Back again

Hey everybody that doesn't read my blog... is that grammatically correct? Aah, who cares. I don't. Anyway. Yeah. I got better within about seven days, thankfully. The term has ended, but I'm still at school. I'm working over the first two and a half weeks of December, you see. Getting me some money so I can buy nice things. Like a good TV. And maybe maybe a PS3. I'll have to see how much I have. I wanna play Disgaea 3.

Or, maybe, instead of all that, I can have my brother build me a solid desktop for all my computer gaming needs. That'd be awesome. I dunno, I'll have to figure it out. Of course, 50 dollars for my grab-bag target...

But, yeah. So, let's see... what to say next... oh, I can't wait for the next volume of Negima in February. I'd wait a year or two to buy more, but I know I couldn't actually pull off the waiting. It wouldn't happen. At all.

And- ahg! Oh god. Drunken gay guy just came into my room and is hanging on me. WhatdoIdowhatdoIdowhatdoI- oh, he's gone. Whew. That was... awkward. And mercifully brief. I don't mind him, no. He just... well, drunk. And hanging on me. It was strange.

Aaaanyway. That's... I lost my train of thought. I'mma go. See ya!

Siiiiiick

So, it looks like I've gotten the N1H1 virus... otherwise known as the

Swine FLEEWWWWWW.

Somehow, I'm always chipper when I'm sick. Unless I -really- feel like crap. Like, vomiting. But that's really hard to feel chipper if you're throwing up.

However, I'm not, so I'm chipper. Somehow.

... Uhm... yeah. Blarg. Short post is short. G'night.

Roooaaar

Alright, randomness. Let's see, what to talk about... todaaay.

I've got it! ... Ok, no, I don't. I just thought that would give me momentum. Crap.

Oh! Now I've got it, I mean it this time. Manga~! So! I went to a Japanese marketplace called Mitsuwa recently, right? I didn't have a lot of money on my card at the time, so I wasn't able to get too much, but I was able to get my hands on the first volume of a manga series I already have, but it's in Japanese this time. So I'm looking through it, looking through it, not understanding a whole lot... but it helps me practice reading. So that's good. I hand it off to Matsubara-sensei (that is to say, my Japanese teacher. -Hakase would mean professor.) in the car and, without realizing it, she starts to read it! After about 8 pages, she realizes it and hands it back, apologizing quickly. I swear, she's adorable.

Like a kitten kind of adorable. Jerks. Gawd.

She's from Osaka, which tends to be a more... verbose city in Japan. You can definitely tell it in her energetic manner and cutesy dialect. For example: many sentences in Japanese end with desu. The 'u', in standard dialect, is silent. (Deh-s). The Kansai (Kah-n-sa-i) dialect, among other things, has the 'u' pronounced. (Deh-su). Try it. It's cute for girls.

But, yeah. Due to a conversation I had with a friend of mine, we're now contemplating comparing Matsubara-sensei to Lolcats. Tee hee.

Eggplant

What can you do with an eggplant? This is highly delayed, in fact, I'm not sure, I may have already mentioned this, BUT! What can you do with eggplants? I brought home, from that blogger party, cherry tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, and an eggplant. I gave them to my grandmother, and she knew what to do with everything BUT the eggplant. She grew up on a farm, too, and she didn't know what to do with it. At a loss. She knows you can fry them, but that hardly helps. We have no way of doing that. Anybody know?

My English Professor

I love my English Professor, Prof. Navakas. She's soooo open-minded! I wrote a paper using manga and a video game as sources, and she loved it. She reads them herself, on occasion, even, and she's on /English/ Professor. She attends Comicon every summer, too, and she's considering having a class reunion at ACen in May. It's amazing!

My paper, by the way, was about the portrayal of scientists in modern media, in comparison to Frankenstein. I could write a book about... it. Maybe I -should-. And put the proceedings toward my college tuition. Holy Crap. I love it. I'm gonna do it. I'll ask Prof. Navakas if she'll be my editor, and maybe Dr. Fisher, too. (The class is co... what's the word... ah, co-disciplinary. He's a Philosophy Prof.) Wheeee~, It'll be fun! And I know what I can use for a second book, if I need. I can write a narrative. A stoooory. I've been writing narrative for a while, now, in the form of Roleplay, so I can probably manage it. Maybe help me get into the habit of writing past-tense... Heee~, I'm getting excited! I think I'll start now.

