With all the craziness of starting a new job, I haven’t been able to update much this week, so it’s all getting lumped into one big update. Going from having basically unlimited free time to only a few short hours after work has been quite an adjustment.

Work is going well and now I have a fairly good idea of what I’ll be doing once I get done with the training. Everyone on my team seems really nice, although everyone is fairly young. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve seen a single person with gray hair at NI except for Dr. T, the co-founder. It’s pretty crazy, almost like going to college again. It does make it easier to get to know people though because they are around your age and have the same interests.

We went and saw Red vs Blue season one at the Alamo Drafthouse on Friday night. It was pretty cool, before the show there were a few games of Halo played on the movie screen. Then after the show a couple of the guys that do the voice acting were there and did a Q&A. Overall, it was a good waste of the wee hours of Saturday morning, since the show didn’t start until 12:30 or so. Who needs sleep anyway?

The big news in anime is the third Inuyasha movie is out. It’s actually very good quality and it’s got a pretty good plot. Plus there is a LOT of Sesshoumaru in this film, so that never hurts. <fangirl raving> I mean damn, even his voice is hot! ;) </fangirl raving> Like the other two movies, I believe a different studio animated this film than the studio that does the TV episodes, since the movie has a slightly different look to it. On a separate but related note, the other two movies are supposed to be out in the US (selected cities in theaters) on DVD later this year. Two movies is about all I can afford from the Inuyasha series. Viz is trying to get rich off this series alone, I think. If you calculate it up at the official 3 episodes per $25 DVD it’s $1333. [160/3 * 25] And the series is not even finished yet. Yikes!

If you’re having trouble getting the .mkv to play with the software included with the movie, download Windows Media Player Classic and the full Matroska Pack from the Matroska download page. It has slightly more than the bare minimum, but it works. I had problems getting it to work with the files included, but this solution fixed everything.

The third Inuyasha movie has finally been fan-subbed!! I have no idea how the quality is, since I just found it and have not had a chance to download and watch it. However, it is a joint project from two groups that always do a pretty good job: SaiyaMan and IY4Ever. IY4Ever’s site appears to be missing, but you can find the torrent at SaiyaMan’s BT page. Remember, since this is a 1.5 gig file, to leave your Bittorrent windows open for as long as possible after you get the file. You can still watch the movie while Bittorrent is running. Now go forth and download!

Yes, this is an entirely self-serving post to let everyone know that today is my birthday. Although I’m older than I was, I’m still disinclined to believe the person from work who told me I was now considered “old.” It definitely has to be at least 25 before you are considered old. ;)

Work is going pretty well but I’m still in the “I have no frigging clue what I’m doing” stage and I’m just trying to get up to speed on everything. Everyone in my group seems really nice, though, and I think I’m going to be happy working there.

Now that I’m back in Austin it’s time for a slew of updates. Slew. What a great word. Anyway, lots of things happened while I was stuck in the land of the very slow internet.

SideTrack is one of the first things I noticed. For those of you using SideTrack 0.8, you’ve probably noticed that the beta ran out and it’s no longer working. You need to grab 0.9 which has a couple minor bug fixes but mostly just extends the expiration until the end of November. If you don’t know what SideTrack is, see my previous review.

Chrno Crusade has ended at episode 24. Both Animeforever and Anime-Kraze have already subbed the last episode and it’s available for download. As endings go, it’s alright, but it’s not what I was hoping for. I can’t say more without giving away some major spoilers, so you’ll just have to watch it for yourself. If you enjoyed this series, and have money, you should buy the official DVDs when they (probably) come out later this year from ADV Films. One thing to note, ADV changed the name to Chrono Crusade for the US release.

Samurai Champloo has been subbed up to episode five. So far the show is pretty entertaining, but there hasn’t been a lot of development on the main “sunflower samurai” story line. However, it’s definitely worth checking out if you haven’t already. Animeforever is still subbing it but it looks like Anime-Kraze has either dropped it or is just really far behind.

A new anime series is out in Japan called Samurai 7. It’s loosely based on the old black and white movie, “Seven Samurai” by Akira Kurosawa. Surprisingly enough, I’ve actually seen part of the movie, but not really enough to do comparisons with the anime. The first episode of the anime is pretty good, although it’s mostly story introduction and setup. Anime-Kraze and InuYasha4Ever (as well as others, I’m sure) are subbing it, and though InuYasha4Ever already has episode 2 out, they are apparently having trouble with their bittorrent tracker.

I start working next Monday. Yay! The only sad thing is that Tuesday is my birthday. Oh well, can’t have everything.