The short week plus bad weather day plus a little bit of procrastination on my end has left me with the biggest amount of homework I’ve had to deal with in a while. Granted, very little of it is actually turned in and graded, so theoretically I don’t have to do it all, but a lot of it is stuff that the practice doesn’t hurt to have.
The breakfast this morning went fine; there was a lot more discussion than there was presenting going on, and it really acted as a way to get new goals for the game to address. I still don’t know exactly what it is that I’m going to be doing, but the overall concept still interests me so it should turn out to be fun.
Personal - Dallas
I’ve over 8 hours into Final Fantasy XII now, and it probably is my favorite one that I’ve played so far (those being 7-12, excluding 10-2). The combat system is definitely different but still extremely good, the license system is a nice concept (but could have used some slight refinement), and the game doesn’t suffer (yet) from periods that aren’t related to advancing the story (i.e. grinding). I avoided reviews so I don’t know what the approximate length of the game is, but I’d guess somewhere between 30 and 40 hours.
Thursday night and today were both interesting and entertaining, but a lot of what happened today was stuff I had already heard/seen before. Tomorrow morning I’m supposed to be up at UTD at 9:00, and then approximately an hour and a half later, I’ll be done with this series of events. Not “unfortunate” events, mind you, as I haven’t minded doing them. It will be nice to get some free time back, though.
Personal - Dallas
Well, school didn’t get canceled today, so I did have classes (the same ones I had my previous day of school on Tuesday). Nothing overly exciting in either of them, but the fun started about 2:30. I come back to my apartment out here for the first time since last Friday, and I reach down to turn on my computer. I hit the power button, nothing happens. “Hmmmm…” I say to myself. I check the power cable, make sure the power strip is on and plugged in, and check the switch on the back of the power supply. All those are good, so I try again. Nope, nothing. “Hmmmm…” I go again. Well, I check the monitor and printer to see if they come on. They do, so I try plugging the computer into a different outlet on the power strip. Press the power button, still nothing. By now, I realize I have a problem.
The story continues (involves me going home, doing some research, going to Fry’s, and getting a power supply tester), but my conclusion is that mu PSU just decided to die. Not really sure why, but it did. So, I’m typing this on my laptop and I have a new PSU on the way to me from Newegg along with the second LCD monitor which I’ve been meaning to buy since last year. Hopefully that will fix my problem; if it doesn’t, then I guess the next part I’d blame would the motherboard.
Personal - Dallas
Apparently overnight the sky gods decided to make every weatherman wrong about the chance for precipitation, so a combination of sleet and snow overnight meant school was canceled for me today. So, instead of spending my time doing productive tasks such as working on the unfinished program for Andrew, getting ahead on homework, or other meaningful tasks, I decided to play video games. I could have played one of my numerous in progress games, but I instead decided to start FF 12, and I’ll freely admit that I’m extremely glad I did; it’s about at the level of Okami on how much it captured my attention today.
I did finally get around to doing some homework, but that was just reading I needed to do for tomorrow. Assuming nothing intervenes weather-wise tonight, tomorrow marks the start of my 3 days of events for my game class. Update, as “always”, will be forthcoming.
Personal - Dallas
I’ve had a headache since about 5:00 this afternoon (probably because I hadn’t eaten anything until 3:00, and that was just a couple of crackers), and even after having dinner and 2 ibuprofen, it still hasn’t gone away. It’s not a “thump thump” headache, but more one of just constant steady pain. I get it, head; you hurt. Now stop…
Neither of my classes at school this morning were overly entertaining, and then after my second class I went down to HP to both deliver a present to someone’s house (where I had the crackers) and then go by the stadium to try and show Coach Gibbins how to use his “digital camera”. I put that in quotes because technically I guess it fits the definition of one, but it’s a .1 (yes, .1 and not 1) MP camera with no true LCD or viewfinder, just a little piece of plastic that slides up to kinda frame what you see. It can store all of 18 pictures, runs on a AAA battery, and if the battery dies or is removed, all the pictures go away. It is also about the side of one of those keychain deck of cards, so for what it is I guess the specs aren’t that bad. Anyway, I installed the software and everything on the training room computer, and he took notes as I explained what to do. The thing that I always dislike about doing something like this is that the other person wants to look at everything I’m doing, but I have to figure out what in the world I need to do first before I can explain it. Sometimes, I don’t necessarily leave with them better off. ;)
Personal - Dallas
So I actually get ready for sleep around 11:00 last night, and at 11:15 I think, “Hey, now is a great time to make a blog post.” I can’t really remember what it was exactly that I got involved with, but I think it was a combination of coding, listening to a podcast, and doing homework that delayed my thinking about it until midnight exactly. So, no post yesterday. Unfortunately, all I can say is to deal with it.
