Posts Tagged ‘Videogames’
This is version two of the blog, which currently contains 133 published posts. To some extent, this blog represents the creative excesses of a design enthusiast who is somewhere in the process of applying to grad school, working at a law firm and resides in the Financial District of New York City.
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D-day, more commonly referred to as the June 2009 LSAT Administration, was yesterday. It didn’t go great, but it could have been worse. I’m signed up for September (e.g. a retake), but it’s possible, depending on the curve of the test, that it may not be necessary. I’ll know for sure in three weeks.
On the upside, until I get my score back, I’m not going to worry about it, and the ’09-10 applications for law schools have not been posted yet, so for the time being I basically have my life back. As such, I now have the opportunity to complete some of the things I have been unable to enjoy thanks to the onus of needing to study for the LSAT.
Chief among these concerns is the completion of Diablo II. I’ve been meaning to finish this game for a while now. I can’t remember who recommended it to me, but ever since I found out that Diablo III was in development, I’ve been wanting to complete it so that I can be caught up by the time DIII is finally released. (Hey, I never claimed to have lofty goals. Sometimes an itch just yearns to be scratched.)
Oh, as an aside, while I’m on the topic of gaming, I should note that Monkey Island is back, bitches. I’ve been waiting patiently for this day for almost five years, so I’m pretty damn happy. Telltale is even re-releasing the game that started it all, except with improvements (e.g. 1080i vs. VGA graphics).
Secondly, I can finally finished some of the books that I’ve been reading, I’m about part of the way through a bunch of random books, but have as of late been trying to spend any free time reading more academic material in order to prepare for the LSATs. It’ll be a relief to read stories again. Yay.
Lastly, I want to finally catch up on keeping in touch with people, figuring out random plans (trips, weekends, etc.) — that sort of thing. You know, things involving people as opposed to multiple-choice questions. So yeah, that’s what’s up with me. I don’t think I’m conveying this very well, but I’m actually incredibly thrilled to be (potentially) done with the LSAT. I’m…copacetic.
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The eye of the storm. Life has ground (grinded? I don’t think that’s a word) to a brief and much needed halt as I wait to move northward. Graduation was hectic, as one would imagine, but honestly I’m surprised how quickly it ended. I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to a lot of people, but I did get some pretty solid goodbyes in and that was good. I actually think the last person I talked to (other than my roommates) was this random guy named Jimmy, and we talked about how one becomes a man (him, not me — otherwise it would require talking about awkward surgical procedures. <– bad joke). Not how I imagined my time at Emory to end, but somehow appropriate.
Anyway, the wedding was really nice and the whole thing took place at a really romantic beach-side resort in San Diego, CA. They are a pretty chill couple so the wedding took out a lot of the unnecessary pomp and circumstance that tends to make them really tedious; the whole ceremony took all of — 15 minutes? Yeah, shortest wedding ever, or so I’m told. Just walking up the aisle, short sand ceremony, him: I do, her: I do, kiss kiss, the end. It was fun to see all the family again though it was a bit unbalanced (her side: 42 people, his side: 7, haha). Overall, it was a really well-planned wedding, I think.
Well, I’m back at home now catching up on some reading. I’ve been trying to get through Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, but I’m finding that it’s just a little bit much with all the spirituality and stuff. I mean, the parts when she is on her bathroom floor writing and telling herself it is the voice of God pouring forth from her hand (and this happens multiple times) — yeah, color me skeptical. Sorry.
I’ve had better luck with a collection of short stories by David Sedaris – I guess they’re technically essays, which is useful to know if you’re ever looking for his stuff in a bookstore – which I switch to each time the Gilbert book starts to get on my nerves. I’m still determined to finish it, but it’s definitely testing my willpower.
Finally, los videojuegos. I beat Fable yesterday. I actually really liked it. My sister’s friend Marc says it’s too short, but I thought it was a good length if you do all the optional sidequests (which I am wont to do) and take the time to find everything and try out different options. Lessee, I’ve also played The Movies (gets very boring around after 5 hours or so), the Sims Castaway Stories (waste of time, non-fun, WAY TOO LINEAR, gets boring after the first hour and a half), and I’m about three-quarters of the way through Neverwinter Nights. Neverwinter Nights is very long. I don’t know how long I’ve been playing but I’ve been trying to get through this game since prior to finals. Looong. But quite good. I think more hardcore gam3rz would appreciate the length/depth more than I do.
