Saturday, April 24, 2004

I'm a very angry Sennen.
Well, the 600 Character Introduction Limit finally got to me. Uncle Sennen's Small-Ass MP3 Gallery is officially dead until I feel like bringing it back, which may be never. I don't know.

Also, in the process, my Now Playing MP3 also somehow disappeared, and I'm not able to put it back up, for some reason. I'll complain in the Official myOtaku Problems Thread later, but for the moment I'm just enjoying some MP3s off of this cool Media Player that AzureWolf showed me a few days ago.

Sorry this isn't a very worthy update. I'm just enjoying a calm weekend with nothing to do. I'll do something about Theme Parks next time, Mimmi. Thanks for the suggestion.
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Thursday, April 22, 2004

*eats the left mushroom*
These past few days have been rather interesting, in The Land of the Real Land of OtakuSennen.

As many of you know, I am not exactly a social person. Most of the time, when people talk to me, I just listen to what they say and give little feedback. And so, because of this, I have not exactly been too accepted among peers. Actually, most of my classmates have always been kind to me. They.. Persist in trying to get me to get out of my proverbial shell, but have never really succeeded.

But recently, for some reason, I have been much better with this lately. I talk more (mostly when they address me first still), nowadays, for longer periods of time, and it doesn't feel nearly as awkward as before. I even got the screen names of two or three more classmates today, which I thought was rather surprising.

On Friday afternoon I ended up going over to my friend Ethan's house.. A "friend" of mine and many of her friends (along with her sister) have been ranting on and on about this really interesting tunnel they had found a week or two back. And, by some stroke of luck, we "ended up" heading over to her house, and they were gathering their things for a tunnel-exploring session. After two or three hours of trying to break into their house they decided to open the door, and we tagged along.

After a short walk through the desert near their street, we ended up walking into a very dark, man-made tunnel that ran right under two high-traffic streets, two commercial shopping squares, and ended up by our former K-Mart a mile away. Getting through the tunnel the first time was rather boring (Except for poking one of the girls with a stick from a distance and freaking her out), but getting back was more interesting. The flashlight's batteries went dead, and I apparently got "lost" from the group.. Yeah. They ditched me. >_> It wasn't bad, though. The tunnel was reminiscent of Resident Evil.

We've been doing football in Phys Ed for the past week or so. I'm on a team with one guy that's really good, a girl who's a good quarterback who has gotten God knows how many interceptions and touchdowns from running it in, and a few of my friends who can't play for crap. Surprisingly enough, I do rather well. I've made two to three touchdowns per game, plus many, many catches. Today I ended up saving the football from a fumble on the fourth down one-handed with a scary fat dude blocking me.. I almost got crushed when he tripped on his baggy pants.

People are saying I should play in a league, or something to that extent, but I would rather not. I'm not aggressive enough to play with people who actually tackle in football, and I'm not one for voluntary physical activity anyway.

..And that's about it. I'm having a good week, with no homework tonight, and I just had a breakthrough in Kingdom Hearts.

I'm done now. If anybody wants to make a suggestion about for my next myOtaku post, feel free to do so.
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Sunday, April 18, 2004

Cartoon Network got smart.
I was sitting here on the computer last night, bored as usual (Apart from making my new banner), when I decided to check on CartoonNetwork.com sheerly out of boredome. They had a wonderful little link to the re-vamped Toonami page, so I checked to see exactly when the new Saturday night lineup was coming. At about the same time, I heard that damn Bionicle movie playing on our TV in the other room. The second I clicked on the schedule page, my brother ran into the computer room yelling, "The new Toonami's on, the new Toonami's on!"

