I've been so happy that my cs441 homework has been done for a few days, until I receive an email from TA Charlie that there is more that I need to do for the proofs. He nicely let me know this in advance so that I would have time to go back and add to my solutions, but unfortunately in my head I finished the homework on Monday. Once I think I've finished something, I can't work on it anymore. This happened with my proxy server for Networks last year, when I found out at the last minute that we had to properly handle images, and it has happened for this 441 assignment. It's a nasty habit, because I know I'm going to get reamed on points again even though I wrote the annoying program and I got all of the algorithms for the most part correct I think, but I just can't make myself rewrite my solutions to add the new material or think about it anymore. I know I will regret this immensely on Friday when I find out that I once again failed a homework assignment, but there's not much I can do at this juncture.

I will never understand anime. The other night I watched an episode of Dragonball Z (unfortunately, just posting the words "Dragonball Z" to this page will result in many many hits from people looking for "Dragonball Z AIM Buddy Icons"), and it followed the same pattern of pretty much every anime show I've ever seen: normal looking guy fights against big goofy looking bad guy, both characters do strange things that normal people can't do such as "fly" and "shoot energy out of their hands", both characters score big hits against the other that cause many random lines to fly around the screen, neither character ends up actually winning the fight. From watching these shows, I have learned much about Japanese culture:

-Japanese schoolgirls all wear sailor outfits.
-The future of Japan is one of constant war with strange creatures from outer space.
-There is some sort of spiritual life force that, if tapped into, causes normal humans to grow to twice their own size, gain 'roided up muscles, and have the ability to make random lines fly everywhere. This life force has different names in every show, but the random lines are omnipresent.
-When people in Japan feel emotions, there are large physical signals so everyone knows about it. These signals include coiled squiggly lines next to their heads for anger, a single giant teardrop suspended in mid-air for embarassment, and gallons of water flowing out of their eyes like a fountain for sadness.
-Japanese people do not actually look Japanese at all.

It sounds like an interesting place. Although if you look at American cartoons, then our culture consists of: talking inanimate objects (Spongebob Squarepants), animals that solve mysteries (Scooby Doo, et. al.), and the rest are half-hour toy ads. But at least most of ours have varied themes and stories. Every anime consists of the same basic story, with characters drawn in exactly the same style, in the same "Neo-Tokyo" locale. I know the anime purists are just fuming right now, but you've got to admit that every single artist in Japan seems to draw people in exactly the same way. It's posts like these that make me glad that I don't have a place to leave comments.