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To Do List: Or, O Hod, I just want to take the apron off.

So last night’s sleep was something akin to an exersize in futility, even though I went to bed remarkably early. On the other hand, I think it was my body’s way of making sure I didn’t sleep late. I had to get up early this morning to go cash the money order my mom sent me-…

Let’s back up for a moment here: Every year, when my mother sends me my Christmas, she’ll send treats. Fudge, haystacks, whatever. Well, this year she decided she wouldn’t because she knew that if she cooked all this stuff, she’d want to eat it, and she’s trying to shed a few pounds. As a result, she sent me a money order in advance so that I could go out, by the stuff I needed, and make it myself. Which is totally cool, I don’t mind that.

So I cashed the money order and we went shopping for groceries for the stuff I needed, along with whatever we needed for the house. We left at 9:30, got back at about 10:45, which was good time in my book. Groceries put away, a brief bit of holiday cheer, and then it was time for cooking. I made 7 Layer bars first, then shredded up a mess of chocolate and almond bark. Did Ritz PB crackers dipped in the chocolate bark.

Tomorrow I’ll do the almond bark, make the Muddy Buddies, then onto the peanut butter fudge. We might be getting a ham and if we do, I’ll probably cook that too if we can get a decent cut. Christmas, I’ll also be making the Broccoli Casserole because if I do not, my life will probably be forfeit.

Well, it’s official:

I am now, technically speaking, a college student.

Today, the roommate and I went up to AACC where I filled out my application and put forth my classes. I spoke with financial aid and now I just have to wait for FAFSA to send the school my info.  I’ve also called ECTC(my old college, East Central Technical College) and left a message with a registrar to get in contact with me, so I can see about getting a copy of my transcript mailed up here. I’ll also have to go back later this week and take my placement/evaluation test.

I have plenty of time, however. Classes for spring don’t start until January 21st, so I basically get to play the waiting game until then.

In Retrospect:

I wish that I could write as well as I used to be able to, with the frequency that I have now. Some people might be shocked to know that, to know that I write often. I do, constantly, it seems. It’s just that I don’t write anything that I deem worthy of putting here.

The truth of the matter is that for as much as I love to write, I’m remarkably wary of doing so in a public venue. I mean, no, blogging is one thing. I’m talking about stories, snippets of ideas that float through my head. I’ll have to sit down however, and see if I can’t either put up old stories that used to be on Rulihe…or write a few new ones. The idea of the latter scares me a bit.

WHARRGARBL

I have spent the past hour or so over at the garden of eden, backreading all of Eve’s posts.

Now, there are several reasons for this.

1. I’m always looking for dirt in which I can use to traumatize Eve with. It’s a hobby.
2. It was pointed out to me earlier that I don’t keep up with my reading. This is a true statement, and I need to get into the habit of keeping up better with my blogroll and who’s on it.
3. Eve is a fascinating person, albeit a tad bit disturbing. Then again, so am I. I don’t have a lot of room to talk.

It’s funny because even though I have technically known Eve for many years now, I really don’t know her very well. We’ve always touched base shortly and then gone our seperate ways–either I’ve left AOL or she’s found some MMO to bury herself into. Mind you, it hasn’t been until recently that I’ve had the intelligence to, yanno, put her on my BL on aim. We don’t like me for my intelligence though, now do we?

Over the past couple of weeks, however, I’ve had the distinct pleasure in mindfucking her so badly that I thoroughly expect to get smacked just for making this post.

On the other hand, I know that Eve is one of those people I can always torm–I mean, commiserate..with, when it comes to shitty RPers and horrendously made profiles in DM.

I mean, isn’t that what friends are for?

A Brief Post About Games.

So, outside of replaying Chrono Trigger, the past few weeks have found me playing a few games online. While I generally get bored and tired with stupid little web-based games, I’ve found these to be charming and endearing and definitely interesting.

Funny Farm is an awesome word association, leap-of-logic sort of game that took my roommates and I quite a few days to finally finish. Expect it to take time–you will NOT finish it in a day unless you cheat.

Auditorium is a game I Stumbled onto this morning that instantly delighted me. It’s challenging and music based, which kept me playing it a while. While it doesn’t take a genius to figure out how to play, it is rather difficult.

notpr0n is not a game I’ve been playing recently, but is a game I have played. While some people might argue that notpr0n isn’t a game at all, I disagree, and list it here because it does deserve recognition. If you have played it and enjoyed it, you might want to look into getting a copy of Missing: Since January and it’s sequel, Evidence: The Last Ritual. They’re like notpr0n in that you often have to look things up on Google, but are, in fact, a cohesive game. Very awesome.

Hark. I think I just heard a 9 1/2 inch homicidal dick just land on my doorstep. <3

Edit: I was wrong. ;_;

An Exchange:

Me:

Hi Mom,

You know how we were talking on the phone the other day and I said that I really didn’t have much I wanted for Christmas? And how a few weeks ago you mentioned how I hadn’t asked for anything really ‘cooky’(your words, there)for a while? Well, I’m about to ask for something.

A long time ago when I was rather young, I, like most young girls my age, saw David Bowie prance around in tight pants and big hair whilest watching Labyrinth. Thankfully, I was young enough to not pay attention to the tight pants part but I did pay attention to something Jareth(the character, that is), did.

Contact juggling. You know, the part where he does the really neat stuff with the clear sphere? That’s contact juggling and it’s something I’ve been interested in ever since. Apparently, with practice, it’s not too hard to learn, is great for hand-eye coordination, and most of all, it’s good exercise for those of us suffering from Carpal Tunnel syndrome, something I occasionally see signs of.

