The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Kohl’s was like “Dammit, have this free movie ticket!” so Cara and I said “Okay!” and we went to see The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo because that was basically the only movie that seemed worth shit that one of us hadn’t already seen. Plus Cara had seen the other films and such, so she wanted to see. I knew very little to nothing about it, but I was game.

It was an enjoyable movie-going experience. I probably would have never seen it without this free ticket, and I wouldn’t have felt like I would have missed something great, but it was entertaining! I’d recommend it.

Cara told me there was a lot of changes from the books and whatnot? But I was going in cold, like I said, so maybe it’d be more interesting if I gave my opinions without all of that comparison.

First off, the opening credit sequence was some of the most ridiculous bullshit I’ve ever seen. It seemed like it was going to be extremely inappropriate, and it was. They could not have done a worse job at introducing the movie they were about to show me. It was basically a James Bond opening, but just because Daniel Craig is in a movie doesn’t mean it’s a Bond movie. It was just fucking wrong, even if it did look kind of cool.

That was almost certainly the low point, though. The movie picked up after that with no problems, and I did find myself interested in the whole mystery going on and these characters. For the most part, I felt like I got the whole story. However, near the end, it seemed like they must have skipped something. Suddenly they were close enough for a huge bit of money-lending to occur without even a second thought. I did not see that character development happen. I mean, sure, Lizbeth or whatever her name is is a bit weird, so I buy her being that attached, but Daniel Craig’s character just didn’t seem to have the motivation to be that involved at that point. They hadn’t been working together long enough. They hadn’t known each other long enough. I dunno. That was really the only time during the film I questioned the characters, though.

Really, the movie just shocked me with how graphic it was. It showed quite a lot! There were some rapes, a very clear shot of a very brutally murdered cat… just a lot of shots you just don’t see a lot! I didn’t have trouble watching it, because none of it was stabbing. (I don’t really know why I can’t stand to watch someone being stabbed, but, you know. I can’t look at the screen when someone is being stabbed. Made playing the end of Dead Space 2 pretty hard to accomplish!) But it still surprised me a whole hell of a lot. I will admit some of that was because my mom said she liked the movie, and she loved the whole series and all the movies, and that just strikes me as odd, seeing some of the content. But, you know, my mother can have grown-up tastes in films, sure. Just takes a bit to sink in, I suppose. Heh.

Really, though, all the actors did a great job, it was an interesting story… I really have no complaints overall. From what Cara told me, maybe some people who were real fans of the book would have? I dunno. I’m not that person. It was a solid, enjoyable film, one worth seeing if you want to know what this whole Dragon Tattoo thing is all about.

Ascendency was basically my first experience with what I believe is called the 4X genre of games. Reading about it after the fact, it was apparently broken as fuck, and I’m sure there are many better games of this type out there now, and in the past, but it was just one of those formative gaming experiences for me, and I loved it.

So then it came out on iOS and then it went on sale so of course I bought it.

There is simply a ton to the game, and even vaguely remembering it in the past, it was hard to figure out all the controls and stuff. There are a ton of them, and some things, like being able to use your race’s special power if it’s an activated power, is kind of stored in a fucked-up place in the menu that’s not very intuitive to find. I always liked to play as the terraformer people, so being able to activate that ability whenever I needed to was important, and it took me awhile to figure out. Similarly, it’s hard to guide your ships to where you want them to go. I don’t remember ever having any trouble dealing with the pseduo 3D spaces in the original game, but I often had trouble telling a ship to go to the star lane I wanted them to go to. Sometimes they’d just kind of stop beside it for no reason, and I wouldn’t realize it. It was annoying, because you might not find that out until like two turns after you give the order, if you tend to build a fleet of super-slow colony ships like I do.

Other than having to get used to the controls (and I can’t even imagine how bad they’d be on an iPhone. They were bad enough with the screen real estate of my iPad) this is the game I remember. Apparently bugs that I never knew about from the original were fixed in this, making it harder or something? I didn’t notice. I did what I always did, being a super-peaceful researcher and colonizer, and it didn’t seem to really be any different. It is Ascendency. That’s pretty cool.

