Yet another video game font churned out while I should’ve been doing schoolwork: Return of Ganon, the font used for dialogue in The Legend of Zelda for Super Nintendo.

I recently got this piece of spam in my inbox. I’ve munged the addresses to protect the guilty, but still…badly translated English and pure falsehood at its finest. (Even the domain names are misspelled!) Anyway, enjoy…

From: "Admin" <admin@winprise.com>
To: <codeman38@yahoo.com>
Subject: Your password
Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2001 01:09:03 +0500
Reply-to: "Admin" <admin@winprise.com>

Dear Mr/Mm!
If you receive this e-mail, you're a winner.
This e-mail was sended to only 50 randomly e-mail
addresses. You is one of this 50 winners, which
have now opportunity for guaranteed receiveing
$500.000. Additional
information you can request
from web-mail form on http://postofis.[!@#].com .
Your password for access to the information is:
psH9F4kM
Password is case sensitive!
We're apologize for inconvenience if you not
interested about this. In this case delete this
e-mail. We are not store your e-mail address.
Thanks for your attention.
Admin

Is it just me, by the way, or does that last bit remind anyone else of Zero Wing? “We are not store your e-mail address”…”we’re apologize for inconvenience”… I guess all our spam are belong to– erm, never mind. 🙂

And oh yeah, the headers state that the message was sent from Poland, just in case anyone was wondering what specific form of badly translated English was being used.

I got hit by a car today.

No, that’s not a typo. That’s exactly what I said. I stepped directly into the path of a moving automobile this afternoon while walking in front of the student center. And I lived to tell the tale.

Granted, it wasn’t any major impact. The car was moving rather slowly, so much so that I could have sworn it was beginning to brake for me–an assumption I probably shouldn’t have made in the first place. It turns out that not only was the driver not slowing down, she didn’t even see me to begin with. Hello?! The shirt I had been wearing all day was colored a shade of orange which can be described as “more than moderately loud”, closer perhaps to that hue used for roadside cones and warning signs. And yet the driver claimed she didn’t even see me. Of course, it doesn’t help that, at the time of impact, that same driver seemed to have been in a quite engaging conversation with the three people whom she was giving a ride, oblivious to her surroundings…

Anyway, though, I survived. Though my leg still smarts quite a bit from the impact (and whose wouldn’t?), nothing was fractured or broken in the course of the accident, thank whatever natural or supernatural powers need to be thanked. And, well, I can only hope that my location on the fourth floor of an elevator-less dorm won’t be too much of an inconvenience… ::sigh::

This photograph was found in the Local/State section of today’s Macon Telegraph. Look carefully at the sign on the right-hand side of the picture. Then note the name of the coordinator, as mentioned in the caption. Anyone else find this combination amusingly ironic?

Hah. While looking around Radio-Locator, I was presented with this advertisement for a book by former Georgia governor Zell Miller. Now I can understand misspelling the name of my state once— but twice in the same ad?!

And incidentally, the Internet connection here in the residence halls at Mercer is going to be upgraded to 10mbps this weekend (and in the process, split apart from that used for the university’s Atlanta campus). Those of you who have dealt with the sluggish network performance in the dorms and computer labs will very easily understand why this makes me happy… and those who haven’t, well, let’s just say that the connection rates I’m getting right now make those from my old Compu$erve dialup actually look good, heh.

I would have written something longer about today’s events at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, but Kat has already written an excellent commentary, and as is more often than not the case, her opinions on the issue are practically identical to mine. So, I’ll just use her blog entry as a starting point and add a few comments of my own…

I still find these whole happenings surreal. Despite the fact that I’ve been bombarded (no pun intended!) with scenes of the attack playing throughout the day on television sets around the campus, despite the fact that I heard the news as it happened while listening to the radio, despite the fact that classes were even suspended today in memory of the victims– I just can’t believe that it actually happened. Kat’s right; it’s just so bizarre, so unexpected, that it seems more like something from a piece of alternate-reality fiction than anything which actually occurred. Perhaps that’s part of the reason she and I can’t really feel much emotion toward it; don’t get me wrong; I sympathize for those wounded or killed during the event, it’s just that, like Kat, I can’t emotionally connect with anything that’s happened. I’m too separated from anything that’s gone on to really feel any grief, in the usual sense of the term.

