Brian's Journal

-OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Congratulations President Obama and Vice-President Biden!

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I have been up for 20+ hours.  Post will be continued once I actually get a chance to sleep.

But suffice it to say, YES. WE. CAN.

After careful consideration, we have decided that it is time to retool and rebrand Ohayocon.  I hope everyone enjoys the new focus!

It's almost Normal View time again!  For the 7th year in a row, we will be watching a weekend of bad movies in Champaign.  For those who haven't attended one of these, either the main festival, or the Anime Edition that I've hosted at Ohayocon for the past few years, Normal View is an annual festival where we watch 7 or 8 bad movies over the weekend and heckle them mercilessly.

This year's schedule has just been released, and it promises to be a good one.  So if you happen to be in Urbana-Champaign over the weekend of March 28-30, join us for:

NORMAL VIEW DOUBLE 007: ATTACK OF THE THE DOUBLE FEATURES

Remember: when movies bite, we bite back.

Super Tuesday has come and gone, and it looks like things are still undecided for our nomination.  (And just to summarize, I'm a Democrat, and I'm supporting Barack Obama very strongly.)  This is also the first time I've been on a ballot, as a candidate to be an elected Precinct Committeeman.  (And for those wondering what that is, I posted some stuff about that on beamjockey's journal.)

The next few months are going to be interesting.  Obama's got more cash on hand than Hillary right now, and the next few contests will favor him.  This thing's going to drag out until March or April.

On a more local note, I noticed some very interesting trends for my home county of DuPage County, Illinois.  DuPage has long been considered a Republican stronghold; there aren't any Democrats in county offices, and while numerically, DuPage has been provding more Democratic votes for statewide offices than any other county in Illinois except for Cook County (Chicago), we haven't yet been winning on the local level.  I think that's going to start to change, though.

With all 732 precincts in DuPage County reporting, Democratic voters cast 131,635 ballots,while Republican voters cast 108,582 ballots.

So dispite the fact that we had a lot of races with "No candidate", we still got 23,053 more votes than the Republicans.  I've looked at the past data that the election commission has on the website, and we had over TWICE as many votes cast as in the 2004 primary.  (In that race, Republicans cast 86,993 ballots, while Democrats cast 63,951 ballots.)  And this is the first race that we've ever had more ballots cast than the Republicans.  Now, to be fair, there are a lot of factors in play here, including  the Obama factor and the split within the Republican party between McCain, Romney, and Huckabee, but I think this is incredibly good news for us, and will really help to build momentum and excitement for the election in November, no matter who the final candidates end up being.

This is going to be a very interesting year.

I have been in Dallas for the past week attending LISA, the annual Systems Administration conference.  I had a really good time - I actually learned about some new stuff that I want to look at when I get home, got to talk and exchange ideas with a number of people, and generally just had a good time meeting people, networking, and learning more about systems administration. But enough about work stuff. :)

It's very interesting to look at a professional/trade conference from the perspective of running a fan-run anime convention.  It's a whole different world (and price range ;) ), but it seems that drama is universal.  It wasn't on display much, but I've gathered that there's some behind-the-scenes drama between some individuals and organizations.  Fortunately, the attendees can avoid that entirely.  It was also nice to be at a conference with older attendees, since among other things, the elevators and escalators worked all week, and there was no physical damage done to the hotel. :)

On Thursday night, they had the conference reception, which I decided could have been called "Texas Stereotype Reinforcement Night".  It was cowboy themed, with plastic sheriff stars and straw cowboy hats on the tables, and they had shooting games, a mechanical bull, and something that I never would have believed I'd see at LISA: armadillo racing.  But they also had some really good barbecue, so that made up for it. :)

Currently, I'm staying for a few days at skylon's place before I go home on Tuesday.  Getting my rental car to drive here was interesting.  I decided to rent it at the airport since I'll be dropping it off there, and decided to go the cheap route to get to the airport.  I took the commuter train from downtown Dallas to a station near the airport, where I was picked up by a shuttle servicing the remote parking lot.  From the remote lot, I had to take another shuttle to a terminal, then a third shuttle out to the rental car facility, which was close to the south parking lot, but separated from it by a huge fence.  But I eventually got it, then met up with a coworker to go out for a great steak dinner.  Tonight I am going folk dancing with bitpig and mundeemo, which should be ... interesting.  I don't dance at all, so I'm sure it'll be hilarious for everyone else. :)

Pictures will be posted when I get home.  Oh, and I wanted to see if I can bait Tom Limoncelli, who said he has a Google filter looking for people talking about him.  Hi, Tom.  You're in my pictures. :)

A local theater group is putting on "Manos: The Rock Opera of Fate" this month in Chicago.  I would really like to go, but I haven't been able to convince any of my friends that it would be fun.  I figured I would post here in case anyone in LJ-land might be interested in going.

