The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Are we sick of Tomes yet? No? Cause, you know, this month’s IoTM (with the review barely in in time!) is the Tome of Sugar Shummoning. This is a tome that lets you summon 3 Sugar Sheets a day, which you can then change into a wide variety of equipment. These last for approximately 30 combats, then break into Sugar Shards, which are healing items.

Frankly, I think this is much more effective than the other tome I have, the Sticker Tome. In this run, I have used Sugar equipment a ton. It is amazingly useful in Hardcore, especially in Hardcore Oxy, where a day’s worth of summons can keep you in equipment for all of your day’s turns. The Sugar Shorts stat boost is nothing to sneeze at, and until you build your Legendary Epic Weapon or whatever, a Sugar Shotgun, Sugar Shank, or even Sugar Shillelagh for Seal Clubbers are all viable options. Finally, if you have Torso Awaregness, the extra substats from the Sugar Shirt are almost reason enough to have the tome right there, if you’re a serious ascender.

I compare this to the Sticker Tome, and the stickers just come up short. Sure, there are plenty of very strong enchantments on the stickers, but having to be stuck with the Sticker Sword really just kind of nullifies them for me. The main reasons you’d want to use it would be for things like substat and +item boosts, and both those things just don’t seem worth it if you’re having a lot of trouble killing monsters, which is going to happen if you get the sword early, at 10 power, to use these enchantments. I’m sure that more skilled players use the stickers all the damn time, but I have trouble getting myself to use them if I don’t have Double-Fisted Skull Smashing, so I can still equip another weapon, and even then I rarely think to use it. It just goes by the wayside.
For whatever reason, this temporary equipment clicks with me in a way that makes it feel slightly less consumable, and that makes me take advantage of it. That’s neat stuff. Well, it is to me.

So yeah, it’s another tome. But it’s a very good tome. It comes recommended. Plus, let’s face it, if you’re speed ascending in Hardcore, you need the Sugar Shirt anyway, so you’ve already got the tome. But, you know, at least you can feel confident that I agree with your purchase. Everyone cares what I think, right? That’s why I write on the internet. So people can care about what I think.
Right?

Your game runs in an operating system called MICROSOFT WINDOWS.

Therefore, your game should run in a window.

Your game is meant as a form of entertainment. Therefore, I should be free to consume your game content ANY WAY I DAMN WELL PLEASE. If this means I want to watch twitter while I play, and have your game in a window so I can, then you need to fucking deal with that and make it happen, instead of gimping your game and making it so it only runs full screen, in the wrong resolution, so I can’t even fucking play it.

Ubisoft, stop making PC games. Just stop it. Stop making PC games until you are serious about this bullshit.
Just stop making PC games.
Stop it.

Why do I even buy PC games anymore? Bleh. It is literally throwing my money away. THROWN AWAY. Because only little indie companies actually give a shit about programming their games in a way that works, apparently.

So last night, we once again had a Beatles: Rock Band session. After the discovery that my USB headset worked as a mic in the game, we then had the ability, between it and my mic stand, to have three part vocals, no matter how many people were playing instruments. So we took advantage of that fact, and Essner, Spaeth, and I sang. Boy, did we sang.

We were nailing Triple Fabs. We were. Not on every song of course. The brown notes on some songs are just really hard to get without really practicing them, because they’re less intuitive. But man, when we hit those Triple Fabs, with me on Lead, and Essner and Spaeth playing Guitar and Bass… when we hit that… holy shit.

As we ended, and they walked out the door, I said “Nailing those Triple Fabs is probably my best gaming moment of the year.” And I meant it. At the very least, it’s clearly the best music game moment of the year. By far.

Beatles: Rock Band fucking rules.

So here’s how my Wednesday went.

I got up early, and went to school to prepare. I was getting everything all semi-perfect, since Dr. Phegley was observing my class. It all went as well as could be expected, I think, but nonetheless, it was pretty stressful. I don’t know. It’s hard not to feel that way when you’re being evaluated. But I just did my normal thing. That’s the best way to actually get something out of it, right?

So it started out with some stress. Then I worked at the press, huzzah, and then I went home, because I deserved a break, and I was going to have it that evening. I got some Chinese with Spaeth and Jonathan, where I got a fortune telling me to be frugal. Which is funny for the In Bed game, I suppose. Then I headed home. However, I was too tired, due to all the waking up early, so I had to pretty well immediately fall into bed.

A few hours later, I got back up and started playing Mario and Luigi. I buy some fancy gamer mice during the Woot off just because I can. I get the call for dinner, so I save, and close my DS… and then this happens.

