posted 2006/08/30 at 16:05
Let's say you have a computer, running Windows XP, and you've got two network cards in it. You want to set up one network card to connect to the router attached to your cable modem so that the computer gets Internet access. You want to set up the other network card to connect to an existing LAN and be able to access all the computers on it. However, you also want to set up this computer so that it can provide Internet access to all the computers on the LAN. How would you go about this?
Also, once I get my financial aid situation striaghtened out (don't ask how badly that's going for me), I may decide to get a refurbished laptop for me to use at school and at coffeeshops. (Thankfully I get free access at the big local coffeeshop chain.) I've never learned that much about notebook computers, though, and one of the things I'll want for this notebook to do is to have an input out to an ordinary television screen. Is this something that is usually built into a notebook? Is this something I'd need to buy something special to do?
posted 2006/08/28 at 17:37
With as dark as the sky outside is right now, you'd think it was near the Winter Solstice and not midsummer. The worst part is that we're not even going to get thunderstorms out of this, just a bunch of rain. Over the past few weeks we've been denied several storms when they broke up just before crossing the state line into Ohio; the one time we got thunder, it woke me up early on Thursday and made me go to Japanese class groggy. There's a Murphy's Law in there somewhere, I'm sure.
This upcoming Christmas will mark the ten-year anniversary of me getting my current television. I mention this because the TV is definitely showing wear; I can see the difference in picture quality between my TV up here and the TV I bought for my dance game setup in the garage, which was a $100 el cheapo television that still has a much sharper picture than my bedroom TV has. Making matters worse, the remote for my bedroom television hasn't worked for years because after the house fire the remote got boxed up and the batteries inside leaked and corroded the inside.
The problem I have right now isn't so much a lack of money for a new television as it is me just wondering whether or not I really need a new television. I've written recently about how I just don't have much interest in watching television or playing video games that much anymore, and if those things don't interest me so much, then is it worth me going out and getting a new TV? At the same time, though, it's not like I've completely cut TV and video games out of my life, and it'd be nice to have something nice to watch them on, or at least something better than my current setup. I don't know, I guess first I need to worry about getting the money for a new television before I worry about whether or not to actually buy one.
posted 2006/08/26 at 18:18
Serious question here: What is with all the Margaret Cho hate?
I mention this because Monday night, when I couldn't get to sleep, I happened to catch a repeat of the William Shatner roast on Comedy Central. One of the roasters was Lisa Lampanelli (sp?), whose work on the Jeff Foxworthy roast I admired a lot. Shortly after that, though, I went to Lisa's official Website to learn more about her, only to find out that on her Website she'd set up this huge section for this one single joke. Said joke was, in fact, stolen directly from Margaret Cho, and as if it couldn't be more obvious, Lisa stole the first (chronologically) joke from Cho's Notorious C.H.O. tour set, or at least the first joke that appears on the Notorious C.H.O. DVD. Said joke was even more memorable for being one of the first jokes by a major comedienne/comedian about the September 11 attacks after the attacks, and probably the first joke that actually worked and didn't cause a public outcry.
Now, this pissed me off in the past, but I'd mostly forgotten about it before the roast, and was still willing to hear Lisa at the Shatner roast. Near the end of her routine, though, turning to George Takei, Lisa said, "George Takei is so gay, he thinks Margaret Cho is funny." My reaction upon hearing this was something along the line of, "Oh FUCK YOU, you fucking [insert string of anti-female epithets that I, as a feminist, should never use to refer to any female, except perhaps Ann Coulter]."
It's not that I wasn't aware of a great deal of public sentiment against Margaret Cho's comedy in the past; I know that Maxim recently rated her the second worst comedic of figure of all time behind Sinbad, but then again I think Maxim tends to target the tiny-penis neanderthal alcoholic demographic to start with, so I don't pay their opinions too much heed to start with.
