I haven't posted in ages, but I'm excited about the new season of Haruhi Suzumiya. What the animators are doing is incredible, and of course the fandom has been completely flummoxed by it. Michael at Low on Hit Points had already written about the new episodes:

I fully approve of what KyoAni is doing with Endless Eight.

Not only do they have my approval, but they also have my respect! Where do I start? I've mentioned before on how it's a brilliant (yes, crazy like a fox) marketing move, how I personally don't mind rewatching good content, and how I appreciate ballsy moves like this one.

But before EE 4, that all was just a slight counterbalance to what I found to be an awkward direction. But now I get it. It is a very artistic and unusual direction. We are a part of that recursion. We are affected by it like the very characters we are watching. And more and more, I am being drawn into their plight. I love it!

Yes! Someone else who gets it! In fact, I should thank Michael for expressing what I've been feeling. Now I've been able to gain a more concrete understanding of what's going on. These animators have demonstrated before that they have a special understanding of the otaku perspective. What we know, intuitively if not explicitly, is that the temple of anime is built on vividly outrageous characters. When KyoAni adapts a set of novels like The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya they do not want to simply transfer the events & dialogues from books to TV.

Can you imagine how Haruhi would react if she saw them doing that?

I've seen projected schedules for the second season by otaku who've read the novels already, and felt non-plussed. What does it mean to read a story as if it were a series of parcels at a warehousing distribution center that one needs to relocate from train cars to a fleet of trucks? Isn't that a little impersonal? What if those parcels contained your entire household? Would it be natural to feel a bit apprehensive about some callous strangers hauling around the contents of your life? Imagine if you were a head of state, or a royal monarch... This is brand management raised to Art.

Kyoto Animation knows that they've got Haruhi Suzumiya herself to bring to anime. They extend the SOS Brigade to include all her fans, just as they did with the first season. KyoAni has been simulating a relationship with this very dominant person since the very first episode, when she took over the direction herself. Even after relinquishing that role to them, she continued to insert herself by reordering the episodes. Now she's at it again.

You may blame KyoAni now, but we know who's truly at fault. But Haruhi is more practical - and compassionate - than she appears at first. I believe the animators recognized a value in expanding this particular story which originally was much shorter. This arc's not just about showing how revealing how obsessive Haruhi is. The resolution rests on an important character point which in the novel may pass so quickly some readers could overlook it. The hidden information here is so subtle that neither Haruhi nor her best friends were prepared to recognize it.

And so that's why I think this Endless Eight is so cool.

I've got a good job again! Starting Real Soon, I'll be responsible for supporting the Theater Management System, a product of Kodak: Digital Cinema. Even better, I'll be using my Linux expertise. I'm beside myself with joy! After seven long years, I'm returning to Information Technology work and fiscal independence. And though I don't expect this job to involve software development, that day can't be far behind. At the very least I'll be a well-paid geek again!

Years ago when my folks were newlywed, they made their home on a six acre lot surrounded by farmers' fields. To its old oak trees they added many young evergreens, flower beds and a large vegetable garden. As I grew up they replanted our Christmas trees into the back yard and had an enormous hole dug for a pond, which my father then seeded with cat tails.

I understand my parents then were young, ambitious, and possibly a little foolish. Today they can't work quite so long or hard, and they can't afford to spend the money to make their place look as nice as it used to. Also, the trees that were young thirty years ago are now quite tall and kill the grass with their shade. Fortunately they are considering moving to a smaller place, but I feel they're overly committed to maintaining everything as it used to be. I wonder too whether their methods are appropriate, or whether they may be breaking their backs to avoid taking it easy.

Several tall evergreens stand along the east side of the driveway. Pine needles and pinecones collect underneath them, replacing the grass. There's still some grass, but it's very patchy. My mother blames the pine needles; I blame the shade. She wants to remove all the pine needles so the grass would grow back; she's attempted to do this every spring for the past couple years. She dislikes the pinecones too, because they fly out of the lawn mowers. I don't see what she's worried about. The pine needles cover the bare soil where the shade has killed the grass, protecting it from erosion, and I can't imagine pine cones of light mass doing damage to anything. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think most of the kinetic energy from a pine cone meeting a mower blade goes into moving the little thing three meters. I doubt its momentum is much greater than when it falls from the tree.

