To the lifeboats!

My 200th post.

I wish I had good stuff for it. But I don't.

That "blub blub blub" sound you hear? My company going under.

Oh well. Shit happens.

BUT the stress over the extra work I was starting to resent getting shoveled at me that wasn't part of my job is released.

The worst part is that now I'll have to make sure I can still fit in my suit. AND I'll have to start shaving again.

So if you want to molest my triumphant beard, you'll have to do it now.

...

OH, but there is something good today. It's Juan's birthday. Make sure to punch him 27 times.

I'm on a STAKE OUT

I just wanted to interrupt everyone's storm preparations to say:

Freezepop rocks.

Their albums are so good. You need to get one or two copies of each.

A few months ago, Lords of Acid re-released a bunch of albums "stripped", where the vocals are removed and the rest of the music remained. It's pretty good for a Hardcore new beat reference. If Freezepop did that, that's be pretty cool and I'd happily snatch them all up.

It's poppy, very cute music, but nerdy too. It's official: I'm a Synthtron Playboy. Not the kind of stuff I would have enjoyed 10 years ago, but, hey, time evolves things. It's interesting how that goes, huh? Maybe I *would* have enjoyed it 10 years ago if someone came up with the Synthpop upgrades? Nah... there was too much 80's backlash in those days.

What am I talking about? It doesn't matter. No need to be pretentious about it. Hell, I feel slightly dirty for using names to precisely define aural memory. Fuck it. It is what it is.

I <3 Freezepop.

In other news: Samuel Adams is a damn fine beer. I havn't had any in, dang, years. Not since I left my prior employment at the hospital. I had fond memories of it, and a $8 overage in doing grocery shopping so I picked up a 6-pack. Ahhhhhh, aural and oral memory tests successful. Press any key to continue.

...

Please don't poke my balls ever again.

...

Hey, wait, when was the last time I gave you a link?

 > Link < 

Busy

Very very busy.

Work is trying my patience. There's some damned drama going on there with one of my bosses trying to set me up for failure. I take it in stride, and I explain my case to the clients that end up getting screwed. Upper management knows and they just kind of shrug at it because there just isn't enough staff to make sure I get all the information I need to do my friggin' job.

Part of the drama now is not just not giving me all the data I need to do my job (I refuse to start on something now without it). Now I'm getting LIES and MADE UP THINGS for the data I need.

Pfft. I don't care. I get paid one way or another. But what ends up happening is that the clients don't get "sassified." They don't recommend friends, they don't come back for more work. They won't give me good references if I want to give out their contact information. So it's a lack of business for the parent company. And with enough lack of income, they are going to start trimming people, in order of least useful to most useful. I just trust that upper management is going to realize that I'm very useful and Boss Asshat is the one ruining everything.

But, you know. Trust no one. In the meantime I'm trying to adjust my resume again to really encompass the breadth of skills I have. Over the past two years I've gained A HELL of a lot of new skills. I just havn't noticed. The trick is cramming it all onto one page.

I believe a resume should be short and sweet. "Sassify" their curiousity, sure, but leave them wanting more. Then you get interviews. All you gotta do is not fuck-up the interview and you're in. They call you for an interview because they're interested. Remember that.

Aside from that... I need to just fucking finish some projects. I keep starting things and NOT finishing them. I havn't really FINISHED anything (not from work) in about 3 years. Not good. I keep getting distracted. I want to be a busy bee and just finish some code.

After all, did I mention I got myself a Logitech G15 keyboard? NO I didn't pay $100 for it. I got it because my spacebar was starting to break down and piss me off. I wanted to hold out for the Optimus Keyboard, but, seriously, yo, that fucking spacebar was going to make me flip my lid and kill people. Honorable mention to Das Keyboard, but if I'm NOT going to pay $80 for a keyboard that's MISSING SHIT. Even the DK1 is $60. I ended up paying $60 for the G15 and it's got a damned LCD on it, 18 programmable keys in three banks (54 total), a "gaming switch" that disables the Windows key, also known as the "OMFG I WAS GOING TO FRAG THAT ASSHOLE AND I ACCIDENTALLY HIT THE FUCKING WINDOWS KEY AND NOW I MINIMIZED MY GAME AND I GOT KILLED!" key. The keys feel really good on this thing. It's a pleasure to type on. It's also got lit buttons that I can easily turn off, because I've got too many LEDs that glow in the night and I don't need another one... or 129 NEW blue ones. It's a USB keyboard which I've always wanted because I wanted to break the shackles of vintage connectors. Just a USB keyboard? It's got two USB ports on it. That's pretty cool. Now I am literally no farther away from a USB port than I am to my bottle of water. If it were any closer I'd have a USB port on my head. Oh oh oh oh , and, well, goddamn, multimedia buttons that actually WORK. That's a first for me. I've never seen a keyboard with multimedia buttons that works for longer than a few weeks. Surprisingly, it even works with Media Player Classic, which is AWESOME.

