looked so darn familiar. Here I thought it was because we were in a class together. We were, only I was teaching it.

One of the neighbors' cats is trying to be adopted by us. Its a very large white cat which I think is a nuetered female. When I first saw her, I thought she was pregnant. I think the reason is twofold. One, I am a sucker for friendly kitties and have spent some time out on the porch petting fat white kitty (as I call her). The second reason is that in the move, we dumped some catfood out near the porch. Fat white kitty fell upon it like a starving South Park rat. She was digging each and every piece of it out from beneath leaves. Then everytime we made a move towards her, she'd run, only to come back after she thought we weren't looking and eat some more.

Later, I noticed that there is another cat in the same house. A thin Siamese. So here's my theory. White cat is overweight (really overweight) and has been put on a diet. However, the other cat in the household is a Siamese and gets to eat regular food. Everytime fat white kitty tries to eat thin Siamese kitty's food, she's chased off by her owners. So when fat white kitty found the food we threw out she thought we were gods. Hence, the wanting to be adopted by us. This cat is just one big attention 'ho.

What else happened this week... oh. The grand adventure of getting a stamp. Now normally, you'd think getting ONE FREAKIN' STAMP would not be that difficult. You would be wrong. I didn't want to walk off campus to get the stamp because the heat has been making me kind of sick lately. That's okay because some of the dorms have stamp machines in them. Sure, you have to pay 50 cents ofr a 37 cent stamp, but that's okay. Or so I thought. I go to the dorm, get to the machine, find out it's actually 60 cents. Bastards.

It doesn't matter much because I have no change. That's okay, there's a change machine right next to the stamp machine. I walk over, fish out a dollar, and put it into the change machine. Whrrrrrrrrrr goes the change machine. Then it makes a high pitched whining noise. The next thing I know, the "Out of Service" light comes on and the damn thing has eaten my dollar. Fine. I'll just go over to the campus store and buy something. Then I'll use the change to get a stamp.

I go to the campus store and decide to pick up a plastic cup which I'll use later to dig up mud and rock in the small creek that runs through camp (class assignment, don't ask). It costs 20 cents. Well, the cup and the ice that usually fill it costs 20 cents. I didn't want the ice, just the cup, yet I still had to fork over 20 cents. Actually, I had to fork over my last dollar. This left me with 80 cents (three quarters and a nickle) to go get the hideously expensive stamp with.

The only problem is, the stamp machine requires 2 quarters and a dime. It will not take any other form of change. At this point, I'm hot and tired. I hate the stamp machine. Needless to say, the bill still has no been mailed off. I need to do that tomorrow when I can buy a stamp for what it's actually worth.

Until later.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is:
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On Wednesday, August 27, 2003 at 08:31 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

Ancient Greek gay winged sex! No, I'm not making it up. It's a painting on a cup featuring Zephyros (god of the west wind) and Hyakinthos (who was Apollo's lover). Click the picture for a closer look. http://www.androphile.org/preview/Museum/Greece/ZephyrosHyakinthos.htm Gotta love the highbrow porn.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: SETI@home
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On Wednesday, August 27, 2003 at 11:01 a.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. What about intelligence on our own planet?

Today, at 3:40 pm, I will teach the first Intro. Geology lab I have taught in two years.

OH DEAR GOD, WHAT WERE THINKING PUTTING ME IN CHARGE OF TEACHING THESE PEOPLE? HOW THE HELL AM I GOING TO DO THIS? I AM SO UNPREPARED NEVERMIND I HAVE NOTES AND HANDOUTS AND (will soon) HAVE OVERHEADS. I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M DOING AND IT'S DIFFERENT NOW BECAUSE INSTEAD OF GIVING ME $900 A SEMESTER THESE PEOPLE ARE GIVING ME $7,000 A SEMESTER. MY WHOLE EDUCATION RIDES ON BEING ABLE TO TEACH AND I AM GOING TO FAIL! FAIL! I CAN'T AFFORD NOT TO TA, WHICH MEANS I CAN'T SCREW THIS UP. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE LET THIS TURN OUT GOOD. WHAT AM GOING TO DO? WHAT AM I GOING TO SAY? I HAVE TO GET UP IN FRONT OF THESE PEOPLE AND SPEAK! CRAP! CRAP! HELP ME... HELP ME!