Griping

Ahg, what the hell. I go to the cage for a Saturday meal swipe, and they can only cook tacos. I can't even -pay- for anything else. I have to wait for 6:30 to roll around, it's ridiculous! I looked behind the lady and, hey, the grill is ON, why can't you cook me a cheeseburger!? It's not her fault, though... if it was, she could change it. I've decided to return after they've stopped being idiotic (at 6:30), and get me a cheeseburger, root beer, and a big ol' cookie. Or... I could just go eat a meal at Pfeiffer in ten minutes. I think I'll do that. Pasta, I think I heard it was... And the usual eattery is already closed, so I'm stuck. Oooh, if only I had a bit of money for Potbelly. I wasn't expecting the menu at the Cage to be so... narrow.

A 'BlogBQ'

So, my father woke me up at... noon, abouts. I had kinda accidentally stayed up to 9 AM playing Final Fantasy Dissidia. I thought it was something more like 6... oh well. I knew there was light, but I didn't expect it to be that late in the morning. Whatever. Dad wakes me up and tells me we're going to a 'BlogBQ'. I object, questioning why he had to wake me, of course, and he explains by stating 'you wanted to spend quality time with me'. Me and my big mouth...

However, I get up. I can run on 3-6 hours of sleep or 8-10 hours of sleep, so I'm fine... eventually. Still groggy, but I'll wake- did someone just jump in the pool? Oh... almost. One of the little ones. As I was saying. I'll wake up eventually. So away we go.

We get to the party, we're some of the first ones (t)here. I guess I'm not regretting it, I'm having a good time. Talking, enjoying the company of other people. It's nice to get out every once in a while. Let's observe the antics.

Colleeeeege... and goodbye to Chromehounds

Soo, College is right around the corner. Ohh boy. And, to add to that, I found out they're shutting down the Chromehounds Servers January 6th! Sega should have spent less money on the sinking ship of Sonic. Dumbasses... oh well, what can ya do. I hope someone else can pick up the servers and run them instead of Sega. Maybe actually pay attention to them, this time around. I can only hope. I'm gonna miss Chromehounds when it goes... most definitely.

Almost done!

Alright! I'm almost done with this four weeks of vigorous hell. Just three more days before I go home, thankfully. I've been at this program called Premiere, and it takes incoming first year college students or minorities and gives them four week of college in each others company. The classes are rigorous, as they normally are at North Central, anyway. It's tough stuff. I have an English Class, a workshop every day, a couple of jobs I work at on Tuesdays and Thursdays... the night is my only real downtime. Which is nice enough, I suppose. It's quiet, everyone's around. Though the people I need to talk to never seem to be...

But, yes. I plan to double major in Japanese and Education. Hopefully, the state will have a program for Japanese Education Certification by the time I graduate, and I won't have to get Certified in something else to be endorsed in Japanese. Or I could just move to Japan... somethin'. I unno. I'm gonna be up to my eyeballs in money I owe from loans, at this rate, though.

Nooooo! D=

Arg, nooo! My laptop died! Geh. At least I have the computers in the commons.

I'm at school for a month, right now, taking classes and participating in activities. It wasn't so much my laptop that died as it was the power adapter. Y'know, the brick? Yeah. That died, and now I can't use my laptop 'cause the battery life sucks and it'll die within, like, 20 minutes if I turn it on. Geh. So, I turned it to hibernate. I want a new laptop, but I'm not sure if we have the funds for that, between college and what not. We'll see. Hopefully, I can figure out a way to back up my laptop without needing to turn it on. Maybe hook up the hard drive to something else. I unno.

The thing is, I could get another laptop for, like, a tenth of the price of the Tablet (That's my current laptop), and it'll have better specs. Kinda peeves me. So, I'm hoping to maybe get a compaq presario laptop or something. Which has twice as much RAM, half more storage, a bigger screen... so on and so forth. I'll be elated if I can get it. Here's hoping.

Other than that, the four week classes are going well. It's not too much work, and I can write my papers quickly enough. I'm gonna check my grades after I post this, too. The experience I gained at IMSA is really paying off here.

I need to keep a better eye on this

Seriously. Ok, so. College is expensive. >.o I have a lot of funding all set for it already, but I still need more... oye. And it's not a public college, either. Private, which makes it a bunch more expensive. Well, I'll be getting a job on campus, anyway, at least. Maybe if I don't spend... anything... it'll do the job. Oye. -_-

It'll work out, I'm sure. Nyaaarrrr...

