Bad news.

The Pope has heart failure. Only a matter of time.

I know neither Rhonda nor I will forget the summer we spent in Rome in 2000, and where we got to see the Holy Father in person, even if from very far away. Seeing him on television the last couple years, he has hardly seemed the same person.

As sad as it is, I'm glad it's happening and hope he doesn't suffer too much. It's been painfully obvious for several years the Pope's been in poor health, I hope finally he can enjoy the rest he's earned.

Future Golden Bear?

During the game, we got the good news that Sara got into Cal. And Johns Hopkins. She previously got into UCLA, USC, UC Santa Cruz and Seattle University (hope I didn't forget any).

I doubt it's a secret I hope she picks Cal, but I'm sure she'll make a good decision and will be happy wherever she ends up.

Congratulations! We're both very proud...

Play ball

It's that time of year again. No, not baseball season. Garlic fries season.

We headed to the ballpark tonight to catch some pre-season action between the Giants and A's. This game was, of course, monumentous because it was our first as Giants season-ticket holders.



This is our view from the Bob Uecker seats. We know, it's not much, but it's ours.



We are, however, close to the big Coke bottle and glove.





The Giants squeaked it out in the 10th and won, 6-5. For exhibition baseball, a pretty damn entertaining game.

What's also cool is there is a brand-new Safeway at the corner of 4th and King. It's a pretty cool store and is the ideal store to stock up on foodstuffs for the game. What is absolutely mind-boggling is there is a Starbucks in the Safeway and, two storefronts to the east, on the same block, a Starbucks. I just started pointing in the middle of the sidewalk. I felt just like Lewis Black.

It never fails

It rains all weekend, and then it's sunny when I'm cooped up in my friggin' office.

At least I have a window.

Exhausted

You can probably tell it's been a rough weekend.

It really wasn't physically demanding, it was mentally demanding. Rhonda and I have enjoyed a very happy marriage so far, but I'd be lying if I said the demands of married life weren't having an effect on both of us.

It's just too damn difficult to be isolated (for the most part) here in San Jose. Aside from a small bunch of Stockton transplants, most of our friends live in Stockton. Both of our families live in Stockton. We end up traveling to Stockton at least one, usually two or three weekends per month, and on all the major holidays.

The typical weekend in Stockton consists of us juggling our time between my family, her mom, and our friends. This usually results in no one being very happy with the arrangement. My family thinks we don't stay there long enough (we sleep at Rhonda's). Rhonda's mom usually works Saturday nights, so the time we can spend there is limited. We see our friends at church or if there is a pre-planned event, or not at all. Did I mention this leaves us without time to each other?

This weekend we got into town early Saturday evening. Rhonda's mom was not home, but she had cooked for us. I had already gotten a call from my sister asking if we were coming over to dinner, which I had to decline since we already had food at Rhonda's. We went to Easter vigil mass, after which I talked Rhonda into going out with our friends to Chili's. We got home and went to sleep, only briefly taking with Rhonda's mom.

Rhonda went to church with her mom Sunday morning, while I slept in a little. Rhonda committed us to lunch at Xochimilco (yum) with our friends but I think her mom was a little hurt because she wanted to spend time with us. After lunch we went to Rhonda's to visit but then her mom left to go to Jackson with her friends. We still hadn't seen my family either. Rhonda walked her dog, which we practically never have time to do when we're in town, then we went to my cousin David's house to visit my family. My dad was working so he wasn't there. We stayed there a couple hours, which included the most contentious and least fun game of Pictionary ever played, before we left for the ill-fated pillows concert.

Neither of us, by this point, was in anything remotely resembling a happy mood. I couldn't even get excited about a concert six months ago I would've only dreamed about. It was rainy and cold. My body was sore from sleeping on a strange bed and we both felt our sinuses ready to implode. By the time traffic had worn me down, I felt like doing nothing except going home and going to sleep.

Let me remind you this is how about half our weekends go. Our apartment doesn't get any cleaner while we're gone either. It's just so draining, and shows no real signs of improvement.