It's playing every Friday and Saturday night at 10:30pm at the National Pastime Theater, which is on the north side of Chicago, until November 3, 2007.  The best nights for me would be this Friday (the 19th - tonight) or next Friday (the 26th).  If anyone might be interested, please post here or contact me.

There's more information here: Manos: The Rock Opera of Fate

So I realize I haven't posted to this journal in, oh, four years, but after a few failed attempts at starting a blog on my own site, I figured that maybe I'd try to occasionally use this again.

The big news for me is that I'm DONE.  I turned in my final exam yesterday morning, and am officially done with graduate school (unless I really blew the final, but I think I'll be ok).  Graduation is on Saturday, and then I can get my Tuesday evenings back. :)  Unfortunately, because of graduation and the fact that I'm currently on travel in California for work, I'm going to miss most of ACen - but I *will* be there on Sunday.  I'm looking forward to seeing folks I haven't seen in a while!

Other than that, things are going pretty well.  I've actually got a number of interesting projects at work right now (including finally getting some funding for an anti-spam initiative I've been pushing for for a while), I've managed to continue to do a lot of stuff with the Chicago crew, and Ohayocon is going pretty well right now.  We're working on ironing out the bugs from last year, and hope to make things go much more smoothly in 2008.

We'll see if I continue to update this, but if not, look for my next post in 2011! :)

Wow. One whole post for the entirety of 2002. Although I guess I am posting again before my next scheduled post in 2004.

However, I'm mostly posting to point out that I've set up a new journal on my personal site. Feel free to take a look: Brian's Journal

Will I update it as often as this? Probably. :) But who knows, it could be more often.

Since it's been about, oh, eight months since I've updated my LiveJournal, I just wanted to report that yes, I still do exist, and yes, I am really bad about updating this. :)

Let's see, what's been going on since the last time I updated...Well, I went on vacation this summer, first to Hawaii for two weeks for my stepbrother's wedding, and then to LA for a week for Anime Expo, where I met up with most of our IRC group. Both were fun. I'm also starting grad school this fall; I'm going for the degree of Master of Science in Computer Science at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Should be ... interesting. I'm a little afraid of going back to school, but hopefully it should be ok since A) I'm only taking one (maybe 2 some semesters) class at a time, and B) work is paying for it. :)

Other than that I've been keeping busy; work occupies a good chunk of my time, but I still have been hanging out with friends, etc.

By my exponential posting style, I'm guessing I'll post again around 2004, so be sure to check back then! :)

The following was something I posted to a local newsgroup that I read, but I thought that
people who don't have access to that group might find this interesting. These are my first
(two hours in) impressions of Final Fantasy X:

Ok, I spent about 2 hours on it this evening. It is extremely pretty.
The storyline is interesting so far; they're keeping a lot of things a
mystery, and it's a departure to have the apparent bad guy be a giant
force of nature. Of course, this far in, there hasn't been a whole lot
going on yet, but it's promising to begin with.

I'm of two minds about the battle system. I'm disappointed that they did
away with ATB, making the system seem less real time, but on the other hand,
not waiting for AT bars to fill can make the battles go faster. I am
disappointed that they seem to have vastly simplified the elemental spells.
The only four elements they seem to have are fire, water, ice, and thunder.
It looks like they moved some of them (holy, dark, space/time, etc.) to
some of the other abilities, but it still seems to be a bit of a step back.
But as I go on and unlock more abilities on the sphere board, it might turn
out to work better than it appears at first glance.

Oh, and one final thing that REALLY annoys me is the complete inability to
modify the controller settings. I REALLY dislike the "X as select, Circle
as cancel" scheme, but that's what I appear to be stuck with. It can't be
that hard to implement, and for people who are used to other control schemes,
it's annoying that they didn't include it.

