The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

So, earlier in the week, Rei crossposted a bit of information from CheapAssGamer. There was some good stuff on the list! I was wanting to try Soul Calibur IV and Too Human and Infinite Undiscovery, so I set my phone to let me know to go, and then I went.

I got there 15 minutes early. People starting pulling up. Oh, there was some Grandpas and Grandmas. Oh, here’s someone with a laptop to take to Geek Squad, I guess. The coast looked clear. Then, the college kids started rolling up. A guy pulled up on a moped, and stood right outside the door, prompting everyone to get out of their cars, including me. We waited. We were all here for the same thing. I watched, and noticed when the guy moved to unlock the door before everyone else. I got into position.

We all kind of rushed in at the same time. Not a run, but pretty well to the highest amount of walk one could get without running. I was under the impression they were all supposed to be in a bin, but I saw no bin! But wait, there they all were, on a side shelf. I rushed in and grabbed, dodging around people. There’s Soul Calibur, grabbed two Copies. Infinite Undiscovery, a copy of that, thank you… Too Human… where are you Too Human? No? No… gone already, forget it… Ninja Gaiden DS is down there, grab that… oh, the Neopets game was Puzzle Adventure? I was going to buy that for the PC when it hit 10 bucks so I could grab that too… okay? Okay.

An older lady came up and asked me “Is there a sale going on?”
I turned and politely responded. “Yeah, all these games are $10.”
“Are they computer games?”
“No, they’re console games, as well as DS. These won’t run on a PC.”
“Oh, well, then I guess they’re something I don’t know about then.”
Behind me, there was another mom asking about Pure for the PS3. She couldn’t find it among all of us gamers who knew exactly what we were doing. Her son had asked her to get it. In a shocking display, I saw a guy offer her one of the multiple copies he had grabbed to flip. It was a nice gesture.

I checked out, using my $5 coupon, and left. $48 bucks for all those games. (though one of them is for Essner, who’ll pay me back) Not bad! Hopefully they’re worthwhile. At least I had a little adventure of some sort before the boring work of today, I suppose.

I was pretty shocked that I was so successful. I was almost counting on me NOT being successful, much like my recent PSP game run to Gamestop during their Game Days sale. I collect so many games and barely play them. It’s kind of silly. But last time I went to one of these Best Buy clearances, there was nothing there by the time I walked inside. Two guys had EVERYTHING immediately. So I wasn’t expecting to win. But I did. So that’s cool.
I really don’t know why they advertised this in the paper, though. I would bet money that every single person who got most of the games there were people who heard of this sale on CAG. By the time the older set see the flyer in the paper and make it out there, there won’t be games left. It just seems like a waste of money to advertise it, as they’re going to sell out anyway. But eh, I’m not a Best Buy ad guru, so what do I know, I suppose.

Anyway, we’ll see how these games are. I would expect me to ramble about them in the future. So far, the only one I’ve popped in is Infinite Undiscovery, and had a sad reaction to the unreadable super tiny text in the thing. Oh well, we’ll see how it goes.

The way I work is fucking weird, man.

I don’t know. It was but a day or two ago that I had some really great conversations, some really great time with some really great people, and I felt refreshed, not only just in general but in preparing to start on the huge, complicated quest of getting all that transitioning stuff out of the way. Man, I have great friends, great people around me, and I was just going to go do it, you know? Get it done. Make it happen.

And then, the next day, I took a huge downswing.

I can’t remember the last time I took such a horrid downswing and felt so depressed, actually. I really don’t know what is wrong with me. Am I just punishing myself for actually looking forward to the future for once? Does something inside me think that, even though it’s all completely possible, that it’s not completely possible? Or is it just nerves in thinking about it making me weaker and more vulnerable to an already existing condition?

I don’t know. But I felt pretty horrible emotionally Friday, and as I write this, it hasn’t really gone away.

I told Brer the other day that I am a stronger person than I was a year or two ago. That I can make a plan and get things done now. But maybe that’s wrong. Maybe I’m still the same stupid girl who’s hiding up with her computer all day so she doesn’t have to face the biggest change of her life. Certainly the diploma I’m about to have won’t change anything. But I thought how much better I was doing in getting said diploma was a sign that I had mostly put this shit behind me.

Bleh. Blah.

I’m going to work through all this anyway. I’m going to find phone numbers on Sunday before I let myself play what I hope is my treasure trove from raiding Best Buy, and I am going to call them Monday. I’m going to set up appointments, and I will make things happen. Somehow I will afford them. It will work.
Then why does just typing that make me have such a huge knot in my stomach?

