judyonthenet

Literally. I had an annoying cold the entire weekend that I’m pretty sure Kelvin passed on to me. I guess it’s payback for when I gave him whatever crazy fever virus I had, causing him to go to his first day at work on the verge of death. Still, I didn’t stay at home all weekend.

Memorial Day weekend also is FanimeCon weekend, so we dropped by the con to check out Studio Sokodei stuff. Rodney came down to finally see the spectacle that is ReDeath in a convention environment. As always, it was… interesting. No line issues this year, as the main video room was huge. There was some technical difficulties during this showing, with the disc refusing to play a couple times in the last half, almost leading to otaku rioting. Luckily, it eventually fixed itself. After the showing, we went to a few blocks down to take Kelvin to a non-existent graduation party at a now non-existent club. (Apparently, the party had changed time/location.) Kelvin was still determined to get drunk, so we went home, where Kelvin and Rodney had Jagermeister and Bailey’s and played slightly-inebriated Wii Fit.

Saturday, I had several errands to run in the morning, so I missed the premiere of Andrew’s video-game fansubbing pet project, Cowboy Bebop: The Song Remains the Same. We still went to downtown and had some pho at my favorite pho place. Afterwards, we went to Fry’s, where I saw Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn was $39.99. Desperate for more Fire Emblem at less than retail, I snatched it up. I spent a bit of Saturday and Sunday playing it, ultimately disappointed, but I’ll get into that another day.

I went back to Fanime Sunday afternoon to watch Nescaflowne. Mike and Liz came to check it out as well. They seemed to enjoy it, despite having never seen Escaflowne. (btw, it’s a great series.) I’m glad the weird anime nerds didn’t scare them off. Cosplayers were out in full force on this day, with a lot of the awesome ones being characters I don’t recognize. My favorite cosplay were some guys walking around on chocobos (I think). There were also some really sweet diglets; see if you can spot them in this picture! I missed it, but there was an awesome one where the guy dressed up as the Brain Age 2 head. You’d think that’s lame, but it’s not. And of course, Andrew’s Kankuro debut was great, particularly the debut of his little friend, Muppet Karasu. I mentioned a while back Kelvin and Andrew were working on a puppet for cosplay, and this is it!

(For the clueless: Kankuro is a character on Naruto whose attacks involve manipulating life-sized wooden puppets, mainly one called Karasu. Karasu is generally not a muppet, which makes this cosplay different.) Kelvin did most of the construction over a few Sundays. It’s sad… I think he’s used my sewing machine more than I have now. It came out incredibly well, and it’s surprisingly expressive, with its fluffy windblown hair, world-devouring mouth, light-saber-ish chakra rod, and triple googly eyes. Andrew seemed to like doing Franklin impressions with it.

Oh, and speaking of googly eyes:

Monday we finally saw The Song Remains the Same. The fansub came out pretty good. It was kind of long, and I didn’t really get what was going on… pretty much exactly how I felt watching the Cowboy Bebop movie. (Maybe Cowboy Bebop stories should not be more than half an hour.) I liked the music, particularly the songs the game focuses around, but that’s no surprise since Yoko Kanno wrote them. Maybe it’s because I play too many video games, but I really liked the action sequences mixed in with the cutscenes. Major props to Andrew for such great editing, especially the big battle scene with everyone fighting at the end.

The rest of Monday I spent playing Dr. Mario on the Wii. In my opinion, $10 is a bit much for a version of Dr. Mario that doesn’t have 4-player versus for classic mode. But I can’t get enough of Dr. Mario, and it’s got online play and Mii integration. (IMO, every game needs Mii integration.) I haven’t played Virus Busters yet, tho I hear it’s addicting. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to it because I can’t stop playing classic versus anyway. If you have a Wii, get Dr. Mario in the WiiWare store and be my friend! (Or you can be cheap and I can send you the demo. I think you get free versus play that way.) I’m running out of space on my Wii now, so I need to transfer stuff to an SD card. Nintendo really needs to be less of a stubborn ass with their stuff and figure out a better storage solution.

