I’ve been promising this for awhile.

Season’s Greetings, and a Happy New Year.

I have survived Christmas quite nicely. I gave and received some nice presents. I visited my family – mom, dad, my two brothers, a nice selection of aunts, uncles, and cousins, my surviving grandparents, and my nephew. All and all I had a very good time.

With that out of the way I have, of late, been thinking about how I became a fan of anime. I’m not really sure when I first heard about anime. I’m guessing it was likely in the late 1980s probably while I was in junior high (middle school if you prefer). My first exposure to anime came almost exclusively through movies. A showing of Vampire Hunter D I randomly ran across on cable is very likely the first anime I ever watched (or at least the first anime I ever watched that I consciously knew was anime). In high school, and through my first year or so in college I made a small effort to track down some more anime. I watched Ghost in the Shell, Akira, Ninja Scroll, and The Professional: Golgo 13 to name a few, or more accurately to name the ones that I can remember. I know there were a few other movies, but they were all pretty bad, and I remember little beyond them being pretty bad.

The first series I ever watched was Sailor Moon (yes even before I knew what it was I had a weakness for shōjo). Interesting thing about Sailor Moon, to this day I would swear to you that I watched Sailor Moon (1st season, and the first part of the 2nd season) while I was in high school, on Wednesdays, at my grandparent’s house, on the USA Network, while waiting to go to CCD (also know as catechism). However every bit of information I could find about the North American broadcast history of Sailor Moon would say I am dead wrong. Apparently the show didn’t air in North America until August of 1995. In August 1995 I was getting ready for my second year of college. And apparently the show didn’t appear on the USA Network until 1997. All of this leads me to wonder just when did I watch this show, because I know I had watched most of the first season (and the first part of season 2) before it started airing on the Cartoon Network in 1998. Ultimately it doesn’t matter when and where I watched it, only that I did.

A little side note here. CCD, or Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (until I looked that up today on Wikipedia I didn’t know what it stood for either) is basically Roman Catholic Sunday school, expect in my home town at least, it takes place on Wednesdays during the school year (I think this may be true of all of South Dakota, but who knows). From 1st through 6th after classes let out every grade every school kid who was being raised catholic would make their way from the elementary school over to the local Catholic Church for one hour of religious lessons. CCD would start about 30 minutes after school ended. The 7th – 12th graders had CCD in the evening (at 7pm if I recall correctly).

The first real blossoming of my interest can be traced to Cartoon Network (first Toonami, and later Adult Swim), and my friend Tim. In the late 1990s as Cartoon Network’s Toonami transitioned from showing old Hanna-Barbera action cartoons (and the like) to more anime my interest grew with the increased offerings. I started taking note of things like Outlaw Star, Big O, and even Dragon Ball Z. For me the thing that really sealed my fate was the 2001 premier of Adult Swim in general and Cowboy Bebop in particular.

A second side note: Cowboy Bebop is an excellent series to use when introducing somebody to anime. The show just looks great with excellent production values, and wonderful animation. Its characters and stories are interesting. The soundtrack is quite amazing. Perhaps the best feature to recommend using it as an introductory anime is the fact its English dub is really very good. Subtitles can take a person awhile to get used to, and even longer to appreciate, and the English dubs of most anime runs from serviceable to questionable, to downright bad, which makes Cowboy Bebop’s English dub stand out all the more.

A third side note: Late 2001, early January of 2002 marks the time I obtained the Big Eyes, Small Mouth RPG. In addition to remaining one of my all time favorite RPGs the book is the first anime/manga related merchandise I ever bought. The list of sample anime with genre contained within also provided the impetus for my first purchase of any anime which was the Ah My Goddess! OVAs (still the only anime I ever purchased on VHS).

With Cartoon Network stoking the fires what I really needed was a large source of anime I could watch. Enter my friend Tim. Tim is a firm believer in spreading the joy of things he likes from Babylon 5 to anime. As luck would have it Tim was ready to start showing another group of newbies some anime, just as I was a newbie in search of some anime. He started us off with Fushigi Yuugi, then moved on to (not sure of the exact order) Neon Genesis Evangelion, Trigun, Bastard!!, and Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure. From here I start purchasing both anime and manga with some regularity.

The years of 2002 and 2003 saw a gradual, but steady growth in both my anime and manga collections. I continued to watch Adult Swim, and also slowly started the process of learning how to track down information about anime on my own. Either 2002 or 2003 also saw the founding of an anime club at the local university by a guy I was gaming with. I had been out of school since 1999, and my work schedule kept me from attending with much regularity, but the little I did attend resulted in me being introduced to two things: fansubs in general, and Azumanga Daioh in particular. This introduction to Azumanga was in fact a bit of serendipity because the club was scheduled to start showing Love Hina (I had been buying the manga and wanted to see how the anime compared), but for whatever reason I got Azumanga Daioh instead.

Fansubs, short for fan-subtitled, are copies of a foreign language movie, TV show, or OVA that have been subtitled into another language by a group of fans. Generally speaking fansubs are most closely associated with anime. It is also worth noting fansubs are anyway you look at it illegal. Fansub groups are distributing copyrighted material without the consent of the copyright holder. Many if not most fansubbers follow a basic set of ethics which include don’t sell or rent fansubs for a profit, only fansub and distribute titles that aren’t licensed for domestic distribution, cease distributing a fansub once it becomes licensed, and if you like a title purchase it once it becomes domestically available. For whatever it is worth my experienced with Azumanga Daioh worked exactly as intended I purchased both the anime and the manga as they became available.

In the fall of 2004 I was introduced to Dan. He was one of my upstairs neighbors in the duplex I was living in at the time. He also took over the reigns of the local anime club. Before I even knew him all that well he started dropping off whatever anime the club had watched the previous week for my viewing enjoyment, this lead to me venturing up stairs to visit him and watch more anime, all of which lead to what I like to refer to as the CLAMPathon. Courtesy of Dan and the anime club I had just finished watching Chobits, Dan and I had started in on Card Captor Sakura, and while we paused for Dan to purchase more of Card Captor, we consumed Angelic Layer. We started Angelic Layer on a Sunday evening, I sure Dan only intended to watch a few episodes, 16 episodes and 6+ hours later I stumbled back downstairs cursing the fact I had to be at work at 6:30am the next day. We ripped through the final 10 episodes the next day (despite plans to again only watch a few episodes a night until finished). We finished Card Captor Sakura in pretty short order once Dan returned from winter break (having purchased the remaining disks). Card Captor Sakura marks the first, but certainly not the only, series that I watched with Dan only to go on and buy for myself.

The end of 2004 also saw an important development in my evolution as an anime fanboy. I made the seemingly spontaneous switch from preferring to watch anime dubbed, to preferring to watch anime subtitled. I cannot really point to any event leading to the switch; it was more of an epiphany. I really only disliked subtitles at the very beginning of my anime watching experience, I pretty quickly learned not to mind them, and generally when watching anime with other people I went with whatever they liked, but when watching anime by myself I’d go with the English dub. Well around the time of the CLAMPathon (probably while watching Chobits, or at least some anime club title loaned to me by Dan) I found myself watching some anime by myself when I realized I’d been watching it subtitled. So I switched over to the English dub, but didn’t make it through three lines of dialogue, before switching back to the subtitle. I started thinking about it, and I realized I’d been watching the subtitles for all of the titles that Dan had loaned me. I did some experimentation, and put in some random anime I owned switching back and forth between the English dub, and the original Japanese track with subtitles. It didn’t take long to realize I preferred the subtitled version. In addition from sparing me from the sometimes painful world of English dubs, this had the effect of temporarily “doubling” my anime collection as I started the process of watching the subtitled version of almost every anime I owned.

