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03.01.03 :: 20:20
Y'know, sometimes I'm a complete ass. I've been thinking about something that happened at work today. A guy who was trying to set up his DSL called. No problems, I can walk him through setting up the DSL. The problem was that his computer is screwed up. I tried to guide him the best I could, but a lot of his problem was hitting outside of what I could give him support for. (He also supposedly knew computers, but kept asking me what IP he needed to put in when I told him he was to use DHCP [server assigned IP, you don't put in anything]). At one point he told me, "I *know* I'm not doing this the way you want me to, but I want to do it my way!" Fine, do it your way, but I've washed my hands of you at that point. He hung up when he wasn't getting anywhere with me and called back. He got Lincoln the second time and Lincoln reiterated that his computer was hosed. He needed to fix his machine before his DSL would work.
He called back a third time and got me again. He finally acknowledged that his computer needed to be fixed before his DSL would work. So instead he wanted me to give him a dial up account so that he could get online. I explained to him that DSL accounts do not come with dial up accounts. He insisted that he needed one and that I was to give him one. I muted myself and let him sit in silence for a solid 2 minutes (which is forever in phone time) before I came back on the line and said very carefully "DSL accounts *do not* come with dial up accounts." Unhappy with that answer, he hung up and didn't call back again.
Well... I could have been a bit more helpful and given him an account that would expire at midnight, but why should I? The DSL wasn't broken (which is another matter entirely), it was his computer. I get the feeling that the guy felt he was someone important -- and he may even be to someone else -- but the more someone shoves me, the more stubborn I become. That's why it's never a good idea to 'nag' me about doing something, because I'll get pissed and simply won't do it out of spite ^^; (I know I shouldn't be that way, but... [shrugs])
03.02.03 :: 09:47
I had a weird dream this morning (nothing unusual for me ;) It's kind of a mishmash of things. I dreamt that both my brother and I joined the Navy (this is the second dream I've had in which my bro joined the Navy). We were at a stage performance that was meant to welcome the new recruits. It was an informal affair. The performers were recruits themselves. My bro was up there and was the only one performing with any degree of skill. It was all very, very pitiful. At the end I was the only one applauding. Everyone else thought their performance was at an intermission. Only I realized it was actually over (that's how bad it was ^^; )
I stood up from my place in the front row (I'd been sitting on a cushion on the floor) and smoothed out my long skirt o.O; The "uniform" I was in was nothing like a uniform the US military would issue. It actually looked a lot like Chris' uniform in Suikoden III (the body was armored, but still with a skirt). After the performance I went to the officer that was going to be assigning us to our posts. She was going to put me in with the rest of the green recruits, but I asked her to reconsider. She asked what made me so special and I pointed out that unlike them, I've had a college education (which is odd since my bro has too :P ). The first bit of training was to cover the basic education and I've already covered that. She wanted to test my claims herself and so she told me to go to a room and wait.
Finding the room was a pain. It was hidden behind a false panel in the back of a closet. I slid the panel aside and went into the room. The room was as messy as my bedroom is ( ^^; ) and drenched in sunlight from some high window slits along the wall above the bed (which was more like a futon). Hanging along a string above the bed and below the window was a long train of pictures. Most of the pictures had the recruiter lady, a man (her love interest?), and a cute dog in them. I spent quite a bit of time looking at the pictures before looking around the rest of the room. I briefly considered laying down on the bed and taking a nap while I waited, and a voice behind me invited me to do just that. The recruiter lady had been watching me as I examined her room.
The dream shifted some at this point. She decided to take me under her wing as a special project. She was going to teach me to be a cleric (like EQ type cleric o.o; ) She taught me the basic spells and then sent me out to meet other people in the special program to see what other things I could learn.