So here’s that one amazingly insane, cooky gift request from me for Christmas.

http://www.sparklingcitymagicshop.com/shop/product.php?productid=16612&cat=389&page=1

Yep. You got it. I want a 3.5inch sphere of acrylic that costs $35.00.

Amazingly, this is one of the cheapest one’s I’ve found. Some of them can get as pricy as $50, which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me quite frankly; Technically speaking I could just melt down a lot of press on nails, what with them being acrylic and all. For that matter, did you know that apparently, you can make a shiny ball out of mud? Mud, can you believe that? Where was this information when I was a kid? :( I feel as if I’ve been severely robbed of what could have been potential awesome at a remarkably young age.

Mud.

Ahem. I digress. So yea. That’s my one insanely bizarre Christmas request. I’ve obviously been slacking in this department, allowing you to fall into a strange sort of holiday ennui. Ennui. Just sort of rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?

Love,
Lauren

Also: If you noticed the timestamp of this email, it’s correct. 4:26 a.m. Good grief.

My Mother:

That's what I get for asking....OH WELL!
I know that I am going to HATE myself for this...but...technically...
to juggle...won't that require two of them?

I could only giggle at her, honestly. She’s so hysterically funny, even when she’s not trying.

Et tu, Brutus?

This isn’t about betrayel or assassination though. This is about language. I was stumbling around on the internet today and I came across www.lang-8.com. If this is something that everyone already knows about and I’m just hopping on the bandwagon, sue me. Otherwise, this is fascinating.

The premise is simple. People trying to learn a new language write journal entries(or whatever they want, really) and people who are strong in that language come along and correct you. See? Simple. But it’s remarkably interesting and to be 100% honest, hysterically funny at times.

It’s also provided me with hours of entertainment so far and a sense of awesomeness. I’ve been helping people with English. That’s cool. Go check it out.

A Few Notes:

First of all, it’s far, far too late for me to be awake. As my roommate has recently lost her job, she is no longer sticking quite so strenuously to her previous sleep schedule. What this means is that she just went to bed less than an hour ago. I have a gut feeling this may not end well for her or for me, for that matter.

I said that so I could say this: Today I was Stumbling on the internet and I came across a really awesome article about polyphasic sleeping. This is something that I’d never heard of before and I have to say, it makes for a very interesting read.

The concept is that instead of sleeping 6+ hours a night, you begin sleeping in short, 15-20 minute bursts about six times a day, resulting in around 2 hours of sleep per day. By doing this, you force your body into inducing REM sleep the second you fall asleep. Medically speaking, REM sleep is the only required phase of sleep the human body needs, and you get about an hour and a half of it per night.

Few people have successfully managed to do this for any extended period of time, due to a lack of personal discipline but I have to admit, it’s really, really fascinating, medically speaking.

I told you that so I could tell you this: I sat down today with my roommate and her mother and we looked over the course book for the college, discussing what I would take and how. I’m pretty excited about this, I have to say. My decision to go into medical transcription and/or coding is based around the fact that it’s work I could do from home and it’s also something I just find fascinating. I love the medical field but I don’t think I could really bring myself to actually be a nurse–I’m just not social enough for that. Whereas medical transcription is something I could do from my own home, on my own time.

Prior to moving, my mom tried to push me towards the path of a similiar career, court reporting. At the time, it just wasn’t something I was interested in. To be honest, I’m glad I stuck to that decision. Medical transcription is definitely the choice I’d rather take. Today, as we were talking, my roommate asked me if I was sure this is what I wanted to do and I said yes. This is not a decision I’m making based on the fact that, “Oh, I can work from home.” This is something I really have an interest in, as I find the medical field amazing, but know that actually as a nurse is something I would be incapable of handling from a mental standpoint.

Some time next week, she has to go to the college and I’ll be going with her to register and speak with financial aid, along with seeing that I have to do to get my transcript from my previous school. Several of the courses, I can take online, which is a nice bonus. Others, I can either take at the high-school, local campus, or up at Arundel Mills.

I’m really pretty excited about this and when I told Mom, she was very happy for me. I’m getting to that point where I want to do something for me, not for others. It’s taken a while for me to get to this point, but I’m glad that I have.

A Revolution in Gaming: Chrono Trigger

Eleven years ago, I was living in South Carolina.

It’s a good way to start this post. I was young and smart, but not very popular. I didn’t have many friends, but that was alright by me. Savvy with a computer, I spent more time online than anything else, more interested in chat rooms than boys and sleep overs.

My mother and I were living with her boyfriend at that time; He was an older man, who already had two grown sons. He also was in the possession of a big screen television. His youngest son had a Super Nintendo hooked up to that television and it was through this machine that my life was changed irrevocably.

I recall, with great distinction, that one night we went to Blockbuster Video to find some movies to rent and I browsed the video game section as I often did. That particular evening, something caught my eye. It was a box with an image on it, and two words that, from that point forward. were forever etched into my being:

Chrono Trigger.

Blockbuster rented games for five days and for the next five days, I was incapable of sleeping. I stayed up until five in the morning, playing this game. Never, in the whole of my life, had I been so taken in by a game. Sure, I had played Mario and Zelda plenty of times. I was no stranger to video games. But nothing could have prepared me for the magnificent story that Chrono Trigger unfolded into.

That’s what I was a sucker for. A book could have the most unappealing cover in the world, but as long as the story was good, I was ready to give it a shot. Chrono Trigger was the most engrossing story I had ever seen and to be honest, still to this day, it ranks as still one of the best stories ever. Of all the movies I’ve seen, of all of the books that I have read, of all the games I have played, few have captured me in a way that Chrono Trigger did–and still does.