New thing I learned today: Along with doing the music for Cowboy Bebop, Escaflowne, and Macross Plus, Yoko Kanno also wrote the opening themes for Cardcaptor Sakura, RahXephon, and Record of Lodoss War TV series. That last song is amazing, almost makes me want to watch the anime.

I’m getting engagement pictures taken soon (yes, those are completely different thing from the studio pictures I took in Taiwan), so to look less like a hairy freak of nature for my pictures, I decided to get my eyebrows shaped. The cheapest and fastest option seems to be threading, an ancient Indian/Middle Eastern method of hair. Basically, it’s where your hairs are removed by twisting cotton thread by them and having them get caught in the thread. I think it fairly recently became trendy, but there are many practitioners of threading in the Bay Area now. Last Friday during lunch, Anna took me to her regular lady at some hole-in-the-wall place in Sunnyvale called “The Image” or something like that. They offer eyebrow threading services for $8, which is very reasonable, especially when compared to waxing and tweezing prices (closer to $20). My engagement photo session is in a couple weeks, so I wanted to get this done soon in case my face needs to recover for whatever reason.

I thought a place that did threading would be mostly Indian, and while most of the workers were Indian, I think there were a couple white ladies doing hair as well. There seemed to be a lot of old women in the salon getting miscellaneous services. Anna had an appointment for us, so we only waited a few minutes until her thread lady, Ann, was ready to work on us. I was surprise to see Ann is an Asian woman; I didn’t realize non-Indian folks did threading. Ann brought us to one of the chairs furthest in the back and started working on Anna. She immediately went to work as soon as she sat in the chair, pulling thread from a spool, holding one end in her mouth, and twisting the thread together with her hands. Anna made it look painless, giving pretty much no reaction to the threading. She was done in a few minutes, and then it was my turn.

Ann working on Anna

Just so we’re clear, I’ve never done any sort of eyebrow shaping or maintenance. The exception was when I was in Taiwan taking studio pictures, and the makeup lady needed to quickly shape my eyebrows for the shoot, so she shaved them into shape. Obviously, they grew back fair quickly. Ann could tell it was my first time, too. Yeah, she was in for quite some work. At first, it didn’t seem so bad, just some rough tugging at my skin. When she got closer to the thicker part of my eyebrows where she was pulling more out at a time, it started to hurt a bit and make me tear up. I wasn’t surprised, since pulling out one hair already hurts enough. She also had me use my hand to hold my skin taut, and I was pushing on my eyeball a little bit. As I sat there with my eyes closed, I kept hearing the thread snap. I don’t know if that was normal, or my threading was making her break her strings a lot. With each tug, I could feel little hairs fall all over my face. Even though she brushed my face off when she was done, I still found little hairs in my mouth, which was yucky.

When she was done with each eyebrow, she’d have me take a look at a hand mirror. I was worried about getting my eyebrows done since I was afraid the salon lady might see it fit to give me some whole new eyebrow shape, but Ann did a pretty good job keeping the original shape of my eyebrows. She just made it way neater. Because it was my first time doing this, the area around my eyebrows were pretty pink, poofy, and felt really tender. She dabbed some sort of lotion or liquid that was supposed to help them feel better or swell less. Other than that, the area around my eyebrows felt very soft and smooth from the lack of hair (and probably lack of sunshine :P). Later after scrutinizing in the mirror, I did find she missed one single hair randomly, but that was easily plucked out. Now my eyebrows are nicely shaped, and I just need to maintain it for the next couple weeks until my picture session.

