10.25.06
Posted in Anime, Gaming, Rants, Site News, World of Warcraft, Writing
at 4:39 pm
Do you know, ladies and gentlemen, what happens when you turn your back on the wild and wooly world that is gaming? Well, yes, you do manage to get a life, but I’m talking about a temporary, “moving from Cleveland to Pittsburgh” kind of turning my back. What happens is that all hell breaks loose. As I haven’t really had much of a chance to let everyone know what is up, I figure now is as good a time as any to give the rundown of the last week’s events.
On October 17th, I was offered a job at a fairly high-tech company down on the east side of Pittsburgh. I accepted the position and made plans to start on the 30th. As luck would have it, I had come across good luck in that the resolution to the Secret Project had occurred over the weekend prior, and as a result I haven’t had to worry too much about the costs of moving. Most everything has been taken care of, and all that remains as of right now is for me to haul all my stuff down there (I got the keys to the new place on Monday of this week). When I got back to Cleveland on the 23rd, I figured all I had to do was to just go ahead and pack up all my stuff; on Friday I’d rent a U-Haul and drive the whole shebang down in one run.
Yeah, that kinda wasn’t gonna happen.
See, for whatever reason, I could not activate the electric utility over the phone Tuesday morning. I was told that I would have to go down to the office in downtown Pittsburgh, or else I needed to wait for them to mail me a form, and then I had to mail it back with a deposit. Fun thing about it is that my lease said if I didn’t get electricity in my name within three days, I would lose the apartment (and forfeit my deposit et al). Mailing was not an option. I loaded up my car with as much stuff as I could and drove down to Pittsburgh yesterday afternoon. On the way I also called and set up appointments for cable and internet.
The cable appointment was either Thursday, or not for three weeks. And the DSL is being installed on the 1st. While I have been assured that I will be allowed to leave work to get the DSL installed, the cable is a different matter. See, of all of the things in my apartment, the TV is by far the heaviest. But without a working TV in the apartment, the cable technician can’t check to see that the cable is installed properly and I’ll be pretty much waiting until three weeks from now for him to come out again (oh, and he’ll charge me for wasting the trip). Ideally I would have let it go until Friday, when I would have help. As stated, however, I don’t want to wait three weeks without cable, so I get the wonderful experience of hauling the TV myself. Which is what U-Haul is for, except I’m not renting the truck until Friday.
It’s not really so bad, actually. See, when I bought the TV– back in Erie– I dragged it up a flight and a half of stairs. I did it once, I can probably do it again. Probably.
All right, enough about life. I’m trying to keep a positive outlook for the time being so if I harp on what’s going wrong, that’s not going to help at all. Let’s see, what can I say…
The Chinese buffet near the new place is terrible, and I don’t think I’ll be going ba– dammit, positive. Hrm.
I found a DDR machine near the new place, in a theater. That’s positive! Except it’s an Extreme machine that’s a buck for three songs. GAH.
NaNo approaches; I still have no idea what I wan– wait, I’m probably going with Five Hundred Prayers.
I think Phoenix Wright got reprinted; I picked up a copy when I was in Pittsburgh but also saw a copy when I went to Macedonia for the– aah, yeah, there is that.
So, Final Fantasy XII. The forums are all atwitter with early predictions and hopes. I of course seem to be able to see both sides of the main argument– there’s some elements from FF Tactics Advance that are getting a more fleshed-out treatment, but at the same time the gameplay is not entirely dissimilar to dot Hack. While I’ll refrain from actually going ahead and saying what I think– because right now I’m going off of fuzzy, pain-enriched memories of the last time I played the game, five months ago– I should probably mention that I’ll be taking a trip back to Macedonia to pick up the Collector’s Edition of the game that I preordered there. Granted, not on release day– that’d be silly– but the weekend afterwards.
Meteos Disney Edition will be the hotness, without a doubt.
