Reid's Journal

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Happy Easter everybody! Hope you've all been having a good day so far.

Since the last time I wrote in here, my friends have all gotten to be quite busy. My good pal Kimo and his wife Jenny just had a baby boy last week, so he'll be focused on his son for quite a long while. My friend Sterling seems constantly busy with work and the innumerable organizations that he belongs to. Even my friend Steve is busy working and attending classes.

As a result of all this, I'm spending many more weekends not going out. That's actually fine by me for the most part, but this means I really have to find other things to do, since these situations are unlikely to change anytime in the near future. Heck, I should probably be spending more time writing in here; my life isn't terribly exciting, but I can always blab about things I've seen and read.

Still, I've been able to spend at least some time with my friends; I had dinner and hung out with Steve last night and had breakfast and hung out with Sterling this morning. I couldn't hang out with either of them too long, but I hadn't seen either of them in person for weeks so it was way better than nothing.

Just checking in
I've written absolutely jack in this journal for months now, even though I've had numerous things to talk about. I thought I should write a little right now because I just ducked back into LJ land after a long while and left a few comments on several other journals. Right now, all I really have the time to say is that this past month has been filled with far more good, bad, and irritating situations than any November/late October than I can ever remember. Details to come later...

On a highly disturbing note...
I strongly recommend checking out this piece on the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling on the extension of "eminent domain."

http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/06/23/scotus.property.ap/index.html

To this I say, no, non, nein, nyet, iie! And also, pardon my French, merde!

The weird world of hybrids
Just stumbled across a fascinating section on hybrid animals in the Newsweek sub-section of msnbc.com. The Sea Life Park wholphin is among the unusual creatures in the gallery. Here is the link:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7995634/

I really didn't think some of these animals were possible.

A long strange Spring
In the past three months, I've experienced an unusual amount of "firsts." It's a bit too long to get into detail right now, but I'll at least rattle them off: The firsts for me are 1) Going to my first anime convention 2) Serving on a jury 3) Gambling in Las Vegas and seeing a Vegas show & 4) Being let down by every single movie I have been itching to see so far (yeah this doesn't really fit, but this has never happened to me before.) All this plus some assorted ramblings to come later on. And yes, I realize I've been a tad too quiet, but we Tanuki are an unpredictable bunch after all.

Weird...
I had a rather strange experience watching "Next Stop Discovery" on KIKU about an hour or so ago. In case you're wondering what I'm talking about, "Next Stop Discovery" is a half-hour Japanese travel show that goes to various places and samples some of the more interesting things in said places. They have several hosts who do shows in rotation.

On this particular show, they were visiting Hawaii. The host/traveler of this particular show, one Mr. Atou, went to various locations in and around Oahu. I didn't catch the first few minutes, but apparently he went to an early morning fish buyer's market. Then he went to Kamaka Ukulele and was shown around by Hawaii's own Ukulele virtuoso, Jake Shimabukuro. Jake played Mr. Atou some music on his Ukulele when they were finished with the tour.

After seeing Kamaka Ukulele, Mr. Atou headed up to the North Shore via the Bus. Once there, he ate a gigantic avocado covered hamburger in Haleiwa and poked around Sunset Beach. While at Sunset Beach he met with Christian Lassen, a world famous painter who lives and works here. Christian showed Mr. Atou some of the paintings he was working on and showed him around his house.

Lastly, Mr. Atou caught the Bus to Waikiki and wandered around the beach a little. Then, he headed to Ala Moana and visited a store which sells some kind of Japanese style carry bags (I've seen them before but I have absolutely no idea what they're called.) After that, the show was pretty much over. Judging from the Christmas decorations visible at Ala Moana, they must have filmed this show three months ago.

Watching this show just seemed surreal to me for several reasons. First, Japanese travel shows (or at least the ones I've seen) don't just visit locations and tell you about them; the hosts pretend as if they just stumbled upon them right then and there. Frankly, I don't understand why they do that.

Second, during the course of the show, Mr. Atou could only speak a tiny bit of English to the locals around him and virtually nobody spoke to him in any Japanese. It was rather apparent, though, that there was an interpreter with them, because in spite of the gigantic language barrier, Mr. Atou somehow managed to get the answers to all the questions he had. Said interpreter, of course, never appeared on-screen. I suppose they kept the interpreter off-screen in order to enhance the "stranger in a strange land" vibe they had going in the show. However, keeping the interpreter off-screen made Mr. Atou look a bit like a goofy bumbler wandering around from place to place.