Anyway, the main focus of this thing is the LCD. Last weekend I figured out how to program it. Now that I know HOW, I need to know WHAT. I figured I'd make a demo for it in the traditions of yore. I havn't coded in assembly in a long time...

... and I don't have to now. The speed of the LCD really isn't fast enough to handle 60 frames a second. I get reliable framerates shooting for 10 frames a second, and I only get to about 13 until it starts collapsing under the bandwidth. Considering 1/6 is an easy number to use (well, easier than 13/60), that's what I'll use. And it's not that it's really the bandwidth, it's that the LCD response time isn't fantastic.

Old technology. 160 pixels wide, 43 pixels high, either ON or OFF for each cell. Hell, GAME BOY had 4 SHADES!! At least if Logitech gets good response they might make some keyboards with really nice screens on them.

One app running on it: SirReal's Panel. It's really good at doing what I want. I'm now able to remove the time display and network activity display from my taskbar since this thing supports monitoring of those things. Which means more real estate on my taskbar for the other billion programs I run at any given time. It's not perfect, it's got a bug where I can't switch back to my non-5.1 stereo setup, but it's small consolation. The multimedia buttons are cool and I can see the track and artist of what I'm on, even if iTunes is in the background. That's pretty efficient. Volume control on the keyboard is nice, too. All around I'm really happy with this keyboard.

But, all in all, I'm still busy. You wouldn't guess it by the length of this, it just typed so fast that I didn't notice it. I'm looking forward to finishing something cool and THEN sitting back with a long sigh of accomplishment.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh....

Deadlines and dead lines

So Yasumicon is a close 3 days away. And I'm very eager. Like a young woman who just finished puberty. And junk.

The concern is that I'm so looking forward to this being the be-all end-all of anime conventions so that it can make up for Anime Expo being so shitty. And I know, in my rational mind, that Yasumicon just isn't "there" yet. They're still learning. It's not a "good" con yet. I just hope the people can help turn it around. And I'm not talking about friends, I'm talking about everyone else. Nothing ruins a good time for me quite like an asshole.

Prop? Oh, it's kinda going. I'm not going to have enough time to sand the edges again. First time I sanded the edges I spewed a cloud of dust that coated every surface and probably has balled up into a wad of gunk at the bottom of each my lungs. When I sanded I accidentally went too deep so I had to do another putty pass on the edges to seal it up. Then a crack developed and a fleck of putty broke off so last night I did ANOTHER plug. I wanted to paint the mounting bracket (fancy term for something stupid when you see it, remember, it's still a SECRET), but with the rain and getting home at a time where people would yell and scream at me if they caught me spraying shit means that's probably not going to get done.

I mean, it's not a whole lot of work. But everything has a "curing time" and there's no parallelism I can really do. Apply epoxy putty. Cure for 24 hours. Sand. Wash. Prime. Wait for 12 hours (which is effectively 24 hours since I have to work). Sand. Paint. Wait for 12 hours (again, 24). Sand. Varnish. Wait. Pfft. TIME'S UP SHITHEAD!

Anywho, I'm using a backpack for the base of the mount. Now, I had a backpack. I loved that thing. It's a Jansport, in my mind the PENULTIMATE backpack manufacturer in the US. It had a tough leather bottom and I remember getting it during middle school and it lasted me ever since. From middle school throughout college. I remember my mom got it for me because she was sick of me loading up my backpack to heavy that I'd tear through all those shitty condom-thin nylon sheet backpacks she always bought me every year. You know the type: it usually has a popular cartoon character on it, and when it doesn't, it's some flourescent neon nuclear shit.