I'll post more as I play more.

I'm not sure why I even bother with having a LiveJournal, considering how often I update. :)

The past month has been really busy. There's been a lot to do at work, I've been doing things with friends in my free time, and the Thanksgiving holiday saw me driving around Illinois to visit various parts of my family.

Things have been pretty good, though. My friends have been getting together more regularly on the weekends, and some of my friends from downstate have started traveling up here, too. At work, one of our staff members has retired, so I'm going to start having more responsibilities. It's scary, but could be interesting too.

And speaking of work, next week I'll be in San Diego for a systems administration conference. It's primarily to learn more for work, but I won't deny that it'll be really good to get out of Illinois for a week. :)


At one point, I said I'd do some mini-reviews here. Well, here's some mini-mini-reviews. :)


Movies:

From Hell: Good film, sets the mood perfectly and kept my attention throughout.
Monsters, Inc.: Another great film from Pixar, good fun for kids and adults alike.
Harry Potter: Yet another great film. I'm finally *almost* done reading the book, but the movie didn't disappoint. Very faithful to the source material.

TV:

Enterprise: Better than expected. While not the strongest Trek, I think it's better than Voyager.
Iron Chef USA: A complete and utter travesty. I enjoyed mocking it with my friends, but I hope it dies a flaming death. "It's the love juices of the sea urchin!" Ugh.

Games:

Megaman Battle Network: Lots of fun. Adds a fun new twist to the Megaman formula, though the net references can be lame at times.
Dragon Warrior VII: Quite possibly one of the worst looking PSX games I've yet seen. Haven't played enough to know how the plot / gameplay really is though.
Diablo II: Entirely too much fun. I don't think I'd be one of those to keep playing forever and ever though.
Xenosaga: Ok, we've only seen videos so far. But I WANT THIS GAME NOW. Or at least the soundtrack. Next year is so far away.

That should do for now. Hopefully I'll update before another month has passed. :)

I know it's been a while since I updated, but my life has been busy enough that I haven't had
time to write about it. :) This weekend was pretty good. It started off Friday night at a great concert in Chicago by They Might Be Giants. Then, on Saturday, I went to a friends house and played some more in our D&D 3rd Ed campaign - my first PnP RPG experience. Then I went over to ANOTHER friend's house and stayed up playing card games, DDRing, and just talking until 5:30. Now I should study for my Japanese class. Oh yeah, that's something else new. I was supposed to go the Europe, but my friend and I cancelled our trip due to the current instability in the aftermath of the WTC attacks. Since I wasn't going to be gone for two weeks, I signed up to take Japanese. It's pretty fun. But, since I didn't get a lot of sleep last night, I'm tired. Oh well, I can do part of it tomorrow.

Tonight I finally went to see Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within in an IMAX theater. While the it wasn't quite as impressive as I had hoped, it was still really cool. I wish they had used the entire IMAX screen, but that might be a limitation due to the equipment they had available, and the fact that it wasn't meant to be an IMAX film. But one thing that got my attention was the sound. This is the origin of the subject - those speakers are so impressive, that the theater shook when the bass was loud.

After three viewings, I still really like the film. The graphics are amazing, and aside from a few moments of cheesiness, I enjoyed the plot of the film. While the end did borrow a bit too much from Final Fantasy VII, it left me satisfied. I definitely recommend the film, and wish that more people would have understood it and not have let it bomb. Oh well, that means that we'll get the DVD release sooner. And I think it'll do well overseas.


Oh, and as a bonus, here's the review I wrote of Final Fantasy after seeing it the first time. This was posted to a local message board.

A few problems, primarily some dialogue that could have used a little work,
kept the movie from being perfect, but I still loved it. It's important to
note that I'm a huge fan of the games, and while the movie didn't have a
direct connection to any of the games, the "feel" of the games was intact,
and in a lot of ways was reminiscent of Final Fantasy VII. I'm guessing that
western audiences may not like the way spirituality is depicted, but I thought
it worked. The graphics, btw, are fantastic. While the characters at times
have a bit of jerky movement, for most of the movie I found the character
animation to be realistic enough to draw me in. I also thought the alien
phantoms looks excellent; you could really see how insubstantial, yet so
dangerous, that they were. And the way they attacked the inner soul without
touching the physical body was very well depicted.

