Over the weekend Chu and I checked out a farmer’s market in Sacramento and swung by a random thrift store that had a really energetic sign-waving guy standing out front. It was a spur of the moment thing but it turned out to be pretty sweet. Chu got a mug, and then we also bought a diner booth that they surprisingly had sitting around. It was marked at $75 but they must have been trying to get rid of it, because just by Chu and I appearing to be interested, the woman knocked 30 bucks off the price. The only problem was that the “table” portion of the booth was significantly slanted. Just about every screw on the thing was loose (and they had to take it apart anyway to fit it in the car), so Chu and I figured once everything was tight, it would all snap into place. As it turned out, it wasn’t the loose screws that were the problem. The cross-beam holding the tabletop up was bent out of shape. It took some significant effort to get the table put back together and in working order. Had to take a trip to Home Depot to get some nuts, bolts, and washers to replace the rusted or missing ones on the original unit, and then spent some time at CBST’s machine shop bending some metal and grabbing some drill bits (that I had to use manually to drill some pilot holes). Anyhow, it took a few hours and a medium-sized headache, but it’s finished. Here’s the end result, modeled by miss Chu.

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Okay, I have a lot to cover here so I should get to it. Here’s the latest chapter of the FF7 fanfic. I think I finally have some ideas for a plot which I owe to talking with darren during xmas and also playing through the game. Darren also helped me do some recording and songwriting and I’ve included the song in this chapter although it isn’t referenced. It’s foreshadowing. This started almost as an exercise in sweep picking for me and I have to say that while I like the chords and melodies in the song I’m not entirely happy with my playing. And I also think I have to work on my tone. But I still hope you enjoy it. In doing a project like this I think I’ll get stuck if I spend too much time reworking tracks.

Disclaimer: I don’t own the characters or any aspect of Final Fantasy VII

Cloud tried to be delicate, not being able to really tell how earnest Yuffie was about her changes to his song.

“Yeah…this could work too,” he offered.

“Hehe,” she laughed through slightly chattering teeth. Cloud sensed a growing restlessness in the young ninja and all of sudden felt a bit guilty. He had gotten so worked up fretting about having to perform that he forgot to extend the hospitality that a former member of AVALANCHE deserved. And it was still his home too after all.

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I can’t believe it’s been a month since the last chapter of my fanfic. Well, I finally have a title that I’m going with, “Fair Embrace.” This chapter has been written for a while but I put off posting it. And actually I finished the next chapter as well and have some ideas for new tracks. So anyway, I’ll try to get the next chapter up soon and also have new songs. I apologize for not having any music in this post, T_T.

Disclaimer: I don’t own the characters or any aspect of Final Fantasy VII

As far as he knew Cloud was bringing Yuffie back to Seventh Heaven. The rain had let up hours before and the sun was setting. The knot in his stomach that he had felt at first glimpse of Midgar on the horizon intensified as they pulled up outside of the bar.

“Well,” he said, “here you are.”

“Yeah, you’ll be meeting the business end of the conformer if you think you’re going to steal away now,” she replied.

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!!!UPDATE!!!: PICS.

open

boxed up

in situ

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Hey guys. You might recall a while back I was talking about making a home theater pc from scratch. Well I actually built it, and I’m typing this entry on the new computer. All in all I think it was a pretty positive experience. Some trial-by-fire aspects to it in terms of wiring up the motherboard to the case and power supply, but it was surprisingly fun. Came in way over-budget but I guess that’s how it goes. Specs are:

Nvidia Ion ITX-D mobo w/ Atom 330 chip (dual core @ 1.6 GHz)
HEC 8k mini ITX case
500 GB western digital HDD
4GB kingston DDR2 RAM
lite-on CD/DVD-RW drive

Initially planned on running XP, but my old install disk didn’t want to work – probably because it was a dell-branded OEM disk. I tried my best to get into Ubuntu but it didn’t want to install the proper drivers for the display I’m using and in general is not as user-friendly as advertised. As I mentioned to Rob, about 5 minutes after installing I was already having to do shit with a command-line interface. So long story short I’m now running Windows 7, which was a big part of the cost-overrun on my part. The breakdown goes like this:

$170 – mobo/processor combo
$50 – case w/ power supply
$80 – RAM
$40 – slimline dvd drive
$55 – digital hard disk
$20 – wireless keyboard/mouse combo
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$415 total + ~$100 for w7 and we’re not only $150 over budget, but at the point where I could have probably bought the stupid thing cheaper from Dell or wherever. One nice thing about rolling your own, though, is that the number of background processes running is much reduced from a vendor-built computer. Don’t have all the shitty bloatware running around and slowing everything down.