In this day and age, there are few people, especially young ones, that can say that have read a book or seen a movie that really changed who they are and it might sound ridiculous to admit it, but Chrono Trigger defined the person I would become. It was the first RPG that I played. Playing Chrono Trigger set in me not only a standard for future games that I would play, but RPGs in general. I really began to take a deep interest in gaming after it because prior to playing it, I had never really considered video games as anything driven by a story. It’d always been: Kill enemies, rescue princess. To me, there was no hook, no bait for playing a video game for any extended period of time. Suddenly, I became aware that it was possible for games to tell a story. I played a lot of RPGs after that, though few did to me what Chrono Trigger did.

Chrono Trigger also made me get into online role-playing. It was because of one game that I met tons of people, many of which I still know, two of which I now live with. I would never have met them, I would never have moved. I would probably never have started to write as vigorously as I do now. I would never have grasped that good stories can come from so many difference places, some of which you least expect.

While many people tout Final Fantasy III and VII as the best RPGs of all time, I disagree. Nay.

Today, as I booted up my freshly downloaded rom-copy of Chrono Trigger and as Crono put on Marle’s pendant to follow her and the game’s main theme started up, I got goosebumps and I started to cry.  I suddenly felt not only 15 again, but capable of doing anything. The shit with school, the shit with no one in the house having a job, none of that mattered.

For the next few days, I’m going to get help from a Frog, save the princess, lose her again, race wth a sentient motorcycle named Johnny, butt heads with a handsome, brilliantly scathing Magus, run around with a scantily-clad cavegirl, kill dinosaurs, fly on an airship, only to wreck it, turn it into a time traveling airship named Epoch, destroy the world, die, come back to life from the awesomeness of time travel, taunt some would-be nuns, save the world, save my Mom…and still have time to get the girl.

This is what gaming should be. Gaming should not be frustrating, gaming should not be chore. Gaming should be about not giving a shit to what’s going on around you, so engrossed in a story that you can’t put the controller down–not in fear that you’ll get headshotted, but because if you do, you’ll miss a line. You’ll miss a note in Magus’ theme and that might stop your skin from getting goosebumps(Mine does. Every time I hear Magus’ Battle Theme, my skin just tries to crawl off me).

This is Chrono Trigger.

An Update of Not-So-Massive Proportions.

The past few days have changed a lot of things around the house, and while I will not get into the massively minute details, I will try to fill in what I can.

Late last week, my roommate found out that she was getting laid off. Now, we knew it was going to happen by the end of the year, but she did not quite anticipate it happening this early; She’d hoped to at least last until the rest of the year. Her last day of work is technically today, and while she’s glad that it’s over with, she’s surprisingly nonchalant about the rest of it. She’s not worried about money; I don’t quite understand it, but there you go.

She also got her new laptop late last week, something she’s been wanting a while. It’s probably the last big purchase that’s going to be made for quite a while.

We sat down this weekend and hashed out my financial aid whatnots, for going back to school. I still have every intention of going and I’m still looking forward to it. If all goes well, I won’t have to pay for anything and may, in fact, have a little money left over; The roommate’s recent check from FA was for about 500$ and it’d be nice to have another one, should we need it.

Thanksgiving is Thursday and I’m going a surprising amount of cooking this year–Devilled eggs, broccoli casserole and homemade mashed potatoes–I may even make them garlic. The roommate’s mother is coming over to make stuffing and yams(bleh) and, of course, turkey. Oh, and fudge was made too. I’m tempted to beg for a jar of marshmellow cream, so I can make peanut butter fudge too; Lord knows we’ve got enough peanut butter.

Critical Error:

I have made a decision, one that I haven’t talked about with anyone but my mother and my roommate, and one that I certainly haven’t written about, so here goes:

I’m going back to school.

That wasn’t so bad! But…yes. I have decided that it’s high time I got my ass in gear, where my life is involved. Seeing as I’m currently non-income, getting financial aid shouldn’t be a problem, and several of the classes, I can take online.

I’ve decided to go with Medical Transcription, for the time being. There are several reasons for this, first and foremost being that I can do this from home. That’s a big clincher for me. When you tack on my quick typing skills, I’m a shoe-in for this. Thankfully, it’s also something that I’m actually interested in–have been interested in for quite a while. I’ve always wanted to either do Medical or maybe Insurance claims-style transcription work.  Every time I look for jobs in the area, the local hospital is looking for transcription workers, so…I have a feeling that this will pan out rather well.

Procrastination: Or, O hod, why can’t I just get shit done?

So, sitting in my ‘drafts’ folder, there’s this big ass post that I’ve been working on for over two weeks. That’s right. Over 2 weeks. The sad thing is that the post in question isn’t one of great controversy. It’s not too terribly hard to write. It’s a multi-review of several of the games I’ve been playing lately. But I just can’t quite bring myself to finish this post. It’s not like they’re the reviews I did for Spore–they’re not hugely detailed. They’re not a big deal. And yet, every time I see it sitting in my drafts, I sort of cringe and put it off.

But the fact of the matter is that a great deal of it has to do with the fact that I’m nervous that I’m going to type all of this shit out and no one is going to want to read it HOORAY for that, but…

–You know I started this post at–…according to WP, 12:13 a.m. on the 7th. It’s not even the 7th yet, wtf. :( I’m not even going to finish this post. I don’t like it anymore and it can go to hell.

It’s politics, bitches. Get over it.

This is going to be one of those posts in which I start talking about something serious, but then might possibly sort of drum down to video games. I’m not a serious person and I really don’t have adult, serious conversations. So while this may start out sounding witty, don’t hold your breath on it remaining that way.

