New
Caption

Not much has been going on lately. Thought I’d change a couple
minor things around, though.

For starters, I thought I’d finally change the tagline
underneath the title at the top (the Japanese text under ‘Chronic
Jetlag’). The original was taken from an old poem by Ariwara no
Narihira (explained in
this post):

My intention with the original caption was, in the spirit of
Japanese literary tradition, modify the meaning of two lines of text by
changing the surrounding concept. So, where the original poem used it
as a question, I used it as more of a statement.

Anyhow, I thought it might be time to change it around a
little. I thought I’d pick a line from one of the Lunar: Silver Star
Story novels (by Kei Shigema). The main character and his friends
encounter a person who spends his life always journeying from one place
to the next; they ask him why he does so and he responds:

Later on (two volumes and a few hundred pages later), when
they relate the story of this person to someone else, they reiterate
his motto, paraphrasing a little bit, to something like:

I thought this was a bit more concise, and thought I’d borrow
it for the tagline below the title. KF

Weekend Mix

The weekend was pretty good. One highlight was on Saturday, I
met up with some folks from Rice Bowl Journals who
are in the DC area (manny & enygma, and one of e’s friends–though not pictured). We went by
Ching Ching Cha, a
Chinese Tea House in Georgetown.

We had a pretty good time. It’s always great to meet folks in
person whom you’ve known online. By now, I don’t really have any
preconceived expectations of how folks are in person. So, it ends up
being something like a mix of meeting someone for the first time, and
catching up with someone you already know.

Anyway, anyone in the Georgetown area, you might want to try
Ching Ching Cha sometime. I first found out about it from my Chinese
teacher last year–last February, she had a class there as well. It’s
probably the best teahouse you’ll find in the area, though it’s
specialty is more in East Asian teas (so, green, oolong, tisanes, and
some Chinese black teas).

Site Renewal

Other than that, I spent some time fixing up this site again.
You’ll notice it looks a bit different: I moved the posting calendar
and search-box to the top-right, cleaned up how the links look, and
added a “top posts” thing (unfortunately, due to my laziness with
posting last year, only one of those last year is good enough to put up
there). I also tried to fix it up so it’ll show up in both Firefox and
Internet Explorer properly–you really should be using Firefox
regardless, though:

Let me know if you have any problems with it. I spent a lot of
time trying to get it looking right (it’s much harder than you might
think, since I prefer to program everything in straight HTML/CSS–no
modules or automatic Xanga stuff), and so I’d like it to be as good as
I can possibly make it.

Speaking of Internet Explorer…

…part of last week was also spent helping my sister clear
out a nasty virus/spyware/trojan combo she got on her computer.
Specifically, it was AntiSpy
Storm. The first part of this conversation was spent trying
to figure out how she got the virus:

It’s all taken care of now, though, and thankfully so. If you check the
description of AntiSpy Storm, it’s pretty vicious. Good thing that’s over with.

Anyway, I’ll have more to talk on by the end of this week. ‘Til then. …and it seems I’m still keeping in line with my resolutions–that sleeping one is proving to be more difficult, though, and may take a little while. KF

New Years 2008

Happy New Year folks. As usual, I’m just at home on New Years;
after being in Nashville for over a week, though, I’m not too upset
about it.

Eid & Nashville…

Speaking of Nashville, though, everything went by pretty well.
Eid-ul-Adha was good, and I got to see much of my family. I didn’t get
to see the new baby, however, as she’s still in the hospital gaining a
little weight before being able to go home. She’s doing all right,
thankfully, so no worries.

My sister got me something for Eid, too:

This isn’t the actual picture of it (mine is green). But, it’s
an Air Hogs helicopter. Sure, the thing is made of styrofoam and
plastic, but it still flies! I had an idea that if I ever got to go
back in a time machine, I would take this thing with me and visit
Leonardo da Vinci…

I also got her Harry Potter 1, 3, and 5 on DVD, in return.