Throughout 2005 I naturally continued to watch anime both on my own, and with Dan. I continued expanding my collection of anime and manga. I even managed (but only rarely) to introduce Dan to a title or two. I also followed the logical fanboy progression and started buying and listening to anime soundtracks. Anime related merchandise (posters, wall scrolls, and the like) quickly followed on the heels of the soundtracks.

The final piece of the puzzle came at the end of summer in 2006 when I purchased a computer. I got the computer in August, and spent that month getting it set up the way I like it. And my anime related activities with it were basically limited to the obscene amounts of anime wallpapers I downloaded. September and October were given over mainly to City of Heroes (although ripping my CDs onto the computer, and playing with iTunes occupied a fair amount of time as well). By November I was done playing around and ready to start using my computer (and broadband connection) to feed my anime habit. And thus fansubs reenter the picture. Fansubs hadn’t really ever left the picture, it’s just that prior to owning my own computer, I needed somebody to burn the fansub onto a CD, loan that CD to me, then I needed to make a trip to a computer lab on campus, and remember to bring the fansub, and remember to bring some headphones. That is how I watched most of the Azumanga Daioh fansubs (except for the episodes I watched at anime club), the first season of Negima, and a few episodes of a number of other series, but generally it was an event that didn’t happen very frequently. I was now able to obtain my own copies of fansubs, and watch them from the convenience of my own home. I haven’t looked back (as evident by recent entries in this blog).

Feeling Minnesota

Just a brief post tonight:
I am now officially a Minnesotan. Or at least I now have a valid Minnesota Driver's License. Honestly I've been a Minnesotan for some time, aside from three summers and one spring, I've lived in Minnesota since the fall of 1994, I've been paying Minnesota income tax since then, I've been voting in Minnesota since 1996 (to be fair I could have voted in Minnesota in 1994, but I cast an absentee ballot in my native South Dakota, because my father was running for a county office – he didn't win), and I haven't been a college student since 1999. So at the vary least I think you have to give me credit for being a Minnesotan since the second half of 1999, but now I feel all bureaucratically correct. I guess if I want to match the stereotype I'll have to start being nicer to people now.
I’m sure you are not surprised to hear I’ve been watching lots of anime, but I'm feeling a bit tired tonight so that will have to wait for another post. However I'll say this much. I finally caved in and watched Eureka Seven from where Adult Swim is at on through to the end. I lasted three maybe four weeks before doing so, not too bad on my part. Just tonight I started doing the same thing with Trinity Blood. On the advice of a friend (rather belatedly taken, but taken never the less) I watched Karin. I started it Sunday night after I got home from work, and I didn't stop until I had finished all 24 episodes. I seem to have a weakness for romantic comedy anime.
After a delay of two months, I've finally responded to Erik's most recent move.

30.   Bb3      Re2

31.   Bc4      Rc2

32.   Rac1     ...

I got a little shōjo in my shōnen

Since I obviously haven't been watching enough anime for the last month and a half this week I started four more series. The first of these new series I watched is Black Blood Brothers. It's a fun little 12 episode series about vampires. It is lighter in tone then Hellsing (or Trinity Blood for that matter). It tells a decent story, and balances a satisfactory ending with leaving itself logical avenues for another season or a sequel. I don't really have anything bad to say about it, there just wasn't anything particularly special about it either.

The second new series I started watching is Busō Renkin. This series is still on going of the planned 26 episodes ten have aired in Japan of which I've watched fansubs of the first 9. This series reminds me a lot of Bleach as it balances a fairly dark story with slapstick comedy. The setup is also similar to Bleach with a high school boy being thrust into a secret world of monster fighting after encountering a mysterious girl. All and all pretty fun and interesting enough that I'll keep watching.

The next two series I thought were real gems. I’ll start with Ouran High School Host Club. I found this show to be witty, funny, well animated, and just plain entertaining. I know I called it pure shōjo bliss in one e-mail I sent to a friend regarding it. I devoured all 26 episodes of this show in two sittings and quite possibly all within a 24 hour span.

Fujioka Haruhi (pictured above), the main heroine of the story, is a lower-middle class first-year student who is able to attend Ouran Private Academy through an academic scholarship. The school is home to the children of some of Japan’s post prestigious and wealthy families, and is so expensive the Haruhi cannot even afford to buy a school uniform. While not actively trying to pass as a boy, Haruhi does dress in a fairly androgynous manner and doesn’t feel any need to correct peoples assumptions when she is taken for a boy. Shortly after her arrival at Ouran she accidentally break a vase belonging to the Host Club worth 8 million yen. The Host Club, who like (presumably) everybody else in school still thinks she is a boy, puts her to work as a gofer to pay off the debt. However upon seeing her without her glasses on they realize she is quite good looking, so Suō Tamaki (sometimes spelled Suou or Suoh), the Host Club president, promotes her to rookie host and the club provides her with contacts and a school uniform (of course since they think she is a boy it is a male uniform). Throughout the first episode each member of the Host Club comes to realize Haruhi is actually a girl, but since Haruhi doesn’t mind being taken for a boy, and because it’s easier to work off her debt as a host they agree to keep her secret (not that Haruhi ever really actively tries to disguise her gender).

The final new series I started and finished this week is The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. This 14 episode series is difficult to explain without giving away the plot. It covers a pretty wide range of genres: comedy, supernatural, science fiction, psychological, philosophical, and why not through in postmodern for good measure. More impressively it does justice to each genre is touches upon. One interesting thing about the anime is it isn’t shown in chronologic order, only rarely does the action of an episode directly follow the preceding episode (the events of episode three directly follow episode two, and the events of episode fourteen directly follow episode thirteen). I really cannot say enough good things about this anime it is beautifully animated, the plot is well crafted and intricate, the main characters are all interesting, it is thought provoking, and it invites and rewards repeat viewing. I will say the first episode may seem a little odd especially since if shown chronologically it would likely have been episode 11, but stick with this series and you will be very quickly rewarded.

Just so you don't think I'm ignoring all those other anime I'm happy to report I'm up to episode 136 of Prince of Tennis.

A long pause and new wheels

Ah. . . Well it’s been awhile hasn’t it? Oops. So what was I up to during the month of November? I can sum that up pretty quickly. I was watching anime, and my car died. Let’s start with the latter even though that episode only occupies the final week on November (and the first few days of December).

I got my car during my senior year in high school (I really don’t remember exactly when I got it, but it was probably towards the beginning of the school year so that would have been 1993). It was a 1991 Ford Mustang two-door hatchback silver in color (I always personally felt it was more grey in color but whatever). It was nice enough when I got it, and stayed pretty nice throughout the first half of my college years. In the summer of 1996 I was rear-ended by a significantly larger vehicle (like a Ford Bronco or a Chevy Tahoe, but I don't really remember the make and model). In all reality that should have been the end of my Mustang, but it was rebuilt and after a few months I was once again behind the wheel. From there the Mustang underwent a slow but steady decline as the years and miles crept up on it. To be fair I really didn’t take the best care of it either.

