Below are the most recent 12 friends' journal entries.

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
acdragonmaster	11:15p	I didn't know I could eat that much I was apparently very hungry at lunch today. So much so that I ate enough that I didn't even need supper tonight. Which was a good thing, given as I wasn't really feeling up to bothering making something for supper. In other news, current ACen headcount is 5, meaning I have 3 spaces definitely available in my rooms. Anyone going to ACen and looking for a hotel room, let me know, it'd be nice to fill up both rooms. Also up to 4 people driving down from here to Chicago, which means my car is full now. And in yet another unrelated topic, at what point did people stop thinking of the judicial branch as a part of government and instead as some sort of government program to be granted or denied money to run? Apparently, that's what it gets for being far more efficient with its budget than certain other branches..... (Comment on this)
paladinstorm	10:20a	Kitty in sunlight (Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
twoflower	1:19a	Home Unboxing / Film at 11 Haven't posted since my "I aen't deade" post. I've been busy as hell, is why. Wake up, wrangle unpacking and assembly and organization for several hours, finally breathe, eat dinner, party party party, wash up, chill, game too late into the night, go to bed. That's pretty much been my thing for the last few days, so it was nothing really worth blogging about. Sat down to watch Return To House On Haunted Hill, for some inexplicable reason. I love the 1999 remake -- it had a good mixture of witty dialogue, fun characters, great visual design, and even a number of dodges and swerves that switched it up so what looked like ghostly kills were con jobs and vice versa. The followup Castle remakes for 13 Ghosts and Ghost Ship played to the same formula, with terrific visuals and sharp scripts. The Hill House sequel? Aaaaanoneofthatstuff, pretty much. A bunch of grizzly, sexy people go into the house with a lot of guns because they like Money and because apparently a boring MacGuffin was behind all the evil rather than man's indecency towards man being to blame, black guy dies first, lesbian dies second in an allegedly sexy way, people croak, boring things happen, things stop happening, the end. I only kept watching because I don't like to stop things once I've started. In the end it was an incredible waste of time. Now, back to my life. I'm pondering anachronauts. I put it on hold after beating down NaNoWriMo, so I could focus on the move -- now that I'm here I think I need to mix in something of constructive substance during my week's winter vacation, lest I end up playing Torchlight 24/7. Trouble is I've kinda roped myself into doing a Harry Potter parody, and my parody ideas are thin on that front. I do think I have a good plot, though, which just needs some prodding into shape. We'll see how it goes in the evenings ahead. Gonna unwind with some TF2, I think, then sleep and tomorrow go buy a TV for Jen. Later. (Comment on this)
Saturday, December 12th, 2009
paladinstorm	4:45p	What a deer... (distant shot) (Comment on this)
Friday, December 11th, 2009
twoflower	12:04p	Splatterhouse Okay, so. Tuesday I come home from work and immediately engage in a wild tailspin of horrible things coming out of both ends of my body. I rarely get sick, honestly -- but when I do get sick, I go hardcore, apparently. And this time, it just wasn't stopping, to the point where I got incredibly dehydrated and screwed up in all sorts of ways. The next morning we threw in the towel on hoping this would go away and went to the hospital. I hate hospitals. I spent a lot of my childhood in them, after all. But in this case, I CRAVED the hospital, I wanted to go, so I had nooo problems when they went to put in the IV and it took three attempts. Like, whatever. Ow, ow, ow, done, gimmie my damn bodily fluids already. I ended up staying 18 hours, with the practical upshot being a complete end to the nausea (the worst part of the equation) and a lot of sleep. By the time I checked out... I was moved into my new house. They'd up and shuffled the boxes from one location to the other while I was being medicated. Now, it's still going to take a lot of work to UNPACK and set up the house, and I'm still marginally sick (I'm eating fine but the end product is not coming out quite fine yet). But overall, I'm a happy camper. Yes, things could be better, but I'm "on the mend" in all aspects and I have a week of vacation coming up to further mend during. I'll have pics of the new pad once it's fully assembled, assuming we can find all the parts. Thanks to LJers for your well wishes while I was undergoing a David Cronenberg movie shoot. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 8th, 2009
acdragonmaster	10:51p	Good thing I drove home yesterday and not today... .....so. I bought a PSP last weekend. I suspect this may spell my doom. At least I got a decent deal on it, and apparently the previous owner had good taste in games, judging by their save files. I still like my DS better so far though I still need to finish translations for people, orz. IF THIS STATEMENT APPLIES TO YOU REMIND ME TO WORK ON THEM. On another note I really, really love the Sengoku Basara OST. Like, a lot. 水光に映る従夢 is sopretty, not to mention, well, everything else... Oh yeah, and WHO GAVE ME THE SNOWFLAKE COOKIE I am curious now guuuuys don't make me sit here wondering. :< (2 Comments |Comment on this)
