Grid Knight RK

I have been totally forgetting to update this shit because it's mostly BENAMIS people who read it and I haven't been too active in the community lately. But I love you guys and miss the remaining cool people. Also, my WoW guild broke up and I'm currently alone, drifting in a void of where the fuck have the past few months of my life gone and holy shit there are all these games I've been meaning to play but haven't. I still don't have a job but my tax refund and my economic stimulus check got here and I haven't really been buying anything other than food and WoW and sometimes gas but I try not to drive if I can avoid it because my fucking car doesn't have AC. I need to go ask the liquor store dude if I can work there (Tanelorn works there so I maybe have an in). That would be a pretty good job since the store owner is cool and he pays better than Food Loin and stuff. I don't know, I can't get hired anywhere and I hate myself so I'm taking a break from WoW to try and sort that shit out since I'm not raiding anyway. I had something in mind to say but fuck it, hi guys!

I'm going to play Pump tomorrow. Either Gaffney or Hickory; probably Gaffney, since the machine is cheaper, unless they've let it go to shit, or someone's going to Hickory that I want to hang with. Jon's probably coming, and maybe another friend or two as well. If anyone wants to come watch me embarrass myself, having not really played much in a long time, you're welcome to!

SSBM: Brawl is amazing. Launch night was not; I didn't actually intend to get it on launch day, but I ended up following Tanelorn and our other friend up to Gamestop because I was bored. The fucking tournament was an ultra-cesspit of human failure in all respects, from the bad-smelling and lumpy crowd of players to the employees who obviously had NO idea what the hell they were doing. Double damage or something, one-minute matches, with random characters and stages, on the night of release when nobody there would have played the game before; you might as well have flipped a coin. Oh well. I've been playing Subspace Emissary, since I didn't really play Smash before and it gives me a chance to get familiar with the controls and moves and stuff, and I'm kind of impressed with it; it's... A fighting game adventure mode, but the fanboy/nostalgia/whatever factor in the cutscenes is extreme. I especially loved the Mother chapter where you fight Porky/Pokey, and it makes me want to play Mother 3. Oh yeah, and it's good to know that Ness is Neo, apparently.

Academics: Nothing new to report, really. Last week was spring break, so nothing happened. I got all my homework done! I think the most frustrating thing about math for me is that I tend to look at a problem, figure out the answer in some intuitive way (by "intuitive" I mean "educated guess," not "psychic"), be able to work backwards and show that it's the correct answer, and then be totally unable to remember how to actually calculate the answer from the data given. -.- It screws me over on tests.

WoW is going pretty awesome! I've started raiding in the past couple weeks, pretty heavily over the break though I've scaled it back now that school is in again. Can't wait for summer. The first actual BC raid I ever went on turned out to be Serpentshrine Cavern; they needed DPS and I was available, so I signed on and they took me. It's probably the same mindset that causes me to occasionally (a bit more often once again!) bash my head against hard songs in rhythm games, but I really love going on our progression raids when I get a chance; it's really fun to try new bosses (well, relative to our guild) and work out strategies and such.

I ran Karazhan for the first time last week, with our guild's night group (day runs seem to exclusively get scheduled on days I have to work after my schedule is already set, which makes me sad because I need gear pretty badly) and that was some of the most fun I've had yet~ That might be due to the fact that we've got it 100% on farm status now (that run was mostly to gear up alts and newbs like myself) and one of our tanks was hilariously overgeared and we pretty much got to dick around until upper Kara, but I got the necklace off Shade of Aran and the gloves off Maiden of Virtue, which are pretty nice. This week, I was able to go on the Gruul's run and I was lucky enough to get the Gauntlets of the Dragonslayer off of Gruul (nobody else in the raid needed them), which is my second piece of epic hand armor and my third or fourth upgrade since level 70 and I'm still wearing goddamn level 66 rogue shoulders x.x We one-shotted Gruul and would have done the same with the High King encounter if our guild master hadn't accidentally body pulled, heh. We're currently working on Morogrim Tidewalker in SSC; I was in the raid the first time we tried him, and we got him down to 69% on our last attempt before we got repops, which wasn't too bad considering it was most people's first time seeing the boss; we seem to have a pretty good handle on the murloc adds, I think the only real problem we have is keeping the tank alive through the period of time when the murlocs are coming up and he can't be healed.

YEAH BOY.