So when she left me to sweep pine needles the other day, I did something I felt was more useful: I brought out her patio furniture. Then she made me a chocolate pie. Hah!

Today I went out for dinner with Kelly and her mom Sherry, who is visiting from Idaho. We had some great conversation while appreciating some great food at Hogan's Hideaway. Afterwards we returned to Aunt Pauline's house to relax, read and play some Go. Kelly and I enjoyed a short walk before I had to leave, so it was a fine evening.

I drove just a mile before my car died. The dash indicates an oil problem, but the oil stick revealed a healthy level. Our mechanic had inspected the car just last week (and we trust them), so what gives? Sherry gave me a ride home, back across the county. I wouldn't want to try solving a car problem at 11 at night, so tomorrow I'll recross the county to investigate.

Old cars break down, so I'm not too alarmed, but I do worry that I overlooked something with the car's maintenance. I can miss important details while I'm experiencing depression and withdrawal. Tempus fugit, but this year I especially need to get my act together. And last December I had become so much more active.

On the plus side, riding home with Kelly's mom meant I had more time to talk with them, and check out the new GPS system in their rental car. If the diagnosis turns out minor tomorrow I can say I was lucky.

Characteristically, it's times like this when I'm reminded of my status as a meatbot. Early Monday morning my stomach woke me up with a "I'm not happy" informational packet. By dawn I was studying my last dinner in the kitchen sink. This is not supposed to happen. I had been cool with some coughing and dripping, symptoms like those add a acerbic counterpoint to the holidaytime sweetness, but such a bitter metaphor should remain a metaphor, and not become a a literal sourness on my throat. When afternoon came, I had some root beer and chicken soup, which might have been a bad idea, but considering I lost everything by one exit or the other I can't really say. Of course I canceled the interview I had for that afternoon. I did my best to remain still and avoid eating for the rest of the day.

(I haven't forgotten there are some people in worse pain than me.)

I've been able to eat again, but I sense I'm not entirely over this yet. My stomach makes sounds like a mad chemist's lab, and I still have diarrhea, but it's controllable. I haven't been entirely uncomfortable. But I'm still impatient.

Ben took the free ColorQuiz.com personality test! "Seeks affectionate, satisfying and harmonious relationships." Click here to read the rest of the results.

I really wasn't expecting it to describe me so accurately. You need to follow the link here or take the test yourself to appreciate the emotional detail offered in this test's analysis. Thanks to glazzal for pointing out this test.

Notably, my biggest issue with ColorQuiz's results are that it's incorrect on one subtle but important point. He feels this adverse situation as an actual tangible pressure which is intolerable to him and from which he wants to escape, but he feels unable to make the necessary decision. I agree up to my wanting to escape, but I believe that I have made the necessary decision, very recently. But I think I can forgive an analysis adminstered by machine for missing something so fine.

It's seems remarkable to me that a test taken by selecting favorite colors can reveal so much that's hidden. Perhaps it's possible precisely because you don't usually think of covering yourself or self-censoring when you respond to "What is your favorite color?" I suppose now I'll have to find out a little more about this mysterious Dr. Max Lûscher, who developed this idea.

What I love about chest colds is that I can lie about doing nothing, partake of simpler pleasures, and not feel guilty about it. Since I've actually been fairly busy this month searching for my next job and contributing at the VOC, this comes as a nice break. When I'm not hacking up my esophagus.

So this week I've started playing Romancing Saga, which I picked up for its eccentric reputation. That reputation is well-deserved. Romancing Saga has a non-linear story structure. You can begin playing with any one of the eight protagonists, choose your companions and pursue different quests at will. It's quite a departure for Square, the Final Fantasy developer, though not quite so byzantine as Troike/BlackIsle's RPGs (Fallout, Torment, Arcanum). There are few dialogue branches in the game, which doesn't have especially much dialogue anyway, though I've been satisfied with its quality. However, the storyline can appear to branch by spending time in one area of the world versus another. The game guides recommend avoiding battles to see more of the game's events in one playthrough. So perhaps some subplots could turn out differently if I don't participate in them myself? I'm not quite sure, because I haven't played through yet.

