Old News

Yes, I am CHW. And I own this game legally, too, but since it's in another country, I resort to an emulator.

October 22, 2006 Phantasy Star II is putting me through Hell, yet again. Okay, that's a huge overstatement. I'm only mildly inconvenienced by the incompatibility between emulators, and felt like this was a good excuse to stick a video game screen shot on my site. Last term, I started Phantasy Star II. I have started it many times, and always end up quitting because it's such a tedious, boring game. A lot of people hail it as a "classic" and put it on the same level as Final Fantasy IV. I beg to differ. However, playing through the classics is important to me, since I'm an RPG buff, so last term, I tried it yet again. I got farther than I've ever gotten before. As you can see from the screen shot, I'm Level 16. That's high. However, something happened to my PC: a RAM chip mysteriously died. Yes, I'm serious. The CD-ROM drive didn't burn out. The power supply didn't bite the dust. A RAM chip died, and I had to pull it out because it was causing my computer to freeze. How is it that all the things with moving parts survive, and a RAM chip, meant to last 1,000 years, bites the dust? This is ironic and weird. Anyways, my PC is now extremely slow. I can still "play" Phantasy Star II, but the controls have become extremely glitchy ever since my RAM was decreased, to the point where I need to reload from a save state every minute or two when the controls go crazy. In order to remedy this problem, I found another emulator. I tried more than one other, actually, and the problem is, the one I've been using (Ages) uses a proprietary SRAM format, so I can't import my save into the new emulators. Basically, if I want to play through Phantasy Star II, I'm going to either have to buy another RAM chip, or I'm going to have to start in a new emulator, playing from the very beginning. Theoretically, I could also download a hex editor and hex edit a save that matches my old game, but I could accidentally make a glitched save, and this would take too long, and if I download a hex editor, it'll probably add spyware to my machine. Oh, what shall I do?

October 21, 2006
I added a new photo gallery titled "You Have to Remember, I'm a College-Age Guy." It's about the original ideas that I try out, usually to solve some problem without spending too much money.

October 14, 2006
Well, there isn't much to report, today. When my cell phone gets low on battery power, it starts talking (that's the sound that you hear when you load up this page). If you miss me saying "welcome to my website," click here. I've added a couple of things to the website over the past few days. I added a photo of my Norwegian pancake presentation, and a photo of my approximately $7 haircut. There isn't much else to report, except that Course A Level 2 is really, really intensive, and I don't have much time to update this site, as a result.

October 8, 2006 It's early in the morning on October 8. I went to Lotte World yesterday! I went with Paul, Danyeong, and two of Danyeong's friends. There are six pictures available, as well as one video. Click here. I have decided to start organizing my photos by event, rather than era, but it will take some time to categorize them like this.

October 6, 2006
It's Chuseok today! I therefore have some free time, because we get a lot of time off from Yonsei (five days in a row). I updated the Sinchon photo gallery with a new Engrish photo, and I've added links on the main page to my resume and my bio (I had a reason for creating them, but I will not elaborate, because I don't want to cause any problems).

September 29, 2006 I am looking forward to only attending school once or twice next week, because of Chuseok. By the way, here's some more SPAM for your computer! Go to Photo Gallery #2 to see the SPAM gift set that I spotted at 7-Eleven (SPAM gift sets are very popular here).

September 27, 2006 I added photos to my 90-Day Retrospective, along with some random improvements to the site. Thanks, Danyeong, for taking all the pictures (or at least letting someone else take them with your camera)!

September 25, 2006 Today was an awesome day! It was the first day of Level 2. I have ascertained that contrary to prior beliefs, half my class is Japanese. Although only two people on the list had Japanese surnames, apparently a bunch of the Japanese go by Korean names. Despite the fact that my class is largely comprised of Japanese, my speaking ability doesn't seem to be inferior to theirs, which is a relief. After school, I headed on over to Hyehwa and learned some hanja from Mijeong (this is a regular occurrence). After returning to Sinchon, I took a bunch of cool photos, like the one to the left (an olive oil and SPAM gift set for the Korean Chuseok holiday). Go to Photo Gallery #2 to see more!

September 24, 2006
Level 2 starts tomorrow! Yes, that's right, I'm no longer a fresh-off-the-boat Level 1 student. I have 200 hours of in-country Korean under my belt. I passed that final exam with a 98.7%, and then, only four days ago, I took the anxiety-inducing skip test, and placed into the fast Course A! I just took a look at my class composition the day before yesterday: five Chinese, three Koreans from abroad, and two Japanese. I guess I'll be the token white guy.

On an unrelated note, for no reason whatsoever, out of the blue, Yonsei University and Korea University just decided to spontaneously throw a huge party in the middle of the street. The cops were yelling things at the crowd because the party was blocking the road, and I was thinking things were going to escalate, so I got my camera. They didn't, but I did get this guy bowing not zero times, not once, but twice! Here is the video:

Bowing Man 2006