Indeed, what I’m more afraid of– living only miles from a major air force base, especially– is the fact that this can only go further from here. Will this lead to all-out war? Is this “the next Pearl Harbor,” as many commentators have suggested? Only time will tell– but one thing’s for sure: this has definitely made its way into the history books.

To think that the Pentagon has been attacked for the first time since its inception… To think that the Twin Towers will literally be unknown to our descendants, a vestige of history… wow. Again, it’s just so surreal, so outrageous, that it’s simply unbelievable…

Well, I know you’ve all been anxiously awaiting some sort of blog entry regarding Mercer‘s fall orientation. And yes, of course it’s been going on since, oh, last Saturday. So why hasn’t anything new been posted until now? Simple, really: my schedule simply hasn’t allowed it.

So, here’s a brief summary of what happened on all four days:

• Saturday. Well, first of all, I moved onto campus, bringing all my computer peripherals and school supplies, a good supply of food, and a decent selection of clothes along with me. And some of you may know that I live on the fourth floor of Shorter Hall. So how hard was it getting stuff up to the room, then? Not that difficult. Despite the fact that the dorm has no elevators, Mercer’s Orientation Assistants (OAs) were more than happy to carry everyone’s baggage up to their respective rooms. Ah, the joys of going to a small private college. 🙂

  And, well, nothing too eventful happened until after lunch, when I got the Gateway Solo 9500SE laptop that I’m currently typing this journal entry on. Check out the specs on the link above; the only difference is that, because these were advance-ordered in bulk, I got an 800mhz system instead of a 900mhz. Even then, though, it’s faster than my P3/500 desktop system at home; I’m not the slightest bit displeased. And it surely beats the heck out of the old Compaq dino-laptop that I’ve been using!

  I took a little time to set it up (and discovered in the process that it refuses to boot with my USB hub connected, so it has to be plugged in after Windows has finished booting), but before I knew it, orientation had “officially” started. The opening ceremony was handled rather well, and even included a few amusing skits performed by the OAs; after that, we gathered in our orientation class groups, or “O-groups”, to discuss what lay ahead for us. We went from there to a sort of “ice-breaker” in which we played some really lame games to meet and greet other Mercerians; too bad it was held in the gym, and thus it was well nigh impossible to understand what exactly the team leader was saying with the awful acoustics, heh. And from there, it was off to bed, in preparation for…

• Sunday, which started off with a continental breakfast. Unfortunately, there was the slight fact that performing at this breakfast was a rock group consisting of Mercer students–a group which ate much of the breakfast which was available. And, though we were told that eventually more food would be delivered, it never actually happened. Thus, I ran off to my room to eat a couple honey buns.

  Then followed another presentation by the OAs entitled “Choices”, which dramatized the dangerous effects which can result from making rather uninformed choices in situations such as dates and parties. (Yeah, we’ve all heard it before, I know, and many of the students will probably ignore it and will go on drinking excessively and having unprotected sex anyway…but hey, it’s still worth a try to get those more stubborn students to at least think about what they’re doing, heh.) We had another O-group meeting in which we discussed the presentation, and then went to see our academic advisors. I ended up dropping most of my music courses now that I’ve decided to only minor in music; I still have 19 credit hours because of the honors classes with which I replaced the music courses, but my schedule is far more accommodating. Among other things, I actually have some time to get some meals in and a reasonable amount of free time at night, and I also have Thursdays entirely free.

  But the best part of the night was the performance by hypnotist Mark Maverick, in which several freshmen went up on stage and were hypnotized into doing the silliest things–exchanging shoes because they thought they were wearing someone else’s; thinking that napkins turned into $100 bills and grabbing them up only to find them turning into ice cubes; believing (at least in the case of the male students, naturally) that they were Chippendale’s performers…eh, sure, it’s the typical hypnotist fare, but it was absolutely hilarious seeing it happen to our fellow Mercerians. And with that, we were on our way to bed, readying ourselves for…

• Monday. This time, I forsook the rather early continental breakfast and an optional presentation in favor of sleeping in a couple hours later. So, as soon as I got a quick breakfast from the food stash in my dorm and took a quick shower, I went down to–surprise, surprise–another O-group meeting. Who’d have thought? Nothing special this time either; before we knew it, it was time for lunch. After lunch, the O-groups split off to do community service around the Macon area; my group went to an orphanage, where we stuck address labels on envelopes for letters to its donors. Yes, it was boring and menial, but it could’ve been much worse– some of the groups wandered around the Macon streets picking up litter. And besides, we did get to actually look inside the children’s home for a reasonable amount of time.

