 |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Office in a tizzy due to contract expiration/renewal stuff this week. Weeping, cursing, and gnashing of teeth while I sit here wishing for some quiet. Dunno how things'll fall. Did some kayaking a couple weeks ago for an open water swim meet down at the bay. I don't like swimming, pools, beaches, or boating, but for some reason I like kayaking. Hadn't used one in years; I might have to see about getting one for myself to use for fishing and stuff. Finished Persona 3 + FES stuff. Game was fun, but too long. Starting on one of the Sly Cooper games (I don't even know which iteration it is; sister gave it to me after someone gave it to her and she didn't want it) and Okage: Shadow King. Both games are pretty humorous which is a nice change from the serious tones of P3 (which weren't bad, but after like 150 hours of them, different is nice). Having finished reading Lewis' The Abolition of Man, I've been reading the third Twelve Kingdoms novel which has been some comperatively easy reading and enjoyable once I got through its boring first chapter. New anime season is looking rather bleak. I'm starting to take FFXI too seriously. Gotta stop browsing BG for lulz because stupid people make me rage and there're idiots aplenty in this game. Someone was asking for some advice on Monk the other day... when in reply to my comments about Monk's AF he said he was too superior (aka lazy) to use macros, that set off some alarms, and when he said he had a haubergeon ready for when he got to level 59, I about slit my wrists (not really) and told him he should just stop playing the game before his fail got even worse. Hearing some funny sounds off and on at night the last few nights. I think a rodent has taken up residence in the walls of my apartment this week. It's mid October and it's still in the 90s (over 100 with heat index) here and I'm sick of this weather D: (At least we've had some rain lately ♥) Birthday's coming up and I want to be able to enjoy being outside if possible and not melt the interior of my apartment by baking a cake. Anyway, our company's contract was technically up at noon today so I'm not even supposed to be using this PC this afternoon, yet I'm still stuck here waiting to hear what we're supposed to do tomorrow. Fun stuff. Good thing I brought my laptop with my external drive of goodies >_> Tags: anime, books, ffxi, games, life, work
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Month flew by pretty quickly, huh? Still alive and kickin'. Had a few notable things happen since my last update so I'll start from the top. Lack of updates can be attributed mostly to some of the following subjects~ HDTV: A few weeks ago I went ahead and finally bought a new TV, like I'd mentioned a few posts back in June. My mom called me on a Saturday and goes, "Hey, weren't you thinking about buying this TV that's on a one-day sale for $500 off at Conns?" So I thought, gee, I could put this off a little longer but I don't think the price is gonna go down $500 by the time I'm ready to get one, so I fell victim to their marketing schemes my patience and research paid off and I went home the happy owner of a new 47" LCD HDTV to replace my made-in-1993 20" tube TV. I don't subscribe to cable TV and I don't have a HD gaming console yet, but as a PC monitor for gaming and movies this thing is freaking awesome, and my PS2 looks alright on it (not as good as on a 480 or 720 screen, but still better than I was afraid it might look). Had to re-arrange my apartment a bit to set it up; I like the results for now, though I really need to get a wireless keyboard and mouse. -_-; Ponyo: Couple days later I went with my sister and a friend to go catch Ponyo before it left the theaters... a colorful visual treat of a film that had me grinning for most of its duration, but the story and direction were choppy and abruptly jerked to a halt at the end. Wasn't terrible, but certainly wasn't one of Miyazaki's strongest films. Fire!: So after taking my sister home and saying hi to her roomies and chat for a minuet while they passed the peace pipe, I drove on home to find my apartment parking lots containing police cars and a fire truck! @_@ Apparently my building had caught fire and the ironic thing is the fire alarm and sprinkler system (which is located on the wall outside my closet is what caused the fire--there is a heater in there that kicks on in the winter to keep the sprinkler lines from freezing up and it shorted out and caught fire. Fortunately someone saw it and the fire department arrived before it got out of hand--the owner said that if the fire had burned for just a few more minutes it probably would have gotten hot enough to set off the sprinkler system's temperature trip which would have flooded my apartment. I hardly slept a wink that night--partly in case it somehow restarted and partly because, even though there was no damage to my apartment, it still smelled strongly of burnt plastic. At least it doesn't really smell anymore now. "Work": After that adventure, things were quiet for a few days until one Monday morning I got to work to find that my main computer (I have two, one