Category: life

The Final Fantasy (O.o)

[edit]Oh, and Merry Christmas everyone![/edit]

Ah yes, Christmas. I truly enjoyed mine, I hope you enjoyed yours. Christopher’s here, he’s been giving me all kinds of phat l00t for my comput4r. He’s loaded a few thousand dollars worth of programs, music, and stuff onto my computer in his few days here so far. He still has yet to supply me Nero, some Moby, and Windows XP Pro (it’s isntalled, but we need a serial key). It’s pretty amazing – his song collection outgrew his 40GB mp3 player – he now has a 120GB External USB2.0 (Seagate) for his song collection, which is clocking over 16,000 at this moment. Yes, that’s a whole lot of songs, with which I am partaking in the love. My cousin John (28?) just arrived, which is cool. He’s not a geek, he’s actually an actor, or rather, in theatrical college of sorts. He’s pretty cool.

I woke up at 11:00 today, did the presents routine, ate our tradition Christmas breakfast (we don’t do Christmas dinner, we do Christmas Eve fondue, which beats any Christmas goose by a mile) of Sour Cream Eggs (best breakfast ever, it may sound gross but it really is good). We watched a few episodes of Arrested Development (hilarious) and some Season 3 of 24 (so far it’s the worst of the three, but still quite good).

Yesterday Christopher and I went to get my present, which happened to be in the vicinity of Best Buy. We were originally getting a hardrive, but my dad called Christopher in the middle of the searching process to inform him that he already got me one. So we decided to go for the Logitech LX700, the sexiest peripheral to ever exist. It’s a wireless keyboard (About 2 dozen extra programmable buttons, black, soft-keys, solid, all around awesome) and mouse (7 buttons – technically 5, as there are only three “buttons” that are extra, persay, but the mouse can press down and tilt from side to side, useless, but hey, whatever. the battery is rechargable – you just stick it on the charger when you’re not using it (most important to do when you turn it off), it has at least a 12 hour life, if not more, i have no clue, but it’s Logitech, so, i expect a lot). These rock, which is good. To make life simple I’m making a bulleted list.

  1. Logitech LX700
  2. Western Digital 80GB IDE Hardrive
  3. KotOR
  4. Doom 3
  5. Rome: Total War
  6. 2x Sour Altoids – Apple
  7. Blue S-Type XBox Controller
  8. Barnes & Nobale $25 giftcard
  9. Blockbuster $50 giftcard (this came from my grandparents, which is actually probably a miracle of epic proportions. you see, my grandparents are probably the worst giftgivers known to the world. their most famous gift was a plastic statue of liberty AM radio – that’s ALL it did. it was that nasty copper-green. they gave them to my parents before I was born, so I never got to see them. the next year they got the same thing. in the same way, my grandparents have completely failed in getting me logical gifts. for the past 5 years, i got model cars. they came in variations, sometimes like hot wheels, or sometimes in wooden versions. suffice to say, i don’t even like cars. i never told them I did. we could never figure this phenomonon out. they also have a 15 dollar limit. my grandparents aren’t poor – they aren’t rolling in the green, but they aren’t strapped financially, so it was always amusing to see what they managed to do within those limits. we were disapointed in a sick sort of way when we discovered my present to be, well, good. even if we don’t have a Blockbuster within 15 miles of us, it’s definately a milestone for my grandparents.)
  10. Every album from about 10 or 15 artists (I asked for Coldplay and Modest Mouse, but Christopher gave me a few others he thought i’d like).
  11. A lot of programs (Microsoft Office 2003, Outlook 2003 [which, for the record, is better than Thunderbird, Eudora, or any other POP3 client], SSH Tunneler, PGP Encrypter, and eventually Nero, Visual Studio.net, XP Pro, and the Pro version of ZoneAlarm)
  12. Fuzzy Slippers!!
  13. Fleece Robe
  14. A picture frame + scarf (from Colette)
  15. ZSNES + a bunch of games (from Ben)
  16. Two chocolate turtles (from Jared)

My Uncle will be here tomorrow, and apparantly is bringing his gifts along to save the expense of unnecessary shipping.

Now, about this whole Final Fantasy business, I’m gonna have to smack a few people up who don’t think FFVII is the best of the Final Fantasy series. Best game ever? Purely my opinion. The thing about FFVII is that it’s not actually overrated. The fact that 5 people just said it in my comments proves me point. Outside of the RPG realm, the entire Final Fantasy series is looked down upon, even though most people have not played them. The strange thing about Final Fantasy and RPG’s in general is their scope is limited, hype is minimal, the general audience of small. Despite this, they receive no less shame and humiliation from those who have not even played them.

Why is FFVII the best in the series? Graphically, it’s visual diahrrea. The cutscenes and battle graphics were good, but most of the time you were in the world map or running around and such, and none of the models were rounded – everything was at right angles. It was good in its time, today it just sucks. It was THE FIRST 3-D turn-based-combat (TBC, also referred to as classic) RPG ever. Few people grasp this, but it was not done before FFVII. That’s why the graphics sucked – it was an experiment visually. If you STILL try and knock the graphics, go back to your hole. It also had the disadvantage of being an early release on the console. The PS, if you remember, came out before the N64, and lacked certain anti-aliasing technology and other minor things that gave the N64 a graphical edge.

