January 29, 2002

“Those of us who have lived through these challenging times have been changed by them. We’ve come to know truths that we will never question: evil is real, and it must be opposed. Beyond all differences of race or creed, we are one country, mourning together and facing danger together. Deep in the American character, there is honor, and it is stronger than cynicism.”

— U.S. President George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, today

Rather than even attempt to catch up on everything I’ve done since my last coherent diary entry, I’ll summarize what I did today.

This morning, as my gastroenterologist requested, I had an upper GI test done. In this test, I was laid on a table and made to drink several foul-tasting liquids and semi-liquids, stop breathing at a moment’s notice, and pay very close attention to every command shouted by the doctor (“Move a little to the right…a little more…DON’T BREATHE!”) while the motorized table actually spun and twisted underneath me. It was an unpleasant experience, though I felt more disorientation than anything else. I’ve certainly undergone worse tests.

The purpose of this is to take numerous x-ray photographs of the upper intestines (esophagus, stomach, and duodenum). The gastroenterologist can then examine these photographs and figure out if I’ve got anything really weird growing in there. Hopefully, he’ll be able to tell me what’s going on insie me when I visit him in a month or so.

I came home to discover that Kamidake was no longer working. It turns out that my sysadmin had changed the server configuration, which caused confusion in my PHP scripts. So, I got to spend most of my morning putting out that fire.

I then wrote two more pages of Quiet.

I downloaded Moho 3.1 in the afternoon, partially to get away from writing for a little while, and I spent about an hour assembling two simple animations. I think I’m hooked. I had a great time animating, and I think that Moho is able to do some really powerful stuff. I wouldn’t want to try to make Princess Mononoke with it, but I think I could make some very cool stuff with this.

I also bought some more anime yesterday: Robotech collection 3, Boogiepop Phantom disc 2, Trigun disc 4, Gasaraki disc 5, and the new TRON Collector’s Edition DVD box set (which I watched most of last night).