Personally, it's satisfying to play a game which can frustrate my ambitions with a tricky, well-designed system of mechanics. The first few times I played this game I became quite frustrated because I assumed I could easily master it, but I realize now that Saga will not give up its secrets right away, and that's ok. I've been playing with Sif, the warrior woman from the frozen wastes, who rescued a boy prince from a shipwreck. Her first duty's always to protect her snowy homeland from the encroaching monster hordes, but she's travelled far since taking the boy back to his kingdom to report some dreadful battle. Now Sif and the boy are a team to kick ass, take names, and eventually save the world, assuming it needs saving. She doesn't know yet; she's heard some legends about this dark imprisoned god, and the prophecy of a possibly luny sorceress, but no matter. Sif knows that if there's an ass harassing good people, her's is the foot to kick it.

So for today I'm fighting the good fight in Mardias, but soon I'll have to get back to work. I intend to get a new programming job this season, and I've got another preliminary interview to look forward to next Monday.

Go on, you know you want to read my resume. Let me know what you think.

I don't know a lot about Scribd yet, but what I've read so far sounds interesting. Scribd wants to become a free, public repository of documents, written by anyone for anyone. People have already uploaded a large and diverse collection, including a children's Christmas story from 1947, New York City's greenhouse gas emissions inventory for 2007, a calculus textbook, Cory Doctorow's novels (why am I not surprised?), an introduction to subatomic particles, a guide to grading undergraduate exams, and a cheat sheet for bash shell scripting. Will these links be good in another 5 years? Is there material here of dubious legality? I don't know; I have a lot of questions, but today my skepticism has decided to shake hands with my optimism. I appreciate such cacophonous experiments in online public goods, helping us to disentangle our information from immediate commercial value. But I fear that Scribd's good health may only last as long as its obscurity.

When I finally woke up this morning, with a mild throat infection, I found a page for features Now Playing at Rochester's Little theater. Since I'd already read all the synopsizes last night, I read this history of that local attraction, but has some details I wasn't aware of, such as that the name derived from a "little cinema movement" to favor more sophisticated films than the shallow commercial trash of the day, which was 1929. October 17, 1929, in fact, a few weeks before the stock market crash and the day when the Little presented "Cyrano de Bergerac". Gee, Cyrano de Bergerac, I've heard of him, but let's visit Wikipedia to make sure! So maybe he didn't really have a big nose, but he did fight a lot with his sword. He was also articulate, a poet and science fiction writer, but he wasn't actually a Gascon. A what? Oh, somebody from Gascony, a French countryside, with foie gras and brandy. Tres bon! But what do we have here? Viking invasions? Clearly, any more surfing would be a disappointment, after reading about

Viking Invasions!

(Responding to my friend Kelly, who wrote: I firmly believe that kindness is the most crucial thing that isn't getting enough coverage or appreciation in this world. People see news about corporate evil, violent crimes, bizarre conspiracies, etc., etc., but we seldom hear about people who are actually carrying out the golden rule in their daily lives.)

I wish to gently disagree with you. It occurs to me that kindness, or by extension virtue, will always tend to appear unremarkable, whether the medium is journalism or art. To the degree a society does sustain itself we can expect its members to approve of most of its events. Somebody somewhere is refilling a supermarket cooler with milk jugs, carefully and promptly. A child completes her math homework, though the last two problems troubled her. A librarian has patiently directed a stranger again to the correct stacks for the books they need. Good things must happen all the time, or else society collapses.

