I’ll get to last night (and my pathetic excuse for a post) in a second, but first I want to discuss Alpha Male, a UTD theater production that I went to go see tonight for extra credit in one of my classes. I think the closest thing it can be compared to is Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge (the weird take on A Christmal Carol that I saw in New Orleans 3 years ago), but even that made more cohesive sense than this production did. I got that it was a political/social critique over the government controlling us with technology and stuff like “big brother”, but beyond that it was just this giant mass of ideas and metaphors. Basically, I’m fine with writing a paper over it, but I’m extremely happy its only for extra credit and not 5 points of my grade in that class.
So, yesterday…I think my post last night probably qualifies as my shortest one ever. If you look at the timestamp though, you’ll see that there wasn’t this large segment of time in which I had to write stuff, and I was quite aware of that when I was typing. The game was a blowout (as typical for 17 of our last 18 games), and had the game gone about 15 seconds shorter, it would have been 49-0. Next week we play Poteet (not West Mesquite, they’re actually our last game) at Hanby Stadium, so that means JV plays at home (which in turn means I’ll probably have Thursday off).
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49-6. Come on, other teams, at least try to play against us. Please??
Now of course that I’ve said this, if we get our butts kicked next week against Poteet there will be the idea that I “jinxed” us, but I just don’t see that one happening.
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I won’t argue the fact that during the day I waste more than a little time doing stuff like mindlessly browsing sites, forums, etc. when there’s work done that I should rather be doing. This weekend, I think setting up some type of schedule will be good progress toward training myself to be more dedicated. After all, dedication is what I’m going to need to succeed in this endeavor. Oh yeah, I’m not talking about school here by the way. This is about dedication to playing and beating my game backlog.
Basically, my games fall into 3 categories: single player PC games that can be played only at either my house or here at UTD (depending on which computer they’re installed on), console games that by default have to played at my house, and then handheld and MMO games which can be played at either location. MMOs, however, are really just a time sink, so limiting the amount of time spent playing FFXI and WoW would be beneficial. This means when I’m at my house I should focus on games that can only be played there, and when I’m here at UTD my time should be spent on handheld games and any PC games installed on this computer (which probably won’t be many).
To be honest, there are some games that just won’t get played at all. I tend to preorder games based on previews and not wait until the reviews of the game come out, so I’ve ended up with games such as Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness which isn’t highly regarded amongst the gaming community. That means it’ll be pretty much at the very bottom of my list. Then I also have the situation where with the Pokemon games, I’ve bought both versions of essentially the same game (i.e. both Ruby/Sapphire, and even both Fire/Leaf which are really just remakes of the original Red/Blue). I’ve never even beat a Pokemon game, but my collector habit has made me get every single one of the “core” games up to this point (and also many of the spin-offs, including Channel…don’t ask).
Basically, if I don’t do something proactive, this issue is never getting resolved…
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As kids, we all have dreams about what we want to become when we grow up. These jobs are normally exciting, like a movie star or maybe even the President, but in reality this rarely ever happens. I’d bet that almost everyone has shared one idea of what they’d like to be, though, and I can identify it also. Being an astronaut.
With the latest space tourist having gone up to the ISS, she has been writing a blog about her experiences up there. Having been reading this over the past few days, I started thinking about how cool it would be to personally go up into space, and then even maybe onto the moon or Mars. Of course, science fiction includes giant space stations and inhabitable bases which aren’t a reality right now, but they’re things that probably aren’t too far off into the future. Once it does become a reality, if I have the money, I’d sign up for a trip in a heartbeat.
In my current life, though, I played go meet everyone that I needed to today. I picked up the copy of the game document at about 11:00 and spent about an hour total starting to read through it, then at 3:30 I went by Dr. Linehan’s office and found out the current status of everything. The project is a go for the spring, so there will be a class running which I’ll effectively sign up for through the Independent Study process again. In about 3 weeks there’s going to be a meeting to reorganize everything, and I’ll be invited to that also. After reading over the complete document again and finding out that work was going to start on it soon, it reminded me of how much fun I think this game would be. Considering that one of the primary goals of the game is that it has to be fun so people will play it, I think that everything’s on the right track currently. :)
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I stand corrected. Coach Harris emailed me back today and does want me to go with him to Terrell on Thursday for a single 6:00 game. Good thing I played my cards safe and set up the interview on Friday rather than Thursday. After I got that email, I actually went ahead and planned out the rest of my week in Google Calendar. This was something I was planning on doing since the beginning of the year, but Outlook 2003 has issues subscribing to an iCal online, so I just haven’t bothered with it. I may aim for a (private) solution hosted here, but so far this works just fine.
Tonight we had our family “party” for people with September birthdays at our house, and as a result I’m home right now. Because of that and my physics lab this afternoon, I haven’t made any progress with my game playing (although I did play Diablo 2 for about 10 minutes and managed to die). I’ll be able to play FFXI tomorrow afternoon, but everything else will need to wait until Friday afternoon or the weekend. I don’t necessarily want these games I have left to play to be significantly shorter, but having 36-48 hours days wouldn’t hurt.