Fuck.

I’m not going without a DS, so I immediately call up Essner and Spaeth to give me a hand purchasing a DSi with their Wal-Mart powers. I head to the bank to pick up some cash, and while I’m driving there, my car is making some really weird noises.

Fuck.

I go back to the house, and yes, apparently my brakes are fucked up. So I get to get those repaired. Fucking awesome.

When it rains, it fucking pours, you know?

All of this has left me pretty completely drained. I stayed up later than I should have because I was all moody. I still feel pretty shitty. And I’m complaining about it on my blog.
So there. I suppose.

I keep waking up earlier and earlier.

This is kind of distressing, as I’m probably not getting enough sleep as it is. Scratch that, I know I’m not getting enough sleep. So its probably a bad thing that my get up time is slowly creeping farther and farther into the morning. When I went to the office, the sun used to be out. Not so much anymore.

The bad thing is, I keep taking advantage of it. I keep going to the office and working, trying to get things done. This is good, in that I’m getting stuff done. Exciting! However, it’s bad, because it’s programming my internal clock to go ahead and keep waking me up earlier and earlier.

Today I got up at 5 AM. The day before it was 5:30. Soon, I’ll be getting up before I actually go to bed. That’ll be exciting, surely.

I don’t know. At some point I’ll just kind of collapse and sleep, I’m sure. Catch up. But man, it’s so weird being up so early. There is so much fucking time in a day you just don’t know about, you know? Or at least you don’t know about when your day starts at noon. So strange to get home, having done all my work for the day, and in the past, I wouldn’t even have been awake by that time.

I don’t know. I think I’m taking to this morning person stuff kind of well, but I don’t know.
Dunno.
Don’t know.
Yeah.

No, seriously.

I mean, it’s no secret that I enjoy my fruit-flavored candies. Because I do enjoy them. Very much so. It’s also no secret that I enjoy things that are sour, as well as things that are citrus-y. I mean, you’re reading a post by someone who used to eat lemonade mix as a snack. Just pour some into a cup and eat it. That’s the kind of person I am.

Mike and Ike Lemonade Stand Mix is the BEST CANDY. Oh my god.

Mike and Ike already has a sour variant. They’re called Zours, and they are passable, but not great. The Lemonade ones are everything those should have been. They are so good. Each has a sour kick that walks the line perfectly between making you pucker and being too weak. The various flavors are all citrus-y, but not same-y. Each flavor is distinct. They are so good.

Every time I go to Walgreens, as is a post-Fazoli’s requirement, I have to buy multiple boxes of these things, and I eat them all way too quickly. I am eating a box of them right now, and even though there are countless other things I should be writing about, all I can manage to write on this blog is a poor explanation of how great they are.

I just ate another one. So. Fucking. Good.

So there is a fighting game out there called Battle Fantasia. At some point, I got it into my head that it was very button-masher friendly. I also got it into my head that it has a bunny wizard. Therefore, it seemed like something I should rent from Gamefly, so I put it in my Queue, like so many other games. Then Gamefly sent it to me, and I played it!

I sent it back the next day.

Battle Fantasia has some good ideas, and is competent in some respects. The visuals are pretty great, actually. The 3D characters look very much like 2D ones. They have a lot of expression and life that way. I could see you mistaking a screenshot as all hand-drawn for a few moments, at least. The characters all have a lot of variety in their designs, which is cool.
The game itself is trying to be a hybrid of RPGs and Fighters. Your characters have HP, and you can see exactly how much HP each attack you pull off does, because the damage numbers come out of your enemy, just like in a jRPG. As you land strings of hits without being interrupted, you “Level up.” If you’re interrupted, then you’re going to “Level down.” Everyone’s attacks do different things and have different powers at different levels, which is a cool balancing mechanism, in theory, especially since most projectile attacks require your characters to be at least level 2, which means you have to get in there and be aggressive for at least a few hits before you can really hang back and turtle.

However, that is also really lame. I was playing Watson, the bunny wizard, and I couldn’t really cast any spells until I got in and did some serious Melee damage. That’s not how wizards work! It felt unsatisfying. It also felt much less like I had any control over what I could do, since so much of the Level Up mechanic involves your opponent and variables around him. Some battles, I’d have no trouble keeping Level 3 the whole fight, and then next round I could never level up for more than 5 seconds. Granted, if I had had some higher level strategy, I’m sure I could have countered the assaults that were keeping me down. But as a new player, the mechanic was just keeping me away from trying things and figuring out what they did. Kind of a downer.
The game itself, as well, was much less button-mashy than I was hoping. Maybe I was hoping for the wrong thing, but it seemed really hard to make anything cool happen without really knowing the combos. I never felt like I was even beginning to get effective with ANYTHING during my few hours of play. I didn’t feel like any progress was being made. Maybe I’m just awful, but at least in, say, SFIV, I can start to realize what I’m doing wrong after fiddling around for awhile. I just never really got the mechanics.

