Sometimes when life is down, I feel a lot of frustration, anger or disappointment and curse the world and its inhabitants (9:30 - 18:00, Monday to Friday and sometimes on weekends) it's kind of a nice to look at things from another perspective. I mean for a different perspective watch this:

When you realise something like VV CEPHEI according to astronomers you come to the conclusion either science is bullshit or that things are so vast it can only be quantified by the existence of celestial beings or that things are so things are so grand in the scale of things that nothing really matters. I know you could choose to think of that statement that life is pretty pointless but then by that same token all the negative things in life are pretty pointless as well so you might as ride neutral wave it creates and enjoy it. I mean no matter how big celestial bodies within the heavens are, it doesn’t change the fact I’m still big enough to take candy away from small children.

I Know I sometimes make the most random posts about the most mundane topics but I felt this revelation was actually worth highlighting because of its history.

I’ll start at the beginning, (a very good place to start). Back before Sweatdrop, before MUJS, before anime cons and hell even before the Super Nintendo there was one anime in 1992 that pretty much pulled me into the scene I live by today. I know Thundercats, Cities of Gold and a English dubbed Laputa came before it, but there this series so ground breaking, its influence pretty much directly lead to my current state in life. The anime in question was Ranma ½, it was the first series I ever saw and was so good I started looking for more anime afterwards. However it wasn’t the characters, the humour or the animation that drew me in at first. There was one 1:32 segment I saw midway through a 4 hour VHS that made me want to watch the rest of the series and it was this:

Equal Romace - Coco

Ok this morning I woke up late for work from around 3:40 hours of sleep.  My hair was a mess, I didn't have time shave or shower and my office clothes were kinda thrown together from a collection of items which barely escaped the laundry basket. Work was pretty dire and soul destroying and I found out I have slightly less money than I had thought with more things to pay for that I planned. Zombied my way through the day with lack of energy, food and a slight cold. Got to briefly meet up with MUJS friends, had a meal which left me wanting more and ended up leaving the J-pop night in the club slightly earlier than I had really wanted. I did however manage to talk in brief with a few friends.

All in all today was pretty awesome and made me smile ^_^.   

I can't even remember who is was now but I'm sure I read a friends' LJ post advising that they had started watching this series and out of curiosity I looked up the first 11 episodes I could find..... turns out there were only 11 in total anyway. I have to admit I had downloaded the first 9 with no clue as to what the series was about except a spalsh advertisement screen and the title, so my guess of the story was 'Big earthquake hits Tokyo'. I guess I don't know what I was expecting but guess it was something along the lines of Resident evil.... but without the zombies. I wasn't even sure if there would be guns and any form of combat in it.

To cut a long story short I made it to episode 8 and there were no guns, no high speed rescues or major death defying moments. It was mainly just 3 characters who were barely likeable walking alot.  That's it.  I'll admit the art style isn't something I'd normally go for and episodes 1-6 were watched mainly just to pass the time without impressing too much but I decided to carry on watching. There are series which start off slow and pretty uninteresting but thent end up being amazing, One Piece did it, Last Exile did it and I'm glad to say this did it.

The characters start off almost unrealistically set in there ways. There's the miserable character, the chirpy one and the protective mother/big sister type and for a while it's pretty annoying to see them act this way. But I think the turning point is when they finally break out of that mould. The character they put up finally collapses and they more or less break down. You find that that attitude and character is just something they put on show while in fact they are pretty real and scared to death. The climax of the series is simple touching. No special powers or crazy events, no characters that are special/gifted and no fantastic subplot. I don't think I even laughed once during this whole series. At the heart of this show is just a really good story about real people, not just characters made up to entertain.

I can’t say this is the best series I’ve ever seen, I can’t even say as a whole it was that exciting or entertaining, but I can say it was worth it. Sometimes you just need a story to remind you about the merits and challenges of life as opposed to fantasy. I do highly reccomend this series just to remind you about the world and people around you above all else.

You know, I never really considered myself the smartest person in the world (no this is not another post about the woes of IT support) but at the same time I think for a good deal of my life I have known people I would classify as stupid, so I at least know I'm not on their level.  That said life is about experiences and experience is about learning new things, learning from your own mistakes and even the mistakes of others. I’m going to focus on the aspect of learning from your own mistakes. It’s only after you make mistakes and realize things that you understand what you are capable of or in some of my cases what complete reject I was before. I felt like making another post to try and recapture my memories so one day I can look back on these and remember me remembering stuff, point at my old self and laugh.

