It's now late on a Saturday night. Or early on a sunday morning.

I bring you the following observations:

1.) My personal best at bowling is still 114. Today I got 110, but that's the closest I've come since.

2.) Vodka tastes like freaking RUBBING alcohol. I'm half convinced that someone put rubbing alcohol in this bottle.

3.) The temptation to set vodka on fire is to be resisted AT ALL COSTS.

Mmm.

That's really about it.

So, anyway. Wednesday: Got home. Lazed. Loafed. Went bowling (again).

Thursday: Went to Tarragon with Grandma for Thanksgiving dinner. Visited adoptive parents for Thanksgiving dinner. Loafed. Lazed.

Friday: Kanon. KANON. All day. Wuz good. Will review later, maybe.

Saturday: Patapata. All day. Wuz good. Will review later, maybe. DaCappo. Wuz okay. Will review later, probably not. Bowled. Drank some vodka, since I couldn't find any red wine.

I believe that last was a mistake. I'm going to need some ice cream to keep this stuff down. It's ... not that great. I think 3 oz may be too much.

But sweet JEBUS is this stuff potent. Shoulda had a red, but I didn't want to uncork something for just me. 0 have shared the love

 
In reality, I skipped blogging last night.

Thanks to the miracle of technicality, this is not the truth you see before you. Technically, I missed Sunday.

I mean Saturday.

Bah.

I've been pretty good about this for a while, but lately it's all been building up on me. So, in no particular order, I'm going to list the things that make me angry.

So, the FFML is driving me nuts. It's got almost no good commentary on it. I know about the whole "good old days" complex that causes people to believe that it was better back then when it was really just about the same, but in all honesty, the commentary and feedback seems to be a bit low, and lackluster these days. Now, I seem to remember there are (and have been) long periods of low posts, and this is probably just another, but coupled with the attitudes of a few specific people, (and folks, these are people who have never e-mailed me, nor have I ever e-mailed to them. It's not personal) I just find myself getting angry when I look at the FFML.

I don't know why, but I suspect it's because I want to ignore all but a small portion of the FFML, and have a safe-haven where I can go to post fanfics or C&C in a smaller, more carefully picked group. There's tons of these, but the one I want isn't there anymore, and I've been holding out for it to come back. I'm waiting and waiting for the Refuge to return.

But it's not coming, and every day without it causes me to despise the FFML a little bit more, and the posts, as well.

I tell myself that this isn't me; I shouldn't be upset or annoyed, because, hey, almost every post has a redeeming value. Almost every post is going to help someone learn something.

And I should be neutral about things I don't care about them, not upset.

Yet, somehow....

Anyway. Someone told me that this feeling and attitude are completely normal for someone who's been writing as long as me. It was just short of saying, "Well, you were due to feel like this."

And I know it couldn't have been meant that way, but it just made me think about how much I fail to stand out and be anything in the way of a good person. I'm so undefined and completely lackluster that I hit every average and statistic on the nose. There's nothing impressive or, dare I say, special about me.

I have nothing to make me noticably different from anyone else, and I hate the fact that I lack anything unique.

I don't necessarily want to be better than anyone else, I just want to have something about me that's different in a positive way. I have nothing I excel at. There's nothing I'm spectacular with. I'm medicore in the world of fanfiction, which is a readership of (optimistically) 10,000 people, which would mean if I were lucky, some 10% of that read, or have read, what I write.

I think I'm just enraged at my ability to leave a mark on the world.

I keep telling myself this is self improvement, but I get the feeling that all I'm doing it making myself a perfect nobody, and I don't think I'm happy with that idea. It's like I'm commiting personality suicide.

There's my specialness: I doubt anyone has the capacity to hate themselves as much as I do. 0 have shared the love

 
If you go by sleep-cycles....

Anyway.

So I did one thing today. All day.

I watched Sister Princess. I did not, as I had originally planned, touch Sky Gunner or SSX 3, or ... any of the other games vying to get out of my 'to-play' list and into the increasingly more exclusive 'been-played' list.

'Cause, see, I've beaten Dream Hearts, but not with 100% completion.

And then, I haven't even opened Warship Gunner, or....

You get the idea.

I think I'm going to stave off aquiring any new games for a bit. I'd like to get one good game for the PC, but I might end up waiting for Fallout 2. I'll let myself pick up another game or three for the GBA (sp).

But, really, beyond that, I've got enough on my plate. Especially since my little brother gave me a copy of Arc the Lad. Days after I sold my own copy for trade-in value.

Grr.

I think I like bowling.

Anyway. Scrapped Princess.

It was a fun anime that hit along the path of so many cliches, but only actually followed through on some of them. They also managed to completely exclude a character archetype or three. The lercherous (whatever) was notably absent. Nor was there any sign of the sulking bishonen who switches from the bad guys to the good guys just in time to turn the tables in the critical final battle. Exposition was given at a rate that made sense, and let you really feel for the characters.

Generally speaking, you know as much about the show as every character in it at a given moment. You suspect there's more, but rather than having the villanous asides filled with obscure references to the next plan, or the ultimate plan, or anything else, it's all spelled out. You know from episode one that the whole point is that the Scrapped Princess is supposedly going to destroy the world.