Lastly, it's always kind of strange when you see outside media profiling the place you live in. I guess that’s just because they have a different take on some things than you do and want to look at different things than you would. I must admit, though, I was kind of surprised that they didn’t show any other Japanese visitors walking around the places they were visiting; I would of thought there'd at least been few walking around in the background.

Media, media, media
Most of my life of late has been more of the same old same old, so I'm going to write some small blurbs about the more interesting bits of media I've seen recently.

Saw the movie Steamboy at Varsity on Saturday. It was an entertaining movie and I thought it made its' point about not using science to advance weapons technology effectively. I have to admit though, that the reviewers were right when they said it kept making the point again, and again, and again. Still, the steam-punk version of Victorian Great Britain was fascinating and you do have to love a movie that has a spoiled American girl named Scarlett O'Hara as one of the main characters.

Spent part of Sunday night at Steve's house watching episodes of Maison Ikkoku on DVD. Though the show is sometimes on the slow side and poor Godai seems constantly at the mercy of his troublesome neighbors, it has proven quite fun to watch so far. I really ought to thank Steve for introducing me to yet another cool anime series.

Watched "Digging for the Truth" on the History channel tonight. This time around they were focused on the Nazca Lines in Peru and were trying to find the most reasonable explanation as to why the Nazca Indians made the lines in the first place. The most plausible theory they came up with was that the lines were used as the site of various important religious ceremonies to honor the Nazca's gods. The large symbols, as the theory goes, are representations of the Nazca gods and were meant to be like a cosmic billboard that declared that the Nazca had not forgotten about the gods and drew the gods' attention and favor upon the Nazca while they performed their sacred rituals. This is technically still speculation, but it seemed pretty well founded to me, especially when they talked about an Indian nation that made symbols of their own by the Colorado river and did pretty much what they now think the Nazca did. On a side note, apparently the Nazca also made aqueducts that channeled what little rainfall falls on the Nazca plains into reservoirs that are still being used to irrigate crops today.

So ends another uneven entry :)

The last of 2004 and the start of 2005
The past few weeks were pretty good to me. I had a nice if somewhat mundane Christmas and New Year's with the high point being my family's annual holiday parties. There weren't as many of my relatives at the parties, though, in no small part due to the fact that some of my cousins spent one or both of the holiday's with their in-laws or on the mainland somewhere. Without them around, things just weren't quite as lively or fun as they used to be. But like I said last time I wrote in here, the holiday season in general just isn't as much fun for me as it used to be.

Also, I had some vacation days I needed to use before the end of January, so I opted to take last week off. Except for a few chores, I took it easy and had some peaceful fun at home; not really anything I couldn't do on a given weekend. The only unusual thing about last week was the "pre-wedding" party for my friend Kimo and his fiancée Jenny. Technically speaking it was supposed to be Kimo's "bachelor party" but technically, Kimo and Jenny have been husband and wife in all but name for more than a year, so he's not really a "bachelor." Also, Jenny brought him along to her "bachelorette party" so Kimo figured Jenny should come to his party. Oh, and in case any of you are wondering, there were none of the "stereotypical" things associated with such parties, not even alcohol; it was just dinner at Dixie Grill and some network computer game playing at Superconnected by the Hungry Lion. Pretty tame stuff, but none of the six of us at the party had done any network gaming for a while, so it was a fun evening.

On a slight sidebar, I briefly saw actor Daniel Dae Kim of "Lost" at Dixie Grill. He just popped in, got a to-go menu, and popped right back out. I mention this cameo appearance because that was the first time I've seen any actor of any of the shows that are/were filming here in public.

Some decidely more serious stuff to come later.

It's the holiday season...
but oddly enough, it doesn't seem all that festive to me. It's been like this for me ever since I graduated from college a couple of years back; I dunno, maybe not having a two week holiday break goes a long way to killing some of that Christmas/New Years cheer. Still, I like that the weather conditions are more like how the winter months were when I was a kid: colder and with drier air as opposed to hot and slightly muggy like it was for part of the late 90's and early 00's.

I haven't been able to do much with my friends lately; they've all been busy with work or some other such thing the past couple of weekends. In fact, the last really fun thing we all did together was see "The Incredibles" the week before Thanksgiving. But, we're planning to see all the Christmas decorations at Honolulu Hale this Saturday, so at least that's something.

Other than that, I've been fleshing out and writing down elements of a fantasy story I've been kicking around in my head for a while. I'd kinda been lazy about actually working on it, but I promised Kimo I'd have at least a couple dozen pages ready by New Year's. Writing fantasy can be irritating at times; while you can make up any sort of land which can have rules of operation that would not work anywhere in the real world, you also have to make up decent sounding names, semi-realistic cultures, and a whole lot of other things without making it sound too derivative.

I've also been watching a lot of fan-subbed episodes of various anime that are not licensed to any U.S. companies yet. In particular, I've been watching a lot of episodes of Naruto and I've gotten quite addicted. I just wonder when these fans find the time to translate and attach sub-titles to all these shows.

More stuff later.

A special week for credit unions
Today is International Credit Union Day which is part of a several day long celebration called Credit Union Week. To explain what Credit Union Week is, I've cut out part of an e-mail a co-worker sent me at the beginning of the week.

"...So what happens during Credit Union Week and why do we celebrate it?

Briefly, Credit Unions thrive not only in the U.S. but also in foreign countries. In fact, the first Credit Union was formed in Germany and the concept (financial cooperatives) slowly worked its way to the U.S. in the early 1900's. Credit Unions in the U.S., because of our "not-for-profit" status, are exempt from paying real property taxes. As a result, large "for profit" financial institutions such as banks, continue to attack Credit Union tax exemption status year after year to no avail.....thus far. Because of our unique structure having 1) a "volunteer only-no compensation" Board of Directors and Committees, 2) the fact that the Credit Unions residual income are returned back to the entire membership in the form of dividends, and 3) democratically elected members of the Board of Directors are chosen by the members of the Credit Union with each member having only one vote, the Credit Union ultimately controls it's own destiny and it's members become "part-owners" of the Credit Union with their $100 minimum required pledge in the share (savings) account. The general population as a whole benefits from Credit Unions, for without Credit Union low loan rates and high interest/dividend rates, who knows how outrageous the rates would be at other "for-profit" financial institutions. Credit Unions are competition for the banks, savings and loans and other financial services organizations thus forcing their rates to stay competitive.

So as you can see, Credit Unions have lots to celebrate year after year. The mere fact that we are still in existence is much to celebrate. That is why many Credit Unions show their appreciation to (their) members by having fun and educational in-house activities with games, prizes, give-aways and raffles (for credit union week) just to name a few..."

Credit unions are, in fact, going to be much more competitive for customers than my co-worker stated. It used to be that credit unions were almost the exclusive domain of the employees (or relatives of the said employees) of certain companies and branches of government. Over the past few years, though, many credit unions have thrown open their membership doors. No longer does someone need to be, say, an employee of the city of San Francisco to belong to the San Francisco City employees credit union. Basically, if this trend continues, credit unions will end up expanding greatly and will start to seriously cut into the customer base of many banks. Well, maybe not that seriously, since a lot of people have accounts at both credit unions and banks. Nonetheless, it will be an awfully competative market...

The Silence, the silence
Geez, I can't believe I haven't written in here since May. Oddly enough, the past couple of months have provided me with a lot of subject material (unlike most of the past couple of years) but I just haven't felt like writing. Expect some of the random thoughts to trickle in before years end.

Let's start off with my day at work. The credit union I work at is making preparations for some major changes in the coming months. Among these changes is the way we process the deposits we receive from our ATMs. These processing alterations are largely due to changes at the procesing/payment company that we send our processed checks to. To put it simply, these changes now result in us having to learn a whole new way to get our checks ready to be sent to said processing/payment company. And, just this morning, my boss told me that the new procedures were taking effect as of today (pretty sudden huh?)

This wasn't good news to me, as I was already trying to finish up some work I had leftover from Monday and because the person who usually works with me on deposits was out for the day. Learning the new procedures didn't turn out to be easy, especially since my boss wasn't entirely sure of what to do in certain areas either. However, after a lot of work and a lot of stress, I finally managed to figure out the procedures and get caught up with my work. Just a few minutes after I did this, our accounting manager told me that my boss had mixed up some dates and that the new procedures didn't actually go into effect until next Monday. In other words, I got stressed out for nothing.

Still, I had to laugh; the whole thing was like a scene straight out of a movie. Plus, I can't really blame my boss; she is a really nice person and she is very busy most of the time so a mix-up or two should be expected. Besides, I had learn the new procedures soon enough anyway.

More stuff later.

Too soon for Angel
As all you may or may not have noticed, I've gotten to be pretty lazy when it comes to LiveJournal, as evidenced by the fact that I've written in here only sporadically for a long time. I'll try to write in here more, but I can't really tell you how often you'll see something from me as my life is still pretty uneventful.

One event that I'm both looking forward to and dreading the series final of Angel tonight; looking forward because it will probably be well written and dramatic and dreading it because I've heard that it is very brutal, even by Joss Whedon's standards. Like most fans, I'm rather irked that the show is being axed when it is doing pretty well critically and commercially (i.e. being well written and decently watched.) Plus, as a result of the premature axing, we probably won't get to see things wrapped up quite as well as they would if the show were coming to a planned end, *grumble.* I guess we'll just have to see how it ends at eight (*hint hint* Lisa :) )

Speaking of mass media, I've recently been introduced to a delightful web-based comic/manga called Megatokyo, which I'll talk about more in a day or two. Of course, considering I’m in Kitsy’s friend list, more than a few of you probably know what I’m talking about already. More to come later.

Back in the saddle again
Hi everybody. It's been quite a while since your friendly neighborhood badger poked his head in here so forgive me if I'm not quite up to speed about what's been going on; I hope you're all doing well.

As for me, I'm doing pretty good right now. I quit my old job at the jewelry company back in late January and I now work at a credit union. I'd tell you which one, but some of the things I've been reading/seeing the past few months have made me a bit leery of putting such specifics in my entries (the unlocked ones anyway.) I'm pretty happy doing what I do now because it has a lot more promotion potential, actually uses some of my educational background, and pays about thirty percent more than my old job did. Strictly speaking I'm still not getting paid that much, but at least I now make a decent wage.

Not much has changed for me socially, though; I'm more or less still hanging around the same bunch of people. I've found myself playing video games a lot lately, both at home and in the company of my friends. Specifically, I've been playing a lot of Soul Caliber II on Kimo's Gamecube and doing pretty good at it too; it seems to be the one fighting game I actually am good at. We've also been going to see some rather unusual movies like Bubba Ho-Tep and The Triplets of Belleville, since the more mainstream stuff has been largely sucky (too bad Restaurant Row stopped being an indie movie house a few months back...)

Anyways, much more blathering will be showing up after I catch up on the journals.

P.S. Lisa, I don't know if you've been watching Angel at all lately, but if you want to see this past week's episode, tune in to KFVE at 4 o'clock tomorrow.

LiveJournal lethargy
Yup, back after ANOTHER long break from LJ land. Before I get with the usual random info dumping, I've got a confession to make; I've never really been much of a journal writer. When I started this journal almost two years ago, I knew I was doing something contrary to my nature. It's not that I don't like talking about what I've been doing, it's just that writing it down doesn't appeal to me that much. I suppose that's largely because if I’m keeping a record of my activities, I like it to be as detailed and accurate as possible which is due to my perfectionist nature. That, of course, leads to far less writing than there should be. Perhaps I should start treating this thing less like an actual journal and more like a temporarily one-sided conversation.

Anyway, on with the show. I’ve been working a lot lately, due largely to the fact that Christmas is coming up and my company has rushing to get merchandise into the stores. After about ten months with the company, I’ve come to the realization that the jewelry business (and retail in general) is not for me. I never cared much about jewelry to begin with and tack on countless weekend hours, pay insufficient to live on, and low promotion potential, and you’ve got one sorry excuse for a job. Needless to say, I’m leaving as soon as I can find another job.

There have been some changes on the personal front. My dog Snoopy has come down with something called Cushing’s disease. Basically that involves a growth on his pituitary gland which causes him to feel hungry or thirsty more than he should and also makes him want to relieve himself more often too. This isn’t a life-threatening condition, but it is chronic and incurable and the best my family can do give him medicine to treat the condition. We haven’t started giving him the medicine yet though, because he was recovering from an operation to drain excessive fluid from his left ear-flap and to remove a cyst from his right shoulder until a week or two ago. Curiously enough, both of the excessive fluid and the cyst showed up only a day or two after he had been diagnosed with the Cushing’s disease. This is all kind of new for us, since Snoopy has never had any serious health issues before, but he is more than nine years old now, so I guess this kind of stuff should be expected.

I’ve been hanging out with Kimo and Sterling as I have been for ages, but now I also hang out with Kimo’s cousin Steven. Steven moved from the mainland around June and he doesn’t really know anyone here except family, so he’s been hanging out with us. He’s a pretty cool and smart guy and he and I share a lot of common interests, like anime and video/computer games. Plus, he’s staying in Kailua, so he and I have hung out whenever Kimo and Sterling haven’t been available. Lately we’ve been hanging out and playing Castlevania: Lament of Innocence on his Playstation 2.

On a last note, the weather’s been unusually rainy and cool lately. From Saturday to Monday, it was very overcast and raining heavily on the whole island, which is something I haven’t seen happen in some while. From Tuesday till now the central and leeward sides have been sunny and dry, but the windward side has still been experiencing complete cloud cover and moderate to heavy rain; I haven’t seen the sun from my house since Friday! The Koolaus themselves have been so dark and foggy that they remind me of San Francisco in mid-August. But, at least we’re getting much needed rain around here.

That all being said, I hope you guys are doing okay and that you all have a good rest of the week.

-Reid

Ye gods...
It's been forever since I last wrote anything in here. Lots and lots of random things to blather on about; way too much to put in here right now. In case anyone is wondering, I haven't exactly been absent from LJ land, just been doing a lot of lurking and almost no talking. Kinda reminds me of my high school days.

Among the things I've been doing is giving serious thought to making major changes in my life. If the past few months are any indication, the work-a-day world (at least as I'm currently living it) will drive me crazy in a few short years. Either that or ruin my eyesight (but that's something I'll get into later.) I have to somehow find a job that I'll find enjoyable and fulfilling. Of course, those kinds of jobs usually require a LOT more work than your average job, but its way better than being in a job you don't like.

In tandem with that, I have also set a goal to actually write out a lot of the story ideas I have in my mind. I'm such a lazy slob when it comes to my stories; I have numerous ideas floating around in my head, some of which are years old. I've plotted them out, revised them and tinkered with them ad infinitum, but I never get around to writing them down; it’s high time I did.

More blathering to come later.

What I've been up to, part 1
Hi there happy campers, it’s your friendly neighborhood badger again and I’ve finally got enough time to tell you all about some of the things that have been happening to me over the many months since I last wrote a substantive journal about myself. ( Cut tagged for friends list convenience )

D'ooooh!
Mr. English major just made some grammatical errors on his entry!

D'oh!
I just took a look at my journal and realized that I posted my episode airing times entry here instead of on the buffyinhawaii community. Oh well...

I'm going have a new entry with real substance soon; mostly about my job. It's taking a while because I tend to be a perfectionist when it comes to talking about events that actually occurred. Being an english major sucks at times like this because you always want to word your statements just right. Naturally that leads to delays, followed by procrastination, and sometimes outright quitting. I'm so much faster when I'm just writing stuff off the top of my head like this.

Tick, tock...
The season finale of Angel will be on at 8:00pm Wednesday. Lilah Morgan has returned from the dead with an offer Angel and Co. may not be able to refuse: positions of power within Wolfram and Hart.

The third to last episode of Buffy will be on at 2:00pm Saturday. Buffy pursues some hunches on her own while Faith and the others decide to go on the offensive against Caleb and the First Evil.

A brief message
I'm still alive and I haven't forgotten about my friends in LiveJournal land either. I'll be writting about some of the things that have been going on with me for the past few months in a bunch of posts coming in the next couple of weeks. As for what's been going on with me most recently, I've mostly been busy with work, although I did have fun at the LiveJournal meetup last night (only my second one too!) Details on that later.