I can’t beleive I have to wait until June for the next season of Deep Space Nine, but the good news is that Babylon 5 second season is due out at the end of the month. The shocking part of the Deep Space Nine revelation stems more from the fact that I didn’t have any more seasons on preorder after second season, so I rectified that in short fashion over at Amazon.com. God forbid I don’t get my next season early, like I did before. Amazon has no concept of street dates, so they just ship it when they get it. I got DS9 like a week and a half early, and I was happy because that meant I could polish it off before the street date even hit.

It’s officially the Weekend of Doom! That’s right, get your checkbooks out, because Uncle Sam’s knocking on your door April 15th, and he’s bringing Guido and Vinny with him. He wants his take of your income! But all seriousness aside, income taxes are relatively easy to do these days with such online sites like www.TurboTax.com, which I think is a pretty neat site with all the various services they offer. My mother and father often go to H&R Block, while my grandmother retains a CPA to do hers. I always do mine online, due to the simplicity of punching in numbers and watching the Tax Due or Tax Refund numbers change everytime you get to the next section. It’s almost like watching a tennis match sometimes. You enter in your income and withholdings, bam refund numbers climb. Then you enter in your capital gains, and holy shit, I owe four grand. Where’s that extension form at?

Actually, I already filed both and am waiting until the last minute to send my money in. I was going to have them take it out of my account automagically, but I like the finality of a cashier’s check made out to my dear Uncle Sam and Governor Davis.

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Studying Japanese is fun!

While I’ve been undergoing some sort of mental retardation as far as math is concerned, studying Japanese seems to remind me of why I’m slogging through the crap classes to begin with. Even arriving at class is fun, with all of the pre-class conversation and exchanges with some of the tutors. Most of the Japanese tutors are expatriate women who a) have husbands who’re currently working in the Bay Area or b) are single girls on some sort of educational program at a local college or university. While the type-b tutors can be interesting, I actually enjoy speaking with the older women more than I do the young college girls. Why? Because they have much more refined sense of humor, while the younger ones tend to be shy and not quite as open-minded. Man, some of the tutors crack me up. I remember, though, when I took Japanese 2, that one of the young tutors was a real bitch. I heard she got married to one of the students a year or two ago.

After class, today, I was looking over my workstation and trying to figure out exactly how to set it up so I can use the way cool Japanese IME in 2000. As it turns out, the server edition of 2000 doesn’t support the East Asian language IMEs, so luckily I have my trusty laptop, Ein. I use Ein to take notes in all my classes, but as it turns out, using Ein to take notes in Japanese is a big hit with the tutors. But I digress about the tutors. turned me on to this site http://www.declan-software.com where not only will they instruct you on how to use the Japanese IME, but they also apparently sell some Japanese language aids for studying. Like vocabulary audio flashcards and kanji trainers. I mean, holy shit… this was awesome. Kanji is a major weak spot in my studies. and now they had a program that not only sat you down and made you study, but it won’t teach you anything beyond the first set if don’t pass the first ten. Talk about tough. I failed the first set a few times, but I’m chalking that up to fatigue. It’s worth the $20-$30 per application, because using the vocab portion, I’ve learned a heck of a lot more then I did in my first ten weeks of Japanese 1.

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