It’s been a long day. A good day, but a long and tiresome day.

And really, should I be anything other than accepting of that?

I just finished watching the Astro Boy (2003) series.

That ending was one of the best endings of anything I’ve ever seen. It resolves every single plot thread in ways that blow my mind. The ending is frankly better than anything Tezuka ever wrote, and I consider Tezuka a legendary writer.

I can’t even think straight. I’m literally impressed beyond words.

We’ve had another winter storm. Several inches of snow, plus a bit of rain. I attempted a daring escape to my parents’ house in the thick of the storm, but there was too much snow, and people drove even more bizarrely than usual. When I attempted to change lanes, I lost control of my truck, nearly sideswiped a BMW, slid in the other direction, and ran off the road. I was okay and got right back on the road, then promptly turned around and went back home.

I spent the rest of the day watching The Incredibles and Astro Boy (2003 version), both of which were thoroughly enjoyable. This was my fourth time watching The Incredibles, and there were even more little bits of animation to savor. There’s a moment when Mr. Incredible is thrown into a river, and just before he hits you can see him curl into a ball and land on his back. Barely noticeable even on the third or fourth watching, but it adds so much to the realism of the scenes.

And Astro Boy is better near the end of the series than the beginning. The first half is peppered with standard action/adventure stories; by the second half the main theme and plot are revealed and kick into high gear. There’s some great drama in here.

Last night, I attended a pinewood derby at my AWANA club. The cars were simple, the kids were hyped up, the track electronics often failed, and we were usually behind in racking up cars.

But the kids jumped up and down, the parents hollered, much pizza was consumed, and everyone had a great time. It was fantastic.

At work yesterday, we accepted a rush job: grab an entire site, burn it to a CD, and make sure it works off the CD. The disc would be picked up by a courier at 1:00 pm today (Friday). It was assigned to one of the developers here, but I pledged to be sure it was done on time.

I couldn’t go to sleep last night, one reason being my worry over this. I dreaded spending all morning checking links on this site.

I arrived at work and the burned CD was sitting on the devleoper’s desk. She finished it last night.

Trust your people.

And, completely unrelated:

I’ve finally watched Battle Angel Alita, an early-90′s anime OVA that was a classic for its time. It’s less impressive today, though it’s still a dark piece with some beautiful action sequences and a solid philosophical core.

It’s set in the future, in a literal junk city. The populace lives off the junk discarded from a floating paradise above. The protagonist is an android reconstructed from state-of-the-art parts inexplicably junked from the paradise. Her friends are various “low-lifes” fighting to survive, and she decides to fight with and for them despite not needing to.

Most of the characters betray their morals to get what they want. But they all suffer for this. The anime is less an indictment of humanity as a sad display of its frailty. It seems to be saying that people are capable of good, but keep tripping themselves up.

Which is a fair assessment, I suppose.

Spent some time recently watching two favorite cartoons of my childhood, Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs. Animaniacs is usually considered the better show; it could be far more funny.

But I was struck by how consistently entertaining Tiny Toons was. The humor in Animaniacs was often so left-field that I was just bored. I could watch Tiny Toons all day.

Sometimes, you can be so different that you become incomprehensible.

Last Saturday, I attended a choral concert by the Master Singers of Virginia of Rachmaninoff’s Vespers. It was beautiful beyond words.

“Vespers” is actually a misnomer. It was written for the All Night Vigil, which lasts from Vespers (the evening service) through Matins (the night/early morning service) to Prime (the dawn service). Thus, the music begins by echoing the quiet, lilting liturgy of the candlelit evening service, reaching a crescendo of adoration and supplication in the middle of Matins, then calming back down just before a big finish to herald the dawning sun.

The work only lasts for an hour; it’s meant to be interspersed with prayer, Scripture reading, etc. But it’s amazingly beautiful. Rachmaninoff composed it like he would a symphony, so the various vocal sections mirror and complement each other in gorgeous melodic patterns.

And ironically, Rachmaninoff wrote it during the middle of World War I, just after several of his friends had died. War spurred his musical commentary, perhaps.

You can buy CDs of the Master Singers’ performances.

I like to keep my lists and reminders in a little pack of index cards in one pocket. Every time I whip out my cards, I get a smirk from someone watching. Frequently, someone pulls out a PDA or celphone and shows me how they can keep their to-dos on it.

I usually just shrug, since I don’t want to start an argument. But now, here are my reasons for using index cards:

• Paper has extremely high resolution: about six hundred dots per inch, compared to about one hundred for a “high-res” monitor. It supports text and graphics, and direct input. It’s also full-color. Input devices are ubiquitous, standardized, and cheap.
• My data is stored in a universal format that will still be recognized fifty years from now (compared to, say, a Microsoft Word 97 file).
• It never crashes. The data is rarely corrupted (smudged), and even then has always been limited to a few words and been recoverable by context.
• It never has to be reset. It doesn’t have to boot; it’s always immediately on.
• It uses zero power. Its batteries never die. It never has to be recharged.
• It’s almost perfectly secure. While it’s in my pocket, nobody else in the world can possibly access it. If I want to securely delete the data, I burn a card and the data can’t possibly be recovered by a third party.
• It can be easily backed up (using a photocopier). It can be easily archived (drop it in a file folder). It fits a wide variety of standard media.
• The display can be expanded to huge size by spreading out cards on any surface. Cards can be posted publicly on almost any surface, anywhere in the world.
• I can buy massively more storage (five hundred cards) for about three dollars.
• If I want digital storage, the data can be scanned into a computer in about ten seconds using a $70 off-the-shelf scanner.

In cruising blogs recently, I’ve noticed a number of references to coffee consumption. It seems that many people start every day with a cup of coffee. That’s what wakes them up.

This is bad.