Moving on. The thing about FFVII was the plot, the characters, character development, and mood of the game. Unless you’re an FPS or action-ish gamer, you can agree that FFVII had a near-perfect plot and implementation of the storyline. The plot, if described to you in person, would not make sense, it would seem corny and silly. Play the game, my friend, from start to finish. Tell me you weren’t sad and surprised when Aries died, tell me you didn’t find at least one of the characters really cool, tell me you didn’t get bored of the game at any point. If you’re a gamer who doesn’t like Final Fantasy or RPGs, don’t go and tell me you think otherwise, because I don’t really care.

To be a little more specific, let’s look at the choices you have with each character when it comes to magic, equipment, and attacks. For only have three equipment slots, the system is highly complex. Your armor and weapon both have “slots” which can hold materia. Materia are magical items that are either a spell, skill, or stat modifier. You put the materia in these slots to use the materia, or allow the use of the materia. That’s not the complex part. It starts getting thicker by the fact that all materia change your stats. Magic materia make you physically weaker, and magically stronger. Skill materia will increase a stat related to the skill. The stat change doesn’t do much until you get stronger materai – which end up changing stats by 15%. That’s still pretty simple, right? Here’s where it starts really getting cool. The materia have levels of growth. They grow by gaining AP from battle (just a different form of exp). Growing allows you to use the magic more times in a battle, gives greater stat bonuses, or just allows you to use the spell. Weapons or armor may be set to let your materia grow at a double rate, or at no rate, so some weapons may seem better but not actually be. Now, here’s the final piece that makes the materia system awesome. Each slot is set one of two types – linked or single. Single materia are unaffected by other materia and do not change the result of other materia. Linked materia can add to the other materia, or change what happens. For example: If I have the “Counter-attack” materia, and i put it into one of two linked slots, and put the “Poison” materia in the other slot, I have a chance of poisoning the enemy on the counter-attack. The rate of success is dependant on both materia. If they’re both mastered, I’ll always counter, and the counter will always poison (succesfully or not is dependant on the enemy). You can come up with extremely complex combinations – it’s what makes the magic system so cool. It’s really complex.

Battle in generally really rocked (I can safely say, that if you really played the game, you would agree that it’s better than FFVIII or FFIX, again, I cannot speak for the PS2 games). As for the plot? Play it. The characters? Play it. Just play the game. Another specific thing I should mention is the length of the game. You could probably beat the game from beginning to end in 25-30 hours, if you really wanted to. However, you would miss out on 90% of the game. The game has tons of stuff to do, explore, and find everywhere in the game. Even at the very end, there’s loads to do. You can breed chocobos, you can race chocobos, you can play dozens and dozens of little minigames, you can level up your characters, get the ultimate weapons and final limit breaks for your characters, you can find all the materia, you can get the Knights of the Round Materia, its hard to describe how much there really is to do just at the end of the game. There’s just as much during the middle – you can get characters early, you can do side quests, the game easily has 100 hours of stuff to do in it. I have the clock maxed in my game to 99 hours , 59 minutes and 59 seconds. I aint joking.

Why would GameFAQs have more FAQs and guides than any other game, some of which have been added THIS YEAR (this game was made in 1997, folks)? Go find out, and play it.

As for FFVIII…

I consider it a black sheep of the series. Why? The characters were highly unoriginal and extremely unlovable or stereotypical. The plot was fine, I hold nothing against it, but it wasn’t superb. The combat was boring, as was leveling up. That’s actually what I hated most. The combat was so slow, so boring, leveling up was just so easy. I had Squall to level 80-something on the third disc. Why do I find that wrong? Leveling up should be a challenge, it should be hard, I don’t want it handed to me on a silver platter. Not to mention, there was no reward for leveling up. If you got stronger, the bosses got stronger, meaning you weren’t payed off for your work. There was nothing “inventive” about the gameplay – I saw nothing new or innovative about the implementation, only a poor attempt at mixing things up. The graphics were at times, more frustrating than FFVII. The textures were so low-res, so pixelated and bad, I can’t describe the amount of squinting I did. It hurt my eyes. At least FFVII was simple. The game was overall okay, but I really just did not enjoy it at all. I got to the third disc, and decided I had put up with it long enough.

And FFIX?

I consider just behind FFVII. It was a good game – the graphics were solid, the movement and feel nice and smooth. The general gameplay was akin to FFVII, in that you had a main, driving storyline that you could jump onto at any time, but there were always minigames you could go play or you could go level up or just have fun. That’s what I look for in an RPG – leisurely, go-at-your-own-pace gameplay. FFVIII forced you to jump ahead at points, simply out of boredom or otherwise. There were no side quests or minigames, for the most part. They had a bad version of the card game that was made in FFIX (which i still didn’t really enjoy, but I had a little fun with it), and that was about it. FFIX had a lot of funny moments – it was the lightest, most humorous of those I’ve played (FFVI – FFIX). I especially enjoyed the chocobo quests – I had a LOT of fun playing Chocobo Hot&Cold. The FFVIII version was also far more boring and didn’t even reward you for it.

I’ll end my rant now, but I hope you understand my view on the Final Fantasies a little better.

Woof Woof (O.o)

I have spent my week almost completely seperated from my friends, excepting those that have been playing Maple Story. I can say for sure that this is the best free game I have ever played, beating even the incredible Infantry. Yes, even Infantry. For those of you aghast at my lack of Halo 2-ing, I must state a fact that has remained true throughout my life: I am, at the core, not an FPS gamer. The first game I ever played and truly understood and enjoyed, was FF7 (this at the age of 7). I play FPS because I’m good at them and thus can enjoy them. I still maintain that FF7 is the best game ever created, and thus the upcoming movie FFVII: Advent Children has peaked my interest. I have found no easily accesible trailers to be downloaded, only streamed, unfortunately. Just do a Google for Advent Children. The CGI is outstanding, although the file itself or the actual animations suffer framerate issues for obvious reasons. In any case, I patiently await the arrival of the movie.