2007 in Review

Anyway, 2007 was a pretty good year. Over the year, I:

- Received a promotion

- Moved to a new desk (near the window)

- Started following cricket

- Made plans for the next few years

…eh, I suppose it doesn’t sound all that eventful. Oh well.

Resolutions

I do have two resolutions, though. Some realistic ones I might actually be able to stick to, at that:

1) Getting an average of 6 hours of sleep a night

During the weekdays I average about 5 hours, sometimes less, depending
on how difficult it is to get to sleep. This is mostly because I get to
bed around 2AM most days. I figure if I can just move it back, I’ll be
able to get in 6 hours and be more rested for the day.

2) Updating my Xanga on average once a week

No, really, I can do this. No more whole months between updates. I got
enough to talk about, I’m just sometimes a bit… lazy with putting it
down.

Anyway, that’s that. Until next week.

…no, really. KF

Month of Celebrations, and Oddness

Another month has passed. I know I should make several, smaller updates with more frequency… I’ll try to get into that habit next year. But anyway, here’s what’s been going on the past month. Some interesting things have happened…

Schpilkis!

So a funny thing happened at work the other day…

My coworker comes by to talk with me about something. While we’re talking, I feel a tingling sensation on my leg (lower-left calf). Without breaking conversation, I instinctively grab that part of my pants leg… only to hear the distinctive sound of an exoskeleton cracking.

Me: Oh shit…
CW: What?
Me: I think a bug just crawled up my pants.

We finish up what we were discussing, and then I start the slow process of rolling up my pants leg to see whatever it was I killed. Well, more accurately, to dump it out and pretend it never happened–I wanted to do that without actually seeing the thing.

Now… one thing you should know. When I get disgusted, I swear. So, my other coworkers heard me yelling a bunch of four-letter words when I rolled up my pants leg and saw the cockroach carcass fall out (American cockroach, not the smaller German cockroach). They started crowding around since they knew what had happened.

Me: What the hell are you all watching for? Back away!

I got some disinfectant and tried to cleanse my leg and pants-leg as best as possible. I spent the next couple of days walking around the office with my pants tucked into my socks, too.

For our Secret Santa gift exchange earlier this week, guess what I got?

A can of RAID.

Eid Mubarak!

On a brighter note, today is Eid-al-Adha. Yet again, I’m
flying out one-day-late (I’m leaving for Nashville in just about an
hour). Fortunately, I still went to prayers this morning at my old
university, which is near my office; and, I’ll still spend this evening
in Nashville with family. So, all is not lost.

Other Nashville-related News

Otherwise, there’s not really anything noteworthy that’s happened to me. Nothing I would want to bore you with, anyhow (mostly work-related things, or stuff that I’ll get around to talking about at a later date). But…

1) My cousin just had a baby girl. I’ll see them soon when I come back to Nashville. She rejected my suggestion for a name, though–the name I suggested was Kaisera.

2) One of my friends in DC (well, she’s a family friend I’ve known all through growing up in Nashville) had her 30th birthday a couple weeks back. Since she’s a family friend, I can almost consider her a big sister. Which means I might even get to make age-related jokes.

3) I just got the third Phoenix Wright game. One of these days I’ll make one big post about the Phoenix Wright series.

Um… otherwise, I’ll be in Nashville and Atlanta for a week. I’ll be back, and maybe with pictures this time. ‘Til then. KF

Month of Traveling Around

Well, the last month has been so rough it’s like pulling teeth! Even work is like taking time off by comparison. In fact, work might be the least stressful part of my day right now. Though, it’s not all bad stress, mind you…

Nashville for Eid

First, Nashville (back in October) was good. There was some… disconnect as to when Eid-ul-Fitr was supposed to be. See, Islamic holidays are based on the Islamic calendar, which is a lunar calendar: 12 months, and each month is one full cycle of the moon. The new month is signalled by the sighting of the new moon (these days we can use astronomical projections, as well). Since Eid-ul-Fitr is the first of the month after Ramadan, it depends on the sighting of the moon.