Of course, what’s not cool is when you get like 2 hours in to a game, and then it crashes for no reason and you lose progress and then stop playing. That’s pretty annoying! That happened. I reloaded though, and it happened again. I don’t know why. But that was enough to make me stop trying, at least for now. They do seem to still be patching it, so hopefully that’ll fix it? Hopefully.

I like Ascendency, but I think this is merely a nostalgia thing. There has to be a better game of this type on iOS, or just out there in general, nowadays. I just don’t know if someone coming in to it new would be interested. However, I mean, if you can grab it for a dollar like I did? That is a lot of solid game for a dollar, as long as it doesn’t crash on you. So maybe it’s worth trying anyway. Who knows?

I guess in general, in teaching, I’ve been lucky.

I’ve never really had any problem students. Nobody who was actively trying to disrupt my class or anything, you know? I had some people who cracked jokes and stuff? But that’s just fun, and most of them would contribute for serious as well. I welcome that sort of person. I am that sort of person sometimes.

This semester, I don’t know. Today’s reading class went REALLY badly, both because of disruptions and it throwing me off my game enough that I couldn’t think of anything else useful to do. (Okay, the fact that I am really feeling fairly sick probably didn’t help!) But I have these two guys. They don’t do their homework, and they sit in class and they talk the whole class. It’s not subtle in a class of 6 people to do that. When I have to talk over them, and they’re not doing a very good job at trying to whisper, that’s a problem.

Normally I’ll do one silly thing, or I’ll just stop and stare for a moment, and that snaps people out of it, and they’re no longer a problem when this happens. I started first for calling on them to answer something from homework I knew they didn’t do, so they’d pay more attention. Their reaction was actively complaining. “I wasn’t here for last class, why would I have the homework done?” To which I responded “Because you were here Tuesday, and I post assignments two classes ahead. You knew what was due.” To which they said they didn’t have any way of knowing and I was wrong. So I pointed out they were wrong, and moved on. It didn’t stop them from talking. I stared at them, silently, in the middle of a lecture. Stopped them for mere seconds. I stopped them and said “Hi, how are you doing? Everything going okay? Comfortable?” Again, only stopped them for moments. I did my hi routine again, and one of them said to me “Is this some sort of sarcasm thing?” That caught me off guard. I said “No, just wondering what’s going on.” They stopped talking then, but they were just actively doodling and not giving a shit the whole time.

I’ve never been bothered by underachievers before. That’s their choice: they can waste their money and not learn anything if they want. But what they were doing just felt so… active. It felt different. It felt like they were trying to get in my way. I didn’t understand why. They could go get a fucking burger or something and get out of my classroom if they didn’t even give two shits about what I was saying. I wouldn’t pester them about it. Hell, one of these guys has just walked right out of the class in the middle of an activity with no explanation, and I could see him outside the window just chatting on his cell phone happily (as in, it really didn’t seem like an emergency to me!). I didn’t give a shit about that. Do it, dude! Just leave! Do what you want!

Whatever. Just… don’t try to fuck up my class, okay? I am trying to help people here.

It’s so weird that this seems so late now, but it does. Goodness, getting up early will do that to you. I am exhausted.

I didn’t really want to do two rambling blog posts in a row. I try to vary shit like that so that I don’t annoy people or whatever. Try to write “content” sometimes too. But I can’t seem to get started on anything, and the best solution to that is to write. I know this to be true. I told my students that the other day, probably.

Basically what’s going on is that Aesa just booked a flight to visit me next week. This is insane. I mean, it’s insane in a nice way, and it’ll be a nice if at least at the beginning awkward time. I’m looking forward to it, totally. That’s a VERY GOOD THING. But it still, at this moment, seems unreal. It was so out of nowhere. It’s something that, if I wanted to do it, I’d worry and plan for weeks to be able to do it, and even then, I might decide it wasn’t “optimal.” He just went for it. I hope I’m as special as he thinks, so it’s worth it for him.

Really, though, now I’m worrying about what I need to plan. What do we do? Do I plan activities? Meals out? Meals in? How am I going to take care of my teaching duties with him here distracting me? Do I need to work very far ahead? All these are things that I would have planned far in advance usually, but all this just kind of happened. And now that it’s locked in, I can start freaking out about it, I suppose.