I gotta remember this is about my life and not just games, haha. What else... eeeh, not a whole lot. 'kay, bye.

GTO

Ok, GTO! It's about this ex-gang member that wants to become a teacher. Having been a gang member at one point, his goals and methods are unorthodox. His goals change within the first couple of episodes, though. In the first episode, he manages to change a class of delinquints into respectable, studious students, because of the three he tortured. He tortured them because they pulled a prank on him.

It's really quite a funny anime. There's a lot of sexual humor, though, so be aware of that before you show it to any munchkins.

Inspiration!

Ah! Haha! I have inspiration to make a Gurren Lagann youtube video, but... I need the proper software, that's the only thing. I found a demo that I love to work with, but I need the full thing to do everything I need to do... Hmm

In other news, I went to an Anime watch-a-thon this weekend. It was fun. I saw some Ranma 1/2, some other stuff, we showed the host Gurren Lagann... I forget what else we watched. Also, that Ranma DVD was insane with the number of episodes it held. I mean, jeez. Cuh-razy. Oh, right. Ryo. That's the other thing. Yeah yeah. Creepy dudes abound in that show, eeuugh.

Eehhhhm... Roleplay and stuff, I unno. Not much going on anymore. Oh! I'm out of highschool. 8D Totally done. Whoo~! Yeah! >D Now I get to enslave myself to college. >.o

New anime

Aah, crap. I'm falling behind on updates again. Oh well. Anyway. Let's see... ah! Jyu-Oh-Sei is a great anime. Very deep, involved. There's this planet that's used for a punishment planet, though its existance is hidden. Criminals are sent there and they have to survive against the carnivorous plants that dominate the planet. Two boys find their parents dead and are sent to the planet by the Special Forces, made to survive and struggle to the top.

I can't say much more than that without giving spoilers, though I could say about the Rings. The Rings are differenc organizations of people on the planet, each with a different skin color. They feud, they cooperate, etc. The Rings are organized under three individuals. The Top, the Second, and the Third, each with their respective level of power. Thaaat's about all I can say.

Wisdom Teeth

So, I had all four wisdom teeth removed on Monday. I woke up after the operation, but all I remember immediately was getting into the car, and then getting home... and then... leaving to go to my mom's friend's house so she could take care of me because she takes care of his kids while he works. And that's when I remember stuff more clearly. However, I haven't had too much pain, and I've been fairly comfortable throughout the experience. I'll take a pain pill here or there, and I take my antibiotic, an all that stuff, so I'm doing fairly well. I have a little bit of swelling, but it's not so bad.

Best part is the diet it puts me on. Yogurt, pudding, ice cream, milk shakes, juice, tea... I'm not supposed to chew anything, so I get to have all this good stuff, and they'll even get it for me, it rocks. I was playing my game, layin' on the couch, and I ask Mom, y'know, "can I get some ice cream?" And she says sure and gets me some. It's awesome!

Oh, also. I got a LCD monitor for my desktop, which I finally moved up to my room. It's so nice to have it up here, though now I hardly leave my room, which... I really should do more. I should also CLEAN. I'll do that this weekend, when I pack for Anime Central. But, my desktop's new resolution is 1680 x 1050. It's absolutely beautiful... but I need more RAM to keep framerates running smoothly. x.x

I'm playing Disgaea 2, up to the point where Axel actually gets kinda cool in the last chapter, to show my girlfriend 'cause she doesn't believe me about him. He starts out absolutely lame, but he actually gets cooler as the game goes on.

The Depression

Well, it seems as though the depression is finally to be felt in my home. My father has just taken a 10% pay cut, as has everyone else at his workplace, including the owner. At least they all still have their jobs. However, now I'm going to feel really bad about asking him for anything... I'll have to find a job myself. But where to work... I'll have to write up a resume and start looking around. Part-time, of course. I'll be able to feed myself and by myself games and stuff, then, which will be good. And I'll have real-world job experience to stick on there.

In other news, I have... erm... Ah, yes, Generation of Chaos. This is a unique sort of strategy RPG, in that you manage squadrons of one hero and 29 other dudes. Soldiers. The hero has skills and super moves but can succumb to the weaker units of the other side if you aren't careful. Of course, sometimes your dudes stand no chance and you'll just have to run. At the begining of each battle, you choose your formation and attack strategy. You can wait, charge, target their commander or defend yours, or sometimes run. I'm not sure of the conditions for run, as it doesn't always appear.