twoflower	9:38p	sick. Fever of 100.3. Belching/throwing up, diahrrea. Can't sleep, burping every 20 seconds, keeping me up. Kinda delerious. Sitting up and focusing on letting the meds do their work. EDIT: Why didn't I think of this before? Vacuous children's cartoons and sitcom reruns while lying down on the couch keep me engaged enough not to give into delerium, AND let me rest a bit while I wait for the burping to go away. I feel (marginally) (very marginally) better. EDIT #2: When you've been lying on your side for an hour, do not lie on your stomach unless you want to horf up all the medication you've taken. Agh. I'm upright and weirdly energized right now, so, hitting the web. EDIT #3: PROTIP: Soda bad. That's horf #5. I give up; no more drugs and no liquids except water until I sleep. EDIT #4: Monty Python is too disorienting when you have the flu. Tried a little water, lied down, horf. Trying ice chips and uprightness. Seriously considering the emergency room, I have NO idea how the hell I'm going to be able to get to sleep. OMEGA EDIT: Okay, I twittered what happened, but couldn't log into LJ from my mom's Kindle to repeat it here. I ended up being hospitalized for severe dehydration and nausea. They moved me from the ER to a full hospital room soon after that. IV bags kept me going and medicated, gave me system a chance to recover. 18 hours later I was discharged. Got back to my NEW house (whee!) and set up my PC and networking stuff and here I am. I'm still under the weather with a GI (gastrointestinal infection), something that's apparently been going around here. But under the weather is also under control, with fluid intake and a stomach that's calmed down considerably. Over the next few days I'm taking it easy, going slowly with the unpacking and setup of my new place. Thanks for your well wishes, folks. It's been a horribly ugly pair of days. PROTIP: Don't drink from water fountains right next to men's rooms. I suspect that's what did me in. Some jerk not washing up and then going for a cool drink. (22 Comments |Comment on this)
paladinstorm	12:48p	http://icanhascheezburger.com/2009/09/07/funny-pictures-request-cause-its-stupid/ (Comment on this)
twoflower	9:10a	It's Like Ju-on With Asphalt One accident at the Intercounty Connector highway construction site on a Monday morning holding up traffic for an hour is unfortunate. Two accidents at the Intercounty Connector highway construction site, each on a Monday morning, each holding up traffic for an hour is the work of dark powers. I suspect that in the pre-dawn hours, as men in orange vests drive around bulldozers, one is sipping at his cuppa joe and glances aside, distracted by something, and when he looks back there's this creepy Japanese girl with hair in front of her face right in front of his bulldozer and he screams and veers off to the side and WHAM! the Foreman is cleaved in half by the metal blade of the unstoppable machine. And then an old woman with one good eye shakes her fist and says "I warned yoooou, but you wouldn't LISTEN!" Cue terrifying music and reaction shots. Alternative explanation: bad luck. The move is allegedly on for Thursday. As many ducks as can be put in a row have been put in a row, and for my part, I'm dealing with the suspiciously helpful people at Comcast. They've been stalking me on Twitter for awhile now, searching for any mention of "Comcast" and stepping right the hell in even if you say "Comcast sucks and poured sugar in my gas tank and sodomized my housepets" with a "Hi, I'm Melissa with Comcast, can I help you?". It's unsettling, like your grandmother reading your tweets about how baked you got at Trevor's frat party. But apparently it has uses, as I was able to tweet my question, get an immediate response, and start up and email chain with someone who actually KNEW what the hell I was talking about when I said I needed to transfer a pair of CableCards from one account to another. Beats being on hold for a half an hour and then passed up the chain to Level 2 tech support. Cross your fingers that everything else goes as smoothly. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, December 5th, 2009
twoflower	5:37p	The Childhood Trauma That Made Me Paranoid About Failing Video Games Someone asked, so I may as well go into detail. It was the early 90s. My only game console was a Game Boy -- my parents had zero interest in me owning an NES. (Hence I missed out on a good portion of gamer culture, but hey, that's another rant.) I'd gotten the "Final Fantasy Adventure Legend," an RPG port that had the FF name tacked on it, and was playing through it for hours and hours while visiting relatives up in Maine one cold winter. Early on, I'd discovered something interesting. It didn't really matter what your class was, or anything like that, as long as you bought an item from stores which was essentially "lightning in a box". They were cheap, available everywhere, and could one or two shot everything in the game. Overjoyed, I made this the core of my tactics -- stock up on lightning boxes, obliterate everything, collect profit, move on. I got through the game quite rapidly and without any resistance from the enemies worth note. About 20 hours into the game, and I get to the next to last boss. Who is immune to the lightning boxes. And because