For two of the past three nights, I actually do have a good excuse for not posting. Thursday night I was out at UTD playing games with friends, and the last game we played took forever and a half, so I didn’t even leave there until slightly after midnight. Then, last night I was babysitting for the Bambachs (probably the last time I ever will) and didn’t get done there until close to 1:00 this morning. As for Friday night…yeah, well, we watched Pirates 2 on DVD until 11:00, and then I helped my dad connect his new phone to his computer, and then I played some more Wind Waker, and then…
Tomorrow will be my next attempt at obtaining a Wii (I failed on Friday), but barring that and Twilight Princess consuming my soul, Wind Waker and Okami will be the games I work on. I still haven’t tried the final boss of FFX again, but I’ve heard the sequel isn’t that great, so I’m not in a giant rush to get to it. The .hack series should really be my focus anyway, as I have 4 games in it that I’ve yet to beat (and a 5th that I’ve started and gotten partially in to, but I’ll be restarting it when I pick it back up).
Personal - Dallas
If you have nothing to say, that is. The “big” part of my day involved going shopping with my grandmother for toys and clothes for the food bank kids our church gets every year. After that I went by HP for about 2 hours, and then I came back home. Chili’s for dinner, and that just about wraps up my day.
All my gaming time today was spent on Wind Waker, as I might be getting Wii Friday morning if I feel like waking up early enough. Not early as in “camp out in the cold at 4:00 AM” but more like “be there as soon as the store opens”. One I see as being proactive, the other as being stupid. You guess which one is which.
Personal - Dallas
So I tried, and tried, and tried to beat FFX today, but I died, and died, and died on the final boss (I tried 3 times if you didn’t already catch that). My theory on final (really all, but final especially) bosses is that it’s fine for them to be difficult, but you should be able to “comfortably” win the first time through even if you do screw up a little. This is why I haven’t beaten Kingdom Hearts, Metroid Prime, and (almost, but I did win on like my 8th attempt) Banjo-Kazooie. Game developers, leave players with a sense of satifaction, but also with a happy memory and not one where they’re ready to kill the game.
Since I wasn’t having a lot of luck with FFX, I started to play Wind Waker again. My original intention was to play it before Twilight Princess came out (which didn’t happen), but seeing as how I’m still Wii-less, I figured now would be a good time to get it in. Even though they’re not directly related, I still just wanted to go back and play through it again since I never played it again after my original time through (the date/time stamp on my original save is like July 23, 2003 or something like that).
Personal - Dallas
Game. Over. When you’re about 30 minutes past a save point and encounter these two words, you tend to not want to immediately replay the last half hour of your life. Well, maybe other people do, but I know that I sure don’t. While not a great excuse, this can minimally account for why it takes me so long to finish some games.
Hopefully this isn’t the start of a trend, but I’m already looking at getting a new phone sometime next year. While I absolutely wouldn’t mind a yearly upgrade (maybe by doing just 1 year contract extensions?), there are more….productive ways I could be spending my money. I’m a gadget lover, what can I say?
Tomorrow I can’t really go anywhere because I have to wait at home for the pool people to come and replace a light bulb in our spa. You’d think that would be a job that no one would have to be home for, but the switch to turn the light on/off is inside, so at least this forces me to be home (and therefore at least around the games I should be playing).
Personal - Dallas
I decided to search today, and someone else apparently had wanted a countdown timer in their sidebar also! I’ve been tweaking the code (as I did with this theme) to get it to my liking, but this is really exactly what I wanted. Not the way I had envisioned it, but it looks good and works fine, so who am I to complain.
As you can see, I’ve added three dates over there. My birthday (December 20th) and the start/end dates for the spring semester at UTD. Before anyone asks, yes, all those dates are correct. I’d hope I could get my birthday right, and I’ve already mentioned my back to school date, but that last one is accurate. Actually, that might be a lie — it’s only accurate assuming I have an exam on the last exam day. If I don’t (like this semester), then it could be as early as the 27th (the Friday before).
Personal - Dallas
Three of my semester grades are up online, and they are: A+ in Discrete Math, A in Physics, and 100.7 in Exploration of the Arts (either going to be an A or A+, but GPA wise they’re the same). Now, the two classes I’ve yet to receive my grades for are ones that I don’t feel completely comfortable with an A in (especially Government), but since grades have to be submitted by sometime next week, it shouldn’t be too long of a wait.
I watched Superman Returns on DVD tonight, and it was still as good as when I initially saw it (although some stuff did happen a lot sooner than I remembered). I also spent a good 4-5 hours this afternoon working on getting the server set up down in my dad’s office. I’m not completely happy with the stage it’s at, but at least it’s functional for now.
Personal - Dallas
I now have 37 days of no school before I start again in January. No, I won’t be updating this number each time I make a post, but a countdown widget would be kind of cool to have over in the sidebar. Maybe that can be a programming project for me over the break. Maybe…
I’ve already outlined what I plan to do with this month + a week I have off, so I won’t cover that again. What I will say is that I hope to make as effective a use of my time as possible, especially when I’m sitting around bored and tend to just surf forums. Too much stuff I want to do, and unfortunately I don’t think 37 days comes anywhere close to being enough time to accomplish it all.
Personal - Dallas