Category: Uncategorized

The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap is a very good game, although very short it is full of eye candy and references to old games.

I have turned off the IRC server on my linux machine. #conversatron died a long time ago, I just didn’t know it. I kept going back, but the last few times it was completely empty. This is the first step in what I hope will be the eventual migration of everything off that machine so I can just get a shell account / webhost somewhere and not have to worry about the bandwidth of the DSL.

Once again, there was a third thing that I can’t remember now.

I had an odd experience today in FFXI, yet one that’s not entirely unavoidable and I’m surprised hasn’t happened already.

It was a day of catching up on random quests. I got all sorts of things done that I’d been putting off, and got a few more quests to put into the “forget to mark down, and forget to do” pile. Well, one of these involved getting a Wild Pamama (FFXI’s version of a banana) of an Opo-Opo (Monkey) and taking it to a shrine and yelling out my name. Well, I was taking forever to get the Wild Pamama, kept getting normal Pamamas, so I started getting restless, and looking around. I saw on a webpage that there was a Notorious Monster version of the Opo-Opo that spawned every 2-3 hours one grid space over, so I worked my way over to that area. I came into the room, and sure enough, there he was: Mischevious Micholas. I claimed him, but after I did, I noticed another guy right there.

Well, the fight wasn’t an easy one, but I managed to beat him while simultaneously getting berated in Japanese by this guy. I’m not sure exactly what he was saying but as soon as I replied to him using the autotranslator “(I’m sorry.) (Japanese) (I don’t understand.)” he got very angry saying I had a Japanese name, and therefore must be Japanese. (I go by Hamusutaa in FFXI as well, which I’ve come to regret sometimes.) Ironically, I actually understood that part.

I got the rare drop from the monkey, but didn’t know what to do. Was he angry because he was in the middle of fighting him? No, he was at full health when I started fighting him. Was he just angry because he had been waiting there upwards of two hours and I just waltzed in and grabbed the guy right in front of him? When that happens to me, I get angry beyond words, and that’s sometimes on the Notorious Monsters that spawn every hour or so, let alone three hours.

Eventually it seems like he cooled down… and didn’t necessarily apologize, but at least said that things were okay. I took a screenshot of the entire conversation. You can see my conversation with the guy (Rikiriki), as well as another random guy who was messaging me (Eir) who I thought was a friend of Rikiriki’s, but went “sore ga nan da yo” when I asked him if he was Rikiriki’s friend, so I think he was just a victim of circumstance. You can also see my conversation with Luke (Azalyn) about the whole thing, but there was other stuff going on in the Linkshell chat as well that I didn’t include in the screenshot. And best of all, you get to see my pitiful attempts at communicating in Japanese.

Here’s the screenshot. If any of you who know Japanese can let me know what was said, I’d appreciate it.

I think I’m either going to just sell the dagger to Luke or wait a while to sell it, because I don’t want him to see the Auction House history and see my name there… at least if I wait he’ll assume I kept going back to get it. I don’t want him to feel bad.

So this morning at 7 a.m. I was awoken by a thunderclap, vaguely registered the sound of pouring rain outside, and went back to sleep.

The subject line is something that’s been in my head for a while. I can’t help but deconstruct every song I hear now, and they almost all fit that pattern. Yes, I know the musical theory behind it, and why it’s aesthetically pleasing, yadda yadda yadda, but I can’t help but notice it now.

Luke finally started moving his stuff out of the house. He got his books, tapes and bookshelf, and His TV is going to follow… so I’m in the market for a new TV. I’ve been gravitating towards the Mitsubishi WD-52725, but I want to make sure I know what else is out there before spending that much money.

Two nights ago, I finally got Rank 6 in FFXI. A Japanese player decided that he wanted to try and solo the shadowlord as a WAR75/NIN37, so he, along with a WHM75/BLM37 for backup, and I went into the burning circle. I was just there to trigger the fight and cheer him on. He beat it, too. I finally was able to get my Royal Army Mantle, but I can’t get my Royal Guard’s Fleuret until San d’Oria is in first again. And that hasn’t happened in months.

So, besides the passing of Will Eisner, today is very morbid for another reason. Today is the last day that the majority of my department is in the office. They’re all in for their exit interviews and packing up their cubes before getting laid off / outsourced / (possibly) hired back to the agency now doing the work. People just keep wandering around, saying goodbye to other people, chatting, answering the same questions over and over, and generally just putting a black cloud over the whole area. Of course, it’s also that today is an Ultra-Monday, being the first day back from work in what was, for all intents and purposes, 11 days off — we got Friday and Monday off for the past two weekends, and no one really worked those three days in between.

At least the sun keeps trying to peek out from the clouds every once in a while, or it would be a thoroughly miserable day.

Dammit.

Wake up at 10:30. Get into work at 11:15. No new email since last Wednesday. Get an email from one person I knew was coming, ended up being 10 seconds of work. Wait a bit. Nothing. Eat lunch. Still nothing. Leave at 1:30.

Go home. Log into FFXI. Sit around for a while. At 3:30, I get an IM from my boss about something, followed by another IM from someone else. I VPN in to find two other emails about stuff to do.

W. T. F. If you have work for me, let me know before 3pm. I can’t just sit around for five hours with nothing to do, waiting on standby.

Aside from FFXI, not much else is happening (Ha! Psyche!). My Magic: the Gathering losing streak continues, though I continue to play. I finished watching The West Wing season 3, and I want more. I also started watching From the Earth to the Moon, but one of the DVDs in the set I was borrowing got corrupted, so I only saw the first half.

The Yahoo! Year End Party was nothing out of the ordinary. I knew even fewer people than before, and there wasn’t a DDR machine this time. (I assume the machines were lent by an employee who no longer works here, or something.) It was even in the exact same venue as last year. Also, we have yet to get the traditional gift from the founders, and the year is starting to be close to ending.

I need to buy a calendar.

Yes, I haven’t posted in a while. I suppose I should make two posts, as most of what I’m about to talk about revolves around FFXI, so I’ll put all that here, then put the real life stuff in another post.

More FFXI economy and levelling jibber-jabber follows

I think I might have saved myself the trouble of being in the same bus as a drunk person about to throw up by not taking the last bus. We’ll see.

Wow, two weeks, huh? As usual, I don’t update much when not much happens. I’ve been going on with the same ol’ stuff, bought and beat some new video games, still have some others to beat.

The most random thing happened a few days ago. I got a random AIM from some 15-year old. (I assume she was 15, because she had 2006 in her IM name, which I assume to be her high school graduation year.) She used a bunch of exclamation points, said some incomprehensible thing about investment, asked my a/s/l, then when I stopped responding, assumed I went to sleep and said she’d send me an email. The email was a Nigerian scam email.

I made a comment in IRC about this, and was kind enough to submit the quote to bash.org… :p

I spent most of the four day weekend at home, didn’t do anything for Thanksgiving this year, although I got quite a bit done around the house. I’ve been watching Full Metal Alchemist, I’m almost done with it. It’s been weird.

I got another batch of CDs today from amazon.co.jp. Thunderbirds 2086 soundtrack! Joy!