I think the most annoying thing I’ll remember about my Mustang was the door handles. They were plastic, and had a tendency to break during the winter. This would render the door the handle was attached to impossible to open from the outside. Usually it was only the driver’s side door handle that would break, but there was at least one time where both of the outside handles broke, and the only way into the car was though the hatchback (unless I left a window open). I’ve lost count of the number of times I had those handles replaced, and it is one thing about my Mustang I won’t miss.

My fondest memory of my Mustang happened fairly late in its life, in-other-words once it was pretty much a piece of junk. About two maybe three summers ago I was at work, and during my lunch break I drove up to the local co-op to get some food. In the parking lot there was a mother talking to one of the service station personnel, and her child was riding around the parking lot on a bicycle. The kid was around eight or so, but other then making sure I paid attention to where he was so I didn’t hit him, I really didn’t pay too much attention to either. I got my food, came back out to my car, and got in ready to drive back to work. However the kid was now riding his bike in a big circle very close to where I was parked, so I sat in my car for a bit waiting for him to ride away so I could back out without running over him. The kid seemed to have different plans as he just kept circling around behind my car, coming closer to me with each loop, until he finally had to stop before he ran into the side of my car. This got his mother’s attention, and she came over to him and started yelling. I expected her to say something about not playing around cars, but instead she admonished her child thusly, “Hey! Don’t you never never never never never ever hit a Mustang!” I did manage to drive away before I broke out into laughter.

Thanksgiving is what did my Mustang in. I made it home to my parents alright (basically a four hour drive), but on the return trip about six miles from home my car overheated, then as I was pulling over started losing power, and finally died. I let it cool down for a bit, and then opened the radiator (honestly not the smartest thing to do in a situation like that, I could have been burned pretty badly) and once the steam and boiling contents were finished spewing out I filled the radiator back up with antifreeze. I then tried to start my car, but no such luck. The engine would turn over, but it wouldn’t start. Fortunately a coworker happened to drive by and gave me a ride home. I had the car towed in the next day, and Wednesday morning (11/29) I found out it was probably a cracked head (or the head gasket). My mechanic estimated $600 – 700 dollars to repair in the best case scenario, significantly more if they found other things wrong with it once they started tearing into it. Since it was highly unlikely that my Mustang was still worth $600 I opted not to have it fixed, and instead purchased a new car. As you can probably guess my new car is pictured above. For those of you who care about such things it is a 1999 Pontiac Bonneville. My Bonneville is much nicer then my Mustang ever was, I’m just not used to it being mine yet. I still think of it like it’s a car I borrowed from somebody.

Okay that’s enough about my car, both old and new.

So have I ever been watching some anime. I’ve been on a bit of a shōnen kick through all of November and the first full week of December I’ve watched around 90 episodes of Bleach, 80 episodes of Naruto, and 90 episodes of Prince of Tennis. I’ve watched other anime as well, the first five episodes of Death Note (which seems to be classified as shōnen on Wikipedia, but I’m not sure if I agree with that, although the manga was published in Weekly Shonen Jump), the first 8 or so episodes of Jigoku Shoujo, the first 15 episodes of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, all 24 episodes of Oruchuban Ebichu, the first 8 episodes of Eureka Seven, the first episode of The Rose of Versailles, and the first episode of Space Symphony Maetel.

I had watched some episodes of Naruto, and Prince of Tennis before in English (probably about 8 episodes or so each), and I’d watched how ever much of Bleach and Eureka Seven in English as had been aired on Adult Swim by the end of October (probably about 10 episodes of Bleach and around 30 episodes of Eureka Seven). I don’t have any particular problem with English dubs, granted sometimes they can be down right painful, but usually I find them more or less tolerable. Then again when I went back and started watching these shows in the original Japanese I’m forced to wonder just why it took me so long to realize watching anime subtitled is so much more enjoyable.

Coming up for air.

Well. . . I still live.

So I’d like to be able to say that during the interim when I wasn’t posting to this blog I was doing something cool. I’d like to be able to say sorry I didn’t post, but I was spending time with my new lady friend, or I was starting my new fabulous job, or working on my great American novel, or moving to a new exotic location. However if I were to say any of those things, I’d be lying. No what I was up to for the latter half of the month of October was much more mundane (and geeky). For the last 15 days or so I spent nearly every spare not-at-work moment playing City of Heroes. The reason for this MMORPG orgy was simply that the period of time from October 18 until November 1 was the City of Heroes/City of Villains Halloween event.

During this Halloween event there were many special-event-only badges to earn. And earn them I did for more of my numerous characters then I care to think about. So what are these badges I speak of and why would I need any stinking badges? Well if you are familiar with the concept of Boy Scout merit badges you pretty much have the gist of the idea. In CoH/CoV badges are awarded for any number of different in game activities. Two of the main types of badges are exploration badges (get your character to a certain spot on a map and receive a badge), and a achievement badges (as in achieve a predetermined game milestone and receive a badge). All of the Halloween badges were of the achievement variety, and most of them could only be gained by engaging in the game’s version of Trick or Treating. Basically you maneuvered your character up to a door that wasn’t currently assigned as the location of one of your character’s missions and click on it. You would then either receive a treat (usually a temporary stat bonus called an inspiration, but occasionally a temporary power), or a trick and between one and three Halloween monsters (werewolves, vampires, zombies, etc.) would exit the door and attack you. If you defeated enough of each type of monster you’d be awarded a badge. The other reason to engage in the trick or treating is to gain an extra costume slot for a character. Somewhere around one out of three treats would also include one of four costume pieces. Collect all four pieces and you can trade them in for an extra costume slot. I now have many characters with more then one costume.

Enough about CoH. So the World Series wrapped up. Congratulations to the St. Louis Cardinals not many people (myself included) gave them much of a chance against the Detroit Tigers. They sure proved a lot of people wrong. The World Series aside what I’m really going to remember from this last post season is game seven of the NLCS. A game like that is the reason I love baseball. Top of the 6th inning, one out, and one on. Scott Rolen pulls Oliver Perez’s first pitch deep to left. Endy Chavez races back towards the wall and at the last second leaps and stretches his right hand up and over the 8' wall. With the very tip of his glove he snags the ball and pulls it back into the park Chavez then slams into the wall, lands on his feet, and guns the ball back into 2nd base. The second baseman Jose Valentine relayed the ball to 1st base for a inning ending double play. Baseball at its finest.

I did also find some time for my BESM campaign. I ran two sessions one on October 21, and the second on October 28. Both were great fun, I am very happy with how my BESM campaign is going. I particularly enjoyed the session on the 21st. In that session the party got sent back to the “real” world from the feudal pseudo-Japanese world they are usually in. This was actually the second time this has happened to them. On their 1st trip back to modern Japan one of the player characters went on a date, in subsequent sessions that same PC acquired a girlfriend in the feudal pseudo-Japanese world. On their 2nd trip back I felt compelled to make sure the new girlfriend made the trip to the modern world with the rest of the party. The interactions between the new and old girlfriends were a source of great amusement, as were the uncomfortable situations the PC found himself in. If everything works out the next BESM session should be November 11th.

