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Warren Shea

Archive for December, 2010

I don’t know why I go to the manga section at the bookstore…

Monday, December 20th, 2010 at 9:20 pm

…until today! Dun dun dun….

I went to Indigo today and I decided to do my usual routine:

Check out the graphic novel (read: comic book trade paperback) section and see if there were any hardcover books that I like that have made it to the cheaper paperback format. Then, for the ones that have, I rationalize that I could probably either DL it for free or that the story probably isn’t/won’t be as good as I think. And I don’t buy anything.

Then, before leaving, I check out the manga section. I glance at all the titles and, like always, realize:
1. All the titles that I would want to buy right now, I’m waiting for the box set/collector’s edition
2. Any new titles I might want to start, I should probably read online first to see if I like it. No way am I buying one manga (no pun intended) because I will, as usual, go buy the rest of the set. But if I’m going to buy the rest of the set, I might as well wait for a box set/collector’s edition.
(BTW, damn you Scott Pilgrim for coming out with a Box Set. Difference between my 6 volumes and the box set 6 volumes: 1 box and 1 poster. In no way worth spending $56. Alas, it’s a box set I’ll never own…Q_Q)

Anyways, so I’m in the manga section thinking: Again I visit this place, never finding anything worth pur—
And seriously just as I was thinking that, I saw this!

I was like “WTF IS THIS…Ohhh, I’ve heard of this, they make references to it in the Death Note Box Set”…I dunno, I was super surprised but I guess that’s my fault as I failed to do research on stuff. That always happens.

Anyways, I just posted this because I thought it was funny that I was just thinking
1. “I’m never gonna find anything worth pur–” and then I saw it
2. I’m planning to finish my (final) Dark Angel novel today and that means I’ll have this to read after :D

And then I may (or may not) read some Wicked novels and then I’m calling it quits for novel reading until I really find something I want to read. Reading novels can be fun but once I start a novel, I really focus a lot of time until I finish it. Like, I start a book and suddenly everything else becomes priority two. I don’t like that. It’s all about balance!

Anyways, off to read…60-70 pages left :) I’m a reading machine suddenly

/warrenbot points at novel words and then starts pew pew pew pew pew pew pew pew. bzzt. READ ERROR. I/O FAILURE. ACCESS DENIED. SHUTDOWN.   ….  *

Wargreymon

Sunday, December 19th, 2010 at 6:11 pm

I got my D-Arts Wargreymon in the mail yesterday. It’s sweet. Even better is the future release of Omnimon and MetalGarurumon.

Now, when I was younger, I purchased a Wargreymon…which happens to be the same size as the D-Arts version I got so I thought I’d post a shot-by-shot comparison.

Click on the images for a larger one
Wargreymon Comparison chart


The Crest of Courage!


You want a piece of me?


Terra Force!


Look at those blades. They look vicious.


Omnimon – Old toy. Note his epicness in idea but crappyiness in toy.
Seriously, combining the two most powerful digimon, Wargreymon and Metal Garurumon….making a digimon with an awesome gun AND and awesome sword…and a cape! I can’t wait til the D-Arts version of this comes out.


My Digimon toys…I don’t have many, I’m a sucker for quality, not quantity (in this case).


I can’t wait for the D-Arts Metal Garurumon either.

If they do well, maybe I’ll see an Angemon, Angewoman, and a Magna Angemon. The rest of the digimon are whatevs!

/fun to pull out my lightbox and do some shots….tho it looks like my camera is busted :'( it won’t focus upon zoom-in :(

Tire Gauge

Friday, December 17th, 2010 at 2:44 am

So, I took the last 3 days off (used vacation days). Why?

All 3 days have some sort of Holiday Potluck/Gift Exchange/Social Gathering. Well, all 3 days have some type of social gathering/mingling thing. And let me say, I hate that stuff. I would rather code for 4 hours than do 30 minutes of social mingling. I would rather work overtime on Friday night than mingle with people I never talk to or people I’m never going to talk to again. I hate the idea that corporations or departments want everyone to be friends. To force them. I don’t understand why they don’t get that we’re merely co-workers. Any friendship being created should be natural and not forced.

I guess I just hate mingling with people, people that I don’t know, people that I wouldn’t talk to outside of work. I’m paid to develop, not to talk. If I wanted to be social, I would have been….I dunno, but not a developer. Granted, this is a very…extreme point of view of social recluse (me).