Back in primary school I reached the age of 7 and still had not grasped the simple concept of reading, writing, grammar and spelling. I think my main problem with this was I brought up from the age of 0-5 on basic Chinese and no exposure to anything else. So while I had a superb grasp of maths, could play the piano and identify around 50 Kanji I couldn’t tell you where I lived or spell my own surname. This concerned teachers but not my parents as they believed they were raising a normal Chinese kid. It actually took two months of being sent to ‘special classes’ for them to prove I wasn’t actually retarded. That’s not the slang term, that was an actually a test they put me through to see if I was mentally retarded or not.  Although it was over 20 years I still clearly remember those tests and they went along the lines of “this is a picture of a dog” with the word dog underneath it, they then show me the same picture with the words removed and asked if I knew what it was. Other tests included giving me square blocks and square holes and seeing if I could figure out the realtionship of the two, I was done in Iike 2 seconds while other people in the room were there for over 3 mins still trying to figure it out. I was 7 but I think at that point even I figured out what condescending was and spent 90% of my time there trying to get the hell out. Once I got out and got put back into normal school it was only after that I realized how bad my language skills were and that if my performance didn’t improve or if it even degraded then I might be sent back there. So from that point on I studied like hell to get my English to the level of normal 7 year old and crammed what should have been a 7 year education into the space of 4 months. .  

The same thing happened at high school. The first year was fine but at the start of the 2^nd year they split classes up into set 1, set 2 and set 3 for the topics science, maths and English. Set 1 being those who performed best and set 3 for those who couldn’t tell the difference between Copper and Iron. Yours truly was one of those people. I have to be honest as say I was a bit of a lazy student then and core of my problem was I never understood the questions, how could I answer questions on Photosynthesis when I didn’t know the meaning of the word? Again it took the humiliation of being stuck in 3^rd set for everything for me to knuckle down and start reading textbooks, dictionaries and a thesaurus each night to not only get me up to speed but to actually let me finish in the top 5% of the school when GCSE results came in.  

These are just two of my early memories where self improvement came from humiliation but you think I would have learned my lesson right? Looking over my life it doesn’t seem so.

Up until the age of 22 I was on a strict diet of coke or a fizzy drink with pretty much every meal and regular sessions of sugary treats. It took wailing in pain on the bathroom floor and going maybe 6 days without sleep due to toothache for me to realize I need to take better care of my teeth, visit the dentist and cut down on sugar.

It took a family meal of relatives I hadn’t seen in a good decade with 12 different people all saying ‘wow, you’ve gotten fat!” for me to realize I might be on the chubby side and that I should probably be working out and actually exercising.   

It took a pretty heartbreaking dump for me to realize that I ‘m probably not the most appealing person in the world so need to stop acting so childish, stop spending money on crap and actually take some responsibility for my life.

It took me going flat broke and being in debt to realize I need to plan a budget, never go over my limits or take out payments I can’t pay

It took being stranded alone in Japan, on my own, in the middle of the night for me to realize I want to be able to learn another language properly (specifically Japanese)

It took the death of someone close for me to realize that life does kind of suck but we should still keep plodding on and making the most of it.  

The list goes on and while I agree the results are generally positive and life is learned through lessons, I rather have learned something (or learned to do something) without some kind of traumatic event. The train of thought of these is they are mostly reactive actions as opposed to proactive ones, so I decided for once I’m going to change my life for the better with the follow method. Cut down (or even cut out) salty products and fatty meals. I have a almost scary relationship with KFC, McDonalds and Take Out Food (and I add salt to pretty much everything not sweet) and figure it’s probably a good plan to cut down on these before the heart attack as opposed to after. This means I have a stack of carrots in my fridge, some oranges on the desk and my last meal consisted of carrots and Homus. While the future doesn’t look bright, it does look orange.  I know I’m not perfect, I know I never will be and I’m certainly not aiming to be but think in the grand scheme of things I made it out of special school so I’m going to do everything I can and work hard to make sure I’m not sent back.

I’m aware this post might not have been as amusing or joke ridden as I would have liked but hope to those who read this look take away this lesson, think about something you could improve and do it proactively as opposed going though humliation or pain first.

Greetings fellow Interneticans,

Welcome to another addition of Cin’s Good idea’s, bad ideas. Today we look into the wonderful World of Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games or “Warcraft” for short, ((Editor- Don’t you mean MMORPG’s) (Cin – No)).  As you may know, the internet will allow you to browse numerous websites, shop for items on Ebay and hack Faye’s website, but did you also know it can be used to play games? That’s right, you can play games online with all your friends where you can be a brave hero, explore forgotten realms or simply run around in small circles screaming ‘oh god oh god, we’re all going to die’. There are a number of uses for these games, chief among them being procrastination. So without further ado here’s today’s Good idea, bad idea!

Good idea: Playing an on-line game with friends in moderation to improve your social skills, team building ability, hand eye co-ordination and keyboard skills.