World of Warcraft… Hrm. I’m addicted, but it’s only marginal right now. I advanced to Level 15 while at Pez’s house, and started my career as a skinner/leathercrafter. The crafting system is very interesting– there doesn’t seem to be much chance for failure or wasted resources, so it’s not nearly as frustrating as FFXI’s. However, it does take a considerable amount of time and silver/gold to raise your levels; currently after about two hours of dedicated work at it I think I’m at a level 45 or so in Leatherworking and over 75 in Skinning. To be geek-proud for a bit, I made most of my current set of armor. These three days without being able to play have been all right, mostly. However I’ve got the opportunity to play… but I’m not going to right now. Partly because I need to continue loading the car, but also partly because I know if I started I’d be on it for hours at a time.
I have meant so many times to buy more import games. I mean, I spent $300 on a Japanese PS2 under the assumption that I would use it for more than just Pop’n Music; an assumption which has, unfortunately, been invalidated by crippling bouts of just plain rotten luck. I do intend of course to rectify this when I get the chance, but I will unfortunately not be able to do so through Lik-Sang. Sony shut down the notorious importer– whom I’m sure most gamers on the verge of the bleeding edge have heard of, and who I know at least three of my readers have dealt with– under the pretense of intellectual property impropriety in regards to Japanese PSPs somehow making their way to the European Union. I myself don’t see the harm. Except for the harm that removing one of the biggest names in the game importing scene from the scene does to the scene. Anyway, I suppose I shall have to rely now upon NCSX or (more likely) binging at anime conventions.
Which reminds me, I need to volunteer for Tekkoshocon ASAP.
Anime! O glorious product of the Rising Sun, how I’ve missed thee! I had downloaded Fate/stay night a few weeks ago and finally got around to watching the first couple episodes (whilst stuck in my TV-less apartment last night). I’m interested, if just a little confused. I’m not entirely sure if Rin is going to become an ally or not, or if this is going to devolve into Emiya vs. everyone (including Saber). We shall see.
This post has, in actuality, been in the making for three hours. In that time I’ve done some of the packing and loading, but now it’s time for me to put away the TV and thus disallow myself access to my Mac for a while. I’m not entirely sure when I’ll be able to update again, folks; let’s say the 1st at the latest. Wish me luck, ladies and gentlemen.
Oh! One last thing. I want to thank whoever it was (most likely Eric, who rocks mightily) who fixed the LiveJournal syndication of the journal’s RSS feed. If you have an LJ, you need only add furryone_feed to their Friends list, and then you never ever have to come back here again. But please do. I need the hits.
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10.17.06
Posted in Rants
at 9:33 am
So I know really only Pez might be interested in this, but This American Life is now available as a free podcast (with some hiccups). The fact that the recorded version wasn’t free was what really hindered me from hearing the show; my weekends are so busy and with only a few exceptions I almost never watch or listen to anything ‘live’ anymore. I suppose it’s the TiVo Curse: once you have one thing that can be seen at your command, you naturally tend to gravitate towards everything being that way. And obviously that’s not always the case. Anyway, the shows are only free for a week before they go into the 99-cent-a-pop archive, but since I’ve set up iTunes to pull every hour that’s fine by me (as I won’t miss a show).
Not much else going on now. Talk to you cats later.
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10.15.06
Posted in Anime, City of Heroes/Villains, Gaming, Site News, World of Warcraft, Writing
at 11:41 pm
So things have been Busy over the last few weeks. I mean, really Busy, the kind of Busy that gets capitalized for no apparent reason other than the fact that it’s that much busier than busy. Busy is busy enough to get capitalized even when it’s spoken. Yeah, I’ve actually been that Busy the past month or so. I figure I ought to tell you all why.
The Super Secret Project (which really isn’t all that secret anymore) is finished; it was a web site for Atlus USA for the Super Robot Taisen Original Generation games. Earned me a nice significant amount of money, competitive in the industry (at least, I think it was competitive). Plus, well, I have officially been in the industry in two roles now– as a sales clerk and as part of the marketing machine. Once I get the word that the site is live, I’ll link to it– likely in the forums. Working on the site has really kept me excited for the game, and so it’s nice that I am going to be getting a copy of OG1 and picking up OG2 once that hits in November.