The game has a story mode which is, you know, endless dialog scenes followed by a battle. Nothing to write home about. The arcade mode was what made me send it back, though. The last boss requires a gimmick to complete, using moves I didn’t even know existed. Without this gimmick, you literally cannot damage him. After several failures, I eventually looked up how to hit him, and beat him. But it felt like such bullshit, that I wasn’t really willing to put up with the game anymore.

So yeah, I can’t really recommend the game. Go try BlazBlue instead, or just get Street Fighter IV if you need a fighter. I think it was trying to fill a niche that needed filling, at the time, and maybe if there wasn’t all these other top-quality fighters on the 360, I would have been nicer to it. But yeah, Battle Fantasia is not really worth your time.

So there’s a computer in my office up at school, and when I got it, it had been wiped, all fresh and clean for me. This meant I had the “only Internet Explorer” issue. So, of course, the first order of business is to get another browser up ins, stat.

Normally, of course, you go for Firefox. It’s natural. But I saw here an opportunity. The fact that some people tried Google Chrome, and stuck with it, made me interested. I’m too used to my setup at home. It seemed unlikely that my Flock/Firefox double team would ever change on my home computer. The office computer, however, was a clean slate. I didn’t really have any preset ideas about what should be on there. So I said, “what the hell, it’s at least better than IE. I should try it.” So I did.

Honestly, I’m fairly impressed. The main feature everyone was touting about Chrome was that it loads up pages fast, and they weren’t kidding. Even on the old-ish PC in my office with it’s substandard net connection, it pops up pages really fast. It’s pretty nice in that regard.
I also really enjoyed the page you get when you open the browser, that has little pictures of your most visited websites and you can just click on them to go right there. That is actually really useful. It is bookmarks without the need for bookmarks, and I rather like it. From what I understand, Safari has a feature like that? But fuck Safari. Ever since Apple forced Safari on people from the iTunes updater, I decided I shall never use that thing. (Mobile Safari, though? Less. Than. Three.) So if that’s something you would like, Chrome is great. I could actually see my mom really liking that feature.

Otherwise, it didn’t really seem to do anything out of the ordinary. Searching from the address bar is… okay, I guess? It doesn’t really change how you use it much, you just type it into there instead of into the Google search slot on any other browser. The tabs were functional and sufficient. I didn’t notice any problems with it rendering anything.

Anyway, I’m pretty happy with it. I’m not sure it’s going to become anyone’s main browser. It doesn’t have the features that someone really digs into on a Firefox, with its add-ons. However, for something like my office computer, it’s great. It runs really fast, and gets the job done with no issues at all. It really seems like a great “quick search” or “quick skim” kind of browser, and certainly makes me wonder how good it is on Android. I plan on sticking with it. It’s good stuff.

I remember, way back at the beginning of the semester, when I was told that “You should really look ahead to see where major assignments are, and not schedule papers due around that time!”

Man, that’s some advice, huh? That I didn’t follow?

Yeah, I’ve got the first big paper for my class now, and it needs to be graded. On top of that, I also have my first big paper for my Linguistics course, and I need to finish up a short story, among other basic homework.

This is going to be a real busy weekend! Aren’t we just excited?
Of course we are. Of course.
I mean, technically, I hope I’m done with most of it at this point, when this actually gets posted. That would be totally cool and super sweet. But, you know, I’m realistic. If nothing else, I’m sure I still have that Linguistics project to work on. Yay yay.

Anyway, I’ll stop complaining and get back to work now, I suppose.

Arr and avast, matey! Happy talk like a pirate day to ye!
Avast.
Um… scurvy dog…?

Yeah, that’s about it.

I was sad, though, that my class wasn’t on Talk Like a Pirate day… oh the activities I could have done… granted, I still did a little bit, but, you know, it’s kind of lame to say it’s in honor of tomorrow, unlike when I tied in the NEVAR FORGET of 9/11 because I’m half-funny.

Oh well. I salute you, all you Buccaneer-Americans out there! Keep doing what you’re doing.