I feel like reminiscing about Infantry, so I’ll do that. Infantry was a third-person (bird’s eye) shooter. It was simplistic, yet really awesomely cool. It was set in the future, so you had your special doodad-taculars. Originally it was really boring – there were vehicles you ran around in and you just tried to hold these points in a boring King of the Hill form of a game. This changed once they introduced a very loose RPG system – you gained money and rank from kills and flag captures in these CTF-type games. You used the money to buy weapons, armor, or ammo. Most importantly, was the class system. There were dozens of classes, all unique. There were Heavy Weapons (not demolition, they used higher-powered rifles and grenades), Infantry (they were boring and noobular), Jumptroopers (Fast, Maneuverable, Light), Scouts (i think i may have the name wrong, but they were capable of being invisible and used the sniper rifle most), Engineers (they built turrets and defenses, which got their kills), Medics (infantry with healing), and a few others, as well as leveled up forms of those guys. Unfortunately, a few months after that version came out, it went p2p. It rocked.

O.o

This week has been pretty good. It started out meh, but it gradually just got better and better. Gwen’s, Paul’s, and Ben (Feldman)’s birthday party was last night, which was pretty fun. Other than that, I’ve spent a lot of my time doing make up and retakes for school. On Wednesday I discovered I had an F in Chemistry (this was gonna go on the 5-week report, and that just wasn’t gonna happen) which I resurrected to a B, possibly a B+ depending on the grade of an extra credit paper I did. I was frustrated many times by my English teacher. I had to make up this essay we did that I missed, so I told him I’d come after school on Monday, and then he wasn’t there. I told him I’d come after school on Tuesday, but he wasn’t there again. Even on Wednesday, he wasn’t there, but he left the door unlocked, so I had to go through the papers on his desk to find mine (he finally let me do it during class that day, for a whole 20 minutes *grumble*), which for some reason was labeled “never showed”.

Anyways, that’s about the peak of the excitement I experienced. In other news, due to an anonymous tip from Mike, I learned of a secret game that everyone plays called Maple Story. In essence, it’s a free MMORPG, with Gunbound-style visuals. It’s mucho fun, especially when you’re running around with a party of people and stuff. It’s well balanced, and all character classes are unique from eachother. Definately worth the 170 MB download, IMO. My Halo 2 fanatacism has waned for the moment. I still maintain it’s the most fun multiplayer game I’ve palyed, but my mood recently hasn’t been suited for it. As in, I haven’t been in a good enough mood to handle getting owned from time to time. I don’t like the ranked games enough to really want to play them alone, either. I just don’t enjoy the settings. I much prefer custom games, they’re more laid back and enjoyable.

My first Christmas present has appeared under the tree! Not a clue what it is, as my parents are really good at disguising stuff. They’ll usually stick easily guessed items (CDs, games, movies, etc.) in bigger boxes with lots of padding. Oh well.

Quiz-tacular! (O.o)

Your soul is bound to the White Rose: The
Pure.

“I’ve been waiting in the dark for a long
time, shining my beacon of hope through the
shadow. If you see me, don’t you hide your
eyes from me.”

The White Rose is associated with purity, honor,
and chastity. It is governed by the goddess
Artemis and its sign is The Cross, or Agape.

As a White Rose, you are a person of your word.
You may have a strong moral code, but
regardless of your virtue, you always stay true
to yourself. To you, love is the most pure of
emotional forms and it’s just a matter of
waiting for it to bless you. Some people may
say you are too idealistic, but it’s only
because you don’t want to mess things up.

What Rose Is Your Soul Bound To?
brought to you by Quizilla

Wort wort wort.

O.o

Christmafying step III!

This is an ornament Jonathan made back in his elementary years, which is a favorite of mine:

[2012 edit: lost forever]

Elvsers!!!

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I’ve always like this one…

[2012 edit: lost forever]

Before…

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And a some light-room after pictures!

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And some dark-room pictures…

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That’s about it. That’s just the livingroom, I decorated the rest of the house too, but that was the main piece.

O.o

Update stuff:

New Christmas List is up on the archive, and my Halo 2 stats are up over there as well. A note about the list: it’s not a guideline for what you should get me, it’s just there for my own amusement and to see what you guys thought of it. I don’t want you guys to get me anything as I can’t give you anything back, if you really want to, go ahead, but that’s just my personal preference.

Don’t be stupid on the comments, post however much you want, but there needs to be a point to the post. I will present to you my step-by-step process of Christmafying my house through pictures! Step 1: the tree and boxes.

[2012 edit: lost forever]

Step 2: tomorrow!

O.o

That last post was quite therapeutic. Yay. I finally have time to do all this stuff I’ve been wanting to do. I tried out this program from tracking all your stats on Halo 2, it’s running right now. It makes me want to learn Perl now (as it’s programmed in Perl). It has to download a LOT of HTML. First, it has to get all the list pages of the games you’ve played, and then all of the pages for each of your games (About 6 per game). At 17 pages of games, and 25 games per page, that comes out to 2500 pages of HTML it has to download. Then, it has to extract a whole crapload of stats from each of those pages (Kills, Deaths, Suicides, Headshots, Medals, Shots Hit, Shots Fired, Score, you get the idea) and then it calculates a few useful stats, like K:D ratios, averages, totals, most kills in a game, etc.. It’s gonna be really cool once it’s done. I’ll post the stats of the Archive once they’re done. The reason Bungie can’t do this is it would take terabytes of bandwidth which would get very expensive, very fast. They have to purge the stats after a month or so to prevent useless pile up.

