The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Every October, I tend to try to think of some things I could dress up as, and every October, I end up not dressing up as anything at all because I got too busy or was too lazy to attempt to figure costuming out.

Oh well.

Halloween has always been an exciting time, mostly because I am around so many people who feel that it’s an exciting time. There’s nobody more into Halloween than Essner, for example, which is why we always attempted to put together those elaborate Halloween games for awhile. As such, it has always been something that has had parties around it, and has been fun.

It’s also meant me eating way, way too many Smarties.

Fuck, why am I so obsessed with Smarties? (For our Canadian readers, I mean Smarties, not Smarties.) Maybe I’ve written about this before, but shit, you put a bag of Smarties next to me, and they’ll be gone. Like, immediately. I’ll feel slightly sick, but I won’t be able to stop eating them. I will continue to pop them in my mouth, again and again. I’ll have a huge pile of wrappers on my desk.

And that’s the true meaning of Halloween. Maybe. Candy is the true meaning of Halloween, right? Smarties in particular? Also, I guess, women dressing up in “Sexy” outfits and pretending they’re a costume. That’s a thing Halloween is too. Mostly the Smarties, though.

Hope you have a decent Halloween, in any case. I’m going to go Pahtay, certainly. Maybe grade some papers. I dunno. Probably stay away from Smarties so I don’t kill myself with sugar sweetness. Probably.

I am sitting in a Borders, writing this on my tiny little netbook. It’s been awhile, netbook! I forgot how terrible your keyboard is. It’s pretty bad. But oh well, you’re my little computer. Mokona-chan, I have named you. (All my computers are named after xXxholic characters. Shut up.)

Awhile back, I decided my tiny little computer hadn’t gotten enough love. I hadn’t used it in awhile! I had also heard about the Flow Chromium builds that are out there. I love the crap out of Chrome as a browser. I’ve basically stopped using Firefox completely, even though the name is much more appealing. As such, bringing the smaller, more streamlined experience to a whole OS sounded like a great idea. It would do the few little things I needed to do quickly and well. It would rock, and I’d get more use out of my little lappy. I did an OS install.

I hated it.

I didn’t realize how much I depended on the little things in an OS in order to function. Without a task bar and set programs, I found it very hard to operate. Sure, I could use online word processors or something, but it wouldn’t be organized in a way I could deal with. I mean, I couldn’t even figure out how to shut the computer down. It was just so completely different, I couldn’t understand it.

In addition, I expected Chromium to be extremely compact and speedy, but I didn’t find that. My little lappy here was chugging on it, which was unappealing. If it’s going to chug anyway, I might as well have a more complete experience!

So I went and installed the latest EasyPeasy build.

I had an older build on here before my Chromium excursion. It was functional, but kind of janky at times. Certainly better than the bullshit linux this thing shipped with, but not great. I was pleased to find that this new build fixes most of that. It seems a lot quicker, and has streamlined the menus in such a way that I still have access to everything, but can get to my most-used programs in a much clearer way. I appreciate that quite a bit.

It also adds this new thing called Empathy. I don’t know if this is a general Ubuntu thing, which EasyPeasy is a fork of, or what, but it’s pretty great. Basically, it builds basic chat and social networking functionality right into the OS, and it works. My Twitter and AIM are right there, built in, in one spot. Since I’m not running three different programs, it doesn’t eat up as much processing power either, which is always a benefit on a little thing like this. It’s pretty nice stuff! A great feature.

Anyway, that’s sort of what’s going on on the netbook front with me. If you have an older netbook, or just don’t want Windows, EasyPeasy is a great alternative, while Chromium still has a ways to go. I’m very happy with the latest EasyPeasy.

And hey, I’ve mostly gotten reacquainted with the shitty keyboard on this thing. I can almost type full speed again. Crazy. Too bad I’m done typing on it for now! Oh well.

Apparently nothing can piss me off more in video games than poorly constructed mazes with no useful minimap.

I mean, first, I was doing the LotRO Harvestmath thing with Essner and Brer. There’s this haunted house, with a bunch of quests in it you do to get little coins you can trade for silly shit. Fun, silly times, right? Except this Haunted House is designed to be impossible to navigate. The mini-map doesn’t actually show all the walls, stuff is constantly jumping out at you and messing with your vision, and there are three doors to every location in the house, and two of them don’t work. Attempting to do these silly quests filled me with great, great rage. I just wanted a silly mask, game! Don’t piss me off! It also didn’t help that I felt fairly completely ill for a lot of us playing, as well. Either way, I logged out kind of pissed.

Then, a few days later, I start playing Dragon Age. It’s really good! But I decide to do the mage tower first, as I want Healer Mage. In this quest is a horrible Fade sequence that lasts way the fuck too long. In it, you’re dropped in several mazes. One of them has a bunch of nonsensical teleporters in it. I got so pissed at this area, you wouldn’t believe. Well, I mean, mad enough to get pissed on twitter. It also didn’t help that doing one of the things you need to solve the maze is completely unintuitive and kind of buggy, at least in the 360 version. Doing it throws up an error of “You can’t lockpick this” even as it’s functioning properly. If you don’t ignore the error and let it happen, you’ll be stuck forever. It’s really stupid.

