Chan's Personal Blog

Just a short post for today because I'm currently knee deep in academic papers.

Well, tomorrow night is the big show. Every Pentecostal youth group south of Duncan is headed to my church for a youth rally called The Zone. <shameless plug> It's on at North Douglas Pentecostal Church 675 Jolly Place, Victoria, 7:30pm Friday</shameless plug>. Anyways, as for any big show, there's always a big setup. I'm the sound technician for the night, and setup is always interesting. It's interesting because you get a mix of all this foreign gear and equipment that you're not used to, and they have varying dependability and what not. So, it's always interesting to integrate foreign equipment with the equipment you're used to. Always full of suprises and feedback.

People are always an interesting situation as well. Sometimes you get really nice bands come in that are very appreciative of everything. Other times, you get bands that ask you to fetch them some bottled water when you're juggling a hundred tasks at a time. Grumble grumble. And then you sometimes get random unqualified people from the crowd that decide to give you an involuntary lecture on Sound Technicianing 101, and how things can be done better.

Oh well, such are the occupational hazards of a sound man I guess. Anyways, this is probably the biggest setup I've had to do this year so far. It looks like it's the whole sha-bang, they'll have traffic directors in the parking lot, security guards, the whole nine yards.

Some of my high school friends still ask if I do sound/light stuff, and so to answer since we're on the subject, yes.... that would be a resounding yes. I probably average 80-90 shows a year still? That's a bit lower than my yearly average while in high school.... I'm getting old .

I'll start this article with a brief rant. Bah, the horde invaded the house yesterday again! That's three days in a row now. I'll talk about the horde on another day.

Anyways, this last week, Teletoon was showing The Animatrix at 10pm every night. It looks like they're re-running The Animatrix again this week at the same time. The Animatrix is a collection of short animated films that is based in The Matrix universe. Each short film was produced by a different animation company. It provides some interesting history about the Matrix, and some other background information. I remember a lot of hype was brewing around The Animatrix as it was released around the same time as The Matrix Reloaded. They chose an interesting way of promoting The Animatrix, they made the first four episodes available on the Internet for free. (Click on the link to find the free episodes, viewer discretion advised for kids.)

I'm going to do a short review of each individual episode of The Animatrix, as they're all stand alone short movies. Don't worry, the review is spoiler free.

A few weeks ago, a kid from church that I know approached me and asked, Chan, am I a geek? Instantly I thought to myself.... great, I've become the authoritative source on geek culture, how flattering. I chuckled because I thought this kid must be playing a joke or something. This guy is as far away from being a geek as possible. However, the kid wasn't chuckling, he was serious.

So I decided to entertain this kid's request, and applied a quick and dirty test to see if he was truly a geek. The conversation kind of went like this:

Chan: Do you have a girlfriend?
Kid: Yes.

I'm thinking this kid has already failed the geek test.

Chan: Do you play on any sports?
Kid: Yeah, I play on a hockey team.

Wrong answer again.

Chan: Do you know what D&D stands for?
Kid: Uhhh.... no.

Meanwhile in the background, one of the uber-geeks overhears me asking this, and proudly blurts out, D&D stands for dungeons and dragons! I roll my eyes. (I'll let you guess who answered this question.)

Chan: Do you watch any sci-fi TV series such as Star Trek?
Kid: Uh... no.

Chan: Do you do any sort of programming on a computer?
Kid: No.

Congratulations kid, you failed the geek test badly. You're not a geek. He seemed kind of suprised. I'm thinking.... if this kid can be labelled a geek, then I must be the ultimate geek of the universe or something.

For those of you who wonder how geeky you truly are, there is a Geek Test available. It takes about 20 minutes to finish, and it is kind of entertaining. I passed this around at work once, and my boss scored very high. She totally blew my score away. My friend Myron scored suprisingly low, only 14.9% - Geekish Tendencies, which is the lowest rank you can get on the test.

Anyways, you're all probably wondering what I scored. I scored 33.3% which is a total geek.

Here are some of the things that gave me points:

• I know 5+ Food Network hosts.
• I know 5+ Star Trek characters from each generation.
• I have my own website and domain. (suprise suprise)
• I have played a computer game for 12+ hours before.
• I wear as little brand name clothing as possible. (Yes I dress very provocatively.)
• I have been a professional sound/light techie.
• I have watched Transformers: The Movie more than two times.
• I look forward in doing my taxes.

After reading this list, there are two words that best describe me right now. Chick magnet . In either case, have a go at the Geek Test and post your scores in the comment section below.

Do you ever run into the situation where you're supposed to work on something important, like a term paper, but you keep putting it off, and anything else seems WAY more interesting than working on the term paper? Well, this happened to me tonight. Big time procrastination tonight.

So I actually cleaned my room tonight because it seemed less arduous than writing a term paper. My biggest accomplishment was clearing this massive pile of papers that had accumulated on my desk. It was mostly mail that I hadn't sorted through in about a year. It's not that bad because at least they're arranged in stacks that are in chronological order. I've got all my bank statements, investment statements, and Visa statements all organized and filed away now. I also have all my tax receipts sorted and ready for the tax season. In addition, while cleaning my room and sorting through stuff, I found a total of $47.63 ... woohoo, free money! More money to the computer fund. The next step is to do my annual vaccuming of the room.

You're probably thinking, boy you must have been REALLY bored to actually clean your room. Yes... yes I was. I'm wierd .