But it had seen better days. I'd never cleaned it. Ever. The outside pocket had salt dusted all over it when I was carrying a salt shaker for use with some Tequilla. Inside? The things I've had in THERE, whooooo let me tell ya. Or... um... not.

So I chuck this thing in the washer. While it was washing I thought it might be cool to check it out. So I open the lid and shine a flashlight in and was astounded. The water was like a strawberry milkshake. It was thick and foamy and pink. (again with the pink.) I figured it was doing a pretty bang up job.

Bang it did. When I pulled my beloved backpack out it looked like it was assraped by King Kong.

Please, a moment of silence.

On the other circuit, Su's roommate Jed hooked me up with a beta test (ah, really a multiplayer stress test) of Company of Heroes. It's a World War II RTS game.

I played 7 "ranked" games so far. I lost ALL of them except one... and the one I didn't lose was because the other player disconnected. I suck SO bad. And it's a really cool game with a lot of options and styles of play. But there's NO FUCKING LEARNING CURVE. First game I lost it was like "well, I didn't know what I was doing." Sixth game I lost this guy steals my last victory point and then rolls TANKS into my HQ sector. I mean, WTF?! I was playing Allies and they need 4 support buildings before building tanks, and I had engineers franticly building the 3rd support building, thinking I needed it to get a firepower advantage to reclaim that which should be mine.

It's fun and all, but, shit, nobody likes to lose all the time. I'd probably pirate it when it comes out so I can see how the single player campaign is. Those are usually better curved and at least can "direct" you to being a good player. In stress test beta, there is ONLY multiplayer. I have no way to learn since I'm just pounded into submission time after time.

Bah. RTS games, no matter how cool they look or how much "strategy" is involved, is still just a race to see who can make the units the fastest.

The Consumption

Well, it took a few weekends but I finally finished Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. I played it all the way through looking for that "aha" moment that makes all those fanboys (and fangirls) call it the best game ever made. And I didn't find it.

I played the Gamecube version. BUT before you go "AHA, the GC version controls SUCK" I'll have you know I played the game on an N64 emulator years ago and got stuck in the Shadow Temple. I routinely play games on compromised controllers with success. I've used Dual Shock controllers in my Super Nintendo emulation almost religiously, I've used an N64 controller on my computer with the Adaptoid since it first came out. The Adaptoid is unique in that a lot of N64 emulators support it directly in hardware, bypassing Windows. So you get legitimate emulated controls. I also like the N64 for emulating Genesis games and general gaming when keyboard and mouse won't do.

Before I became 3/4 packed in storage, I typically had a PS2 controller and an N64 controller both hooked up to my computer at all times. You know. To waste electricity.

Anywho, I played this game again and did not get stuck. I got angry, mostly. I got lost a lot. Finishing a dungeon isn't a function of skill or learning things about the engine. It became learning about how to avoid fights (because the crappy Z targeting never seems to get it right) and just throwing raw time into the game to explore again and again and again until I have inspiration to do something odd and having that work (maybe). While I think Zelda Link to the Past is a masterpiece, it wasn't PERFECT. The in-game instructions got really irritating after a while, and the linearity introduced by Zelda II Link's Adventure took hold very tightly. OoT was an oportunity to shake those out but it dug in with its heels. But that's the trend of games at the time. Can't get mad at the past.

Well, you can get mad at the past. It just doesn't pay off.

Complaints:
There were only two dungeons I really enjoyed playing as a game instead of as a chore. Those were the Water Temple and the Spirit Temple. The others were a hassle (just hurry up and let me finish this thing) at best, frustrating at worst (I WANT TO FIND THE LEVEL DESIGNER FOR THIS ONE AND KILL HIM AND HIS FAMILY).
Bosses? I enjoyed the last boss a bit and the Shadow Temple boss. I found the others too slow-paced for my tastes. They just felt like big versions of regular enemies that take a long time to kill.
Travel? *snore* Travelling between locations is mostly a time sink. I didn't like how in Final Fantasy X you don't really fly your airship but instead "point and click" to your destination. BUT walking Hyrule Plains sucks. Nonsense enemies thrown in there just to steal even more time away from you, too. Besides, Hyrule is not a "plains". It's a forest, it's a rich and wooded area. It's LttP. It's Link's Awakening (well, not technically, but the same style). I mean, sure, Lake Hylia looks pretty, but it's just a simple lake with very little exciting shoreline. The desert is huge, for a faked-huge-desert. Final Fantasy VII did it with the snow plains where you put posts down so you don't lose what direction you're walking in. Hell, you can't get LOST in the fucking LOST WOODS. It just spits you back into the faggot fairy people village. I call that WEAK.
All in all, the game could have consisted of those two dungeons, those two bosses, and the "world" of a zone between zones could have been shrunk by 75% and I would have been a happy camper. I've never played Majora's Mask, but I did play Windwaker and I hate that the ENDLESS TRAVEL WITH NOTHINGNESS wasn't really fixed.