You don't know why, or how. But they don't give her an obscure mystical title, and only reveal her purpose in episode 16, so she can angst and wallow in self-pity until episode 17 (18 if you've got bishonen to add backstory), which is just in time for a fanservice episode (pre ep 20) before begining the final story arc, whereupon the tables are turned again.

The anime carries itself in such a way that what you don't know, no one in the show cares about. And neither do you, because it doesn't really matter, and if it does, you'll know. Well, thinking back, there are perhaps a few minor exceptions to this, which felt more in line as 'good storytelling' instead of 'cheap gimmick to create false dramatic tension'.

It takes itself seriously, in many senses. No Slayers-style comedy here (I liked Slayers, but this anime managed to establish itself as 'good' without needing to cash in on its style), actions have consequences. Come to think of it, you never even see exaggerated features, face-faults, or chibi-versions of anyone running around. Unless you count Soopy-kun. Which I don't.

It still has humor, it just tends to be on a level that maintains a degree of sophistication.

There's no slew of unexpected or gratuitous powerups (for the good guys).

There's nothing I can really point out that I'd like to improve or change, honestly. I don't think it was perfect, but at the same time, I can't point at any flaws. Maybe I'm sleepy.

Anyway, while it was not the best anime I ever saw, it was enjoyable. I had fun.

"I liked it. It was much better than 'Cats'. I am going to see it. Again and again."

Gotta wake up in five hours for work.... 0 have shared the love

 
If you go by sleep-cycles instead of actual dates, this entry is technically not late.

I was out bowling until 1:00 AM.

Haven't played since I was, oh, eight, I guess. My best game was 114 tonight.

That was actually pretty fun.

Hmm. It was supposed to be minature golf, but plans exploded, and so, we were going to see a movie.

But that didn't work, either.

So ... bowling.

Aside: Equilibrium was a pretty cool movie.

Read or Die TV continues to be interesting.

Tsukihime continues to own, and I now have a copy of the game it is based on. Not in any form I can understand, but at least I have it.

That's about it. 0 have shared the love

 
I missed a day.

I have no idea how that happened.

But I also had a strange dream last night.

I can't articulate it.

But I slept in this morning and was late to work. That was embarassing.

Anyway. My muse is stirring, and I wish to encourage that gently glowing ember into a flame once more.

So this is going to be a brief entry.

....

That's about it. 0 have shared the love

 
I feel like I'm constantly tired.

I had an epiphany last night.

But I had forgotten when I woke up.

Now I only remember that I had one.

Today was a pretty bad day at work. All of my lists of who needed to be called, and when, got deleted.

That was ... problematic.

My holy crusade against improper elipses use has ground to a halt. I really wish someone told me this before.

I worry sometimes that I'll become embittered, which is part of the reason my C&C has been waning of late. That and, more importantly, I just feel so unmotivated. Like I've lost my creative spark.

And then there are days where it's back, but I don't have the patience to C&C the majority of what I'm looking at; I only want to write my own stuff. I get the idea that if I make myself C&C someone else, I'll stop being constructive, and only be critical.

Of course, that would defeat the entire purpose, wouldn't it?

I'm still tired.

Tomorrow will bring a better day, I suspect.

I do not know this, but it is my belief. Positive thinking. 0 have shared the love

 
I'm tired.

I forgot to blog yesterday.

I almost forgot today.

I'm tired.

Ugh. So much work I can barely keep afloat, and it's massively stressing, too. But I still love my job, and I know that things will get better soon. We're short on people, but that's going to be solved within the next week and a half. Just gotta sit tight, and think happy thoughts.

Ah, Mutsumi, where are you? Some day....

Until then, I must sleep. 0 have shared the love

 
On a dare, and because I need to make up for missed posts, I'm going to review Jak II here.

So, this game is a sequel to the original Jak and Daxter.

I liked Jak and Daxter, it was fun, shiny, and all-in-all, really colorful. I felt it was well done, and the story was amusing, if not really ground-breaking.

The sequel boasts better graphics, they claim. Well, I don't know about that, it's limited to the PS2s hardware, which the original game was already pushing the limits of. To be fair, you usually don't notice the loading sequences when you wander through the city (which is huge), except when you walk through a gate. Then it doesn't say loading, but you have to watch the door unlocking sequence, which gives the game enough time to load.

That's cool.

The story is a bit different. Well, a lot different. The entire game plays like a fanfic someone wrote based off of the original story, with additional characters, and a hell of a lot more angst. Also, Jak talks. That's kind of cool, but they gave him enough of a personality transplant from what I've seen that he ... actually, he had no real personality in the original game except to roll his eyes at Daxter a lot. I'll consider that an improvement.

The new world that Jak and Daxter run around in is different, so instead of getting powerups in the form of eco, you now get guns. This is kind of interesting. Jak also has some mysterious and uncontrollable power to turn into a monstrous version of himself that can't use guns, but is pretty darn fast, has claws, and can learn some interesting new abilities. Like doing a ground-pound and creating an area of effect attack that wipes out pretty much any enemy nearby. The rarity of actually being able to transform against the use of doing so is something that could probably stand to be adjusted. Really, most enemies are so simple that it's faster just to use a gun to skip the transformation sequence.

