Ouch Owie Ow

Went snowboarding this past weekend for the first time at Wilmot Mountain. Never realized how much fun it was to fall on my ass every couple of minutes. I think I got a whiplash from falling on the rope tow. All in the name of fun though. Hopefully I can continue going on some regular basis. I've been playing Project Gotham Racing 2 (XBOX) quite a bit lately. Find me online as propheci. Saw some good movies over winter break. 21 Grams and Gozu jump out as the favorites. And lastly, been reading Al Franken's book, ``Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.'' That is a damn good book. Funniest line so far?

``But, you know what, I don't want to get into a while partisan politics thing here. Not in this book, anyway. We'll leave that for my next book, I Fucking Hate Those Right-Wing Motherfuckers!, due out in October 2004.''

The semester is about to start and that means work towards a VLDB 2004 submission. Time is super-tight this time but I think I can pull it off. My class schedule for the spring semester has been updated.

Recent playlist favorite: Horse the Band - ``R. Borlax''.

Racing

So I got Project Gotham Racing 2 for the XBOX yesterday. I've put about 6 hours into it and it's possibly the best racing game ever. Now only if I didn't have this school thing... SIGMOD is due next Monday. My paper is pretty much done sans maybe one more performance graph and some more words. Looks like I won't be working until the last minute like last year's VLDB.

Currently listening to: Youth of Today - ``We're Not In This Alone''.

Hey Everybody! It's Bob and David!

I've been watching quite a bit of the Mr. Show DVDs I got recently. Amazing to see current-day famous comedians and sketches on there. I think in recent years, sketch comedy has become a dying art with SNL going down the tubes. MadTV has had some funny ones but they still lack the smart writing Mr. Show or Kids in the Hall had.

I recented the new Ninja Turtles game the other day. Boy is that boring. I played about an hour and just couldn't get myself to continue. The lack of a strong story and the repetitive button-mashing gets old, fast. But there are a few games to look forward to. True Crime comes out next week. Project Gotham Racing 2 is soon. And Fatal Frames 2 is coming out this month, too.

Current playlist: Khanate - "Things Viral". Hooray for doom metal!

Kalashnikov vs. Dragunov

Spent much of the past couple of days to beat Max Payne 2. I was a huge fan of the first one and this sequel didn't dissappoint. See myreactions to it and also the recently released Gamecube title Viewful Joe.

Mac OS X Panther came out last week. My pre-order should be getting here soon. I tried out some of the new features at the Micro Order Center in the Union the other day. Exposé has to be one of the coolest features ever. Seeing as how my Powerbook only has a 12" display, it's often a hassle to find an open application. The F9 key will be a godsend. Plus the spiffy OpenGL animations aren't too shabby to look at.

Circle Takes the Square

Been a busy couple of weeks. I'm working hard on my MS thesis: efficient OLAP without data cubing. Very excited about some current results. Just for my thesis, I've upgraded my computer to a full gigabyte of RAM. And just to accomodate my busy schedule, I've finally purchased aTiVo. Various parts of this site has been updated, included my reviews of recent games and recent music.

Crappola

So school's officially started and I feel nowhere ready for it. Recently, I've been playing a bit of Sega's World Series 2K3. It's pretty sweet but I'll probably stop once the football season gets started. Watched my Huskers beat them Cowboys silly yesterday. Now it's just 4 days until the start of the NFL! As far as football video games, Sega's NFL 2K3 looks very exciting with its 1st person view mode and whatnot so I'll probably check that out next week. And of course, who can forget about the upcoming Half-Life 2?

Looking back at the summer, I accomplished some of the things I wanted to do: finished Zelda, Metroid Fusion, etc; built a new computer; did a lot of research work. One thing I didn't do was release another record on my label. I think I'm about to give up since the 20+ demos I got were all mediocre to bad. For the fall semester, I will be doing a lot of research along the lines of closed frequent itemset mining and related topics. And I'll probably watch lots more Takashi Miike movies.

Blasphemy

Beat Silent Hill 3 last night. It was probably one of the most blasphemous games ever made. Gameplay was a little too heavy on the fighting and puzzles were pretty easy on normal mode. The storyline was not as confusing as Silent Hill 2, and it was engaging to the end. I felt the game was a little bit short and the ending was sort of crappy as well.

SA-X and Omega Metroid are Dead, Too

Hooray! Finished Metroid Fusion for the GBA. Man the final boss SA-X was tough. My hands were literally shaking as I killed it. Good game though; definitely better than Metroid Prime.

Ganondorf is Dead

I just beat The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker! Sure kicked Ganon's sorry arse. The final level with all its bosses and puzzles was very enjoyable. The game overall was also excellent although I'd still put Eternal Darkness as the best Gamecube game I've played. Anyway, now there's nothing to do but wait for Silent Hill 3! Well, maybe I'll finished Metroid Fusion or something.

Oceanic

And a new star is born! Got my new tower all setup now; you can check it out here. Took a while to get Gentoo running but things are finally smooth using the 2.4.21 Alan Cox kernel. Still got some work left on the DVD burner and Palm sync but those can wait. For now, my time is spent with Zelda and Metroid Fusion. Slowly making progress in both of them.