Now, I have been highly anticipating this new Toonami, for several reasons. The first one, of course, is that Cartoon Network's finally decided to seperate the more childish shows from the actual good anime (Aside from Dragonball..). I really had no reason to watch last until 10:30, because of the damn Bionicle movie. Gundam SEED was certainly interesting, especially compared to the crap the old Toonami's been vomiting up for the past year or two. Some of the character designs were rather bi-shounen-ey, and that's not good, but I'll live with it. Yuki Kajiura's theme song makes up for that. *light laughter*

And then came the Saturday Night Adult Swim revival. Ohh, how I have been anticipating this one. The original Saturday Night Toonami was so awesome, and the scene transitions for this new one were very sweet. They took footage of the streets of urban Japan, which for some reason was really, very cool, and for Animatrix they replaced the I in Adult Swim with a red or blue pill, depending on the transition.

The first time I had seen the Animatrix, I only saw it because it was one of those ground-breaking East/West collaboration things. At that point, I wasn't really too into The Matrix. I had seen the original movie, and enjoyed it, but I really didn't realize what cinematic genius it was until Revolutions. I enjoyed the more "traditional" Animatrix pieces the first time through, but watching it this time through I appreciated "Record" and "Kid's Story" more.

My parents dragged me to bed kicking and screaming before Cowboy Bebop was on. I didn't want to stop watching the only reason to be alive on Saturday nights.

Also, I was doing a nice little sketch page while watching Animatrix, and I must say I was in the zone last night. I drew what ended up being Misato in such a detailed way that one of my friends thought it was actually traced.. It was a very good page.

---

Next time on Sennen's myOtaku: Sennen's Adventure Through the Social Looking Glass and What He Found There.
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Saturday, April 17, 2004

A rant of epic proportions..
...Alright, the computer didn’t crash this time.

Yes, it’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for. It has been days since part one went up, and due to various problems you haven’t been able to get to the grand finale. Until now. I’m writing this post in Microsoft Works, and saving every time I finish a sentence, so even if my computer does bug out on me again it won’t be long until I’m back working on this post.

*prays one more time to the anti-spyware gods* Let us begin.

Kazaa was a very wonderful program at first. I was constantly downloading songs, mostly from .hack//SIGN and DanceDance Revolution, and I made a few friends through the system as well. Eventually, I started burning CDs, which seemed to only work on one CD player in my entire house. Luckily, that stereo is the one in my room. I spent a lot of time sitting in my room rocking back and forth eating potato chips and staring at magazines while listening to that first CD... And it was good.

The computer certainly got slow, and things got miserable after a while. I could barely get online to do anything, and if I did anything more than AIM and one window of Yahoo’s browser the entire thing would come crashing down. We took the computer to the shop, it got cleared out, and everything was fine. I vowed never to use Kazaa again.

By this point, my various websites were getting dull. I had played all the Cartoon Network games, and GameTalk was getting repetitive, so I embarked upon a new waste of time- Geocities. What I set out to create right off the bat was a bit too large, I think. It was meant to be an anime/video games/J-pop site, but that was a little bit too much for a little n00b like me. I had a bit of help from a friend of mine (He did a review of TimeSplitters 2) and later on, Kazuko assisted with the FLCL section, but it was way too big of a vision.

One day, I was looking for pictures for the .hack//SIGN Character Bios page, on Google, and came across TheOtaku.com. I enjoyed the anime shrines vastly, along with the image galleries, and I spent two or three months just browsing through everything. I took a quick peek at OtakuBoards once, but I was still partially devoted to GameTalk, so I didn’t
give it much thought.

Eventually, however, I noticed that they had a .hack//SIGN forum. This is what dragged me into OB, actually. I was very spammy for a while, as seen in my earliest posts. There was one in a .hack//SIGN thread that was nothing but “’k”, but I was so ashamed that I just deleted that one a couple of months ago.

My first post/thread/appearance on OtakuBoards was in the Otaku Lounge, in my very own introduction thread. Interestingly enough, Shinmaru’s sister was the first OB Member to come into contact with me. The next few friends of mine were KKC, Japan_86 and DragonWarrior, followed by Syk. Kazuko followed, and then I met a slew of others in AIM Chats.