Anyway. The majority of the game actually takes place in a single very large and ugly city. Jak doesn't run very quickly, either. Fortunately, you can steal other people's hover-cars or hover-bikes, kind of like GTA to get around. But they all handle like cows on skates, blow up really easily, and the city is full of inconveniently places obstacles and slower traffic. The city is, without a doubt, the worst part of the game. For one thing, it's the hub you must navigate to get from one mission to another, and some missions even take place inside the city. For another, the system chunks so badly when you do almost anything in the city that you can actually see the scan-lines cross the screen as the hardware tries to keep up with the game.

The city also hosts dozens of mini-missions, little terminals that you walk up to and get assigned some task, usually involving getting to a specific point within the time limit. This is remarkably unhelpful because for many of these, it shows you a precursor orb in some part of the city without telling you where it is, then returns you to your own viewpoint with a twenty second timer counting down. You chances of getting to the orb before you run out of time is pretty much all based on luck. The hover-cycles are the fastest vehicles in the game, and, well, you need them to get to these goals in time. But you can't check the terminal from a hover-cycle. If you bring one to the terminal and hop off the cycle to check it, your cycle will usually be gone when the camera comes back to you. So you're dependant on some passer-by to be riding a hovercycle that you can steal, which takes a few seconds of your preciously counting down time.

I'm certain that it's possible; the game never would have been released were it not. But the difficulty, and the dependance on luck involved in getting these....

Well, that's only bonus objectives, which as far as I can tell, are only actually needed if you like to get 100% completion on your games. Which I do.

But we'll worry less about that, and more about how the actual missions play. Less time-limits, but if you blow your mission (die) you typically get reset back to the very begining of the mission. Check-points are exceedingly rare.

...yeah.

The game had a lot of potential, but for one thing, I can't stand the city, and for another, it seems to me that this game is asking a lot of dedication for a 100% completion, and it looks like an investment of time that will be largely frustrating. The difficulty pretty much guarantees that the payoff will not be worth the reward.

Final analysis: I'm going to try and take this game back to the store to trade it in for store credit today. 0 have shared the love

 
The promised update is here. Just go to the homepage to see it.

Some things are still missing. Most of the larger stories. PoE is (still) being rewritten, though, so....

That's about it. Late, but done. More to do later, possibly this month. 0 have shared the love

 
It's hard being the strong one.

By which I mean, it's hard to not depend on other people. Perhaps even impossible.

Which, I suppose, is the whole point of friendship. Helping someone out, and them helping you out when you need it.

It's hard.

But it feels good to be there when a friend needs you. 0 have shared the love

 
Visited my mother again today.

I'm trying to be more regular about that, but I've got a history of just sinking into a pattern where I'm comfortably numb and ignore everything I don't have to. Usually to focus on self-improvement to the point of being so self-centered that I backslide more than I gain.

Anyway. Speaking of family, I've decided to go over the events concerning my father in my head again. I can't remember if I entered it into my journal, since the history I see at the bottom of this screen only goes back to Saturday, but I'm too lazy to expend the effort to look. And yet, motivated enough to talk about it.

I'm so complex. (Where a=A and b=[B], with a[B]!=Ab, and bb=[A])

So. I got a letter from my father last Sunday.

Indirectly. It was from my grandfather to my grandmother, as he is still paying her alimony. My step-mother, my father, and their child are all described as 'obscenely obese', and I'm told that my father's been out of work for a year. This distresses and dissapoints me, mostly because I was led to believe that my father may actually be dying. It's not something like cancer, or a wasting illness, it's just that he's in a position where his declining health is getting to him.

My grandfather has emphezema (sp?), and he decided it was more important to notify us about my father's health than even bother mentioning that he's ill himself? This bodes poorly. It's also suggested that my step-mother's decline in willpower and health is linked to mine and my older brother's leaving. For those of you not in the know, I ran away at the age of fifteen, and moved in with my mother. Important points: My father did not appear at the custody trial. My mother asked for only 100$ a month in child support, because when she was struggling, that was all she was able to pay my father, and she didn't feel it was fair to my father to ask for more.

My older brother ran away at the age of seventeen (about six or eight months before I did). We both did this because we weren't comfortable living under my step-mother's parentage. Now, I know I'm a damaged person, and I've got issues. I'm not perfect. But I'm not going to blame my issues on my upbringing, and the abuse I took. Let's face it; most children in abuse situations don't even know it's abuse until they're out of that situation. I didn't. It doesn't justify antisocial behavior, it's not an excuse to be unkind or perpetuate that kind of treatment to another generation.

It's just something that happens, that you have to accept, and put behind you.

Except, I didn't. I learned a lot about psychology and manipulating people from my step-mother. I picked it up from watching her. Of course, I didn't know it was wrong, so I treated my ex-girlfriend very poorly, and emotionally manipulated her, which resulted in a very destructive relationship, whereupon I was destroying her free will, and by allowing me to do so, she was destroying my drive to do anything whatsoever. She decided at some point that we had to break up, and I said it would be the smart thing for her to do.

There you see: I perpetuated the behavior that I learned by the abuse I took. Does that make it okay? Fuck no. I will own up to the fact that what I did was horrible. I hate what I've done, and I'm only now learning not to hate myself for doing it. I hold myself responsible for the abusive behaviors that my ex-girlfriend learned from me, and now in a small way often employs against her significant other.

But I also feel I'm not in a position where I should say anything about it. It would be the ultimate act of hypocricy, I think, for me to say, "Hey. You're treating him like I treated you. Not cool." So I wait, until that moment comes along when someone asks for my help, and I can do what I can.