I do social things with non-friends (read: coworkers) sometimes. And they’re okay. So these gatherings aren’t the only reason I took these days off.

The other reason is: gift exchanges.

Now, I’m the type of person that….well, remembers when I’ve been wronged. I remember if someone has pissed me off, I rarely forget stuff like that. I’m stubborn and I hold a grudge forever. It’s not mature, it’s not rational, but it’s me.

I remember when I was in art class in elementary school. I had brought in a Mega Man Nintendo Power and was using it for artistic reference. My friend decided to take his exact-o knife and cut a 0.5cm cut on one of the pages. For what reason, I could only fathom. Idiocy comes to mind. But the result was clear: I was furious. You let someone touch your stuff and they’re idiots, they don’t care what happens to it, it’s not their stuff. Common courtesy is something the average person lacks, imo.

When I was in highschool, I had just purchased a brand new Garfield book. This dude spilt a can of Sprite all over the book (I had the book less than 1 hour!) and all the pages got wrinkly and wavey. He didn’t apologize or anything, he just insisted: “It’s alright”. Well, yes, I could still read it…but the pages were all wrinkled and wobbly when they dried. The book, which was new when I got it, was no longer new because of someone’s accident. But y’know accidents happen, it’s the lack of apologizing and admitting that bothers me. What is “alright” to them is not alright to me.

When I was in University, I had accidentally thrown out my credit card in my garbage. My mother, every Wednesday night, collected all the garbage in the house and put it in a big black garbage bag. Being Wednesday, she had done it, and I was unaware my credit card had mixed in with all the garbage. Realizing my mistake later that night, I went to the garbage bag only to see my credit card cut up into slices. Confused, I confronted my mom asking: “Why did you cut up my credit card?!”. She said “Well, you were throwing it away so I thought I should cut it up”. Fair enough. I asked “If you were going to cut it up, couldn’t you have asked me about it before cutting it? Maybe check the date on the card, check that it hadn’t expired yet”. She replied with “I did check the date, the card was expired”. Except….you know what, the card wasn’t expired. She read the date and didn’t do the math or the logic or whatever it is that your brain does to determine if a date is in the past or future. She just…man, she didn’t think. She saw the credit card in the trash and rather than simply ask me
a) Did you mean to throw your credit card out?
or
b) Did you want me to cut this credit card up?
she just did it. So I had to get a new credit card…
Not only that, but why was she going through my trash in the first place?! (again, something my mom did that really pissed me off).

It bothers the fuck out of me when shit happens and affects me, which isn’t my fault, but because people don’t
a) think (because they’re idiots)
b) care (because what’s not theirs doesn’t matter to them)
Whatever retarded karma or whatever that is really bothers me, that someone’s ridiculously avoidable mistake or error in judgement or idiocy could negatively affect my life.



Okay. Relax. I went off track. I will write more on this later (it’s actually a post I’ve had in my drafts for a while now).

Getting back to: I remember when I’m wronged and gift exchanges.

Last year, in my department gift exchange, I got a terrible gift. I mean, there’s alcohol, that’s whatever. There’s tons of that. There’s some other stuff that
a) has a christmas theme
b) is related to food, can be used around the house (a bowl or a sushi set).
Well, last year, I got the most useless gift ever.

A Tire Gauge.

This one:

Definitely the worst gift for a number of reasons:
1. Who the Fuck NEEDS a Tire Gauge?
2. Who the Fuck WANTS a Tire Gauge?
3. IT’S A FUCKING TIRE GAUGE

Needless to say, I got the gift, which nobody wanted to trade me for, and which might possibly be the worst gift I’ve ever gotten in my life ever. What stings is that I also spent $20 to get a gift someone else might have actually wanted. I basically see it that I purchased this WORSE THAN USELESS (because useless would be something that was “meh”…but this is worse than useless because it makes me ANGRY everytime I think about it) gift.

So, given me, the fact that I hold grudges forever and never forget stuff, I’ve sworn off these gift exchange events.

The reason why I don’t let people touch my stuff, books, toys, whatever, the reason why I’m OCD is…I trust people and they disappoint me. And when I get disappointed, I try never let myself feel that again. I learn my lesson quickly, burned once is all it takes, and I take precautions never to be burned again.