Bad idea: Obsessively playing WoW, communicating using fragmented mutations of the English language and refusing to log off until the till server kicks you off at 2am in the morning for a server reboot. Then proceeding to watch two 45 min long episodes of Firefly and the Serenity movie.

Seriously, what the hell was I thinking? It was a time of the night where cats and party goers would be passed out and yet I thought it would be a good idea to sit through 4 hours of sci-fi footage. I’m now in work muddling my way though the day in a zombified state looking for brains. Specifically mine, as it seems to be missing. Plans for tonight include a) finding my bed b)collasping and c) making sure I haven't collapsed on the cat, although at this point I'd settle for just B. On the plus side I had to deal with a user with the name of Dickon Love, this should be added to the case why some parents shouldn’t be allow to name children.

This is a modern age we live in. It is an age of World Wide Web Networks, digital medium and social sites. We use the wonders of GPS, real time conversations and the youth of today can type as fast as they talk. In fact this very post is brought you by a combination of the above. It is truly an age of information.

That said, some people do not deserve to be here and should be released back into the wild to hunt wild boars, graze on grass and maybe get mauled by a bear. I admit I’m not the smartest person in the world, make mistakes or have an off day, but seriously the number of people I honestly think don’t deserve to part of society is steadily growing. The reason for this post is to enlighten you dear friends out there of the type of people I have to deal with. Yes these are comical situations but they honestly come from personal experience which I now wish to share with you. These are not exaggerations, these are actual human responses. Please enjoy the list of reasons why a small number of you make sure IT support hate you all.

**************

Me: Can I take your Roll number?

User: Where can I find that?

Me: It should be on your account book or statement

User: I don’t see it

Me: Do you have a Sort code and Account number then?

User: Where’s that?

Me: Top left of your statement

User: Sort code? Is that the one next to the Roll number?

**************

User: My PC’s not working, it’s just has no power

Me: What happens when you press the power button?

User: Is that button on the front?

Me: yes

User: Oh! I pressed it and it just started working!

**************

User: I’ve forgotten what my username is

Me: What’s your name?

User: Where can I find that?

**************

User: Can you help? we’re got a problem with the mouse

Me: What’s the problem?

User: We can’t catch it.

Me: ….. why are you calling IT support?

User: Someone said to call if we have a problem with mice

Me: Call pest control.

**********

Me: Ok to test this I need you to unplug the phone from the line

User: Ok I’ve done it

Me: No, I need you to unplug the phone from the line

User: I told you!  I just did it!

Me: ……….. what am I talking to you on?

User: Oh! You mean you want me to unplug the phone from the line.

*click*

**********

User: I just unplugged my PC (Desktop, not laptop) and it turned itself off!

(…and you decided this was a problem IT support could fix?)

**********

Me: Can you try pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del

User: Which button is that?

Me: No, the Ctrl, Alt and Del keys at the same time

User: Oh OK, which one is the Alt Key?

Me: The one with ‘Alt’ on it.

**********

Me: Have you tried turning it off and on?

User: Of course I have!

//Run command /Uptime SYSTEMNAME

SYSTEMNAME has been up for: 42 day(s), 8 hour(s), 22 minute(s), 22 second(s)

(No, no you haven’t.)

********

Me: ok the PIN is 4758

User: 4578?

Me: No, 4758

User: Oh… 4857?

Me: I’ll it say again, 4.. 7 ..5 ..8

User: So that’s 4418?

(Screw it)

(Logs on the User’s PC and types PIN myself)

*********

User: The printer’s leaving ink marks on the paper

Me: Yeah it could be broken

User: I don’t think so. It’s never done that before.

(User logic: It’s never been broken, so therefore it will never break)

*********

And finally the Golden star for Fail. The user has failed to remember their password so I reset it and give her a default one.

Me: Ok if you enter that new Password, that should allow you to change it

User: OK, I’m on the screen now…. What do I put in for the username:

Me: Your username

User: Ok… and what do I put in for the password?

Me: That password I just gave you

User: OK, now it’s asking me for a new password. Where can I find that?

Me: You just choose what you want to the new password to be and enter that.

User: You can’t tell me what the new password is?

Me: No, you have to choose one yourself and enter it.

User: That’s not very helpful, I don’t know what the new password is.

Me: It can be anything you want it to be that no-one else knows, that’s how passwords work.

User: One sec, I’ll ask the person next to me if they know (over the call) Hey Mike, what’s should I put for my password?

Mike: Not sure, call IT support and get them to help you

User: He says you should know it

Me: Look, just put in “Password1234” for your new password

User: How do you spell Password?

Me: P-a-s-s-w-o-r-d

User: OK, how do you spell 1234?