Still, I want to know why there is such a huge backlash towards Margaret's comedy. I will admit that some of her jokes may not be understandable without a basic knowledge of the GLBT community, and I will also admit that her routines from about ten years ago relied too much on her portrayals of her mother. I can understand right-wing backlash to Cho because of her strong left-wing views (and her courage to express them), or her status as a GLBT community icon, or because she is a bisexual herself. Perhaps there is some element of homophobia invovled. Perhaps there's an element of sexism involved too, because Cho tends to talk about the women's body and its unique functions just as male comedians have done about their bodies for a long time, and our society still allows men to have more open discourse about their bodily functions than they allow women. Maybe it's corporate in nature because Margaret is far removed from the mainstream comedy infrastructure and works independently.
I don't know what it is, but I seriously wonder how many of the people who dis Margaret have actually taken the time to watch one of her routines from start to finish, because her comedy is quite hilarious. Certainly a lot better than Lisa whats-her-name.
posted 2006/08/25 at 22:15
I have to say that blogging in Japanese is certainly holding a certain measure of interest for me now, if only because I really can't express myself and my feelings (which I try to do in nearly everything I write) in Japanese like I can in English. That, and I'm trying to figure out who this mysterious "blog" person is who keeps leaving comments ...
No word yet on this little project of mine extending to other people on either side of the Pacific, but it'll be interesting to see how it goes. I'm half-tempted to try the old Hotmail account of the sensei I had for first-year Japanese, who moved back to Japan with her husband a couple of years ago. I doubt she remembers me, though, and she probably doesn't have the time to keep in correspondence with me. I hope I can make new trans-Pacific friends through this effort, then.
posted 2006/08/24 at 23:28
I didn't get my first NES until the system had been out for a few years. I got a Super NES a few days after its release (they were sold out first day), and then proceeded to get both the Nintendo 64 and the PS2 on their first days out. Of course, I should follow that last remark by saying that in the case of the Nintendo 64, it had yet to be announced that Square was deserting Nintendo for Sony, and in the case of the PS2 I hadn't yet bought a DVD player even though I'd purchased a very expensive limited edition Tenchi Muyo! boxed set. (I love Ryo-Oki, so sue me.) Also, in both cases I wasn't in school and had large amounts of both time and disposable income.
So help me, though, there is absolutely nothing in this new generation of consoles that's catching my eye. Xbox 360 is ... well, it's Microsoft, and even though it's got a DDR game coming out this year, but it looks little different from the current XBox DDR games. I know other classic gamers are salivating over the Wii's ability to download and play classic console games, but I already collect classic console games, and from my few dalliances with emulators a few years back I know that I just can't get into a classic game unless I'm playing on the system's original controllers. The PS3 looks very interesting, but with the war between Blu-Ray and HDDVD yet to be settled, I don't want to commit to a single format yet.
I realize that this is just me being a savvy consumer, but so help me I can't help but take it as yet another sign that I'm getting old. Sigh.
(Oh, Joe: The first comment on tesuto posuto ... I can't make out most of those kanji. *headdesk*)
posted 2006/08/22 at 21:35
For those of you who had problems reading http://www.seanshannon.org/jp/, I should have specified that you need Japanese language support installed on your computer in order to read it properly. (Then again, I'm concerned that even those of you who have Japanese language support may not be able to read it because of the different ways there are to encode East Asian languages.)
Basically I'm going to use the blog as an excuse for me to keep my Japanese skills up. The .org/jp (or whatever I choose to call it) will NOT be a Japanese-language version of this blog. (For one thing, my Japanese skills are still very limited.) Instead I'm just going to write about my life and my thoughts as best I can with what little Japanese I already know and whatever I manage to pick up this semester. In a linguistics class I took last year I learned how differently the brain works when you're reading a foreign language and when you attempt to communicate in it, and how foreign language teaching tends to focus too much on the former and not enough on the latter. I hope that this helps me to keep my Japanese fresh, and gives me an incentive to keep learning the language even after I no longer have to do so for class.
For those of you who are yourselves learning Japanese, I hope that the blog may be of some use to you for reading comprehension if nothing else. I showed the blog to my Japanese professor earlier today, and I'm thinking about suggesting trying to start some sort of electronic penpal system with Japanese students in the process of learning English. It was surprisingly easy to set Blogger up to do a Japanese-language blog, so maybe some of my classmates will be interested in doing something like this. We'll see.
posted 2006/08/21 at 19:06
Does this show up correctly for all of you?