All prayers will be appreciated at this time. Thank you.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Scottish deer are culprits in bird killings
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On Tuesday, August 26, 2003 at 12:49 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

Possibly one of the weirdest, most disturbing articles I've ever seen on National Geographic. Basically, it talks about this type of deer (and in some cases sheep) eating the heads and legs of baby chicks. Disturbing mental images there. Although it wouldn't be the first time mother nature had come up with meat-eating deer. One the largest mammalian predators ever came from the cervine (deer) family, though the pictures I've seen of it make it look more like a very large and nasty hyena. Still, carnivous bambi!

School must have started somewhere, and some teacher must have given their student a geology assignment. The reason I think this is because the last few days my pitas page has been getting smacked left and right by people looking for "super volcanos" or some variation there of. I'm talking like 20-25 search engine hits for it in the last 24 hours. Good lord people! Look somehwere else. The only thing you'll find on this page is me ranting about how bad the program on Discovery was and how much I yelled at the screen when I saw it.

I've got to do a small (five minute) presentation today. The professor wants us to use pictures to illustrate our talk. Why he wants us to do this when the presentation itself is five minutes long, I'm not sure. But hey, if that's what the professor wants and since he's the one determining the grade, that's what the professor gets. I'll be sure to do a really quick power point presentation before class since I know that's what this professor really likes. Power point. My eyeballs bleed just thinking about it.

In about 40 minutes I'm going to go talk to a professor about a GIS class I'm taking. Now the regular lecture version of this class is taught Monday evenings from 6:15 to 8:00pm. If I signed up for that section my a) my schedule would force me to be on campus 12 hours straight and b) my roomie is my ride to and from campus, and I don't want her to have to stay on campus until 8:00pm. Luckily (or so I thought) there was an internet based version of the course. Great! That means I can learn everything I need to know at when I can, and I can fufill the prerequisite for the higer level GIS classes.

Only not, because I find out when attending the information meeting on Monday, 6-8pm, that the internet based class is not exactly the same, that it doesn't count as a prerequisite for the higher level classes, and that's its only for people who just want a brief overview and nothing more. WTF? Then why even offer a Internet based version of the class if it's not the same thing? Why not just call them by 2 different names if they aren't the same thing? So I'm mad and stressed because I was told one thing and given another. I'm going to talk with the instructor today and see if I can work something out (extra homework or something) to make the internet based class equivalent to the lecture one.

Because really, if I have to spend 12 hours on this campus more than once a week (I already have to do it once a week because of the lab I'm teaching Wed. night), I'm going to snap and kill someone.

Finally, re-discovered one of White Cat's Digimon stories. They were some of the first Digimon stuff I read. Very good. My favorite is still With you, which is shounen-ai and good. Lots of good characterization and a nice build up to the end. Definitely worth reading.

And now, to go power point. Here my enthusiasm -_-.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Slayers - Reflect, Chaos, Rebirth
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On Monday, August 25, 2003 at 01:23 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

Okay Twig, I guess I should defend myself. There are several reasons why I disliked the book "Into the Wild", and not all of them have anything to deal with Chris McCandless or the author. For one thing, I was told to listen to this book (because we got it on tape) and analyze it like it was evidence for a crime scene. This is not how the author approaches it by any stretch of the imagination. So I was very much put off by the fact that I was in one mindset and the author was in another. He was trying to present the story as entertaining and I was thinking like Columbo (just the facts). So when the author went off on long, rambling tangents to prove a point I became very annoyed rather than entertained. I would have been entertained had I been reading the book in the mood to be entertained. I wasn't. I was just trying to get the facts of the case so I could write my arguement.

Second, there were several instances where Chris McCandless' arrogance got to me. Repeatedly, people tried to give him advice on how to survive in Alaska. They tried to convince him to get better equipment, he didn't. They tried to convince him to get to know the land before hand, he didn't. They tried to give him things like food and clothing because they felt that he was underprepared. He refused. His (or at least what the author felt was his reasoning since McCandless is dead and the author is using a lot of conjecture to tell this story) reasoning was that he had spent lots of time camping and foraging in the American Southwest and could handle Alaska.