I think you've expressed in a general way the urgency we must feel after any exceptionally good event. Appreciation certainly has its place in our societies. This is an ordinary, common-place observation, because daily we hope for appreciation by others and we desire to share our admirations. Since good events happen all the time, the acts of kindness we notice must represent exceptional ones. A friend is there to talk every time you need to talk, or has a good excuse otherwise. A friend gives you lunch on a traumatic day. A friend entertains you with a classic movie and popcorn when you're down and out and have few options to do anything. It would feel wrong not to acknowledge such things when they happen to us.

You're free to argue that we could acknowledge kindness to a greater degree, but the project of communicating the wonderful things we do for each other already flounders on supernumeracy. In other words, we can easily find faults in our social system, but selecting its best features leads us to greater disagreement.

So it seems unremarkable to me that bad news predominates our widest forms of communication (911 and the Emergency Broadcast System come to mind), just as good news does in our most intimate encounters. So rather than kindness missing coverage, I imagine it's humanity. I want to describe it as our universal mystery of being, or our collective consternation. We have a bad tendency to shorten the mess up by limiting who we consider human, or else limiting what human is. And we don't share enough examples of different people being human, which I think you'd agree would include many instances of other humans being kind.

I hope I don't come across as flippant, because this woman's problem genuinely deserves our sympathy. In short, someone wants us to follow a link because she has reason to hope this could help her afford necessary medical treatment and save her life. Outlandish? Certainly, but Erin's sad story sounds entirely plausible to me.

1. Erin has carefully avoided asking strangers for money. I've seen dozens of artists, bloggers and charity drives ask for money with PayPal buttons, but Erin has refused to do this.
   
2. Unlike most industrial countries, the United States' health system is a sketchy patchwork of programs. The resistance to a single payer system means there's no comprehensive explanation for how an American would receive the medical treatment they need. Maybe your employer pays, maybe your personal health insurance pays, maybe Medicaid if the state figures you're poor enough, maybe your friends host a website for you so you can pay with a weird .com's promotion program.
   
3. $10,000 isn't a lot of money, in the grand scheme of things, which makes it difficult to imagine an alternative narrative which makes as much sense as the one presented by Erin's website and blog. If a con-artist wanted to game MegaUpload's program, they'd need to sucker 5 million clicks every four months to avoid working at $15/hour for the same year. I can imagine several more profitable avenues for that kind of talent, including writing for TV reality shows.

So please consider following this link.

I can't really explain why it's taken me so long to develop discipline (assuming I indeed have). I wonder if I got as far as I did with school and career because of something resembling talent, because it'd be hard to attribute my successes to persistent and dedicated effort. I couldn't say that I didn't understand how many minor applications in the same direction can yield profound results, because the world is filled with examples by great artists and scientists. Perhaps I'm just a slow student of life.

But setting that aside, I'm ready to get myself a job, because I have a Plan. This time it's going to work, I'm going to get paid, and a new and beautiful world will dawn. Still, excuse me if you've heard this before:

The Plan

• Relax
  
• Warm up my skills
  
• Practice my responses
  
• Discover job leads
  
• Check-in with my people
  
• Write to prospects
  
• Schedule interviews
  
• Get a job
  
• Have fun
  
• Organize my shit
  
• Publish my findings
  

See, I'm just putting it all down. Each of these are my necessary conditions to getting a Real Job. Now's the time to set aside my shame and grief. If I'm going to have the programming software engineer coding geek job I deserve, I must do certain things:

Relaxation

Each day should begin with due respect for the mind mysterious. I like to practice breathing meditation followed by T'ai Chi.

Skills

A programmer's gotta have the right skills, and using the skills is the best way to keep them and acquire them. This also builds my confidence, and can be fun too. (But some books from Microsoft are quite dull, bleh.)

Interview responses

When I was younger I assumed I could simply go talk. Perhaps I was less anxious, too, but no matter. Most interviewers will ask me some common questions, questions I can anticipate. Writing responses beforehand presents me an opportunity to take control of these daunting encounters.

Market research

Usually you've got to look for the jobs before you get one. Even when I don't need to, knowing something about their business is a great way to get a company to pay attention to me.

Networking

Though I wouldn't want to be an inconsiderate twit about it, I could discover a great job opportunity from anybody I know. So if you know of an opening for a computer programmer, could you pretty please pass it on? Thanks!