As some of you may be aware, last night was the first and only VP debate. Now, first of all, I’m confused as to why that is. Maybe it’s something that’s only happening this election, I don’t know. I’ve never really kept up with the whole Presidential BS, and so this is the first time I’ve ever watched them. I guess I sort of got a bit interested in this running for the following reasons:

1. My roommate is living/breathing this running. It’s all she does: Read about politics. Which, you know, hey. That’s great. If you want to keep up with the times, more power to you. It’s nice having someone in the house that I know I can go to and question, if I have something I’m curious about, in regards to the political/economical state of the world right now.
2. This country, as we currently know it, is in a state of remarkable disrepair and I, personally, blame GWB for that in it’s entirety. From our economy to our current foreign relations, this guy has screwed us royally, and this will be his last year in office. The new President that’s elected will, hopefully, change the way shit works, and we can get this country back on it’s feet.
3. While I do it in the utter privacy of my own mind, I am a patriotic person. I understand in full the countless people that have died so that this country can have the freedoms that it does. While I am discontent with the current situation of this nation, I am proud to be American and I am eternally grateful to the men and women, of every race and color that came before me, that have sacrificed as much as they have, to see to it that I live with the freedoms that I do.
4. This is a sort of ground-breaking running: We’ve got a black man, Barack Obama, running for President, we HAD a woman running for President, Hillary Clinton, and we now have a woman on a ticket for VP, Sarah Palin. This is one of those elections that’s interesting in that it’s a lot of ‘firsts’ for this country.
5. The woman on the ticket for VP, Sarah Palin, has proved to be a complete moron, and there’s nothing I love more than someone being a complete idiot, with the passion that she does, on public television. God, it’s great.

So last night, the roommate and I sat down to watch the VP debates. I didn’t know much about Palin, outside what little research that I’ve done, including watching several clips of the interview she did with Katie that made her look like a box of damned rocks. I knew nothing of Joe Biden, going into watching the broadcast. Absolutely nothing, which was actually a good thing, IMO. This isn’t a review, but more of an opinion of what I saw, while I was watching.

Joe Biden: This man came off as remarkably polished, professional, and yet personal.  He was articulate, well-spoken, intelligent, and yet not so intelligent that I didn’t understand him. Sure, when he started getting into the policies and big political words, I didn’t always follow him. Otherwise, he struck me as experienced(as he obviously is!), and yet understanding of many parents out there in the world, both single or married, with children who worry about what the future holds. I think he might have stumbled here and there, but when he found his footing, it was rock solid beneath him and he didn’t waver for a second. That reassured me in a lot of ways, that this guy not only meant what he said, but knew what he was talking about. This is the kind of guy that I would not hesitate to walk up to, and ask questions about politics. I know he would give me straight answers because he’s ridiculously experienced and yet I know he could explain things without baffling me. That’s a good thing.

Sarah Palin: To be honest, I really expected this woman to just stumble all over the place. While I have to say that she didn’t–she managed to get out complete, whole sentences, you see-that didn’t change my opinion of her. She seemed to have safety zones; Areas that she stuck to, no matter what. There is a word in the political world called ‘pivoting’. What that means is how smoothly one steers a conversation in the direction they want it to go, from topic to topic.  Sarah Palin ‘pivots’ as if she were driving a sportscar that runs on blocks instead of wheels. There were several of the questions asked that she simply didn’t answer. Either she directly ignored them or didn’t understand the question, or went back to a previous topic. I think I was most horrified when, after being asked what her ‘achille’s heel’ was, she pointed out her strong points. As if she didn’t know what an achille’s heel was. Part of me wanted to laugh so hard and yet the other part was absolutely terrified. This woman might be the Vice President–and let’s face it, John McCain has cancer. He’s 72 years old. There’s a big chance that he might die during his term. This woman will become President. That scares the hell out of me.

She also tried to pull her folksy, Goofy, “Well, gawrsh” sort of talk, and I personally found it a little insulting. You can explain things to people in a simple way, without making people feel simple. That was the vibe I got from her, that she was trying to talk up her ‘hometown nature’, and in the process, kind of made it sound like she was, in fact, saying, “I’m not smart like everyone in Capital Hill because I come from a backwoods town, so don’t expect fancy words from me.”  That totally rubbed me the wrong way.  Does that mean she’s saying that people from small, backwater towns can’t go to school, bust their ass, and learn how to talk like the big boys? I cry bullshit! Maybe I just read into it the wrong way, but that’s how it felt to me.

At one point she even stated, point blank, that she didn’t want to talk about something. When asked about global warming, she stated that she didn’t want to discuss it’s cause. I was beyond myself. Look, princess, if you become VP, there are going to be times where you’re going to talk about shit that you’re not comfortable with. Sorry, but it’s true. Not answering people when they have questions, no matter how controversial or taboo the subject may be to you, is not going to endear you in people’s eyes. If nothing else, there were FAR better ways to have handled that than just shooting it down utterly.

The whole business of her winking at the camera just made me want to slap myself in the forehead. This was a televised, live event. This wasn’t some commercial for make-up.  I don’t want a cover-girl in office. I want a responsible, professional, mature person there. This wasn’t a beauty pageant and you’re not supposed to act like some moron in a bikini. She often made comments that sounded like they’d belong more on a commercial than anything else. Like..slogans. “This is who I am and this is what I care about.” I felt like I was watching Ray Zalinsky in Tommy Boy. I understand that as a VP candidate(and as a VP, should that come to pass), she’s supposed to be behind her running mate all the way and that’s great, but I often felt like her methodology was cheap and rehersed.