I got keyed for Karazhan a few days ago, too. Apparently our guild needs hunters on the 8 PM raid, so I'm gonna try and go when I can and do heroics and stuff whenever. Carousel (Tanelorn, our prot pally) is just about uncrushable now, so he can tank that shiz.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Dalaran&n=Voah <-- I actually have about 50 more RAP with whatever green-ass trinket I have instead of my riding crop, it's the core of something or other

I thought that, when I told the tank I needed a minute to vendor before summoning me and he replied "np, gat to roll a j anyway", the PUG was pretty much over before it started. I was wrong.

I wish I'd thought to add that warrior to my friend list.

So, I was at work today minding my own business, and then you know those kinds of songs that have a piano and a female vocalist and pretty much nothing else? A slow piano chick cover of Dream On started playing on the muzak in my goddamn store. Now I know how the guys in Lovecraft novels feel.

This holiday season has been incredibly tame compared to any previous one I've experienced at Food Lion. It didn't really get super-busy until just today... And yet they still manage to not be able to schedule effectively, so here I am with a 9-hour (10:30-7:30) shift. They gave me an hour lunch break because they're legally obligated to, so here I am eating Bojangles and doing nothing in particular at home. Fun.

@Noland: I totally forgot what you wanted me to burn for you, I'll give you a call when I have some time or you can IM or text me or post it or whatever, I'm not sure if you have internets yet.

@Alex (the Mint one): Did P3 rock your fucking world, or did it assault your world with a guitar solo so fucking outrageous that the unique vibrations of the sound waves caused your world to turn into a squadron of F-16s piloted by duplicates of Aigis? I know you done played it some.

I think it was because I went to Alex's birthday party relatively shortly after that last entry and I had a FUCKING AWESOME TIME (Brittany, Victor, and I = trap master) and I was going to write a long post about it and kept putting it off and then forgot about my LJ and then my GODDAMN FRIENDS got me back into WoW which is like crack cocaine. I'm Horde on Dalaran, and I'll probably start another character on Deathwing since apparently there's a Bemani community guild thing starting there. Yay.~ Shit, not much has really happened except I successfully completed a semester at York Tech, and I haven't really been doing much at all; not a lot of anime buying, game buying, anything buying, since I'm trying to pay off my credit card and loans. It's going pretty well. I still haven't picked up the LE vols. 3 and 4 of Melancholy and I hope I'll be able to... Actually, looking at Right Stuf, the volume 3 LE is only $36, so I'm gonna get it and some other thing so the shipping will be free. Tomorrow I'm going Xmas shopping... I'm only buying stuff for a few people this year, and I won't be spending much. I want to get something for like everyone on the internet that I know, but I'm gonna stick to just my family and a couple friends here to keep from spreading myself too thin. I hope nobody takes offense, I still love all y'all :x

EIKEN AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I have fond/traumatic memories of watching the anime a long fucking time ago in high school and then buying the DVD and traumatizing other people with it when it eventually got released, and then I go to the bookstore yesterday so Jon can buy some shit or other and I see THE MOTHERFUCKING EIKEN MANGA on the fucking shelf and I got the first volume and I have to buy it because EIKEN, LMAONADE.

(for the curious, the other manga I'm following/slowly buying volumes that are already released are Negima and NGE: Angelic Days)

Just a quick heads-up to let everyone know I'm still alive. My hosting account expired (I didn't want another year of Globat because they're balls) and I don't have the money to purchase more hosting, but I do have a backup of the site as it was about a week before it went down. I haven't been spending as much time at Gamers Edge the past couple weeks, due to heavier schoolwork and such, and I haven't really been playing IIDX either... I took a break from DM for a while and started playing again a couple days ago; my set's back at my house now. I'm sure I could get used to the LCD screens at Edge, but I really would rather just play at home and do well. V3 was sort of a letdown after everything they did for DistorteD, but that's just in terms of bonus stuff; it's still a great release. More streamlined than previous ones, I'd say, and the unlock system was breezy. I got one of my friends here hooked on the game too, and he's doing pretty well; his only other game was Guitar Hero, and he's in the mid-20s after like three evenings of playing the game at my house, so that's cool.

So yeah, I've been talking to a few people on AIM, but overall I'm drastically out of touch with how everyone in the internet is doing. How are y'all?