Two wildly unrelated topics

There are a number of things I’ve been thinking of posting about, enough of them that I’m not going to fit them all into this post. Let’s start things off with some more about Baseball. I’ve got a few things to say on the subject so I’m just going to take it in roughly chronological order.

Round one of the post season has ended. I didn’t really have any strong feelings on the NL side. I do have a soft spot for the Cardinals so I’m happy to see them advance, but I’m as happy to see the Mets in the next round as I would have been to see the Dodgers. I’ve got a few more feelings about the AL side of the equation. I got half of what I wanted out of round one. Things didn’t go very well at all for the Twins, but I can take solace in the Yankees defeat. Round two got underway on Tuesday. The Tigers have looked very impressive against the A’s thus far. And the weather has relented and allowed the Mets and Cardinals to finally get underway tonight.

I was happy to see the Twins picked up the option for Torii Hunter. I hold out hope that they will be able to workout a multi-year deal with him. However I suspect it will be more likely that Torii will be dealt to another team probably around the trade deadline. Even if he isn’t traded I imagine there will be a great deal of speculation and rumor about his future with the Twins throughout next season.

I was saddened to learn of the death of Buck O’Neil on the sixth. I will always remember him for the classy way he handled missing being elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by one vote, and then going on and speaking at the induction service for his fellow Negro League players who were elected.

The other baseball related death of course garnered a lot more media coverage. You would pretty much have to be completely oblivious to the outside world, or live under a rock, not watch TV, not listen to the radio, not read the newspaper, not surf the Internet, and not interact with people to have missed the fact that an airplane crashed into a building in New York City yesterday. While it was pretty quickly determined to be an accident and not an act of terror, I imagine most people in general and New Yorkers in particular couldn’t help but reflect on the events of September 11, 2001. This tragedy relates to baseball because the plane was owned and presumably piloted by pitcher Cory Lidle (most recently of the Yankees, but he played for a number of different during his career). He along with his flight instructor Tyler Stranger where the only two people killed during the crash (21 people were injured during or as a result of the crash). I like many baseball fans cannot help but remember Thurmon Munson and Roberto Clemente.

Okay enough about baseball and death. I turn now to a much lighter subject: City of Heroes, and now for the first time City of Villains. One week ago today I purchased City of Villains and I am enjoying it, but haven’t really played it enough to form too many opinions. I will say it looks a little better (graphically) then City of Heroes. The archetypes have been changed up a bit. Brutes basically equal tankers, but deal more damage while soaking up less. Corruptors are basically defenders in reverse (or blasters that can heal as well as controllers) their primary powers are ranged attacks and their secondary powers are buffs and heals. Dominators are more or less controllers they just trade some versatility for more offensive capabilities. In a weird sort of way a dominator is a bit like a reverse blaster, in CoH blasters have the primary powers of ranged attacks, and their secondary powers come from a catch all category called support. Support borrows a number of powers from control, and buff (but no heals), and adds a few melee and other offensive powers. The dominators of course have control for their primary powers, and have an odd catch all category called assault for their secondary powers. Assault basically uses a mix of ranged and melee powers along with a few different single target buffs (and debuffs). I haven’t played a stalker yet to see how they differ from scrappers. I do know they have fewer hit points, and regardless of which secondary power set is chosen all grant some access to stealth abilities. The final villain archetype has no real equivalent in City of Heroes, and may be my favorite it is the mastermind. The mastermind concentrates on summoning “pets” to fight for you. These pets while computer controlled have a fairly sophisticated set of controls the player can use to direct their actions.

Sticking with City of Heroes one of my characters (pictured above) took second place in a costume contest yesterday. The award for 2nd place was 500,000 influence (which is basically the money used in the game). So that character is pretty set for influence until probably sometime around 20th level or so. The Blueshifted Hero is a defender and currently is level six. His primary power is called kinetics (he controls speed and movement) and his secondary power is sonic assault (he screams really loud). I leave you with a close-up of my influence winning character The Blueshifted Hero.

This is not the post I wanted to make today

I am not normally a superstitious person. I have no problem with black cats, my only concern about broken mirrors and walking under ladders have to do with safety, and I have never ever felt a pressing need to throw salt over my shoulder. I am also however a baseball fan, and baseball is known for its superstitions. So I find myself wanting to talk baseball, but fearing to do so because this is post number 13. This same fear and superstition is the main reason I haven’t posted anything about baseball yet in this blog. I’ve been wanting to, but it seemed like every time I’d start thinking seriously about making a baseball post in general, and a post in particular about a certain local professional baseball team, something bad would happen to that local professional baseball team. Nor can I discount my irrational fear that should I mention how good this local professional baseball team was doing, especially given their rather dismal start to the season, that they would instantly stop performing in such an excellent and unexpected manner.

So I remained quiet on the matter. Now Sunday the regular season ended, an event which I view with mixed feelings every year, on the one hand in means baseball will soon be over for the year, and on the other it means post-season goodness. I was prepared to risk angering the baseball gods, and actually make a post giving my thoughts on the coming post-season especially about that aforementioned local professional baseball team, but as I sat down to start composing this I noticed this is post number 13 so now you are getting. . . I don’t even know what to call this, but here it is.

I was first introduced to the greatness that is the game of baseball not from the game itself, but from the history of the game. I can thank a board game of all things for this. I unfortunately don’t even remember the proper name for this game. It is something like S.I. All-Time Superstar Baseball. I played it in high school, and it was owned by a classmate of mine, who obtained it from his father, who was likely the original purchaser of the game some time in the mid 1970s. The game was designed to simulate the game of baseball featuring rosters of the all-time greats for each team in the Major Leagues (as of the mid 1970s). Each player would take the role of a manager and select a roster from each teams available all stars. Some teams clearly had a better selection of talent available then others, just think of the guy “unlucky” enough to be managing the New York Yankees. His thought process has to go something like this: “Let’s see I need three outfielders, who do I have that can play outfield? Why I have Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, and Joe DiMaggio. Hmmmm. Oh I know Mantle can also play first base, but wait Lou Gehrig plays first base. Okay I’ll come back to this and select a catcher. Let’s see well this one is easy, Yogi Berra, oh but wait who is this Bill Dickey guy. Well damn. This is harder then I thought.”

I first encountered the game in the early 1990s. Since then I have been (mainly unsuccessfully) trying to find out more information about the game. I believe it was originally published by Sports Illustrated in the mid 1970s as a competitor of baseball simulation games like Strat-o-matic Baseball. It may have been published in conjunction with Avalon Hill, but I suspect it initially was solely a Sports Illustrated undertaking. However in 1978 Avalon Hill did publish a game called Superstar Baseball (pictured above) that used the exact same rules, but instead of featuring complete rosters for each team (the original game I played used a double sided 8" x 11" sheet of paper with the position players on one side, and the pitchers on the other) it contained 96 cards (half American League, and half National League) each representing an individual player from baseball (Avalon Hill also produced a 48 player expansion pack).