I’m just not a spontaneous person in general, I don’t think. I mean, I can speak that way. I can interact with people socially that way. But outside of just talking, such things worry me. It’s an unsure situation. I don’t know the outcome. That’s the fun of it all, I guess, but I just rarely find it that way. I want to feel the path beneath me.

But then again, if I had waited, and planned forever for a “perfect” moment, this nice thing that’s happening wouldn’t have happened. I’d have worried about asking Brer about it, and worried about setting it up… instead we just picked a date that looked okay in my work schedule, and just did it. And now it’s going to happen.

Best prepare to enjoy it.

I’m worried about this job interview. It’s for a job I really want, and am completely qualified for, but if they’re already interviewing, which I didn’t anticipate when I applied, that means they probably need someone RIGHT NOW, and my current teaching contract is going to prohibit me from taking up that offer, at least on a full-time scale, until the end of the semester. I worry this will knock me out of the running, but I also feel like that would be really damn unfair. They can’t blame me for trying to get the best job I can. I can’t just fucking wait around with a shitty job while they twiddle their thumbs and think vaguely about hiring me. But still, I bet if I don’t get the job, that’s why. Sigh.

I’m worried about the crazy plans Aesa and I keep accidentally concocting. They sound like such fun! But I’m not stupid enough to make stuff happen without making sure there won’t be terrible repercussions. I can do that, though. But even after I do check, double check, and triple check, I’ll probably still worry about it.

I’m worried about the fact that I am always going to be late to my 3:45 class because of how they scheduled me. It’s not my fault, I can’t help it, but I don’t want all that to reflect on me. Still, I’m not going to drive like 200 mph on the highway just to make it on time. It’s not worth THAT.

I am worried, pointlessly, that friends, okay Essner, is slipping away from me. I mean, I understand you have to make life changes when you can, and that’s cool. But shit, him moving out caught me by surprise. I felt very distant in that moment. Not by any fault of his. It just made the amount of time between the last time we talked seem… gigantic. We used to waste time together all the damn time. Now life is fucking that up with all it’s “scheduling” and “work.” Bleh.

I am worried it’s going to take Brer all goddamn year to find an opening down here. It’s not his fault. But waiting for Wal-Mart to just magically decide they have space for him down here is becoming maddening. I don’t know what kind of planning I should be doing anymore, or when to expect him, and I don’t really appreciate that. I’m kind of a planner.

The standard joke finish is “I am worried I worry to much.” But it’s not that. I worry because I care, deeply care, and I wouldn’t get rid of that for anything. I’m worried I will somehow forget how to push through worry and still get things done. I am worried that I will revert back to being able to do nothing when I’m worried. That would be terrible. I don’t think I’ll do that.

Remember when I said I’d keep writing these? I guess I am.

Pokemon Gold/Silver is a basically perfect game. It’s the sequel to Pokemon every single Pokemon game since wishes it could be, but has completely failed to be. It was full of plenty of new content, gobs and gobs of fanservice, and refined basically everything there was to love around Pokemon Red/Blue. It is THE Pokemon game.

First off, let’s just talk about the new Pokemon. All of them fit right in with the original 150, easy. You don’t feel like they’re stretching for design ideas. They just work, and it’s awesome. The only Pokemon I truly love are from this and the first game, (Let’s try a list off the top of my head… we’ll call this a list of Pokemon who, if I saw a toy of them, I would buy immediately: Eevee, Vulpix, Ninetales, Wobuffet, Skamoray) and while that’s a personal preference to be sure, I just feel like, in general, these Pokemon are just the ones with the design chops to make me love them.

In addition, Gold/Silver made much-needed changes to the formula of Pokemon to make it a more fun game. Eggs were a really good addition that let you customize your team more. The new types, Steel and Dark, dealt with the balance issues of the first game, as well as little things like giving us a Ghost Pokemon that wasn’t also Poison, so that Ghost could actually be useful against Psychic Pokemon. The timed events, based on a real-world clock, were also fucking fantastic, and I just can’t understand why every Pokemon game after this hasn’t had them. Those events kept me playing the game for a long time, and being able to only catch certain types during certain times of day was just cool.