Prismatic Sports Bra!

It’s good!

Join me tomorrow when I’ll tell you th…

Okay, fine, a little more.

First off, the idea of it being a “sports bra” is, you have to admit, pretty humorous. Even as a female character, the idea of fighting crime in just a crazy color-changing sports bra is funny. So it gets points there.

If you were thinking that there were similarities between this and the Amazing Technicolor Dreampants, you would be correct! This is not a remake of the crazy rainbow pants, perse, but a slight change on the same idea. Different equipment slot, a few different powers, same constant randomness of useful effects in combat. It also seems to combine with the pants fairly well. I’ve had both of them running, and the similarity of their powers means I am more likely to have one of the ones I really want hit every combat. (I assume for most, that would be the +PP effects, or maybe the +XP effects.)

The one new effect on the Bra that I especially like is the +sidekick effectiveness. I remember when the judo kid gloves hit, and I was really worried about them being useless, and then as I used them, I realized how badass powerful they were, at least for farming. I haven’t unequipped them since. And when, with those equipped and with the bra hitting the right color, I have seen some crazy chip drops. It’s totally sweet.

I also especially like, message-wise, the message after battle when you hit on the +XP color. The idea of a hero actually doing that just makes me grin.

The one drawback to this item is the lack of a -time piece of equipment in the slot. Ever since the Xentrium Breastplate existed, I knew there was going to be this issue: It’s hard to justify putting anything in the shirt slot that doesn’t reduce time per turn. It is an especially hard sell, to those who own most of the IoTMs like me, to replace the Letter Shirt and it’s -15 seconds. I still don’t know if it’s worth it for the bleeding edge types, but I found that the recent inclusion of the Xentrium ingot to make full sets of Xentrium equipment really helps alleviate this. I basically just put on Xentrium gauntlets and boots, two slots that I don’t have IoTMs for because I missed Roderick’s gear, and that basically fixed the problem. It’s not as good as just the Letter Shirt, much less that AND these gloves and shoes, but dammit, I’m casual. I’m having more fun with the Bra on. The Letter Shirt is just a pure stat boost, the Prismatic Sports Bra is fun. I don’t have enough time to play my turns anyway. Heh.

Yeah, I dunno. I like it. Random is fun, I suppose, and this is random. Plus, hell, the idea of being a constantly-shifting rainbow-clad avenger of justice is just awesome. Admit it.

Yeah, this is a post about a dream.

Last night, I dreamed that there was a huge trip going on. It was a big deal. It was a huge event. Everyone was going, and I do mean everyone. My entire family was going. Essner, Spaeth, Droid, all my IRL friends were going. Most of my internet-style friends were flying in to go. This was a huge event!

I wasn’t going.

I started out okay with this, but soon, as I watched everyone gathering on the front lawn with all their stuff, I realized that kind of sucked. Soon, someone from work relinquished their spot. I could take it! I could go!

I told my mother the good news.
“You can’t go. You have class.”
This started a huge argument about how totally unfair that was, especially seeing as everyone else was going to miss class for this trip. Meanwhile, I knew the clock was ticking. Everyone was going to leave soon. I was arguing with my mother while she finished packing to go. I also realized that there are people waiting that I had never seen in person. Even if I failed to get to go, I needed to get out there and see Brer, and Cris, and Ecks, and all my good friends I’ve never seen in person before. But I was stuck in this argument. My mother kept seeming like she would give, but wouldn’t. I couldn’t figure out if it was futile to keep arguing or now.

I woke up with all of this unresolved, and feeling very actually frustrated.

I guess one could really analyze this dream. Something about how both my mother and school feel like they are keeping me away from fun and the people that I love. There’s probably some level of truth to that. Not an infinite amount, but some level. Either way, it was an extremely clear dream. I remember all kind of details. There was some sort of huge valve in the basement that Mom was shutting off to prepare for the trip, for example.
Man, I don’t know. I rarely have such serious dreams. I felt like sharing.

When we last left our heroes, Lord Captain Alluishous had jumped directly into a slime and got his ass devoured. Luckily, since then, we got another party member… who was with us the whole time! Of course! Originally, I thought it quite unfortunate that he didn’t go Barbarian as I was expecting, but instead went Cleric. Yes, this brings our party to THREE healers and 0 tanks. But, it worked out well. He built him up as muscular, beefy, and hit-stuff-style as was possible, basically. It worked out well, with him on the front lines next to Spaeth, I think. With two melee-style people, we were looking a lot better.