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My semester has been off to a slow start — I’ve only done a few assignments and no real studying yet. I’m bracing myself for the semester to get into gear, but in the meantime, I’ve spent this weekend apartment hunting online, doing crosswords, dabbling in homework and, most of all, playing Quest For Glory: So You Want To Be A Hero? —
This, of course, leads into the point of my post. Okay, so, one of my favorite things about old school adventure (well, in this case adventure/RPG) games is that they always have the most deliciously terrible puns. And, just when you didn’t think it could get any better, in this game, I came across a grammatical pun, which is just that much worse. So here goes:
What’s the difference between a cheetah and a comma?
A cheetah has claws at the end of its paws, and ….
(wait for it…)
(waaaait for it….)
A comma puts a pause at the end of a clause!
HAHAHAHahaha. Anyway, I just thought I would spread the joy. Also, I need a new game to play now that I’ve beat Quest for Glory — albeit with only 492 out of 500 possible points. Those last 8 points are driving me crazy, but oh well. I am obsessive, but not quite obsessive enough to spend hours trying to get 8 points. I think. Maybe.
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I want a new computer. Let me explain.
For starters, I got this computer (HP Pavillion zd7000 line) a little before my freshman year at college and I really love it. However, a lot of the letter keys are rubbing off at this point, the left screen hinge has begun to crack, and now my optical drive is acting up. But fine. I can deal with all those things. Afterall, I’ve basically left this thing on for about 3 years straight with the exception of carting it around on about 15-20 plane flights, going through about 3 complete reformats, installing all number of programs and downloading at a rate of probably I’d guess 1.5-2 gigs of data per day for various reasons.
Unfortunately, the graphics card it’s equipped with is this NVIDIA GeForce4 Go bullshit that is compatible with absolutely nothing. The only thing it can handle are games designed prior to, like, 2000 (I’m guesstimating, but you get what I mean). I actually like a lot of old games though. So, fine. However, the OS does not like trying to play those games that were designed for Windows 95 or anytime before that. It makes it kind of unstable and there’s a lot of crashing, restarting, debugging, running emulators, setting profiles, setting CPU cycles, etc. etc. So basically, there’s rarely a game that actually plays all that nicely on my computer. Grr.
Anyway, so I mentioned previously that I bought Psychonauts, and I found out after spending 3 hours getting it to install (my CD-ROM drive kept screwing up – I think the lens may be a little wonky) that I couldn’t play it because it’s incompatible with my stupid graphics card. Grr. Furthermore, my third favorite game of all time (Curse of Money Island comes in second) is Civilizations III. I was very, very excited about and following the development of Civs IV up until the point that I discovered my graphics card could, once again, not handle it.
So fine, I wouldn’t mind shelling out some cash for a new computer except — I don’t want to get another computer with XP because in a couple of years I’ll wish I had Vista. Secondly, I don’t want Vista until Service Pack 1 comes out because I don’t want to mess with the general buggy-ness that is Windows. SP1 is slated for the end of 2007, which means no matter what I have to wait until then.
That’s where I am. Honestly, I’m not that upset except I really wanted to play my game. :( Woe is me. What do I do?
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Packing up my apartment took, like, four days — I’m not even kidding. What a pain in the ass.
But anyway, I’ve been dealing with a lot of organizational things recently so I haven’t had much time to blog. (Furthermore, let’s be honest, no one really wants to hear about how I decided to organize my office supplies anyway.) I also went ahead and reformatted my lovely computer so now it’s running a lot faster, but that meant reorganizing all my files and programs and getting updated applications, etc.
Now that my computer is up to par, I can do things like play games! I bought Psychonauts, a Tim Schafer game (he designed Grim Fandango which is my favorite game of all time), except I can already tell I’ll get sucked in if I start and I think I might need to rejoin the land of the living for a while. Hmm. What a predicament.
Okay, well, that’s honestly all that’s new with me. Most of my grades came in today and I was pretty shocked that I got an A in Business Law. I’m pretty sure I did the math and unless I totally aced the final, I thought I was going to get around a B+. So either I did really well or she curves like a madwoman. Good stuff.
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A while back, I did a project for JRNL 311 (Electronic Communication) where we had to choose a topic, report on it, and build a website for it, along with Stein and Mcmillan. Anyway, Mcmillan and I revisited the Center for Puppetry Arts – our topic of choice – this past weekend along with Dave and Singer, which was actually quite fun. We watched Tales of Edgar Allen Poe (last time we watched the Velveteen Rabbit). We couldn’t take pictures inside the show, but here are some from the museum. There’s also more on the project website.
 
Anyway, afterwards we all went to the Majestic, which is this diner that Dave is obsessed with. It was, however, actually quite good. I’ll try to get a picture of it next time cause you have to see it to understand.