The amount of content in the game just hasn’t been matched as well. Getting to go back to Kanto and face Red after being the game was totally and completely a HOLY SHIT moment the first time it happened. While it didn’t take as long to get through that content of course, what with your fully-powered team, blasting through the area you had so much trouble with in the past game just made you feel like a REAL Pokemon master, you know?

This was like the pinnacle of handheld gaming when it came out, and frankly, for the most part, I bet it still holds up. I wouldn’t touch it at all. (Well, okay, maybe I’d put the female trainer from Crystal into the original game, but that would basically be it, and I can live without that.) Pokemon Gold/Silver? You’re awesome.

A quick one, because work schedules suck! And I need to be up in like 4 hours to do all my teaching bullshit.

Remember back on Christmas, when I played a bunch of iPad games? Well, I also played Pinball Collection HD! It’s the last one I played that day, promise.

Anyway, it was pinball! You got a table for free, then they wanted money for additional tables. Pretty fair, really. What’s there is really impressive, too, so I could see somebody wanting to buy more, if they actually liked pinball. I’m… not really a pinball person! But it was pretty impressive.

The graphics were really nice. It looks really impressive on that iPad screen! They’re going for a fairly realistic sort of pinball table: no stuff that can’t exist in real life. Maybe these are real-life tables remade? I dunno. Anyway, it all looks like it should, with all the lights and the dings and sounds you’d expect from a real pinball table. The presentation is top notch.

The controls, too, are pretty well perfect. Tap on the left, left flipper, tap on the right, right flipper. Simple as that. It feels really good holding the iPad and just bopping the screen with your thumbs. I certainly felt like I had about as much control as I ever do playing pinball when I was playing the game, so that’s nice.

The free table, Wild West, is really easy, though. Again, I am not very good at pinball, but it did not take me very many plays to figure out how to unlock the bank vault, and then rob it, which made it easy to rack up extra lives. This almost seems like a problem to me? I was getting kind of bored during my last run because it just wouldn’t end, and was not in any danger of ending! Not that I want to be dead in like two seconds or anything, but it seems like there should always be a risk of failure, right? I dunno.

Anyway, it’s got your high score tables and everything you’d want. If you like Pinball, you should clearly own this game. It’s clearly made with a lot of love. I was glad to just waste some time playing the free table, though.

Let’s see… what’s on my list of games I haven’t talked about.

Oh, woah, Solatorobo! The game I played out of my duty as a furry. Or something.

Solatorobo is a game that I am very glad got made and published in the US. That’s crazy! I’m so glad it happened! It’s really not the kind of game I really want to spend a long time with.

First things first: this game is adorable as fuck. The character art is awesome, and the world is weird and unique looking, even with the not-great 3D graphics of the DS. (That said, the 3D is among the best on the DS.) The little sound clips for the characters and stuff just ooze cute, and make you grin. It is just a fun world to be around, where you’ve got this mecha, but all you do is throw things, not shoot everything with guns, you know? It’s just not a sort of world you see anymore.

And that’s really the problem. This is not the kind of game you see any more. On the PS1, this game would have been a fucking revelation, beloved for years to come. But on the DS, it still has a lot of stuff from that era sticking around that it probably shouldn’t have. The game is extremely talky and hand-holdy, and while it is cute, as I said, I wouldn’t call it good. It can take you forever to do a simple side mission because Red just has to do so much talking in between fights. It also makes the plot paced very slowly.

All that hand-holding doesn’t do the game any favors because, at least as far as I’ve gotten, the combat is extremely simple. I am flat-out not good at any kind of real-time combat. I mean, I can get by, but I’m just not good. I had mastered the combat, at least as far as I’ve played, pretty well completely. It’s simple, which it has to be, since all you can really do is pick up and throw stuff. I hear late in the game stuff gets more interesting? But again, how much game with slow dialog would I have to sit through to get there? I just don’t know.

I’ve heard this described as a homage to games of that era, and if that’s what you want, this game totally does that, and does it well! I personally found that, while I wasn’t not having fun, perse, there just wasn’t enough there to keep my interest going when other shinies appeared. Poor Solatorobo! Oh well.