(By the way, I should be getting e-mails whenever any of you leave comments on the .org now, so I'll be sure to screen them now instead of leaving them in the great big Blogger void from now on.)
posted at 16:54
UT went back in session today, but I don't go in until tomorrow. Still, I was not happy when I checked UT's Website and found out that my Japanese independent study was STILL not showing up on the system. I don't know if there's a paperwork snafu or what, but I need this course to graduate, and if my e-mail doesn't get responded to here soon I'm really going to panic.
I'm not as caught up on my Japanese as I'd like to be, and the thing is that I've had all this afternoon to work on it (basically up until I go out to the garage to work out), but ... it's the last day of vacation, you know? I just want to lay on my back here on my bed and be the laziest turd on the face of the planet. This isn't what I should be doing, yes, but when else am I going to have time for this, especially if I get a job at the start of the new year?
Just don't ask how my summer went. Don't even ask.
posted 2006/08/20 at 23:26
Couple of Japanese-related questions here ...
Does anyone know of an Internet store that sells Japanese children's readers (like for first and second graders) to US addresses? I'm looking for a way to supplement my Japanese learning here, and I've heard good things about using children's readers as a way to bolster vocabulary and kanji and learn different sentence structures.
Also, can anyone recommend a good Japanese-language blogging site that features easy input in Japanese? I could probably configure Blogger to accept Japanese language input through my copy of Windows XP, but that would more than likely tie me to Microsoft's proprietary Shift-JIS encoding, and I already feel dirty enough using the Microsoft products I already use.posted 2006/08/17 at 19:42
There's nothing quite like the end of a summer vacation to make you sad. This is especially true when you look back on the summer and realize how little you accomplished. (Actually in my case it was more that I accomplished my main mission of the summer, but quickly realized how stupid I was to put so much focus on it.)
I have been battling depression here for about the past month or so, and was informed today that my counselor won't be available the first week of classes because she won't be on campus. That is not what I needed to hear, but I'll find a way to tough things out until I can see her, somehow.
This past week I've also been investigating doctoral programmes in English even more than before, and more and more I'm coming to realize that I just don't want a doctorate. I've been meaning to write more about that, and about some personal revelations of the past year or so, but that's going to require a full .journal entry, and I really don't have the time for that considering the preparations I'm making here for what will be my final semester as a student for the time being. (I am still considering going for an MFA in creative writing, but again, there are too many details involved in that to get into right now.)
Uh, yeah, so what are the rest of you up to? None of you have tried the Blogger comment system I installed on the .org yet ...
posted 2006/08/15 at 23:42
Does anyone else think that there is absolutely no way that Snakes on a Plane can live up to all the hype at this point?
posted 2006/08/13 at 13:06
I don't know what feels odder at this point: the fact that the Bengals have a nationally televised game tonight, or that the game is on NBC. Given that it's just a preseason game, though, I probably won't watch too much of it since I have so much other stuff that I need to get to here. Looking at the Bengals' schedule for the coming year, I think I can safely say that there will be no playoffs this year; I think the Bengals will be lucky just to get to 9-7, even with Carson healthy. Still, we broke all the important streaks last year, and I won't be too disappointed if the Bengals go back to stinking it up this year.
Speaking of looking at schedules, I looked at the Tigers' upcoming schedule as well, and that kind of put me out of the mood of thinking that they might be able to win the World Series. Hell, with the number of AL powerhouses the Tigers have coming up here in the last months of the season, I don't even think I'd feel safe guaranteeing a playoff appearance at this point. I know that the Tigers are just in a temporary slump right now and they'll get back to playing winning baseball soon, but the way things are going it makes it hard to think that the Tigers will accomplish anything this season other than finishing above .500 for the first time in forever.
Yeah, back to work with me, I know.
posted 2006/08/12 at 17:18
I can still remember the things I used to do on Saturdays as a kid: Getting up early to watch the weekly Australian Rules Football recap show at six in the morning on ESPN, Saturday morning cartoons, the old WWF syndicated shows, then going out shopping with my father, usually hitting up the arcade at the big mall a few miles from here to play games like Pengo, Jr. Pac-Man, and of course Skeeball.
