I giggled with glee on the last day of work

Yes, I actually giggled. I couldn't contain my excitement when I hopped in my car to head home. Of course, in a week, I'll have gone from doing easy work that I get paid to do, to doing hard work that I have to pay for. Well, at least I'll be able to get a little bit of freedom in Waterloo, living on my own again. Of course this year, I'll have to do my own cooking and cleaning which will consume a lot of my time.

I've been playing Shadow Hearts 2. It is an incredibly good console RPG. It's like they fixed some of the problems that newer FFs have, and added stuff that made SNES-era games so gratifying. Great characters, good setting, oodles of sidequests that focus on different party members and their unique skills, as opposed to ones that are open only at the end of the game. Random battles aren't frustratingly frequent (mind you that can make leveling up very tedious). Overall it's a great game, so props to Midway.

Speaking of games, I was playing Tekken 5 a while ago, and got to wondering why I have so many ideas that would improve it, but none are ever implemented by any game in the fighter genre.

For one, I'd like to see ragdoll physics. The Bouncer does a great job with ragdoll physics, and it looks very natural. I don't like how in Tekken, characters will start their recoil animation when hit, regardless of what position they were in before. Another example would be when a character is hit with a powerful attack that sends them rolling backwards, but they are near a wall. When I got pounded in this situation, my character rolled backwards without going anywhere, since the wall stopped them, but it didn't halt the rolling animation. It's already been done in many other games, so I don't know why the fighter genre is scared of ragdolls.

Another thing I'd like to see is the elimination of the health bar. I'm sick of seeing someone getting piledrived into cement, but being KO'd by a weak kick that barely clips their elbow. I think they should develop a locaiton based system, much like I've seen in Carmageddon. If someone is repeatedly kicked in the right leg, their right kicks should suffer from it. If someone take a boot to the head, they should take a lot more damage then if they got it in the thigh. If they take enough damage in the torso or head, another good shot in the right spot should be the finishing touch, a la Bushido Blade. Being knocked out by leg sweeps isn't realistic -- KO by repeated elbows to the kidney is. Now if Namco would call me up, perhaps they'd think about stuff like this. Tekken 5 is fine and all, and so is Soul Caliber 2, but I think it's about time someone stepped forward and redefined the genre.

Listening to... Tsuneo Imahori - Scattered Rain (Trigun soundtrack)
Link of the moment... I heard and saw this whole event. Very exciting experience.

Gotta catch em all!

1. Pokemon progress
2. Work as of late
3. Lack of poker
4. Dungeon Siege 2
5. New bag and DVDs

1. Pokemon progress

Man, I love pokemon (the game). It's such a great waste of my time. Leveling up is very time consuming though. The pokemon I'm most proud of is my Beedrill. I need to get some grass and water pokemon though. Right now I'm outside the water gym, so some grass pokemon alongside my Pikachu would let me rip through that pretty quick.

2. Work as of late

I'm on my last legs of work. There's a lot of work that I probably could have done before I left if I put more effort into it, but either way I get paid the same, so Kaarlo can find someone else to go move heavy computers back to the board office.

I'm sick of not knowing what to say to people who ask what I'm going to do with my math degree, so from now on, I'm going to tell people that I'm going to be an air traffic controller. Lately, though, I picked up the idea of logistics. Logistics is perfectly in the field of the C&O degree I'm getting, so hopefully I can land a good position plotting out shipment routes some day.

3. Lack of poker

Out of the last five weeks, Ryan and his friends have only played once. Of course, I made forty bucks that night, so it looks like they picked a good week to do it. It doesn't look like they're doing anything tomorrow either. I played with Grant and Adam for cash on two different occasions. Grant won our duel, but I like to attricute it to him getting lucky with the cards. I beat Adam, although he was outplaying me most of the night. One all-in went my way and I got the upper hand on him.

4. Dungeon Siege 2

I downloaded the demo for Dungeon Siege 2 (it was 1.5 GB!), and it's a pretty fun single player diablo clone. It can be played multiplayer, but the single player game is more fleshed out. I've heard that if you want a diablo clone to play multiplayer with, Sacred is the way to go. Turner is supposed to come over tonight with his copy of Sacred so we can play, but I don't know how to contact him. I don't really know where he's living anymore. He's moving in with some friends in two weeks. I hope it works out for him.

5. New bag and DVDs

I went shopping with Turner last weekend, and wound up buying a bag at Bentley. It's an over the shoulder Roots bag. Hopefully I get used to it, and hopefully it's an improvement over carrying shit in my pockets and a backpack. I picked up some blank DVDs from Futureshop. They had a pack of 200 for $50, which is cheaper than I've seen any blank media before. Hehe, I've got 900 GB of blank space sitting in front of me. This has got to last me a few years, unless I decide to back up both my hard drive thrice over.

Two more weeks until Waterloo. I'm oddly looking forward to the drive down, because it gives me an excuse to play Pokemon and sleep for 14 hours. In a way, that's my vacation.

Listening to... Pennywise - Falling Down
Link of the moment... I'm trying to stock up on movies while I can rent them for a dollar each.