I don't know a single person in the same boat we're in. We have friends who are married, and friends who live out of town, but no one who feels the pressure to distribute their time the way we do. It would be much easier if one of our families lived somewhere else, because it would be much more cut-and-dry where we would spend our time. I also don't know why we always do all the visiting - no one comes to see us.

To add to that I am having a tough time getting used to staying at Rhonda's. Throughout our pre-married days, she stayed at her mom's and I stayed at my mom and dad's. Since my parents don't have a suitable bed for two, we've been staying at the Hotel Caranza since September, and it's been a difficult adjustment. Everything is so much different from how I've lived the entirety of my life, and while my mother-in-law has been entirely accommodating, it's just hard. Rhonda even does things differently at her mom's than she does at home, and I feel completely thrown off by my surroundings.

I don't know how this is all going to work out. It's definitely disheartening, because it often feels like an entire weekend goes to waste. I've suggested taking trips to Stockton for the day and coming back, which has worked with mixed results, and is often more impractical than staying overnight. We're just going to have to figure something out and make it up as we go along.

And no, moving to Stockton is not an option. When was the last time you saw a software company in Stockton?

I blew my whole lunch blogging. Back to work.

Missed opportunity

On the way to the office this morning I realized I'd made a mistake.

Last night we passed on the pillows concert I had been talking about back in February. We were set to go, but traffic was oppressive almost from the moment we got out of Stockton at 6:15. When it was 8 and we were barely in Livermore, I had Rhonda call 511. It started to look like we might - might - get to San Francisco by 10, then assuming we hadn't missed their set, we might have to stay until 3 and with the heavy rain, could conceivably not get home until 5ish and still need to work in the morning. Faced with all that, and considering tickets were only $8 apiece, I decided we should forego the rain and the traffic and the inevitable drowsiness at work and head for home.

My attitude at that point could be described in only one way: demoralized.

I was alright about it until the ride to work today, when I had time to reflect on what I'd given up. Japanese rock bands do not tour in America often. Your favorite Japanese rock band touring near your home for the cost of a couple of Frappucinos happens even more infrequently.

More importantly, this is the first time in my life I've really felt old. This wouldn't have happened in college. This wouldn't have happened even a few years ago. I would've been at that concert and stayed until the end. I probably would've just said, screw it, and I would've took a cab to the San Francisco drop-in and worked a 4 am to noon shift, then slept the rest of the day.

What have I become? My friends and I used to stay out drinking and playing video games until the sun came out, and the number of times we've done that has dwindled to the point it's limited to special occasions - bachelor parties, birthdays, and the like. I know I'm going to get old, not much I can do about it, but this was the first time I felt I had gotten soft.

So I blew it. I might get the opportunity again, but odds are against it. About the only thing I can do is try to learn something from it. The first thing to learn: leave earlier from Stockton.

PSP Sweet PSP

Best Buy sucks.

You think they would've had a handle on this, but I went down to Santana Row right before 7 to pick up a PSP. There weren't that many people there, maybe forty. I see some workers having a smoke out by the loading dock and I ask them how many PSPs they have.

Twenty.

So I hop in the car and head for Milpitas, my contingency plan being to check Wal-Mart and then try my luck with the Milpitas Best Buy. If I get nothing I use my red Costco card to give that a shot at 10. I drive by Best Buy and the line is longer than at Santana Row, and it dawns on me the smart people would've saw that Wal-Mart opened at 7, tried there first, then headed to Best Buy to get line for when the store opened at 8. I get there about 7:15 (I could really cut some time off my commute if I got up at 6 every day) and the store is already open.

I head for electronics, expecting savvy shoppers to have already cleaned out the PSP stock. But nope, they have about fifteen still. This is after the store has already been open twenty minutes. Best Buy isn't opening for another forty. I pay cash with my poker winnings.

People are not as smart as I give them credit for. Did I mention it's like chilly outside? One guy tells me he asked someone at the Milpitas BB and he also said they were only going to have twenty PSPs.