I hadn't learned any tactics, hadn't done any build work, basically never learned how to "properly" play the game, I couldn't proceed and win the game. I tried fighting him again and again and every single time met crushing failure. I couldn't go back to an earlier save, because there was one save slot and it was right before the boss. I was dead ended, stuck, and had failed completely. Given I was a kid, this was incredibly demoralizing. And ever since then, I've made it a point to research builds, learn what I need to know, and tread very carefully in games lest I make some irreversible mistake and end up needing to either start the whole game over or abandon it. This was a pretty common feature of 90s games, such as Sierra adventure games where just stepping on the wrong pixel can kill you, not have an item you overlooked five hours before that was now critical, or action games where you can hit a skill wall nice and hard or not have the right tools to get through. So, needless to say -- I am a fan of light death penalties, freely available respecs, changeable difficulty settings, and quickie-shot games like fighters or shooters where mistakes just mean you start a new round. Games with good design that, unlike early games, don't completely screw you over arbitrarily. Games which promote fun first and challenge second. But even then, I tend to be very cautious... timid, even, until I feel comfortable with how the penalties for failure work. It's a silly fixation, I know, but it's what I gots. (32 Comments |Comment on this)
wizardofkitty	3:14p	Dancing With Hockey Sticks! Dancing With Hockey Sticks by ~wizardofkitty on deviantART Let's just say I was inspired by a cute little drow. ;D Classes are over, 3 "projects/take home" finals and 1 actual final to do. :D -Crystal Current Mood: artistic Current Music: Sheryl Nome starring May'n- Obelisk (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, December 4th, 2009
twoflower	11:57a	Teh Metalz & Teh Mirrorz & Teh Movez Brutal Legend! I haven't actually gotten to the RTS elements yet. I'm about to; that's the next mission. So far, it's been an enjoyable romp with AMAZING art direction and fun writing, but traditionally I suck badly at RTS games, so we'll see if the fun level slopes away sharply. I'll talk more about that next time. I unfortunately accidentally got a major plot twist spoiled for me by watching some multiplayer videos, of the flavor of "Curse Your Sudden But Inevitable Betrayal". Honestly, though, that's fine; I care more about WHY a twist happens than the twist itself; I'm still curious to see how Character A got to Point B. I'm also curious how the Drowning Doom, the 3rd faction, fits in... I like 3rds factions in stories because they provide an alternative to Pure Good and Pure Evil, some sort of sideline viewpoint that has legitimate reasons not to trust in either camp. Sadly, I don't think that's the case here, but we'll see. As for the soundtrack... honestly, I'm not a metalhead. And yet, I'm enjoying this, particularly the classic / standard stuff from Sabbath, Maiden, Megadeth, etc. It was enough to make me wanna fire up iTunes and let the wacky Geniustm thingy put together a nice metal playlist to enjoy last night while playing some TF2. I think the emphasis on the sheer awesomeness of rock rather than the GRR BURLY MAN MAN KILL EAT ENEMIES sort of aggression that metal typically carries these days helped a lot. Humor and metal go together well and help take the piss out of it all. Mirror's Edge! For a game that's basically "Do it right or die horribly over and over and over" and focused completely on speed runs, I'm actually enjoying this. I think it's because of the very minor penalty for failure... if you do become street pizza, you immediately respawn not too far from where you died, to have another go at it. It's fast, it's forgiving, and it's less of a bitchslap than other games deliver to you when you screw up. Borderlands is the same; if you croak, you just zot over to town with slightly less money but no worse for wear. TF2? Respawn, move out. Booyah. (L4D2, well, MUCH stiffer penalty since you could have to restart the same campaign mission over and over. One reason why I prefer Versus/Scavenge.) I'm all in favor of forgiving death penalties, ever since being traumatized by a JRPG which basically dunked me into an unwinnable, unfixable doom scenario after 20 hours of play because I made a build mistake two hours into play. Being able to roll back without a cascading series of crippling drawbacks makes it easier to experiment a bit and try alternate approaches without being punished for not memorizing an extensive FAQ or not having twitchy l33t sk1llz. Finally, the move is on -- I pack up and move to my new house next Friday. Packing is pretty much done, although there's a LOT of stuff down here, and miscellaneous odds and ends are going to turn up constantly over the next week without a proper box to put them in. Plus there's the iffy relocations of sensitive/gigantic/weird things, like my MAME cab and my skeeball machine and the pile of game consoles around the TV... ugh. I just want this to go off smoothly and stress free. (Which is gonna be tricky considering the Child's Play charity event in Second Life is that very night. We have plans in place to handle it, thanks to my resourceful mom, but it's gonna be a tight squeeze.) (7 Comments |Comment on this)