Now I'm not an expert on living on the woods by any stretch of the imagination, but even I know that what holds true in one part of the country might not hold true in another. For instance, the knowledge I need to survive in the desert (where to get water, how to survive in the heat, how locate myself based on the sun/stars) does me absolutely no good in the woods of the Southeast. There's usually an abundance of water, the heat is not what's going to kill you, and it's very hard to navigate based on the sun/stars if you can't see them. Similarly, what McCandless thought he knew about surviving in the relatively temperate Southwest could not be applied to artic and sub-artic stretches of Alaska.

Finally, I didn't like how the book tried to make him into some kind of martyr. Yes, he wanted to leave civilization behind, sought to explore the wilderness, and wanted to rely on no one by himself. I can respect that. What I can't respect is someone who goes without having planned or learned anything about what he's doing. To me this wasn't just a case of bad luck, it was a case of willful ignorance onhis part. McCandless didn't deserve to die from it, but he did. I fail to see why this makes him so special.

I've never read "Into Thin Air" either. From what I understand, Jon Krakauer got in trouble for that book because one of the people on the expedition he talks about disputes most of what Krakauer says happened. Only the person doing the disputing died before he could release his own version of events. So there's quite a bit of controversy surrounding that book as well, which kind of makes me "Hmmmmm..." about this one.

Right, I'll step off the soapbox now. Really. I will. Besides, I have to go to class soon anyway and write yaoi during the lecture. I missed school.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Elvis vs Anime - music video
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On Sunday, August 24, 2003 at 08:03 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

I love this music video. It's great if for no other reason than you see Squall and Rinoa swing dancing. No, I'm not making it up. Great parody of the original music video for that song only with anime. Truly one of the highlights of this otherwise depressing, frustrating day.

Another highlight of my day is being told that Sakura4ever has been removed from FF.Net. I don't know if it was through my efforts or because once she realized she'd been caught she chickened out, and quite frankly I don't care. Just as long as there's one less of her sort out there.

The final bright spot of my weekend was going to see Pirates of the Caribbean again. Such a wonderful, wonderful movie. I got to clarify some of Captain Jacks' actions, habits, and speach patterns as well as noticing lots of little things I missed inthe first watching. This also inspired me to start a fanfic (damn you, Cneko this is all your fault!). It involves wedding vows. I found a great template for a ceremony at see, and am working off of that with added humorous bits. Also want to write the next part of the Digimon story but I'll do that when I don't have quite so much homework to get done.

And now, the bane of my existance. For my forensic geology class we had to listen to this book on tape and write a paper on the evidence presented in the book. The book in question is Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer (a name which when pronounced sounds disturbing like "crack whore"). It's melodramatic, wandering, and over-all not a good presentation of just the facts. I'm not particularly enamored of this book and having to listen to it for four hours and then write a 1-3 page paper on it does not help.

It also doesn't help that I think the guy who died, Chris Candless, was a self-absorbed, overconfident moron who wandered out into the wilderness without fully understanding what he was doing and got himself killed in the process. Why this merits a whole book devoted to him, I don't know. I just think it was a twit and havign to read about him being a twit does not improve my mood. At least that part is done with and I can begin to rip apart the author's arguements in revenge for making me sit through all that drivel. Ah, sweet revenge!

Finally, this weekend is too short and I have to start teaching my lab sections next week. I also have to stay very, very late on Monday and attend a planning meeting for one of my classes until 8:00 pm. This is for one of my internet classes, so once this meeting is done with, I should be able to not worry about staying on campus late (except on Wed.). However, I am slightly unerved by the fact that all my classes ask for "independent projects." I hate independent projects because they usually eat up my time and are a waste of my time. Hopefully, at least one of these things will be useful.

And now, I watch my roomie play FFX. BYE!