It’s not all positive though. I have fairly sensitive skin, so I wasn’t particularly surprised when, later that night, the areas around my new eyebrows broke out into little bumps and became a little itchy. The thing is, I don’t remember her ever touching my eyebrows, except with string. The exception would be when she applied the fluid to help with my skin soreness, so I’m thinking I must have had some sort of allergic reaction to whatever she stuck on my skin. Plus, my complexion has been having issues lately, so maybe I was touching my face too much. Regardless, it just blended in with my bad skin anyway :P After a couple days, it’s mostly gone now, and the swelling and pinkness was gone within a day of the threading. My overall experience is still positive, though. Considering the cost and time it takes, I’ll probably do this again next time I need eyebrow shaping. The experience becomes more comfortable the more regularly you do it. Ann was very friendly and patient with my newbness, plus she doesn’t go nuts with your eyebrows, so I think I’ll stick with her. If I get bored with my eyebrows, maybe I’ll try shaping them more, but I doubt I will because I think Kelvin will get pissed. Much thanks to Anna for helping me with this crazy threading stuff!

Before and after pictures after the jump, so you won’t be forced to look at my disgusting weird-angled closeups of my hairy eyebrows and bad forehead skin.
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Man, stupid Nintendo and their genius money-making ploys. I preordered this off Amazon last month for $89.99 shipped, originally for my mother for Mother’s Day. But then I got lazy about finding her a Wii, and then I got into the Wii Fit hype, and then I decided I wanted to keep this for myself. (It’s okay; my mom’s still high off that iRobot I got her for her birthday a couple months ago. Once word gets around, I know she’s going to want one though.) I’m glad I decided to preorder, as it’s apparently selling like hotcakes, with Amazon and GameStop canceling preorders weeks before release and stores selling out upon opening today. My order showed up today right on time on release day.

Kelvin and I gave it a shot today, and even though we’re not big people and hence have normal BMIs, our Wii Fit age is not so hot. Kelvin got a good 9 years above his age, while I got a good additional *ahem*20*cough* years. I think we need to figure out this balance board thing ASAP. I’m not surprised at how unfit I am, but hopefully I can be slightly motivated to attempt this thing regularly. You can set weight loss (or in my weak-ass case, gain) goals, and if you think the BMI is kind of a lame way of measuring your progress (I do), you can track your weight instead.

Inputting height and age information.

I’m surprised at how much the exercises can work you. I actually sweated a little and had to catch my breath. The yoga and strength exercises are done with a “trainer”, which is a male or female mannequin that talks to you without moving their lips. Kind of creepy. They basically model the exercises for you, and you can change the view of your trainer to get a better idea of how you’re supposed to do the exercise. You need some room to play it; I think Kelvin burned extra calories moving the coffee table in and out of the way.

The aerobics and balance mini-games are cute and make excellent use of the Miis, making it a lot more fun to watch than the yoga and strength exercises (which are painfully boring to watch other people do). The player also looks pretty goofy doing the aerobics or balance games. Hula-hooping is surprisingly exhausting. The more minutes you play, the more games/exercises you unlock. The better you get at an exercise, the more advance levels you get for that exercise. Here’s videos of Kelvin demonstrating a couple of the games:

Also, Kelvin hula-hooping and doing step aerobics.

Our initial impressions of Wii Fit are overall positive. Definitely not a workout replacement, but if you’re not fond of physical activity like me, I think it’s a great first step towards better health and increased activeness. Let’s see how much longer we’ll actually play with this thing.

Wii Fit was already released in Japan and Europe, so there’s already been quite some media coverage on it. Some of the more interesting links:

(Successful) Wii Fit Experiment at 4 color rebellion - Guy gets the benefits of Wii Fit in time for his wedding.
British Moms don’t like Wii Fit calling their not-overweight kids “overweight” - It seems like the British aren’t as lawsuit-happy as we are. The mom in the video still likes the Wii Fit besides getting pissed enough to go on TV about Wii Fit making her kid want to go on a diet. I’m not sure Americans will deal as well. Their media is still pretty sensationalist tho. The title of the BBC News video is “Computer game tells ‘porkies’”.
Ellen gives away Wii Fits on her show - Be careful of your ears when watching this video. Soccer moms everywhere are now totally aware of Wii Fit, so more guaranteed big bucks for Nintendo. And if you’re wondering how the folks that don’t have Wiis can play their free Wii Fits, well, apparently Ellen has that covered. Man, I wish I was an audience member.