Flash forward to today. I can't catch the AFL's recap show because it's on some Fox Sports channel that I don't get here in Toledo, the cartoons aren't anywhere near as good, I have no interest in professional wrestling anymore, and even if I go out shopping for some reason it's not with my father because he's either working in his office or working out in the yard. This isn't even getting into how late I tend to wake up on Saturdays because I stay up so late Friday nights. (Before anyone gets any ideas about the last part of that sentence, I'm usually up in a fit of self-loathing; it's not like I'm going out drinking or partying or anything like that.)
Still, somehow the sun seems to shine a little bit brighter on Saturday. Somehow there's still this child-like feeling in me that says, no matter what I need to get done, I should kick back, put my feet up, and relax on a Saturday. Maybe once I'm out of school and teaching full-time I can do that, but for now ... well, the semester starts a week from Monday, and I haven't gotten anywhere near as far on the MA exam reading list or my Japanese studies as I'd like. Le sigh. Le weep.
posted 2006/08/11 at 16:59
I'm actually posting right now from the main computer lab at UT. I had to come here to take care of some more stuff, and the worst part is that I'll have to come back here next week as well to get things like the textbook for my Japanese class and my parking permit.
In a way I suppose it's a good thing that I'm getting the chance to come here when things aren't so busy so I can get used to being around campus again without ZOMG TEN MILLION STUDENTS around, but at the same time it kind of stinks that I'm having to keep making trips here over my break. Not that I'll be here that much over the semester -- depending on whether or not I can work things out with my thesis, I may only have to be on campus Tuesdays and Thursdays this semester -- but I've still got that child-like instinct of wanting to avoid being on campus if I can.
I've been looking online at instructor positions at various two- and four-year colleges in the area, and there are a couple of community colleges nearby that have positions available. Ultimately I'd like to stay an instructor here at UT, but budget considerations being what they are as well, as well as the fact that I'll be entering the market in the middle of an academic year, I don't know that they'll be able to take me for Spring semester. Still, perhaps some time teaching away from UT -- even if only a semester -- may do me some good and give me some valuable experience.
I've got Walden out in my car and it's another nice day out (nicer than Tuesday, even, since it's coolger), but I should finish the book in maybe an hour or so, and I didn't bring another book with me. Maybe I'll take a walk at Wildwood when I get the book finished. We'll see.
posted 2006/08/08 at 23:14
Earlier today I hoofed it over to UT in order to take care of financial aid stuff and to try to get my schedule sorted out since I need to take my Japanese course this coming semester as an independent study. As I was walking through all the old familiar buildings, though, I didn't get the old familiar feeling of being welcome at UT that I've had these past few years. I'm not sure why I felt this way -- I may feel totally different in a couple of weeks once classes start back up -- but it was kind of unsettling.
While I was out, though, I took advantage of the sunny weather and stayed outside most of the day reading Walden. I hope that doesn't sound pretentious.
posted 2006/08/07 at 20:01
Back when the NES was the latest and greatest video game system, I really didn't like the cheap black plastic sleeves that the games came with. I much preferred the clear plastic cases that totally sealed both the game and the instruction manual up that the games used to come in when you rented them from the video rental stores. When I discovered that places like Toys'R'Us actually sold them for around five bucks for a case of five, I snapped them up quickly.
This was all well and good back in the day. The problem is that since this time my collections of old video games have increased, and of course there isn't a store on the face of the planet that wants to waste shelf space for empty cases for video games for video game systems that haven't had new games produced for the system in well over a decade. Thus, right now I have games for my NES, Super NES, and Nintendo 64 that are laying "loose," and while this is hardly a life-or-death issue, it's a huge annoyance when I try to get things organized and keep all of my games for a given system in the same general area. I haven't looked on eBay for the cases yet, but I may just have to do that. Heck, I may even buy old video games I already have copies of if I can just get some more of those cases.
