Rob

09:20 am: Machines!
I lol'd.

http://www.poe-news.com/forums/sp.php?si=31&fi=000054282&ti=1001049834&pi=1001049902

(Edit: link wasn't working so copy / paste)

01:50 pm: Yakety sax
I just want to reiterate here how great the YTMND soundtrack is. It's over 300 megs, but it's mostly stuff you really should have anyway.

Furthermore, I would like to reiterate how dirty I feel after playing an MMORPG for a few days. Damn you, Silkroad.

06:26 pm: First, some people decided that George Bush just plain Didn't Like Black People, or at least poor people. Then, people started thinking that it was his fault for diverting manpower to Iraq that could have helped in Louisiana and instigating a deadly bureaucratic conglomeration. And after that, it was just the incompetence of some guy he hired. Now, it appears that that guy is putting the blame to the Louisiana government. So far, every protest on this matter I've heard from politicians rests on the presumption that he's guilty of something, and none of said protests have made much sense thus far.

So yeah, I honestly forget what my point was when I started writing this, aside from the fact that blame seems to be steadily moving downward, and will probably bounce back up some once it hits Mayor Nagin. But shit, people, don't listen to entertainers when they talk about politics.

06:02 pm: It's either real or it's a dream there's nothing that is inbetween
Someone is old! But whom?

(Also: score for the Snatcher tie-in.)

02:33 pm: Daicon III & IV
I might be 24 years too late in seeing them, but holy shit are these ever great.

11:32 pm: Raking
Earlier today, I was making a pile of leafy branches in the yard, with a rake that was far too small. Every once in a while, a big clump of branches would get stuck in the rake. It didn't pose much of an impedence to the actual raking itself, but it gave me the same feeling that a big piece of food stuck between my teeth would. Logically enough, stepping on the branch and pulling it out of the rake gave me the same feeling as flossing.

09:45 pm: I think I've officially reached the point of the vacation when I can't wait to get back to Berkeley. And not a moment too soon, either.

05:08 pm: OBJECTION
Having to peer review essays from my history class at Skyline College has taught me that I was a fool for ever complaining about having to use footnotes in high school research papers. A little bit of translation: whenever I write "examples?" on the paper, what I mean to write is "I'm calling bullshit on this whole damn paragraph".

I started some groundwork for a new game, this time a whole lot more complex than Falldown. I can safely say, now that I'm not such a bum about wanting to mess around with game programming, that this is the best thing ever.

12:32 am: To paraphrase Calvin
I'm almost done with my history term paper. All I have to do is write it. Next weekend should be free for the debut of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which is pretty much guaranteed to be the Best Thing Ever until the DVD version comes out and we all get tired of it, Equilibrium style.

I really feel like I need to get out and into some natural light before I go crazy, except that (1) I'm stuck doing this paper, (2) I'm in Daly City, and the weather is currently fluctuating between Shit and Really Shit Even For Daly City, and (3) the paper is keeping me from going anywhere much further than San Francisco, which isn't a whole lot better. I really can't wait until this weekend is over.

01:02 pm: I finally got the Falldown program I was writing working the way I want it. It's a bit scarce as far as graphics go, but I'll worry about that later; I have all sorts of studying to do for summer school this weekend. And quite frankly, I can't decide on how to go about finding a library for mp3/ogg support or rigging some sort of background (probably by using methods from either Puzzle Bobble 2 or Cameltry). I'd put it up for download, but I have no accounts I can use to host it at present, and I don't really feel like setting one up now. Other than that, though, I'm extremely happy with it -- particularly the fantastic Mersenne twister random number routine I ended up implementing.

11:00 pm: The story thus far: A few months ago, I attempted to pick up FF3 for a nostalgia-charged playthrough. To my dismay, I was not nearly as interested by it as I thought I would be. The entire thing had become too mechanical; there was really nothing left in the game that I hadn't done and redone over and over again back in the day when it was fashionable to do so. This, unfortunately, left only the plot. Not that that was bad by any means, but I became somewhat disillusioned upon realizing that the dialogue had, in fact, established what was more or less the standard for fanfiction.net. So, with nothing really holding me in, I put the game down and didn't look back.

Yesterday I discovered that an amalgam of hacks had been compiled into a monster of a patch over at this one website. I've been playing through it, and it's been pretty fantastic so far. There's a full changelist on the site, but it doesn't really do the whole thing justice. Getting the patch and playing at least up until the 3-party moogle fight puts the whole thing into perspective more than anything else I could mention, but suffice it to say that the Sabin scenario will keep you occupied for quite some time.