Me: 1, then 2, then 3 and then 4.

User: oh, you mean the numbers 1234?

Me: Yes

User: Oh finally it’s let me in! You guys should do something about these difficult systems.

*this ACTUALLY happened*

There are many more examples but these are some of the more memorable ones that make me lose faith in humanity. Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to go cry myself to sleep.

Ok now I'm back and have had a chance to sleep I should expand on ‘meh’ with the good and the bad

Awesome:
Hanging out with friends like Jon (both of them) and Dave, trying DDR, Domino's Pizza and late night parties. This is about the only event in the entire year where they can play music on a dance floor and I actually have a clue what it is. Having a chat with long time net friends and SDers and being entertained for my entire time there. Making Dave's wrap into a limbo line was best I did there.

Good:
Nice venue, lots of things to do and see and was nice to bump into a few people who still remembered me even though I haven't spoken to them for a good year. Pub quiz was excellent but brought down by maybe being a bit too popular and having to share seats, sit on the floor and tell people in front to sit the fuck down.
 
Not great:
Not having enough time to sit and chat. Seemed like I was always moving around so even when I did see people I wanted to chat with I would say a few things and then get dragged off for the next event. Need to skip more events and make time for idle chatting. The events themselves were pretty good and hosted by Rob which is always a plus but think after this many years of it it's hard to get excited about people walking down a stage. The live performance and drums did brighten it up a bit but miss the AMV'S from last time.

I guess while the con was pretty good the main issue was it was very similar to previous cons but without the 'wow this is awesome' factor. The only thing new I did try was fucking terrifying but glad my friends where there for that.. I think I crave new things and meeting new people but think it was pointed out in the weekeend that cons are different now. People show up in groups, hang out in groups and leave in groups and I don’t think I have the will or energy to make new friends with random people. I have a good time with my friends but think it's really getting to the point where it's just quite fun and doing it more will just hamper the joy I have already..... and considering this is like the best aspect of my life that realization is fucking depressing. Hence meh.

Greetings and welcome to another edition of "Cin's Good Ideas, Bad ideas". Toady's topic is Ayacon 2009 Cosplay ideas, lets hope you too have some interesting things to show. Without further ado let’s get started!

Good idea!: "Thinking of a an original cosplay idea which will wow fans and be fun to show off at a con!"
Bad idea! "Trying to bring the fucking thing into existence"

..... seriously, what the hell was I thinking. I am now 92% done on my cosplay idea which will be unveiled at the weekend but man I really did not think this though. My room looks like a bomb shelter.... well like a failed bomb shelter that didn't work and just kinda exploded when the bomb actually hit. My room is seriously a mess and at this time of writing I can not find my bed. So far I have been cut with plastic, paper, scissors, carving knives, a spoon (I don't understand that one myself), a long piece of metal and my Cat. I pretty sure with the amount of times I cut myself on this project I now qualify as emo. 

That all said this is without a doubt one of the most simplest cosplays I will ever do (besides ‘L’) and just hope this added touch is worth it for all the actually fans of the show. To everyone else I’m pretty sure you’ll look at me and stare blankly for a few moments before you pretend not to remember me and then head for the nearest exit. 

anyway 2 days to go and I shall rant some more tomorrow!    

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Dear Michael Bay,

                        Pleas stop making movies. Please.

Reguards - Ken Hoang


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Just got back from seeing Transformer and have to say it wasn't too bad, I'd say 3.4/10.

Lots of issues with the movie the main ones being what the fuck are you army characters thinking. There's a 3 story transforming robot made of solid metal and you stand there firing a gun at it. What the fuck. Why not just just throw rocks huh? Use flame throwers, use shells which explode on impact, use missles or even use a tank but for god's sake use your freaking common sense. Serioulsy take a peice of advice from the main character and just run, that's all you're good for, leave the action to the proud warrior autobots.

On that note, Autobots, where the fuck were you? There's a battle going on and there's like 2 of you on screen. Seriously I know we're in the middle of financial crisis but come on, you can afford to have a few more of you guys on the battle field. You kick ass, I know you do but come on.

Finally, Egyptian arcaeologists and people who work with metal detection in Egypt.... god damn you guys suck.
 
Again, overall a few transformers, lots of speed chases and lots of things blowing up with people slowing down while diving through the air. I think the writers guild strike really affected this movie, it's like they just ignored the strike and just went ahead and made the movie filling up part where there should of been story with huge explosions....... not that it's a bad thing mind you. Like a bland tasting stew lacking in taste (and I fucking love stew) It could have used more meaty plot, more juicy developing story and get this.... MORE FUCKING TRANSFORMERS!!.....(and less humans)