Train Kept a Rollin’ Posted February 22, 2003 at 12:00 am
It was a busy week, though I think next week will be worse. Our cable modem service was down for the better part of five days which, of course, sucks. Titus and I had to head over to the computer clusters at Tech just to take our online Biology quiz. A technician from AT&T/Comcast (who knows which one) finally came by to fix it on Tuesday. I haven’t heard anything about us being reimbursed for the downtime.
Since my resurgence of interest in anime, I’ve been more than a little curious about the numerous import anime DVDs you can find on eBay. Being able to get an entire series for less than the cost of just one of the US Region 1 DVDs is tempting to say the least. Well, this past weekend I finally took the bait and ordered “Serial Experiments Lain” for $25.99 shipped. This included the entire series on two region-free DVDs with Japanese audio and English or Chinese subtitles. Compare that against the Region 1 DVDs which have both English and Japanese audio and English subtitles spanned over four DVDs, each of which costs more than the set I ordered. So now one might begin to see the conundrum this creates. You can pay a quarter of the price at the expense of an English soundtrack (which isn’t a huge loss in some cases) and possibly inferior subtitles. So how much are these features worth? You have to wonder if these DVDs are even legit.
Well, my order arrived Friday to my delight and I eagerly examined what I got for my money. The packaging is functional and seems professional, though nothing as flashy as the US special edition lunchbox set. The video quality is good if unremarkable. The 2.1 Dolby surround sound was probably the most markable improvement over the DivX encodes I originally watched. I was a little disappointed with the subtitles. There were a few typos and number of missing periods in the fifteen minutes or so that I watched. I guess you can’t get everything for nothing.
Monday and Wednesday were hectic as usual. Biology lab went pretty well but ECE lab was longer and more frustrating than usual. Printer problems ensued again and none of these brilliant engineering majors seemed to figure out that you should watch your print queue and maybe cancel your job if it fails! It seemed obvious to me but I didn’t say anything.
Thursday was mostly devoted to studying for the Biology test that was coming Friday. I read all the chapters covered except the genetics section which I felt I had the best grasp on. When Friday rolled around and the test did come, all the preparation came to naught. I did worse on this test than on the last. I read the book. I took all the quizzes at least once. I have attended every lecture. What the hell is the problem? As predicted I did well on the genetics questions. I didn’t do well on everything else.
Other than the Biology exam, Friday was a good day and the most productive one of the week. Michael and I got checked off on Project 8 for embedded, I got points back for a silly grading error on my first ECE lab exam, and I got a much-needed haircut.