I'm guessing that the more "serious" film viewers here may not like the film.
But I'll be seeing it again before the weekend is over. :)

This was quite an exciting weekend. This Saturday was the annual meeting of my high school's alumni association, and my 5th year high school reunion. The festivities started Friday night at an Irish pub called Fado in downtown Chicago. It was a lot of fun - the people organizing the get together figured that maybe 30-40 people would show up for the pre-reunion party. We ended up with 57. :) That was a few too many people crammed into the small area we were in, but we made due. It was good to see people that I haven't seen since graduation. Unfortunately I had to leave before the party was over so I could catch the train back to the suburbs. I still have not actually driven into Chicago, thank goodness for public transportation. :)

On Saturday was the reunion itself. Before that, though, was the annual meeting of the Alumni Association. I am happy to say that in the sole race with more than one candidate, I won the election to become the vice president of the Association. And I even have a task already - work with people to update the website.

After the meeting, some of our teachers came back for a tea, and people broke up into groups to talk. After that was the reunion itself - many of the people had been at Fado the night before, but there were several who just came to the actual reunion. The highlight of the evening had to be when we showed our senior video that had been made at the end of our senior year in 1996. It was great to see ourselves from five years ago. (Or even before; in my case, the only picture of me that made it into the video was from sophomore year in 1993. :) )

All in all, a good time seemed to be had by all. I hope that I catch up with some people again before our 10 year reunion. :)

This weekend was pretty boring, compared to the last two. I pretty much just stayed at home and rested, and watched some anime that had been building up in my queue.

Last weekend I attended the wedding of one of my best friends from high school, and was busy with that for most of the weekend, especially since I had some other friends staying at my place. I know it's late, but I want to wish Jim & Sarah all the best - I hope you two have a great life together.

The past couple of weeks have been busy at work, too. We're nearing the deadline for the entire lab to go behind the firewall with rules, so a good portion of my time has been spent trying to figure out what ports, services, etc. that we need to have opened. This week is the moment of truth, so I'm crossing my fingers. :)

Next weekend is the annual meeting of the alumni association of my high school, as well as my 5th year reunion. I can't believe it's been 5 years already, so much has happened - I went through college, got a job, and entered the "real world". It'll be interesting to see what the other classmates that I haven't talked to in years have been up to. Oh, I'm also running for vice-president of the alumni association, so wish me luck. :)

I hope to actually get to some of the mini-reviews I've been thinking of posting. I've now seen Final Fantasy: The Spirits within twice now, and I'm planning to see it again on the IMAX screen near my apartment this week. I really liked the movie, and will try to post more thoughts after the third viewing. :)

As usual, I threw off my sleeping schedule this weekend, so I really should try to get some sleep. The main problem with this whole "real world" thing is that most people, for some unknown reason, actually think the morning is supposed to be used for *work*, and not *sleep*. :)

Finally done with a relatively busy weekend. It started on Friday, when a friend of mine helped me go get a couch that another friend was giving away. It's so cool, though - I finally have a real couch to sit on! Before, I had this daybed thing that my dad gave me that I had slowly been breaking by lying back on the part that you're not really supposed to lie against. :)

The rest of the weekend involved me going to my dad's new house to help him a little as he's just moving into it. Fortunately they had movers to move the really bulky stuff, so the biggest thing I had to do was set up his computer.

Then, before I left tonight, we had dinner with some friends of his and a family that was visiting from Norway. They had been in America for a year a couple of years ago for an exchange program, and the husband had taught at my dad's school. I'm probably going to Europe for a couple of weeks in October, and part of the plan is to go to Norway and stay with them a few days. As a result, we talked about that a bit. Now I'm getting more excited about the trip. :)

I've finally thought of something to do with this journal; I think I'll do some mini-reviews of games I've played, anime I'm watching, etc. I'll try to post one within a couple of days, probably of Super Mario Advance.

I have no idea how often I'll use this, but I figured I'd join the bandwagon and join up!

I just got back from a friend's house for the fourth. Had a nice barbecue, and wore myself out playing Dance Dance Revolution. :)

Gah. After a day off, don't really want to go back to work tomorrow. Especially since everything's been breaking lately, and I *really* don't want to have to spend another day on the phone with Sun.