I think that's about as responsible as I can be.

The closest thing I have to a role model is my mother, who I think is an awesome person, possibly the most awesome person ever, with the exception of Segata Sanshiro. But he's not real, and she is, so she wins. She has enough willpower to drop from 310 lbs to 120 in a single year, and keep that weight off. She's pulled herself and her life out from the worst possible places and situations, and has proven herself to be a remarkable person. I don't think I respected her nearly as much as I should have, growing up.

My father, on the other hand, I think I respected too much, given that he stole (I know the amount now) thirty thousand dollars from my grandmother.

Now, he didn't steal it, directly. He actually took it with the understanding that it would be used for the down-payment on a house that my father would buy, which would include accomodations for my grandmother when she came back from her stay in Costa Rica. Well, I won't say that my step-mother is not also responsible for that money dissapearing, but my father was the one who actually said, "We don't have that money."

Not, "It's gone. I'm going to need some time to pay you back." Not, "We spent that money, I'm sorry." Just, "We don't have that money."

What's worse, is that later, he ended up borrowing my grandmother's credit card, and gave it to my stepmother. After my step-mother used that credit card for things like trips, trinkets, junk, and so on, when it had been given in confidence that it would be used to pay for the moving service to help move into the home that they had (after the fact, and without my grandmother's money) chosen. I confronted him over the phone about this abuse of my grandmother's trust, and he said, "Well.... You know, your grandmother's old. She forgets things."

And she's my roomate now. In all honesty, she does forget things. Minor things. Little things. And that's now. Not five years ago, when this happened.

That was the last time I spoke with my father.

Now I'm confronted with the idea that I might not be able to ever say goodbye to my father, or talk to him again, and all I can really think about it is that, given my lously track-record of keeping in the loop with my family, I'm not sure I want to talk to him again. There I am, confronting the idea that I may never. Ever. Get the chance to make my peace with him, or say goodbye. And I'm not sure I want to bother, even though I know that I've got a chance, and it may not happen again.

Part of it is because I don't trust that he's his own person. I think he's really mostly subject to his wife. He's still responsible for his own decisions. And it's not like he couldn't just call me; he has my number. He has my e-mail address. He knows I'm living with his mother, trying to patch the hole he made in her life.

But maybe he knows how much I resent that. Maybe he knows how dissapointed I am.

And maybe, maybe, maybe, he knows that after all is said and done, I don't even know if I love my father.

The father I remember loving as a child was the one who raised me as a single father when my mother was at what was probably one of the worst points of her life. When I was a tyke, not even four years old, and Dad's favorite vehicle was his old Honda motorcycle. He'd sit me on it in front of him, and then put on his jacket, and button me up inside it to be safe. He'd take me and my brother to visit our grandparents (before they divorced). He'd take us to the park. He worked his ass off to take care of us, and he showed us that he cared. He was the best father he could have been.

And I remember him dating, even as a father, not trusting most sitters, and bringing me and my brother along. I vaguely remember a handful of women he saw, most of which thought me and my brother were cute as buttons. I remember arguing with my brother over who got to sit in the front seat of the old Honda hatchback whenever we went shopping, or did anything else all together.

But then I remember how much he changed after he married his current wife. Did he think that she would be better for taking care of us and it was his job to take care of the family by working hard and bringing in all the money he could? Did she tell him that? Did he just never really care, and think that the obligation was safely passed off?

I don't know. But that caring father I know was abruptly replaced with a very distant always tired man who had no hobbies, and barely had time to listen to me when I asked him questions. A man who fished, I think, but cared less to spend time with me and more just to enjoy himself. A man with very little patience, who I think was always stressed even when we were on vacations, which was about the only time I ever really saw him.

I think the last time I actually saw my father in any light where he regarded me as an actual part of his family and his life was when I was summoned to the principal's office because they had found the detonator I was trying to build because I wanted to blow the school up (there's dysfunction for you). And after all of the accusations and explanations that it was all my mother's fault, all he really wanted to talk to me about was how the science of the stuff actually worked. I think I saw, in the depths of his eyes, a very sad and ashamed reflection of the old dad I had. One who had no idea how to talk to me again and say that he still loved me, and that he knew how hard it was to be awkward in school.

And I think whatever there is of the father I loved can't come back until my step-mother releases her control over him. Gods above; he lost two sons, and alienated his own brother and sister, to say nothing of how he mistreated his own mother. He's invested too much in the decision he made to come back now.

If I did talk to him, I wouldn't be talking to him. I'd be trying to talk to that part deep inside himself, that he's been trying to kill to make his wife happy for years.

And I don't even know if I want to reach out and say farewell to that last flickering spark of the man I think of as my father.

I think I should. But I just don't know.

Happy thoughts. Meeting Darth Morrison for lunch tomorrow. Haven't seen him in nearly a year, so it should be fun. 0 have shared the love

 
Today, is another day.

My first real day of being on the phones; they really threw me to the wolves, as it were. My duties rapidly outstripped my ability to do them, at first, but I managed to get to a point where, despite the fact that I was not making headway, I was not falling further behind.

I imagine that within a week or two, I should be able to stay ahead of them. Wow. What a rush of work. I'm finding that I actually enjoy this job more, just because of the relaxed environment, even when it's stressful. And what job can't be stressful, ocasionally? It's reasonable, at least. The call volume is higher than I had thought it would be (though, today, two of the people (of four) who answers calls were out), but not unmanagable.