Basically, I hate non-logical mazes forever. Teleporters that don’t follow simple “this door leads to this door” logic and instead does whatever it wants, depending, is a great way to piss me off, apparently. Fuck teleporters, and fuck mazes! If, you know, you find them sexually attractive. Otherwise, just hate them with me.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m still COMPLETELY EXCITED to play Gamma World this Friday with people. I mean, totally excited.
But man, the main rulebook leaves something to be desired.

I swear there is a chapter missing in this thing. The book makes references to things like “worldlines” and all kinds of crazy stuff, but there’s no section in the book which actually describes the setting. Now, I’m not a lore person, but still, you have to give me, as DM, something more than nothing so that I can create a setting that is thematically appropriate. All you really get is “crazy, destroyed world with mutant powers.” I guess that’s enough, but goodness, it seems a little questionable, especially when you have all these other elements showing up in your descriptions of monsters and gear which refer to things you haven’t referred to.

It also seems weird that, by using the rules in the box, you can’t create several of the player characters that the pictures in the rulebook show you. For example, there are several pictures of a mutated rat person, but following the rules, you can’t be a mutated rat person. You can be a swarm of rats. An entire swarm of them. But not a rat person. It’s just odd.

Still, I really like the card mechanic in general. I am looking forward to seeing how that adds random fun to the game. It should add some! I think that’s neat. I’m not so hot on the booster thing, but if it works fantastically well and everyone is interested? Well, who knows. Maybe. I still feel like they should have been stand-alone expansion packs of powers or loot, but I guess I don’t get to make the business decisions at Wizards, huh?

It’s pretty obvious to me, though, that Wizards has a potential hit. It does seem to be handled pretty badly, though. Hopefully they can turn it around. It’s still going to make for damn fun role-playing this Friday, though. I’ll be sure to let you know how that goes. There will be pews, pows, and things of that nature! Believe it! Like a Naruto!

I kind of want to write something else, but damn, I have like 20 tabs open in two different browsers, so that means it’s time for…

RETURN OF THE SON OF LINKDUMPING!

My good friends (note: I don’t actually know them) at Rocketcat Games are preparing to release their next little game, and they made a trailer. These guys have the very amazing grapplehook genre down pat. If you haven’t spent the dough on any of their more expensive games, and you should, at least get this one when I rave about it after it comes out.

This link lets you play Dominion online. The interface is a little rough, but it totally works. How badass is that?

Nothing will bring a smile to your face more than another Hiimdaisy comic dub. Well, at least, if your face is my face. Or similar to it.

Do submit comments on this new Proposed Land Use Action.

I don’t know what this is, but it’s been open in a tab for weeks, so… yeah.

This thing lets you randomly generate names of your Lands if you were playing Sburb. Which is kind of fun for a few minutes if you enjoy Homestuck as I do.

Here is a dice roll I made for Jan in the game I’m playing on Talking Time. It’s on this neat site that lets you roll dice and save the result in a thing where you can link to it, which is fantastically useful for playing on a forum. It’s neato, if simple.

Finally, here’s a link to this article about a manga I keep meaning to look up. I want to read a story about an actual, healthy poly relationship, which supposedly this is. And, you know, I guess there’s fucking in it too, which… well, you know, that’s nice too!

I’ll go ahead and leave you with that thought, I suppose. Remember that fucking is nice, too. Cause it is.

I have a test today.

I have no fucking idea why.

The more I think about it, the more annoyed I get. Why do I have a midterm? What sense does that make? This test basically does nothing to actually gauge my skill. It simply makes sure I’ve read, which I have, because I’ve been discussing these novels in class for weeks. It’s just kind of crazy.

Hear me out. I’m a grad student, and this is a grad-student-only class. All of us in this class have degrees. We’ve done our time. We’ve shown our commitment to learning, and proven we learn. This is what tests are for: to provide a score that proves learning, and to give incentive to pay attention in class to people who aren’t fully invested. But we’re grad students. We’re fully invested. We don’t need to do matching on quotes to prove our commitment to this thing. You’ve already caught us. Just let us learn.

It just seems extra crazy to me, given that part of the test is a take-home essay assignment. The topic for the essay could, easily, be a much longer essay than required. I mean, I don’t particularly want to write a long essay on this stuff, but at least that would make a little sense. That would prove my skills at grappling with these theoretical topics, instead of matching quotes for no reason for half the test score.

Grad school gives me benefits when I’m working through complex topics in my own way. The reason I’m there is to be pointed at the “right” topics to be concerned about, and then see how I deal with and interpret them by working through them with other people. It’s not about memorizing quotes, and it’s not about getting 100%. It’s about actual learning, with people who want to learn. This test isn’t that. I don’t get why we’re having it, and it annoys me that I’m wasting a whole week of class time on this.