Aside from combat, you manage your empire. Aside from shopping, you can only do things in town when there is a commander there, and only one thing can be done per commander, whether it's moving or fortifying a town or what. Multiple units of yours can sit on one square, and depending on where you are, up to four of them can defend against attacks, one at a time.

The movement system is based on a grid, with squares filled in to form paths between locations. Some units can move four, others five, and still others six. I havn't run into any units with more or less movement than that. Every unit has an ideal terrain to move on, as well. Dessert will slow most units down, and flatland, I do believe, is ideal for all units. Forest may slow larger, heavier units down, while flying units move best over rocky terrain.

Personally, I like it. It's a strategy game, but the combat is simple enough where I stop playing the game because I can't figure out what I want to do, as in Fire Emblem. Of course, a death in Fire Emblem is permanent, so it requires planning.

Aah!

Well, I haven't been here in a while. Hey guys, looks like my blog is falling into the neglect hole again. >.o Well, I'm back. Not a whole lot new going on, though. I got a PSP with... wait, I think I already mentioned that. I'll have to check. I just got back from the Dragonball movie. Which was a laugh. Don't get me wrong though. It was horrible. HORRIBLE. You just can't do a live-action Dragonball movie. And if you do, try to fit it into the plot somewhere, don't do needless bullet-time effects, make Goku ASIAN, and get the characters right. There was something else I wanted to say in there... oh, yes. Also. It can't be done because you can't fit a whole segment of screaming in. If you do, it's awful and needless and boring. If you don't, you aren't doing it right. Stop it.

Blarg. Been a while.

So, let's see... what's new. Portal's new, let's start with that. At least, I think it is. Anyway.

Yes, Portal. A puzzle game made by Valve. You take control of one of seemingly many test subjects and have to make your way through various, well, puzzles, using... well... portals. You have to use inertia and momentum by falling, running, jumping and thinking your way through them. It's good fun, especially when you get to goin' real fast. The ending song is fun, too.

That's all I have to say about Portal... let's seee... Prinny!

Prinny: Can I Really Be The Hero? is NIS America's first action game of the Disgaea series, known to be a strategy game. And it's very well pulled off. It digs back to the roots of gaming, when things were a challenge to play. There is the one-hit kill mode and the 4-hit kill mode. Either setting can get very difficult. Hell's Finest mode presents you with 'one hit you're dead' play mode, and you'll really need the thousand lives you're given to get through it!

New Comics

So I have rediscovered an entire set of comics I enjoy. They're wonderful! One of them casts the entirety of Cartoon Network in a much more serious light, involving death and blood, though don't be mistaken and think that it's gory. Not at all. It's not grossly bloody, but there -is- blood, and drama, and sad happenings. That would be the Powerpuff Girls doujinshi. Quite good.

And then there's Ever After. That puts a new spin on tales like Little Red Ridding Hood and Goldie Locks. The Brothers Grimm, right? Anyway, I won't give anything away, just read it for yourself! Though, the artist is currently out of commission for an undetermined amount of time due to illness... So it hasn't updated recently.

Those are the only two I really remember looking at, so yeah. These can be found at www.snafu-comics.com

PSP get!

Whoo! I got a PSP and Prinny! Can I Really Be The Hero? It's awesome. The game is fun and really rather difficult. I imagine, to get the full experience, I need to play on hard, but that's far too hard. I need to play on normal before I do any of that crazy crap. I mean, jeez. Fighting twin spellswords with one hit and die mode is just insane. But, yes, good fun.

The game is an old school platformer, which is awesome. It adds a bit, though, with attack buttons and what not. You can hip drop your enemies to stun them, which is a key mechanic in boss fights. Fighting the bosses is really neat when you pull it off right. Dodging their attacks before countering, moving around them, destroying their health when they're dizzy. It's good fun. It can be frustraiting, though, so if you have anger management issues, don't get it.

I... didn't play games today. Wow.

I guess that's what I get for procrastinating so much. Homework piled up, and my Calculus grade is suffering big time. I caught up on a good 3 weeks worth of homework just now, and that's just calc. And I did my Environment Science work, and after Calc, I gotta do that worksheet for Government. But, yeah, busy day for me. x.x

So far so good.

Well, I don't seem to have forgotten about this for too long at a time, which is good. Here I am again, not even a full week after my last update! Awesome.

Today, I'll tell you about a webcomic or two I keep up on.