New thing I learned today: “Porky” has two slang meanings. Aside from being a mean word for a fat person, it’s also British slang for “a big lie”.

Get this game! Looks like they’re matching the Best Buy price this week.

Of course, it drops 31 days after it was shipped to me, so I can’t get a pricematch… damn Amazon. Nevermind, Amazon decided I was within the 30 days and gave me a $10. I guess Amazon is going to have to stay awesome. (Credit goes to CAG.)

I know I just changed themes not that long ago, but I saw this one on the Wordpress blog and really liked it. It’s simply called Blue Blog by LoonDesign. I like the more artistic look as opposed to plain and simple ones I’ve used in the past. Colors are nice and mellow, and now that I’m a little better with my writing and picture editing, I’m ready to move on to a fixed width blog. With all the spacing, my words should seem a little less invasive of your monitor. I kind of wished something separated the post content from the background, as when you scroll past the sidebars, the posts are surround by tons of whitespace. Ah, well. I’ll deal for now. I like giant subscribe button in the header and the customizable picture. I don’t have any decent pictures, so you guys are stuck to staring at Ninja Squirrel. Some things obviously some tweaking; in the meantime, please ignore the broken widgets on the sidebar :P

Since I’m getting more random hits to my blog, it was suggested that I start monetizing off it. Yes, that means ads and such. As you can see, I’ve already got Google ads in the side already. I was hesitant before because I don’t want to annoy my regular readers (all 4 of them), but a lot of articles about making money off you blog suggest ways of hiding ads from your regular readers. Ad clicks are from search engine hits most of the time, as opposed to super-smart regulars, so this is best. I have two suggestions for my regulars if the ads start to irritate you.

1) Register on my website and stay logged in all the time. You can register at the login page. It’s kinda ghetto at the moment, but functional.

2) Use an RSS reader and subscribe to my blog. As I’ve mentioned before, I use Bloglines and Google Reader. (I use both to see how my blog looks in different services.) They’re free services, easy to use, and great for efficiently slacking off at work. You can keep up-to-date not just on my blog, but anything with an RSS feed (which is pretty much everything on the internet). Things like polls won’t work in a reader, and you can’t see my fun sidebar stuff, but readers link to the actual blog, so it’s just a click away.

As always, feel free to let me know your opinion on any changes.

After much wait, Konami finally released news on the Metal Gear Solid 4 Limited Edition Playstation 3 bundle. And man, does it suck.

$599.99. For a 40GB PS3. You’ve got to be sh*tting me!

I’m not one who can’t handle a little overcharging for limited/collector’s edition stuff; I’ve overpaid before for import and/or limited edition games and consoles. And Konami claims this bundle will be extremely limited, and I take their word for it. But seriously, can’t you throw us a bone? Japan got the same bundle for 51,800 yen, which is like $500. And the bundle doesn’t really cost $600. You can only preorder it on the Konami website (starting May 19th), and I know that sales tax is going to be charged. That’s another $50. Shipping isn’t free; in fact “shipping costs are higher than normal on this item, due to product size”. So total, we’re talking closer to $700. The value cost:

$399.99 retail price for a 40GB PS3 (in black)
- 49.99 retail price for a SixAxis controller
+ 54.99 retail price for a DualShock 3 controller
+ 84.99 retail price for the limited edition Metal Gear Solid 4 game (has a couple documentaries + soundtrack)
= $489.98
Basically, with out tax and shipping, you’re paying a $110 premium for the grey gunmetal PS3 and controller. Don’t forget the 40GB PS3 has ZERO backwards compatibility for PS2 games.

Compare this with the regular non-limited Metal Gear Solid 4 PS3 bundle, which includes an 80GB (which can play most PS2 games) for $499.99. It also has a (black) DualShock 3 controller, and the bundle includes the regular edition of Metal Gear Solid 4 (retails $59.99). I think before it was discontinued, the 80GB PS3 was sold in a bundle with MotorStorm for $499.99, so you save $5 by getting a DualShock instead of a SixAxis and much more hyped up game in the new bundle. You can also buy this regular bundle at any retailer, so free shipping and no tax with Amazon. I can still preorder the Limited Edition of the game at GameStop, so assuming I sell the regular game for $10 less than retail, I can still get Limited Edition for like $45 extra (with tax on the game).