I happen to think OoT is perhaps one of the most overrated games in history. At least Donkey Kong Country was overrated but after everyone finished the game and realized when they said "OVER 100+ LEVELS!!!11!1eleven!1" they counted those one-room-bonus-stages as entire levels, too. *headdesk* So, as gamers, we realized that it was junk that looked pretty. It took some of us longer than others to realize it, though.

Since it's on the disk, though, I'm going to play Master Levels. I got the first three dungeons down and am making my move into the Forest Temple. So far some parts I like more and some parts I hate more. Fighting sword and sheild enemies on ice? That's a pretty cool thing. Even more confusing and 80% backtracking dungeons? That's a pretty bad thing. It's THAT bipolar syndrome that 3D Zelda iterations seem to have that really hold it back from greatness.

What am I saying? Zelda could be a shitstain on underwear and packaged by Nintendo and it would still be heralded as the greatest thing to arrive since sliced bread. Nevermind sliced bread, bread PERIOD. Greatest thing since the milling of grains for flour. Greatest thing since the millstone. Greatest thing since the disc-shaped stone. Greatest thing since STONE.

What I MEAN by "hold[ing] it back" is that Zelda could be really propelled upwards in the hearts of die-hards and purists like myself but big N just won't do it for some reason. Twilight Princess is likely going to be fanservice to the OoTards.

...

I'll still get Wii, though. Nintendo makes enough good games, and the system has good preliminary 3rd party support. Unlike PS3. Where "All News is Bad News."

Back in the day, there was a game called Graal that promised to be the PC version of Zelda. But those freewheeling days of 1998 are long gone. Now Graal is a pay-to-play online game with very little hint at its original Zelda roots. I remember downloading the client and server. I would give anything to have those files back. I had 10 hearts and 6000 rupees in the bank. The whole "community gaming" concept is flawed, though. It doesn't work because everyone contributes something with little regard for their neighbors. Because of this there were no "quests" that took place across different places. What had to happen had to happen in the zone because that's all the author had control over. The mishmash of different zones and no quality control on the maps or dungeons or houses or spelling in the text made the game look like the personification of an AOL chatroom.

But it had a simple level of fun that I didn't match with Ocarina of Time. Interesting, huh?

Kind of like how I like Doom and Doom 2 better than Doom 3 and all of Quake. I remember in Doom getting to a door, holding my breath, opening it and having a hoarde of enemies all turn and shriek at me and start attacking while I figure out where the fuck I have to run to get damaged the least and still dole out the pain. I remember kiting a bunch of guards from Hyrule Castle over to the lawn and circle slashing them all. It's not part of the game. It's clearly a showboating move. But it helped remind me that it's a GAME. I mean, just comparing LttP and OoT: You enter a room and it's a "WOW! HUGE!" moment, a questioning moment when you see two levels, maybe a laser eyeball dude in the corner, some buttons, and you're hanging out in the doorway figuring out your plan of attack, or shitting yourself if the door closes on itself and you're pushed forward into it. Meanwhile, OoT, you enter a cool room and it's quiet. There's carpet and torches lit and it looks very beautiful and then you get whacked in the head by a FUCKING FLYING BAT THAT HAPPENS TO BE ON FIRE AND INSTANTLY BURNS YOUR SHEILD INTO ASH and it's your fault for looking up or not pressing Z (or L). One is a game, the other is a teacher cracking a ruler on your desk.

GAMES are fun. Pretentious and elitist programs are not.

BAD END.
(please try again!)