First on the list, is Misfile. Personally, I enjoy this comic a lot. It's funny, it has a strong plot, and I feel it has an open mind about things. Add to the mix that it updates regularly with minimal filler and maximum reliability and you have a winning combination. The art is also quality from the start, though, of course, it has improved over time. Only once or twice have I found myself looking at something and wondering why it seemed so strange, and that was only because I imagine that particular pose or position would be really hard to draw.

Now for a peek into the story. Heaven is run something like a corporation. The Angels are the workers, there are managers and bosses and all that sorta stuff, and our main Angel, Rumisiel (or something like that) works the files of everyone's life. Every person has a file, detailing their life and the events of it, and they're sorted by boy and girl. He mixes up two people's files. Some missing pages from one, and he accidentally slips Ash's (Main character, boy) file into the girl filing cabinets, while also misplacing two pages of another girl's life, her name is Emily. It's all about how that stuff gets sorted out.

Oh! I'm supposed to be writing a game review, that's right. Gotta go do that. It's about Chromehounds, I'll tell you more later. Gotta go write it. See ya.

X3:Terran Conflict and... uhm.. stuff

Alright, today, I'll introduce you to a nice space sim. X3:TC, while you can't find it in stores in the states, you can find it instead on Steam, otherwise known as Valve. The game is amazing, if you ask me. It involves a balance of an economical system and fighting, and a storyline which can bolster you along on your way to creating an empire throughout the X Universe, as it is known.

Trading will certainly get you more money faster than gunning down pirate ships ever will. You can trade anything from energy cells, the in-game power source, to full-blown heavy weaponry. Of course, you have to have the necessary notoriety to be able to trade weapons. You can't just wonder into some new race's space and expect them to let you buy guns. They have to trust you.

And there's no better way to earn their trust than to shoot down some pirates or doing a mission. If you shoot down pirate ships in space controlled by a race, that race will trust you more on account of the favor you've done them. Additionally, ships you destroy will sometimes drop some of their cargo, allowing you to pick it up and use it or sell it.

Doing missions is another great way to gain notoriety. They can vary from finding ship x and returning it to station y, defending a station from incoming pirates, patrolling a sector for various dangerous faction activity, be it Kha'ak, Xenon, or pirate, tailing someone to a secret meeting, or hunting someone down, among other things. There are trading mission, combat missions, all sorts of missions.

So, I've been playing that game for a while. I've got a bit ol' Terran destroyer-class ship, which makes me a force to be reckoned with, and right now I'm searching for some sort of Boron (one of the races) mobile base or other, I dunno. I'm not sure where I'm supposed to be looking for it, really.

If you pick it up, though, make sure you have a joystick.

Do it!

Hoo-waaah! I live! Alright.

The trend of me not having time to do all I wanna do continues. Rather, all I -should- do, bu that's besides the point. I'm doing well in school, no need to worry. Oh, wait, I need to study my Calculus... Oh well. I'll get on that later.

Oh, I should watch the rest of A Little Snow Fairy Sugar...

Not much in news other than I've been into my roleplaying a lot lately, and I also got my girlfriend the first 9 episodes of Gurren Lagann, which you should go out and buy right now. I'm serious. Right now. Go to your nearest Suncoast and buy it. And then watch it. And then come back.

Did you do it yet?

New blog

So, I decided I should change my main blog to something a bit more fitting. I don't just play games, after all. I roleplay, I watch anime, I read manga, -and- I play games. It's so much more than just the video games.

So, let's see... I've been reading Negima! a lot lately, I'm up to volume 15, though I used the internet to finish the current story arc. Just to get it over with. I'll still buy it, of course, but I just wanted to finish it already. Heh. As for anime, I watched Ghost Hunt, which is good. Suspenceful at times, kinda scary, I couldn't sleep right away after watching it late at night, all by myself.

As for games, I've been playing a new MMO with a friend and I also found a cool Source engine mod off of Valve. It's based on space ship battle, between two capital ships. You can fly fighters and infiltrate the enemy ship, all sorts of stuff. It's good fun.

Now, with all these games I'm playing, you can imagine that, factor in school, and I might feel crunched for time! Oddly enough, I don't. Though, well, I suppose it's because I watched Ghost Hunt a while ago and read my Negima! books a while ago, too, so all I've got occupying me right now are the games and school.

Also, I've been rewatching parts of another anime, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. I highly recommend this anime! It is AMAZING!

Anyway, yeah. So, here we go, maybe I can maintain the habit of posting regularly this time...