This temple-thingy was the first actual “dungeon” I’ve probably ever been in while playing this stuff. We’ve been doing it wrong all along! Sort of. There was a fairly solid fight with some slimes and some rats, and a small little interlude with a Mimic of all things. It was good times. Still, I was OVERWHELMED by how badass Alena’s healing is. Man, I used my Spirits of Battle, and suddenly, healing the entire group was effortless thanks to my paragon path, since everyone was always in a zone of conjuration I made. It was kind of obscene. If I wasn’t so fragile, I’d say Shaman was kind of broken. As it is, I know if I was focused on fully, I’d go down like nothing.

I got to try out my Spirit of Shielding Flame, and it was as excitingly neat and as frustratingly situational as I expected! Still, I love the flavor. Setting up a protective barrier around a person that lets me burn anyone who hits them is fun, fun, fun for a healing/defense-oriented person like myself.

Mainly, though, there was problem-solving in this dungeon. And I amaze myself in how I work. Maybe it’s just because I was so tired, but man, the first thing I thought of to do was the solution, and then, suddenly, everyone starts coming up with humorous, silly ideas, and I get so caught up in playing along that I forget to even suggest what I knew, from the very first moment, we were supposed to do. I suppose it’s a good thing that we’re having such a good time and messing around so much. Fun is fun! Having fun is good! But goodness, it’s almost frustrating when I realize I’ve been sitting on the answer the whole time and I just forgot to say it while we were cracking jokes about my character stripping in front of everyone (to change armor, of course!) and people screaming at walls to create avalanches.
It’s also kind of amazing how wrapped up we can get in our own bullshit narrative around what the real narrative is. Every time I have to recap to explain what we’re doing (although I never remember any names or anything, so there’s a lot of “that dude” and “that one guy”) everyone is kind of amazed and finding it odd that that’s what we’re actually doing. Such bullshit we are spinning, let me tell you!

Still, our planar adventures are continuing. It looks like we won’t be able to play again for awhile, but hopefully this one doesn’t drop off and disappear. I’m having a really great time, to be sure, and I would like it to continue. Here’s to hoping scheduling prevails! Yay scheduling! I think!

I’ve defeated the basement.
Well, okay, I didn’t “beat” it. It doesn’t end. It just gets progressively harder. But I’ve gotten to the end of the rewards.

I started the basement a long time back. Once I had decided to stop ascending for awhile, and level up to level 30 to get the Scourge of Seals trophy, it just seemed like an easy thing to also swing down to Fernswarthy’s and pick me up a telescope. What could be simpler?

The basement was about the most frustrating thing I have ever encountered in Kingdom of Loathing. Oh man. It was tedious. It rarely felt like I was making much progress. Even at my highish level, it was fairly expensive to get down to level 500. Ugh. I hated it. I hated it so much that I could barely make myself stomach doing more than, say, 20 levels a day. Since I have no free time to play Vidjeo Games anymore (though hell, that does not stop me from continuing to purchase them!) and rarely even played those 20 turns, that made my progress… almost nothing for a long time.

This weekend, I noticed my odd work schedule. “I have two full days off,” I said to myself. “I should just power through and be done with that shit.”
And I did.
And all I got for it was a telescope.
Yeah.

Anyone who thinks I’m going to do this another, what, 6 times to get all the upgrades is a little off in the head.

You know, a ball. Towards some pins.

So this Friday marked the second consecutive Friday I have went out with people from work and bowled like crazy at the Thunder Ally Cosmic Bowling whatever the fuck thing. It has done nothing but rekindled my love of bowling. I don’t know. I’m not a sports person, and I certainly don’t care about being “the best” in this either. But it has the addictive “mostly just working against yourself” factor that draws me to golf, but is significantly less physically taxing and time-consuming than real golf. (Real golf has so much downtime, even in a cart. I think I’ll stick with video game golf, where I can just teleport to my ball again and again.) It also doesn’t hurt that I’m pretty good at it already. I mean, I’m not going to blow you away (IGN.com) or anything but I can fairly consistently bowl, say, 150? And that’s plenty for me. That’s better than most “casual” bowlers. I’m happy with that.

But yeah, so I love bowling. Still, bowling with the people from work is… kind of surreal. The first time I went, I had just this strong feeling of “Oh, so this is what ‘normal’ people do with their free time.” People were drinking, smoking, flirting. There was a fight in the parking lot. Loud rap music was blaring the entire time. People went to a strip club afterward, and were up until 7 in the morning. (I went home right after the bowling.) This was not a world I was used to! I was out of my element!