Once everyone's on the same page, and we get the fifth person added to our cadre of phone-answerers, we should be ready to rock. I'm excited, and have happy premonitons about the future, which is rare for me given how easily I become depressed. Usually.

But things are looking up, and I'm happy; tomorrow morning, and from now on, I will be working from 6:00 AM to 3:00 PM, which suits me just fine. I imagine much of the morning will be quite busy, as 6:00 AM here is 9:00 AM on the east coast, but I'm not too worried. I think it'll all work out.

Oh, there was also an altercation, if you're curious.

But that's pretty much the end of that, and I'm glad for it.

On to ... sleep, I suppose. I'm planning a major overhaul of the actual site on Saturday, so I can replace all of the missing content that was lost in the HD crash. 0 have shared the love

 
So today was the second day of work.

The training is light; the actual work came hard and fast, and I'm not, honestly, totally prepared to deal with it. That's okay, though. This seems like the kind of thing that should be really intuitive once you get a handle on it, which I should be able to do reasonably soon. I just need practice, and a bit more time to get there.

It's fun, there's a lot of comraderie between us there.... I think it's a good thing, all considered.

I'm also kind of tired, and since I worked ouy tonight, most of my entire day was consumed with working and bitching about the old job.

Watermelon elementals aside.

So ... I think I'm going to drool vacantly for a moment or three, then get me some shuteye. 0 have shared the love

 
Today was the first day of work.

At my new job.

It ownz your lesser, mortal, not as cool as mine, job.

Well, no, but I like to pretend. I'm happy here; I was happier at EA than at Sony, but this place has something that EA and Sony lacked. Career potential. Real career potential. And if that fails, so be it. I can go back to school.

I'm kind of relaxed with regards to the future at this point, though. Things could go wrong, of course, things could still go horribly wrong.

But I'm relaxed, calm.... I think this is more of what contentment is.

So, to go to work, I have to walk, essentially, four blocks. I walk across the parking lot of my apartment complex to the train-overpass, which happens to be conveniently located. I walk across the parking lot for a Home Depot on the other side of the tracks (I come from the wrong-side of the tracks, baby). I walk one block to an intersection. Cross two streets. Walk to an expressway (I take the pedestrian underpass), cross the two onramps, then cut through a parking lot about another block down the road and I'm there.

Total walking time is about twenty five minutes, but I don't mind. After I've managed to square away some of my debt (which is, honestly, minimal; I'm really trying to save up enough money to get people presents for Christmas this year, since I've blown it for the last three-four years due to being terminally poor) I plan on getting myself a bicycle, then my commute time will be cut in half. Fifteen minutes to and from work.

The morning commute will be especially nice, as it's going to be completed at about 5:30 AM. The home commute will be at a much sunnier 3:00 PM, but that's fine by me. That gives me two banker's hours to go to places that keep ... well ... bankers hours.

Though, I'm noticing more and more places seem to be gearing themselves towards being open during odder hours. Not that I'm complaining. Used to keeping somewhat strange hours myself, it actually suits me quite well.

I wonder if the government will pose that x percentage of people in major metropolitan areas should do their work on an inverted schedule to try and alleviate the traffic and overcrowding issues some places are experiencing.

Nah. It's novel, but really, poorly thought out, ultimately.

Anyway, sleep and SSX 3 are vying for my attention. Shiny.... 0 have shared the love

 
So, I went shopping today.

Misnomer.

Wallace helped me go shopping, as I have no car of my own. Ironically, we ended up going somewhere that was walking difference from my home.

Anyway, payment issues aside, I ended up buying basicaly a new wardrobe, for the first time since ... high school, I suppose.

I'm amazed at how in touch I am with my feminine side; I really had fun shopping. I got plenty of nice clothes for my new job. Nice looking business casual-style clothing. Slacks, great shirts with dragons and dragon-based patterns on them.

Also, a few nice stark colors to bring respectability and officiality into the image. With the lost weight, and new clothes, I am that much closer to being 'no longer an eyesore'. Aces me!

I had to ask my mom for permission to hold up on handing over the wisdom tooth extraction money I owed her for the month and instead diverted to: the wardrobe.

But, hey I can feel good about myself wearing these clothes now. And the new job that I'm wearing them too.

Oh, yeah.

Also, I bought a rain-charm to prevent it from raining. It's called an 'umbrella', but I've found if you spend 20 on one, and carry it around, it will never rain when you're outside. Quite handy. 0 have shared the love

 
Brian vs. Final Fantasy XI

I've always had a fear, looking into an MMORPG, that it'd consume my life and distract me from everything else outside of it if I were to get into it. I was lulled by certain people into believing that this game was worth the risk, though. That it was a fantastic online experience that could not be passed up and had to be enjoyed. Others suggested that it might have been different.

I caved. I decided to find out for myself.

The reality surprised me.

The installation of this program is daunting, to say the least.

You start out with five CDs. Not being interested in Tetra Master online, I skipped it, and tried to run the installer off of disc one.

Surprisingly enough, it won't install unless you've already got Play Online installed. Well, okay, then. So I install that. After that's done, disc one, disc two, disc three, disc one. Then you have to manually install disc four.

Five CDs for this game?

Crazy.