Maybe I’m being too hard on her. Maybe, in my distinct lack of knowledge, I’m not looking at this from all angles. Part of me hopes that’s the case–because if it is, it means I might be wrong here. It means I might have no clue what I’m talking about and thus, this woman might be okay.

Unfortunately, according to my roommate and every other political blog I’ve been reading up on doesn’t seem to agree with me.

…Well, shit.

The Witcher: Extended Edition. AKA, o hod, he’s hot.

About a year ago, I was pretty quick to snatching up The Witcher. I’ll be honest in admitting that my reasoning behind it was highly ovary based, because Geralt of Rivia was one of the hottest hotties I’d seen in a while. I am of the firm belief that if I’m going to sit down and spend copious hours on a game, there had better be an incentive, a reason for making me want to keep going. In this case, it was Geralt.

(I understand that the above statement might sound a bit..I dunno, shallow or petty, meaning that I’ve missed out on great games due to a lack of hot–but you ever notice how the really great games have hot? Castlevania? Final Fantasy? Chrono Trigger? Yea. Shut up.)

The first thing I noticed was the load times. Then, the mind-boggling dialogue. Followed by an iffy combat system and a horrendous inventory.  But you see, I didn’t see it like that. What I saw was:

A bit of a loading time, but considering the graphics and the machine that I was running it on, no biggie. A hysterically FUNNY dialogue. A combat system that, while not great, was certainly not the worst I’d ever played, and the inventory didn’t bother me that much at all, as I’m not terribly used to playing RPGs like this. I didn’t know better.

However, with the release of the 1.4 patch, it’s now turned into:

A much, much shorter loading time. They’ve really paired things down in that department. The graphics are still beautiful, though they’re now much sharper, clearer. The world of the Witcher is a drab sort of place, post-war, so there’s a lot of gray, but where there is color, it really pops out at you, which is nice, particularly in clothes.  They’ve recorded hundreds of new lines of dialogue, and it shows. Now, when everyone talks, it sounds much more natural. Things are explained better through dialogue; There were parts in the original when I was very confused, as what I was supposed to be doing–or why I was doing it!–was not explained very well, if at all. So points there. Some of it still sounds a little funny, but now it sounds more intentionally amusing.

Unbefuckinglievable.

The combat system…mm. In my opinion, it still needs work. The repetitive clicking on a mob, just to attack them? It gets old. I would rather mash a button that swings my sword than have to click on my opponent over and over again, but…You take what you can get. The inventory system? Oh, NOW I see why everyone nagged over this one. It’s SO much better, now that they’ve cleaned it up. Glorious, I would go so far to say.

All in all, the Extended Edition patch is awesome. It fixes so many issues of the games, as well as adds a little new content(2 new missions, hooray!). Best of all, if you bought the original game, you can DL the EE patch for free, which is just kickass.

So! If you played this game at launch, and were not impressed with it? Give it another go. It’s worth a shot!

Spwned? (I know, corny)

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, if you’re into the gaming world at all, you’re aware that Spore came out on Sunday. As I am a big player of the Sims, I’ve been keeping up with this game for a while. When I first heard about it–nearly 2 years ago, at that–I was fascinated.  And why shouldn’t I be? This game boasted some very awesome features, an amazing, revolutionary game play and possibly a new take on simulated games.

On Sunday, I started playing it and boy, was I disappointed.  Let’s take it step by step, shall we?

First and foremost is this whole DMR issue that everyone has their panties in a twist over. As of today(five minutes ago, to be exact), there were over one thousand 1-star reviews on Amazon for Spore. Why? Because people are pissed about this DMR.

I’ll dumb it down for those who don’t know what that is: A DMR is a tiny bit of software attached to another bit of software that installs itself in the background when you install the big bit of software. It leeches resources off of your computer, but what it really does? It monitors how many times you install this big bit of software on your machine. For Spore, the limit is 3.

After three installs of Spore on a machine, you have to call EA and basically get a new CD key. That’s the basic gist of it.

So in other words, what’s being said is that I’ve got 3 chances to play this game; After that, I’ve got to call EA up and give them hard proof of where I purchased the game, when, using what method, all so they can give me a key to install a game that I paid over $50 for. If I bought the deluxe special uber edition, $80. In short, you’re not really buying the game. It’s more like you’re renting it–except you’re renting it for fifty dollars. Yea. Right.

Is anyone else surprised that this was already being downloaded and played here in America, before it even came out? That’s right, folks; While they installed a DMR, EA made a critical error in their thinking. The game was released in Australia before it was released in America. It was already on several torrent sites before it even came out on Sunday here in the states. Way to go EA.

With that aside, let’s actually be fair and get into the review of the game, shall we?

Like I said, I was a huge follower of this game. Which is why this is so sad because this game had the possibility to be really, truly impressive. But the reality of the game is nowhere near as good as the fantasy of the game. All of the wonderful things that could have been done were not present, leaving an overall sour taste in my mouth.

Playability: In terms of playing the game straight out of the box, Spore is pretty easy. I would go so far as to say too easy, because I often felt that the tutorial did all of the work for you. It prompted you practically every time something needed to be done, generally making this game far too easy.

Length: The length of a game is a big factor for me–I tend to sink my teeth into a game and continue to play it for hours at a time. The more days I get out of a game, the happier I am. I started playing Spore at noon on Sunday. I was at the last stage by about 7ish, maybe 8 and I wasn’t playing it on easy mode, either. I understand that not everyone is going to tear through the game as quickly as I did, no. Being used to the Sims series, however, which generally has no end, this was pretty disappointing for me.