Spent last night drinking and playing Guitar Hero and Karaoke Revolution, managed to get up, go to class, take a test, and almost definitely get an A (there was one question worth 5 points whose answer I was unsure of, the rest was easy), and I've been playing IIDX the rest of the morning. I managed to AAA a couple easy songs (Light Motion Hyper and with you... Hyper), and decided to try some hard songs; passed Nageki no Ki Hyper easily, tried a couple 11s and a few more 12s. I think I can pass Due Tomorrow if I work on the rolls... They're ridiculous, but it's pretty much a matter of either getting offbeat and losing all my gauge or clearing the song with gauge to spare. Title of the post refers to the FUCKING 74% ON SAKURA FUCKING ANOTHER that I just got, and I haven't been able to get close since. I bet I'll clear the song after taking a break, playing other stuff, and coming back to it.

DM: Cleared Fairy Tales Little Prayer EXT. I've been doing lower-level stuff on EXT, trying to FC it (so far I've only succeeded at Innocent World, but I'm close on a lot of them) and it's been helping with my consistency a lot, I've been getting bigger combos on harder songs and such, though I still have trouble with the majority of 80s and some mid-high 70s. I'm pretty close to a pass on Model DD7, at least, and I cleared Used To Rock 'n' Roll and Tsuminagara... etc as well, albeit with a horrible, horrible score on the latter (and on Fairy Tales; my ADV skill on Fairy Tales is still better.) Oh well, I'll just play a little every day, and eventually I'll get better~

I'll work on IIDX, too, but not right now 'cause I work in a few minutes, and I can only play it at home really. The LCDs at Gamer's Edge don't lag that much so they're okay for DM and DDR and stuff, but having to sit so close + the latency + the little skips and display lags completely butcher my IIDX playing. I tried Concertino in Blue Hyper the day I got it on that LCD and managed to get more greats than JGs.

Also, Persona 3 sets a new standard for RPG soundtracks. This is thoroughly kickin'.

EDIT: Oops, I had Little Prayer and Fairy Tales backwards

School is going awesome so far. I'm taking two classes this semester: English Composition and Programming Logic and Design. Both are bitch easy, especially composition, the entire focus of which is in writing essays, and by essays I mean "introductory paragraph, three body paragraphs, concluding paragraph." Keeping up has been easy so far, although I really need to find my backpack, or just get a satchel like I've been wanting to, and decorate the satchel with some kind of gay wap shit like a Beatmania/GFDM logo or something. Except I forgot to schedule an appointment with the student services lady, which is ironic because we're supposed to be coming up with a 504 plan for my ADHD. AHAHA WAIT, SILLY, THAT'S NOT IRONY AT ALL! That's just what retarded people think irony is.

My non-academic life has been taking an upturn, too. I'd been making fun of Jon for spending all his time at the cyber cafe (called Gamer's Edge; inspired by The Gord, I wonder?), but I've been spending most of my time there lately because it's really awesome. Think I mentioned it in another post, but we both know the guy who runs it from way back in high school and get unlimited free game time due to that and bringing in (not technically donating, but I at least am probably not moving away until I finish this associate's degree so it'll be here for a good while) most of our good gaming stuff, so I've basically been hanging out here and using the internet and playing games instead of doing it at home, which has been good for both my actually playing games instead of just messing around on the internet and for my getting out and socializing with people; even if I'm just sitting at one of the PS2s and playing an RPG, I'm at least being social with other physical people who are in the room at the same time. I think I swore less than half a dozen entries ago that I'd never pay to play an MMO again, but I just picked up EQ2 because four of the people here (including Dylan, the proprietor, and Jon) play it. I'm an Arasai (evil fairy) Inquisitor (evil priest) on Najena if anyone else actually plays this. I'd heard things about it being really awful, but I actually like it so far; it's not that different from any other MMO of this generation.

Also, Dylan gave us a key to the store. :3 That lets me come in and play games after I get out of class in the morning, since we don't open until 4 on weekdays when high school is in session.

Oh my god, KONMAI outdid themselves again.
( IIDX DistorteD CS song spoilers )

Anyway, I've been playing on the big LCD screens here at Gamer's Edge, and I'm not sure how I like it :x They're nice and big and sexy, but IIDX is kind of blurry and even with the timing adjust I'm having trouble with my timing. I need something to set the controller on that's not right in front of the screen, though; I can play up next to my small TV at home, but not this one, I go cross-eyed. I haven't even managed to AAA anything, and I keep fiddling with the timing adjust, though I think I'm doing best on +1. :x Might want to just take it home and play on my own TV, though I'd rather be here able to hang out.