I did finish Xenosaga a few days ago, and the ending was… I don’t really want to put too many spoilers right here on the front page but there’s so much that can be said about it. It’s equal parts of Xenogars and The Da Vinci Code, which I can honestly say wasn’t exactly unexpected what with all of the Judeo-Christian, Kabbalist, and Gnostic influences. Still, it sort of renders the entire struggles of the last three games kind of moot when you realize just who has been in your party since about three hours into the series. I shouldn’t need to spell out who. I am a little disappointed that there’s not going to be any more games in the series, as the story hit an interesting stride and was left very open-ended. Still, it provides enough closure for the purpose of making the ending satisfying. My next big project will be to get out of my hesitation to keep playing Wild ARMs 4.
As for my rush to Level 50 in City of Heroes, that was a mission I finally accomplished just about two weeks ago. Playing as a Kheldian– an archetype which plays like a super blaster– has been really interesting, and while I’ve not been playing as much as I was in the weeks running up to the big ding, it’s only because I want to wait for Issue 8 before I go through the low-level content again. Most importantly I want to be in position to check out Faultline 2.0. I glanced through it when it hit the test server last week; as I’ve only had ten minutes’ exposure to the new issue and I’m not aware of any major game-wrecking power nerfs, I feel a little unprepared to make any snap judgements. We shall see. The ‘new’ Pocket D seems… well, unusual. Let’s leave it at that.
This evening I fired up World of Warcraft for the first time in a month. It’s hard for me to say what drove me to it, but I just felt like doing it. In any event, I am glad I did– Anvilmar, my usual haunt, was full so I fired up the character I’d started on Kirin Tor. Getting her to Level 6 took a couple hours, and I played around with a handful of UI mods as well. These mods certainly addressed some of the issues I’d brought up during the Unbelievers trial (and confused me in a couple other cases), but overall I came away from the session with one thing stuck in my mind. Kirin Tor is an RP server, while Anvilmar isn’t; and I was approached by a couple of people during my travels who spoke to me, and weren’t strictly asshats. They weren’t the brightest bulbs I’d ever met, but they at least responded to me with the respect due a fellow human being (ie, they didn’t just call me a noob and ignore me or challenge me to The Most Lopsided Duel Evar). Bolstered by that kind of positive reinforcement, I’ll likely be continuing that for a few more weeks.
There’s been a lot of discussion in the forums lately regarding Final Fantasy XII, which hits the US in fifteen days. The most skepticism seems to be centered around the Gambit System. It’s been proffered as a way to delegate the responsibility of some of the more tedious aspects of dungeoneering (such as keeping the party healed between battles), and what I’ve played so far sort of exhibits that fact; at the same time, however, the comparisons to the dot Hack series are certainly valid and deserved. I’ll be honest, I am excited about the title– excited enough to be set up for the Collector’s Edition and to head down to Macedonia for the midnight release party– but I still have my reservations about the game due to the fact that it is so different from previous FF titles. Different can be good, yes, but it’s a risk that the series may not be able to recover from if it turns out to be a flop.
And, the job hunt continues apace. I’ve been away from home on the past couple Fridays, first to Madison, Wisconsin and then to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Both trips were marked by some reading being done; in transit to Wisconsin I read a CSI: New York novel, which was an interesting little distraction, and coming back from Pittsburgh I picked up the first novel in the Crest of the Stars trilogy. I read through it in about two hours the next morning. My impressions are… well, the book certainly sets up an interesting plot and a very detailed universe. However, and this might just be the way Tokyopop chose to break up the novels for more money or some other reason, but the book has a really nasty little cliffhanger at the end. Not coincidentally, that cliffhanger happens to be the climax of the one episode of Banner/Crest that I’ve seen to this point, from WAY back when it was on TechTV (back when there was a TechTV– oooh, and I have some interesting things to say about that, too). Anyway, I’m digging it so far but I need more. I’ll likely be picking up the Banner box set this week or next.
Let’s talk about G4 for a moment, then. Friday came the announcement that G4 was going to be consolidated with E!, which oficially makes them the Cable Katamari of Suck. Seriously, they’ve rolled up two networks in their ball of abysmal programming, and while admittedly E! doesn’t exactly have that far to fall it’s entirely possible that someone will wake up and see that the numbers on TechTV were far better than G4. Wikipedia’s saying that G4 is in fact the LEAST watched channel on cable TV. Let me put this into perspective: C-SPAN, which shows Capitol Hill, gets better ratings. The Home Shopping Network gets better ratings. The freaking Reality Television Network gets better ratings. If you’re losing out to reruns of Survivor, maybe it’s time to consider going back to what worked, eh?