Around the same time back in.. November, I think, we ended up getting Paint Shop Pro, along with an Eva boxset. (Azure, I just let myself up too obviously in that, so don’t even bother.) This is about the time when I became more of a non-spammy member of OtakuBoards, I suppose. And, with this non-spamminess came a fear of posting too much. I didn’t want to make any replies that were too short or too irrelevant, which has led to a decline in my post count daily average. Oh well.

So.. Yeah. Now I’m all done ranting. Good night.
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Monday, April 12, 2004

Let's sing the
I've rewritten this post two times. I'm sorry, but I'm agitated, so I'm going to be brief.

Part two of that rant still isn't up. I'm sorry, but my computer's been very bitchy recently, and I haven't had many oppurtunities to actually finish the post, let alone post it.

I got a PS2 on Friday.. Relatives sent us some money (belated Christmas, they said) and I found some extra cash I had hidden away in my desk, combined with some of my brother's money. Yeah. We got Kingdom Hearts and Medal of Honor: Frontline.

I wanted to get DDR, as it's my top priority, but I want to get the good pad. It's only $70 at that Fry's place instead of the regular $100, which is good, but the only Fry's near here is in San Diego. I'll have to wait a while, but I'm guessing we'll be down there soon enough, considering my dying grandmother is down there along with my dad's pregnant sister.

We were down in San Diego yesterday, actually, for Easter. We stayed at my grandmother's house the entire day, played some croquet, watched Fox News Network, and ate a good dinner. It was boring, really, but I shouldn't complain. It wasn't a time meant for enjoyment, anyway.

Today was my first day back at school.. It was very boring, of course. Nothing interesting happened in any class, my friends were ditching me (God knows why), and I didn't get enough sleep last night. Not to mention the headache. It just wasn't a good day.

Kingdom Hearts is good. I'm just starting the Monstro level today, and I haven't gotten tired of the game yet. This should keep me occupied until I at least rent another game.

..I'm going to go crawl into a hole and think now. I'll get the rant up soon.. *cough* Enough. *cough*
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Wednesday, April 7, 2004

Filler update...
Um.. Yeah. I've run into many problems regarding getting up part two of my exceedingly long rant up over the past couple of days.

First off, my computer's been really slow over the past few days. Some adware seems to have been stuffed into my computer, and all of these popup ads have been injuring my computer's poor little 256 MB RAM. Between my constant multitasking (I'm on AIM, Yahoo Instant Messenger, two internet browsers, and watching a DVD right now) and the painful popup ads, it's been very hard to get any documents written without the computer crashing.

I ran two or three spyware/adware searches yesterday, and ended up deleting 27 files. The problem's still here, though to a lesser extent. I think we may have to take this computer into the shop (second time, now) and just have them fix it all again.

The first two days of Spring Break were utterly dull. Nothing interesting was happening, online or off. I beat Metal Gear Solid a second time (Woo-hoo, no more Lovely Elephant), and the game in general was losing its luster. I needed some other game to keep myself occupied.

Splinter Cell came to mind rather quickly when I thought of other stealth-based games. I had never played the game before, though I had tried to get my hands on it once, but the thought of a Tom Clancy game seemed rather refreshing at the time. I also planned on renting Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life.

Hollywood Video had one copy of Splinter Cell left, but they were out of Harvest Moon. I went over and found a copy of James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing instead.

Splinter Cell was just as I expected it to be- Metal Gear Solid-esque with superior gameplay, but with a thinner plot. It is a very fun game. Earlier today I got into CIA headquarters, and Sam Fisher's new Ninja-ish outfit is awesome. Not to mention the thermal visor ability.

Everything or Nothing.. Isn't as good as Splinter Cell. I do like it a bit more than Nightfire, because first person games are rather restricted in what you can do in most cases (Third Person firefights are much more easy to work with). The new rappel gadgets are fun, but I feel that they were rather overused in the first few stages.

