Month: April 2003

The Dante’s Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell – The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 – Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	High
Level 2 (Lustful)	Low
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Low
Level 6 – The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very High
Level 7 (Violent)	Low
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Moderate
Level 9 – Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante’s Inferno Hell Test

Man, I was shooting for Limbo. Oh well, I get to hang out in Dis with all my friends!

Yesterday, I drove up to the city for lunch at the Cheesecake factory, then to visit WonderCon. Well, I ended up waiting longer than I would have liked for people to show up, but at least I got some shopping done in Union Square beforehand.

At WonderCon, I saw a few people of interest: The folks at the Fanime Con booth, Susan Van Camp, who’s name was familiar to me because she drew art for some Magic cards, way back when. I also ran into Shaenon Garrity, who I totally freaked out by recognizing her. (Although I did mispronounce her name, and I did sort of know who she was because she was in the Cartoon Art Museum booth.) I also saw Judd Winick and Sergio Aragones from a distance, but I didn’t have anything for them to sign… why, oh why didn’t I bring stuff to sign?!

This morning, I finally got to play DDRMAX2, but my enjoyment of it was diminished by the pad I have… the stupid down arrow is going bad, and it’s a practically brand new Konami pad. Grrr…

Also, danpa just came by to pick up the last remnants of kken‘s stuff from the garage. He loaded up the plastic tubs and boxes, and we noticed a cooler. Well, I cautiously opened it, only to discover a substance that, a year and a half ago, was bread. Now I need to figure out how to dispose of this stuff…

Washington Mutual finally called me back today, after I was continuously pestering them. Well, it appears that I got approved for the loan… of course, now the issue becomes less “Can I buy the place?” and more “Should I buy the place?” We still haven’t found a third roommate, although desslok may possibly be interested (depending on how his situation plays out), but not for at least two months.

The real question it all boils down to is “can I afford to live without that extra $600/mo?” It would be tight. No more amazon.com packages of bunches of DVDs… No more buying video games that I don’t finish… No more buying every comic that looks interesting every week. I draw the line at lunches though. I refuse to take my lunch to work. That $5 * 20 days stays right there in the budget, thank you very much. Of course, even with a second roommate, there would still be less money flowing… of course, I could always tweak down my 401k temporarily or blow some stock options at less than optimal prices. The fact that next month is my last car payment helps things tremendously.

Another trick to this whole equation is exactly how much I would be paying for the house. Because there won’t be a selling agent, I can possibly talk down my landlord’s asking price. It wouldn’t amount to much in the monthly payment, but every little bit helps.

Once again, that listing is at http://www.craigslist.org/sby/roo/10600507.html. Holy crap, there’s a lot of listings on craigslist right now. This is so depressing.

On a completely unrelated note, I got DDRMAX2 in the mail today. I have an excuse to start DDRing again. Yay.

I have discovered a four-length loop of degrees of separation while browsing my friend’s friends page.

has both and listed as friends (and they her in return), both of whom are on my friends list, and they on mine.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled Monday.

Diagonally, because I’m not quite moving forward, but I’m not exactly staying in the same place…

Just called the loan broker again… the underwriting department was in “training” all last week, so they should have an answer either tomorrow or Monday. Yeah, right, I’ll believe it when they call.

So, last week I bemoaned about how my VCR wasn’t recording. Well, I figured out why it wasn’t… boneheaded little me forgot to press the last button (“Timer”) which puts the VCR into timed record mode. I tested it on Monday, and sure enough, it recorded. So Tuesday night, when I came home and found the tape wasn’t sitting at the beginning like the last two weeks, I went to sleep happy.

Wednesday night when I put the tape in and found that instead of recording 24 on channel 2, I had recorded the 9 o’clock news on channel 4, I wasn’t as happy. I swear that I had set the program to channel 2. Next week (yes, I’m a masochist, I know), I’ll get it right and set the VCR to channel 2 before I push the timer button.

If that doesn’t work… grrrr…. I’m tired of having to watch the encore showing on Monday nights at 11 on FX. I’m just glad that it exists, not many shows actually have a regular encore showing.

So, last night was the first night of Passover. Last weekend, I went to Mollie Stone’s (after meandering lost around the Stanford campus a bit), a kosher market in Palo Alto. Last year, I was all so excited to find the section at Andronico’s in Palo Alto; they had a whole end cap of various Passover foodstuffs, as opposed to one section of one shelf at the normal supermarkets (which were mostly unusable during Passover anyway). Well, I was blown away. There was an entire side of one aisle, floor to ceiling, and islands… filled with various kosher for Passover products. I stuck to stuff I was familiar with, but I could have gone so hog wild there. It was also slightly odd to see people running into people they knew in the aisle. The Jewish community in Palo Alto must be pretty small, even if it’s probably the largest in the Bay Area.

For two weeks in a row now, I’ve tried recording 24 on Tuesday night. Both times, I come home, and the VCR hasn’t done a thing. It’s very frustrating. The time is correct. The settings are right (I even used VCR Plus one time). It just refused to record. I’m going to have to do a test record while I’m there to watch it over the weekend…. very frustrating.

Want to go home. Want to go home… 4pm meeting? D’oh!

I hate that feeling when you feel like something is amiss, but you don’t know what. Argh.

Submitted… for your amusement.
The Courtesy Phone at Jiffy-Lube

So. Many. Hamsters.

So, I beat Zelda, all by myself. No, guides or FAQs or anything. Yay me.

April Fool’s Day has been pretty uneventful… just the typical stupid /. fake stories. I just got a bunch of CDs from the Land of the Rising Sun, including DDR Extreme and Final Fantasy: The Black Mages and some more Yoko Kanno stuff. I also got my GBA SP today. I just want to open and close it over and over, it’s so cool looking. Now I just need headphones for the dang thing (coming in the mail later this week).

Yes, we’re still looking for a roommate, although we keep getting warm bodied requests, none have gotten past the email stage.