The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Hello, girl! How’s my puppy, hm? How are you, huh?

Listen, we have to talk.

The fact that you like me? That is so totally cool. I love the fact that you’ll drop what you’re doing to come and see me. I love that you follow me around the house, and that you bring me toys to try to convince me to play with you. I love how you greet me with your happy jumps and you playful nips.

But seriously, little girl, you are trying my patience.

I am a creature of the night. I know you used to be, so I’m sure you can relate a little, right? That means I rarely get to bed early. I’d rather not get to bed at all some nights. And that means that now that my schedule involves being up early, I’m having a harder and harder time getting enough sleep.

The very, very last thing I need is you waking me up at 5 in the morning wanting to say hi, ESPECIALLY when you leave immediately after.

Seriously, little girl, I can’t nap all day with Mom like you can! I got stuff to do. Work to do. I can’t handle this. It’s got to stop.

So, you know, whenever you read this blog (I guess I am assuming that dogs will get blog-reading capabilities within your lifetime) please cut it out? Thanks.

I need to learn to be social with people outside my safe, and completely awesome, social group that I’ve had forever, mostly due to things and other things. So when my fellow TA’s invited me to a party they all were holding to kind of get to know each other, and I had nothing going on? Well, I decided to actually go.

Now, I knew a lot of things about this party weren’t going to necessarily be things I was down with. Namely, the fact that everyone would be drinking but me. I am a Teetotaler, and honestly, that’s not going to change. But I mean, it’s a bunch of English majors, getting together to relax. There’s going to be alcohol. So I was worried it wouldn’t be my thing.

Luckily, my worry was unfounded. Yes, there was a ton of drinking, but I still had a wonderful time. It really helps that quite a large number of the TA’s this year are incredibly witty and funny individuals, enough so that, even with a few drinks in them, they’re still able to keep things rolling with the jokes and whatnot and barely miss a beat. It wasn’t what I was expecting, but I had a great time, much like the fun goofing off we’ve been doing in class so far.

The big first of the night, though, was that I drank a shot of whiskey. Why? Fuck if I know. Peer pressure or something? I didn’t want to ruin the game everyone was playing. In any case, it was as disgusting as I figured it would be and I will never do it again! Drinking is just not my thing, man. I mean, I don’t know. I guess something is wrong with me. I think about the cost of everything that was drank that night, and it just makes me shake my head. That’s just so much money I can spend on better things, just like smoking and whatnot. Better things like pointlessly large amounts of caffeine!

So, yeah. I went to a party.
Yeah.

School has started.

Okay, so, not really. The pre-school seminar on how to teach EN100 has started, as of today.

But it’s really the same kind of feeling.

I would have popped you in the lip for suggesting I would be back in school again at this time last year. I just really can’t escape this stuff, I really can’t. It is a whirlpool that is constantly pulling me in. Ugh! Ack!

But this is still an exciting time. I get to teach a class! I get to write more short stories in the graduate version of the short story class I already took! I get to get more hands on job experience at the press! I, uh, have Medical Insurance! It’s exciting.
And scary.

But exciting!

Anyway, wish me luck. And especially wish me sleep. I honestly have no idea when that’s going to happen this semester. BUT SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK!
THE WEAK!
Weak.

So, I’ve been a Gamefly subscriber for awhile now. So I guess, the question is, how do I like the service? Or maybe that isn’t a question anyone has, but just for the record, I think it’s pretty nice. I mean, it’s been forever since I had rented games, but Gamefly seems to do everything one would want from such a service. I am fairly happy with it.

The only thing that’s annoying me is… well, the fact that they set expectations really high the first time and then cut them down.

The first time I returned a game, the very next day, I got an e-mail saying they sent out a new game. I was astounded. There was no way the game had gotten back to them yet. It turned out that they sent out the new game due to something called “FastReturn” which lets them send out new games before they even have the old one back. I was incredibly impressed with it! I was like “Yes, this is going to be totally sweet.”

FastReturn hasn’t worked for any game since the first one.