So I was in my office plugging my PSP in to charge at about the time I expected to be sitting outside Best Buy, drinking coffee and praying they have enough.

On a side note, I heard a couple of Wal-Mart employees talking about how two people put PSPs on layaway. Why? What is the point of getting up early and going down to buy something the day it comes out if you're not going to leave the store with it?

At lunch, I will try to hunt down some games.

MegaTokyo

Spent a lot of time tonight reading MegaTokyo. Last night, I read the third trade paperback (most of which I read online a couple years ago), and that got me interested in the characters again. Then tonight I plowed through all the remaining strips, until I was all caught up.

I love Fred's art on this strip. The writing is good, but not great, but it's the art that really makes this series fun. The characters are very expressive, and it's something a lot of artists neglect in favor of going into super-detail. The fact that Fred does the art and writing duties is commendable. The series might've been funnier when Rodney Caston was writing it, but ultimately, MegaTokyo is a romance story and while it's not short on chuckles, it really delivers the goods. I can't believe I can't get Rhonda to give it a try, since I really think it's right up her alley.

It's too bad the strip isn't in color. Maybe, with the wild success Dark Horse is having with the MT trades, they can re-release the strips in color a la Bone, which got a fabulous color face-lift whenit was picked up by Scholastic.

The place promised in our early years

Makoto Shinkai's Kumo no Mukou, Yakusoku no Basho is a film for dreamers, both figuratively and literally.

In an alternate reality, Japan is divided by American and "Union" factions by a giant tower that reaches into the sky. One summer, two boys and a girl make a pact to build a plane and fly it to the tower. Several years later, the girl lies in a hospital, asleep since that summer. One of the boys now works for the government and attempts to prevent the tower, now realized as a weapon, from replacing the area around it with a parallel universe. The other, the protagonist, is lost until he is visited in his dreams by the girl. He then takes on the mission to fulfill the promise he once made.

This is a gorgeous film. Now with a staff and a budget, this film is more ambitious than Voices of a Distant Star. Both films have some similar themes and share a heartfelt romanticism lacking from many animated works. In a lot of anime, romance is aplot device for the sci-fi; with Shinkai's films, it's the other way around. I don't think Kumo no Mukuo is as good as Voices, neither in content nor in concept, but it's still a tremendous effort worthy of your time and money.

Shinkai's star is definitely on the rise. He's up there with Satoshi Kon and Shinichiro Watanabe in terms of anime directors to watch.

Buy my crap

I forgot to mention last night that I'm selling some books and a few video games on half.com. There are a few Xbox games and some lightly-read manga and comic trades in there.

Help make our apartment less cluttered by buying some of our stuff!

I also realize I never said anything about Kumo no Mukou, Yakusoku no BashoKumo no Mukou, Yakusoku no Basho, like I said I would. So looks like more blogging tonight after work.

Happy Birthday, Sara

It's my sister Sara's 17th birthday today. I think this is around the right time too. So let me take a quick second to say Happy Birthday!

Stormy Monday

What's up with this weather? That's back-to-back weeks now of fantastic, sunny weather during the work week followed by clammy, wet weekends.

Great weekend for us. Rhonda's long-term sub position at Whaley is up at the end of the month, but she was just recommended for another long-term gig at Matsumoto. She's doing a tremendous job of balancing full-time work and her credential work. It's not very common to be working alone in the classroom while you're still working on your credential, much less to be commended for it, and I'm very proud of her.

Saturday we were in Stockton for Bubba and Rhonda's ten-year anniversary shindig. That was, of course, followed up by a poker tournament. I came pretty well-prepared this year, playing lots of World Championship Poker on Xbox and reading Doyle Brunson's Super System, "The Bible of Poker". I gotta say Super System was a wise investment (I got it on Amazon Marketplace for less than ten bucks), since I think it was the main reason I won the tournament. Hopefully, no one reads my blog, and no one will read the book, and then no one will get better and I can keep taking pots.