Still, everyone seemed to want me there anyway, and I had a good time bowling, even if I was just kind of quietly eavesdropping on the conversations, not really being equipped to join in with them. It happened similarly the second time. But even with that awkwardness, the fun won out. I had a great time. Since I never do anything Friday nights, I’m really thinking of making this a regular occurrence.

And with the idea I’d be bowling on a regular basis comes the idea that I should get some equipment. I always waste a game getting used to the new shoes, the new ball, and everything. Why not get some affordable bowling gear? Some shoes, a bag, and a ball. I don’t need a crazy expensive ball, because I’m one of those “straight forward” bowlers, who doesn’t put a ton of hook on it, and in fact would rather my ball DIDN’T hook very much. The balls that don’t hook are the cheap ones. Initial web pricing would put the entire ensemble at about 80ish dollars. I spend that kind of money on vidjeo games I only play twice all the damn time. It doesn’t seem unreasonable.
However, I couldn’t pull the trigger online. Getting all the drilling worked out online was much too stressful. Still, I don’t especially want to go talk to the guy at the pro shop. I always feel like such a poser going into such niche places like that… I feel like that when going into a comic shop too, for instance. But eh, I’ll get over it, and check it out next week. Hopefully I can order a ball in some crazy, eye-hurting color or something.

Or maybe I’ll change my mind again! I’m awesome like that.

I used to be down on IoTM equipment. “Why would I equip that? It’s just going to fill a slot that I could use for some other cool thing I found in the game that may be more funny.” Then again, I used to be down on IoTM familiars for the same reason. I came around on familiars because I realized that using a different familiar each run changed things up, and the IoTM ones did different things than the normal ones. Hell, all my IoTM purchases are mostly for this reason: To have an ever-growing list of things I can do, and figuring out how to use them effectively changes the game up constantly, much like the theory behind “Standard” in Magic. So yeah, when I got the Haiku Katana, that all changed, really. Here was a weapon that was fun, did funny things, and really changed up my Muscle class game. I’ve been leaning towards Muscle classes ever since it came out because of this. I’m eager to get other pieces of equipment to really change up my game. This month, KoL has the Elvish Sunglasses, a Moxie-based piece of equipment. I snapped it up.

Now, I’m still in basementing hell and ‘waiting for the Hamster Times” limbo, which is fine, because I barely have any time to play anyway. But that means I haven’t really gotten to try it yet, like so many IoTMs. (I’m going to have a series of very eventful runs once I start ascending again!) I’ve been using it for the Moxie boost for basement checks, but, you know, that barely counts as being put to good use. I mean, the stats on it are great. Who wouldn’t want those bonuses? The +pickpocket is especially nice, what with all the very important new pickpocket-only items that are now available. It’s a bonus-granted machine to the moxie classes.

However, I like a good bonus, but I like entertainment value more. The Haiku Katana gave me both: It’s got really strong boosts for a Muscle class, and it has all these crazy skills I can use and silly Haiku text to read. I like that. The Elvish Sunglasses leave a little to be desired in this department. It grants me skills I can use based on instruments I have equippped. Now, the +5 Substats for “Play a Guitar Solo” is completely awesome and useful. The stun with drums, delevel with Accordians, and extra sleaze damage with flutes are also appreciated. However, this is going to really restrict what I equip. Now, I suppose if I was making my Legendary Epic Weapon, I could use that for most of the run. Especially as a Disco Bandit with a Shagadelic Disco Banjo, I’d be doing pretty nice. At the same time, so many of the ranged weapons I have, in the past, used during a run are not instruments. I normally make heavy use of the Beer Bong, Grease Gun, and Potato Pistol during a run. These are some of the strongest items at their levels (or at least, last time I played a Moxie class they were) and they’re not instruments. The last time I really heavily used instruments as a Moxie class was during my Disco Bandit hardcore run, and that was because I couldn’t pull all my good weapons like I normally can in softcore.

Basically, the sunglasses are asking me to make a hard choice. If I want to use the skills, I have to pick inferior weaponry. I’m sure most of the more hardcore set don’t care: From what I understand, if you’re speed-running, you use your Legendary Epic Weapon for the majority of the run. But it’s unfortunate that I’m not going to have quite the access to it as I would like. Why not have a fifth “vocal solo” skill for when you don’t have an instrument equipped? It could be worst than the rest, but I would appreciate it being there.