Oh, yeah, weird thing: Apparently, the reason my domain was suspended recently was that large amounts of spam email were being sent from it. I'm not exactly sure how the hell that happened; my best guesses are that it was because of the bug I picked up earlier, or someone was abusing a script that could send email. Anyway, it's back up, I went ahead and deleted my Wordpress since I wasn't really using it anyway; Neko has that photobook thing up there and Alex has like some fucking 4chan thread on his part of the space or something? Whatever it was, I backed it up and removed it; I don't know if you could actually do anything harmful with it, but I'm being super paranoid right now since I really don't want to be suspended again. Changed all the passwords too, so if anyone suddenly can't get into something let me know. Please check any scripts you're running and make sure they haven't been compromised.

Jon got Persona 3 the other day and I've been dividing my time between playing Digital Devil Saga, watching him play P3, and cleaning the fucking computers in the cafe. Mostly the latter two, since they neglected to put any kind of anti-virus or spyware utilities on the PCs. I installed Ad-Aware, Spywareblaster, Spybot, and AVG on the one I use and got rid of a scandalous amount of bullshit, including an infuriating SmitFraud variant that I had to excise manually. Christ. I'm kind of hesitant to go ahead and do that on every machine in the cafe, since I'm not being paid to do so, but the specter of insecurity just annoys me...

Anyway, Persona 3. Amazing. Even though he has it and he's my roommate and it's available to play at Gamer's Edge at any time when Jon isn't playing it, I'm going to buy it, because it's just that fucking great. I want the collector packaging/OST/artbook and stuff. I especially like the soundtrack; great to listen to, jazzy and catchy as hell, and it combines with the atmosphere/rest of the game to be just ridiculously awesome. Jon described the presentation (interface, music, and whatnot) as classy, and I can't really think of a more succinct way to put it. All of you should buy this game, too, if you like JRPGs.

Little note: Holy crap VJA has gotten lame. I kind of drifted away from the forums as my life meandered in various directions, and occasionally I come back (like earlier today to see if there was any interesting DistorteD discussion, which is what prompted these comments) to find that the forums are basically full of retarded crap now. That place used to be super chill (and there are some chill people who continue to hang out there), but for the most part it seems to have polarized into a group of schmucks who flame indiscriminately in any thread whatsoever and a group of schmucks that overreact to everything and feel the need to argue with the first group at every opportunity, neither of whom are particularly chill. I miss when I could read threads about my goddamn beat games without seeing about two off-topic personal attacks on each page, or (as a specific example) an on-topic and inoffensive post by Zer0 without two or three goofy cocklaunderers quoting some ill-advised post he made on a completely unrelated topic up to like two months ago. Christ, I like in-jokes as much as the next guy, but I'd rather have a thread full of the same GETITS we've been making for years than the web forum equivalent of fucking Freddy Got Fingered.

EDIT: GGRRREERAAWWROORRGGGHH FUCK I just dropped Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows DIRECTLY ON MY FOOT

Been spending the past few days at the gaming cafe that recently opened up just down the street from my house, so that's why I haven't been online. It's fucking sweet; really nice computers, and four pretty widescreen LCDs with 360s, a PS2, and a Wii. Since I know the owner (since high school) and brought in my Cobalt Fluxes, my drums sometimes, Wii games and other stuff I pretty much don't have to pay money for game time (he's making money off my stuff, after all.) Basically, I go here and play video games much like at home, except there are people around and it's like hanging out instead of playing games all by myself.

My life is fucking great right now; got this awesome place to hang out, cool people here, going to school (half-time) next week... Oh, and my mom and sister are living with our cousin on the other side of town so that she can go to the new high school (complicated, has to do with marching band) , so we have the house to ourselves during the week. All I need now is a better job X.x

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1176594643&size=o

FUCK YEAH MY CYMBAL ARRIVED TODAY

As a super bonus, I discovered by lucky accident that setting the module to drum kit #33 instead of #1 causes the rim of my hi-hat pad to trigger in Drummania, so my current problems with the setup are pretty much fixed instantly

1: My video card is too old to run Bioshock, at all

2: I just discovered that my school isn't part of Dell's discount computer thingy, so no savings for me

I really would have liked to save what, 12% on a laptop

And to be able to run Bioshock right now

Well, I'll make sure I can run it on my laptop <3

EDIT: What's a good webhost that doesn't do fucking promotions that you have to opt out of or else you're mysteriously charged $50