I met up with a group of four other people (one of them resembled chaos from Xenosaga). At first they were very skeptical of me. What good was a cleric to a team going into battle? (Especially a cleric with a lot to learn still). Then I demonstrated how I could heal their wounds and they reconsidered letting me tag along. One of them asked me if I knew any other tricks, and I said that once I had learned more I would be able to summon food (a cleric can do that in EQ). That *really* impressed them 'cause some rarer foods could be easily gotten if I created them. Specifically, they wanted me to create oranges and five patty hamburgers o.O;
I woke up after that. Maybe I should play fewer games... ^^;
03.02.03 :: 14:32
Pepper must take me for a fool. >.> She's waiting by the door wanting to be let outside with a look that says "I know you just gave me a bath and so a *promise* I won't go rolling in the first pile of dung I find (but the second one is fair game >=)" ¬.¬
03.03.03 :: 22:41
I'm spreading the goodness of Dynasty Warriors 3 to my co-workers. If I'm honest with myself, I have to admit that it would be a close race between it and Final Fantasy X for which is my favorite PS2 game. I've played both of them to death and still go back for more ^^; (And, for the curious, my favorite Xbox game is Jet Set Radio Future hands down. On the GameCube it's Super Smash Bros Melee. Dreamcast is Sonic Adventures (both 1 and 2). The PlayStation is a toughy. That one is a toss up between Final Fantasy VIII, Valkyrie Profile, and Persona 2: Eternal Punishment.)
03.04.03 :: 20:36
Quick blog entry tonight since I'm up to my eyeballs in e-mails that I need to reply to (and probably won't get finished tonight). The first part for the new computer arrived today (the 64M memory key). I figure that the rest of it will be here at the end of the week [hope hope]. I'm kind of scatterbrained right now =/ I haven't read blogs in at least a week. Merf, gonna try to take a bite out of my email now.
03.05.03 :: 22:02
A lot's happened today, so I'll get the bad news out of the way first. My great grandma Olive died last night of pneumonia. She was 98. I'm not as heartbroken as other members of my family are. I'd last seen her probably 10 some odd years ago after she was moved in with my grandma and before she moved into a nursing home. The part I feel worst about is that some members of the family had gotten a court order against my grandma barring her from my great grandma 'cause she thought she was abandoning great grandma in the home =| Because of the ill feelings involved grandma isn't going to attend her mother's funeral. That's what angers / saddens me the most...
Work has been totally exhausting me this last week. Lincoln and I were given a pretty big project to do and we've been tackling it ferociously. I'm proud of how much we've been able to get done (though we've only scratched the surface at this point), but I'm so tired when I get home. I have to call a lot of people for it. This much human contact is flat out draining for an introvert like me.
I started out drained today because Pepper was a complete pain in the ass last night. She kept *whining* all. night. long >.<!! When I got up and let her outside she tore around the yard like her tail was on fire. While I was up she was a perfect angel, resting quietly. As soon as I laid back down to sleep she started whining again. I was so very annoyed by the time I got up this morning. If she does it again tonight she's going to find herself banished to a backroom where I can't hear her... (I hate doing it, but I can't sleep all day like she can...)
I checked the shipping status on my compy. It says that the boxes made it to the USPS, but not *where* they were handed over =/ So, pretty much I know the post office has the computer and that's it. The current estimate on delivery is early next week. Now that I think about it, it seems a bit odd. The part I got yesterday came via UPS not USPS. Huh... Unless they get a wiggle on it I probably won't get it until Monday at the earliest. The postal office doesn't deliver mail to the address I shipped to on the weekend (which means it has to get here tomorrow or Friday and I doubt that'll happen).
03.07.03 :: 21:44
Wai wai! My new computer arrived today at 5pm ^_^ I didn't get it home until 8pm because I had already made plans to spend the evening with my parents, but as soon as we were finished... ^^ I went with the name Baku for him. Currently I'm going through all the nit picky setup details. Though it probably says a lot by the order I'm getting things done in: install mIRC first, uninstall AOL next, install / configure firewall. Hahaha. I'm pleased for the most part, though I think I need to be a bit more discerning when I purchase next time. I ordered an optical mouse, but it wasn't a 5 button one like the Microsoft one that I adore =/ I also ordered speakers with a sub (or, that's what I thought I ordered) but there's no sub to be found. Maybe I was mistaken or I hadn't read the info well enough. Ah well, it's nothing I can't live with / buy parts to correct =)
The stupid user for the day was an old man who called tech support for help turning his computer off. This wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't taken us 7 minutes... --;
03.08.03 :: 22:31
Oi, what a day. I went to my aunt's to help her with her computer some more and ended up breaking it --; At least her printer worked for 20 minutes before Windows 98 ate itself. I brought the machine home, swapped parts, and am currently reinstalling everything on it. That's not really how I wanted to spend this weekend, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do. I'm not even finished with Baku yet. I don't have a graphics program installed yet, so no current desktop picture. (I found a nice one on the FFX-2 website that has Lenne and Yuna standing back to back with their fingers laced together. It's the same pose as the Gasaraki poster I have in my room. I must be a sucker for it... ^^; )
Anyhow, 'cause I took parts out of Yggy to get my aunt's computer (Huey, if you want to know his name) working again I didn't have a chance to move most of my data over. Ysa-chan, if you'd email me your letter again, I'll get it mailed off for you ^^; (It might be a week before I throw the hard drive into a machine so that I can extract the data off of it). This is the part I hate about new computers; recollecting contact / personal information (ICQ, AIM, MSN, Yahoo, bookmarks, address book, etc. augh!)
03.09.03 :: 14:37
Still tweaking with Baku. Dell didn't physically configure the way I would have liked, though it makes sense from their point of view. I'm going to have to find some other IDE cables to use so that I can hook it up the way I want. It's not good to have two hard drives on the same IDE (slows them down) and that's how I'd have to do it if I used the cables they provided.
Anyhow, this is my new wallpaper =) I can't wait for FFX-2 to come out ^^
03.09.03 :: 21:51
Jackie~~~ Thank you so much for the FFX-2 trailer and mp3s! I've been shaking my butt all night to Real Emotion and the trailer is *so* very cool *_* Even if Yuna as a rock star seems completely out of character, she's still hot and the graphics rock. I can't wait for this game XD
03.10.03 :: 22:24
It's not often when someone plays a joke on me (I just don't lend myself to such antics), so it was no small surprise when I arrived at my cubby this morning and found that Lincoln had labeled *everything* on my desk over the weekend. "Amanda's chair", "Amanda's desk", "Amanda's monitor", "Amanda's computer", "Amanda's keyboard", "Amanda's headset", "Amanda's Kleenex", "Amanda's crackers". Everything had a neat little label machine tag stuck on it. I'm not sure what I'll do in retaliation yet. I must plot my revenge carefully... >=)
03.11.03 :: 20:11
I got home from work this evening and promptly fell asleep. I was out like a light for two solid hours before waking up x.x; I don't know why I'm so tired, today was a complete waste --; I have a lot that I need to do and I got pretty much *nothing* done =/ I sat at my desk and vegged for about 6 hours. It didn't start that way... I was thinking really a hard and outlining in my head... Then I completely lost it when my concentration was shattered and I never got it back =/
I found the perfect T-shirt for me online today. On the front it says "I do tech support and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" and on the back "and your credit card number". >D I might need to order that shirt for myself ^^v
03.12.03 :: 22:45
I dreamt of Final Fantasy 1 last night. I wasn't in the game, per say, so much as I was following an avatar that was. There also wasn't a party of 4 people, but 1 main guy. The first time he went into Garland's dungeon (which had new and improved graphics) he got his butt kicked and had to start over. A woman approached him (ex-girlfriend/wife type) and was all snide to him, but also gave him a knife that she said would help him. He also ended up with two kids (like the twins from Final Fantasy 4, only less useful). He went into the dungeon a second time and equipped a crossbow this time instead of a sword. (Bows were a FF4 thing, weren't they?) He shot a monster in the neck, but since he was low level it only wounded the creature instead of killing it. He then put as many arrows into the monster as he could before he was drawn into battle. But because it was lame FF4 rules, he only started with 53 copper arrows. Low power and low quantity. He didn't have nearly enough arrows to kill all the monsters in the dungeon. Anyhow, I woke up before he got to Garland, so I don't know if he won or not ^^;
03.13.03 :: 22:20
I did a lot today while at the same time not doing anything at all. Does that make sense? I ran a lot of errands, but I didn't get any of the work I wanted to do today done =/ I got exactly zero writing accomplished and I really needed to get a couple projects done =/
I bought my plane tickets for AN03. I'm surprised that it only cost me $420 round trip. In past years I've paid between $700 - $1,000 for airfare (so I usually set around a grand aside for it). I know that I haven't finished paying for the travel because I'm driving part of the way (I figure that'll add another $100 - $200 to it depending upon gas prices at the time). But that's still a lot less than I usually pay. That suits me fine. Leaves me more money to spend in the dealer's room =D
I also learned how to make stir fry tonight (and eating the results didn't kill me!) That doubles the number of 'safe' dishes I'm capable of cooking =D (The other one being tuna casserole :P )
03.14.03 :: 20:25
I want Final Fantasy X-2 ;_; Here's what Gamers.com had to say about it: Final Fantasy X-2 cheerfully flips the bird towards any kind of reverence for its fabled name and most dedicated followers. This is the best possible direction its creators could have taken. Where is it written, after all, that Final Fantasy should have to take itself so seriously? Why not cut loose and have a little fun with it? Or for that matter, a whole lot of fun -- guns, giant robots, outlandish costumes, bouncing pop music, lots of skin, and enough lesbian innuendo to send the FHM/Maxim set into their locked bedrooms for hours of getting to know themselves better. There will undoubtedly be resistance to the themes and style of this sequel, but I expect it will serve only to amuse the more open-minded. How could any self-respecting bean *not* want this game? I looked at importing it and the cheapest I could find was $78 x.X; Maybe I'll wait and see if I can do better in the dealers room at Anime North. FFX-2 OST doesn't come out 'til April 30th. No merchandise yet that I've been able to find [s-i-g-h]
Heh, thinking about games (and Yuna *_*) makes me happy. Thinking about all the morons I spoke with today definitely sours my mood. Like, it took a woman 13 minutes (13:35 if you want to be exact, I was timing --; ) to locate her cable modem, locate the power cord and pull it out. There are only 3 cords coming out of the cable modem; a black one that is screwed into the back of the modem (the coax from the cable company), a grey cable with a rectangular end (the CAT-5 that connects the modem and the computer), and another thin black cord that connects to the AC Adapter. I can assure you that there is no rocket science involved when I say "unplug the black cord that isn't screwed into the modem".
I shouldn't be so harsh, but that was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back for me. Almost every call I took today ended up taking over a half-hour 'cause they were all tough problems / slow-witted people. The only call that went quickly was the one in which I told a woman that I wasn't going to troubleshoot her printer.
03.16.03 :: 16:24
Playing a Cleric in EQ is very easy. This is how it goes: [sit and recharge mana] [stand and heal person who needs it] [sit and charge mana] repeat for hours on end. And while I'm doing all that sitting, the other people in the party are fighting monsters and gaining us money and experience. I feel lazy ^^; (But, hey, don't knock a good thing, eh?)
My ear's been bothering me today, kind of like I'm being poked with an ice pick. Hmph. Plus the annual allergy attacks have began. I love how pretty the blossoming trees are, but they just knock me on my butt, y'know? :)
03.17.03 :: 23:28
Blech, today was just, blech. I went to work for 3 hours this morning and encountered loads of stupid people --; (And I don't call them stupid just because I had a thumping headache and was in an irritable mood, they really were stupid). Like the woman I spoke with for 15 minutes trying to talk her through typing her password in correctly. She hung up on me, got another tech, he spent a half hour working with her before he changed her password to something ridiculously easy to type and she finally managed it. But that wasn't even the worst of the lot, oh no, the winner for this week was the guy who kept getting the emails he was sending to his friend bounced back. When I asked him what address he was trying to send the emails to he told me "bob@409 S. Fishmouth St." --; Another tech quipped that it didn't work because the guy had forgotten the zip code. Funny, but I wasn't in the mood for it. (Not when the first thing I told my pinch-happy co-workers was "Pinch me and I'll punch you.")