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By slightly after noon today, my schedule is essentially so full that I can’t make any advance plans for the rest of the week. Today I had to go home after my last class to wait for a furniture delivery (except my mom called and said she was home, but I still had to go get all my stuff I didn’t bring out). Tomorrow I leave here to go back home immediately after my physics lab because we’re having a “party” at my house (read: family all comes to our house and we eat dinner). Wednesday right after my first class I’m meeting my CGD teacher from the spring to borrow her copy of the Far Future design document so I can better familiarize myself with the decisions made so far. That afternoon at 3:30 I then go and meet with Dr. Linehan to discuss the status of the Far Future project and see if anything is going to happen with it this semester.
But wait, there’s more.
Thursday there’s then the chance that I’ll be heading to HP immediately after my last class to go work football games. I won’t know for certain until probably Wednesday, but my guess is that I won’t be working Thursday games for another week or two until UIL ineligibility rules kick in (apparently that might be an issue). Friday I then of course have the Varsity game, and I need to correct something here that I said previously. This week we play Terrell at home, and we play West Mesquite away next week, not the other way around. This actually worked out well because the Mary Kay person wanted to interview me earlier than Monday, so I’m going there Friday afternoon at 2:00 instead.
Luckily I have very little homework or studying required of me this week, as there’s not a whole lot of spare time for me to fit that into.
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Today our first physics test was given to us online with a due date of Tuesday at the beginning of class. It’s 5 questions, primarily conceptual (i.e. all variables, no numerical calculations), and I hate it. 3 of the questions weren’t too bad, but one I didn’t get for over an hour until I started working with numbers to see a pattern (and I’ve yet to start on the last). Granted, I love the fact we have 2 days to work on it instead of 75 minutes, but that still doesn’t make me like it anymore.
As I’ve set aside Sunday as my homework day since the start of school this year, I didn’t have time to play any games this afternoon. Tomorrow afternoon I have to come home though to wait for a furniture delivery, so that will provide some playing time. I’ll also be home on Tuesday for a family party we’re having here, and then Thursday assuming no away football games. Hey, I’m not arguing. :)
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Today I spent a significant amount of time playing three separate games: Diablo 2, Final Fantasy XI, and Okami. None of these really “overlap” in any gameplay areas, which is why I think I enjoyed the time I spent playing each of them. Diablo 2, as long ago as it came out, I’ve still never beaten due to an unforunate “glitch” a couple of years ago that meant I would have to replay about 2/5 of the game. Okami is of course new, and FFXI is an MMO that is just a major time sink. Now off to play at least one of these again before I go to sleep tonight, possibly two.
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So I get home this afternoon, start eating lunch, and UTD calls me. A lady from the IPP (internship) office is on the phone and says something along the lines of “Mary Kay has seen your resume online and has requested an interview with you”. Ummmm….ok?? Then, it sounded like she said it was for a position in their advertising department, but in actuality it was their IT department. That cleared up a little bit of the confusion.
I beat Ratchet: Deadlocked this afternoon and started on Okami. I’m only slightly over an hour into the game (and that’s not even that far, just the intro to beginning of the tutorial save point is about 25 minutes), but so far it’s awesome. Graphic style is extremely unique, gameplay is fun, and the whole brush element is pretty cool also. I should have been finishing up my last two physics homework problems, but I have tomorrow for that anyway.
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I’ve gone over this topic numerous times before, but I shall iterate it once again: I have way too many unplayed games and not enough time to play enough of them concurrently. I will be the first to admit that, yes, this problem is entirely my fault, and yes, the majority of unplayed games I have I probably shouldn’t have bought in the first place. That’s a problem that I’m slowly dealing with, however, and not the main point of this post anyway.
Today I picked up Okami, a game that’s pretty much being classified as one of the PS2s last “must haves” and the best non-Nintendo alternative to Zelda. Of course, this means I want to play it as soon as possible instead of making it wait in the piles of the aforementioned unplayed games. However, I currently have 2 (well, arguably 4) PS2 games in progress at the moment: FFX and Ratchet: Deadlocked (the other two are We Love Katamari and Kingdom Hearts (yes, still)). Since Ratchet is a game with a falrly quick single player campaign, I started playing it this afternoon and got to where I think is immediately before the final boss battle. This means with no football game tomorrow I should be able to finish it up and start Okami.
To cover the state of the rest of my current gaming world, I’m playing Neverwinter Nights and Diablo II on the PC (along with some FFXI thrown in for my MMO of the month). I think I still have Conker to finish up on Xbox, and on Gamecube I still have Metroid Prime (been on the final boss battle for who knows how long). And we won’t even go into all the games I have that I want to play, but through self-restraint I haven’t started in order to avoid starting them and then quitting a couple of hours in when I move onto the next game.
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