The game itself (either version) was played using three nonstandard six sided dice used to generate numbers 10-39. One die determined the tens digit and was numbered 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, and 3; this of course means numbers in the 30s would be rolled 1 in 2 times, while numbers in the teens would only be rolled 1 in 6 times. The other two dice were added together to generate the ones digit. One of those dice was numbered 0, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, while the other die was numbered 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. This creates an interesting bell curve where 4 and 5 are tied as the most common number being generated, 3 is the next most common, 2 and 6 are tied for the third most common numbers, 1 and 7 are the forth most common, 0 and 8 are the fifth most common, and 9 is the least common number generated. Combine the two sets of dice together and you get numbers between 10 - 39 where 19 is the least common number, 34/35 are the most common numbers, and there is some interesting overlap (24/25 has an equal probability of occurring as 32/36). Each player (as in the members of the team) has a chart using these numbers that is based on their lifetime statistics. The “manager” roles the dice and compares the result to his chosen pitcher’s chart with possible results include a strike out, fly out, ground out, walk, wild pitch, passed ball, or most likely swing away. If the swing away result is reached the other “manager” roles the dice and compares the result to the batter’s chart. The results include the above outs plus home runs, doubles, singles, double play balls, and so on. This is the bare bones of the game; I could go on about how it resolved things like bunting, and stealing bases, but I think you get the picture.

I may never have been able to find a copy of that original game, but I was able to obtain the Avalon Hill version (and the expansion pack). While my version didn’t contain as many players as my classmates, since each player in the game was represented by a card, the game was able to include a brief bio for each of the 96 players it did feature. And from these bios I learned to appreciate the rich history of the game, and from there it wasn’t much of a leap to appreciate the current game. That Ken Burns documentary didn’t hurt either.

I leave you with two pictures of characters from City of Heroes. The first is of a guy I like to call Captain France, but since that name was taken I was forced to name him The Foreign Legionnaire. I am still very happy with how he turned out looking, and if I ever get him to level 20 he will look awesome with a cape. He is a tanker with the primary power of invulnerability, and the secondary power of super strength.

This second picture is an "action" shot of my first ever character Shashu (which is Japanese for Archer). She is a blaster with the primary power of archery. She recently made 14th level and I selected fly as her power. As cool as super speed is, flight just might be even cooler.

40,000 Volts of Justice!

My inhibitions no longer being lowered by alcohol I am now free to dispense with the mildly embarrassing comments on my personal life, and kick the geek up a notch for this post. I’ve been talking about it long enough here is the dreaded post about City of Heroes. What is prompting this post is the fact that two fairly momentous events (momentous events at least within the context of the game) have occurred within the last few days. I had a character reach 14th, and then 15th level.
Before I can describe why this is so cool, I really need to explain some basics of the game. First City of Heroes is an example of what is know as a MMORPG a rather impressive looking acronym that stands for Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. If you need an explanation of what that is, and don’t feel like following the link I provided then let me say this; the name is pretty self-explanatory. Massively-multiplayer as in lots and lots of people playing at the same time; World of Warcraft, one of the most popular MMORGPs has something in the neighborhood of 6 million subscribers worldwide, now naturally not all of them will be playing at the exact same time, but even a small percentage of 6 million is a pretty big number (1% alone is 60,000 people). Online as in it happens over the Internet. Role-playing game as in it’s a game where you pretend to be somebody else. In City of Heroes you play the role of a superhero defending Paragon City from crime and the forces of evil.
The first two things you do when creating a new hero are decide on the archetype and origin of the hero. There are five basic archetypes: blasters, controllers, defenders, scrappers, and tankers. The archetypes define in broad strokes what type of hero you are creating by determining what your primary and secondary power categories are, whether your hit points will be low, medium, or high, and whether your damage output will be low, medium, or high. Blasters for example have low hit points, but high damage output, and as the name implies their primary power focus are ranged attacks (think for example of The Fantastic Four’s The Human Torch). On the other hand you have the melee archetypes scrappers and tankers. They lack ranged attacks, but excel at getting up-close-and-personal with their foes, however each type goes about that in a different way. Scrappers have high damage, medium hit points, their primary power category is melee, and their secondary power category is defense (think Wolverine). While tankers have medium damage, high hit points, the primary power category of defense, and the secondary power category of melee (think The Thing from the Fantastic Four). So a scrapper can deal out more damage in a fight, but cannot last as long as a tanker who can soak up more damage because the archetype will take less damage per attack, and will have more hit points in the first place. Within each archetype there are numerous different power sets so one blaster could focus on fire attacks, while another could be an archer.
Origins determine how characters received their powers. There are also five types of origins: magic, mutation, natural, science, and technology. Magic heroes gained their powers from the mystic realms (Dr. Strange or Wonder Girl). Mutation heroes were born with their powers (the X-Men). Natural heroes derive their powers from either training (Batman), or their powers are the natural inborn traits of their species (The Martian Manhunter or Superman). The powers of science heroes are the results of either scientific experimentation (Captain America), or an a fortuitous accident (Spider-Man or The Fantastic Four). Technology heroes derive their powers from devices (the Green Lantern or Iron Man). To some extent origins exist mainly for flavor, as they have no effect on what powers can be selected or how those powers work, but origins do effect which NPC contacts a hero will start with, and what types of equipment can be used to improve the character. Origins also grant each hero a ranged attack (albeit a fairly short range) that does very minor damage, and has a possible secondary effect that varies by origin.
Once archetype and origin are out of the way the primary and secondary power sets are chosen. First the primary power set is chosen. Blasters for example can chose between archery, assault rifle, electric blast, energy blast, ice blast, fire blast, and sonic attack for their primary power set. Each set then has a list of nine powers tied together by a common theme that as the characters advance in level the more advanced powers on the list will become available to them. The first two available powers in the archery set are snap shot, and aimed shot with their difference being snap shot does less damage, but recharges more quickly then aimed shot. A starting blaster using the archery power set would be able to choose one of those two powers at first level.
Then the secondary power set is chosen. There can be some overlap between archetypes on power sets. For example the defender has ranged attacks as a secondary power category so can choose some of the same power sets as the blaster, but not all of them, and has access to some ranged power sets that the blaster doesn’t. In other cases there is little to no overlap scrappers and tankers both have access to the melee and defense power categories (differing in which category each archetype has as primary and secondary), but they share only one power set in common in their respective defense category, and no power sets in common in their respective melee category.
Even when different archetypes have power sets in common the archetype that has that power set as a primary power will always be more effective then the archetype that has the power set as a secondary power assuming the two characters are the same level (or really within a level of each other). A blaster using archery powers will always do more damage then a defender of the same level using archer powers. As another example defenders who select one of the power sets that grant healing powers will always heal more hit points of damage per use, then a controller of the same level using the same power set because for the controller it will be a secondary power while for the defender it will be a primary power. Another difference between primary and secondary power sets is the speed at which the powers on the set become available to the characters. As a character goes up in level the more advanced powers on the primary set become available at a lower level then the more advanced powers on the secondary set. Sticking with defenders and controllers for an example a defender using the empathy power set will be able to select the power resurrection (being able to bring defeated heroes back to life is a popular power when heroes team up) as early as 6th level which is when the forth power on a primary power list becomes available to characters. A controller with empathy as a secondary power set won’t be able to choose resurrection as a power until 10th level, because that is the level a character has to before the 4th power on the secondary power list is available.
In any event starting heroes are only able to chose the first power available on their secondary power set, so a defender who selected archery as the secondary power could only take snap shot at first level. Armed with those two powers one primary and one secondary, along with the inherent power of brawl (any hero regardless of archetype can punch somebody), and the minor power granted by the chosen origin the hero is now ready for combating evil. Actually character creation continues on to what may be my favorite part - costume design, and then wraps up with selecting a name and the optional writing of a description (usually of the characters origin), but that doesn’t really factor into why I’m writing this post so I’ll move on.
As a character goes up in level different things happen. There is the obvious (at least to anyone who’s ever played a RPG) the character gets more hit points, and does more damage, and at 2nd level and every two levels after that the character can select one new power from their list of available powers drawn from their primary and secondary power lists. There is another often highly anticipated event that happens at 6th level. At that level charactesr can start selecting powers from the pool power sets. The pool power sets each contain four powers the first two of which are available to be selected by any hero regardless of archetype as long as they are at least 6th level. The third power in each pool can be selected at 14th level (or later) as long as the hero as previously selected at least one of the first two powers in the pool, and the fourth power in the pool in the set can be selected at 20th level (or later) as long as the character has selected the third power in the pool at an earlier level.
The idea behind these pool powers are there are some abilities any hero should be able to pursue if desired (the power sets are optional and don’t have to be selected). Among these power pools are the four travel powers flight, leaping, speed, and teleportation. The first two powers in each of these four pools are all pretty interesting. The true gems, however, that most people want their characters to have at least one of all happen to be the third powers on the respective lists. Those coveted powers are fly, super jump, super speed, and teleport. Each one of these powers allows the character go get around Paragon City very quickly. As implied by the name MMORPG (or at least the first M) Paragon City is a pretty big place and it can take a while moving your character from one location to another (a not uncommon complaint in MMORPGs) especially when the area you have to travel through is filled with numerous villains of a higher level then your character. Once one of these travel powers is obtained much of difficulty (and time spent) in moving from place to place is removed.
This of course is the first cool thing I mentioned that happened to one of my characters recently. I have an electricity blaster named The Sparkstress (pictured above) who as of 14th level has super speed. It rocks. I absolutely love watching her zip across maps in about 30 seconds that would have taken a few minutes to cross before (and that is before factoring in additional delays caused by running into groups of villains). The second cool thing that happened at 15th level is I got to select a title for The Sparkstress. So she now displays to all the other players as The Extraordinary Sparkstress (in retrospect I kind of wish I’d opted for startling because The Startling Sparkstress would have been pretty damn cool).
Okay that’s probably enough about City of Heroes for the time being. I likely will have more to say about the game in the future. However before I go I do have a chess update for you. I have received a move from Erik, and remarkably responded to it with in 24 hours. Erik was no doubt extremely shocked.

