The past couple of days I’ve thought about making a blog post at night, but as it’s quite apparent that never happened. Also, between now and Sunday there are only 2 nights (tonight and Friday night) that I’d even have a chance at making a blog post. How to solve the problem? Just go with the novel idea of making one in the morning :)
Tomorrow is the first real HP football game of the year (the scrimmage last Friday doesn’t count), so I’ll be in Waxahachie with the JV team until who knows when. Friday there’s not a varsity game as we play at SMU on Saturday instead for the Tom Landry Classic. Now is when it’s going to noticably less convenient not living in HP, but I don’t think it’ll pose too much of an issue.
Recently the debate within me on whether to play FFXI or WoW has resurfaced (since I’m not going to dedicate enough time to both to justify paying both the subscription fees at the same time), but around when I postponed WoW in December I said that I was going to wait for the expansion. That’s been pushed back from July (which was the release date when I made that comment), but I’m still going to stick to that and devote my current playing time to FFXI. Of course, in the last month I think I’ve logged on once or twice, so maybe just playing more period should be my first goal.
I might as well give an update on my life at UTD here as well. The Far Futures project has been put on hold until possibly October because of a funding issue, but all my other classes are going along as planned. Of course, I like some (Government) more than others (Physics), but there’s no real way to get around that. I will say that I’m extremely happy that after this semester, I never have to take another physics class again in my life. :)
Personal - Dallas
Well, I didn’t fall any more madly in love with UTD over the summer, but today was the first day back at school. Unfortunately, this means two things: 1) I’m going to start having homework again after 3.5 months off from school, and 2) My completed games list for the summer doesn’t get to become any less pitiful. Sly 3 just was too much fun to go back to grinding in FFX, but I’d like to actually get both completed this weekend. Right, like that even has a remote possibility of coming true.
Personal - Dallas
Let’s face it, some entity was bound to end up with it sooner or later, and I guess Google really is one of the better choices. Now, if you care to know the reason behind this, it’s because in just over 2 weeks I’m finally going to have to give up my email address I’ve had for 6 or 7 years. There were lots of choices for my replacement address: Hotmail (yeah, right…), Yahoo (the likely winner if did it not require the use of a 3rd party program to access your mail in Outlook), self-hosted on one of my domains (would require me to keep ownership and hosting on the domain), or Gmail (the winner). But no, Google’s ownership does not stop there.
Google has many, many other services online that they offer, say for example…..Google Calendar. Using something like this would allow me to manage my schedule in one central place and then view it from a number of different computers. This could also be accomplished through an Exchange server, but since I have yet to set up a local server here at my house, this was the next best alternative (even if I did have to download a plugin for Outlook to make it work). Supposedly I’m also supposed to be able to publish entries back from my client to Google Calendar, but I just never made it that far. Are we done? I think not…
Since I will be using multiple computers throughout the week (a minimum of 3: dekstop at UTD, laptop, desktop at home), I’ve often thought how nice it would be to keep my Firefox profiles synced across all 3 computers. While my solution was just to have a file server that kept my profile directory synced, Google has an extension that does pretty much exactly what I want. Granted, I haven’t installed it on any computers yet, but it’ll probably make the to-do list in the next day or two. So, Google, have fun owning my soul.
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Mindless leveling is the main part of RPGs that I can’t stand. That’s why I’ve yet to beat the final boss of Kindgom Hearts (I die too quickly because I’m not strong enough), and that’s why I took a break from FFX right before the final battle with Sin. I’ll hopefully get around to beating it before school starts on Thursday, but for now I’ve started Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves. It’s a whole lot like the 2nd one (which isn’t a bad thing), but it actually wasn’t the first game I started to play. That goes to Genma Onimusha, but the button layout on that game was done pre-Controller S. Basically, I got about 10 minutes in the game and can’t fight well enough to survive along with my wrists starting to hurt because the “X” button is what’s used for attack. Since I wanted to go ahead and play Sly 3 also, I saw no point in fighting with that game, but I will get back to it eventually.
Completed Games:
- Final Fantasy IX (PS1) – 5/21
- New Super Mario Bros. (DS) – 7/5
- Daxter (PSP) – 7/9
Games in Progress:
- Final Fantasy VIII (PS1)
- The Rub Rabbits (DS)
- Final Fantasy X (PS2) (Start: 7/15)
- Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves (PS2) (Start: 8/13)
Personal - Dallas
Well, at least the part that I’m involved with is. Today we finished the filming part for The Heretic, so now all that’s left is editing and adding in the sounds/voices. Granted, that’s a lot of work left to do, but nothing I can directly help with. If I hadn’t been doing this for the past month or so, my time would probably have just been spent watching TV and playing video games, so this was probably the more productive use of my time (although it did drastically cut down on my completed video game list). It’s weird though to be involved with a big project like this and then not have to be concerned with all the post-production stuff. Very relaxing, but just very unusual for me.
School starts in less than a week for me (the 17th), and I’ve gotten all my books with the exception of my physics lab manual. Yes, school for me starts on a Thursday again; no, I don’t know why again (although my guess is because of UTD’s 2 day Thanksgiving break). Next Tuesday or Wednesday I’ll be going down to HP to talk with the trainers, and then assuming everyhing works out as planned, the first football game I work is on the 31st. That gives me a full week of no football in between starting school and the first game.
Personal - Dallas
Two weeks from yesterday marks when I start back to school, so I don’t have that much of a summer break left. I’m still working on (but getting closer to finishing) FFX, and I think at that point I’ll probably start Ratchet: Deadlocked or Sly 3 just to break the RPG string. I also could have sworn I hadn’t beaten Prince of Persia: Warrior Within either, but apparently I did, so Two Thrones is also a potential choice for me.
Next week (maybe Monday) I’ll go and get all my books for school, and I’ll also be finishing up work on The Heretic. That’s been really fun to do over the past few weeks, and luckily the timing works out well so that school won’t interfere with it at all. I also need to run up by HP one day before school starts (although I’ll probably do that the Tuesday or Wednesday of the week I actually start) to talk with the trainers about football. The first game I’d work is on the 31st, and while I’d guess everything would be the same as last year, I’ve learned from experience that it’s always a good decision to find out.
Personal - Dallas
Ok, so I wake up this morning, play around on my comp some, go get some lunch, and sit down in front of the TV. Nick GAS is on, good channel, so I watch it for a while. Then, it came about time for a new hour block to start, so I hit the arrow on the remote to bring up the bar at the bottom of the screen to look at what’s on other channels. What’s this? Instead of the typical Comcast (ugly) bar at the bottom, there’s a nice sleek 2-row blue bar down there. This isn’t the TV with the Tivo (and the Tivo one looks different anyway), so what’s going on? Let’s open the menu…same blue theme, all nice and sleek, and even a video preview in the corner. And then I saw it…
Time Warner Cable has arrived!!!!! No more Comcast to deal with!! Apparently overnight a new interface was pushed out to all our boxes (I confirmed this by sprinting downstairs and checking the TV in my parents’ bedroom). Now the only remaining issue is getting rid of this devil A/B line system, and I’ll be a happy person again. Well, I guess I’m happy now, but I’ll be happier. :)
Personal - Dallas