I’m writing this on my iPod.

You see, this evening was really quite horrible. Sub-par! Was decent before that, but busy. I changed some oil, beat a game, and so on. Therefore, my planned ramble about Lost Planet 2 never happened. And now I’m blogging on an iPod. Yeah.

This WordPress app isn’t great. Then again, any app designed around typing a huge amount of text is going to be a bad experience on an iPod, but still. The interface goes crazy when I rotate the screen, for instance. Not solid.

Still, I guess I have it to thank for having content today, however horrible, so thanks, WordPress app! I’ll probably never use you again.

Okay, time to try to sleep.

Edit: And now, it’s the morning after. How did it do?
Passable.
It claimed to have posted on the wrong day, which I fixed, but the twitter integration did work, which was surprising. I figured that also would have fucked up.

Yeah, as I said, passable. A passable app. Maybe it would work better on an iPad. Then again, on the iPad I could just use the web interface I’m using now, so it’s kind of moot. Oh well.

Linkdump day! Linkdump day! Hey everybody, it’s Linkdump day!
Sing that to the tune of the Cartoon Planet Mailbag song.

But yes, it’s that magical time again where I have way too many tabs open. I need to fix that! Let me fix that. Here, for your enjoyment, are some tabs I have open.

Here’s a very impressive little song and hand dance routine that I was linked by Brer. It’s fun! I can’t get over the expression on the guy’s face.

This link is me being excited that Tron Bonne was officially announced for MvC3. I know that’s kind of old news now, but I missed the offical announcement, and recently discovered it. I have excitement. Tron is my super favorite.

I laugh every time I watch this touching moment with Sonic the Hedgehog.

Val linked me this short film. It’s pretty damn solid, though I dunno, some of the music is weird. Still, impressive. Worth your 15 minutes.

Anyway, there’s some viewing enjoyment for today. I hope you have fun watching them. Maybe I’ll write something significant tomorrow! Then again, I always say that and never do, so…

Mercenaries is fun.

I had always heard so much about Mercenaries, but of course, not having given a shit about any Resident Evil, I never played it. In 5, I wanted to try it.

But fuck, it’s hard.

To unlock more levels and characters, you have to get A ranks, a feat I simply couldn’t do. My brother and I tried the first area multiple times, and didn’t even get close. Twitter came in and attempted to give me some advice, but to no avail. I couldn’t do it.

Then I realized there were Resident Evil fans out there, waiting to help me.

It only stood to be the case that anyone playing pickup games of Mercenaries online at this point was really good. I hopped on Xbox Live and joined a random game. My focus was purely on survival. I knew I was dead weight, but I figured as long as I stayed alive, everyone else would carry me along.
I was right.
Soon I had unlocked several characters and maps! Awesome! Of course, then I got to the point where I couldn’t survive without actually being passable, and I stopped progressing. Still, I was having fun. The combat of RE5 is intense, in it’s own broken way, and all the balls to the wall co-op combat was addicting. I kept hopping into games and playing rounds until they booted me out for sucking so much.

It was fun!

I still wish it would have been easier. I could really enjoy the mode with friends if the difficulty was dialed down just a little bit, to the point where I could unlock all the toys and everyone could play with them. Man, though, that really is neat. Something like that with some custom classes built into the mix… I’d pay 10 bucks to play that online, easily. It really is a huge little extra mode.

Of course, it’s only significant to me because this one has co-op, but, you know. That’s why I enjoy Resident Evil 5.

A wise man once said, “If you’re going to cut it, cut it close.”

This is about the closest I’ve cut it on my “daily post” idea since I started it. Seeing as it’s already the day of this posting. Still, I’m doing it! I mean, I teased Brer about writing a guest post, but I was going to get something up here, dammit!

Of course, I never promised it was going to be interesting.

Oftentimes, when I remember I need to write one of these, I sigh and wonder why I put such importance in it. I mean, I know some people read it, and that is super cool, but I doubt anyone would cry if I stopped posting. (And now it’s looking like I’m looking for people to tell me they enjoy this and blah blah… not what I’m wanting, really. Just being unable to think of another way to say what I’m wanting to say here.) It’s not a job or something like that. Having a website is something I am paying money to have. It’s something I’m doing for me on some level. But what if what I want to do is play a game? Or sit on my ass? Why do I make myself write?

Whenever I feel that panic that I haven’t written something and it’s getting late, I know why I do this.

I am damn, damn proud that something goes up on this site every day, even if it’s mostly useless ramblings and very biased game impressions. I think it’s fantastic that I am generating so much text. Am I proud of all of it? Not all of it. I find typos sometimes days later, and I’m not golden every day, or most days, even. Am I proud that I haven’t missed a day in years? That’s right, multiple years? You better believe it. This has been the most successful project I’ve ever undertaken, and I think that’s neat.

Am I going to let the fact that I’m busy as fuck stop this blog? Nope. You’ll get bullshit every day. Come back tomorrow! I’ll tell you about Resident Evil 5.