I will note here that other video game companies have a history of putting their games in decent cases, but the cases haven't always been ideal. Sega gets a kick in the crotch for their huge Sega CD/Saturn cases that are about a sixteenth of an inch taller than will fit properly in a DVD rack. Sony likewise gets a kick in the crotch for changing the packaging of Playstation games in the middle of the system's lifetime, forcing me to "make" jewel cases for my older PS1 games and have to keep the oversized manuals in a separate place. Microsoft gets a kick in the crotch because ... well, they're Microsoft, and that's all the excuse I need. Atari gets a kick in the crotch because the main reason no one ever made plastic cases for Jaguar games (aside from the fact that no one in their right mind ever wanted a Jaguar) was because the cartridges were curved, and thus hardly ever set right no matter where you put them. The only company that escapes my size 11s is NEC, whose TurboGrafx games all came in standard CD-sized jewel cases, although how many of you actually remember, much less own, a TurboGrafx?
posted 2006/08/06 at 18:01
Well, at the very least my blog posts have gotten longer recently. I'm not sure if they're necessarily better, but at the very least I feel like I'm writing about stuff that's more relevant than what I've been writing about. This isn't going to be one of those posts, though, because I just want to get some randomness out of the way here.
The heat wave relented there for a bit, but we got up near 90 again today. Most of the rest of the week we're only supposed to have highs in the low 80s, but I could really go for some daytime low 70s/upper 60s here. Then I'd feel better about going out for long periods of time, either to walk someplace (mixing in exercise walking with my dance game routine) or take some photos.
So help me, I'm starting to entertain thoughts of the Tigers winning the World Series this year. A team with that little playoff experience shouldn't make it far into the playoffs, but I'm beginning to think that with Jim Leyland at the helm all things truly are possible. I fear what a Tigers/Yankees ALCS may do to this family, though.
Fall semester starts two weeks from tomorrow, and I finally seem to be clicking into overdrive with MA exam reading and getting back into the swing of things with Japanese. There's some important school stuff I want to discuss here, but I want to save that discussion until I get a few things straightened out.
Unfortunately, my personal life has taken a huge hit in the past month, and that's kind of gotten me all odd and off and stuff. Again, let me straighten some things out there, and then I'll try to talk about it here, although that may take a whole .journal entry to go through.
Yeah, that's pretty much it. Back to reading.
posted 2006/08/04 at 19:35
I've mentioned in the past how I went to school with the children of the family that runs the local cable system here in Toledo, and the insight that's given me whenever we have problems with our cable or our cable modem. (Okay, maybe insight isn't the right word, but at least I have a better idea of who to get pissed at, and why they deserve so much scorn, than other people here in town.)
Anyway, said family also owns our big local paper, The Toledo Blade, which in spite of said ownership has produced some outstanding content over the past few years. The thing is that the management of the paper is currently negotiating new contracts with most of its unions, which historically have done well for themselves. (Toledo has always been a strong union town thanks to its historical ties to the automotive industry, especially when so much corporate transportation was done by ships traveling through the Great Lakes.) Of course, the paper wishes they could have more money, ostensibly for the purpose of reinvesting in the paper but in all likelihood to just fatten the wallets of the owners. (I know how cliché it is for a liberal like me to say something like that, but like I said, I know this family.)
The reason I bring this up is because over the past few weeks, when I've had the television on, I've been "treated" to commercials where The Blade argues its case at least once every half-hour. The joys of owning the cable airwaves in town, eh? The inundation of the paper's posturing would be bad enough as it is (not just because I disagree with them but because I think this case is a microcosm of why large media ownership -- even on as small a scale as Toledo's piddly operations -- is dangerous for society), but these commercials are absurdly stupid, basically trying to argue that unless the unions cave in to The Blade's demands, Toledo will become a ghost town because no other company will want to do business in a place where average workers actually make a decent wage and fat-cats like the owners of the paper have to buy their kids Jeeps for their sixteenth birthdays instead of Lexuses. No, dipshits, the reason why businesses don't come to Toledo is because this city fucking sucks.
Don't get me wrong, there are things to like about this city, and more and more I find myself of a mindset that I'd kind of like to stay here after I get my MA and teach locally. The people who own our major newspaper and cable system just aren't one of those things to like, and now that they're working so diligently to take away one of the biggest things to like here (the strong union base), they're steadily rising up my shit list.
posted 2006/08/02 at 19:05
One way in which I notice myself maturing in a way that I don't feel comfortable is in my television-watching.