Originally I thought it was, perhaps, because I put the first game in the big mailbox at the actual post office. Maybe that gets them to scan it, and putting it in the mailbox at home does not? So I put the most recent game in that big mailbox again, and it once again did not work. Or at least, it certainly didn’t seem to.

This is one of those things like the Logan’s Burger problem. If they hadn’t ever turned it around so fast, I wouldn’t be annoyed that they haven’t since. And I mean, I shouldn’t be annoyed in general. The service is still worth the money I’m paying for it. I just want things to play, and the game I keep holding on to, Resident Evil 5 (Which I should ramble about someday) is a purely multiplayer with my brother experience, so having it around isn’t useful for just, you know, normal stuff. Normal single player gameplay. Though I suppose I could just try it and see what happens.

But yeah, anyway, those are my thoughts on Gamefly. I hope the service continues to help me not waste all kinds of money on Vidjeo Gamez. I was already proud of myself for not putting money down on Scribblenauts, even though it looks amazing, and just adding it to my game queue.

So here’s how awesome everyone’s precious Apple is.
Okay, I don’t want to get TOO down on them, because man, the iPod Touch and iPhone really are just amazing devices, but man, this struck me as so dumb.

So I’ve used my AIM account to do my iTunes transactions for a long time. I never understood why I could, but it let me, and I didn’t want to make another account, so I’ve been using it to buy my games on my iPod Touch. So Sunday, I get a message that there are new updates for games. One of them was the previously mentioned Mevo and the Grooveriders, which probably meant new free levels for me. Huzzah! So of course, I went immediately to update them. This requires logging in, so I did.

Then a little window pops up, saying I needed to transfer my account to an Apple ID. It seems they finally stopped the odd, nonsensical ability to use my AIM name for transactions. That’s fine with me, it makes sense, no worries. So I click the little “Update Account” button.
I get taken to a little screen explaining that I’m going to make a new Apple ID, and they’re going to transfer my licenses and whatnot. Sounds good! So I click continue.

“iTunes could not process your request. Try again later.”

So I tried again later. Same problem. And again. Same problem.

It’s important to note that I can’t update my apps, nor can I purchase new apps, until I get this transferred. It stops any transaction and makes me do this thing that I cannot do. Brilliant.

So I e-mail tech support, and ask them to fix the problem. The e-mail that comes back says, sure, they can do it for me (as opposed to fix their broken program) and that all I need to do is relinquish the password to my AIM (which they will change, sometime at random, and it will just stop working I guess, probably right when I need it) and all kinds of financial data through an e-mail.
I don’t really want to do that. I don’t want to have to worry about losing connection to my messengers. I guess I’m just lame, but the idea of my AIM account being held hostage for any length of time, however small, really really bothers me. I don’t want to do anything fancy. I just want to be able to give them money. But apparently I can’t do that.

I guess I’m just lucky that there isn’t any apps I really want to buy right now, so it’s not really affecting me. But eventually there will be. I hope they’ve fixed their stupid form by that point so I can make it all happen.

Gods, just look at this shit. How can I wait for Beatles Rock Band?
HOW CAN I WAIT?

It’s just going to be so intense. So intense. So intense.
I apologize for the excitement, but it is endless.

But man, it just opens up a whole new can of worms. After watching that video way more times than was healthy, I went into a happy dream world of September 9th (Okay, probably more like September 11th, (NEVAR FORGET) since I’m going to be getting it from Amazon.) where I am rocking the shit out with my friends and then, it hit me: Are my instruments up to snuff?

I mean, I own at least 4 plastic guitars. But my GH2 one is broken, Essner keeps claiming that my Rock Band one is broken too, though I don’t believe him. My GH3 wireless guitar has this battery that is never charged and fills me with anger, and my drum kit… well, I’ve had to replace the pedal on it again, and it’s probably going to break again, and if we get back into Rock Band really hardcore, which I hope happens with the Beatles coming out, I just can’t believe that the drum heads won’t break again either.

