-
Honest Living!
2003-01-24 20:35:44
Work is done for break. Got low pay from this job but free soda, and today free chocolate and a puppy to play with while stuffing binders and watching mind-numbing daytime TV. If I never see another ad for fiber, slim-fast, fur sales, medicare/medicaid supplements, accident attorneys, or crappy 2 year "colleges" again, it will be too soon. The only decent thing on daytime TV is The Price is Right.
Classes begin again on Wednesday. Really they begin on Tuesday, but I don't have classes on Tuesday, so for me they begin on Wednesday. This is fine, and it will give me a chance to start typing my old 225 notes and finish buying my textbooks in the meantime. Likewise, I'll be able to do some baking and other things that I can't really do once I'm in class all day. I've been missing this. Not only will I get to sleep until 10 on most days, I'll be getting out of the house and doing something interesting as well! I love school!
I'm going to DC tomorrow for a meeting of the Video Producers' Group of DC. It's way the hell out in Cleveland Park (45 min. metro ride) but it should prove to be interesting. I'm planning on taking a handful (read: 4 or 5) of my updated CDs with me (the current update retires a lot of the crappy old videos, the crappy new videos, and doesn't have the Katsucon video on it yet while I play with encoding options). I don't know why, but it seems like a good idea. I doubt any of them will consider AMV to be any sort of legitimate form of work, but it may still be worth it for making connections. Or am I just being wishful? Speaking of wishful, I think I'll buy a Powerball ticket while I'm down there. Donating $1 to education or elderly programs or whatever charitable-looking fund the money in DC goes to for a license to dream for a few hours is worth it...unless I get struck by lightning (which is more likely than winning the jackpot).
Tomorrow's also when people are going to start moving back in to the dorms...guess I'd better do as much leeching as possible while I still can...like this one guy's review that I promised him I'd do...and haven't yet. Yes, that sounds like a good idea... -
Ass-terpiece Theatre
2003-01-19 23:01:21
Did anyone else watch Hound of the Baskervilles on Masterpiece Theatre tonight? This is perhpas the most disappointing thing I've ever seen come out of the BBC. Besides the miscasting of Ian Hart as Dr. Watson (his physical appearance is quite contrary to almost every portrayal of Watson that I've ever seen or imagined), the amount of hacking and rewriting they did to the story is apalling. First, the character of LL was replaced by the country doctor's wife, there was no sceance in the original book, and Holmes beat up the cab driver to get information? How out of character can you get?! (In the book he paid the guy off, which is his usual way.)
In other news, friends on the Katsucon staff ML have informed me that last night was the AMV prejudging. Here's to good luck for me in the tallying!
New HD should come tomorrow if FedEx is doing everything right. The question is where it'll go - the community center (the normal FedEx location), or if they'll try to go to campus mail as it's winter and weird shit like that happens...guess I'll knwo when I check the tracking number. -
Das Lied des Superperforatorwerbungen
2003-01-18 14:13:40
Manitu last night was tons of fun. Everyone showed up, but Mikhail sadly didn't get to see the movie - the show sold out and since he was only guaranteed a seat if Chris C. noshowed, he was out of luck. I owe him a copy of my fansub now. This is apparently the first title in the filmfest that sold out, and I swear, the entire German speaking population of DC showed up for this - even DW (Deutsche Welle) showed up to do news coverage, which is saying a LOT for a one-off of a film that got pretty poor reviews in the English speaking press. And, of course, I have to critique the print and version that we saw:
First, this was the original cut of the movie. All of the music was unchanged, and included the first version of the opening music and the Lou Bega credit sequence. This shocked the hell out of me with the lawsuit and all in Germany. The subtitling was done in Germany and was copyrighted 2001, which means that it was before any fansubs would have been in existence. The print also had a couple of crapout points, and I really can't think of why short of mishandling, unless there's a way to add subtitles to an already existing print, in which case I'd just guess that they used an old worn out print for the mastering.