Cover letters

I always write my own cover letters, and I can really struggle to get them right. Unlike bored individuals surfing LiveJournal, the person hiring for the job I want may not have limitless patience and compassion. So the conditions for reading cover letters compel brevity and a particular structure, but choosing the best material or how to express it can be quite challenging.

Interviews

Course, once I've entered the interview I can only hope my preparation's good enough. Paying attention is always the key: listening well to the other person, showing appropriate manners to strangers, and showing my engagement to the conversation. People want to know that I'm there and interested in their concerns, and if all the other stars have aligned then I have a pretty good chance.

Having fun

Playing Kingdom of Loathing may not directly get me a job. But while I'm writing a list of everything I'm doing so I end up with a job at the end without admitting that I'm going to be holding my PlayStation controller at some point, then I simply wouldn't be being honest with myself.

Organization

Like my self-discipline, this is another work in progress. This could be the subject of a whole other post, though I can say I'm entertaining some new ideas. Achieving better organization would help me avoid grievious errors and bolster my self-confidence.

Going online

I should fit the model of a good programmer in other respects too. In my mind, that would include raising my flag on the 'Net. I hope that people will find me through my postings here, and see a little better who I am. 'Publishing my findings' may even help other readers, or inspire them to contribute something useful I haven't tried.

So for about fifteen minutes I was seriously considering switching to Blogger. I think it was mainly a self-aggrandizement impulse. I've associated Blogger with the heavy hitters, and since I could now create a Blogger blog for free, I could now step on the stage of the serious writers of the Internet. "Oh, I am so ready for the big time!" For my first post I would rationalize the move, to explain why I was disappointed with LiveJournal. "I wasn't excited with its surfeit of social rigging", I was going to say (having double-checked the definition of 'surfeit'), but I tripped myself up when I returned to LJ for some illustrative examples. I clicked on my 'Friends' link, and in thirty seconds I knew I'd been a dork.

My friends have been writing about themselves on LiveJournal! One new friend is looking ahead to the Singapore Writers Festival. My pal Kelly can't wait for the holidays to be over. Peri downtown is still dangerous at her keyboard. Sue in Toronto has a new job! And Adam in the UK is still finding good anime to watch, which is always a very good thing

So long story short, I came up with a new topic for a blog post. All's well that ends well, right?

Oh, and as for the title of this post: once I put down some money for a full account, I already know the name I want to give this journal.

Or maybe it's just that I feel lonely. While I had that computer training situation last winter, I felt pretty good about myself and met a lot of people each day. When I left I intended to start volunteering again at the VOC, begin my T'ai Chi classes again, and drive into the city every Saturday for Jayce's lunch meets, to evade this depression hit. Maybe that could've worked if I'd started promptly. Certainly while I'm by myself its easier to dwell on self-criticism.

In the past I socialized a lot online, so it's plausible to expect I could make it happen again through blogging, but it's difficult to write not knowing who I'm writing for. Nobody may find it, but its not safe to consider this a private journal. Assuming its public I also would like this to gain the qualities which make a blog worth reading: concise, regular updates and interesting material. Perhaps I shouldn't worry too much yet about "interesting material"; my friendly readers will probably be satisfied to read about me or what I'm finding interesting. Concision and regularity are liable to be my greatest adversaries.

I began today by watching some new anime fansubs. Negima looks like a brainless, fun romantic comedy series. Lucky Star is just insane, particularly the Lucky Channel segment with super idol Minoru Shirashi. Claymore may turn out to be an interesting horror series, but if not it's got a hot tsundere protagonist. Unfortunately, Gurren Lagann made me aware that I'd lost AAS soft subtitle support in Mplayer (why hasn't Gentoo folded that in yet?), but I'm eager to see what Studio Gainax is up to this year. There's some brouhaha on the grapevine about episode 4 and 2ch. I can't wait.

My room has become distressingly disorderly; I might feel better about myself if I can sort it out today. There's so much shit I need to take care of, but this most of all.