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: FF.Net- Sakura4ever
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On Saturday, August 23, 2003 at 07:52 a.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

You know what I really hate more than anything else in the whole wide world as an author? A plagarist. Someone who takes what other people have written and claims it as their own. This pisses me off to no end, even when it's not one of my stories that's been plagraized. In this case, it was one of Ren'ai-chan and Sigel Phoenix's Kenshin stories called From the Ashes. I read both of their blogs, saw what was happening, and even got a chance to see Sakura4ever's version of their fic up on FF.Net. Word for word, it was the same. She didn't even change the title. In fact from the way the fic was formatted on FF.Net it looked like she copied and pasted from a browser window. I suspect this because all line breaks, paragraphs and "" were all messed up. This is not something that any person would normally do.

In my experience, plagarists rarely stop with one story when they've gotten away (or think they've gotten away) with it. On a hunch, I stuck the titles of the stories into Google. Sure enough, No way out came up in an archive under a different name and attached to a different email address. I emailed the true author and let her know what was happening. She's proceeding with getting FF.Net to take it down.

As stated on Sigel Phoenix's page, Sakura4ever is looking for fics not posted on FF.Net in the hopes that people won't notice what she's doing. It's a fairly good strategy unless someone stumbles across who had read the story previous or one of the original authors happens to see her fic posted to FF.Net under someone else's name (as what happened this time). So here's what I'm asking anyone who reads this page. Look at the stories still listed under Sakura4ever (my link of the day) and see if you can recognize any of them. If you do, see if you can find the original author or the original copy of them on the net. Then let FF.Net know what's going on.

That makes two confirmed stories this person had copied. If I remember right, FF.Net has a three strikes policy. Sakura4ever is about to get her second strike. I hope that people will be able to give this person her third strike and get her off FF.Net. One less person who thinks they can get away with this crap will make the world a happier place in my book. Less likely to try and steal one of my stories next time. Bastard.

Ah, it's the small vindictive pleasures that make my life worthwhile.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is:
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On Friday, August 22, 2003 at 08:27 a.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

Dear last user of this computer,

You know, I don't want to know if www.hotgrannysex.com or www.grannyxxx.com or even www.maturesexclips.com are real, working websites. I don't. However, the fact that everytime I try to type in a URL into the address bar of Internet Explorer one of these or some other porn site comes up gives me the sinking suspicion that they are indeed real. I would like to remind you, last user of this computer, that it is against university policy to look at porn in the public computer labs. If you are going to look at porn, please choose a computer or web browser that is not broken so that even if you don't think to do it, I can flush out your history and not learn every detail of your particular kink.

Yours truly,
Tsaiko

PS- Tell the last users that saved their files to the desktop and not to their own personal file space that I am looking at their thesis project and it's boring as Hell.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Brendan's On-line Anagram Generator
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On Thursday, August 21, 2003 at 01:03 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

I am currently typing from the Mac lab at University. These are the strangest computers ever. I think from hence forth i shall call them the space!Macs. Basically, the entire computer is a white half dome with a large screen on a movable arm coming out of the top. Attached to the dome is a keyboard and attached to the keyboard is a mouse that is one huge button. The computer next to me also has two small, clear globes with a silver inset hooked up to it. Someone suggested that they might be speakers. Personally, I think the space!Mac is laying eggs to hatch more space!Macs from. Those wires connecting to the dome? Umbilical cords.

I can already tell I've got two real winners in my lab sections. Now understand, I've taught the Intro. Geology labs before when I was an undergraduate. I didn't have a on-line journal at that time. Therefore, I couldn't rant about the sheer stupidity of some of my students. I'm talking stuff like the directions for the lab reading "Draw a picture of the crystal in front of you" and them writing down the words "clear solid." I use to grade labs before TAAS and would foam at the mouth over some of the answers I got. Now instead of just the people at the tables, I will be able to entertain and horrify a much larger audience with the antics of my peons... errr... students.

Don't you all feel special?

Anyway, back to the two in my labs this time. The first week of classes this year is only three days long because classes begin on Wednesday instead of Monday. So labs aren't meeting this week. They'll start up next week. Since I teach a lab on Wed. afternoon, I went ahead and emailed both my section to inroduce myself, tell that labs don't meet this week, and ask them to get the lab manual and read through the first lab by next week. Really simple stuff. I got two questions back.