For now, I leave to go get a Christmas tree!

O.o

I was in a great mood, until, randomly, I recieve this.

[15:00:12] TheMysteriousMrZ: www.gamerankings.com so, i see that half-life 2 has remained in the top five while halo 2 is conspicuously absent from the top ten altogether.

[15:00:25] *** “TheMysteriousMrZ” signed off at Sat Dec 04 15:00:25 2004.

THIS is why Half-Life 2 sucks. THIS is why Half-Life sucks. I didn’t want to have to make a post about this, but I’m gonna have to if I’m gonna get my point across.

Sure, four weeks ago I was confident that, according to Gamerankings, Halo 2 would have a higher score. In reality, I didn’t care, it was just a fun bet with BEN (not Zach, mind you). I would have liked to see Halo 2 stay up there. The retardacity of this is that somehow the ranking score has turned into a numerical value of how good a game is. It’s a summary, not a statement. I find it enough that IGN, Gamespot, and GMR all found Halo 2 to be a better game. I could care less about “Boomtown” and “eToyChest”‘s ideas. You know why Halo 2 has such a low score? Because 6 sites, none of whom I’ve ever heard of, decided it’s a bad game. I read them. As reviews, they SUCKED. If quality of reviewers could be measured, they wouldn’t be included. Nonetheless, they are there, pulling Halo 2’s score down a full percentage point or two.

That being said, HL2 has a higher score, fair and square, I suppose.

As for MY opinion of HL2 and why I think it sucks, I’ll try and convey that now. I’ve seen HL2. I watched Zach play it for an hour, and to be honest, I was not amazed. From what I’ve read (I’ve read 3 or 4 reviews on it) and seen (I’ve watched a number of movies and screenshots), I can make some pretty fair statements here.

Graphics: Yeah, they’re good. That is, if you have a good rig. Zach’s machine definately isn’t bad, (It’s like 2.2 AMD with a 9600P, right?) but it didn’t look outstanding on his rig. Good? Yes. Personally, I don’t find the recent graphics of Doom 3 and HL2 all that amazing, they look dreary and dull. Elder Scrolls IV? Now that’s beautiful, and it’s not even a finished engine.

Physics: Get ready for this: Halo 2 and Half-Life 2 use the same physics engine. They both use the Havoc engine – HL2 uses a slightly more advanced and souped up form that allows some water effects (bouyancy) and just a little more detail all around. Personally, I could care less if the world I’m playing has realistic physics. The physics in Halo 2 are detailed enough that I can have loads of fun just screwing around rolling barrels and rocks around. Ben said something about the ragdoll not being good in Halo 2 – I beg to differ. Watching myself die is almost a treat – it’s like a reward for doing badly. If I’m sniping and I get sniped back, my guy will fall backwards (not doing the flailing thing) and roll down the stairs slowly. So far I’ve never seen any unrealistic poses (think back to when ragdoll had just come out) or anything annoying and stupid. Yes, every now and then when you get blown up your guy will flail around, but so what?

Storyline: Keep in mind, I speak from ignorance and base what I know off of the Gamespot review. According to them, the storyline was weak, and not very good in general. The end was anticlimactic and ended with you fighting a weak enemy with an overpowered weapon. This is just what I read – don’t look at me for innacuracies. Halo 2’s storyline owned. I have to say, it was really good. Did the cliffhanger ending suck? Absolutely. I wanted the game to keep going very, very badly. That just raises the bar for Halo 3 – I expect a lot from its story now (Bungie has unoffically announced it in the recent Q&A). Apparantly HL2 still doesn’t have any cutscenes, or third-person events for that matter, and Gordon Freeman never speaks. That doesn’t seem like much room to make a plot. I don’t think I’d like the entire story being told by people talking to you.

All that being said, there is still more to mention. Halo 1 had a higher average review score than Half-Life 1. When I compare HL1 and HL2, I don’t see much difference. They look the same, they feel the same, they even SOUND the same (they didn’t even put in new sounds for some parts of the game). HL2 = HL1 + graphics and physics. That’s all I see. When I look at Halo 2, I see worlds of difference. H2 = H1 + much improved storyline/single player in general + huge gameplay changes (new weapons, vehicles, maps, dual wielding, no health, I could go on and on about the fundamental differences) + xbox live + graphics + physics. When I say HL2 sucks, I don’t mean it’s a bad game. I mean that by my standards, compared to what I enjoy playing, it is not a fun game that is worth my money. Steam alone is enough to push me away – I read the Game Revolution review, and that was a big enough factor to really change their score. Anyone with a non-state-of-the-art computer will have to deal with loading times and general annoyances. The implications of Steam are awful – if every company did this, PC gaming would go down the tubes.

That’s just what I have to say.

…

I haven’t gotten any sleep the past 4 days. I don’t really know why I’m continually compelled to stay awake, but it ends tonight. Break’s over, but it was mucho fun. Friday I went bowling with partially the same group as Tuesday (Gwen, Amy, Eileen, Sarah, Mollie, Veda, Megan, Paul, Ben, Ryan). I suck at bowling, but I had fun anyways. Saturday was Daniel’s LAN party, which was mucho fun as well, that went from 11:30 AM – 8:00 PM. Church was ok (I was in the nursery again, but it’s more fun as I get better with babies. Having done it like 5 or 6 times now I’m almost semi-competent at handling babies!) and I opted not to do anything. I took a four hour nap and woke up to a little kid who came up from Pennsylvania just to see me (his parents were in town for the day).