Back before the fire at the house we had DirecTV with all the special packages and cable, which was perhaps overkill, but it was nice. After the fire we only had cable at the hotel, then after we moved back here we didn't get cable again for another couple of years, which deprived me of the two channels I most wanted to watch (TechTV and Food Network).
Stuck with such limited selections, and not really having much time to watch television because I'd started school again, at first I fixated on Monday Night Football for reasons that I still don't really understand. All throughout that season ABC was advertising the remake of Dragnet starring Ed O'Neill that was going to start airing in the winter, so I caught that and thought that it did a tremendous job of bringing what I liked about the original Dragnet (which I used to catch on a regular basis back when it was a fixture on Nick at Nite) into the modern form, at least until Ethan Embry left and it turned into a bland ensemble drama. Still, that was the first time I'd watched a Dick Wolf series on a regular basis, and it hooked me enough that I started watching both Law and Order and SVU on a regular basis.
Eventually we got cable back, although I kept watching the two Law and Order series for a while, dropping the original season after Jerry Orbach passed away and the latter when I couldn't watch it due to a late-night class I was taking. (I still watch SVU reruns on USA Network and have three seasons of the show on DVD, but I don't make a point of catching the new episodes on NBC like I used to.) Having cable again was nice, but first TechTV got swallowed up by those bastards at G4, and then Food Network dropped the original Iron Chef in favour of its own, vastly inferior version. I'm probably not even going to watch the Red Wings as much as I used to now that the team has lost so many of its players from its latest run of glory (though I suspect the new players will begin their own run of glory here soon).
There are three shows that I still make a point of catching as often as possible: The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and Countdown with Keith Olbermann. However, in all honesty, as much as I like the shows, I just have the feeling that I'm watching them less because I feel like watching them is a good use of my time, and more because I feel obligated to watch them because I'm a left-winger. I mean, anyone who read me back in the day knows that I've been a huge fan of Olbermann's since his SportsCentre days, and I believe that Countdown is the only hour of television on the major cable news networks worth watching, but more and more I find Olbermann to be engaging in the same kind of intellectual dishonesty that runs so rampant among right-wing talking heads like O'Reilly and Limbaugh, and even if I agree with Olbermann on a point I can't stand it when he uses dishonest arguments to bolster his case. (This is why you hardly ever see me writing about Michael Moore, because even if I agree with most of his points, he "proves" them using quite shady methods sometimes.)
I guess what bothers me is that when I was younger I'd always hear older people talking about how there was nothing but trash on television, and I felt obligated to point out that, although most of what was on television was garbage, there were still good shows out there -- some useful, some entertaining, a select few both -- if you just looked hard enough. I still believe that. However, at the same time, more and more I find myself just wishing that I didn't watch television so much, and devoted my time to more fulfilling pursuits. Like I said, I feel like I'm maturing, and maturing in a way that kind of makes me feel a little sad. I hope that makes some sense.
posted 2006/08/01 at 17:10
The heat wave definitely has Toledo by the proverbial balls here now. 95 degrees and heat indexes over 105 two days in a row here, and we'll probably have more of the same tomorrow before we cool down on Thursday. Even though I've got plenty of stuff to do here at the house where it's nice and air-conditioned, I still wish it were cooler out so I could maybe go to a coffeehouse to do MA exam reading instead of spending yet another day here.
Related to that subject, we appear to have solved the problem of the smoke detectors constantly going off. We're now running a fan over the smoke detector in my sister and brother-in-law's bedroom (which has always acted a little strangely), and that seems to have solved the problem of the detectors constantly going off. This couldn't come soon enough for me, given how much those alarms were making me mental.
I may not teach this coming semester; as a "lingering" grad student I'm already at the back of the line in terms of assignments, and I may decide to take a part-time position at UT's Writing Centre instead if it fits into my schedule better. I'll be teaching again at the start of the new year no matter what anyway, and hopefully at that point I'll be able to finally command the type of money that would enable me to get my own place. We'll see how it goes. I still have a lot more I want to write about the whole grad school and teaching thing, but now isn't the time for that. Maybe later.
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon