|
06.01.03 :: 18:03
I went and saw Finding Nemo with my parents this afternoon. It was a cute movie and I liked the short they showed before it :) I was having an allergy attack before the movie and my eyes were swelling. I got a bit irritated with my dad who kept asking me to look at things (like my watch to tell him what time it was) when I could barely pry my eyes open. I missed a bit of the start of the movie, but that's okay :)
I've been playing Xenosaga this weekend and finally put my finger on what I dislike about the game (besides the clunky controls): the equally clunky menus. You have 4 sets of points to keep track of on 6 characters (experience, tech, skill, and ether). WTF? I bet half of my game time was spent on character maintenance. The menus aren't structured in a way to make it easy to spend the points or see exactly what each person has. On top of that, I *always* hit the wrong button when I'm trying to do something (I have the same problem with .hack). Maybe my fingers are too well trained to Square's menu schemes or something... At least Xenosaga's menus doesn't take *quite* as long as Xenogear's menus did to load.
06.01.03 :: 22:05
I've just given up on Xenosaga. I'm so furious at the game right now I'm fit to be tied. It's not a hard game, but while playing it this weekend I've become increasingly aware of how much *TIME* it wastes. Honestly, I can easily spend over an hour putzing around in the menus buying skills for people or running around to buy armor, and then a different out of the way vendor for AWGS equipment. WTF? Actually, I think an hour is a generous estimate, make that two or three.
But what's really gotten my goad is going through one of the later dungeons. Start at the top of the tower where the save point is (only one in this dungeon), go down, find boss, want to save, go up, can't get to the save point anymore, scream because all of the flipping monsters came back 'cause I went through a doorway, turn off the machine in disgust. It's NOT FUN when it's the same battles over and over and all you want to do is to get from point A to point B. I'd liken it to reading the same page in a book repeatedly without any forward advancement.
So, I say, FUCK YOU Xenosaga! I've got other games to play that are actually *paced* decently. None of this "watch the game for 40 minutes" then "bore yourself to death in a dungeon for 2 hours" and "run around performing errands for 90 minutes" after that. [Flies it the bird and goes off to better games.]
06.02.03 :: 20:47
A love letter to Square-Enix
Dear Square-Enix,
I have been a loyal fan of both of your games for years now. I first tasted the sweetness of Final Fantasy right after sliding the Dragon Warrior cart out of the warm confines of my NES. My affair with Square continued on into the days of SNES, but my love of Enix was not forgotten. I rejoiced the day I got my PSX. Final Fantasy VII was the second game I owned (Dead or Alive being the first). Oh how I gave you countless hours of adulation as we played long into the night. My love for you grew with the release of Final Fantasy VIII. I could never forget the day I played the import and you spoke to me in a foreign tongue. Enix too has earned my adore for such epic tales as Valkyrie Profile and Star Ocean: Second Story. Between you two I could spend years in front of my television. The day you merged into a single company was like the day my heart united. I could love both without feelings of betrayal for fawning over one of you while not the other.
And so I ask you, love of my heart, why, oh why, have you allowed the propagation of yet another SaGa? Is it not enough that you have unleashed two of these misbegotten games upon North America that you must release a third? Why did you not put the resources into sweet talking Tri-Ace into making another Valkyrie Profile? Are we undeserving of another Front Mission? I would even take that odd Hanjuku Eiyuu egg game over another SaGa installment. You disappoint me, Square-Enix. Between the two of you there should be enough titles to leave out the crappy games and only bring over the ones worthy of such effort. Shame on you!
Your disappointed fan,
Greenbeans
Sometimes it's tough love...
06.03.03 :: 22:41
Where did tonight go?! It feels like just a few minutes ago when I sat down to work on Write or Die and it's already after 10:30! I didn't get to write any fics! Or play any games! Or watch the Tuesday night Discovery channel detective programs! And I think I forgot to eat dinner ^^; Yeah, I was in the zone or something...
06.05.03 :: 22:10
I got a pleasant surprise in my mailbox today. It was a flyer for a performance by [seven-degrees]. It's not unusual for me to receive performance material (I buy enough tickets throughout the year that I've ended up on most of the theatre groups mailing lists). But then I noticed that it wasn't a local group, they were based out of Irvine. Then I saw that Elaine Cardenas's name was on the front of it ^_^ I haven't heard from Elaine in so long. I went to the website to see if there was any contact info for her, but there wasn't. I wish I could have gone to the performance.
06.06.03 :: 23:58
It's amazing how I've been trying to watch .hack//Liminality since about 7pm this evening, it's nearly midnight now, and I've only managed to see a single episode. Do I suffer from the "shiny rock syndrome"? You betcha =]
I keep Janet Jackson's "Together Again" around because it reminds me of a fic idea. One of these days I'll get around to actually writing it ^^; Every night I'm punching out another couple pages of the SeeDfic, but I really need to stop having new ideas. It makes me feel like I'm never going to get this story wrapped up satisfactorily because there are so many different directions I could go in. It's wonderful on one hand that I feel so much freedom to explore within the story, but I need to learn to stick to my outlines better, heh...
Oh! One more thing: Tyrlen may be down for a day or two because it's moving webhosts. Elf says he's having my email forwarded to another address, so if you send me something it should still make it... Else, contact me one of the other half-dozen ways I have listed above ^^; [Is getting sick of email after being plagued by email server problems at work for over a week.]
06.08.03 :: 02:05
Yesterday was Jeffy's berfday, yay :D I went to his place and took him out to dinner. We then chatted and drooled over FFX-2 for a while ^^ [Wants that game]. I'm still not very successful in this whole "sitting down and watching anime" thing. I watched only a few episodes of .hack before I went to Jeffy's in the afternoon. I think I'm going to have to start turning off Trillian when I watch anime. I get distracted too easily ^^;
The post office sub station by my house closed down. I found that out today when I went to get some stamps =| Now if I want to mail something off on a Saturday I'm going to have to go across town to do it at the other sub station. (It's not that far, it was just really convenient having one right by my house).
06.08.03 :: 02:05
I feel bad for Pickles the cat. It's been really hot out and she's a long haired outside cat. I don't think her owner ever brushes her. So I pulled out a brush and attacked her winter coat this afternoon. I got a lot of it out, but we'll have to do it for a week or so before she'll be rid of it (not that she was protesting the brushing ^^; ) Pepper has it easier, just drag her down to the groomers and let them buzz her =D
I fired off the first final draft of Sowing 20 off to Chaos for him to poke at. Once he's done improving it ( ^^ ) Helen said she'd hammer down the grammar and spelling errors my fics are usually littered with. 20 isn't going to be the last part =/ I wanted 19 to be the last chapter, but it got too long so I broke it up. With 20 it happened again, got too long. Maybe 21 will be the final chapter, I hope, the story is making forward progression. I guess I just had more plot to go through than I thought I did.
I hit upon the 'theme' song for Tsuyo courtesy of Jeffy today as well. Vanessa Carlton's "A Thousand Miles". It's a pretty tight fit for him once everything is said and done in the story... heh...
06.09.03 :: 21:43
I gardened this evening after dinner, then I remembered why I was adverse to outdoor work when I began having a nasty allergy attack that ended up with my going inside 'cause of a bloody nose. But what I was doing needed to be done. I cleared the black berries out of the flower bed by the house. Stupid black berries.
Sean has written a wonderful Read or Die fic titled So It Is Written for Yuricon (or something like that...) The point is, the story is very good and you should go read it. Yes, that's the point, now go, scoot, there'll be a quiz on it later.
06.10.03 :: 21:54
Yay! I wrote through the climax of Sowing chapter 21~! That means I'm *DONE* with the core story! I just have some epilogues to write, closing notes, etc. Of course, Corvus has cursed me by saying the epilogue is going to be 300k :P
06.12.03 :: 22:16
I was semi-productive today. I put most of my manga (all except Silent Mobius) into a box to make room for other books that I've been stacking around my room for months. I really need more shelves ;_; I mailed some packages and then went to Costco. Yay, lots of soda and water and OJ and ramen and the Animatrix DVD hopped in my cart and refused to get out, honest! I haven't watched it yet, though. I was reading fanfic. Chapter 70 of Liberi Tenebri was posted tonight on Final Fantasy Online. If you haven't been following this series, you should. Go read it.
06.15.03 :: 21:03
I took my parents to see The Italian Job today for Father's Day. I was carded while buying the tickets. It's a PG-13 movie. My dad gave me shit all afternoon for that and I'm sure I'll still be hearing about it a week from now... On the bright side; it was a pretty good movie along the lines of Ocean's Eleven. It also rekindled my desire to own a Mini (I've wanted one ever since seeing it in You're Under Arrest). I always use a Mini when playing Gran Turismo 2, which is probably half the reason I suck at that game :P
I only have Quistis, Xu, and Cid's epilogues left to write for the SeeDfic. (The epilogues are averaging between one to two pages per character). I'd shake with excitement, but Sean would take that the wrong way. Stargate SG-1, Friday, 8 or 9pm, channel 55. Okay, I'm still remembering Jackie =]
06.16.03 :: 21:09
I am the happiest bean out there right now! Why? Because I've finished writing the SeeDfic! =D (Well, with the first draft, at least). I'm going to let it sit for a bit before going through it again to smooth the rough spots over. Then it'll be tossed over to the mercies of Helen for editing. But still, WOOHOO! I actually *finished* a major project in a timely manner (relatively speaking, Oct 1999 - June 2003). Man, this feels good =) (Though I doubt it'll be long before I'm off and writing again ^^; I've still got a lot of ideas percolating around in my head... o.o )
06.19.03 :: 23:31
Crap, almost forgot to blog tonight! It's been a busy evening. I spent most of it cleaning / doing housework 'cause Jeffy's gonna visit this weekend ^_^ Man, I shouldn't put off housework as much as I do, but... I doubt I'll ever learn otherwise ^^;
Couple interesting things from today. First, a Gundam picture (from a model Helen gave me at AN) that left me feeling disturbed for the rest of the night o.O; Second, a realization: Matt told me that 60,000 words is considered novel length. So I did a word count on Sowing the SeeDs chapters 1 - 19 (449,116 words, btw) and divided it out and concluded that it's 7.49 novel lengths long _o_; Daaammmmnnnn, someone needs to take my keyboard away :P
06.21.03 :: 01:11
Wai wai! Jeffy's here! He brought the Final Fantasy XI beta and we played around with it most of the night. (Well, he played with the controller, I took notes and sent him files =) We spent a couple hours just testing the limits of the PlayOnline email client. We're such geeks ^^;;; The PlayOnline interface is very slick. The only thing I can think of to compare it to is the .hack interface, only cooler and with a lot more options ^^; I'm still not convinced that FFXI is a Good Thing, but it might work out well for some people, I'll concede that. But you *will need* a keyboard, mouse, and broadband to make it enjoyable. If you're lacking any one of these three things, don't even bother playing (patching took 40 minutes on a cable connection, FYI)...
06.22.03 :: 02:23
I think I played too much FFXI today @.@;; The day started off innocently enough with Pikmin. (My biggest quibble with the game is that the little buggers drown in centimeters of water. They're plants for crying out loud! They should be lapping it up!) Anyhow, then Jeffy and I went to mail some packages and went to the mall, had lunch, picked up the 5th Potter book. Then I read during the afternoon while Jeffy played FFXI. My parents came by to work on the dryer (you wouldn't believe the amount of lint build up we pulled out of that thing x.x; ) After that, I played FFXI until, uh, nowish ^^;
In, oh, 6~ hours of game play I'd gotten my monk up to level 6 (would have been 7 if I'd stop dying :P ) and met Cid. Woot! I'm on a quest for him now, but I can't quite figure out where I'm supposed to go with it =/ FFXI is winning me over from EQ because it's not first person and it works nicely that way. (It does have a first person view just as EQ has non-first person views, but EQ's other camera angles, frankly, suck). FFXI also has area maps that you can reference. Between those two features I've spent only a fraction of the time lost that I generally spend during an EQ session.
The monsters (at least in the areas I'm in) aren't "look at them wrong and they attack you" aggressive. And I also haven't been railroaded by monsters (be fighting one and have every monster in the immediate area come over and hit on me). There aren't any guards to take the monsters to if you get in over your head so you will die on a regular basis. But... It's easier to swallow in this game because I haven't had to go body searching yet (I dunno how it is in higher levels) and the lost experience isn't devastating.
In short, FFXI has taken a lot of the things I find frustrating about EQ and resolved them. It still can't solve the problem of people actually, y'know, talking to me. Being online and all I guess I'll just have to deal ^^; The people we've met on FFXI so far have been pretty nice. The GM Jeffy struck up a conversation with didn't blow him off. I joined up with a party a couple times, though the experience both times sucked =| That's my complaint about FFXI game play; group exp sucks and getting gil sucks. (As in, the game is almost as stingy as SaGa Frontier when it comes to giving out the currency --; )
06.22.03 :: 23:15
I twisted my ankle today while going down the stairs from my parents' apartment --; Not too bad, though it is swollen and I know I'll be feeling it tomorrow. Bah.
Jeffy let me play some more FFXI before he left this afternoon ^^ I got my character up to level 8 and then lost it again when I died (but I found the place Cid wanted me to go!) ^^; That's the problem, I'm a bit too aggressive with my monk. I don't want to waste my time fighting pipsqueaks to gain levels. Gotta live on the edge and take your lumps ^^; I also saved up enough gil to buy my character a hat ^_^ She looks very good in it, it's a beret that matches the color of her hair =) While I was out and about I came across the most incredible looking waterfall. I took some screen caps of it, but I'm reluctant to post them because it's beta. Maybe after the game comes out I will.
I forgot to mention it earlier, but Jeffy and I had a great fic brainstorming session while eating lunch at the mall yesterday. He took notes while I rattled off ideas. (He's such a great friend for doing that... ^^ and understanding. I'm sure the people at the next table over thought I was on crack or something o.O )
06.25.03 :: 22:14
Ack! Where did today go?! I knew today was going to be majorly messed up --; I worked two shifts yesterday and it completely threw off my schedule (and is the reason I got today off from work. Not that I could drag myself in for another shift if I had to). But today's been messed up. I slept 'til noon, had a nasty sinus headache until around 4pm, which really messed up my plans for today =/ When I have a headache like that I don't want to go out and run errands, y'know? I also lost an hour while speaking with the neighbors. Don't get me wrong, I like visiting them and playing with their dog, but time flies when I'm over there o.O
I spent too much time this evening playing Pikmin. I suck at that game, there's no other way to describe it. (I also enjoy finding ways to off the Pikmin, which is probably why I'm not that good at the game :P ) I know that if I want to actually beat it I'm going to have to start over.
Elf's coming over this weekend. Good thing I did all that cleaning last weekend. I just need to do a bit of sprucing up around here and I'm set ^^v
06.26.03 :: 22:58
I met the company owners for the first time today. I thought I'd safely escaped under the radar until Sharon took them around and made sure they'd met everyone. She introduced me to them as the only female tech ^^; Okay, that's true enough, yeah... ^^; I took a nice nap this evening and then worked on researching some things. We'll see how things go...
06.30.03 :: 20:44
I took a picture of Pickles the Cat today. She's happier than the picture makes her out to be, honest. I had a heck of a time getting her and Pepper to stay still long enough for me to take a picture of them (I never did get a good picture of Pepper).
I finished Order of the Phoenix last night (at 1:30am. I then had allergy attacks every couple hours for the rest of the night so I didn't sleep well at all :P ) Anyhow... Well... My general dislike for Rowling's writing continues with this book. At least the status quo hasn't changed ^^; At least Sean's excited about Luna. It's kind of fun to see him bounce around like a fanboy ;)
| 