Today sucked. I’ve failed (or rather, barely passed, but I really don’t see the difference between a D and an F) all the tests I took last week (Math – D, Programming – C, Chemistry – D, Engineering – D (a journal check actually, but we don’t have tests in there, so…) and I have yet to recieve the results of a Global test I took. This proves my theory – my grades rely on sleep. In case you don’t know, I don’t study for tests, I’ve never needed to, but I don’t absorb the information if I don’t have 7+ hours of sleep. In essence, now until Christmas break is crunch time as far as school goes. Whether I actually put that into practice is yet to be seen, but it will definately require more of my attention.

One of the things that made today suck was the announcement that the student teachers will be leaving this month. All of mine are really cool, mostly better than the normal teachers, but this also means work loads will decrease as the teachers get more work. It also means I have to deal with lower quality teaching. Global won’t really change, but Chemistry, ay ay ay, Ms. Smith is so boring, I shall die a thousand deaths under that teacher.

The walk home was nice, though, it was unusually relaxing.

O.o

Woo, Thanksgiving. It did not live up to previous Thanksgivings. We had dinner at a couple’s house (they go to my church) as there were only 3 of us, which would be a very boring Thanksgiving dinner. The food was lacking (no corn, not very good mashed potatoes or rolls…) and I was pretty bored the entire time. However, I don’t want to be complaining on Thanksgiving. I shall now compose a generic, cheesy list of all the things I’m thankful for today:

-My Friends (meh, you all know who you are, i’d be bored out of my skull and very very confused without you all)

-My Family (my parents are good parents, i’m used to them. my brothers own, though i never get to see them anymore)

-Electricity (yes, this ranks third, as it powers my xbox, computer, phone, and refrigerator)

-My Church (yep, technically this should be ranked as first, as it goes in the “God” category, but i’m too lazy to put it up there. sunday school owns!)

-My House (i like living in the basement!)

-Food (as ben pointed out, we have meat everywhere in my house, but i especially enjoy the cereal selection. it’s quite good)

-My Computer (boy would I be bored without this buddy)

-My Blog (it’s suprisingly therapeutic writing in this thing…)

-My Techno (it’s good for listening to doing anything – playing halo 2, doing homework, talking, it owns)

-Hugs (these should be up higher too, but i’m still too lazy to change that. woo!)

-Halo 2 (bahahahahahahahaha)

-everything else i’m too lazy to capitalize, punctuate, or think of

wewt.

^^

Yum, yum, yum, yesterday was incredibly awesome. After school, Amy, Gwen, Kristen, Ben Feldman, Ben Myers, Paul, Zach, and I all walked to Amy’s house. Zach left shortly after arriving, but the rest of us stayed and ate loooots of food. Amy has a food-tacular house, to say the least. Her sister (Annika) and a random person whom I can’t recall the name of were there too. (I might note that Gwen and I did all the DISHES!) After a while, Kristin and that other person left. After a couple of hours those of us remaining (except Annika) went down to the Fall Creek Elementary playground and fiddled around there. We tried playing wallball and frisbee, but Ben M just owned at it, and our frisbees weren’t very good. Like, you’d throw it, and it would jump up two feet from a little gust of wind. We retreated back to the house after an hour, and piled on top of eachother on the couch, played Mancala, that type of thing.

We all went to my house (at this point it was 6:30), this time with Kristen and Annika along. We chilled there for 20 minutes. I showed them BANANA PHONE, and some of my techno. They (Amy in particular) toyed with my guns, did horrors to my Xbox, which it may need counseling to recover from. We wandered down to Belle Sherman and played Structure Tag until Julia, Crawford, Rachel, Katie (Clay), and Steven showed up (around 7:30). Then we played kickball and soccer for a few hours (Zach showed while we were playing soccer). While we were waiting for Gwen’s mom to show up (to pick up Amy, Annika, and Kristin up too) we huddled together in a big hug circle to keep warm (it was cold!) which was absolutely the coolest thing ever. We all departed to our own ways (around 9:30 or 10:00). Ben and Paul spent the night at my house, too, which was sort of the icing on the cake.

I got about 10 hours of sleep last night, though my power went out, and I took a nap during that. I’m really tired right now, too. I dunno where all my energy went.

Gwen and Ben and Amy were really good to me last night, they make life less confusing.

As most of you know, Caitlyn and I broke up, for some pretty good reasons. I think we just didn’t have enough in common. Neither of us are bitter about it though, which is tremendously good. I don’t have any regrets about it, as I learned a whole lot from the experience, which is the only valid reason (at least I believe) for dating as a teenager. So my reason was fulfilled, to say the least.

I’ve spent a lot of today contemplating and in a generally not-awesome mood. I keep having these retarded arguments with Daniel about making me a Clan overlord, and as I’m arguing I’m thinking “dude, be mature, just drop it.”. Stupid stuff like that keeps setting my mood down. Like when I started this post, I was at a “^^” state, but now I’m more “…”. I’ll leave it at “^^” just for the awesomeness of last night.