Still, I very well might change my mind about it by the time I do a run with it. Just the bonuses could be a huge lifesaver, and perhaps I’ll find there are plenty of instruments to keep me going for the whole run. We’ll see. As it is, I’m slightly disappointed in it at the moment. Not a whole lot. Slightly. I do appreciate it making the basement a little easier, if nothing else.

EDIT! LATE ADDITION!
So, I just remembered they recently added a bunch of ranged weapons to the game. So I checked them out! So many of them are instruments, and so many of them seem totally worth it! Obviously they had thought of that before they released an IoTM so dependent on having good instruments for most of the run, huh? Silly me. This makes me much more excited to try it out, both because it’ll be more useful and because I just realized I have a whole bunch of new weapons to find and try. Neat!

If there was one familiar I wish I would have been able to get in Kingdom of Loathing, it was the Doppleshifter. (If there was two? Probably the Wild Hare as well.) I’m just a fan of fun, basically. I don’t attempt to be very effective at the game when I play. I just enjoy fun, and dammit, cool randomness is kind of fun, you know? I wanted to be able to enjoy that randomness over the course of the casual-style runs I do. However, it’s a very old familar, and it’s prohibitively expensive to purchase. I couldn’t begin to justify it, so I just figured I’d never have one.
So when, on the Jick and Skully show, there was more and more and more talk about making a piece of familiar equipment that made a familiar work like a Doppleshifter? I was so excited. I had my fingers crossed that the idea wouldn’t get thrown away like so many other good ideas, and that they would actual impliment it.

On April 1st, they did! The Tiny Costume Wardrobe was introduced as something that will appear once a year from now on, on that day. And I snapped it right up. No hesitation.

I haven’t really got a chance to play with it yet. I look forward to playing through a whole run with it equipped to, say, The Land-Stander, my Pet Rock. But from what little I did, it seems to work completely as advertised. At the beginning of combat, it becomes something. At the end, it changes back. What more could I want? Nothing, really.
Of course, using it means I can’t use my Mayflower Bouquet or any +weight gear, which is unfortunate, but I’m willing to trade for that functionality. And if nothing else, it seems like it could have a barely minimal pretending to be optimal use, too. If, say, you want to level up your Jumpsuited Hound Dog, but don’t want the +combat? It still gets the experience when it’s got the Wardrobe equipped, and it’ll do something else. Again, though, that probably isn’t actually optimal at all, especially since the Bouquet could give them additional experience, but whatever. The idea of being able to level tower familiars while having fun with them instead of disliking them is kind of exciting.

But yeah, it’s just a straight up fun thing. You know if you’d enjoy such randomness in your game. I sure as hell will. I was very, very glad to pick that one up.

The other game I was playing all Easter weekend was, well… Tetris.
It’s all this thread on Talking Time’s fault. There was Tetris love! And I love Tetris. Not as much as, say, Panel de Pon. But I love Tetris.

So when Rei linked to Tetris Friends, I went and checked it out.
Hours later, I realized I had just played, well… hours of Tetris.

Tetris Friends leaves little to be desired, if it’s Tetris that you crave. You can turn the “piece shadow” off and on, so if you’re a purist who doesn’t like that, that’s your option. It has the hold thing, which I hadn’t actually used before this but actually adds a great additional element to the game. It has a couple completely normal Tetris variants, which are always needed. It has 2 player VS mode, which would be nearly perfect if you could pick your opponents. I do like the “only 2 minutes” aspect of it. Makes it easy to go “just one more game” since you know you’re not going to get trapped in an epic back and forth battle. It has a neat mode called Sprint, which you can play alone or in multiplayer, which is basically a race to clear 40 lines first. The strategy is actually much different than a normal multiplayer, as setting up Tetrises is much less important.

The only really unfortunate thing about it is that you can’t pick your opponents. I can’t challenge a friend to a game of VS. It’s all done by their matchmaking. Though their ranking system seems pretty darn effective. When I get online in Tetris DS, I am immediately destroyed by power-players. In Tetris Friends, I have yet to be completely stomped in a match. When I did some complete stomping myself, the game popped up a window and offered to rank me up about 5 ranks, which I accepted. Now I’m facing people more my level faster, which is exactly how it should be. Playing with just people who are close to your skill. Awesome.

But yeah, I dunno. I have no idea how this venture is making money. One little ad can’t pay for everything, can it? Especially since I think this is licensed and not like… the Tetris Company itself putting this out? But it’s everything I could possibly want from a Tetris game, and it’s free and online and with robust stat tracking and a “token” earning system to keep you coming back again and again. What’s not to like?