Current status: just died to Dadaluma and his one-hit-kill dirk throws, quitting for the night.

11:03 pm: I have come to the conclusion that programming is not something I would like to be doing for a living. Well, really, it hasn't been so much that as the fact that doing a lot of programming reminds me why I dislike doing it extensively. Not that I hate programming itself or anything, but my mind just isn't used to keeping track of so many variables all at once. In any case, I should really be dividing my time spent programming into much smaller chunks -- I keep succumbing to a "just one more thing" mentality, and before I know it, I've completely lost track of what I was trying to get done in the first place.

So yeah, that's enough programming for today. And probably most of tomorrow. Summer school is about to make off with a lot of my time, and ABA Games just released a little number called Gunroar, which I'm currently downloading.

10:26 pm: Summer school starts tomorrow. Luckily, I haven't completely squandered my free time up to this point: I picked up a good deal of C programming over the past few weeks for one (mostly from the surprisingly detailed tutorial at www.howstuffworks.com). And probably some other stuff that I don't remember right now.
Yeah. Other stuff.

12:28 am: This entry is going to be shorter than I would like it to be, as for some mysterious reason, my internet connection has been shot for the past few nights. Usually only at night, and not completely (otherwise I couldn't be posting this), but there is certainly a leeching neighbor or something that's totally screwing with the signal. And this makes me do more useless crap while I wait for it to get back up, and by now I'm pretty worked up about the whole thing.

Anyway, thanks for all the birthday greetin's and stuff. If anyone wants to do something over the weekend, use the phone; if I'm on AIM at all, it won't be for long periods at a time.

10:28 pm: Tomorrow is my 20th birthday.

Rock rock on.

12:16 am: As was prophesied: the obligatory Star Wars Ep. 3 post
Yes, it was a good movie. No, I don't think it was nearly as good as episodes 4-6. And yes, General Grievous was totally rad and spiffy and sounded, at least to me, like he belonged in a Tartakovsky cartoon. And I, being the huge Puppetry Enthusiast that I am, actually felt that Lucas's oft-repeated spiel about "not being able to do certain things without CG" was completely and utterly justified (aside from the CG baby thing. That was just shoddy). I also feel all warm and squishy that they totally ripped off the Gantz cycle, but I guess it's only fair, considering that Gantz ripped off the lightsaber first. Sort of. I'm looking forward to the volume where they have to hunt down a large and threatening Ewok boss, though.

11:23 pm: This summer, I plan on taking a history course at Skyline college and volunteering at a hospital somewhere in San Francisco. Normally I would be repulsed by the very idea of not slacking off the entire summer, but I guess bumming around Berkeley the week after finals has done me some good. Shame on the dorms for kicking everyone out right after finals.

Anyway. Before all that starts, I have to get in all my favorite Daly City activities. Namely eating at In 'n Out and going to Century 20 with whoever can be rounded up. And, of course, the obligatory visit to Serramonte, even if it's just to eat fast food tacos and look at cheap-ass kitchen appliances at Target. Seriously, that sandwich maker was the best 7 dollars I've ever spent, and I feel like I could use a blender now. Or a coffee maker. Or some sort of deep fat fryer. Anything under $20, really.

Cafes in Berkeley are great and everything, but deep inside I crave a return to the food courts of my youth.

09:57 pm: Too much shame
A running log of shame from my old Foothill dorm. It amuses me to no end.

What shame will befall them next?

11:07 pm: I just realized that I haven't been taking nearly enough interest in anything that I do. At least, not during the middle third of this semester. And now I'm kicking myself for it, because I realize it's been holding me down ever since my second semester at Berkeley. I've started to care way too much about my grades, which apparently is among my greatest fears (right behind disease-carrying monkeys).

But no more. Tomorrow, I'm going to go to early lecture, conjugate the hell out of my Russian test, and see about getting some sort of job, volunteer or otherwise, at UCSF for the summer. And I'll drink coffee before physics class, just in case.

08:54 am: Congratulations are in order
Mark says that Al Gore is making a television station in San Francisco. A television station for the internet generation, as he put it. I sort of think he's making it up, but I don't know. It just seems to me that Al Gore may be at that time of life where he would like to start a television station in San Francisco.

And thank you, Wet Pets Pet Store, for attempting to rhyme the word "dogs" with "scorpions" in the rap in your commercial. That is just great.

(Edit 4/6/05: Information on the Al Gore thing is here. Sounds like a cross between TechTV, government access, and a toned-down ebaum's world to me.)</a>

Redundant edit #2: Google satellite maps kick ass. I can totally see my house from here.