The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Today I got fitted for glasses. (Is that the term? Fitted for glasses?) In doing this, juice was dripped into my eyes to dilate my pupils to make sure the doctor knew what was up. What then followed was like 2 hours of me not being able to see well enough to read.

Holy shit, I did not completely understand how much my world is built out of words, but it totally is.

Seriously, it blew me away how helpless it made me feel. I had to ask a woman to dial my mother on the phone for me to pick me up. When I got home, I tried to make myself dinner, but I couldn’t actually set the oven temperature or timer in order to pull it off. The only thing I could do was lay down and listen to podcasts, but I even had trouble working my iPod touch because everything was so blurry.

So I laid there, thinking about it. I couldn’t talk to my friends online because I couldn’t read the screen. I couldn’t play games. Basically all my leisure activities that weren’t podcast-related were out of the picture, and even those were hindered. Not being able to make out letters kind of removed my ability to do the vast majority of things I do with my life. Hell, even my career revolves around this stuff.

It was kind of scary, I have to admit. And though I fully think I would be strong enough to survive and move on, somehow, if I lost my sight, man, there would be very, very little unchanged in my life. Every single thing I do would have to be replaced in some way. Every single thing.

I was pretty happy when I could see again.

I really wanted to write some sort of “blog post” today, but while things were nice for awhile, at the end of my evening, things got real shitty. So here I am, at 3 AM, tired as fuck with no blog post to give to you. At the same time, if I don’t post something, I shall feel like a failure. This is that thing I will post.

So, yeah. Here’s an LP recommendation from me. I’ve been watching this playthrough of Demon’s Souls. You’ll recall the game is not for me. However, it’s still super interesting, and I’m enjoying watching someone who really knows what they’re doing run through it.

If you don’t read Deptford’s comic, you’re missing out on some real gems. Real non-inked gems. Yep.

I’m also probably way behind the curve on this, but I just started reading the Comics Curmudgeon earlier, and laughed my ass off. Clean off. Seriously. Had to reattach it.

Anyway, fuck work-related bullshit. I’m going to try to sleep. Tomorrow you’ll probably either have a blog post about a Magic Card Draft, or a Porn Game. Feel free to start casting your votes now. Sleep a lot.

I’m deeming Operation: Get More Sleep a failure.
It isn’t a failure because I wasn’t getting more sleep. I was. It’s a failure because it’s dramatically cut down on my work efficiency.

I find that, more and more, I only get work done in the mornings. Once the afternoon hours hit, I am either busy being social, or busy hiding, eating, and trying to eek out a little relaxation before a busy evening. I can’t make myself focus on work then. I’ve tried, with limited success, but it just doesn’t work for me.

Yesterday, I woke up early. Really early. And I graded a huge stack of papers, wrote a speech to give later that evening, set up an appointment with a name change lawyer, and had my appointment in St. Louis. Many of these were things I had been trying to get done all weekend, but felt stuck, depression-wise. But I knocked it all out this morning, and had time to talk with Cara about things, too.

Yes, I’m going to have to spend more mornings getting up early and knocking shit out if I’m going to succeed, get this thesis done, and so on.

Therefore, I declare Operation Get More Sleep a failure. Long Live Operation Neversleep!

And with that, ironically, I’m going to bed.

Already took a day off for Depression (which Jonathan things is a game, because I capitalized it!) so fuck, taking a break here too. Here’s some links.

Best Let’s Play.

Shakespeare has some important advice, apparently. That’s nice of him.

Did you know that you can lose the tutorial battle of Final Fantasy Tactics? I sure as fuck didn’t, until I watched this video.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHmuchmuchAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

ANALYSIS CUBE! ANALYSIS CUBE! ANALYSIS CUBE! ANALYSIS CUBE! ANALYSIS CUBE!

I’ll force myself out of my horrible state tomorrow. Have a good day, everybody.

Lately, my life has been lead by terror.

It’s weird, though. I have so much like… actual stuff I could be scared about. I have actual shit going on in my life. Transitioning, graduating… all this shit is terrifying, potentially.

But I’m getting panic attacks about not formatting informal notes correctly, not being early enough to have enough time to sit around and be early, or a non-important radio message not going through on the radio that never works anyway.

It is beyond stupid and I hate myself for it. But these are like… well, okay, I’ve had worst “attacks” in the past, but I seriously have to stop and just breathe for a bit to calm down, and I’m left with this sense of dread over the stupidest things until they’re done. I had to ask how to STUFF ENVELOPES like three times today because I had to head off the feeling of slightly stuffing an envelope with a flyer wrong before it made me even more useless than I already am.

Best guess is that I’m projecting issues related to passing onto all manner of other things in my life. I certainly know that I was projecting my anxiety about my shopping trip today onto Cara, when it was just a thing we were going to do, as far as she was concerned. I’m sure this stuff is fairly similar. I’m worried about some bullshit like “letting people down” with what I’m doing, and that translates into panicking about letting them down in dumb ways which would never happen. That makes a level of sense.

But dammit. It is frustrating. Makes me want to just sleep for a few days, or stay inside. Bleh.

It’s the day of St. Valin the Tined, so named because he had spikes all over him. Maybe.

Basically, Valentine’s isn’t a big deal for me this year. I mean, I would never put it up there as a “top” thing, but this year, especially not. Not only am I going to be busy the whole damn day, but the biggest thing I did to celebrate was to have a game bought for me, and buy a game in retaliation. That’ll show him to buy me a thoughtful gift!

But seriously, I may have a ton of shit on my plate. I may be stressed and worried as fuck, certainly. There is a lot of shit going on in my life!

But I still have love.

Brer, fuck, I love you so much. Shit sucks, but we are working it out. I know you’re working hard. I’m working hard. We’ll get in the same physical location, dammit.

