a pirate's life for me

Well, my weekend was officially crap. I should have known it was going to be bad when I woke up Friday morning to find an email regarding the Intro to Web Dev class I am slated to take this coming semester. It went a little something like this:

"Good morning, David, Charles, Blake, Cynthia, Alicia, Naveed, Alex, Jeremy, Krishna, Kristen, Anthony, Priyesh, Rachel, Stephen, and Steven:

Thank you for interest in this very popular class. We understand that you mostly likely enrolled in order to learn important skills in web design. Due to a clerical error, this has been listed as a writing component class. Because of the nature of this class, assignments will not be in essay form, therefore, we regret to inform you that the writing component designation has been removed from this course. You do not need to do anything if you wish to remain in this web design class. However, you will not receive writing component credit.

Thank you very much for your interest in our web design course. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at the above email address. Thanks, ks"

So in case you're wondering why that was such bad news, the whole reason I signed up for that class is because it was a writing component. I have 3 classes left to take at UT, and 2 of them are writing components. This would have been the easiest writing component known to man and I was excited because it meant a nice, easy last semester. As you can see, my dreams are no more. So now one week before classes start I have to find another writing component, which I can't do until the first day of classes (meaning it'll be a pain to get in). What's worse is no matter what class I do find, it's guaranteed to be lame and a lot of work. So much for my easy last semester. I could probably do fine with just one writing class, but I have to take two. Here's me dead come December: o-|-<

So that's the start of my ruined weekend. It continued on Saturday when I drank nothing but water while playing Rallisport online the entire day with my Rallisport friends whom I met online playing so much. Come night time, I had the worst headache imaginable. I took a shower and it didn't help and I figured it couldn't be due to lack of sleep because I slept a good 12 hours. I finally determined that my headache was probably due to caffeine withdrawal. I guess water is bad for you. So I went downstairs to make some iced tea only to find out that we were out of sugar so I couldn't make any. What's worse is we didn't have any sodas or anything with caffeine in the house. Feeling miserable and upset at our lack of caffeine fixes, I decided to drive to the nearest gas station to get me a Dr. Pepper. I chugged that sucker down and waited for the caffeine to do its magic. An hour went by and nothing happened. Still feeling miserable, I admitted defeat and decided to just go to sleep. Just as I was about to get in bed, I realized that my headache was gone. I was going to get up and enjoy what was left of the night, but decided to just sleep instead. And sleep I did. I just wish I had figured out what the problem was earlier in the day. I missed out on some hot Rallisport action thanks to that stupid headache. So what's the moral of the story, you ask? What's the point, you say? It's really quite simple.
-I like Dr. Pepper. A lot.

Last weekend I bought Tenchu: Return From Darkness, which is a really awesome ninja game which focuses a lot on stealth and Silent Killing™. If you own an Xbox I highly recommend it. (It is also available for the inferior PS2.) It's a nice departure from killing zombies and monsters in Ninja Gaiden. Tenchu has a little more realistic setting. I played a lot of Ninja Gaiden this past week too. I don't know how far along in the game I am, but it seems to go on forever. I love it! I just beat this huge dinosaur skeleton thing which was pretty sweet. The funny thing is after I beat it I realized I can upgrade my sword. I didn't even know you could do that in the game. My sword should have been level 3 by now and here I am with a level 1 sword. I guess I should get props for making it this far with a weak sword. I felt dumb but also elated that I now have a level 3 sword. No wonder the game has been so hard..

I didn't buy any game this weekend, which effectively ends my game a week streak. There's always next weekend though ;) I suppose I could return DoA Extreme Beach Volleyball and rent something else, but how can I part with such a gem of a game? You'd all do the same if you were in my shoes. Don't even lie.

Once I finally stopped playing Rallisport online, I decided to fire up WinMX and do a little trading; something I haven't done a long time. I spent about 12 hours Saturday trading like mad. I got some cool stuff and uploaded a ton. (This was all during my insane caffeine withdrawal headache btw.) So when it came bedtime I left WinMX running so I could let my queues progress to get some files I wanted. Well when I got up in the morning I noticed I had some IMs in WinMX from other users. I laughed because I knew they were from people begging to be moved up in the queue so they could dl stuff from me. Too bad I was asleep. While 2 of them were of that nature, one was not. Rather it was small paragraph in Japanese from someone named 'air_snake.' It was a lot of text and I didn't feel like reading it all so I quickly skimmed it, as it seemed unusual. It contained a link to a page on the RIAJ's (Recording Industry Association of Japan, the Japanese version of the RIAA) website about piracy. It was at this point that I thought to myself, 'oh crap.' The page contained a ton of Japanese and I was too groggy to bother trying to translate it. I ran it through my Rikai extension in Firefox and quickly skimmed the page to get the gist of what it was saying. Basically it was a cease and desist message. I don't know if the RIAJ can sue me or anything given that I'm in the US, but rather than risk it, I unshared all my stuff (although I'm still on WinMX now leeching like crazy). I did a little research earlier to try and find out if they can or cannot sue me, but the results were inconclusive. As such I have to be a stupid leecher for the time being until I find some good info on the matter. During my research, however, I did find out that lots of other people got these messages. They all came from someone with snake in their name, usually with a color or some sort of element/state, such as red_snake, solid_snake, water_snake, or in my case, air_snake. So, as I've come to find out, Japan is launching a similar campaign to the one started by the RIAA. They may have won in the short run, but I do plan on sharing again once I'm better informed. As I've always said, if it wasn't for filesharing, I wouldn't own most of the CDs I have. I was exposed to Japanese music thanks to Napster and now own about $500 worth of Japanese CDs. I have online friends I met through WinMX that I talk to on a regular basis. As you can see, filesharing is one of the few things I feel strongly about. It just kinda pisses me off that I get in trouble for sharing a few thousand mp3s and music videos, meanwhile a guy downloads off me and has tons of rape porn and 12 year old girl porn vids. God forbid you share some music. I thought the problem was mostly localized to the US thanks to the greedy RIAA. I guess greed spans the planet. What an age we live in.

And thus, that's how my weekend was ruined.