Basically, it comes down to the fact that it would be nice to have a new Drum Kit and a new Guitar. But is that really worth paying $250 bucks for the big pack? Man, I don’t know. And the individual Beatles guitars, though really fucking cool, are $90 by themselves. I have to keep my mind on my money more than ever before. That is a lot of cash.

Just got to stay positive. Of course everything will work. It’ll all be fine. And if it isn’t? Stores are desperate to unload all of these plastic instruments. Surely I can find a cheap guitar somewhere or something. It won’t be as cool as the Beatles replica guitars, but what are you gonna do.

But seriously, man… I have to keep waiting for this. No fair.

So I was busy doing VERY IMPORTANT work that involved uploading a video of Molly being cute (which you can see here. As you can tell, VERY IMPORTANT) when suddenly my 3G connection seemed to die and I had nothing, nothing, for awhile in there.

Now, I’ve only had internet on my phone for, what… 3 weeks? 2? Not very long. And yet, the loss of the net connection on my phone instilled in me the same pointless rage as when the internet goes down at my house. How dare I be disconnected! How dare they have a momentary loss of service!

The service was back up in, what… 10 minutes? 15? It wasn’t very long. I could once again get my tweets and my IMs and my random internet stuffs wherever I might be. But man, for those moments when I was shopping at Wal-Mart and unable to twitter and tell the world about it? Intense Fury.

If there’s one thing that’s clear, though, it’s that I am likely never going to be able to go back to not having data on my phone. Luckily/hopefully data stuff will be a lot cheaper by the time this contract runs out and I get a phone on my own. I mean, it’s only a matter of time until it becomes standard.
But yeah, never going to be without it. Ever.

Also, we all know this post was just an excuse to post that video. And reviews are already in. This is a bad cell phone video of a puppy you do NOT want to miss! And because it’s so popular, I’ve prepared an additional puppy video! That’s right! Two shitty cell phone puppy videos for the price of one! Don’t delay! Watch today!

It has come to our attention that, a few posts ago, we used the word “addicting” in a circumstance where we should have used the word “addictive.”

We here at getmeoutofthis.net apologize for this grievous and uncalled for error in judgment. No ill will was meant towards our readership. We hope that our loyal readers will find themselves forgivive.

Apparently this exists.

That’s basically all I have to say about the subject, except to be astounded.

The world is just an amazing place. you know? You think “hey, I have access to a vast network of computers which can basically give me any information I want at any time. There’s nothing I can be surprised by anymore!” and then you get surprised by the combination of two games and the fact that people actually play in some sort of league in this sport, and so on.

It’s just… amazing.

It really is.

I mean, I honestly don’t know how many other perfect pairings like this could exist, though. The concept is just, honestly, brilliant. “Let’s combine a sport where the goal is to pummel someone until their a drooling body on the ground with a game where you have to be constantly aware of your surroundings and make quick, smart decisions.” It works, you know? The game distracts from the boxing in the minds of the fighters, and the punches to the head and pain distract from the chess. It works.

Man, seriously, though. Chess Boxing.

So, there’s a thread on Talking Time. It’s called Fall Anime ’08. The title is kind of incorrect, though, as it’s much more about talking about what Animes are currently running and how they are. (I guess the title was correct, back in Fall of ’08, but it keeps being used.

In any case, I check in there from time to time. I used to be all about the animes, and I like vaguely knowing what’s going on in the Anime world. So while I’m there, I hear about an anime called Saki. It’s painfully fanservice-y, with lesbian sexual tension poured on by the bucketful, and it’s not very good.

But it’s about Mah Jong. And how winning this Mah Jong tournament is the only thing that matters. And dammit, I am completely weak by this kind of concept. The idea of these dramatic shows about board games, card games, and so on is what made me watch seasons of Yu-gi-oh. I can’t get away from such things. They are so compelling to me, even when I want to murder the animators every time they’re like “MUST HAVE THE CAMERA ANGLE SHOW SHE HAS BIG BREASTS LOL!” When you play Mah Jong like this, then I watch. I am so weak.

So yeah, that’s what I’ve been doing for the last day or two. Watching Lesbian High Schoolers Play Mah Jong show. What have you been up to?