Anyhow, I was already scheduled for a short shift today 'cause I had a dr.s appointment this afternoon. They wanted to run some additional tests on my heart (an ultrasound, and an EKG while I walked on a treadmill, don't remember what the test is called). Yeah, so I went to the clinic and changed into this *way* too short robe they gave me. (They said to only take my top off, but even then the robe didn't cover my mid-riff). I got up on the table and laid down like I was instructed to, then I had the, I dunno what it's call, the pokey thing covered in flippin' cold gel that does the ultrasound, poked into my chest. And I do mean *poked*. The tech frowned and poked, fiddled with a dial, frowned, wiggled the instrument, poked harder. Suck. After a few minutes he stopped and told me that he couldn't do the ultrasound. He was unable to get a good read off of my heart. Huh..? As he explained it, his instrument can't read through bones and my ribs are too close together for him to wiggle it between them and take a reading. (Which hurt, btw, him trying to move the ribs and push the instrument in there). So... I dunno where we're going from here. The clinic is going to call my dr. and ask him what he wants them to do. Personally, I'll go with just dropping the idea. The alternate methods described to me for getting a reading didn't sound all that pleasant and I can assure them that my heart's still thumping... ^^;
I'm still working my way through Xenosaga. Let me just say that if you're in the dungeon with the park, sewer, and woods (you'll know it when you get there), make damn sure you grab everything the *first* time --; I spent over 2 hours tonight going back though collecting things like rare cards and decoders --; It's nice that you can repeat dungeons if you do forget an item, but what a pain in the butt. There's no easy way to get to the different areas of that one and it's so flippin' huge!
03.18.03 :: 18:12
Y'know what puzzles me? Restaurants and their reluctance to make reservations for a party of 18. See I can understand not wanting to serve that many people, but by the same token, that's 18 guaranteed sales that you have right there. I mean, really, "we won't reserve for a party that large because we might have other guests" is BS IMO. Restaurants *want* customers, don't they? They're turning down a sure sale for a maybe. That's foolish... but oh well. I'll just keep in mind which restaurants aren't interested in accommodating me and make sure I don't patronize them in the future :) (I know, I'm being irritable and restaurants don't want to commit to anything, but really, you don't stay in business by turning away people...)
03.19.03 :: 21:00
Well, we just had to go and start a war. The news is promoting it as Bush vs. Saddam. Y'know, it it were really that, why not bring back dueling? We could let them settle it like men and both countries would rejoice being rid of them [innocent look]. It's funny listening to the reporters trying to fumble through the Arabic names. I couldn't do any better, mind you, but I'm not on camera.
03.20.03 :: 23:00
Wow, Portland's on Foxnews because of all the protests going on there against the war. Like that's going to do a lick of good. "Yes, let's throw bottles at *police* because they're the reason the *military* is invading Iraq!" Um, maybe they missed the memo, but the police (and their fellow citizens) has as much input on the decision as they did; which is to say none. Stop taking it out on the wrong party darn it --;
My bro got me Persona 2: Innocent Sin for my berfday [swoons]. I've wanted this game for quite a while ^_^ Now I just need to borrow Jeffy's PSX so that I can play it [pleading look in his direction]
03.21.03 :: 20:30
The big news for the day is that I finished up College Life today. Man, that is such a weight off my shoulders. Now to finish off the SeeDfic!
03.23.03 :: 17:15
In this week's episode of Adventures in Beansitting: The bean attempts to bake cookies. Watch as she valiantly tries to beat the butter and sugar together into a 'creamy' state. Laugh at Pepper's antics as she attempts to snag the cookies for the counter. Cry with her as she realizes she has plenty of baking powder but only the baking soda currently keeping the fridge stink free. It's a fun filled afternoon with dubious culinary results!
03.23.03 :: 23:20
^^; I should point out how Trillian screws with my computer games before someone gets offended.. See.. I forget to turn off Trillian, then I go to play a game on my computer. Someone messages me and then Trillian forces the focus to the message and completely f00ks up my game. I get mad at Trillian and kick it and then usually go back to playing ^^; This happened a couple times this weekend. Sorry, not trying to be rude or anything, I just forgot to close everything before loading my game =/
03.24.03 :: 23:16
I've had a headache pretty much non-stop since Friday. I'm thinking it's an allergy related sinus headache since my nose is stuffed up and it feels like my eyes are on fire. Aspirin just kind of dulls the pain, but doesn't make it go away. Bah, I think I'm going to be the death of me with the stress I put myself through and allergies and whatnot x.x
On a brighter note, I'm happy to announce that my cookies were a hit. Despite all my culinary bumbling I pulled off the difficult feat of baking a cookie that is soft, but not undercooked, browned, but not burned =) Texture wise they came out perfectly. The recipe makes 5 dozen cookies (I ended up with about 4 dozen). I can't eat that many o.O; I gave a plate to my parents (who quickly demolished them) and took a plate to work (where they lamented not having more, but that goes for just about any free food source ;)
03.25.03 :: 23:10
My car's broken ;_; Dad thought he had it fixed (at least temporarily) this evening, but when I drove off I didn't get a mile away before the heat gauge was pegged again =/ The car's been grounded until Saturday when it's going to have the head gasket replaced and who knows what else. I'm using one of the Lancers (dad and I have managed to collect a couple of them over the last few years) to get to and from work. Bah ._.; I liked driving the car with the turbo.