/thinks I need to start making a RAGE category…cuz man, I got lots of those.

Accomplishments #2.5 – Mid December 2010 Ediiton

Thursday, December 16th, 2010 at 3:07 am

Shows / Movies
Re-watched Slam Dunk (anime 101 eps) – Unplanned accomplishment
Watch Blu-Ray Toy Story Trilogy (and extras)
Watch Batman TAS and DVD Extras (low priority)
Watch Batman Beyond and DVD Extras (low priority)
RE: the 3 items above: Decided not to do these. I can do these any time and right now, with cable, it’s much more difficult to watch *my* stuff. It seems like this month was dedicated to the Food network -_-;

Books & Manga
Finish Reading 2 novel (260~ pages)Done!
Finish Reading 3 novel (260~ pages) – To Do

warrenshea.com
Keep blogging! I slowed down a bit near the end of this month. – Doing good so far
Update Links section by Friday, Dec 17th, EoD – To do

Gaming
Finish Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64) – To do
Play and be awesome at Gran Turismo 5 – In progress…
Hold Street Fighter 4 (and other games) tournament at work – To do – next week!

Web Development and Design
Finish my ASP.NET 3.5 book – To do
Start my CSS book – To do
Start my (other) CSS book
Start my HTML5 book
Work on my EPIC SITE

Other
Mega Man Tribute Artwork – To do…maybe

Notes
I’m pretty behind….I don’t know what I’ve been doing but it hasn’t been what I should be doing.

I’ve been watching a lot of Slam Dunk…101 episodes in 15 days still averages to about…7 episodes per day…which is like, 2 hours…so that’s a lot of time there.

I’m hoping to spend the next 2 days VERY productively and the rest of the month more productively than the beginning…it’ll be tough with all the holiday stuff incoming but there’s also more free time.

Reading

Wednesday, December 15th, 2010 at 11:58 pm

Oh man, it’s 11:30 and I still have to do my accomplishments post…ah the pressures of being a disciplined blogger.

So, because of my accomplishments post, which was created to make sure I don’t lazily live my life month by month, I had done some good reading today. Great reading actually.

One of my goals was to read 2 novels this month and conclude the trilogy of Dark Angel novels that exist. I had finished one novel last month and recently (three days ago), started my second one so that I could have some progress in my accomplishments blog post. While I only read around 60 pages within the last 3 days, I really got my ass in gear and read a whole 200 pages today! 200 pages! I’m quite surprised with myself. Granted, I didn’t have work today (I’m on vacation) and I only did 4 things today: make some rib sauce and paint some ribs (30m), clean, watch Slam Dunk!, and read, I was still able to read a usually impossible amount (for me).

Now, I want to discuss reading. Originally I said I hated it, then the stance came to “I don’t hate it if it’s something I enjoy”. And well, I still wouldn’t say I enjoy reading but it’s not quite the pain in the ass thing I thought it was. I’ve been able to “deal with it” well if the writing and/or story is good.

I guess it all depends on what you’re reading. My past novel experiences were generally forced (school). Even some X-Men novels I had read in high school weren’t memorable or great. I thought the Hobbit was too long and boring as well (believe it or not, I’m not so much a fan of Fantasy – like LOTR or D&D..or Thor). That first Dark Angel book also sucked ass. Terrible stuff. So much that I didn’t want to read the other two, I thought the writer was garbage. But, feeling the need for some story closure, I decided to tough it out and read the two books. I’d been faithful to the Dark Angel series that I didn’t want to simply read a wiki on it (not that I could find one – I tried). This novel was a lot better and more interesting than the first though. I wouldn’t say that I couldn’t put it down, I still feel like there are so many other things I’d rather do then read. But this novel made it so that toughing it out wasn’t so bad.

I dunno, just the idea of reading a novel seems so incredibly daunting and…I wouldn’t say time consuming, but I can think of better ways to experience a story (like a show, movie, or a wiki) if those sources/adaptations are available. But in the case they aren’t, like these novels, or some fan-fiction…well, I’ll tough it out.

I’m excited to read the 3rd book and find closure (man, I hope the book closes things!). I think I’ll take a 2 or 3 day break before starting the third and final book. I think maybe next month I’ll read one or maybe both Wicked! books…and then maybe call it Reading quits for a while. Maybe read Harry Potter books…maybe.

Anyways, off to write my accomplishments post!