Spore is broken up into different ’stages’ of evolution, which seems fair. But the stages are ridiculously repetitive or short. The first stage, the cell stage(which was easily my favorite)seemed to go by in a flash. Which seems really annoying because as you advance through the stage, you can see deeper into the primordial ’soup’, and you never get to compare to some of the larger creatures you see deeper in! Which frustrated the hell out of me. The Tribal phase, in my opinion, was a huge waste of time because it felt so repetitive. Harvest food, kill your neighbors. There was no depth to it at all, it seemed.

Controls: Oh, the controls. In the Cell stage, they’re downright infuriating. Maybe it’s because you’re swimming around in water, but from the beginning, I was not impressed with the controls. They felt very sluggish and unwieldy. I saw other little cells just zipping around, where I was moving at a snail’s pace, despite what body parts I’d added to help with speed. Further into the game, that never really went away. It felt impossible to catch some prey items, even if I had wings. In the Civilization stage, vehicles moved remarkably slow as well, I thought.

The controls themselves are your typical mouse and/or WASD. I found that using WASD was the best to control your creature, using the mouse to control the camera angle–which is your only option in that regard.  While the overall control scheme could have been much worse, I also think it could have been better–but some people may not mind them at all. I admit that I like an absurd amount of control over a game, so maybe that’s just me.

Graphics: The graphics of the game were pretty nice, for what they were. I found that I could turn them up all the way and still run the game without problem. Mind you, they’re graphics for a Will Wright game, so they’re not the graphics of say, comparatively, Crysis, but they’re still nice to look at.

Sound: Like the graphics, the sounds are about what you’d expect. It was interesting, to me, to hear all of the different animal sounds, the work that was put into them, but other than that, the sound is pretty average–nothing spectacular, in my opinion.

AI: The AI of this game? Disappointing. I thought that, seeing as this was Will Wright, I could expect the opposing factions to maybe throw me for a loop here or there, but that never occurred. I think part of the folly here is that in even in as early as the Cell stage, you always knew what was going to attack you. There was never any mystery, any surprise. I never ‘felt’ like a Cell, swimming about blissfully, unaware of what was going to happen. I knew who to run from, who to eat. The same happened in the Creature stage, as well. There was very little guesswork here, where the AI was concerned.

Replay value: I played my copy single player only. I didn’t get into the online thing, and maybe that’s where the game really shines, but I found little to no replay value to it at all. Maybe it’s because by the time I had gotten to the Space Stage(the last stage), I was already bored with the game.

I’m the kind of player that likes to figure things out on my own, you see. I rarely read manuals when I play games; I either figure a game out on my own or I let the in-game tutorial show me. If I can’t figure something out, only then will I rely on the manual. As I’ve mentioned above, Spore’s in-game tutorial really kind of turned me off to the game and this happened a lot in the Space stage. I wanted to do things on my own, but the game forces you to not really have that option.

So by the time I had gotten to the Space Age? I didn’t want to finish it, much less replay it. I had had enough of having the game shoved down my throat.  It didn’t feel like you were given that many choices in the actions you took. Sure, you customized the way the creature looked, but even that stopped after the Creature phase. So you have three phases of customizing the way your creature physically appears. In the Tribal phase, you can add little bits of clothing and whatnot. Big woo hoo there. The part of the game that seemed to carry the most interest for a lot of people–creature customization–is cut remarkably short for a species that, according to my span, lived over 10 billion years.

But even as a species, your possibilities of how you interact with the world around you is remarkably simple. You are either herbivore or carnivore. Be nice or be mean. Persuade or take over.  I didn’t feel like there would be much else to do a second time around–and I’m not saying that there’s not more to do. It’s just that the game didn’t give me the feeling that there was much else, you see.  After playing it start to finish, I didn’t feel like I could go back into it and do things all that differently, because the game didn’t give me the feeling that there were many other options. For a Will Wright game, that’s pretty sad, given all you can do in the Sims 2.

Conclusion: It seems like what could’ve possibly been an awesome game wound up being little more than mediocre. Is it an amazing accomplishment? Absolutely–because the things that could be done with it are still there, still possible. But is it an amazing game? No. Far from it. Short, repetitive stages, combined with a bossy, overbearing tutorial system made this game almost like a chore to play. Once the newness and the novelty of it wore off, I realized I was no longer having fun, per se–but just pushing through it, hoping for a light at the end of the tunnel. I never found one, unfortunately.

A lot of sites have given the game an eight out of ten, and in my opinion, that’s far, far too generous. To me, it ranks more of a six out of ten. I had hoped for so much more out of this game, but the technical issues(DMR), in combination with a very lackluster game, makes me disappointed and sadly unimpressed.

I’d like to take a moment..

To talk to you folks about something that I feel is relatively important to me.

That something is reviews. I love reviews. I love reviews on movies, games, products I buy, even the recipes I like to cook. I like hearing or reading about something someone has tried before, what they think of it. It helps me make a better decision, helps me decide whether or not I’m going to decide to bother with something. I mean, for fuck’s sake, I read reviews on the damned tea maker that I told my mother I wanted to buy.

As a direct result of this strange love I have with reviews, I have recently stumbled acros the dual-blog nature of a fellow who I can only assume is named Bob. Bob reviews two things I take very seriously: Movie, and video games. These two things are remarkably important to me. I watch a lot of movies and I am always on the lookout for awesome new games that are worth bothering with(because, let’s face it, a shitload of them just aren’t worth bothering with these days).

