First of all, my review of Sayonara, Zetsubuo-Sensei, Vol. 1 is finally done and posted at Manga Recon. I really enjoyed this book, and though I haven’t read any other full reviews of it yet, I get the feeling most people will either be pretty delighted with it or be completely baffled that anyone could be. Its humor just happens to hit my funny bone just so, which is a pretty great thing!
Secondly, I’ve been waiting until I was finished with the review to talk about my anniversary, so it is finally time! Besides a lovely dinner and so on and so forth, the main feature of the day was that we both got Blackberry Storms! Yes, we spent our wedding anniversary geeking out over new phones, do you have a problem with that? We geeked out at home, we geeked out at the restaurant. All in all, the “Geekiversary” (as we named it early on) was pretty fantastic, and now that I’m finally done with that review, I am finally allowed to really play around with my new toy! I’ll begin with two photos I took this morning of my office. The camera on the Blackberry blows away the one on my old phone (though my skills are sadly the same).
Items of note: photos of my dog, bird window coverings hand-painted by a coworker, onigiri sticker purchased last year at Anime Boston, iPod (without which I might die), Bleach action figures, Azumanga Daioh desktop background, very large cup of coffee, Gumby & Pokey, useless rolodex, colorful angel brought back from Mexico by my boss (slightly obscuring wedding photo).
Now to see what this thing can really do! :D
Grace says
March 12, 2009 at 9:38 pmMan, I did not need another new series to add to my list, but this sounds really funny.
Melinda Beasi says
March 12, 2009 at 9:41 pmIt is really, really funny. And you have 15 volumes available already in Japanese!
Grace says
March 12, 2009 at 9:42 pmLOL I’d actually prefer there to be fewer, so I didn’t have such a backlog to get caught up on! D:
Melinda Beasi says
March 12, 2009 at 9:43 pmUm. Oops? :D
jansong@livejournal.com says
March 13, 2009 at 6:09 amWow! Great photos.
Melinda Beasi says
March 13, 2009 at 6:34 amI was really surprised by the quality of the camera!
jansong@livejournal.com says
March 13, 2009 at 6:55 amJust read your review which is most delightful, too. :)
Melinda Beasi says
March 13, 2009 at 8:24 amThanks, mom!
Danielle Leigh says
March 13, 2009 at 8:07 amcongrats on the geekiversary! Sounds like my kind of fun :-)
Also, the manga recon link keeps crashing my mozilla firefox. This is a new thing as I can usually few manga recon without problems….
Melinda Beasi says
March 13, 2009 at 8:25 amThanks for the congrats! :D
Hmmmm, I’m having no trouble with it in Firefox right now, but if you’ll tell me the details of what version you’re using, etc., and if it is giving you any kind of error before it crashes, I’ll pass it on to Jon who runs the site. I’d also recommend giving it a try again. I know the server MR is on gets really easily overloaded, and there have been a number of problems with stability recently. I don’t know whether or not that might be related.
Melinda Beasi says
March 14, 2009 at 5:53 pmJust FYI, to follow-up, it appears MR was hacked recently, which was likely causing the site to crash your browser. Jon is picking up the pieces now.
Danielle Leigh says
March 15, 2009 at 7:39 amwhoa…I always wonder, *who* does those kinds of things?!
And thanks for letting me know!
Ed Sizemore says
March 13, 2009 at 1:04 pmHappy Geekiversary! As Blackberry as a gift, is just so beautiful. As a fellow geek, *snif* I’m try to hold back the tears so I can type *snif*.
I’ve been wanting to check out Sayonara, Zetsubuo-Sensei. I’m a big fan of dark comedy and something about this book calls to me. Thanks for reviewing and recommending it.
Melinda Beasi says
March 13, 2009 at 2:48 pmI’m so glad you understand! :D It really was the Best Thing Ever. We decided we should *always* get cool, geeky gadgets on our anniversary from now on.
I think you would really like Sayonara, Zetsubuo-Sensei! There are definitely a couple of sections that don’t translate as well as the rest, but it had me laughing out loud regularly.
kat/shinyredtype says
March 25, 2009 at 3:20 pmHow -is- the Storm? I’ve wanted an iPhone but DO NOT want to switch to AT&T. Since I can get a discount on a Blackberry with Verizon’s new every two, I’m considering the Storm. Thoughts now that you’ve had it for a few weeks (and since I know Paul is pretty serious about tech stuff)? I haven’t been finding great reviews, and I would prefer personal experience from someone I trust, anyway!
Melinda Beasi says
March 25, 2009 at 3:26 pmHi Kat!
Okay, I’ve really loved it, though there are a couple of issues. The speed with which the display adjusts from portrait to landscape mode is frustratingly slow. We downloaded a beta version of the new software, though, and it sped things right up. I don’t know if you feel like hacking your phone like that, but Verizon is releasing the new software officially in just a month or so, I think, so there wouldn’t be a long wait for this improvement. The new software also fixes a problem with custom contact ringtones superseding the “vibrate” and “silent” settings, which I’d found irksome.
Other than that, I have really loved it. It’s taken a while to get used to the touch keyboard, but now it works really well for me, especially after I sped up the keyboard response setting.
I think a lot of the poor reviews you’re seeing are probably based on the *original* version of the software which was much, much buggier and I think probably responsible for them having to put it on sale. Heh.
kat/shinyredtype says
March 25, 2009 at 3:41 pmWin! I didn’t want to spend the extra $$ if it wasn’t worth it, but it sounds like it will be if I’m upgrading anyway. Yay.
I figure even with a regular old Blackberry, I’d be adjusting to the keyboard, so it can’t be too much worse.
Best!
Ed Sizemore says
April 14, 2009 at 9:14 pmI finally got around to reading this book. I really enjoyed the dark comedy. I love how he pokes fun at all aspects of Japanese culture. It’s a great cast of characters. I look forward to volume two. “What if I died?”
Melinda Beasi says
April 15, 2009 at 6:21 amAh! I’m so glad you came back here to let me know! I enjoyed this manga so much.
Ed Sizemore says
April 15, 2009 at 6:31 amI’m actually hoping he doesn’t expand the cast too much. The core group he has established in this first volume has more than enough raw material for a dozen books. Heck, I think I would enjoy an entire book of nothing but watching Kafuka give a positive spin on the most tragic events.