It's been over seven months since I last posted to this blog. So much has happened, I can't summarize it. Not all at once. But I want to reach out to all my friends who may find this blog, particularly now that I have something important I want to relate. I'd like to try updating this place on a regular schedule too.

This could've been worse. I scraped a bumper this morning, parking at the computer lab. It looks like only minor damage, but any accident is an embarrassment and a hassle. But of how many thousands of parkings I've made in my lifetime, why should I have to scrape two cars in two years in the same lot? At least it wasn't the landlord's wife this time, only the office manager of the other charity in our building. Of course there were no injuries (I would've been going at, what, < 1 mph?), but we are switching our car insurance today. I hope that doesn't complicate things.

Next door to the vets' computer lab, a new coffeehouse has opened up where a hardware store had closed up a few months ago. I like coffee and coffeehouses, so I walked in two weeks ago to check it out. I saw shining wood floors, new coffee hardware and empty bookcases: a promising start. But that day I'd imposed on them to break a dollar for change without ordering a cup, so I felt obligated to revisit them promptly. Today I did, and quickly saw that this shop was something more than I'd presumed it was. Equal=Grounds is in fact a promising, GLBT-friendly coffeehouse. Four virile young servicemen sat in a painting facing the register, which had beside it a rainbow mousepad. A selection of gay interest VHS & DVD titles, including Priest, In & Out, and Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, stood on sale to the left of the counter. The bookshelves in the back were now stacked with titles & colors to appeal to its chosen customers. A beautiful hand carving of an elephant's snout hung signifigantly on a door jamb.

I wish I could say I was not distressed at all. I've had excellent gay and transexual friends, and empathize strongly with their interests in fair treatment & social acceptance. Of course they deserve a friendly community spot to dissect the last Image/Out film festival over a cup of java. So what for did I feel this urge to run & hide? I'm not a closet -phobe, am I? If these folks can put up with the dominant fixation's love notes to itself 90% of the time, surely I can put up with a few tasteful male nudes. Or is "putting up with" what I should expect of myself for enjoying a cup of coffee? But a community that so consciously values the personal discovery of pleasure wouldn't select against a sensitive straight guy, surely not? Aahh, I get so confused!

Psychoanalytically I suppose that I'm worried about my intellectual integrity, that I might be perceived as feigning PC-ness for points, as if one could only appreciate their contribution to the common culture if you were looking to hook up with them. Or maybe my own hangup got engaged by this scenario. You tell me.

Because I could not stop for Death -
He kindly stopped for me -
The Carriage held but just Ourselves -
And Immortality. ~~ Emily Dickinson

I've begun watching a new anime series, Simoun, a speculative yuri drama. While that isn't unusual for me, it is unusual for me to explain my impressions in writing. I have believed that I engage further with stories when I analyze them, rather than "reviewing" stories to persuade or dissuade others of their entertainment value. Preparing the notes for this post has already improved my appreciation for this beautiful and imaginative series.

A nation of craftsmen have begun an invasion by air of a "beautiful and peaceful" empire called Simulacrum. Their fleets of dirigibles and cramped & fragile fighters must travel between lightning clouds and a treacherous sea for their objective - to observe the empire's flying machines. The empire has literally revered this technology as the expression of God's will, but now uses them to repel the invading craftsmen. These machines are Simouns, gloriously nimble dervishes that paint mystic pattern-trails upon the sky, summoning great explosions. Simouns carry two pilot-priestesses, who provide the machine with its activating principle: their kiss. In other words, this anime provides a fantasy world where female homosexuality is not only accepted and validated, but is the key to the kingdom: Girls are kissing, while the world hangs in the balance!

But this isn't Ragnarock City: any shagging goes on discretely off camera, and Simoun has paid as much attention to creating a plausible, self-consistent world as it has to its characters' relationships. The technical and architectual design evokes a feminine, shoujo esthetic. The spinning disks from God which move the flying machines can also move the empire's locomotives. The persistence of the species in the absence of boys receives an explanation more artful than "they use cloning vats and genetic engineering".