"You said we weren't having lab this week. Do we still need to show up during the time?": Um... no. I can kind of see where there my be confusion, but not really. Maybe they're a freshman or just wanted to be sure. So I was very polite when I responded and let them know that, no, they did not need to show up.

"Where ae we supposed to read about the Minerals lab?": Duh, in your lab manual. I still have to respond to this one.

Found out that one of the things I was hoping would get fixed when they deleted my account didn't get fixed because... well... they didn't deleted my account. Somehow (I have no idea how) the language preference on Netscape got set to Spanish on my account. Usually, this has no bearing on my web surfing except in a few places. Most notably: Hotmail and Livejournal. This is very annoying because it makes it hard to navigate around the sights. I've tried resetting the default back to English. I go to Preferences, I select Languages, and Netscape promptly crashes. There's no way to set it back.

At least I'll be brushing up on my Spanish this way.

Finally, a story from my sister. My sister is persuing a Pharmacy degree down at the University of Georgia. She's arachnophobic to the extreme. Last night there was a spider (she claims it was three inches big, but this is in terror inches. It was probably a 1/2 an inch if that) in her room. So being the mature, self-reliant, confident person that she is, she called her fiance and asked him what to do about it. His response was "Grab a shoe and squish it." The problem was that the spider was closer to her shoes than she was. Since there was no way she was going near the spider, that was a no go.

Her next plan of attack was to spray it. The problem was, she had no bug spray. That's okay because she did have a can of Lysol. So with Lysol in hand she ventured into her room and sprayed the spider. The spider was unaffected but at least now he was germ free. Further sprays eventually drove the spider up under her desk. Where is stayed and refused to come out. No amount of spraying would drive it from the darkness. It was watching, waiting for her to put the can down.

Which was why my sister spent the night on the couch instead of in her room.

Until later.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Of Mice and Pirates
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On Tuesday, August 19, 2003 at 03:35 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

I said I'd be updating this thing everyday, didn't I? I lied. I also said I'd do entries about my roomie and I's trip. I still hope to do that. I have been updating my Livejournal with pieces of a alternate universe Digimon fanfic over the past few weeks. Otherwise, it's been the wild rush to get everything done before classes start tomorrow.

This includes meetings out the wazoo. I've been to three meetings and about being a graduate student/TA. The first one was a waste of my time, the second one was just to give us a ton of paperwork (Why is it that once people hand you paperwork they then feel the need to read said paperwork to you? Do they think you've gotten this far without reading?), and this one was to schedule which sections of labs I was going to be TA-ing.

So I got my schedule worked out. I'm taking a section of the Intro. GIS in the hopes I can get my certification for it. Does this have anything to do with paleontology? No. But it will look really good on my resume ^_^. I'm taking a Forensic Geology class. This is basically using geology to help solve crimes and other mysteries. What does this have to do with paleontology? Nothing! But it looked nifty and my temp. advisor told me to just get registered for something. My final class is Marine Sediment Transport. This is a graduate level class. While it's not a paleo class, most fossils are found in sediments so this could technically be used towards my Master's degree.

As you can see, there is a significant lack of paleo classes. That's because none are being offered. The two paleo professors are going away and two new paleo professors are coming in. But not in time to teach any paleo classes. this means I'e had to BS a schedule. Fun, fun.

Luckily, I managed to get two rather good sections of Intro. Geology labs to teach. One if Friday morning BUT it's at 9:10 and not at 8:05. The other one is less good, but acceptable at 3:40-6:30 Wednesday afternoons. I'll have to make sure I eat a snack before lab since it means eating dinner late. Somehow, I doubt it would help my reputation to pass out while teaching my lab. I'll also have to somehow eat dinner in the 30 minutes between lab and TAAS. Must have my anime fix every week.

Nice to know I have my priorities in order. "I can't take the evening section on Wed. because I have to watch cartoons." Luckily, I was able to tell them that I rode with my roomie to campus and couldn't stay until 10:10pm because of transporation issues.

