Nonsequittal Rumblings

The IRC portion of mIRC-X network was shut down 3 days ago.
Now their BitTorrent tracker is not accepting any more new torrents.
Hrm… They sure are falling off of their glory fast.

This birthday felt quite a bit different from some recent ones. I got some birthday wishes on IRC and on some forums… those were nice. Thanks to those who sent me the happiness. But I’m not a total net resident, so that’s secondary. (No offense to those who sent me the happines…)
For one, I actually got a b-day card at work. That didn’t happen last year. I thought it wouls just pass quietly, unnoticed. What a surprise.
And of course, there’s that one person who is celebrating it with me (although from 900 miles away), and that makes a huge difference too.
No offence to anyone, but the biggest surprise was when her MOTHER called me to wish me a happy birthday. Now, that’s something I didn’t expect at all. It totally blew my mind. It was great. It was so sweet of her to do that. Whoa, it hasn’t been 3 months yet since I started dating Emily, and I’m already feeling like I have a 2nd family!

Oh, horror. Yet another virus e-mail flood attacks Cessna. I actually got a copy of those e-mails too. Now, what’s this virus? It’s Music Worm! Dammit! That’s first discovered in November 2000! That’s more than 3 years old, and it’s still floating around? And the damage gets so bad that the company’s IS department have to strip all the ZIP file attachments from all the messages that goes through their e-mail server?
I knew people were pretty ignorant. I knew that people in general are idiots… But what a reality shock. It’s way worse than I thought. No wonder Mr. Cook was so damn confident with his statement. I mean… come on! With the latest MyDoom attack that got highlighted all over the news just recently, people should’ve learned to take caution with e-mail attachments. And these e-mail messages comes out of blue, from the people you’re unaware of. And these e-mail look significantly different from regular business e-mail. If you have even 3 ounce of brain, it should trigger your caution alerm, and make you at least THINK before opening the attachment. For chrissake, the attachment is in zip format, so you have to open the zip file, then double click on the file inside of it to activate that damn worm! And it still works! Aarrrrrgh!

I was waken up from a nap yesterday with a few news. The final news that Emily told me on the phone was http://www.mircx.com/irc.html. I shook my head, tried to comprehend what I just heard, and I decided it’s something I should jump out of my bed for. Yup. Much chaos seems to be ruling the fansub community.
Froth Bite decided to move to Aniverse. It’s pretty stable, and it’s anime friendly network. Or it used to be at least. Aniverse suffered from large scale DDoS last year as well. So we weren’t too positive about this move. But what other choice do we have? We just didn’t know.
Well. What do you know? Aniverse is no longer big enough to support the large community of fansubbers anymore! Within couple hourse, aniverse went down from the overload. Whoa! So much for that idea! Onto a new home!
Xepheus told me, over MSN messenger, that there are fansubbers on EFnet, discussing what should be our new home. People listed EFnet and Undernet as possible candidates. Undernet got ditched pretty early on, then Rizon was brought to the table. Then, of course, much chaos still reigned the scene and all. Personally, I stayed out of the discussion, and proceeded to take care of dinner.
In the end, to me, EFnet was just too different from the environment we were used to. Rizon felt much more like home. It looked like a few groups were already starting to move to Rizon as well. So that’s where Froth Bite is sitting right now. The first day seems to be going well so far. We’ll see how good this network will hold us.
Of course, switching to new network brings whole new set of extra works – registering nicknames, registering channels, etc etc… Gee whiz, I hope we’ll never have to do this again. Seeing how big Rizon network is, it’s hard to imagine it would die so easily. Then again, once the giant network, DALnet almost died too. Anything can happen, I guess.

I just read the “about” section of Doom9. It talks about how the site came around to be. Just a simple reading. Mildly amusing. But, now I came to realization – you know, I have had my own struggles and discoveries and what not when it comes to my computer experience. That goes same for programming web sites and fansubbing, among others. If I had the patience to sit down and write down all those things I’ve found, and have in my head, and then publish it on the web, maybe some people can benefit from the tips I give out. Please, somebody, give me some patience and some time, so I can do that myself!
Actually, I once found some time to teach some people how to typeset. It was a lesson that was done over IRC. The log is still available. I want to do more of these types of guides. Of course, there are some questions to be answered at this point too. On the IRC network where fansubbing groups roam aruond, there are so many people who are skilled in such things as timing, typesetting, etc. Those functions are relatively easy to learn. Conversely, things like translating and encoding skills don’t come as easily. So there’s some inbalance of work force. And, even if the inbalance is taken care of, there are already abandunce of people out there! Why do we need more? Why do I need to teach people, so we’d create even more of these people?! I started subbing of Kita-he, thinking that it wouldn’t be as popular of a show as some other show of the season. Heh. Now look out there. There are 3 groups who are actively subbing it. Then why bother?
And that’s when I get really boggled. For me, it’s kinda fun. I’ve learned the fun of fansubbing. Translation is challenging. Other functions of fansubbing are fun too. The interactions are great. But… “Don’t fansub just because you want to be famous… Also, doing it to please the fans isnt a good reason either.” (http://atocha.mit.edu/nnl//t00t-01.html). Ah, great. How do we tell who falls under this category, and who don’t?
Then, back to my own dillemma. Who is to say my motivation isn’t get my famous? I don’t know… I just don’t know any more…
I just think… if people are more willing to go explore on their own, do their own homeworks, do the web search on their own, learn on their own, experiment, etc etc… all on their own, then the world would be a better place. I wouldn’t even need to write the guides and etc.