~$700 for the super-limited edition bundle or ~$545 for the same thing + 40GB + PS2 backwards compatibility - grey color. The collector and MG3 uber-fan in me are battling with the cheap ass in me, and I think the cheap ass is winning…

Season 2 of American Gladiators came back this week, and it’s certainly at least as enjoyable as last season. The new season has all the gladiators you loved from last season (AKA Crush, Wolf, Titan), plus eight new gladiators including both winners from last season. (I guess being a gladiator pays well.) The women’s winner, Monica, is now called Jet, basically the same annoyingly perfect woman from season 1, now more manly and with blue streaks in her hair. She looks mean in the pictures, but isn’t really in person; she needs to get mean fast. Otherwise it’s just contender versus another contender on steroids.

Evan, the hyperactive, hypercheerful blonde-headed speed demon winner for the men last season, is now Rocket, a slightly more steroid-ed version of his previous self.

While it’s only been a few months, I don’t think any amount of training will get Evan to fit in with the rest of the male gladiators. I mean, look at the stats for this season’s roster so far:

6′2″, 230 lb
6′8″, 290 lb
6′3″, 220 lb
5′10″, 160 lb
6′3″, 251 lb
6′3″, 240 lb
6′4″, 225 lb

Guess which one is Evan :P

The new season has a few new events, but the first episode only showed a couple of them (and only 3 of the 8 new gladiators). I’m not impressed with any of them, but I do like the changes made to the old events. Basically, everything is like twice as big/wide/tall now. It seems like they got more money, cuz the number of arena spotlights seemed to have doubled too. What’s crazy are the changes to the Eliminator (final event). In season 1, when a contender fell off an obstacle, it was easy for them to just get right back out and climb out of the pit they fell in. So many people cheated on this with the handbike, which should be grueling, but isn’t when you just immediately let go, sprint across the pit, and climb out to continue. Pretty much zero punishment. Now the pits are deeper, and the handbike has a bunch of plastic balls in its pit.

American Gladiators: where a kid can be a kid.

So, a little bit harder, but not as good as having a gladiator run out and grab you for a time penalty. They also added a barrel run where people run down a spinning, slanted, large plastic tube. What’s fun about this one is that contenders lose their footing, slide down the tube and hit the end with their crotch. Awesome. However, the best/worst addition to the Eliminator has to be the finish line. After pushing the physical limits of your body and completely exhausting yourself, instead of busting through some cushions into some giant cushy mats at the end of the Eliminator, you instead have to rope swing through the paper finish line into a pool of water, where instead of catching your breath you drown because you’re shocked by the coldness of the water and are too tired to lift your head above the water. It’s cool tho; American Gladiators has ya covered.

He looks happy to have finished the race.

There also seems to be a little less talking this season, and I’m very thankful for that. I still hate contenders who are so frickin’ motivated and so frickin’ inspired by their kids; nobody cares. Instead, I love American Gladiators‘ editors, giving us wonderful moments such as the following:

Cute girl raises up sign to encourage her mommy.

Mommy is moved by sign.

Mommy is now encouraged and motivated to face the undefeated Crush in Joust.

Mommy gets owned by Crush.

Girl’s heart is crushed shatters.

By the way, I still have a crush on Crush. *gush* I’m quite satisfied with the first episode of the new season. I mean, how can you beat broken-hearted children and contenders with disabilities? (Dude, one guy has a freaking prosthetic leg in the first episode!) Apparently, most of America disagrees and decided to watch shows with “writers” this week. And I use that term “writers” loosely. (House has been total crap since it came back from hiatus.) America would rather watch Two and a Half Men than watch people getting beat down. What is the world coming to?

New thing I learned today: The UK and Australia each have their own rendition of the show, simply called Gladiators.