Going out to celebrate Jag's B-day tonight. Haven't managed to get his present. I know what I'm getting him, just haven't found the time to get it. He may get it late. Depends on a lot of things, but he WILL get his present. WHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Finally, a note to myself: Remember to email the peons... I mean students in my sections tonight or . Hopefully, my lab assignments will go through the system quickly and I'll be able to tell them that labs don't meet this week. Otherwise, they'll show up tomorrow and wonder what is going on.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Free the Gnomes!
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On Saturday, August 16, 2003 at 05:17 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

We are out of the old place and completely moved into the new. I have decided that I will rent this new place until I die. No more moving for me. Where did this stuff come from? Our old apartment was not that big, and yet we moved boxes and boxes of crap. Did it multiply in the closets while we weren't looking? I swear we did not have this much stuff last time we moved. I do not remember ever buying this much stuff. I think the gnomes were secretly moving it into our apartment while we weren't looking. Or something. Needless to say, I threw away bags of junk and as I'm unpacking will probably chunk even more.

And how the Hell did we wind up with four computer chairs?

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is:
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On Friday, August 15, 2003 at 06:42 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

I killed it.

Well actually, our old apartment killed it. The "it" in question being our vacuum. It is dead. I foud this out when it started emitting a high pitched squealing and then smoke. Good-bye vacuum. So, we managed to convince the people at the old apartment complex to allow us another day to move out and clean the old apartment. Thank goodness. My back is a mess and I can't go out in this heat and do anything without getting sick. Bleck. Anyway, that's where I've been the last few days. Hopefully, I'll be back to posting everyday after this weekend.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Blood, Love & Rhetoric
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On Wednesday, August 13, 2003 at 09:06 a.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

Sleeps with Coyotes writes Pirates of the Caribbean slash. Sleeps with Coyotes, the same Sleeps with Coyotes that got me addicted to Sleepy Hollow with her slash writing, writes Pirates of the Caribbean slash. Who cares if they're works in progress? Not I, said the Tsaiko.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: National Hurricane Center
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On Tuesday, August 12, 2003 at 03:28 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

As you can guess, we (Miome and I) have safely made it home. We're all in one piece. The cats are all in one piece (which for me was the biggest concern once we got out of DC. Thanks Jag for taking care oif them while we were gone). The cats are delighted we are home and are showing their delight by tearing any and all cardboards boxes to shreds and then running around the apartment like they are insane. Nice to know they missed us -_-. What follows will be a rough day by day recounting of our vacation. It may be in more than one part depending on how lazy I feel.

Day 1:
This day consisted basically of packing, driving, and me being sleep deprived (as evidenced by the last post I made). Now we had pretty much timed it so that we would get to DC before rush hour. Or so we thought. But what with leaving later than we meant, stopping for gas, stopping again for food, and hitting some repaving on 95, we got to DC just at 5:00pm. Most of the traffic was heading out of DC but we still hit some nasty stuff on the way in. But we never came to a complete stop even if we were going about 2 mph at some points.

As a side note: I'm glad we weren't heading south on 95 that day. The police were forcing all traffic off 95 S just south of Richmond, VA due to a collision between a car and a transfer truck. Very nasty traffic jam on 95 and on the roads they were forcing traffic off onto. Those people were probably stuck there for hours.

We make it to DC. Now, we have directions to the hotel that we got from the hotel's website or from Mapquest. These directions mention getting on K street and then taking a right on Conneticut. What these directions failed to mention was that in order to take a right, you have to get on this little side road thing that runs parallel to K street. You can't actually turn right from the main street. Needless to say we didn't figure this out until after we had missed our turn.

That's okay though. Everyone knows that DC is basically laid out like a grid. All the streets with numbers run one way and all the streets with letters run the other way. Didn't know what those funky streets with state names did (keep in mind, we had no map and only had directions and what I remembered of the layout of DC) We were on K street so all we need to do is make two right turns or two left turns and we'll get on another letter street. This will intersect Conneticut eventually. Or so we thought. Keep in mind we decided to do this all during rush hour traffic.

Needless to say, it didn't work. We ran into construction. The lane we were in disappeared. At one point we wound up travelling down a little back alley and neither one of us quite knew how we got there. By this time, I was having conipitions because I was sleep deprived, stressed, and had not eaten since lunch. At one point I was even crying. Tsaiko was not in a very good emotional state. Somehow, we wound up on Conneticut. I think th