So we finish that, and then it turns out that to play FFXI you need to go through the Play Online interface, which is basically a stream-lined Square oriented AOL. It does http-access (for data on the game) e-mail access (for the e-mail address they give you with the game) and it gets you into the game, as well as hosting its own chat services and buddy list.

All of which are features that don't do a whole lot for me. But you can't proceed without registering the Play Online client. I don't know why, since it's not like you could do anything with it you couldn't do without an internet connection anyway, but they require it. So we finish this up, and have a Play Online ID.

Great.

But you can't do anything with a Play Online ID except register a 'handle'. Which is linked with your ID, and your e-mail address.

Okay, fine. So I do this, then I poke at their system a while. Dunno if I'm ready to play online, so I toy with the chat feature. You can't chat without creating a 'nick' and linking it to your handle. Er.... Okay. I'm guessing that the handle is the one that would be on the buddy list.

So I do that, see that it's basically a dumbed down IRC ... that's fine. Time to play the game.

But you have to update, first. I'll be honest; you expect this from an online game. They've got tons and tons of patches. So I figure, DSL, 20 minutes of patching at most, since the game has only been out for a week, we should be set.

Two hours later....

Yes. Two hours later I actually get into the game.

Whoo. Character creating was kind of amusing. You get different theme music for each race/gender you can pick, and the honky-tonk human female's music was second only to the cheezy disco lounge/80's porno music of the frolicking catgirl. So I pick my character (a white mage) and get into the game.

First off, I don't know what's going on with the interface. I've played a small handful of online games -- Everquest, Asheron's Call, Ragnarock Online, and Earth and Beyond. All of them have what ultimately amounts to a clean, managable, and usable UI.

The UI, for me, really makes or breaks a game. That's what determines if you can even play it. There was an amazing lack of explanation for how to handle even simple movement controls, the mouse-directions for moving your character and the camera were unintuitive, and (as far as I could tell) unconfigurable. I eventually managed to get the keyboard into a more comfortable configuration for me, but the way that the game dealt with focus (like Windows programs can) was just insane. You click, a menu pops up. But nowhere near the cursor, and now when you click, that tiny window is just shifting from preset a to b, while you're trying to figure out how to chat with another player.

This one could be my fault for having the resolution set really high. It's possible that with a lower resolution, that pop-up menu would be more obvious. Regardless, the control scheme does have the appearance of something that's really powerful if you take the time to learn it. I'll give it that much.

However, the game was unable to convince me to invest that time.

I played for about four hours, which, by my reckoning, means that I spent about as much time installing the game as playing it. Unfortunately, despite all the hype, the game comes across like most other MMORPGs. It's IRC with a really shiny interface, and a lot more numbers.

It couldn't distract me by being cool enough to get around that. The character models were limited, there just seemed to be a general lack of effort to the whole thing, and there was pretty much no one online on the server I got stuck on (you can't choose which one you go on, you know) that spoke English.

Poor luck of the draw, maybe, but color me unimpressed. Here's to hoping that Square-Enix issues refunds, though I doubt that this is the case.

Oh well.

I might go shopping for new clothes today. I could use them, given that I start a new job tomorrow.

Hmm. 0 have shared the love

 
Brian vs. the Interview.

Round: #5

I lost the last round (#4), so I didn't have high expectations when the splashscreen showing Brian Man vs. Interview_005 came up, though I thought it was odd that the actual 'vs.' logo was silver instead of blue.

I shouldn't have been surprised; it was a scripted battle.

So, I go in, and all the buttons I press don't do anything, my character (Brian Man) jumps into the center of the platform (Phone Interview Arena), then immediately busts out the Power of the Stars on Interviewer_005.

Interviewer_005 looks like a pallet-swap of 2-4, so I was shocked when he was hit and transformed into Interviewer_001, and said, "You're hired. You start on Monday."

Then the results were tabulated, and my pay ratio increased by a good 26%, and it said to enter my name for the top 10 high scores.

Third place. Not too shabby, though I think my round 5 results put me in danger of not beating my life with an S rating.

I really want to beat my life with an S rating, so I can unlock newgame+ and the cheats. From what I hear, beating it with a B or higher is enough for the newgame+, but those cheats make all the difference to me. The A level cheats are like, money and social status editor, I want the venue cheats from rank S. Psychic powers, debugging mode....

It's hard work, I tell you. 0 have shared the love

 
Ugh.

You know, the main problem with writing a journal that's visible to the public is that you have to be careful to censor yourself. I can't really afford to talk about work-related stuff too much, because (really) someone from work might find out and get offended.

There's a precedence, you realize, and that means I have to be careful.

Anyway, there's good things about it too.

Number one, judging by the comments I get, people only read this site when I tell them to, so it's essentially private.

But it's public enough that I remember to keep up my obligation to actually read it.

The main point of that being that, well, I want to be able to look back on this some day and remember what I did, say, a year ago. To remember where I was, what I was doing, and what I was thinking.

As for why you are reading this site, well, I guess you're just a snoopy and invasive person who wants to know all about me.

Or, you know, I pointed you to the site because I thought there was something worthwhile, like the FrankenMP3 player tidbit.

And those are good, too, because they encourage my creative drive, which has been on the decline (as mentioned) since the HD crash.

Which was less of a crash and more 'rampant stupidity'.

But enough of that.

My profound noise for the day: You find depth where you look for it.