I <3 Games

I won a copy of Pokemon LeafGreen on ebay. I'm a little wary because I got it awfully cheap from a seller in China who was selling hundreds of games. He has nearly flawless feedback though, well into the hundreds of dealings, so I can't find a catch. I have a feeling I might find it on a pirated cartridge, but so long as it works I guess it doesn't make much of a difference.

I'm also eyeballing a copy of Shadow Hearts: Covenant ending in two days. After watching some gameplay footage of that game in Gamespot, I've had a hankering to play it. I saw a used copy at EB in the mall today, but it was much more expensive than I could find on eBay, and still only about four bucks cheaper than their new copy instore.

Tomorrow I'm heading out to Chanel's camp for a 'party' for Grant. It's his birthday on the 24th, but she wanted to surprise him. I honestly don't want to go all that much, but Holly twisted my arm. I'm really not an outdoorsy person, and some of the company that Chanel and Grant keep aren't really people high on my friendship list. I'll probably get a dozen bugbites, and a sunburn, and waste two hours of my day driving, but I guess I really don't have much else planned to do for the day.

Lately, I feel as though my vision is deteriorating. I'm not sure if my vision is actually worsening, or I only feel as though everything is less clear since I now have glasses. It'll certainly be a lot better having glasses this year for lectures. Of course, now I really have no excuse for not understanding the material!

I saw a pretty decent bag at Bentley's. It's a Roots bag, with two big pockets under the front flap, and two seperate compartments, one big enough for a binder if necessary. There's also a pocket on the side, which would be a good spot for my cell phone. I think I might wind up getting it, barring a better bag coming along.

I'd also like to go on the record as saying that I hate when people use numbers in place of letters for titles of movies or shows. I just watched an episode of Numb3rs (aka Numbers). Yay for Riemann's hypothesis. It was ok, but all those crime drama shows are the same to me. I hate the 1337-speak in the title though. From now on I'm going to refer to that show as "Numbthreers".

Listening to... Iron Maiden - The Number of the Beast
Link of the moment... Gameplay footage is near the bottom

Does he get a finder's fee?

Adam came in this weekend, and he came over last night. We went to Futureshop, and I was getting ready to buy a GBASP when he convinced me to check out Walmart first. I had much doubt that they would be selling it for much less, but they actually had it on sale for ~$68, saving me about twelve bucks (plus I got to pick my colour!). I was too cheap to buy a new game as well, so I didn't do much other than stare at it all night, and read the stuff that came with it.

Today I went to Cash Converters, recalling that they had two copies of FFTA the last time I was there. This time, however, their selection for GBA games was very poor. I couldn't find anything good, so I headed over to EB in the mall. All of their used games were overpriced, so I didn't get anything there either. In desperation, I headed over to CD Plus, and they had some used GBA games. I found FFTA for $25, ten bucks cheaper than EB, so I picked it up. Oddly enough, I looked through the used CD section for any signs of a Chore cd, and I actually found one! I picked up Another Plebian for ten bucks, but I don't think it's as good as their other two cds.

Hanging out with Adam was fun last night. I polluted my body while he was here though. We had cheeseburgers, ice cream, and some fat breakfast. We caught the majority of House of 1000 Corpses. It was ok.

I might have found a good way to make money and experience in FFX, so hopefully I can get that ball rolling. I started a new game in FFTA, of course, and at the moment I'm trying to get a few extra party members. I'm so used to abusing save states to get new units, and speeding up the emulation to speed through battles.

I hope I can find some good used games now. I'm keeping my eye out for Pokemon, Legend of Zelda, Fire Emblem, and Wario Ware, but I'm sure I've got enough games for the moment.

Listening to... Snapcase - Break the Static
Link of the moment... Things just sound too tinny through the built in speaker.

Is now the time to strike?

Looks like the GBA is going for $80 at Futureshop now (with classic Metroid as well, but I wouldn't play it). On the one hand, I've been waiting for a deal like this at Futureshop, and it's finally here. On the other hand, I don't really need a GBA yet, and it might throw me off track from FFX. I'd hate to stop playing it again, without getting some good time out of it.

I've also started playing Seiken Densetsu 3 lately. I stuck ZSNES and SD3 on my USB drive, and I waste a bit of time playing it at work (only when I'm at Ignatius, since they have XP instead of OSX). That is such a great game. I would love it if they came out with a game that maintains the battle system and character system. There is no single main character, but you pick one of the six available to you, along with two allies, and the main story changes slightly based on who you pick. Beyond that, each character has four final classes to choose from.

Last night was a very good night for me, poker wise. I lost my first ten quickly, then turned my next twenty into forty, and turned that forty into seventy. For those counting, it's 40 dollar profit. I think I'm finally out of last place now.

Tonight, however, no one showed up to play at my house. I suppose it's better than only having only one or two people show up. Grant and Chanel came over. We played a collection of card games. Poker, Asshole, Rummy, and Golf.

I've burned a whole shitload of DVDs for Phil. Unfortunately, I can't seem to burn Trigun and Spiderman for him. The Trigun DVDs won't compress properly, and the Spiderman stuff keeps giving me errors. I'll go on the record as saying that DVD Shrink is a great utility for this sort of stuff.

Another month left in town. Let's hope it is well spent.

Listening to... I Am Spoonbender - The Teeth's Loan and Trust Company
Link of the moment... Turner seems fond of this game. I downloaded the demo, and it gives Diablo a run for its money.