29.   a4      Kd6

30.   Bb3

I'll leave you with one final picture of The Extraordinary Sparkstress.

Another first, if a dubious one

Man am I hungry. Actually while that statement is true as I type it, by the time I get around to posting this it will likely no longer be the case, as I am cooking spaghetti as I type to rectify that vary situation. However until I actually eat that spaghetti the statement stands, “man am I hungry.” I am not surprised that I am hungry, because I always get hungry when I go out drinking. I went out drinking because today one of my coworkers got married. My immediate supervisor, in fact, and since the wedding dance was held within walking distance of my house, and I wasn’t working, and she invited everyone at work who was interested, it seemed like a good idea to go. So this marks another first for this blog; I’m posting while tipsy. I’m at that lovely state where I’ve had just enough to drink, that I feel very good, but not so much that I’m going to do anything really stupid. I know this because as I was walking home I was drunk enough to think driving to Alexandria to go eat at Perkins sounded really good, but not so drunk that I didn’t immediately veto the idea as being pretty stupid (and let us not forget unsafe).

I had quite a bit of fun. This evening reminded me that I should go out more and make an effort to be more social. No offense to the people I regularly get together with for gaming, since that is in fact me going out and being social, but in addition to that I should go out and be more social in situations where there are strangers, and women present. The evening really brought home for me the fact that I have now officially been single for far too long. In what would have been an unlike me fashion I very nearly made an attempt to do something about that tonight. One of the bartenders there was very cute, and I had actually convinced myself to ask her for her phone number when alas I noticed the engagement ring. I take some solace in the fact I noticed the ring before asking her for her number, as opposed to after, but never the less but for that ring I would have taken a very big step tonight regardless of the outcome.

I did somewhat surprise myself by actually dancing at this wedding dance, which is more then I did at the wedding dances of my last two cousins who got married. I would go so far as to say I haven’t danced this much, at least this much in public, since my college days, and even then I only actually danced after I had consumed enough alcohol that I didn’t care that I was dancing. I cannot say that was the case this evening, I had only finished one drink when I started dancing tonight. I can only say that apparently when your other supervisor (as opposed to my immediate supervisor who was the bride) whom you have a small crush on suggests you join her on the dance floor your only correct answer is yes. Before anyone gets any ideas about there even being a slight possibility of an office romance in my future let me quash those thoughts by saying she’s a married woman. For that matter even if she wasn’t a married woman, the idea of dating someone I work with strikes me as being such a bad idea, that I’d never pursue it.

Well this post does in fact guarantee I will never tell anyone I work with that I have a blog. Let me end this post by saying two things. First my spaghetti was very good. Second, and in proper MasterCard commercial fashion, rum and coke at your supervisor’s wedding dance: $2.50. Being on the dance floor at the same time as your call center manager and dancing to “Baby Got Back” with her: priceless.

w00t - post number 10

Gaming on Sunday was pretty normal. Just about everything I said about the last gaming session I ran also applies here just in a slightly different order (and I’m talking about BESM and not Shadowrun). We started late, we were easily amused by each others company, we paused to eat, and when we continued we remained easily amused by each others company. Most importantly we had fun. I will admit I sometimes wonder if we don't let ourselves get too distracted, I even mentioned my concern regarding that, but my players assured me they were having a good time.

This last session I realized I’d allowed the PCs to become quite powerful. I had intended this from the start, I’ve been giving XP awards roughly 25 times larger then what is recommended in the rules. The official BESM character advancement rules suggest giving one character point per five sessions, whereas I’ve been giving around 5 character points per session. So really the PCs becoming extremely powerful is precisely what I was shooting for (although it is worth remembering when I originally started this campaign I didn’t think it would last as long as it has), but this last session really brought home for me just how much my PCs had accomplished this. After one character slaughtered an ancient dragon (built on 105 points and for reference most starting characters are in the 20-40 point range) in two swings on his sword I made the pronouncement that the characters could officially “bring it.” More then anything after this last session I’ve come to the conclusion that I should probably redesign my main villains (yet again as I’ve already gone back and increased their power twice). Mostly I just need to give them more hit points, and maybe some more active defense, just so when the final conflict finally comes it doesn’t go like this:

Player 1:
Hey there’s Weifan the Demon Dragon King who had been manipulating us into doing his bidding since day one.

Player 2:
And there is his lackey, Kyomatsu the Demon Lord, who has cursed our NPC exorcist.

NPC Exorcist:
Yeah he’s a jerk. This totally nondescript curse that has never been fully explained in game has really made my life difficult.