Good enough for now, I suppose. 0 have shared the love

 
So.

Last night I had a strange dream.

At least, to me it was a strange dream.

I don't usually remember my dreams, so this one really stuck out to me.

Let's see. There was a lot of stuff in the begining I don't remember, but it was relatively detailed. There were things like those old-fashioned furnaces you see in classic New York city apartments, with little pipes and intricate wiring everywhere. It wasn't important, but the level of detail made me somewhat suspicious through the entire dream. I don't know why.

There was a little girl, I'd guess somewhere between eight and eleven years old. She had brown hair, and it was shorter than mine. Maybe shoulder-length, at most. I think she wore glasses sometimes. She was pretty, and I attributed it to her mother.

Apparently she was my daughter, which is something that surprised me.

My apartment was on top of an apartment building, but not really like a penthouse. More like an extra apartment that just happened to be above the rest. I wore the Trench, and I think I usually had gloves, a scarf, and a fedora on, too.

Everyone said I was cold and distant, but I knew I really felt sorry for this daughter of mine, who lived on her own in a mansion someplace away from me.

No idea about the mother's whereabouts. I guess she had passed away, but the dream-me never even bothered considering it.

So this daughter has some vast mystical power, and apparently I do too, though mine is highly specialized or something. I end up hardly being able to use my own powers to accomplish anything I see in the dream, though the people I do work for tell me that I'm pretty good at it. Apparently, I'm like a meta-human from Read or Die, and this story is focusing on my personal life, where my powers don't matter as much.

She uses her powers once, before I met her, and summons the spirits of every evil being and person that has died in her lifetime, and they all follow her around, invisible to everyone else, trying to take over her mind. I remember finding out about this only much later. I guess I was aware of them, but for some reason I couldn't directly drive them away. Or I could, but something told me if I tried, I'd wake up and miss something important, so I had to keep on doing nothing directly.

Then I found out that the spirits were afraid of me, even though I wasn't doing anything to them, and stayed away from me, even though they were trying to get closer to my daughter.

So I stayed close to her and kept them away.

And I remember holding her, and she was trying to tell me something....

...and I woke up.

Much strangeness. 0 have shared the love

 
A moment of silence, if you please.

Ladies. Gentlemen. Protect your children from what you are about to read.

Tonight, this very night, a trusted companion of many months perished.

On the way home from an appointment, I pulled my MP3 player from my pocket, and it slipped from my hands. Now, I'm not one to leap to any defense available, but I would like to point out for the record that reality has often interfered with my plans, and it wasted no time taking advantage of another opportunity to do the same, here. Before you could say, "Sweet Newton's first observation!" reality kicked in and enforced the law of gravity on me.

Come now, ladies, gentlemen. What are the penalties for violating a law of physics? Cartoons and anime have been doing it for ages, and no one yells at them for it. But the second I even have the potential to break a law of physics? Enforcement.

There is no hesitation.

My beloved MP3 player, shiny silver surface, polished plastic chrome, and hand-burned CD-of MP3s tumbled to the cold, unforgiving asphalt right then and there.

I gasped in horror and dove to retrieve it, hoping somehow that by throwing myself on its ruined remains, I could transfer some critical essence of my own spirit into it, to give something of me to death, so that it might live.

Alas, that bitch, reality stood in my way again, and mocked me. The player was broken. The lid would no longer latch properly, despite my efforts to stem the seal and keep its vitals contained within. And then, there, to my eyes, revealed by the light of the moon, I saw it.

The disc.

The precious essence of my player, lying there on the ground, inert.

And scratched.

Life has not known as much sorrow and rage as I in that moment, drunken on the intoxicating tonic of hatred and remorse, but that coldly logical spark in the back of my mind insisted that there was a way, there was a way, nature be damned. I searched, a long task involving many precious minutes -- minutes while the player grew cold and stiff in my pocket, to find the missing pieces of the latch. Something was loose inside; but no matter. I knew how to solve this.

A battery was missing.

Inconsequential. A suitable replacement could be found elsewhere. Some suitable ... er ... donor ... in its prime would make my dream a reality.

I returned home, and pretended nonchalance. Nothing was amiss. Nothing was out of the ordinary.

The moment my flatmate's attention was drawn elsewhere, I fled to my study, frantically wrenching the player and all sundry pieces from my coat to fling them to the desk. Tools. Tools. I needed tools to go about my grisly business. I paused only long enough to lock the door, secure in the knowledge that no one could disturb my experiments now.

And then ... as gritty and repulsive as the task was ... I made the first incision.

A simple cut, through the friendly, once lovely and flawless label on the bottom, to reveal the first of the screws.

Hmm. No screws there.

Well, time could heal all wounds, and it would forgive me, once I defied nature itself!

Proceeding onward, I wrenched open the un-latchable lid, not turning my head aside for a moment as I beheld what should be hidden from man for all time. I confess. I may have looked away for a moment.

Nonetheless, I turned back, and began the fiendish task of unscrewing all four sealing bolts.

A grisly, demented process it was, but what man of medicine -- NO! -- science was I to refuse work when the tools were already there? Had I not a magnetic-grip screwdriver with interchangeable heads, ranging from six sizes of Philips and flathead? Fourteen sizes of hex bolts? Even a breathtaking ... eight ... star hexes?

Pity I only got a chance to use the one Philips, really.