O.o

Oy, I haven’t posted for a week. It’s not that I haven’t had anything to post about, I just didn’t feel up to it, I guess. Overall the week has been okay. Lots of Halo 2 playing has occured (I’ve played well over 300 games now). My Clan and I actually played against Bungie (and won!). Proof that Bungie owns, right there. 😀

I stayed home from school because I’m a lazy, lazy bum. I woke up this morning thinking a lot of things. “My homework is done.”, “I have no tests today.”, “I’m tired.”, “I’m going to be late for school.”, and “Thankgiving Break is too short. Let’s make it longer by one day!”. So I stayed home. I slept until 12:30 (making for a total of 12 hours of sleep!), and just lazed around for most of the day.

Daniel stopped by for a few minutes a little bit ago. He came and picked up some of the money I owe him (27/66 bucks). *shuffles slowly towards his Xbox*

EDIT: I was a little bored, so I decided to revise a report I did on Global Warming for my Global History I final report. The beginning and end are a little cheesy, as I had to cater to my teacher’s political leanings at one point or another, but the point comes across. I presented a rather weak argument in favor of the common theory of Global Warming, but to be honest, there isn’t much of one.

http://oftimarchive.blogspot.com/2004/11/report-global-warming.html

Have fun picking it apart. Since it’s been a year, I forgot the sources for that solar info (about the earth’s axis and rotation), but you’ll live.

[2012 edit: looks like these gems are lost forever]

O.o

In light of Half Life 2 being released, I need to make a statement.

Half Life 2 is not compareable to Halo 2. Halo 2, while intended to be a single player game, is really a multiplayer masterpiece. Half Life 2, while it has mod potential, is in essence, a single player game. Halo 2 has the most amazing mutliplayer I’ve ever seen. Half Life 2 will probably have the most amazing single player I’ve ever seen.

I understand the extreme mod potential, but in reality, most of these mods will suck. It’s a fact of life. Maybe a handful will be pretty cool, but in reality, none can compare to a system that has a) been tested for bugs b) been tested for balance and c) been tested for everything else you can think of. The fact is, Halo 2 MP combines anything and everything that’s been good about any other multiplayer. Voice, the party system, dual wielding, vehicles, assymetrical maps, and hijacking. You can’t beat it.

Half Life 2 has the graphics, the physics, the story, and the mods to make the SP equally mind-blowing. Neither of the games introduce much anything new – it’s all improvement on what’s already there.

I’m sure both games are worthy of a 10.0. But my Halo fanboi-isms remain, and in my mind, Half Life cannot redeem itself of Counterstrike.

Beating Dead Horses (O.o)

“A title?!”, you ask? I felt the need to include that. HIJACKED FROM WEILIN!

+||SECTOR ONE: Currently

1. Name: Tim

2. Nicknames: Froehlich

3. Feet size: 10.5 or 11

4. Do you have a crush: I guess if liking my girlfriend counts?

5. boyfriend/girlfriend? (see above)

6. Age you act: Bored – 7 Regular – 15 (I can’t really be the judge of that..) Happy – 15 (again?)

7. Where Do You Live: the good old US of A

8. Where you want to live: Sweden or finland, iceland aint bad either.

9. How many siblings: 2 bruthas

10. Favorite Salad Dressing: salad = teh suck

11. Ever gone skinny dipping? nay

12. What are you watching? my moniter

13. Last person you talked to: ben myers

14. Favorite movie: unbreakable, i think

15. Favorite Book: books != cool

16. Favorite Type of music: trance/techno/dance and some classical and some alternative rock

17. Favorite types of cars: ….fast cars?

18. Favorite Saying: i dunno, probably woot

19. Favorite Fast Food: wendy’s!

20. Favorite Ice Cream: cookies and cream

21. Favorite Alcoholic Drink: uh, wtf mates?

22. When Do You Go To Sleep: varies

23. Most Embarrassing Moment: not a clue

24. Stupidest Person you know: as far as actual intelligence goes, I’d have to say…phil.

25. Funniest Person you know: karel

26. Favorite holiday: thanksgiving or christmas.

27. Favorite Food: mashed potatoes, maybe turkey, corn off the cob (that’s why i like thanksgiving)

28. Favorite Song: clocks (coldplay)

29. Favorite Television Show: cosby show

30. Favorite Radio Station: i just listen to the techno streams…

31. Favorite junk food: twix

32. Favorite happy love song: no.

33. Favorite Drink: coke

34. Favorite article of clothing: generic, loose, crappy pants.

35. Favorite Animal: penguin

+||SECTOR TWO: The Future

1. School: RIT, RPI if I feel like doing the work

2. Where You Want To Live: Sweden (i thought this was asked already)

3. How Many Kids You Want: 2-3

4. What Kind Of Job You Want: unsure, electrical or computer engineer most likely, possibly biological engineering of medical engineering.

5. Wedding song: ….wtf, mates?

6. Pets: two dogs

8. 5 years from now: college

9. 10 years from now: double major and engaged to be married. 😛

+||SECTOR THREE: Have You Ever..

