i want to play final fantasy XI, but it only accepts visa and mastercard. i hate you, square enix.

thanksgiving spending
so much spending of money. so much. let's see.

mario party 5 (GCB) - $49.99
mario and luigi: superstar saga (GBA) - $29.99
final fantasy XI (PC) - $49.99
final fantasy XI hintbook - $16.00
wavebird platinum - $34.99
wavebird platinum - $29.99
PS2 dualshock ocean blue - $22.88
dreamcatcher - $5.38

too many good video games. too many! too many cool systems. not enough money. not enough time. and just when i was getting back into the old ones too, morrowind and super smash brothers.

there's so many other games i want, too. wild arms 3 and final fantasy x for ps2 are each only 19.99. final fantasy x-2 just came out. i want mario kart double dash and prince of persia for gamecube. but they just came out. and greyhawk: the temple of elemental evil was just released as well for PC. for GBA, i intend to buy golden sun: lost age at some point, and fire emblem just came out. it always hurts like a punch to the gut when you see a game you paid 49.99 for priced at 19.99 (kingdom hearts, dbz: budokai, which anyone who doesn't own should buy). that always happens with rpgs like baldur's gate or icewind dale. oh, and for PS1, chrono cross is finally released as a classic, for 19.99. i loved chrono trigger, so i intend to buy and beat that one day too. i was actually worried about that one, some of the best PS1 RPGs are really hard to find and sell for 40 used in most places, which sucks.

does anyone still follow me?

reason for the wavebirds. i'm so cheap. i saw at bestbuy that the wavebird white was 29.99 and the platinum was 34.99. 5 dollars for a different color! i was so angry. but the line was so long that it wasn't an issue. later at the same mall, in electronics boutique, i saw both for 34.99. there was no line, and according to my reasoning, they were priced the same here so i was _not_ being ripped off. plus, we needed another controller if we wanted to play mario party 5 with 4 people at home. so i bought the platinum one. that was yesterday. today, at the target at the enfield mall, i see both wavebirds for 29.99. i buy it, thinking to return this new one from target at electronics boutique, liberating the 35 dollars they swiped from me and giving 30 to the store with the better prices. on the drive home i realized that i had thrown away my EB receipt while attempting to clean the family room (my nieces are like godzilla, but cuter). oh well, looks like i picked up 2 wireless controllers while at home.

i bought mario party 5 in the hopes that it will bring back the glory days of 4 player multi action. we played it some here, it's pretty good. i wouldn't have bought mario and luigi because i just purchased FFXI, which is an MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role playing game, and those suck up your time and charge per month), but mario and luigi is supposed to be much like paper mario, which was behind many of my As turning into Bs freshman year. and if i register my gamecube, mario party 5, and mario and luigi with nintendo.com, i can get that zelda bundle disc!

in case anyone's interested, here's the link. if one does not wish to check out that link, it basically says that one can either subscribe to nintendo power, or register one's gamecube along with any 2 of these 4 games: 1080 snowboarding, mario kart, mario party, or mario and luigi.

so i own all these video games that i do not have the time to play. not to mention all these video games i want to buy so i can play one day when i do have the time. stupid life, with its eating and sleeping necessities and not fun stuff.

i realized, when i came home and saw it on my bookshelf, that i did in fact own neuromancer. and i'd already tried to start reading it, twice. this time i had nothing else to do and a sleeping schedule that kept me up til 4am at the earliest, so i plowed through it. it was amazing! i don't know why i didn't get past chapter 1 the first two times i picked it up. i read half the novel in one night, and finished it the next day. really good. but after i read the last word, i put the book down, looked up, and said to myself, "i don't... the hell??" i have the feeling that the book means something, but i am completely in the dark as to what it is. i even tried reading the afterword, hopign it would provide some clue. nope. someone tell me what the book MEANS.

i always used to behave like a plague when i found an author i liked. as soon as i read a book i liked, i read everything else the man or woman had ever written. like some sort of scourge that just devours a book, and as soon as it's gone, moves on to the next. hmm, the imagery does not translate well from head to blog. nevermind. regardless, i've become jaded. an author has a vision. a world with its own rules and physics and races and magic. with heroic, compelling characters and a tale of epic proportions. but it inevitably begins to suck, as the authors, inspired by the thought of more royalties, explore every niche of their world and dispel all magic and mystery with more companion books and novels based on what were supposed to be minor, supporting characters, and so on and so on. my ranting is incoherent and unconvincing. i'm sure people know what i'm talking about, though. right? i'll try to name examples from personal experience. oh man, and when the spouses or children of the authors start writing books with the him or her, you know that's trouble.
and when they start playing around with prequels, you know that's because they're desperate.