is on the Navy network and I just use it for email and administrative things like timesheets and stuff, and the other is on a separate network and it's the one with all my development stuff--programming tools, database stuff, source control, etc.) was acting up. I could log on but I had no network access. Turns out, as the week went by and my ears picked up whispers, that the IT group that manages our machines (which is a separate company on a different contract, yay for bureaucratic BS) had been failing to keep our machines updated (like with OS updates, antivirus updates, software patches, etc.) so the Navy deemed our machines a risk and the plugs were pulled. Basically, this meant that I couldn't do any work. At first I didn't care and just did a lot of reading--after all, my experiences with this kind of thing at CITGO made me think this would be a two-day affair at most. Well, imagine my amusement when the end of the week rolled around and I was still out of commission and tried to re-image all our machines... but they screwed up the image, leading to another week of tempers flaring (but not mine) and people unable to work (including me). This incident was initially made worse by the fact that my sister was borrowing my laptop (which I normally take to work to do non-internet-or-USB drive-requiring things I can't do on my work machines) because hers was in the shop again. I dunno whose head is gonna roll for this incident, but the Admiral was not happy... They've since mostly fixed my computer so this week I've actually been rather busy catching up on stuff, and as much as I, like most people, like to sneak my own agenda items into my day at work I can honestly say it's a nice change from the past couple weeks to walk out the door in the afternoon and actually feel like I accomplished something. WikiWarrior: In my oodles of free time I directed some energies towards the TaikaiWiki, the until-three-weeks-ago mostly dead wiki site for RI's writing tournament stuff. This proved to be an interesting undertaking and I'm glad to see the community discussing and working on this thing for the first time in years (since I joined in the tournament writing at the very least). Speaking of this stuff, looking forward to Ascension this fall though I don't have a good idea of who or what to write yet... Persona 3: And speaking of accomplishing something, I guess I'll wrap this entry up with some short talk about Persona 3, which I just finished last night. Took me, what, about two months (105 hours on the game clock) to finish it. Having not played a Persona game before I wasn't really sure what to expect other than SMT monster design and battle style (though, having recently finished the Digital Devil Saga games, Persona 3's gameplay felt very easy); I gotta admit, the school life and dungeon grinding mixture was strangely engaging and didn't feel like the drag I was worried it might. The game is bold and colorful and just oozes style, and though it could have stood to be a little shorter, I really ended up liking it a lot more than I expected, which is always a good thing. The story was totally whack as far as concept with a worldview I can't agree with, but the plot was creative, held together, and had pretty good pacing and a good cast of characters backed by mostly-wonderful voice acting (though some of the pronunciation of names made me cringe, I wanted to mute the TV every time Ken talked, and Fuuka sometimes sounded... off...)--this is probably the best game dub I've heard since Tales of the Abyss. The ending threw me for a bit of a loop; the whole delayed memory bit felt a bit weird, though at least it had been previously mentioned as a possible outcome. On its own, the ending scene was pretty good--I'm playing FES version so I don't know if it was changed from the original, but the scene left off open to interpretation but not flagrantly depressing. Having just started FES' The Answer portion of the game, I feel a bit cheated at that particular "official" interpretation put forth in The Answer's opening, but I will not pass final judgment until finishing The Answer (on one hand, that interpretation made some sense to me due to that portion of the final battle (the cost of use of the skill to finish the boss), but on the other hand, the whole "several weeks later" thing where the game picks up from at the end made me reconsider... well, here's looking to The Answer for answers). That's about all I've got for now. Tags: consumerism, games, life, pics, work, writing
Current Mood: busy
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Haha, so last night after watching Taken and playing some Persona 3, I got on FFXI and a friend sent me this link... It's so awesome! It takes English input, translates it into Japanese, then back into English, and repeats that process until the what translation engine comes can't think of a different way to translate it. Sometimes just watching the steps it goes through is more hilarious than the actual result. Some results are what you might expect (the simpler the input, the higher the chance of that), some may seem weird at first but make sense if you consider things like multiple meanings of kanji, and then some are just plain hilariously twisted from their original meaning. Case in point (it accepts English or Japanese, actually, despite what it says). Things that totally lack context, like song lyrics for example, tend to produce funny results. And then some simple questions will send it into a conniption. Anyway, have fun! :D Tags: random
Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Muse - Bliss
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Well, on Tuesday I made the trip up to San Antonio for my Microsoft certification test. San Antonio's roads are a mess (lots of construction) and it was hard to find the place... That's actually the first time I've ever driven that far at once; my lil car doesn't have cruise control so by the time I was back home in the afternoon, my leg was pretty stiff. -_- But hey, I passed the test, which is a big load off. I had to pass it to keep my job, so, needless to say, I'd been a little worried about it. My mother wanted to come with me to visit her friend in the hospital up there. A few weeks ago, a friend of hers was hit by a truck while she was riding her bike. She was in pretty bad shape, but this was the first time I'd seen her since and she was in far better shape than I expected from what my mom had been saying, and they expect her to make a good recovery, so that's good. This city is so full of crappy drivers, some days it blows my mind. And my sister makes the first case of computer hard drive failure that I'm aware of in the family. Her laptop drive seems to be dying, so she brought it over last night and I took a look at it... popped the drive out and we picked out a new one on newegg. It's a good thing she had backed everything up a couple days before on her external drive I got her because after we put the thing back in it wouldn't even boot into Windows. Fabulous. I hope it is just the drive and not something harder to fix, because I'm not good at gutting laptops and would rather not mess hers up. :x I have been so sleepy lately D: I hope I can catch up a bit this weekend... Tags: life, work
Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Within Temptation - Pale
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
In the wake of RftA I've actually been rather busy at work studying for certifications required by the job position. Last week I finished cramming for and took and passed CompTIA's Security+ exam, yay! Since then I've been working on studying for a Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 certification exam, which I'll be taking some time next week I think. Have to go to San Antonio for that one, so I'll have to make a trip out of that. On the bright side, I get to count the whole day towards worked hours. So between that and my house & dog sitting for my parents for two weeks (which basically just involves going over there after work and playing Suikoden V for hours), not a whole lot has been going on. I did take my Beretta to the range this week to shoot a couple hundred rounds. Hadn't done any shooting lately and reading my dad's latest American Rifleman magazine at work, I was like "Hmm, I really want to go shoot my pistol..." So I did. It was fun (once I stopped twitching every time the short-barreled .45 in the adjacent lane went off, anyway). Gunsmoke is theraputic. My form could use some more work, though. Ironsights at 20-25 yards is pretty tough for me--I haven't shot this pistol enough to get out of the habit of jerking the trigger a little too hard, which tends to send my groupings to the right a little. First time shooting at an indoor range--I think I prefer outdoor. Oh, well, there was one minor adventure last week :P On Thursday (or Friday) afternoon when I got back to my apt after work my fridge light was out. Figured I'd put that on the list for next time I went to the store. Went over to the house and didn't come back to the apt until Saturday after lunch, at which time I realized that, no, the light hadn't burned out, the entire fridge had shut off. Turned out one of the breakers had tripped. So, uh, I still ate the food I had in there and some of it tasted, uh... different! xD But I don't think any of really spoiled all the way because it didn't make me sick. :D Now I know to check that breaker box first if anything fishy is going on! Talked yesterday with my buddy from Citgo who still works there and heard some interesting/bad news... (I don't really watch the news or read the paper, just listen to talk radio while in the car and the radio hadn't mentioned this) there was a pretty big fire at the refinery; alky unit exploded, very hot and damaging fire, lots of acid in the area. Took like 3 days to get the fire out, though it was contained quickly, no spillage got into the ship channel water, and on the bright side only one person was injured (he had inhaled some leaking gas and when it lit up, for 1-2 seconds the air in his lungs superheated to about 1200F, ouuuuch--but he's alive last I heard). Friend said they've been having a lot of saftey problems since the start of the year--when they cut a lot of the work force. Pretty crazy stuff. O_O Speaking of Suikoden V up there, I've