NPC Kitsune:
I don’t like him either, for equally vague reasons that haven’t been fully fleshed out in game because the GM keeps forgetting what they are, and because the PCs don’t care that much since I’m only an NPC.

Player 3:
Let’s waste these turkeys.

(General sounds of combat.)

Player 1:
Wow that was a close one Kyomatsu almost got to attack me.

Player 2:
Yeah. Hey how about when Weifan was all trying to run away, and I was like “oh no you don’t,” and I totally cut him in half with my sword.

Player 3:
We pwned those guys. Who wants sushi?

Okay so I’m reasonable sure none of my players would say, “Let’s waste these turkeys,” but the scene stands.

Alright a few things in brief:

I have met a lot of interesting people. I know this because they send me e-mail with highly amusing things in them like this following statement: “In other news, I know a *lot* more about trebuchets than I did a week ago.” Just take a moment and ponder the inherent awesomeness of that statement. I am in awe.

Nothing really new to report on the anime front. I haven’t received anything new in the mail, but on the 18th the second disks of Saiyuki Reload, and Twelve Kingdoms were mailed to me so I should get those in a few days. A new episode of The Prince of Tennis is up on Toonami Jetstream. I will likely watch that tomorrow. I also started watching Hikaru no Go, and Naruto on Toonami Jetstream. I hear a lot of good things about Hikaru no Go, and found the episodes I watched to be enjoyable enough, but I didn’t care that much for the dub (not a horrible dub mind you, just not a great one either). Naruto seems to be firmly in the category of guilty pleasure anime (by the way really not liking the English dub of Naruto) thus far it seems to be a fun little ride, but nothing too deep. The friends I have who watch a lot of anime seem to come down all over the map on it, from not really caring for it at all (at least after the first 20 or so episodes) to liking it quite a bit.

As far as chess goes I am awaiting Erik’s response to my last move so nothing new to report there.

I am uploading (and in some cases downloading) music to iTunes at a greater rate then I can listen to it. My iTunes library now has 1497 items (3.7 days worth of media). My iTunes jazz collection is up to 170 songs (14.5 hours). My anime OST collection is sitting at 240 songs (13.7 hours). The music in my never played folder is up to 432 songs (1.1 days worth of songs), which actually isn’t that big of an increase over my last update. That is mainly do to the fact I’ve been making a concerted effort to listen to new things I put on iTunes and before my last big upload binge I had whittled my never been played list down to about 17 hours worth of music.

Guilt - it is a powerful motivator.

Okay time bring up a new subject here at Irregular Blathering namely the game of chess.

I’ll spare everybody the detailed analysis of how I became a chess player if for no other reason then I’ve already written such a post for roleplaying games, and I am planning to write another for anime. I will say many of the same players who were featured in my post about roleplaying factor into me picking up chess as a child. Namely my parents directly because they were basically just good parents, and more indirectly because they owned a really cool chess set that I like to play with as a child. Add to the mix a decent chess program that I’d play on the family computer (an IBM PCjr just to give you an idea of how long it has been since I’ve “owned” a computer). And to bring it all home my local public library had a book called Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess by Bobby Fischer, Stuart Margulies, and Donn Mosenfelder. I highly recommend the book to anyone looking to learn chess, because it focuses on teaching how the pieces move, and how they can be used to either checkmate your opponent, or avoid checkmate yourself.

I bring this up because this evening I received an e-mail from a good friend and former college roommate, Erik, with whom I’ve been engaging in a chess match via e-mail since November 2005. In his message he was nice enough to compliment my blog, but suggested it was taking time away from our chess match because it had been quite sometime since I last made a move (for those interested I’m inferring here and not actually quoting). He went on to request either a move, or at least a post about chess. I have in fact given him both (obviously I’m a very good friend).

For a number of different reasons I’ve decided to post the moves of our chess match here. I’m doing this mainly because I hope it will provided me with additional incentive to promptly reply to Erik’s future moves. Also chess and kibitzing go hand-in-hand. For anyone curious this is an example of the opening called the King's Gambit Declined. I am white, Erik is black:

Move	White	Black
1	e4	e5
2	f4	Nf6
3	fxe5	Nxe4
4	Nf3	Nc6
5	d4	f6
6	Qe2	d5
7	exd6	f5
8	dxc7	Qxc7
9	c3	Be6
10	Ng5	Nxd4
11	Nxe6	Nxe6
12	Qb5+	Qc6
13	Qxf5	O-O-O
14	Be2	g6
15	Qa5	Nd4
16	Bg4+	Ne6
17	Bf4	Bd6
18	Bxe6+	Kb8
19	Qd5	Bxf4
20	Qxc6	Pxc6
21	O-O	Be3+
22	Kh1	Rhf8
23	Na3	Nd2
24	Rfe1	Bc5
25	Nc4	h5
26	Nxd2	Rxd2
27	b4	Bf2
28	Rf1	Kc7
29	a4	. . .

While on the topic of Chess, I have a certain other good friend from college with whom I've also been engaging in a game of chess via e-mail, and I'll just point out it has been a few months since I sent you my last move.

A few other things in brief. . .

Well I finally did it, I forced myself to watch the fifth disk of Tenjho Tenge. It wasn’t as bad as I was afraid it might be. The first two episodes continued the flashback that had been going on and on since the last disk. The events depicted remained confusing, but at least the fight between Tawara Bunshichi and Natsume Shin at the beginning of the first episode (and continued from the final episode of disk four) was interesting. The third and final episode on the disk returned to the present, where the majority of the characters I care about are active, so that was pretty good. However I fear I’m do for another visit to the past as it has yet to be explained how and why Takayanagi Mitsuomi kills Shin, nor has Mitsuomi and Natsume Maya actually started dating which the present alludes to them doing before Shin’s death.

After that I moved on to disk one of Saiyuki Reload. It was a pleasure to watch, but none of the four episodes advanced the plot in any noticeable way. I’ve heard from a friend that much of Saiyuki Reload is like that, but if I hold out I will be rewarded with plot advancement before the end of the series.

My BESM campaign should continue on Sunday, so I’ll probably post something about that on Monday. I’m really looking forward to it, I’m even more excited that for the first time in quite a while I won’t have worked the morning before running the gaming session. So game mastering while wide awake will be quite the treat.

Finally on the iTunes front the total number of items in my library is up to 1166 or 2.8 days worth of music. My jazz collection is up to 140 songs or 12 hours of music. My anime OST collection is up to 204 songs (11.8 hours of music). There are 419 songs on my iTunes that haven’t been played (1.1 days worth of music). That is actually fewer songs then last time that haven’t been played, but the songs themselves seem to be longer in nature since last time I had 24 hours worth of music that hadn’t been played.

It was bound to come to this

When I started this blog there was one particular occurrence I was dreading. That moment has finally come. Something happened today at work that made me stop and think to myself this will make a great blog entry. And yes I’m going to post about it.

This does give me an excellent opportunity to actually write a bit about what it is I do. I debated for awhile whether or not I’d actually mention the name of the company I work for, and in the end I decided no I wouldn’t. It’s not that it is any great secret, I’m happy to tell people I know what company I work for, but given the possibility that total strangers may actually read this post (or people connected to the companies involved in what I’m going to relay) I’d rather not make identifying the players involved in anyway easy.