And if it’s one thing Muslims can disagree over, it’s when Eid is. Though, to me, it’s really not that major an issue as folks like to make it out to be. Back in ‘the day’, Mecca and Medina would sometimes celebrate Eid on two different days; I say to just roll with the city that you’re in. Most places held Eid on Saturday; Nashville ended up holding it on Friday.

Unfortunately, I was flying on on Friday afternoon. So, I missed the prayers that morning. However, because everyone was planning on it being Saturday (and… if you ask me, it was supposed to be Saturday regardless), all the family had plans on Saturday already set up. Catering, cooking, feasts, and parties were planned for Saturday.

So we went ahead and celebrated both days. I mean, if it’s one thing Bangladeshis won’t do, we won’t pass up a good feast. Some folks might see the minor disagreement on when Eid should be as a sign of disunity among Muslims. Us enlightened folks see this minor disagreement as a cause to celebrate for two days instead of just one. (Nevertheless, it is nice when everyone agrees on the same day.)

California for Business

One great thing is that I got to go to Southern California for business. There’s a course on SAS Enterprise Miner software (which we’ll be getting at work soon), and myself and one of my colleagues went to Irvine, CA, for that two-day course. My colleague coincidentally had planned his vacation for the preceding week in the Bay Area, so he just extended his stay and trained down for that. Me, I took the opportunity to fly into San Diego the preceding weekend to spend it with family in the area.

Since it was an improvised vacation, I was more so happy to be able to spend some time with family I don’t get to see that often. I did go with my cousin and his 15-month old daughter to the San Cabrillo National Monument, where there are some really nice views of San Diego and the Pacific Ocean:

After the weekend, I went up to Irvine for the course, and flew out on Tuesday. Took Wednesday off, on account of arriving at 5:45am that day.

Arlington for Rest

One of my friends came into town on Wednesday (and another on Friday-Saturday). Since that week was really light work-wise, and also there was an anime convention right in Crystal City near my apartment that weekend (AnimeUSA), it was a pretty good time.

Nashville for…

Since I’ve already gone on long enough, I think I’ll get back to some of the stuff I’ve picked up next week. I’m going to Nashville for the Thanksgiving weekend, and I’ll update when I get back. …soon, this time. KF

Whoops…

Two mistakes… First, I haven’t updated in nearly two months.
Lots has happened in the meantime: Ramadan, the
Twenty20
World Cup of Cricket, and… well that’s about it.

Ramadan as you already should know is the month of fasting,
the holiest month of the year. By now I’m rather used to the lack of
eating, so that part is incidental–some of the other important things
to do for Ramadan are coming through. Particularly trying not to get
angry or all riled up about anything.

Twenty20 Cricket

Oh, there was a second “whoops” in there. So… the first ever
World Cup for Twenty20 Cricket was in South Africa in September. Now,
Twenty20 is the newest form of the game, and is extremely fast-paced:
twenty overs an innings, one innings per team, and the entire game
lasts about 3-4 hours tops. You might think this encourages just going
out and blinding hitting for sixes all the time–although the teams
that took that strategy got knocked out.

All in all it turned out to be one amazing
tournament, with so many close calls and games that
ran down to the wire. Best in form were the greatest sports rivals in
the world: India and Pakistan. Now, each has players I really like.
India has Yuvraj Singh, an amazing batsman, and Mahender Dhoni, a
brilliant captain. Pakistan has Mohammed Asif and Sohail Tanvir, both
really great bowlers. I slightly
sided with Pakistan since they had a few more players I liked, but the
best part was how damn close their matches
were.

First, you had their one match during the group stage,
where it amazingly ended in a tie. A tie… In
Twenty20, though, it goes to a ‘bowl-out’ if that happens, and this is
such a new thing that it was even the referee’s first time officiating
a bowl-out! Here’s the final over:

(LINK)

Although India won, these two giants had another chance to
square off in the final. And unlike the ODI World Cup earlier this
year, this was completely brilliant. Here’s the
final over.