1. Done Drugs: nope, and never will.

2. Run Away From Home: newp

3. Hit A guy: i’m gonna assume this was meant to be for girls, so I’ll assume it’s asking me if I’ve hit a girl. so no.

5. Stolen Anything: software and music

6. Broken A Bone: no

7. Cheated On A Test: newp

8. Cheated On A girlfriend/boyfriend: no

9. Gotten Drunk: no

10. Been With Two guys/girls At Once: no

11. Been In The Hospital: nope

12. Let a friend cry on your shoulder: yep

13. Fell asleep in the shower/bath: a long time ago. it was scary.

14. Gone to Church: every sunday.

15. Never slept during a night: yep

16. Ever been on a motorcycle or motorbike: once

17. Been to a camp: a bunch

18. Sat in a restaurant w/o ordering: nope

19. Seen someone die: nein.

20. Gone a week w/out shaving: aye

21. Didn’t wash your hair for a week: yuck, no.

22. Broken something valuable: probably.

23. Thought you were in love: nay

24. Streaked the streets: no

25. Screamed at someone for no reason: you know it

26. Said I love you and meant it: nope

27. Been hurt by a guy/girl you loved: newp.

28. Stayed up till 4 am on the phone: does IM count?

29. Pulled a prank? not really

30. Made fun of someone? uh huh

+||SECTOR FOUR: Which Is Better..

1. Coke Or Pepsi: Coke

2. Cats Or Dogs: dogz

3. DVDs or VHS: ….what a retarded comparison. DVD.

4. Deaf Or Blind: blind. sight is cool, but life would suck without music and voices.

5. Pools Or Hot Tubs: pools

6. Television Or Radio: TV

7. CDs Or MP3’s: don’t care, really

8. Apples or oranges: both

9. Strawberries or Blueberries: strawberries

10. Gold or silver: silver

11. Vanilla or chocolate: chocolate

12. Movies or music: music

13. Park or Beach: park

14. Hot or Cold Weather: hot

15. Sunset or Sunrise: sunset

+||SECTOR FIVE: When is the Last Time You..

1. Took a shower: this morning

2. Cried: not a clue

3. Watched a Disney movie: shrek 2, that was a while ago.

4. Given/gotten a hug?: today.

5. Been to the movies: friday, saw the incredibles, it was highly amusing

7. kissed someone: never have…

8. Said I love you: never.

9. Danced: never danced in my life

10. Did a survey like this: a few months ago.

+||SECTOR SIX: What is..

1. Your Fondest Memory Of This year: i dunno, probably word of life..

2. Your Most Prized Possession: my computer. or xbox. or halo 2.

3. The Thing That Makes You The Happiest: halo 2 and sleep and friends

4. Your Favorite Food For Breakfast: s’mores pop tarts

5. Your Favorite Food For Dinner: lasagna

6. Your Favorite Slow Song: ….i know of none

7. Your Ideal BF/GF?: O.o

+||SECTOR SEVEN: What do I feel about…

1. Bill Clinton: teh suxxor

2. Love at First Sight: nope. not true love anyways.

3. Abortion: oh, you KNOW what I think.

4. Smoking: retarded, but I don’t care.

5. Death: i’m not afraid of it, if that’s what you’re asking.

7. Rap: yuck.

8. Marilyn Manson: double yuck.

9. Premarital sex: pretty retarded, some people just don’t know how to wait. it’s bad.

10. Suicide: i was going to be callous and say something like “it’s for the weak”, but I guess most people do it for a reason. still pretty retarded.

O.o

Today was eventful. I haven’t actually played Halo 2 today, my will was crushed by still not getting a headset, I really want one. I’m also really tired as it’s getting late, and I had a busy day in general. I went and saw the Incredibles, it was funny. I like Pixar. After that I got dropped at Sho’s house, at which Sam, Kerry, and Colette were at. We talked and played Apples to Apples (funny game), and watched Farenheit 9/11, which made me want to strangle Michael Moore.

Why, you ask? That’s why.

Beyond that it was fun, I got to spend an hour or more talking to Colette and Sho after Sam and Kerry left as they played with my hair. (I guess I smell like Jing? Supposedly that’s a good thing…) Colette’s mom drove me home, and now I sit here about to sleep. Good day. I’m hoping I can get my headset thing all sorted out tomorrow.

O.o

Oh goodness, the only reason I’m sitting here typing this is ebcause none of my friends are online to play HALO 2 with. I’ve made about a dozen or two dozen friends playing online, the voice chat really makes the game more personal. I don’t have a headset to chat with, but I’ll fix that, hopefully tomorrow.

I’ve beaten the campaign (I beat it last night), so I can finally give some form of a final word on that. The cutscenes, as I mentioned in the comments, are not outstanding. The earlier ones have gigantic texture pop-in problems, but that gets better after a few levels or so. The plot itself is better than the first, it’s highly involving and pretty interesting. As for the levels, they’re far, far better than the first. No more hallway crawls (excepting the next to last level, which is slightly reminiscent of Doom 3, it’s quite freaky). For those of you that car (absolutely no one) there will be some story spoilers up ahead.

All the levels are highly fun. There are only two levels which have anything close to repetitivity or a hallway crawl. And they’re still fun, despite that. You only spend a short time on earth, then you kind of romp around on another halo, a gas formation, and the covenant homeworld. You switch roles into a coveneant heretic, who does not join forced with the humans, but serves his own purposes until the end. Speak of which, Halo 2 has the biggest cliffhanger of all time. Knowing there will not be a Halo 3 for a very long time, it was quite painful as endings go. The last level is quite fun, so you’re all pumped, and the cutscene shows the master chief flying back to earth, and the Arbiter (covenant heretic) is with some of the humans and stuff, it’s all crazy, and then it just ends, cut to the credits, bam. It hurt.