Also, my weekend's been shot in the foot 'cause my grandparents are going to be here (mom just told me today). Whenever they visit my dad stays at the house so mom can be with her parents. I think I'm glad that I'm working this weekend. Less time for me to be around. (Don't get me wrong, I like my grandparents, but I had other things going this weekend... Like clothes shopping with Jeffy).
03.26.03 :: 22:05
Stupid user story! A woman called tech support because she was trying to print a pro-Israeli and her printer wouldn't do it, it would only produce garble. Anything else she tried to print came out just fine. So, of course, this meant that her printer was being hacked. I didn't laugh (oh how I wanted to), but I did tell her that it was about as likely as her TV being hacked, but she wouldn't believe me. I fell back on the old "We can't support your printer, which is apparently working except for this one document." I did recommend that she cut & paste it into a word processor and try printing it from there, but man... [shakes head]
I went to see Dreamcatcher after work. It wasn't about what I thought it would be about ^^; I knew it was Stephen King and that aliens were involved, but I expected the guy to mess with the alien more =/ On the bright side, they showed an Animatrix short before the movie. That was very cool :D
03.27.03 :: 20:00
My mom is kinda freaking me out. I'd gone down to her office around noon today to scan a picture (I don't have the scanner hooked up to my computer and I'm too lazy to hook it up right now ^^; ) When I got there she was gone. So I plopped myself down and started working. Then I noticed a half-eaten orange sitting there all tempting like. I asked her pressman if there were more oranges in the fridge. He said yeah, so I ate her half of orange :P I finished up what I was doing and left before she got back.
This evening I went back to her shop to print out some things. (Same story with my printer as the scanner ^^; ) Lo and behold, there was another half of orange sitting there o.O; No one was around (the shop had been closed for an hour), so I ate it and finished what I was doing. I then got to thinking, what if she's leaving these half-oranges out as Amanda-bait? What if she did something to the oranges knowing that I'd come along and eat them? o.o;
I called her up when I got home and asked her why she kept leaving half-eaten oranges around her shop? "Because someone keeps eating them before I do!" Ah... ^^; "I left a bean burrito in the microwave for lunch and left. When I came back your father had eaten it! Someone ate my half of orange too!" Ah... ^^;;;; "Well, mom, you're down another half of orange. You shouldn't leave them on your desk like that..." You'd figure after surviving two teenagers she'd know to better guard her food :P
03.28.03 :: 14:42
I'm out of snacks at work. This is a Bad Thing. I'm one of those people who eats 5 "mini-meals" a day. Lincoln heard my stomach gnawing (it was making sounds like an Alien) and so he offered me half of his orange. ... Did an orange truck crash here or something? Where are all of them coming from? :P
Jetwolf, please return my Hand Maid May DVD ;_; I've forgotten what happens on that disc. I tried watching the second DVD, but I didn't understand it. (And the fact that I'd had a couple glasses of wine beforehand had absolutely nothing to do with it...) The third DVD is sitting here unwatched; waiting for its sister disc to return from its extended vacation. Please bring it home before I put its picture on the side of a milk carton.
03.28.03 :: 14:42
Sklathill posted a link to a Japanese art website this evening with some amazing stuff on it. I liked one of the images there so much that I trimmed it down a bit and made it my wallpaper. (How odd is it for me to have a wallpaper that isn't anime / game based, eh?) When you have a chance I'd recommend going through it :)
03.30.03 :: 15:28
My aunt came over this morning. She'd offered to make me some dust covers for my game systems for my berfday ^^ (I get tired of finding dust and dog hair on the, especially in the ridges of the Xbox). She asked to see my room so that she could judge what color of fabric to make them out of. Upon entering she noticed that 1) my room is a mess :P 2) my room is small 3) I *really* need a bigger room.