(LINK)

Also, Bangladesh did well their first match by beating the
West Indies. Unfortunately the Tigers lost every other match. Hey, I
still hold out hope! It’s a young squad (19 to 25!) so… give it a few
years’ experience.

Right, the ‘Whoops’

Yeah I forgot about the ‘whoops’. So, I gotta watch these
matches live. And so I got some high-res streaming video that I can
watch online. I get into work early during Ramadan, so I manage to
catch many of these while I’m at work. Well… one day we get an email
saying the following (some facts changed for anonymity):

………………………………
………………………………
…………………….whoops.

To be fair, I didn’t realize we were on a shared DSL network.
And, many people in the office do watch streaming
video occasionally, including one other person who, like me, follows
cricket live (although not using as high-res feeds). Not to mention
that this wasn’t a problem during the soccer World Cup when at least
5-10 people would be watching during a given game. So, while it’s not
entirely my fault, a good portion of the blame is due to me.

Like I said, “whoops”.

But, here’s the funny part: the log they
retrieved apparently was only a snapshot of usage at one time, a time
when I happened to be out of the office and hence
watching the game from home. So, two other people who were
not really the cause of that “internet slowdown” got
a little bit of the heat for it. I was going to keep
it under wraps but… once I heard that, I had to start telling folks
it was largely my bad.

Although, this was before the final match of the Twenty20 World Cup.

…and we still watched the final match online.

Upcoming…

Lastly, I’m going to Nashville this Friday for Eid, to spend
it with my family. I’ll post more stuff about all that once I get back
home on Wednesday. ‘Til then. KF

Otakon: Music and More

So, Otakon was in Baltimore this past weekend, and it was plenty of fun. I go every year, and some years are better than others. But this year had some particularly great events.

For starters, I managed to get it so that I had a business trip up to Baltimore on Thursday. So… I went up in the afternoon, and went into the city around 5:00 to pick up my badge a day early. This turned out to be perfect, since there was a panel I really was aiming to go to early Friday morning…

OverClocked Remix

So the first thing I saw on Friday was the OverClocked Remix panel. OCR is a video game music remixing community and, well, the kind of music that’s up there is incredible. Probably about 90% of the music I regularly listen to comes from there.

Anyway, some artists that I really like were up there on the panel; most notably pixietricks and Zircon. Not to mention that pixietricks (Jillian Goldin–link’s on the left) is also one of the voices on the soundtrack of the latest expansion for the Civilization series: Civilization IV – Beyond the Sword. Anyway, the panel was incredible, we got to see some live performances, and overall it was a great way to start the entire convention.

By the way… All the music on OCR is free for download. So, well, don’t dismiss the idea of remixing video game music until you’ve heard how good some of these folks are.

Lunar: Past, Present, Future

On Day 2 (Saturday), we had a panel on my favorite video game series: Lunar. This was the second year running for this panel (I mentioned how it went last year), and, it was pretty successful if you ask me. We got a good crowd, and it was tons of fun talking about the series and showing off some of the lesser-known things about the series.

For instance, we spent some time talking about some of the changes between the Japanese and English versions of the games, and some of the extra merchandise like the novels.

One thing I’m glad we got to do is show the extremely-obscure Magical School Lunar anime. It’s about a 12-minute clip based off of the least-known game in the series. If you check LunarNET’s anime page you can see the video for yourself (also available via YouTube or animesuke.com).

OBJECTION!

There were a lot of common themes to this convention. I did manage to see a lot of folks from my favorite current video game series: Phoenix Wright – Ace Attorney. Such as Phoenix and Edgeworth:

There were a number of other great things about the weekend. Chief of which is that a couple of my friends came up from North Carolina (C & D) for Otakon, which made it all even more worthwhile. Then there was the “How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse” panel, which taught me a few things that could very well save my life one day. And, lastly, a couple of finds in the dealer’s room.

