JOURNAL: Kai Stromler (Kai Stromler)

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  • give me a reason 2003-12-19 09:04:44
    I just voted for a lame banner because there was a slim chance that the person who assembled it was a Dissection fan. Really, who else is going to use the meme "angels fall first"?

    Exam in half an hour, and then I'm on a flight home. After break I may or may not continue making AMVs; I need to put more time into my academic career, and the book is going into final phase. I'm probably going to be able to wrap up chapter 12 in the terminal tonight and whip out 13 over break, and then it's about a 60-page deathmarch to the end, hopefully before spring break. With that in mind and bearing also in mind my continued technical problems, continued AMVage from me is in doubt. I've got cool ideas, but I'm not sure that I can execute them to their full potential at this point in time, or that AMV is really holding up for me as a creative outlet.

    Now that I've cycled up to 230+ pages-per-year pace, I usually feel like I'd much rather be writing.

    --Kai out

     
  • they say a weather balloon crashed 2003-12-17 09:22:00
    So I took the exam. And I'm still here. I just hope I'll still be here next semester. Bloody university.

    As an example of the stupidity that can be readily encountered in this area, I'd like to bring up the following. I was walking across the Diag the other day and passed a bunch of freshmen (or whatever, they were short and kinda immature, but that fits a lot of people from my perspective), and, deep in conversation, one of them actually said "WTF" out loud.

    I don't know about you, but that's the stupidest thing I've heard in a long while. Everyone knows you mean "what the fuck", and saying it aloud involves more syllables than just saying the bloody phrase. Of course, they were freshmen or something, and thus utterly unaware of how dumb they look normally, so maybe something like that comes as second nature. It scares me that I go to the same university as people that stupid.

    I firmly believe that the proposed A-Rod trade is a Bad Idea. If this goes down, in ninety years we'll be wailing about the Curse of the Batting-Glove Macarena and damning John Henry and Theo Epsten for giving away No-Mah and Manny for the most overpaid player in baseball. This is a stinker deal and it is going to ruin the Red Sox offense next season. The kickass pitching will help some, but the result is going to be an offense-defense rebuilding pendulum and no world championship until the Yankees miraculously run out of money.

    And I'm going to be going home to watch the rest of the season, so the Patriots are probably going to cave in as well. Suck.

    --Kai out

     
  • to bring the end 2003-12-15 11:01:28
    I shouldn't be here. I should be studying. I think I know what I'm doing, but if I don't score noticeably above the median this time around I am for all intents and purposes dead. If I score well enough on my 478 exam Friday and pull what I'm averaging in 481, I should probably be able to come back next semester regardless, but I really don't want to take this bloody class again this time next year, or jump into 592 and try that wringer on for size.

    AAGH. NO PANIC. I blame the prof for making this one closed-book, closed notes where the others were open-book, open-notes. Hopefully a bunch of other people bomb worse than me so I can maintain position.

    After this, though, there'll be very little I'll need to do for the rest of the week. Sleep, read up on BDDs, and work on the book should about do it.

    There's nothing I can still do that I haven't done. There's no way to avoid what's coming. All that remains is to just suck it up, stand firm, and draw like it doesn't matter. I may not prevail. Imay not even bloody survive. All that I can do is just leave it all on the floor, making sure that I'll have no regrets.

    --Kai out


     
  • the maker has moved on 2003-12-13 10:45:48
    my faith is written in my blood
    and my gods within my image
    i stand within the sun unblinking
    and rise within its rays

    it is not enough to kindle the fire
    one must be the fire
    it is not enough to face tomorrow
    when there is time enough today

    so long this savage beast has been slumbered
    (too long)
    shackled and bound no longer
    for i am both sacrifice and solution

    has the world made you?
    have you made the world?
    these are strange times i ask you
    generations of messiahs
    as grist to the mill

    all with the world to sell
    and a world to win
    yet looking no further
    than yesterdays dictator
    or yesterdays traitor...

    -- A.A.N., 2002


    time is a thing we must accept
    the unexpected i sometimes fear
    just when i feel there's no excuse
    for what happens
    things fall into place

    i know there is no way
    to avoid the pain
    that we must go through
    to find the other half
    that is true

    destiny
    is what we all seek
    destiny
    was waiting for you and me

    i believe behind confusion
    awaits the truth for us
    past the obstacles we face
    i value our life and trust

    years of questioning why things happen
    the way they do in life
    wishing that i could turn back time
    so we could join our souls

    i know there is no way
    to avoid the pain
    that we must go through
    to find the other half
    that is true

    destiny
    is what we all seek
    destiny
    was waiting for you and me

    -- C.S., 1993


    The test of commitment is to continue leaderless stronger than when led. Individually we are weak. Collectively, we are strong. As long as we refuse to give up, give in, or turn down.

    Let the metal flow,

    --Kai out


     
  • for a child in an unmarked grave 2003-12-12 08:23:26
    Has the site gotten more readable and usable with the pruning of the OT caption? I don't know. There's still as much useless junk in the parts of the forum I read as before, so there hasn't been any noticeable removal of spammers, or any ridiculous upflow. GA is supposedly next on the chopping block, which should cut down on the dumbness in there. Honestly, though, you're going to GET critical levels of dumbness whenever you open up a public forum for general discussion of anime on the internet. There was some post a couple months ago (forget who made it) to the effect of "you think *our* forums are retarded, go over to Adult Swim sometime"; I haven't been there, but from the few other anime-only forums I've been to, I can honestly concur.

    Do you have any idea how CLEAN and UNCLUTTERED and USEFUL the .org forums were, even before the pruning? Look somewhere else, at the me-too posts that take up half a page because they've got no avatar image size restrictions or the site FORCES a twenty-line Ragnarok character description into that column, at the sigs with full screencaps or artbook pages wedged into them. Look at the complete inability to type a parseable English sentence. Most of our European and Southeast-Asian posters here are consistently MUCH more understandable. *I*'m more understandable when I'm answering someone's question in broken German. Look at the 200-posts-in-an-hour spam wars, with moderators doing nothing. If the .org was a nuthouse before, these forums have the inmates running the asylum.

    Maybe the forums will get more usable in the future with "the cowards and the shirkers" all fled. Maybe not. I'm hardly one to judge, as I get little or no technical information and almost no ideas out of them. They've not successfully convinced me to watch a single anime or listen to a single band (though Weird Screencaps has definitely contributed some titles for me to Never Ever Watch, and I probably SHOULD get around to listening to Mercenary). Hence, the forums are of less worth than either Jesmaster or DokiDoki on their own, as they successfuly got me into Chastisement and Iniquity (respectively).

    Unfortunately, you can either have a spam-filled forum or a dead one. There's just not enough people in this hobby (total was between 500 and 600 active/known when I counted back in the summer) to sustain a large amount of interesting and relevant discussions. Not that this is uniformly bad or good: look at Slashdot. Half the trolls are more interesting than 90% of the posters, but the other half would do much better with a 0.45-inch hole between their eyes.

    What in the blade am I doing making a huge 'site' journal like that one? I'm the one who should get capped for contributing to this stupid kickup.

    Relevant:
    Work on the book is proceeding, but studying will take precedence. It's like I'm going into a tailspin in AI; fortunately I've got 35/80 (at least) ROCK SOLID on this last problem set because my agent has been tearing it up big time. Game to game its consistency sucks, but overall there's more really good scores than really bad ones.

    Something will be hosted over break, but I'm not going to decide what or how until after Monday, when I have the AI exam and 481 demo. Memorial column will go up tomorrow, but don't expect anything else for a while.

    --Kai out


     
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