The happy couple got a cut of the winnings, and I think I'll be picking up a Sony PSP this Thursday with the rest. What can I say, I'm a hardcore gadget junkie. Looking forward to Metal Gear Ac!d and Lumines, but the real deal-maker was finding out how to encode video on the Memory Stick for PSP playback. I have been wanting a portable DVD player or a personal video player for over a year, and now I can have that and a super-advanced gaming console. And it looks so damn cool.

I've been taking full advantage of my library card and the outstanding collection of DVDs at the Campbell Library. Since I had some free time tonight, I decided to watch The French Connection, the 1972 Oscar-winner for Best Picture. It's not bad, not better than A Clockwork Orange, which it beat for Best Picture. It's definitely a film that was probably ground-breaking in 1972, but with the deluge of action flicks and police dramas both in film and on television in the years since, it's difficult to recognize it as an influential film in the action genre.

Nevertheless, Gene Hackman's a badass in this movie, long before he was the voice in the Lowe's commercials or the coach in Hoosiers (also on my list to see before March Madness is over). And this is William Friedkin at the top of his game, right before he peaked two years later with the scariest movie ever made, The Exorcist, and before he disintegrated into a total hack in the latter quarter of the 20th Century. The pacing is deliberate in the first forty-five minutes, demonstrating a patience today's less-intelligent action films don't have, and setting up some frenetic action sequences involving subway trains and some unfortunate sap's commandeered car. A director like Michael Bay could learn something from this film, since his films (think Armageddon) are so crammed with action from beginning to end that they are mind-numbing and, ultimately, boring because they have not character development, nor story, nor any tension or suspense built up by the film's pacing.

Whatever happened to Roy Scheider? He was in some great movies in the Seventies and early Eighties, and then he dropped off the face of the earth. He was Brody, for Pete's sake.

It's that good

Green Day Album Brings Boy Out Of Coma

The List

Wow, Giants season tickets. One more life-long dream fulfilled.

Made me think of another life-long dream. My U2 tickets came in the mail a few weeks ago. Since I was maybe twelve, there have been three concerts I wanted to see in my lifetime: Michael Jackson, Prince, and U2. Since then, I've kinda soured on Michael. Prince lost me when he became "The Artist", and then launched his first tour in six years the year of my wedding, when I had no time to think about anything else (represented by a six-year low in number of Giants games attended). Unfortunately, Prince came to San Jose the same day as my friggin' bachelor party. So you can only imagine how psyched I am for U2, a concert that I have anticipated since The Joshua Tree became the greatest album ever recorded.

The list hasn't really grown. There were artists I added to the list but took right off, because you tend to see a lot more concerts when you have a job. Dre and Snoop, Pearl Jam, The Roots, Eminem (twice), OutKast (thrice), Janet Jackson (four times) - all since 1998 (except Janet Jackson, who I saw at Shoreline on the Rhythm Nation Tour when I was still young and impressionable). I even saw Ray Charles at the Fujitsu Jazz Festival, which I took Auntie Helen to back in 1999 when the Economy was still New and tech companies did things like give their employees free tickets to events they sponsored.

U2 is something else, though. Other than a brief lull after Achtung Baby and before All That You Can't Leave Behind, they've been remarkably solid over the last twenty-five years. In this day and ago of crappy music, that makes the quality of their music even that much more impressive.

It's going to be incredible. I can hardly wait.

Taking the plunge

This morning, Rhonda and I headed to San Francisco. Our destination: Select A Seat Day.

Forty-five minutes later, we were Giants season ticket holders.

They're not great seats, but they're (relatively) great for the price. And there are always ways for us to offload tickets to games we can't attend. But getting tickets this year and renewing them the next two years guarantees we'll be at the 2007 All-Star Game.

To celebrate, we topped it off with a Super Burrito.

Why Batman is cooler

Because Superman's a dick.

(Courtesy of The Beat. Make sure you check out that Office Space/Superfiends clip!)

Lion King Tix on eBay

I have 2 sets of 4 tickets to The Lion King for sale on eBay. The show is in Sacramento on May 27 at 8 PM. My dad bought them, then we found out that's the day Sara graduates from high school.

