Outsourced

I went to my first concert tonight with John, Alvin, Tommy, James, and Jenny; Weezer and Foo Fighters performed at the Erwin Center. We ended up getting seats near the top of the stadium, which I didn't think was bad, since it wasn't deafeningly loud. Rivers Cuomo (who also happens to be an author, hehe) and company played all my favorite songs including Buddy Holly, Island in the Sun, Say It Ain't So, and Photograph, so I am satisfied. Foo Fighters wasn't as good in my opinion, and I was disappointed that they didn't play Times Like These. However, they sang much louder than Weezer. Everlong was really good, though, with cool laser-light effects, and they played Learn to Fly and All My Life. Foo Fighters weren't bad, it's just hard to be as good as Weezer.

Today my iPod froze on me while I was changing the audio file to play. I was walking to the RLM for Chinese and I decided to try and play my Chinese audio where they read the Pinyin sounds to do some last minute studying before our quiz. And of course, when I tried to do so, that's when it froze. It didn't respond to holding down the play button to turn it off or any other commands. At first I was pretty worried. However, when I got back, I quickly googled "iPod froze" and found a solution. For iPod minis, iPods with click wheels, and later generations all you have to do is hold down menu and the select button for a while (with lock off, of course) to reset the iPod. I also had to recharge it some before it'd turn on again.

I'm probably not getting enough sleep these days when I need it. I spend a couple of hours meticulously working through each Chinese homework lesson, with about 3 or 4 lessons a week, a test every Monday, and a quiz Wednesdays and Fridays for this week and next week. After that it looks like there's only one homework lesson a week, but we start having an additional oral quiz once a week. It's a lot of work, and I'm pretty sure Mintra agrees. I suck at speaking it and recognizing tones as the TA speaks, but I really want to learn it. One could say I'm determined. I'd like to thank Terry in particular for putting up with my constant inquiries about the Mandarin dialect.

I did manage to set aside time to watch Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children. Very cool movie, running 1 hour, 40 minutes. Lots of cool fight scenes, beautiful graphics and animation, Square Enix managed to work in every main character, and great music by Nobuo Uematsu. I thought the piano renditions of the original FF7 music were most excellent. Tifa's theme is the most relaxing non-lyrical music ever. I can't wait to pirate legitimately purchase the soundtrack when it's released. Ahem.

Although Tommy thinks Advent Children's plot is weak and practically non-existent, I didn't think it was that bad, though some parts were confusing. I also think the fighting style stays true to what I think fighting in the Final Fantasy world would be like. If you watch, expect to see a few limit breaks in action. Travis agrees that the lack of Chocobos is forgivable due to the awesomeness of the movie. Check it out if you've played FF7.