The premiere of 24 was last night and tonight, and while maybe you could argue that they’re just reusing plots from old seasons, the show itself is still absolutely amazing. The worst part is that they show 4 episodes over the course of two nights and then make you wait a whole week for the next one. Very effective in getting you hooked at the beginning, but still so annoying to have to wait for more.
Personal - Dallas
I thought of this Wednesday night after I had made my post, so I planned on making it Thursday. That was before I pretty much instantly gained three events to attend, so this wasn’t exactly on the forefront of my mind. Now it is, however, so let’s discuss why.
Basically, at the price point it’s launching at, it’s by far too much “phone” and not really what I’m looking for in my next PMP (except for the widescreen). My ideal device would be some kind of mixture of the Zune, Gigabeat, Vision W, and Sansa View. Complicated, I know, but I want lots of space, pretty comprehensive codec support (Xvid and AC3 being fairly big ones to me), a good interface, and a widescreen display. That’s not too much to ask, is it?
Considering both the Zune and Gigabeat S (really the same device) fail the widescreen test and the View fails the storage test (only 8 GB), that means my probable pool is the Gigabeat V and Vision W. If I wasn’t so put off with my dad’s Zen Micro, I wouldn’t be so hesitant to go with the Vision W, but it also doesn’t support AC3 meaning I’d have to transcode the audio on the vast majority of my DVD rips. The Gigabeats don’t even support Xvid, so all my rips there would have to be transcoded to something else anyway. Sometimes compatibility is just something you take for granted…
Personal - Dallas
4 minutes, short post. Not a whole lot happened today; after school was over, I preordered some games and then just watched TV for most of the afternoon with the occasional work on my program that I’m writing primarily for a friend. If it’s not icy and cold tomorrow, I’m going to see Arthur and the Invisibles at Northpark, but it depends on how the weather is overnight. Finally, I (in my mind) have this great plan for Sunday and Monday for getting a lot of homework done so I have very little to do next week, but we’ll see how that goes.
See, that post wasn’t so hard to write. Everything you need to know in a nice condensed format. Maybe I should write on a deadline more often…
Personal - Dallas
So I go to my game project class tonight, spend an hour there, and leave with three events that it is “highly desired” I attend, all inside about a 40 hour time window. Next Thursday the producer of films like Ice Age and Robots is coming to give a speech at the conference center at 7:30. All day Friday there is an event going on over in the School of Management that covers a lot of the area surrounding what the game project class is about (games and the military). Then, Saturday morning there is a breakfast at UTD with two of the top Army officials at 9:00. I go to this class once, and I end up with over a day’s worth of stuff to do over a three day period. I think this might be a first.
Nothing else that interesting has happened; I’m done with school tomorrow at 11:20 and don’t have my next class until Tuesday at 11:30 — that’s (just) over 4 full days off for a “three day weekend”. Typically, although not next week, I’ll have almost 3 full days off (Friday at 11:20 to Monday at 10:30) for a normal weekend. Yeah, I think I can deal with this schedule.
Personal - Dallas
So I’m sitting in my accounting classroom before class starts, and I’m looking at my syllabus to see what we’re doing next week. When I read it, I see this: “1/15: NO CLASS” Hmmmm??? Apparently there’s this little day called “MLK Jr. Day” that’s a holiday for us. Im my obsession over how spring break is the “only” holiday we get this semester, I apparently overlooked one. Oh well, at least the surprise was a positive one. :)
I’ve done the calculations, and (assuming no changes to the exam schedule), I’ll be done with my last exam on April 26th. In the process of trying to update my countdown timer I broke something (or rather, it broke itself), so that’s temporarily gone until I can solve that issue. A piece of software can’t show a greater love for a person than unexpectedly breaking and then making them scramble to fix the problem. Sometimes I think computers plan these things out in advance…
Personal - Dallas