Moviebob, as he calls himself, often writes small reviews about movies or games that he’s seen/played recently. It’s even better, however, when he posts the small movies he writes, reads, directs, etc that are reviews and/or gripes about the movies he’s seen or the games he’s played lately. He takes it a step further with the games, extoiling virtues or pimpslapping the issues that suck, where games are involved.

What one has to understand is that I take my video games even more seriously than I take my movies. I like to consider myself someone who, at the very least, tries to keep my finger on the pulse of the gaming industry and where it’s going. So to have stumbled across this fellow by the help of my good friend the Fu, has been a bit of a godsend. He is witty, intelligent, and brutally honest. He is forward and blunt and does not beat around the bush. He doesn’t sugarcoat shit, with is awesome. I hate shit that sugarcoated. Even cookies.

Moviebob is–you guessed it–the blog in which he talks about movies.
Game Overthinker is the blog in which he discusses video games, their shortcomings, their awesomeness, and why people should love/hate them more.

So I implore you. Please take the time to go visit Moviebob. Watch his videos and read his blog. Embrace his wit, his awesome nature, and his love of big words at considerably inopportune times.

Ahem.

The next few posts are going to be posts in which I discuss some of the people on my ‘blogroll’ which is completely RIDICULOUS sounding word for links. I suppose we can’t all be perfect in life and I changed that rather ridiculous sounding word to catagories which suit Her Royal Skankiness to a much better degree. Also, in the near future, there will be a picture with a pan of peanut butter fudge that turned out to be so insanely good, that there are currently cavities forming in my mouth as I type this. :j Thank you, and have a nice day.

Software: Or, o hod, what is that again?

So, I’m a geek. As a geek, I use different things on a day to day basis, with my computer, that make my life a thousand times easier. That might make me a sell-out, yanno, taking the easy path. But I love software the way I love computers. I am shiny geek. I like programs that streamline things. So I’m going to post here about some of the stuff I use, both software and web-base applications, why, and what makes it so friggin’ awesome. Here we go.

Trillian
This is my IM program. While it has a lot of great little bells and whistles, I think the best part about Trillian is the fact that not only is it skinnable a thousand ways to Sunday, it allows me to use various chat services at once. It also allows me to have more than one SN on at once, which is great because I have IMs for OOC chatter as well as IC RPing. That is a beautiful, glorious thing.  Trillian has been around for several years now and I’ve used it, religiously, with little to no problem. It’s a great program and I highly recommend it.

Photoshop and GIMP
Photoshop is pretty much the be-all, end-all image editing software, for me.  However, it is a bit cumbersome and sometimes you just want something fast, easy, and light to use. Not to mention cheaper. I’ve found that using GIMP saves time and resources on the laptop. Photoshop is a bit more professional grade, I guess you could say.

Firefox
Firefox is, to me, the manditory web-browser these days. Nothing really beats it. It does everything. Great tabbed browsing and dozens of great add-ons/plug-ins just make it simple yet vercitile. I don’t think there’s anything I really can’t get Firefox to do for me.

Bulletproof FTP
You know, after fighting with several different FTP programs(Including the FireFTP add-on for Firefox), I went back to Bulletproof, which I used years ago when I first started this site, even before it found it’s own domain name. Back then, it worked like a charm. To my delight, it still does. You have to pay for it’s full usage after so many days, but I have to say, it’s well worth it. It’s simple to use, easy to navigate, and even when I told it to load up the shared music folder, which is over 800gigs worth of music? It didn’t freeze up. It took it about 3-4 seconds to process the request and bam. All set. That? That makes me ridiculously happy. FireFTP would bog down, and even FileZilla couldn’t handle that.

WinAMP
Ah, what list could be complete without good ol’ winAMP? I’ve probably been using it for well over seven years now, if not longer. Even though I have occasionally tred off the beaten path, I have always wandered back eventually. I have tried a few other things, but never found anything that suited me in a way that I liked. The only one I did like, Mediamonkey now no longer works on my computer–which is a shame, because I found the sound-quality to suit my liking much better than winAMP. I understand that winAMP is ridiculously overrated and I wouldn’t say no to replacing it but, for the time being, it’s my staple when it comes to playing music.

AVS
When it comes to watching DVDs or movies on my machine, I always use AVS. Simple to use, nice format, and I like how easy the screen is to manipulate. Also free to use, which is nice.

MediaMonkey
I mentioned this in my winAMP post and while it no longer works on my machine, it’s worth giving credit to. If you have a huge collection of music, this is great for organizing, renaming, re-tagging, the works. It’s simple to use and can handle large batches of files at a time.

OpenOffice
When you just don’t feel like paying a ludicrous amount of money for an office suite, consider open office. While it is a bit of a resource hog, it’s perfectly free, and works very, very well. I use the Writer program for all of my document needs.

While a small list, these are definitely my favorite programs, the ones that I use on a pretty much day to day basis.

What do you guys use? Are there any programs out there that you just cannot live without?

Opinions: Or, o hod, why can’t you handle this?

( Note: The following post does not target a single person. It is not an accusation. It is nothing more than a collection of observations that I have made over the years of living on the Internet. This is not me blaming anyone, or pointing the finger. This is not some personal vendetta hate letter. However, should you feel, while reading it, that you are guilty of some of the thoughts expressed here, perhaps you might want to sit down and think about a few things. Lord knows I have. Thank you. )

Opinions. They are everywhere. And, as a 25 year old female, born and raised in the U.S., I am still under the obviously delusional perception that people are still entitled to having an opinion. I don’t know where I get these ideas, I swear. I am, however, also under the perception that people are still allowed to disagree with opinions. I believe that not all opinions are bad. I believe that sometimes, people can have good opinions. Rarer still, I believe that occasionally, someone can disagree with an opinion in a mature, adult fashion, and it can often lead to interesting debates over who’s opinion(or disapproval) is more interesting.