Oh, and one of the IT monkeys at work introduced me to a new game called Plasma Pong which seems a little too addicting for me to install on my computer right now. Nevertheless, during the next break…maybe. It’s like pong, except you can shoot out or suck in plasma with your paddle, and the game has a pretty impressive rendering engine for the plasma for any of those die-hard dorks out there.
In other news, I watched one of the most depressing movies ever. I was looking for a fluffy Korean drama-ish type movie. You know, just some silly characters in some ridiculously cheesy setup. Anyhow, I ended up watching Sad Movie (yes, I do realize that perhaps the title should have tipped me off, but try to work with me here), which stars Tae-hyun Cha (My Sassy Girl). I mean, the description I got from IMDB just said it was about some people struggling with their relationships.
Anyhow, it turned out to be like a Love Actually from hell. There were 4 pairs of people, each with a different type of relationship. Except, whereas in Love Actually everyone had issues, worked through them and then was happy, in Sad Movie, they all have issues, work through them and then miserable things happen to everyone! So depressing! Anyhow, the moral of this story is: Sometimes, things are more obvious than you would think. Lesson learned.
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For a long time, there was a Container Store ad that would play on 106.1 KISS FM in Dallas, Texas that had circus music in the background. Then, there’s be a pause and the voice would say “I see we have more time” — and then the ad would start up again.
That phrase is kind of what I feel like right now. After deciding to ditch j-school, as corny as it sounds, it feels like a world of possibility is open to me again. For starters, I finally had time to finish part one of the WordPress Plugin Tutorial that I started working on over winter break. I plan to have two more parts to it, but hopefully someone will find what’s there useful.
I’ve been having lunch – and we have, like, hour-long lunches – at least twice a week with my roommates. And I’ve checked out a bunch of restaurants as of late, which is great. I discovered that I rather like Indian food. We’ve ordered from Udipi (South Indian food) a couple times, but one of the sales reps told me I should check out Mirch Masala (North Indian food). Apparently, North Indian food has more meat and South Indian food is largely vegetarian, so if you like meat then North Indian is the cuisine for you. (The reason for this is because South India has more vegetation due to its proximity to water, whereas North India relies more on livestock.) Anyway, he was right and it was delicious, though the service was mediocre.
The do, however, give little keychains with to every customer, which I thought was kind of cute.
But anyway, we also had the Top Reps dinner on Wednesday, where we take the three reps who have made the highest amount of sales out with all the business managers to a fancy dinner. We went to a restaurant that we have trade with called Sala. I ordered crab enchiladas and duck tapas, both of which were pretty good, but not great. The restaurant definitely chose style over substance. However, I had a lot of fun and it was a great night. I also think it really “recharged” the reps to get back in the office and sell some more. Pictures of the my food and the restaurant below.
Meanwhile, I have rediscovered Tetrinet, which is, I suppose, a kickback to my high school days. We spent an excessive amount of time playing Tetrinet in class after exams were over during senior year. It’s not the healthiest of habits to restart, especially now that the Wheel Online Redesign team is fully underway, as is my role in heading the PR department for my marketing class. But everyone has their vices, right?
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My parents aren’t big fans of turning on the heater because they think it wastes electricity. Nonetheless, when it finally hit 27 degrees (which is very cold for Texas), they finally, finally deigned to turn on the heat. I’m now back in Atlanta, but not before experiencing some of the “Winter Blitz” – as the media seems to be calling it – that Texas is enjoying. Everything was iced over yesterday morning so the roads were dangerous. On the way to the airport, we saw nine different cars that had either been in an accident or had simply spun off the road.
I took this chance to mess with my camera (though it seems mean to blithely take pictures when someone’s already having a bad day), though I was taking pictures from inside the car and the windshield was dirty so the color’s a bit muddy. At one point there were three stranded cars (two in foreground and the white truck in the background) that were visible at once, so that’s what that is.
My flight was cancelled due to the ice, so I had to catch a later budget flight with AirTran but I still got back in time to have dinner with Wheel people. :D One of their friends brought back a bottle of absinthe (tastes like licorice) from when he was studying abroad last semester, so we tried some of that while playing Gears of War (xbox). Random, I know. I quite like the color of absinthe, but beyond that it’s pretty much like normal alcohol. There’s mostly just myths associated with the drink.
I also saw Jane, my ex-roomie, who’s back from Freiberg! Yay! Finally! And I’ll be going out properly tomorrow so expect many more picture while I learn to use this thing.
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