david eddings is bologna. the belgariad and the mallorean and the elenium and the tamuli are all right. that's 2 decent quintologies (or whatever a 5 book series is called) and 2 decent trilogies. 16 books! but no, he has to write belgarath the sorceror, polgara the sorceress, the rivan codex, the min (is that right?) codex, and crap crap crap. nothing sacred. and then the redemption of althalas, i thoguht about picking up, but i read from reviews that it's just another rehased belgariad. lame.

as is brian jacques with his redwall. redwall and mossflower are really good. the animals as people, the rhymes full of clues, and the massive vegetarian feasts were fun at first. but really. how many books has he written now? and they're ALL THE SAME. the plot is the same every time. who told me about that interview with the author of the hardy boys? tao? He just follows the same formula every time and fills in the blanks, like madlibs.

robert jordan blows so much. him and his wheel of time can suck it so hard. his shit is just rampaging out of control and needs to be put down.

terry goodkind has written 8 books so far in his sword of truth series. the first 5 were good. the 6th was a weird commentary on communism. the 7th was from the perspective of a half-sister of the main character, that we never knew existed. both could be cut out from the series with no loss. i haven't read the 8th yet, it only came out recently.

i read book 1 of dune and barely made it through. only half the words in the damn novel are in the actual English language. i bought 2-6 when i was bored and suffered an immediate headache when i opened book 2. haven't read any of them. but his damn son keeps coming out with new books about the stupid houses.

i read books 1 and 2 of the sword of shannara. bad. unimpressive. but he keeps coming out with new books about some fucker named Jerle Shannara. every two months i see a new one out. the bastard.

i just read dragonflight, book one of the dragons of pern trilogy by anne mccaffrey. i'm working on book 2 now. it's good. but i won't even consider anything else by her once i finish this trilogy. there are so many pern books by her that it can't be anything but trash. i really only bought this one because i had to pick 5 books when i joined the science fiction book club, and it was a 3-in-1 omnibus, and i'd heard it was a classic. when i went to barnes and noble today i saw a new book by her and her SON.

i read the icewind dale trilogy and the legacy trilogy about drizz't do'urden by r.a. salvatore. good. then i tried the demon something something series by him, and it was the same book, with different names for the damn characters. some beautiful woman and some massive man slice through armies invincibly. gay. now he's working on some new series with drizz't, i think it involves him killing an army. i just saw book 2 on the shelves today. not interested.

one person who has not let me down so far is orson scott card. i loved ender's game. i loved the continuation of the series that a lot of other people didn't enjoy at all. and i've loved the companion series about bean so far. i'm still waiting for the next one to come out. i also read the homecoming series and the alvin maker series by him, and they're not too bad. not as good as ender's game, but decent.

mickey zucker reichart and her last of the renshai series is real good. i was worried when she began another trilogy that took place in the same world but a few hundred years later. but she uses an immortal to anchor the series and pulls it off really well. and the second trilogy has a purpose; it resolves something pretty big from the first.

as for john irving, all his books draw on each other, and they're all related. but he's so autobiographical i don't find it annoying. and it's almost always funny and fresh. the only book i didn't like was (surprise?) his last, the fourth hand.

to any author who kept his or her work to a single series, thank you.

the reason this is bothering me is william gibson. what else should i read, by him? i don't want neuromancer to be sullied by any inferior work. amanda, any suggestions?

i'm tired of typing, all of a sudden.

catching up
long time since i blogged. the singular reason being morrowind. up until i left for home on wednesday, all i've done since i last blogged is play morrowind. it's funny because this game has been out for a long time. i played it addictively when it first came out on a cracked version i downloaded off of direct connect. but the gaming industry powers that be released a new, game of the year edition with the original game and 2 expansions all for the low low price of 29.99. that ain't bad at all. i bought morrowind with the newest castlevania, PS2's lament of innocence (MSRP 49.99). it's 3d, but it's not terrible. it's actually pretty good. i played that until i died and lost a few minutes of play. that always bothers me, so i installed morrowind and haven't looked at castlevania since. i'll get to it when i get to it.

there are a bunch of games don has that i've been meaning to play. mario sunshine. super smash bros melee. i played melee for a little bit, but playing by oneself in one's room doesn't have the same feel as 4 people playing the older one on n64.