In any case, it was a good experience, and one I’d definitely recommend, but after having built it I’m not sure I’d do it again until component prices start to come down a little more. I also think I went a little overboard on some of the pieces – I probably could have cut costs a lot if I was making a computer that was primarily just for web-surfing rather than running a home theater pc. Get some shitty hard disk (or scavenge one), forget the optical drive, cut the RAM by half, and try and find a good linux distro and you’re back down below the $300 mark for a perfectly functional computer that’s using a top-of-the-line ultra-low-voltage processor.

Okay here’s chapter 2 of my Final Fantasy VII fanfic. I still haven’t thought of a title. Dave’s review post inspired me to keep up the activity here. Note that the song in this works into the story later on. Cloud plays it for Yuffie later as a kind of impromptu jam. It’s sort of Vai inspired although I’m not claiming that I play like him. I’ve been doing some tremolo stuff. Bought a new guitar recently, a Charvel. Sorry about the noise.

Disclaimer: I don’t own the characters or any aspect of Final Fantasy VII

Cloud sought shelter under a canopy at an abandoned turnpike between Junon and Midgar. It was late afternoon and the rain had just started up again. He was on delivery. Early that morning he had crept back into Seventh Heaven before Tifa had awoken and collected his messages. “What am I doing?” he asked himself. The fantasy of her black tresses over delicate shoulders sliced clean through his heart and he buried his face in his hands as waves of nostalgia broke over him. An old friend, who had been shadowing him since his last stop, watched from a distance for a while, before it simply became too pathetic a sight to bear.

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Okay guys, I finally started my epic Final Fantasy 7 fan fiction. I hope you enjoy the first chapter. The basic idea is that cloud wants to start a band. The idea is I guess that I’ll compose the music that’s referenced in the story. Anyway, Ross, I guess this puts the ball in your court. Enjoy. There’s some shredding at the end of the track.

Disclaimer: I don’t own the characters or any aspect of Final Fantasy VII

In the rainy season in Midgar Cloud clutched the battered note to his chest. He could still vividly recall the night at Gold Saucer when he had received it. Normally, he wouldn’t have wanted to have his fortune told, but Reeve insisted.

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Hey guys i’m in sunny California now. Had an awesome dinner with Rob and Kelly last night to celebrate my arrival. Not much to say. Feeling pretty amped up today but at the same time strangely missing being on the road. Mark will remember Dave Hunter, a UR guy who quit his PhD program to drive big rigs for a living. Honestly can say that I now appreciate some of the appeal. The punishing nature of the first two days driving had a karmic payoff in the last two days. In particular the 2nd half of Nebraska and the entirety of Wyoming were pretty spectacular. I got into this really good groove of waking up and getting on the road about an hour before dawn. The roads were pretty much my own for the first couple hours of driving each day. I’d leave the radio off until the sun came up and just enjoy the early morning half-light. Finally got the camera charged on the night of the 2nd day, so here’s some pictures from the 3rd and 4th days of the trip.

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here’s a few photos from my first week, spent in beijing.

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Big ups to Rob for hosting me on Saturday and showing me the sights around Sacramento and Davis. Have to say the trip was pretty incredible on my end, don’t know how stoked Rob was to have to deal with me all day!

Anyway, like I said, the trip was good. Sacramento struck me in a lot of ways as like either Rochester with nice weather, or a slightly hipper, definitely more diverse Rochester. I caught a glimpse of Arnold but it was while I was on a shuttle from the airport to the hotel, so I didn’t get to snap a picture. I thought I took like 30,000 pictures, but in reality I somehow only took 30, and most of those were surprisingly crappy. When I was describing the trip to Chu I resorted mostly to Google street-view’ing where we’d been. Some pictures I did take, for whatever they’re worth, follow below the cut.

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There was a reason I took these pictures but I forget what it was. The first two have a kind of warcraft 2 feel. anyway, creepy place to be!

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