Busy busy busy. Things to do, people to see, professors to ignore.

I think the people at the Apple Store are jerking me around.

I got my first Powerbook a few weeks ago. After a couple of days, weird bright splotches started showing up on the screen; it looked like the rest of the screen was dirty and those were the only clean spots. (Yes, I cleaned it.) When I brought it back to the Apple Store where I bought it, they arranged for a replacement.

The replacement was even worse. Not only did it have the same splotches on the screen, but the Superdrive (DVD-R/CD-RW) was faulty and the hard drive kept making "I'm about to die" metal-clunking noises. Back to the Apple Store.

Anyway, I'm currently on my third Powerbook, and this one doesn't have the keyboard attached properly. (It's an aluminum Powerbook, so the keyboard isn't detachable.) The hard drive is clunking, and the screen has the same splotches! It's going back Thursday.

I still suck, but lately I feel I've been sucking less.

Learning tesuji is tricky, but the basic ones Tanaka-san taught me have already helped immensely. And I'm already giving some people handicap stones.

Yes, friends, I'm addicted to yet another game. Initial D. The best racing game since... well, ever.

The gameplay itself isn't groundbreaking, but it's extremely solid and very fun. The force-feedback feels almost like I'm in a real car.

The groundbreaking part, however, is the card system. You can buy a card from the machine (at the arcade I frequent, it's $1) that will save your race history and preferences, along with the customizations you've made to your car. This card is good for 50 races, after which time you can transfer the data to another card.

Oh, and did I mention the music? (No, I just checked.) Apparently, it gets its music from the anime of the same name. The genre is hard to describe... I've heard it called "eurobeat", I've heard it called "J-pop"... I just call it "damn good".

Programming Languages: Took the midterm Monday (13 Oct 2003). I think I did fairly well, except for one question on the written portion: "What do you know about scope and lifetime of variable give an example" (all [sic]). I defined the two terms, then wrote a skeleton Pascal source file and sketched each value for each variable.

Database Systems: Midterm here, as well, on Tuesday... same professor, same ambiguous question style, same general uselessness.

Operating Systems: Midterm (sensing a trend?) today (Wednesday). This was the most difficult, by far. Not only did we have to answer a number of questions, we also had to write two C programs by hand. At least they were fairly simple. (The test was open-book, open-notes, closed-laptop. I forgot my books and notes.)

A few of my friends make anime music videos. I've decided to give it a try. I already have an excellent song/video combination... granted, it's not anime, but it's animated nonetheless. I'll announce it when it's done and not a moment sooner.