on that note, i whalloped garrett in SSB for n64. he's all right, but he's not a challenge by any means. i won twenty bucks off him in the process. should i feel bad about that? we moved steiner's n64 down to the common room (where it belongs) for the duel, and i'm glad, because we've had a few 4 player melees since then. n64 really feels like the glory days, with smash, goldeneye, and mario tennis.

what else before thanksgiving that's worth recounting?

god, the tuesday before was incredibly bad. i did the written section of my data structures homework, and didn't even try for the programming. that's a 15/25, which really isn't terrible. but i'm sure i could have done the coding if i'd given myself just a few hours. and the signals... i started it with steiner the night before, realized i must be doing something wrong, and put it off for later so i could ask scott about it. that's when i started working on my data structures, and then next thing i know, it's 9:30 in the morning, and jon's asking me if i want him to hand my homework in for me. i did part of 2 problems, out of the 7, and i figured it's not even worth it. eh, that's the 3rd problem set i missed. that's starting to look bad. luckily homework is never worth much... so i check the rubric on the website, and it's worth 30%. 30%!!!! last semester, in signals and systems I, the homework was worth 10%, with 12 problem sets, and the worst 2 dropped. now each homework is worth 3.75% of our grade. that is ridiculous! that's also 11.25% of my grade that i've automatically lost. whoa. ah well, what's done is done. i can't do anything about it now. guess i'll have to pull off a miracle final. not to mention doing the last problem set.

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your mom's the mean!
today is looking pretty good. both my applied math and signals problem sets were pushed back to tuesday, so i have nothing due tomorrow. i read myself to sleep last night with Stephen King's fifth book of the Dark Tower series, Wolves of the Calla. I didn't do any work last night. and this morning i picked up my microfab midterm. i got a 78/100, and the mean looked to be around a 60 :) i don't know how that happened.

yesterday was not as good. i woke up at 7am to work on my data structures assignment due in 4 hours. i managed to do most of half of the programming. i'm looking at maybe a 13/25 for that homework. then i crammed another third of a semester into my brain for applied math. the test made no sense. none. that's because i don't go to class, and i haven't done any of the homeworks that this test was based on. and the test had nothing to do with the homeworks that i reviewed. i seriously spent about 15 minutes contemplating dropping this class. for the remainder of the time, i alternated scribbling stuff and then erasing it because it was wrong, and doodling pictures of sad boys who didn't like taking tests.

at one point, i threw my pencil on the ground and hummed (pretty quietly, i think) a nonsensical doo do do do dooo. the person sitting in front of me turned his head 16.7 degrees to the right, said, SH! and then turned back. it wasn't even a shhh... it was a SH! steiner, catherine, and i were laughing for the rest of the exam. it was pretty sweet.

i finished the cat who walks through walls, and farenheit 451 recently. i was not especially impressed by either. heinlein's books always start out so promising, and then turn into these weird magical orgy stories. i'm not kidding. i don't really know what to say about bradbury. the imagery and the description in F451 were really deep and vivid sometimes. but the rest was just confusing. i do want to read "something wicked this way comes." but that's just because that has to be the coolest title ever.

i ordered saji's with sai last night. really good. and then we just hung out for a while. she asked me who my close friends are here. i had trouble answering that. i'm not really sure how to gauge that sort of thing, anyways. what do you think?

matrix
i just ate a ton of frankberry crunch, and i feel sick. who ever thought something could have too much marshmellows?

i thought revolutions was rather disappointing. so was reloaded. i remember liking reloaded when i left the theater. minus the neo-smiths fight, rave scene, and bajillion slo mo trumpet fanfare jumping shots. then i read some reviews, agreed with what they said, and realized it was pretty crappy. i did enjoy the mathematical concepts the movie played with. when i started at the CFR office this summer, i checked matrixessays.blogspot.com regularly to see what new symbolisms people had uncovered in reloaded. i got tired of reading puffed-up windbags with greatly exaggerated opinions of their own intelligence spout off about "matrix within a matrix" theories pretty quickly though.

revolutions was... all right. the ending was crap. i don't want to give it away, but it's weak. i could've written that. to people who say, you don't like their movie? write a better one! i say, shut the fuck up, jackass. there's a reason i'm paying to see this movie. it's someone else's job to make this movie. their livelihood depends on its success. i should be feeling satisfied when i walk out; i should be thinking, that was money well spent.

the zion scene was incredible. all those APUs fighting even more sentinels. the music, and the heroism got me really pumped. but that could have been in any two-bit action movie. nothing special there.