really put a lot of time into that game the past couple weeks >_> When I got off last night I was in the middle of recruiting Haleth, the last manually-recruited of the 108 Stars of Destiny characters so I think I'm almost done. The gameplay in this installment is pretty fun, though I find the game to be really easy. I mean seriously my party has pretty much killed every story boss in 1-2 turns (often 1) for most of the game (admitedly I did use Zerase a lot for a while after she became available for use). I have done a hefty bit of training, but the nature of Suikoden's exp/level system makes levels pretty trivial--it's more about your equipment and rune setup. I really like how many of your usable party members are actually useful this time around... I mean, there are still some clearly top-tier characters like Zerase and George and Richard and Levi, but with a little tweaking, many of the characters can become solid party members. (Rather partial to the Lyon, Kyle, Richard, Miakis, Prince, Cathari setup, or another mage with Cathari in reserves for Godspeed rune.) The story seems to be dragging its feet a bit at times, and V suffers from the same problems that previous installments do in that you're technically commanding an army, but it hardly ever feels like you are outside of the war battles. Lucretia's comments about making sure all the leather and food stores were taken when temporarilly fleeing the castle was a nice touch in that regard--good reminder that it's not just you and your 100-odd misfits in this. Silent protagonist syndrome is really starting to bug me in this game, though... The Prince is a character with a LOT of potential for good dialog and interaction, but unfortunately they decided to make it 99% one-sided, with that other 1% being the smattering of very simple dialog trees. There are many silent protagonists that I don't mind being silent, but in this game, the Prince's silence has started to bother me. That said, the rest of the dialog and cast is really fun. Usually. I still cringe at some of the event scenes (though not at the throne room flashback during the Nether Gate vs Arshtat, that scene was great!) because of how akward and over-done a lot of characters' reactions are (or sometimes because of how terrible the voices are--beavers I'm looking at you). I mean, the motion capture tends to look good, but, like, the body language and way Prince and Lyon and especially Miakis (still much ♥ for you anyway, though, Miakis~) react to things in scenes is sometimes just... eeshh. I seriously don't think it's meant to be funny, but sometimes it is because it's so bad. Ah, well. I guess it's better than having all the scenes done the same way most of them are in the game (no voiced dialog, zoomed-out overhead camera). Anyway, I hear the end of the game's story is pretty weaksauce, but so far it's still probably my favorite of all the ones I've played, with 3 (despite its painful gameplay) a close second. Guess that's all for now. Tags: games, life, work
Current Mood: okay
Current Music: kalafina - ARIA
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
My sister found and made this recipe a while back and it instantly became a keeper for me. Made some again this week, thought I'd share~ (the recipe, not my dinner) 6 zucchini 3 tablespoons olive oil 1/2 cup chopped onion, or more 3 cloves garlic, minced 1/2 cup chopped mushrooms 2 tablespoons dry white wine 1 pound ground turkey 2 diced tomatoes (or a 14oz can, drained) 3 tablespoons chopped fresh basil 2 tablespoons oregano 1 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary 3/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese 1 egg, lightly beaten (just used to hold things together, can do without) 2 teaspoons salt 2 teaspoons pepper  Cut zucchini in half lengthwise. Scoop out insides, leaving shells about 1/4 inch thick. Reserve at least half of the insides (I keep all of it). Heat 2 Tbsp of olive oil in a skillet on medium high heat. Sauté onion and garlic until soft. Add mushrooms and reserved zucchini insides, and sauté until the zucchini insides are softened.  In a separate skillet, lightly brown the turkey thoroughly. Stir in the onion and mushroom mixture from the other pan. Add the wine. Stir in tomato and herbs and cook off some of the moisture. Remove mixture from heat and set it aside.  When mixture has cooled a little (5-10 min), add cheese, egg, salt and pepper. Fill zucchini shells with mixture. Fill a baking pan with 1/4 inch of water (don't put too much or it will slosh into the zucchini). Place filled zucchini halves in pan and bake at 375 degrees for 40 minutes, until golden brown. Remove zucchini from pan and serve while hot. You should have some leftover filling which is really good to just eat as it is (baking/toasting it will make it even better). To reheat, a toaster oven works much better than a microwave. Pretty well-rounded meal on its own, but I like a salad with this dish, or some fruit (or both!). It takes a while to make (over an hour), but it makes six delicious servings. Tags: food
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Previous 
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