The taste of recovery is bittersweet. It’s good that I am feeling a lot better now. The fever is staying down, and I can actually eat food. I can walk around, and I can do stuff. I do feel somewhat exhausted still (since I still haven’t fully recovered), but it’s a lot better than being bound to bed.
And the bitter part – yes, I have to give up the freedom of staying home. As of today, I made back to work. Just for half day, but the taste of work is coming back to me. God, the stress is coming back to me. Ugh, how can anyone stand under such pressure and stress for long? No wonder I got sick.
I do enjoy the fact that I get to come home early, and spend the time as I wish. I need to relax and regain my energy as much as I can, while I can.

It’s been a while since I’ve last updated this journal, and there’s a reason to it. You might have guessed from the subject already. I had mono. For a few days, I was bedridden, with up to 103 degrees F fever. (39.5 degrees C) For a body that’s reaching 30 years of age, that’s quite a fever to take.
The funny thing is, while it was quite hard, I never thought to myself “I’m gonna die!” Quite often, though, I thought “This sucks!” My head hurts, I’m hot, and I’m cold. I get thirsty like crazy. I get hungry, but I can’t eat really. I can’t sleep at night. And yet I’m tired. Then, the next thing I know, I’m sweating like crazy. Then I notice my facial hair is getting out of control, but I have no energy to shave. This is insane!
It all started around my 3 last entries. Back then, I mentioned that I felt gloggy. Well, things just got worse and worse from that point on. I was finally able to see my doctor on Tuesday afternoon. He thought I either have strep throat or viral cold. If it’s cold type of stuff, there’s really not a cure for it – just rest a lot. He did a test for strep throat, and it turned out negative. So he perscribed me Tylenol #3, and sent me home.
Well, what do you know, it felt as if Tylenol made things worse. Maybe it’d take my headache away, but it made my fever go wild! I quickly called my doctor’s office back, only to find my doctor and his nurse are gone until a week later. I can’t deal with this craziness for another week, so I decided to go see another doctor in the same office. And that’s when I found I had a mono… And actually, by that time, I was already starting to feel better already… Wether if it’s mononucleosis, or simple cold, or influenza, the best medicine is good nutrition and good sleep. And that’s what I got!

…some scary quotes. We, the supporter of technologies can’t say “It’s not our fault that your computer got infected. It’s your own stupidity’s fault.”
I also think of these in the context of fansubbing too. The most common questions that fansubbing team get is “I can’t play your video properly!” Well, the latter quote is telling me that we can no longer say “It plays fine on our computer. The file conforms to the MPEG-4 standard just fine.” It’s now our responsibility to come up with a final product that works on anyone’s computer, no matter how messed up the users’ systems are? But as I read in Doom9 forum, it’s not a very easy task… The battle between the creator and the end user… the battle between the techies and the commoners… they never end…

I think the lunch I ate yesterday did more damage to me than good. I’m still feeling kind of sick. This is not good when I really need to think. If I can’t think I can’t do my job, and I end up doing other stuff, and that’ll cause me to not meet the deadlines, and… the effects goes on.
One of the things I do at times like this, is, of course, surf the web. One of my latest favorite page is someone else’s blog(?). I’m not sure if he calls it blog or anything like that. Faireal. He seems to be technically knowledgeble, interested in Anime and fansubbing, and… it’s just series of interesting reads every day.
I do wonder how many people are interested in an essay about Japanese anime fansubbing, written in Japanese. Anime fansubbing is there to do service for non-Japanese speaking audience, and it really makes me wonder, how many actual Japanese really appreciate his view.
Nonetheless, the essay dated yesterday was very interesting to me, along with the other fansub related essay. I agree with what the author has to say about the fansub scene. At the same time, I notice myself falling into one of those latest comer fansubber – emphesis on speed, emphesis on latest anime, and sub-per quality translation. I mean, since I speak both Japanese and English at near native level (I was born and riased for 15 years in Japan with Japanese parents, then moved to United States 15 years ago). So I want to believe that my job usually is at least on acceptable level. But there are times that I say “Oh, what the heck, I have no idea what the character is saying exactly, so let’s just make some guess.” And, of course, being away from a culture for 15 years is pretty significant. It’s enough not to be able to catch up with latest pop-culture changes. And age of 15 was still young to really learn all there is to Japan. For example, I wouldn’t have been able to catch on to the reference to Tai fish – sea bream – used in more or less metaphorical senses in such scene.

I hate deadlines. I can’t deal with them very well. But if I work in a group, the existence of deadlines are ineviable, especially in a corporate environment.
I have one deadline in the middle of the week, and I have couple more next week. And all of these are programming deadlines. You know, how am I supposed to know that I’ll be done with my programming by certain date? Especially if I am to expect any unexpected? Hrm…