Cris, goodness, I do love you, you know. Our relationship is something I know you tell me I worry about too much, which is completely fair. But it’s still awesome, right? Yeah. Still pretty awesome.

Kale, I love you. You’re very silly, but so very nice. I can’t talk to you without feeling the emotion there, you know? Don’t go anywhere.

Ecks, though we don’t get to see each other nearly enough, I love you, you know? You’re so wonderful. Our schedules will sync up again soon, I hope.

And man, those are only the people I have at least partially romantic feelings for. Awesome family. Awesome friends. So much love.

Enjoy your day of love, hm?

I have been playing Dragon Age: Origins: Awakening. In this game, you recruit a party member called Justice. He was a warrior. I had been running a two Warrior, one Mage, and me Rogue setup in the original game, so I was needing another warrior to duplicate that. I was glad to pick him up.

As I do because, I dunno, I feel like having a streamlined experience and I am playing on easy anyway, I used the Auto-Level to level him up. He learned some kind of buff, and the computer automatically set up tactics for him to keep this buff up on himself. So far, so good.

Justice casts this buff. When active, this buff causes a tiny explosion/whoosh of air thing to ripple out around him about every three seconds. This makes a fairly loud and annoying noise. He always has this buff up. The only way I could not have him have this buff up is to control him manually or rejigger his tactics so he does not cast it, but if I did that, then he wouldn’t be buffed, and I don’t want that.

I walked around with this noise for like 3 minutes, and I had to remove him from my party. The noise was driving me crazy.

Great fucking job, Bioware! You succeeded in making a character nobody could ever actually use. All because you attached this ridiculous noise to that buff. Fantastic. I don’t understand how playtesters wouldn’t have realized how annoying that noise was. Was the game not tested with Justice in your party?

I don’t know. Mind-blowing stuff, and now I’m down a warrior. Oh well.

People at work keep pestering me as to why I, as a gamer, do not own a copy of CODBLOPS. It was suggested the other day that I “invest” in a copy. I feel like this is a valid suggestion, of course. I’m sure CODBLOPS is a great game, and I do look forward to playing it at some point.

But man, the couple of hours I just invested into You Don’t Know Jack multiplayer were probably more fun than 3 times the amount of time spent in the CODBLOPS multiplayer, and maybe more.

Enjoy what you enjoy, you know? I’m not saying they’re doing it wrong, and I know they’re not saying I’m doing it wrong either. They just want to include me in their gaming sessions, which I appreciate. But it’s just one of those things, you know? It just reminds me of how out of the mainstream I am. There’s no way I could describe how excited I am about this trivia video game, and how it will get my full attention. They just don’t share that particular joy, and I think they would be a little unable to understand why I enjoyed it so much. This is the case for so many things. We often clash in opinions on what movies, shows, and whatnot are awesome as well. They’re all great people I love working with, but their tastes are so, so far away from mine. So far!

It just really shows me how ridiculously broad a concept like “gamer” is. There are key “gamer” experiences that my friends at work will never know. There’s no way they’d ever play a Persona 3, for instance, and I consider that one of the major gaming experiences of last generation. Most “gamers” I actually discuss things with on a regular basis would understand what Persona 3 is and how it mixed things up in a significant way, even if they didn’t play it much or even enjoy it. The people at work, though, who probably play games somewhere close to as often as I do, have no clue. They probably know nothing about it.

I don’t know, it just fascinates me, because, again, neither of us are wrong. We’re both doing it right. Yet, there’s this big game between us, when we have what ought to be similar interests. It just shows me how different people’s worlds really can be, even on this small level. That’s kind of cool, don’t you think?

Snow cancelled my night class, and in the process, killed any want for me to do anything at all. ANYTHING.

Thus, you get this. Internet images. Aren’t you lucky?

There are no words to describe this picture. I can’t even parse it. I mean, obvious what Garrus is doing is indeed Sick-Nasty, but his expression… and his deck… and… man. No words!

This amazing optical illusion was making the rounds the other day. It was doing so because it is amazing. Although one person suggested it could be improved if the batmen were kissing.

Speaking of, if you need some sexy in your day, I even have an image for that. You are hooked up.

Apparently the WoW support team is pretty awesome. This image proves it. Or, you know, someone photoshopped it to make them look awesome, but either way.

I don’t even know what this is, but I can’t stop watching it. Guess I’ll have to deal with it.

Seriously, if you get bored, just stare at that last one some more. That’ll take care of it. I’ll write some more tomorrow.

We all win at trivia!

Okay, well, we got third. But when first place is the Matt Essner’s Family Power Team, who used to run the trivia night, and second place is the Unstoppable Team of Notre Dame Teachers, well, third place is fucking fantastic.

I didn’t expect to kick such ass. I wasn’t, I dunno, picking strategically or anything. Jonathan, Cara, and Buchhiet were people I knew wanted in. Cara suggested I grab Cole, who brought some sports knowledge and history degree stuff. Jonathan brought in Kenny, who was just a wellspring of random trivia. Essner suggested I grab Mason, and I totally did, who helped us knock the crap out of the movie rounds. Cara had several good obscure saves, and Buchhiet was a powerhouse, working with Kenny on the Sports Maths to make that work, and pulling in all kinds of knowledge like coin collector knowledge I certainly didn’t know he had.

If anything, I was probably the weakest link, and I still caught a couple of them. (And destroyed the category about grammar, because come fucking on. Grammar category.)

We cracked jokes, we had fun, and we dominated most of the teams there. I managed not to get into any awkward conversations with former teachers and such. It was an awesome night, and I am so glad I decided to get everyone together to go and do it. I hope everyone else was glad too.