The translation was......weird. A couple of the sequences I had trouble translating were clarified greatly (now I know what "Jeffrey hat ein fahren lassen" means...) and they didn't translate the outtakes either so I don't feel so bad about it. They also caught a LOT more of Dimitri's funky speech patterns than I did =) Otherwise, it's clear that they were trying to punch up and Americanize some parts and rush others. Karl May had been subbed as some American western author, and Uschi had been renamed Bushy. They did a good job of covering up Uschi's grammar joke, as well as a few other German language nuances. However, the English subtitles were also greatly simplified compared to the German CC subs on the R2 DVD, meaning that the fansub script has more dialog translated than the official print. A lot of the puns were left untranslated, and a number of lines (especially the final scene where Ranger and Abahachi are arguing about national parks) were just plain WRONG in the official script. I was thinking it was dubtitled, but there were a couple of scenes where the subs didn't match up to what I know was in the dub segment on the DVD, so that's not an option. While I want to go back and fix a couple things in the fansub now that they've been clarified, I probably won't. I like my translation a bit better, for no other reason than 1)it's literal, and 2)it's mine.
After the movie, we all went to Cosi, had warm things to drink, and chitchatted for a while, which was great fun for all...on the metro home, though, something came up to pretty much ruin the evening. When we got to the transfer point, we heard someone getting yelled at by the station manager's voice of god mike for standing too close to the railing, so we knew someone was watching down below. As we waited 15 min. for the train, this woman started loudly and viciously screaming at her crying child, and ordering her other kids to wait around with their hands in the air. At one point, one of the kids needed to use the restroom, and she brought him over to do it on the side of the railing - and no voice of god mike even though the kid could have been electrocuted if he'd hit the electric rail. She kept screaming and ordering the kids around until our train came - and they were going in the other direction. I feel like I should have done something, and I'm really not sure why I didn't. Maybe one day I'll know. -
Aftermath...
2003-01-16 21:21:08
Newegg's charged my CC, verified my address, and should ship the HD tomorrow by 2 day FedEx. Since FedEx doesn't count monday as a holiday, I can tell off the temp agency on Tuesday and sit around, stalk the tracking number, and wait for the delivery. Obsessive? Yes, but this is my precious data. This is my video that's half finished that I started two months ago. This is some of my rarer and more obscure mp3s. This is my last year...and last couple months spent leeching anime.
I guess it's a good thing that I didn't try to defrag, huh?
Something good did come out of all this, though. I'm working tomorrow for the same place as the last three days, which means...another $70 after taxes. Of course, I have no idea where my last paycheck is...I had a voice mail from the temp agency that they left at 8:30 this morning. Did they somehow forget that 1)they sent me to a job already and that it starts at 9am, 2)that to get to a 9am job in downtown DC I have to leave by 8, and 3)their contract states that I'm not allowed to make non-contractor related phone calls, which means I can't check my voice mail. I wonder if they were calling to tell me my direct deposit didn't clear or something...*shrug* they can tell me tomorrow in person when I drop off my timecard. This one's not my fault.
Anyhow, the computer is running at half capacity right now, but is running safely. Here's to a speedy recovery! -
Slap me with a splintered ruler...
2003-01-15 23:04:56
Just when things were looking amazing...
My 60GB hard drive (the IBM one) decided to develop physical bad sectors. After sending a slew of type 51 errors to the system log and crapping out my buffer on a CD burn (is it really that much to buffer a 4x drive?), I did a chkdsk /r, consulted some people who know more on the matter than I do, and dropped $130 on a western digital 80GB SE drive + extra ATA cable and 2 day FedEx from Newegg. I have Aluminum's word that this thing will work perfectly, and have every intention of holding him to it.
Ughhhhhh, this means installing Partition Magic again, doesn't it...shit.
JOURNAL: iserlohn
Current server time: Jan 30, 2025 23:35:07