I’m not saying get Leo Laporte back. That’s impossible now. It might have been an option a year ago but now? Forget about it. What I’m suggesting is bring together some intelligent and funny people to produce a show akin to the Screen Savers. I suppose I’m a little obsessed about it, yeah, but the fact of the matter is that TechTV from 2003-2004 had the single best tech-oriented TV lineup to date. Those folks just plain got it.
Ah well. With any luck I’ll be making my own contributions to the world of quality tech television very soon. And the GAMErica project, which I’d put on the back-burner this time last year, might be coming together again. We’ll see. One way or another I will begin bringing teh fünni on a regular basis again.
Oh, yeah. Last year I was hyping National Novel Writing Month pretty much constantly, and badgering everyone I knew to do it. Well, the badgering is a bit less this year, as is the hyping, mostly because I don’t rightly know if I can participate this year. I have an idea– a vague one, anyway– but the whole job thing and the possibility of moving might wreck my ability to devote time to it or nuke my efforts halfway through. I hope that I’ll have an answer to both of those problems here in the next two weeks but it’s still up in the air right now.
I think that about covers everything that’s safe to discuss openly. There are a few other things that I’d rather not have plastered around the world, and some things which I need to keep to myself for right now, but those who need to know already do know. And to be honest, there’s a lot here already. Later, folks. We’ll have to do this again some time.
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10.09.06
Posted in Gaming, Rants, Site News, Writing
at 9:00 am
Morning, folks. I think this week is going to be a good one. I, of course, have absolutely no evidence to back that claim up, but then again I’ve been known to get ridiculously lucky once in a while. So, yeah. After the disaster that was Thursday and Friday of last week, I think I’m due for some good luck.
My weekly fix of podcasts turned up some wonderful gems, especially from This Week in Tech. Leo and company started discussing Windows Vista, and the Windows Genuine Advantage ‘upgrades’ coming in that system. In the newest builds of Vista, if an illegit copy of the software is detected, WGA will lock down the computer, preventing any applications from being run, only allowing file operations (for a backup in advance of a legit reinstall) and surfing (using IE) for one hour at a stretch. So basically there’s no real difference between a pirated copy of Windows Vista and a legitimate copy of Windows Me.
Continuing on the tech bent, I’ve recently started watching some video podcasts as well, and managed to subscribe to Cranky Geeks just in time. Neil Gaiman was the guest on the show this past week– yes, that Neil Gaiman. He’s exactly as funny as I figured he would be. Assuming you can stand 45 minutes of John C. Dvorak, I’d suggest you go check it out– and I’m looking at you, here, Pez and Kat. Incidentally, I came very close to picking up Anansi Boys when I was stuck in O’Hare Friday morning– I picked a CSI:NY novel instead because I had stupidly forgotten Pez’s copy of American Gods at home.
I keep getting spam addressed to Hugo Chavez. While I would love to peep in on his messages I know for a fact that I don’t want to have a bigger Coke or to see gaping vegetables the size of hallways.
I’ve been working through Xenosaga III lately, after having put that on hold for a bit to finish the Super Secret Website Project. I’m still digging it, but there’s a lot of leveling that I still have yet to do. And to be honest, breezing through the game to this point only to hit a wall is a little irritating. But it’s still a better game than XS2 was. I will say this, though: Wild ARMs 4 has been a stop-and-go endeavor. It’s got a good battle system and it’s an interesting story– but it’s freaking brutal.
Once things calm down a bit I’m planning on getting back into the podcasting thing. I’d like to go ahead and re-start Quicksave; maybe as a video podcast, maybe not. I don’t know, actually; it depends on if I have to move again or not, and that’s looking more and more likely as time presses on.
Not much else is going on today. I’ll keep you folks updated on anything going on.
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10.06.06
Posted in Rants
at 7:28 pm
…doesn’t necessarily mean I have to be awake for all of them.
The next time I try, someone please remind me of that fact.
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