Oh, before I forget, my convention curse did return. The final total was 28–no exaggerations. KF

A Month of…

Well… a lot has happened in the past month. And, all of it good. I mean, real good.

At work…

For starters: I’ve been promoted! This happened almost two months ago; but, I didn’t post about it back then because I was going home over Memorial Day weekend, and I wanted to tell this to my mother and father in person. Although, I kind of ‘accidentally’ let it slip the week before Memorial Day…

Anyway, I’m now at the consultant level (up from associate). This is great especially because I’ve been working ridiculously hard the last couple months, and it really feels like it’s been paying off.

Work right now has been tapering off, by the way. It’s a lot less intense now than it was, say, in April through June.

At home…

Also for one week last month, one of my friends, J, came down from Ohio to visit for a week. We had a pretty good time.

One thing we did that I’ve been meaning to do is visit Great Falls National Park (Virginia side). There were some really nice views…

Not to mention that J stopped me from nearly stepping on this little guy:

Elsewhere…

Well, J left for Richmond for AMA the next weekend. So I followed her (well, I was free that weekend for once, and I figured I could use the break out-of-town, so what better way to spend it?). Truth be told, the convention itself wasn’t all that great. There was a Jedi fight…

But nothing else of note from the convention. Only the people, J, J’s friends, etc. We did find a rather good Japanese restaurant in downtown Richmond, however.

Now…

Now, I’m getting ready for two things. Work-related, we’re at the end of our current project and we’re wrapping that up. Life-related, Otakon is this weekend in Baltimore, and I’m going to be going as usual. Though, there’s some good stuff to look forward to there…

Not the least of which is a Lunar panel that I’ll be co-hosting on Saturday, 11:30~12:30. It should be tons of fun, just like last year’s panel. Also, I’ll be trying to make the OC Remix panel on Friday morning, and see if I can’t get anything signed by Tomokazu Seki, a voice actor who’s work includes part of the Lunar series.

I’ll get back to y’all after this weekend. ‘Til then. KF

Recent
Trips

I’ve been out and about lately. Yeah, work’s
still been busy, but I’ve squeezed in two little
vacations in the last month.

North Carolina…

First, I got to go to North Carolina to visit a couple of
friends from college. It was a really nice break
from the city. Felt like being home again, being that far South. Oh,
and I got to play with this guy again:

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Well, they have two kitties.
One of them is just a bit camera
shy.

Nashville…

Besides
that, I also, finally, got to go back to Nashville for a few days over
Memorial Day weekend, plus a couple days… I was really feeling
homesick.

But, that’s about it for now. I’m still a
bit busy, so I’ll try to elaborate more on some of what’s been going on
the past month a bit later when I have time. KF

Hard Work

Ok, several updates for the past couple weeks…

First, the Cricket World Cup… Unfortunately, it didn’t end so well. Australia won (yet again, damn 30-game unbeaten record). But, it was after a game that was reduced to 30-something overs a side on account of rain, with the last few overs being played in near-darkness. It was a rather underwhelming finish. Now, given the way Australia was playing, they probably still would have won, but it wasn’t much of a final. Now don’t get me wrong… I want the Aussies to lose already, but they are great cricketers and there’s no denying that.

Second, the other reason I haven’t been posting much… For about a week and a half straight I was pulling 10- to 12-hour days, plus working at least 8 hours over the weekends, to meet a deadline on Monday of last week (April 30th). That deadline was met, and it’s a similar feeling as coming off of your last final exam. Of course, there’s another deadline at the end of May, but that looks like we can meet it without the same crunch time as was at the end of last month.

So, my upcoming plans… I’m going to be in North Carolina this weekend visiting some friends. The next week I’ll just stick around DC. And, finally, the week after that, I’m flying to Nashville for a few days. Looks like May will be a pretty good month. KF