Now, I'm off to kick my brother off the Nintendo so I can play Everything or Nothing. Later.
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Sunday, April 4, 2004

Your True Nature by llScorpiusll
Username
The quality that most appeals to you:	Beauty
In a survival situation, you:	Act crazy as a diversion
Your hidden talent is:	Spiritual wisdom
Your gift is:	Genius
In groups, you:	Don't fit in
Your best quality is:	Your compassion
Your weakness is:	Being predictable
Created with quill18's MemeGen 3.0!

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It's like German Chocolate, only better!
Finally! It's about time I made a non-crappy myOtaku post. It's been a while.

Today, I feel like looking back a year and seeing exactly how I became the Sennen that I am today. I want to pinpoint where it all started going downhill. Heh..

In 1996 my parents bought their very first computer. It was a Windows 95, with some unknown brand name, and so little memory that if I used this computer today I would stab the monitor repeatedly out of frustration. However, when all you ever do with a computer is play some Disney games and occasionally do some Solitaire time, and you're only six years old, these things aren't very important.

By 1999, however, I started to notice this stuff. I had decided that I wanted the internet, because of all of the cool online games I had heard about (Updated Pong on the Nickelodeon website.. Yeah.), and our pathetic little 95 was far too weak to support even a dialup connection. I ended up just giving up on begging my parents. Instead, I tried to go to my dad's workplace as much as possible to play games on his computer.

But then a light made itself be known. My father's workplace was planning on establishing an internet car dealership thing (I'm at a loss for a better description), and they had nobody to start the department. My dad decided to go ahead and take initiative. He would also have to check up on his work from home, though. That's when we got a shiny new Windows 98.

We were blown away by the immense power of this amazing machine- We could install any PC Game within a matter of minutes. It was so fast. And it was cool-looking. Ohh, how it was cool-looking. The Hewlett Packard logo was so edgy, right next to the casually scribbled word "Pavilion".. And the CD burner! We could finally burn CDs (Though we never had a desire to until about 6 months ago)!

And so began my journey into antisocial internet addict-ness. I spent two or three hours a day just surfing around Nick.com, Cartoonnetwork.com, and occasionally ZoogDisney.com. The games, no matter how crappy they are in my eyes today, were amazingly addictive back then. It was not long at all before Cartoon Orbit came around, and I had an extremely large repitoire of pointless little sprites filling up a little window that everybody loved to see.

This continued for quite a while. For a while I became more absorbed in video games (I finally developed a taste for games, and I didn't just listen to the hype), and my computer time lessened every day.

Then I met a girl, who ended up convincing me to download AIM singlehandedly, solidifying my perpetual online-ness. I won't go into details, because a lot of you people who read this already know how the story goes.

During sixth grade my teacher had me run the class website- It was nothing major, though. I just had to get on the computer every day and put up the day's homework, and weekly put up the new spelling words. Stuff like that. It became such a mundane and quick job, however, that I started to sneak onto the world wide web when I was done every day. That's when I came across the very first message board I frequented- GameTalk. It was and still is a very, very spammy place, where the threads were ordered by when they were created and faded away, even if it was a popular thread. There were plenty of "[person's name] SUCKS!!1111!!" threads, and I can't remember a post that consisted of more than three sentences.

The girl and I tended to email each other a lot as well, but I didn't have my own e-mail address. I shared it with my parents, who knew nothing about this girl. It became a neverending mission to intercept every message from her address in our inbox before anybody else could see it. So, logically, I routinely checked the inbox at school one day.

Something about the Yahoo page was different, though I couldn't quite tell what. Everything was more.. Blue, and stylish. Upon closer inspection, I noticed a difference in the Yahoo logo itself. It had "DSL" written below it.

At first, I couldn't believe it. I checked several times, just to be sure, and everything stayed the same. Needless to say, I rushed home very quickly and turned on the computer immediately. Lo and behold, the internet was moving about ten times faster.

I got on to Kazaa.com and started downloading immediately.

---

This is a two-part thing. Come back next time for the exciting conclusion to this myOtaku post!
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Friday, April 2, 2004

Random Crap Update.
Well, Spring Break is here. I'm probably going to spend the entire week online or re-playing Twin Snakes.