Today I took like a four hour nap. That hasn’t happened in… well, forever! I had been waking up super early to do all my teaching all week, and the times when I went to bed hadn’t really adjusted. I laid down for a nap, thinking I’d only be out for like an hour, and suddenly I was late for my brother’s family dinner thing. Me taking a nap! Me getting rest! It was just odd. An odd occurrence! I’m all tired again now. Maybe I’ll sleep some more! YOU NEVER KNOW!

Speaking of sleeping, Q really likes to do that with me. He’s learned that it’s warmer under the covers now, so when I get into bed he DEMANDS I let him into my blanket and then he curls up right beside me. This is a danger to me being able to get out of bed at a decent hour in the morning. He’s so warm, so cute, and so happy. I don’t want to ruin that, and it’s not like I want to get up out of bed either. Surely it would be better just to stay in bed with him a little longer, right? Damn warm dog, loving me and wanting to stay close to me. Such problems I face in life!

Speaking of puppy dogs, Q is also trying to steal my My Little Pony blanket that my brother got me for Christmas. Like, seriously, Q! You have a blanket to lay on right there! But if I drop mine to the ground for a moment, he’s right on it. Then, like, I can’t get him off, because of the previously mentioned cuteness and stuff. I bought you your own blanket for Christmas, puppy dog! I mean, I know that’s in the other room, and you want to lay in here, but…
He’s just a blanket-thief, pure and simple.

Speaking of stealing, I’ve been stealing class time from my students! (Okay, that one was a stretch, I admit.) But seriously, I can’t make it to class on time. I have 30 minutes to drive to Sikeston after one of my classes and teach there, and it takes me at least 35-40. I either have to let the class before out early every day, or have the other class be shorter than it should be. Nothing I can do about it. I wish we would have caught this schedule problem sooner! I mean, I’ll make it. It’ll be alright. But it’s just kind of frustrating. Because I’m required to not let students out early and such, and I really have no choice in the matter to do what I’ve been hired to do. Oh well.

Speaking of oh well, I guess this blog is over. Oh well.

I realized I’ve never talked about my new telephone!

I got a new telecommunications device. It is magical and cool! The end.

Okay, no, I have a Samsung Galaxy S II now. All Android-y and stuff. You know? I am, for the most part, very happy with it.

Let’s talk about what I wanted out of a new phone. Coming from my Blackberry, I wanted something that could do the internet well. Browsing the internet on that Blackberry was the worst experience possible. I wanted something where using the internet was not the most last of last ditch efforts, but instead something I could do all the time.

I certainly got that in this! I’m finding the Android browser pretty great! There are some slight annoyances, sure. Like how it for some reason seems to be converting Google AdSense ads into popups? That’s weird and frustrating. I also find the way you switch between tabs and stuff kind of clunky. But it’s way, way, way, way, way the fuck more usable than anything Blackberry has. And you can actually see Web pages in something extremely close to how they’re supposed to look.

The phone is huge, though. Like, it’s really big! I was originally worried it wasn’t going to fit in girl pockets, though it manages to, barely. This is, again, great for looking at web pages and stuff, but it is just kind of big! I’m getting used to that, though.

What’s really taking some getting used to is the keyboard. I love that the thing does good voice transcription: I use it when I can. However, I find I use too many internet slang words and usernames when I type and text for the voice transcription to be very effective. It won’t do things like Aesa and Brer and Q and such, because it doesn’t realize they’re names. Which makes sense. But it makes the voice stuff much harder to use. The phone’s default keyboard wasn’t that great either. Now, though, I’ve switched to Swype, which is just… fantastic. Like, it makes me go “why aren’t all software keyboards like this?” It has its mistypes and false positives, of course, but for the most part it is way, way faster than trying to plink out words on the screen. I miss my physical keyboard, I really really do, but this is doing a pretty good job.

That’s really about it, I guess? As far as apps and stuff goes, I’m really only using Tweetdeck, and this thing Aesa told me about called Out of Milk to keep track of what groceries I need when I think of stuff, which has been handy. I’ve been chatting using IM+, and it’s not too bad. There might be a better option out there, but it gets the job done.

This phone is a huge, huge upgrade. It’s great! Still, at the end of the day, it is a phone. I’m not using it for much more than what I was using my Blackberry for! It just does all the things I did on there WAY WAY BETTER. So, a step up. Hurrah!