I told her that mom, dad, and I had half-heartedly discussed knocking out the wall between this room and the room next to it so that I'd have more space for my pack-rattedness. We went over to the storage / work (more storage now) room and she decided that just moving me over to that room would be give me the space I needed if we did it right. So we've made tentative plans to do that. (I think she's pretty excited about it). Haven't set a date, but we've started plotting out where we could put the furniture I want to keep and especially getting me more shelving. I so need shelves x.x
The grandparents are still in town. Dad and I are heading over to mom's this evening to have a big spaghetti dinner together (yum, spaghetti :)~~ ) I'm guessing that they're going to leave tomorrow morning, but I'm not sure.
03.31.03 :: 19:10
Woot! I beat Lu Bu in Dynasty Warriors 4! Man, was he a pain in the butt --; Okay, time to spill out my strategy in case anyone else is having problems with him. I was using Xiahou Dun.
First encounter with Lu Bu was at Hu Lao gate. He's guarding the gate, and you can't just sneak by unnoticed like you could in Dynasty Warriors 3. I'd recommend saving with full health outside of his patrol range and then walking right up to him. He'll challenge you to a duel. (Don't decline because your troops moral will sink and he'll be on you like a fly to crap). Accept with the X and you'll be taken to the cage with 45 seconds to beat on each other. The goal here is to simply survive the 45 seconds. The easiest way to do this is to jump (X) and downward attack (triangle) to keep out of his way. He can still bat you down if he gets lucky, but if you keep in the air you'll survive until a draw is called. After the draw you'll both be returned to the field. Lu Bu is "blind-sided", thus giving you the chance to scurry past him and through the gate. Go deep enough in to assure that he won't spot you out of the corner of his eye and decide to follow. After that, resume butt-kicking until the next Act.
The second mission of the next Act calls for the defeat of Lu Bu. Much easier said that done, especially since the Wei forces are outnumbered. Xiahou Dun starts in the lower right corner of the field. Go south and east to encounter Zhang Liang, who might challenge you to a duel. Accept the duel. Zhang Liang is a pushover in duel mode, just do the air combo and then slash him a couple times as he bounces back to his feet. Repeat until he's defeated. Afterwards he'll leave Lu Bu's service and he'll become a playable character (after the stage is completed). Run around and rout some of the lesser generals (who may leave before you even get there if moral is going your way). An event will happen that you can't do much about unless you ran straight for the opposite corner of the stage from the moment it started. Instead, head north along the castle's east wall and clear out the forces before opening up the north-eastern gate. Diao Chan will come rushing out to do battle with you while asking you not to fight (hah, you started it, wench :P ) Defeating Diao Chan will enrage Lu Bu. It'll take him a minute to run around to beat you down, so duck into the gate Diao Chan came through and battle the lesser general within. He'll give up when he sees the enraged Lu Bu fighting blindly.
By this time the battlefield should be looking a lot emptier. (In my game only Lu Bu was left as an enemy general). Save inside the castle where it's safe and then head outside. Lu Bu is going to be looking for your head if he spots you, so stick on the very edge of battle (so you can see health meters, but it's foggy) to assess how it's going. If Lu Bu ran around to fight you then Xu Huang is betwen Lu Bu and you. That's a very good thing since Xu Huang and his troops are going to be acting as human shields. Peg Lu Bu with a few arrows or run up and musou him once then keep running south along the castle's eastern wall. Hopefully sooner than later that'll trigger Dian Wei and his reinforcements. Keep letting Xu Huang and Dian Wei soften up Lu Bu while you peg him with arrows and the occasional musou. "True" musous work the best, but there's also the chance that one of his peon guards will smack you from the back and kill you. So you might want to put a little bit of time into smacking down the stragglers. The trick (if you want to call it that) is to let the allied generals do the dirty work. If Lu Bu's chasing you around (and he will), you can out run him (lead him into a group of peon soldiers and he'll stop to smack them), or you can jump up and attack down to get the drop on him. But don't stay close to him for long. He has incredible reach and deals out a lot of damage.
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