i read online about all these freaks that say the matrix changed their lives. they swallowed the red pill and are no longer in wonderland like the rest of us. what?? what's wrong with you people? reality's reality. we're here. if your life sucks and you're alone and sad, you really ought to change that. you believe this movie has changed your life because you're desperate to believe that. sitting in front of your computer telling people that they don't "get it" won't make you happy.

and liking a movie that is not widely accepted by the general population does not make you part of an elite cadre. it's a goddamn movie. you are not smarter than the rest of the world because you enjoy a movie. you are not more learned because you bought and watched through the animatrix dvd however many times.

if you want to feel intelligent, go to a library. read a book! stop wasting your life rotting in front of a screen.

i feel like i had more to say. i sort of ran out of steam, though. if i remember any other good points i'll update this post.

they gave me more stuff to do at work, instead of the same old filing business. now i can look up information on the various prospects we ask for money. yay! maybe i should get over there, then... and i was awake at 8:30 today.

bullshit

long weekend. we won the whole tournament at delaware. unfortunately, coach decided at some point that i should have no part in it. it's mildly upsetting. i know i'm not amazing, like krishna, bill, dave, or john (damn, that's a long list of amazing people). but i'm definitely solid. it wouldn't bother me so much if he didn't overestimate some people. stu's really not very good. neither is conner, i think. but i didn't log on to bitch about frisbee or say mean things about people. it just sucks that my weekend is shot when i have so much work, all so i could sit on the sideline and get sick (i'm pretty sure i came down with a cold from not playing all day). i would have been better off staying home or playing with the B team. ok, enough.

i was going to look through blogs earlier, and then i realized that i wasn't much interested in reading some of them. i don't know why. one thing is seeing mary mentioned anywhere, especially in conjunction with marisa, bothers the hell out of me. good lord, that just sucks the fun right out of everything. it's impressive, really. these blogs are getting out of control.

what else. news. not much. i have plane tickets for japan and HK. sadly, i didn't realize this before, but the trip to japan takes pretty much 2 whole days. a ~22 hour flight and a 12 hour time difference means leaving at 6am in the morning on 1/6 won't get me to japan til late night on 1/7. that blows! and my flight to HK leaves in the evening, but the airport is really far away, so that day in japan only counts for maybe half. so instead of the week i had hoped for initially, i'm only spending 4.5 days with makiko. stupid flights were booked up on the 4th and 5th. i'm on the waiting list for those days, so hopefully i'll get a spot.

there are all these people i'm currently not talking to. not all voluntarily. but it's pretty sad. i don't see how to fix any of these, or maybe i just don't see the point. so it goes.

that isn't in reference to anyone, by the way! don't worry.

you are freakin' out (long pause) man. there you go, mara.

i must have watched 8-10 episodes of scrubs today. wow. one thing that's too bad is the show started using pop music that i already know. i liked it when it was weird stuff that i'd never heard of but liked anyways.

i just logged on to say: nothing turns a funny quote (from a movie, tv show, flash cartoon) unfunny faster than when unfunny people recognize it for its juicy comedic goodness and rapidly suck the funny right out of it by using it over and over again.

scrubs, or this entry is boring
i'm at work. making copies. this blows.

i'm seeing matrix: revolutions at 1:15. it better be good.

what did i do saturday? not much. i went to m2m for lunch with tao. it was _beautiful_ out, so we tossed for a while. tao had to leave for lab (ha! sucker) so i went inside lerner to post for more people to come. pine was screwy and not logging me in, so i wandered up to the game room and found !time crisis 3! and !house of the dead 2! time crisis 3 is clearly superior, but the gun was messed up (i just found out yesterday with more careful testing that it's a range issue. one will be fine if one leans real close to the screen), house of the dead 2 was only 1 quarter to continue, and it takes on a special significance after playing so much typing of the dead. so sam wandered into lerner while i was calling up fernando and moser and mike, and i dragged him upstairs, whereupon he became fused with the bust-a-move machine. mike played house of the dead 2 with me (his gun's aim was off, mine was fine), and dave and sai joined us too. we all went out to toss after wasting already too much of the beautiful weather.

joined by more rookies/sophomores. toss, go to wrapp factory (which mary likes much more than makes sense) for a smoothie. mmm... very berry. i'm sure it's got nothing on jamba juice, but one does what one can. wander some more, end up in hogan. help clean by vaccuuming the suite and then leave for home, because i'm not sure if i'm going to see Lost in Translation at 5:15 with mara london mike and sai.

i run into mara on the way home and she tells me i can't come because london can only handle a group of 4 people at the most. um. alright. so i go home and sit around and watch some scrubs. and by some i mean A LOT. that show is incredible. i can watch it for hours without getting sick of it.

i'm waiting around for mara to come back, because i'd asked her on friday to do something with me on this day. and she said i'm going to a movie, do you want to come too, i said maybe, and she said we can definitely get dinner after. so there's me, waiting around. i think around 8:30, maybe 9, mara calls me to tell me she's at hogan watching another movie, and they already got dinner from tomo.

whatever. more scrubs. scrubs good. i watch scrubs until i pass out. not a bad way to end the day.

digital camera, or i don't want my life to disappear forever
it's been a long time. i have a lot to talk about, and a lot i should put down here, for posterity. i probably won't get around to most/any of it. but, i have work tomorrow. hopefully i'll wake up obscenely early for no reason and go in at 9am. ha. and then i can blog there.

i'm definitely buying a digital camera. i've always sort of wanted one. for various reasons. i feel like memories aren't real. what are they? you can invent memories, you can forget them, or you can just ignore them. i don't remember spending every day with jillian, my friend from home, when we were little. i'm sad about that. but there's a complete blank there. how did that happen? i was fairly old; this was around 1st or 2nd grade, i think. that's pretty messed up.

photographs are real. i guess you could say they can be doctored, but come on... i'm not framing anyone (for a crime, not in a photograph. weird that it could mean two such different things). i just want some way to remember my life. i know i will need it when i'm older.

i can't handle a real camera. i've tried. the film, the processing, the albums... impossible. i have bunches of photos still in the package CVS gives them back to us in. and some empty photo albums. and probably some undeveloped film somewhere.

so digital cameras seem like such a good idea. but my computer still has a messed up hard drive. it's going to crash eventually. i could burn all my pics onto cd, but that's also a pain. and they're still not physical, in a way, i want an album full of photos of scenes, places, and people from my life. i just don't want to have to compile it myself.

it's like this summer, when i thought about paying $30 or something for summer access to columbia's gym. i just kept not. and it kept being less and less worth it.

i can't buy a crappy camera. if i get one, i want it to be decent, around $400, probably. and i'd have to buy a better memory card, and maybe a better battery. and what have i got left? 3/4 of my senior year. most of my friends from freshman year i don't even like much anymore. all those dorms, all the views from carman 10 and 47 claremont and woodbridge (shaft here, i guess), all the cool places i've gone, the parties i've been to, the onetime events i've crashed, i've already missed these things.

i remember one rainy night, looking out north over amsterdam from the ec bridge and being amazed by the lights. and every winter, i stare at college walk for hours. these things, i need to save them. why am i waiting?

i promised mary i wouldn't write anything about her, if she couldn't read this blog. she doesn't enjoy me saying that she's a huge fucking bitch. what bothers me about that, is i don't even understand exactly what bothers her. is it me thinking she's a bitch? because not writing about it doesn't mean i don't think it. is it that i might make other people think she's a bitch? that just makes her a bitch!

so i broke my promise here, sort of. but i felt like explaining that. and i'm not calling her a bitch here. and i doubt this changes anyone's opinions of her.

i wish i had a picture with mary. i don't think a single one exists, even from other friends' cameras. for the person who's had the largest impact on the "best" 4 years of my life, that makes me sad, sometimes. considering the time we've spent together, and all the times we've gone out, there should at least be something. but in 30 years, no one's going to remember. not even me. i hope? do i hope that? i'm not sure.

she has a picture of her in pete's lap, grinning at the camera, on her windowsill in ec. in a pretty frame and everything. and i imagine there must be bazillions of pictures of her and marisa. i guess i was just never up there in her life.

yeah, so digital camera. can't let things keep disappearing around me, passing by forever, without making any attempt to capture it. futile, right?

that sounds like the end of the post. but i forgot to write this part. i did the organizations section of my yearbook senior year. the captions for every photograph in my section are _hilarious_! i was so money when i wrote them. i would seriously bring it with me to school, and just carry it around with me to show off to friends. it's that good. but i figure i can sell myself on more than just my yearbook talents from high school.

but this whole thing came up, and i reached my final decision, because i was just looking at catherine's photos of the halloween party. i could think of a ton of great captions for those pictures (i keep writing captain instead of caption. it's instinctive. odd, eh?). but it would be pretty sad to caption (damn, did it again just now) someone else's photos. so i gotta do it myself.

end! long.

something about losing respect for any girl that shows an interest in jess.