However, let’s face it. This is the Internet, and while there are people out there who make valid opinions, more often than not, they are not taken seriously. So let’s get into the nitty gritty of this problem. The biggest reason why most opinions are not taken seriously can be summed up in a simple, pseudo-mathmatical equation:

normal person + anonymity + audience = asshat

There you have it. That’s the first reason why most opinions just aren’t taken seriously. But, let’s be fair here, and add to that:

When you take the time to put your opinion on the Internet, whether written like a 15 yr. old teenage girl texting on her cell like an idiot OR, a mature, reasonable, intelligent adult, you put it out for the whole world to see. You make it public and thus, run the risk of asshats finding it, exploiting it, tearing it apart, chewing it up and then spitting it out. And to that, I say, “You should’ve known this would happen.” Keep this paragraph in mind. We’ll get back to this.

On the other hand, by making your opinion known to the general public, there is the slim, random, but totally possible chance that unlike the idiot 15yr. old, you’ve put it in a place that will be read by like-minded peers. Which is a good thing, because that now means there is the possibility that someone intelligent will read it. You’ll now have the opportunity for someone to either agree with you, disagree with you, and there might be some great, adult debate.

Now, I said all that to finally say this: I may not be Einstein, but I like to consider myself a person of reasonable intelligence. As a result, I like to surround myself with equal intelligence. Most of the people I talk to on the Internet are people that are capable of not only well thought-out opinions, but of responding to opinions they disagree with in a mature, adult fashion. That’s great, because as a person of relative intelligence, I love a good debate. I love to sit down with smart people, discuss things, agree, disagree, and agree to disagree occasionally. I am an adult, and I can be level-headed that way.

So you can imagine where I might be a bit confused with how, lately, I’ve been noticing lately that some people just cannot handle that. Why is it that people cannot seem to handle it when someone gives them a disagreement of opinion. I am referring to these latter types of disagreements, by the way. The well thought-out, politely offered disagreeing opinions.

Now, when I say ‘opinions’, everyone is going to get into an uproar about “Oh, I have the right to my own opinion, blahblahblah”, so let me go ahead and just call a spade a spade, here. When you get down to brass tacks, an opinion is, in many ways, nothing more than constructive criticism.

Someone draws a picture. The angle seems a bit off. I offer my opinion of it. It’s criticism. Can we all agree on that? Good.

So, back to the topic at hand: What is it lately with people just being unable to handle a bit of polite, non-flaming, well-meant criticism? Why do people seem to take such offense? Especially when they, themselves, are the one who put their initial opinion out there in the open, for people to read, consider, agree, or disagree with? More importantly, why is that people will put out an opinion, be criticized(in polite fashion, mind you), and just say nothing? They will not agree, they will not disagree, they will not defend themselves, nothing? Read up there, people! Anonymous! It’s safe to argue reasonably over the Internet. Hell, as we’ve seen, it’s safe to argue like an ass over the Internet, too! What’s the point of putting out your opinion, if you’re not willing to stand up behind it? That’s the beauty of an opinion: It’s yours. It’s your thoughts, your feelings, your outlook on a topic. Be proud of it!

Every time I see that happen, when I see that following silence, I suddenly wonder: Do people not have the conviction to stand behind their opinions? Do people feel they don’t have the right to stand up for what they think? I can understand, to a degree, why you might not do this in person–because God knows it’s hard to stand up to a real person, face to face. (That’s not sarcasm, by the by.)

If you don’t want people to pick apart your opinions, you shouldn’t make them available. Mind you, I’m not saying you shouldn’t have an opinion! People have the right to think what they want. Everyone has the right to have an opinion on things. Really though, if you’re going to take the time to make them public affairs, that anyone can see, you should really be prepared for the possible repercussions of doing so.

Or am I just insane? Am I just being too optimistic in a world where it’s common-place and a source of entertainment, shooting down what people think and making fun of them at the drop of a dime?

It bothers me to think that the beautiful anonymity of the Internet is turning into the weak-minded fear that we have to deal with in the real world, where people are afraid of saying what they think because they fear persecution. This is the Internet. How’s that meme go?

Anonymous does not forgive. Anonymous does not forget.

I believe in that, because it’s true. When you are anonymous, you can do and say whatever you want. But that doesn’t mean that you have to be some 4chan fucktard to abide by it.

Take your Internet life by the horns. Say what you want. Put your opinions out there in a polite fashion. If someone disgrees with you? Debate. Be intelligent. Don’t be afraid to say what you think and what you feel. Don’t be afraid of fucking anything. Say what you mean and mean what you say.

Story Time.

No, not really. But part of me is sorely, sorely tempted to maybe make a page that has stories on it.

Before I turned this into a blog(something I’d wanted to do for quite a while, but never quite knew how!), this was just a standard, run of the mill webpage that I had used to host stories and my pathetic attempts at fractal art. And while I can say with some honesty that there were a few good stories here, it just didn’t quite …I dunno. I guess, as my own worst critic, I was never satisfied with my own writing. So, now, this is a blog, a place where I can bitch about the things I don’t like, scream about the things I hate, laugh at the shit that amuses me, and cry about the stuff that makes me sad.

Oh. And headbang to the insanely kickass music I find.

However, sometimes I miss some of those stories I wrote. Sometimes, I’ll reread one and be like, “That wasn’t so bad.” And so now I’m trying to decide if I want to make a page for them here, or if I want to start posting them here at all. And I’m just unsure.

And God, my head hurts.