Beyond that, the single player was still really fun. The multiplayer, on the other hand, is perfection in action. All the maps are incredibly excellent. The variety of weapons is huge, they’re ALL unique, but still balanced. Dual wielding is intricate and balanced, as well. The way the game plays discourages camping, as standing still means you just get owned, no matter what. The no health system is so liberating, it’s incredible. I dunno if I can ever go back to the old system. The new vehicles are akin to the weapons in variety and improvement. All the vehicles are fun to use, and none of them are too powerful, and that includes the banshee. Boarding vehicles is awesome. It puts so much more strategy and thought into using vehicles, as well as how to fight them. XBox Live is also perfect. There’s never lag. I’ve had a spurt now and then, but only in big 16 player games. Once you get above 10 people it gets stressed sometimes, but never anything bad compared to the standard lag playing PC games. Voice chat and proximity owns too.

This was just a summary, I’ll make a real detailed breakdown and review in a week or so.

^^

Halo 2 owns, I’ll bother with a real update later. I have a final gay marriage conversation, with Paul. It’s the 5th one (4th one is one Zach’s blog). When I was debating this whole thing with Kevin, I knew all my reasons, but it seems I’ve just forgotten them. I had a legitimate argument, I just burned myself out on this particular topic. Oh well. Because this one is short, it’s getting posted directly.

[20:52:53] Salandarin: paul…
[20:52:54] Salandarin: “Maybe it’s because he doesn’t have an argument besides “God hates fags”.”

[refer to comments on zach’s blog]

[20:52:56] Salandarin: come on man
[20:53:11] Lemonadeyeti: what’s your argument?
[20:53:21] Salandarin: it’s certainly not that.
[20:53:24] Lemonadeyeti: what is it?
[20:53:59] Salandarin: why does it matter? you’re just gonna transform what i say into opinionated Christian-isms
[20:54:20] Lemonadeyeti: do you want to tell me what it is? because if you don’t, then I’ll think you don’t have one.
[20:54:25] Salandarin: i never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever said God hated anyone.
[20:54:44] Salandarin: you know I have one. i have four arguments on it.
[20:55:05] Lemonadeyeti: tell it to me…
[20:55:59] Salandarin: no. you know why I don’t want to? because it’s not gonna make a difference. it’s gonna set you deeper in your belief that I’m in blind believer in something that doesn’t exist, and that I’m trying to legislate morality and my beliefs.
[20:57:43] Lemonadeyeti: ok, you took offense to my comments. they were insensitive and inappropriate, and for that I apologize. I know you are very religious and faithful, something I could never be, and I respect that.
[20:58:05] Lemonadeyeti: but I don’t see your argument outside of religious/moral standpoint and if it does exist I would like to know it.
[20:58:16] Salandarin: thank you
[20:59:19] Salandarin: my personal goal would be to remove marriage benefits, and just seperate marriage from the government. that way marriage is back at the origin/foundation of religion.
[20:59:44] Salandarin: the government can supply civil unions for those who want marriage outside the church.
[21:00:09] Lemonadeyeti: marriage is an ambiguous word because it is sanctioned by the government
[21:00:19] Salandarin: doesn’t matter.
[21:00:32] Salandarin: if it weren’t sanctioned, we’d be better off
[21:00:44] Lemonadeyeti: as it stands now, marriage based on sexual preference is discrimination, because it is not limited to only christians/ those of specific other faiths
[21:00:58] Lemonadeyeti: if it were to be run by the church, then it wouldn’t be
[21:01:10] Salandarin: what’s your point?
[21:01:52] Lemonadeyeti: my point? as long as marriage is a governmental institution it shouldn’t be limited by the specific beliefs on a single faith
[21:02:26] Salandarin: and you’re right. morality from any one point of view cannot be enforced.
[21:02:31] Salandarin: and should not.
[21:03:32] Salandarin: i’ve given up on arguing over gay marriage. personally, i don’t want it to happen, but, there’s nothing I can do.
[21:05:44] Salandarin: are we clear?
[21:05:56] Lemonadeyeti: transparent.

I am still opposed to homosexuality in itself, for reasonsbeyondmy faith. If you want them, ask me.

HALO TWO OWNS ALL!

^^

Today was good. I once again managed a good 15 minutes of sleep in Chemistry, it make the class so much more enjoyable. I think the only reason they never stop me is because they know I know the material. Overall the day has gone by quickly. I got the upstairs TV set up with 7.1 surround sound, in preperation for Halo 2. I’m going to Scouts for the first time this seasons, from which I’ll go to Daniel’s, and then we go to the mall and wait outside EB to get Halo 2. I may go to his house or go back to mine, I’m not sure, but I’m not gonna be at school tomorrow, that’s for sure. Tomorrow I’ll probably go to the Halo 2 Tourney at school, which should be fun.

I can’t wait for this game. My goodness, I’ve never anticipated a game this much, ever. So far 13 reviewers have said it was perfect. The lowest review score is an 88, out of about 25 reviews, and the NEXT lowest score is a 93.

😀

Wewt.

O.o

Today was pretty good. I woke up at 8:00, and I was like “Meh, I’ll take my time.”, so I got to school at about 8:45. Most everything in school has been going pretty well, though Chemistry is SNORE-TASTIC. I slept a little bit in there, as it’s just so boring and easy to understand. I had a much more extensive and interesting debate over abortion with Paul. We ended on the note of having to discuss Evolution, which will be understood once you’ve read it. Semi-long.

Abortion #2

Much more detailed, and probably a little more interesting. As a side note, if you wannaflameme for my beliefs, don’t do it on my comments. I just gets annoying having to do it over the comments system. If you have a question or something to add as support or counter-point, go ahead, but don’t flame.

[2012 edit: looks like these gems are lost forever]