You see, I've decided to replay MGS: The Twin Snakes because of the sucky rating I got last time I beat it. I died God knows how many times (It stops counting after 99), and I got the codename "Lovely Elephant." ..You can tell just by the name of it that it's a very lowly title. :/ As of right now, I'm about to talk to Meryl for the first time, and I've only been killed once.

My relatives sent me some extremely belated birthday money, and I have $150 now.. I might be able to convince my brother to lend me some cash, meaning that I might be close to a PlayStation 2. Whee.

I put up a new mO MP3. The Pillows's "Advice", FLCL arrangement, one of my personal favorite FLCL songs. Woo-hoo.

And now to fill space with a quiz!


You are Amon! Prone to silence and not one to
smile easily, you never the less get the job
done.


Which Witch Hunter Robin Character Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla


You are Proverbs.


Which book of the Bible are you?
brought to you by Quizilla


Your: Mysterious eyes. All in the title. Your
independant secretive and myseterious. You
appear cold and distant, but hey, at leats no
one messes with you.


What type of eyes do you have?
brought to you by Quizilla

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Thursday, April 1, 2004

*rants about school again*
Whee. Another period-by-period post of today's happenings on myOtaku. Don't worry, though, for I shall come up with something more substantial for tomorrow.

Accelerated Reader/Science- We learned about birth disorders. Hooray. All of a sudden everybody's making jokes about dwarves and autistic children and laughing like the clinically insane about it.. Are all Seventh Graders this strange? Anyway, we turned in our AR logs today. I read 656 pages last month (I slacked off. Sue me), and came in third place, class-wise. ..My God, AR is stupid.

Phys Ed- It's Thursday, and you know what that means- Today was D.A.L.E., or as I like to call it, Pot 101! Today was really one of those time-waster busy work days, I think. The strange teacher person who seems to know a lot about inhalants and heroin had us fill out these random little activities in our workbooks, and I just sat there figuring everything out before I even filled the paper out. Everything was really obvious- Simple crossword puzzles, and "hidden" phrases in stuff. Needless to say, I was bored.

Math- *sigh* More about proportions and stuff today. I really, really understand this stuff (we've been doing this for, like, a week), and it's one of the more boring things I've done this year. I spent most of my time in the period drawing the preparations for a good DeathBaby picture.

Language Arts- Heh heh. Turns out that the yearbook has lots of problems on each page, and we have a thousand things to fix by tomorrow night. Today I got out of more prepositional phrases to get on Adobe PageMaker and toy around with some pages.

Lunch- Ugh.. Today, the choices for lunch were Tony's Brand Mini Pizzas or some weird-ass Chili Cheese Dogs in bags from Wienerschnitzel. I randomly selected the chili cheese dog, and ate what may possibly the most awful food to ever disgrace that cafeteria. The cheese tasted like styrofoam and the chili was.. *shudders* It tasted like paste. I didn't even get to the actual hot dog before I threw it away. The baked beans were pretty good, though.

Art- We had a substitute today who spent the entire period taking role and checking to see if there were any kids from our class on this list of students he got that had to go to the office. During this time, I finished the "good" DeathBaby picture. It looks.. Interesting, I guess, and I'll scan and CG in the picture tomorrow, if not tonight.

Social Studies- We continued watching "Ever After" with Drew Barrymore.. God, why couldn't our teacher have made us watch something more like The Lord of the Rings to learn more about ye olde Europe? I got bored and started writing confusing messages on sticky notes and hiding them in desks.. I think that whoever finds the one that has the "top secret information" will be rather weirded out. Or, the one that says "If you ever want to see your eyeball again..".

..*ahem*

Yearbook- I stayed to work on the yearbook some more after school today, and got two or three pages done. We are pretty close to done- We have maybe 25 more pages to fix minor things on and we'll be done. After that, we get to sell them. ..God, I hate this.

I came home, and went to take a short nap, only to be knocked awake by my brother half-spitting on my mattress. Why can't he just go and hide in the corner, doing crossword puzzles?
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