I work for a telecommunications company, that does an awful lot of different things relating to information technology. I, in fact, have only a vague idea of all that they do beyond my immediate (and in the scheme of things rather small) division known as Operator Services. Their corporate offices are located in Minneapolis, MN (technically I think they are in a suburb). My own little corner is a call center located in rural Minnesota near the town of Morris (where I live). I work at one of two call centers they run (the other also being located in rural Minnesota).

The first thing people tend to think when they hear call center is telemarketing. We are not, repeat not, telemarketers. We do not cold call people and try to sell them things. We are what is known as an inbound call center, basically meaning people call us. And we do basically what the name of our division says we provide operator services. Our direct customers are telephone companies (a mixture of mostly small CLECs, and ILECs) around 300 in number spread out mainly through Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, and South Dakota (but also Arizona, Oregon, Utah, Washington, California, and probably a few states I’m not thinking of). The two main things we do are provide directory assistance, and toll call processing (the aforementioned operator services). What this all boils down to is when customers of one of the telephone companies we serve pick up their phones and dial either 0 (or 0 + (area code) + 7 digit number) or 411 (or 1+(area code)+555+1212) they come one of the two call centers my company operates. From there the operators at the call centers either provides assistance in placing calls for the people who dialed 0, or look up a listing for the people who dialed DA.

That is the main thing (but not the only thing) my call center does. I find my job is mostly clearly described as a shift supervisor. While I am on duty I am responsible for assisting the operators with difficult calls (or callers), managing the current staffing level (which can involve taking calls myself if needed, or getting extra operators to come in if needed, or sending operators home early if they aren’t needed), and generally doing what ever needs to be done to get the center through the day. I am also responsible for ensuring the operators both know how to process the different types of calls, and that they are correctly processing the calls they receive. My actual job title is not in fact supervisor, but Lead Customer Contact Representative, and generally in house my position is informally referred to as In Charge (I guess as in my position is in charge of the floor). However if a caller asks to speak to the supervisor of one of my operators I’m the guy that gets the call (assuming I’m on duty otherwise it goes to one of the two other people who also hold my position in the call center).

So that is the crux of what I do. Now back to the whole reason for this post. Another service my call center provides is what we call After Hour Repair Service. Again our direct customers are other companies (mainly telephone and cable providers) and while they are closed if their customers are having a repair issue with their service (such as having no dial tone on their phone line) they can call in and speak to us, and we’ll take a repair report and get their problem reported to the company in question (and if needed call out a tech for repair). Most of these companies have us fax a copy of the repair ticket we create to their business office, but a few of the companies instead have us e-mail them a copy of the ticket. Now of the companies that have us e-mail them a ticket a smaller subset has us e-mail the ticket to multiple people inside their company, and of that group a even smaller subset sometimes replies to the e-mail. These replies are usually from the technicians looking into the problem, and almost always directed towards the other members of their company. I suspect they either forget that my company will also receive the message (since we are the ones who sent out the original e-mail), or more likely they just don’t care. I say I think they just don’t care because generally the reply we receive is a few words about how the problem was resolved along the lines of, “replaced cable box service restored.”

Today however when I arrived at work and checked my e-mail I found a real gem, and I quote:

"As far as I can tell, the profile he is using is borked, I couldn't find the main profile to change it globally though, so I changed his line directly to bar premium and operator, but allow everything else which is how I think the voip should be set up. I didn't call him to let him know its fixed though since this is the "data" guy and didn't want to get into an hour long conversation about dhp dll subinfrastructure disabling to increase the throughput of his bearshare filesharing or something like that… again. Also, Im assuming he was told to expect a reply Monday, so if he tries it, it should work now, and if not, who the hell makes calls out of the country? C'mon ppl, write a letter, send an email, it's probably O'Dark O'clock over there, let em sleep. Unless its Canada of course, and unless you have Moose relatives, there ain't much reason to call up there."

They only response I could think of that was appropriate was OMG and LOL. And lol I certainly did.


A few things in brief:

I enjoyed the two new anime on Adult Swim this last Saturday. Of the two I found the first episode of Trinity Blood more interesting, but I found Bleach to be cute I guess is as good a word as any. I look forward to seeing more of both. Sticking with anime I watched another episode of The Prince of Tennis on Toonami Jetstream, and still find it to be an enjoyable little diversion. I actually watched the Saiyuki movie. I liked it, really it was just like a long filler episode, and has no real effect on the ongoing plot, but it was fun. I still haven’t watched disk 5 of Tenjho Tenge, which I guess says something about my opinion of the series. I received the first disk of Saiyuki Reload in the mail at the end of last week from my anime rental service, and I look forward to watching that soon.

Going with TV as a theme (and anime) I’m considering actually canceling my cable service, because aside from Adult Swim on Saturday I don’t watch TV any more. Of course I really like watching Adult Swim on Saturdays, so I’m not sure where that leaves me.

Okay that HeroClix thing I was going to talk about. . . Back in August about the same time I received my computer I also received a Venom figure from WizKids. This figure is their send away figure for their Marvel (tm) HeroClix Sinister set. Basically each time WizKids releases a new HeroClix set if you buy what they call a brick (12 booster packs) you can fill out a form, send in the receipt, the 12 proofs-of-purchase, and pay shipping and handling and in return WizKids will send you a limited edition figure from the set that you cannot get any other way (well not directly anyway). This was all fine and dandy, and I was quite happy until near the end of August I received a letter from WizKids that said at the end of July some of the credit card information relating to certain orders of this particular promotion were compromised. The letter goes on to say the incident was quickly discovered, and there is an ongoing police investigation. The letter advises me to pay close attention to my credit card balance, and tells how to contact the police detective running the investigation if I see any suspicious activity on my card. I have been paying close attention to my credit card, and I’m happy to say there has been no suspicious activity on it, but the whole situation just makes you want to say, and I'm quoting an ex-girlfriend here, “Nerrr.”

I amused myself this weekend by ripping all of my Beatles CDs, and most of my jazz CDs onto my computer (okay so I amused myself for at most 45 minutes doing this since it takes like 3 minutes to upload a CD onto iTunes). I now have 135 Beatles songs on my computer (6.2 hours worth). I have 120 jazz songs (10.7 hours) on my computer, but I haven’t finished ripping all of my jazz CDs yet. I have 192 songs coming from anime soundtracks (10.9 hours) I have 425 songs (24 hours worth) on my computer I haven’t listened to yet. Of course that just means I haven’t listened to it in iTunes, not that I have never listened to those particular songs. In total my music library at this time has 1059 songs (2.5 days worth of music). I’ve come to realize iTunes is like the ultimate mixed tape.

City of Heroes continues to be enjoyable, and a major reason I’m not watching much TV. At this point it is probably safe to say I could devote an entire post to the game. The likelihood of me buying City of Villains is pretty high. Which means the likely hood I’m going to continue playing the game for a while is also pretty high. That of course means I’m unlikely to get into World of Warcraft anytime soon, although it remains a game I am quite interested in. That is a shame, because I have several friends who play World of Warcraft, and only one (that I know of) that plays City of Heroes. And while logging onto City of Heroes by myself is fun, logging on at the same time as my friend is a great deal more fun, so having a lot more friends I could play with is a major attraction for World of Warcraft.