  After that was all done, we went to our advisor’s house down the street to share some dinner (specifically, pizza) while we talked about what awaited us here at Mercer. Then it was off with to Starcadia, a local amusement complex which offers such entertainment as arcade games, miniature golf, go-carts and bumper boat rides. I decided to go play a round of miniature golf (on which I did, oh, about 30 over par…OK, so I’m awful) and then play some arcade games (which I did significantly better at, heh). Then we went to a special party for Mercerians which was being held at Hotlanta Wings, a local chicken restaurant. OK, so I, being the sort of person who usually avoids parties, didn’t have all too much luck finding interesting people there, but I still did manage to meet a couple of people nonetheless; and of course, I’ll probably find quite a few people who are extremely interesting among the music hall, library, and computer science building. 🙂

  And then we returned to campus for an ice cream social, in which I continued talking to some of my new friends…but before long, I started feeling a bit tired, and thus returned to my dorm to go to sleep. And before I knew it, it was…

• Tuesday, the last day of orientation, also known as today. As usual, it started with an O-group meeting (who’d have thought?), but this one was held in a rather, um, interesting location; after we met on campus, we carpooled to a nearby cemetery so that we could ponder what lay ahead for us in a relatively peaceful atmosphere which was, well, rather conducive to such reflection.

  After a bit of discussion about how college is so different from high school, we returned to the campus, where we were served barbecue on the quad; it was set up so that, while eating our lunch, we could wander around the quad and learn more about the rather diverse selection of student organizations–everything from the chess club to the math club to the glee club to the anime fan club (no, I’m not making that last one up!). Before long, though, it was time to return to our dorms and dress up for the convocation ceremony–that is, the official beginning of the 2001-2002 school year. Then came dinner and, sadly enough, the closing ceremony for orientation, which also featured a candle-lighting to symbolically induct us into the Mercer family, or whatever it was supposed to symbolically do. And, well…thus ended fall orientation…

Too bad it couldn’t have lasted longer; I would gladly have put off classes for a week if I could have. But hey, I do begin my Java programming class tomorrow…so maybe it’s not so bad as it seems. ::sly grin::

Oh, yeah, and one more thing: If I hear the expression “this is your time, this is your place” one more time, I’m going to scream. 🙂 [For those of you non-Mercerians who are reading this–which is probably a majority of you, come to think of it–that was the official motto for this year’s orientation, heh.]

So anyway, keep watching this space; there’s sure to be plenty of venting as soon as classes have actually started…

Heh…I saw this recently on the “Selling It” page of Consumer Reports, and I just had to link it here.

Y’know how a lot of cleaning products are named after pure and natural substances or phenomena? For instance, there’s Tide detergent, Ivory soap, Sunlight dishwashing liquid, and so on.

Well, the Iranian company Paxan did quite the same thing as described above in coming up with a name for their own cleaning products. The only problem is that they did so in Farsi, the native language of Iran. And the Farsi word for snow is…um…eh…well…let’s just say that it doesn’t translate so well into English.

What do I mean, you ask? Well, would you be inclined to buy a box of Barf Detergent Powder? I didn’t think so…

Spotted on CDnow‘s front page today: an ad urging visitors to “pre-advance order” a copy of Planet of the Apes.

The redundancy just never ceases at that site, does it? 😉

Hah. I was just logging on to cdnow.com using Netscape 6.1 (the latest release, for those who haven’t been keeping track, and a huge improvement on the bug-filled 6.0), and this error message/warning appeared at the top of the page:

“If your browser does not work properly, we suggest that you download a more recent recent version of the Netscape browser. You may experience problems with the version that you are currently using. Also, you can shop via the CDnow telnet interface.”

First of all, “a more recent recent version”? And second of all, such a thing doesn’t exist anyway. D’oh. Better luck at writing the browser-sniffing script next time, CDnow…