If you know anyone interested, pass the info along and tell them to bid, bid, bid. They're pretty good seats, in the orchestra section and more or less in the middle of the row.

I've seen the show in Los Angeles and it is amazing. And no, I'm not just saying that because I'm selling them, it's really something to behold.

Remembrance of flings past

My ex-gf Elaine has a blog up over at Friendster.

I haven't given Friendster a thought in like a year. I should go over there and tidy up, I'll add it to my growing to-do list.

Quick, give me some Zoloft

I just realized 3 out of the my last 4 post titles contain the word 'suck'. So angry! Someone call the Office of Homeland Security!

My mom hates that word in particular, so to her I apologize (although I don't think she reads this). I'll try to expand my vocabulary; it's just when I think about the DMCA all I can think of are words of the four-letter variety.

Things that have 'AA' in them but do not suck.

Random follow-up to my previous post:

• American Airlines
  
• Pocket aces
  
• Alcoholics Anonymous
  
• Hank Aaron
  
• Aaron Rodgers (whoops, thanks elk)
  
• AA batteries (although AAA batteries suck: they don't last as long, you always have AA when you need AAA, and you often need four of them when two AAs would have done)
  

Lunchtime ramble on BT, fansubs, and why the film studios suck

Last night I was consumed with hooking up my PC to the receiver. The last few weeks, I have been downloading a lot of anime fansubs off BitTorrent and just downloaded Kumo no Mukou, Yakusoku no Basho (The Place Promised In Our Early Days), the new anime from Makoto Shinkai. For those who don't know, Shinkai is the guy who made the anime independent gem Voices of a Distant Star by himself on his personal computer.

I never got around to watching the movie, Rhonda fell asleep early, so I spent time tinkering with a better interface to watch files from the computer on the TV. I dusted off the ATI Remote Wonder that came with my Radeon video card, and hit the Net. Stumbled upon this Meedio software and it's pretty cool, like a TiVo interface for your computer. The most irritating problem is that even on my 32" TV, the fonts are super-tiny due to standard TV's terrible resolution. I'm still evaluating the software...not sure if I'm going to buy it, since it's a stop-gap solution until I am able to build a MythTV box out of my spare PC. Or until TiVo allows you to stream video to your TiVo box and not just the other way around.

Still, I was thinking about springing for a Philips DVP642, so this probably saved my $70 in the short-term. And now I can watch some of the cool stuff I downloaded from the couch instead of huddled in front of my monitor.

And before I get bludgeoned by the morality police for downloading stuff and taking money out of the hands of artists, this movie's not even licensed for U.S. distribution (yet). And most of the stuff I watch I end up buying anyway (Bebop movie, Paranoia Agent, RahXephon are all examples), I'm just too impatient to wait for a domestic release, if it ever comes. The anime industry tends to look the other way on fansubs because they believe (wisely) that exposure to their product is a good thing.

<soapbox>As for piracy in general, the MPAA viciously went after the Sony Betamax because they thought the VCR would destroy the film industry, and we all know how that one turned out. I don't advocate downloading movies to keep them (DVDs are what, $20? For superior picture and audio quality?) but the popularity of movie file-sharing should tell the MPAA something (movie prices are friggin' ridiculous, the quality of most studio films is too iffy to risk wasting ten bucks on, good but obscure movies don't play in cineplexes in small cities and downloading is the only way some people can see them, people are sick of getting burned by buying a DVD and seeing a "special edition" hit the market within six months so they want a watching copy - take your pick). Instead of sending out a team of lawyers to stifle technology, perhaps they should look at how to use it to their advantage.</soapbox>

Wouldn't you pay to get a studio-quality, high-definition stream of a new movie with Dolby Digital sound at a reasonable price, bypassing long theater lines, people answering cell phones during the movie, stupid pre-movie commercials, and price-gouging at the snack bar?

The studios are like Sean Penn at the Oscars Sunday - they just don't get it. And don't get me started on the RIAA.