But in short order my work was done, and I, like a boy, breath quickened with anticipation as he opened his presents on Christmas day, prepared to lift off the inner cover and behold the very workings of the machine itself! Yes! But ... what was this? Defied! Nature stands in my way once more, for evolution has seen fit to provide this player with not only screws to mount it, but plastic prongs that hook in?

Fiendish.

But I had no qualms at this point. No hesitation. I had already gone this far into the process, up to my elbows in parts and removed screws (an awesome four, all told), and quickly exchanged the Philips head for a flathead.

I paused only a moment -- a moment, I assure you -- to study what would become my most beautiful creation. Licking my lips with nervous anticipation, I wrenched, prepared to lever the thing open and lay about the grisly innards!

My anticipation was not rewarded for some time.

Regardless, I persevered, and in an explosion of minute plastic springs, the inner workings were revealed.

Mankind was never meant to play with such beauty, nor even behold it. But I was not balked! Nay! Neither reality nor nature could stay my course, now!

With frenzied motions, I began to put the plastic pieces back in place, one at a time, delighting in the way I realized they worked, they fit together within the system, that they ... dare I say it? I dare! The way they gave life to my MP3 player!

Cackling with fiendish glee, I reassembled the entire thing in total, rendering my newmade patchwork golem complete. Lacking only ... the power of electricity.

Unable to find a decent lightning storm, I plundered spare batteries, and tried the player again.

But wait. The disc. The disc is missing.

No matter -- my hands cannot be more sullied at this point. I delved into the trashcan where I had dropped the disc previously, and wiped it briefly with a soft dry cotton cloth from the center outwards, avoiding any circular motions. Good enough.

I put it in.

Then, I pressed the 'play' button.

And what happened next, I must tell you....

Ladies. Gentlemen. You may wish to be seated.

For you see.... My creation....

LIVES.

Also, I flubbed an interview badly.

Bummer me.

G'night! 0 have shared the love

 
Shingetsutan Tsukihime, winner of the coveted "Obsession of the Moment" award.

I give it a full eight Tin Sugar Cubes (that's of a possible eight, for those of you who are wondering).

I like it.

It makes me happy when I'm sad, which is pretty wrong, since it's a very dark and gritty story.

I find it somehow vindicating.

I don't know why. But after spending most of the day depressed, it cheered me up. A fact for which I am vastly grateful.

I could put content in this post, instead of just nattering on that I liked it and fulfilling my self-imposed requirement to post at least once a day, but I've decided that I should try my best to post meaningful stuff whenever possible, or just a short note that yes, I am still alive.

Also, I have a good excuse. I'm working on Diamonds in the Rough again.

That little spot where all of my fanfics got erased depressed me quite a bit. Now to get back into the groove. 0 have shared the love

 
WAGE~!

Today was the Halloween party thrown by Ser and Madame Buffington.

So, I, being my normal lazy and flaky self, whined via phone to get a ride, and ended up getting to their place with my requisite pot-luck offerings. Cheese, crackers, and cupcakes, a 20$ investment.

But hey, the cupcakes were on sale for 5.00, from 16.99, a value I couldn't pass up (apparently, they depreciate in value by 60% for being sold on the day after Halloween.

So, we get back to the place where the party is before the party starts, and it comes to light that pretty much no one is really ready for the party, and things need to be done. Cooking, decorating, etc.

I offer to help out with the cooking because I don't feel like decorating. Mistake on my part, as I ruined the deviled eggs.

Anyway. About this time, while I was puzzling out how to salvage ruining what I had offered to do to help, someone tells me in a condescending, "You can't do anything right," tone, that she'll do it, since it was obviously her idea to bring deviled eggs first.

Let me make something clear about this; this person is, in reality, quite probably my least favorite person in all reality. That probably means very little, because I make it a point not to dislike people whenever possible. Regardless.

She is the reason why I don't like furries. She emobodies every value of the 'bad' furry to exist, from the annoyingly shrill voice to the constant references to 'paws' and 'litter boxes' (since 'hands' or 'washrooms' are apparently unpronouncable to her). She is the most attention-whorish person I have ever had the misfortune to meet. She feeds off attention, and she doesn't seem to like me because I don't care. She is so self centered I hate myself just for being near her.

So I left the party.

Woohoo.

I was really looking forward to hanging out with friends, but I'm going to have to ask this now.

No offense, guys, but if Rose is invited to an event, don't offer to include me.

My options will be to either grow increasingly bitter by having to be near her, or decline as politely as possible. This is no snap judgement; I've disliked the way she's acted every time I've seen her. If she's a deeper person than the insipidly shallow persona she's demonstrated to me, she should really consider not acting the way she does.

This is not me saying that you should pick one of us to be friends with, this is me saying, as a friend, respect the fact that I don't want to be around her. I have no problem with being involved with you guys or doing things.

As long as she isn't there.

Ugh.

Well, my day is pretty much shot, now. Spent most of the morning getting psyched up for the party, and then couldn't go because someone annoyed me too much.

So, a quick message to all furries out there: I personally challenge you to be better people than her. I can't imagine it's hard. I don't personally know a single furry who bothers me at all, let alone as much as she does. But whenever I see or read internet discussions about 'bad' furries, she immediately comes to mind.

Now. I'm going to try and do something useful with my day.

No bets. 0 have shared the love