Within Simulacrum, all people are born female, but individuals choose their ultimate gender when they reach maturity at 19. Tempus Patieum, the same mystical entity which empowers the Simouns, also transforms the teenage girls into adults when they visit its holy spring. However, only young love can activate the Simouns' power source. Mature human beings who've chosen their sex cannot fly them. Priestesses of the Simoun Simula, the organization which runs the empire's flying machines and now its defense, ordinarily would follow their society's expectations to visit the spring at 19, but can now delay to continue flying (for war, for freedom, for love).

So this is Simoun's premise; I cannot yet judge how well it uses it, having seen only the first three subtitled episodes. (Thank you, Sue, for the episode synopsises.) This anime could raise some of the Big Questions about War as it relates to Beauty. I expect it will provide a robust setting for fans' erotic fantasies (more so perhaps for women who love women, though I am not complaining). I've enjoyed the visual and musical presentation. The character designer has given the pilots varied & appealing appearances, and the adult women & men appear true to their ages. The environments look gorgeous, and the Simouns themselves appear as beautiful as this story requires. As for the music, Simoun uses some nice classical arrangements.

Now I'll voice a few questions that've been bugging me:

• The Call Tempus attaches cables between their ships and a crippled member of Call Cup's to converse with the surviving pilot, apparently because the empire does not have radio. But when they fight the craftsmen later, a group of Simoun execute the same Remergion pattern-trail in unison. How do they coordinate so accurately in battle?


• As Erie and Neville travel to the spring, Erie considers her choice, saying, "And if I don't choose to become a man, it'll limit what jobs I can do in the future." However, adult women have appeared to hold most political and military positions. So how, if I trust the translation, do the adult men enjoy greater vocational flexibility?


• Simulacrum has been referred to as 'the Imperial Nation', which sounds redundant and awkward to me. Is there a more accurate translation?

I expect I'll have more to say about Simoun after I've seen more of it, but not before I write about some of the other new anime I've seen.

I'm almost satisfied with the presentation here now. Black on white, with a little color (green!), without the wads of stale ornamentation I've observed on so many blogs. Then cool Verdana, with some extra line-spacing to let my type breathe. Aahhh...

Still, I wish I could set my own title. Though I'd learned to set the title on the browser's titlebar, I couldn't discover how to change the heading within the page, and I won't take one without the other. Unfortunately, it appears that cannot be set without a paid account. With the S1 style system, the LASTN_PAGE variable providing the title property cannot be overriden, and I couldn't discover a S2 layout which provided a customizable title. But perhaps I'm overlooking something?

I go into the computer lab again today. Yesterday morning I taught my regular student Cal some more algebra, and I taught basic computer skills to another vet in the afternoon. Now it's time to see what the new day brings.

I care about my writing. I choose words deliberately, and avoid needless expression. But knowing what would genuinely interest readers is often difficult, particularly in this context. What's interesting about my day, my interests, or my problems?

Perhaps that question is an appropriate focus for my blog. LJ provides for comments, so contribute feedback, please. A hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand ask for this: the typical human drive for contact. What is so interesting about my question? The answer seems to lie in the context.

I care about computers. I've known how to program for two decades now, and I've used the Internet for 16 years. The genial abstractions of computer science fascinate me; I'd like to return to college eventually to do graduate work. At present I teach at a computer lab & diagnosis PC's for local vets.

I care about games; both electronic and non. I watch anime, read manga, and appreciate other elements of Japanese culture such as soba noodles and Zen Buddhism. (My old alias, MacGuges, is reference to a favorite manga.)

I worry about the war and my country. I grew up here in America & can remember the warm feelings of pride I'd have on Flag Day. Yeah, I was born into the place founded on rational humanitarian principles! It saddens me what vengeance & duplicity has been done for "9/11", and I continue to donate to the Red Cross.

I enjoy conversation & fair argument; it's valuable to me to keep up my rhetorical chops. I value doubt over faith. Beliefs will happen, but confusion precedes discovery. We ought to make the most of such opportunities.

Hail Eris!