So, this morning I had a pair of back to back telecons starting at 7am. Because of this, I took both telecons from home. While on the telecon, I was playing Ninety-Nine Nights and finally managed to beat it.

N3 is probably best described as mediocre. The gameplay is similar to Drakengard in the sense that it is one versus many action combat, but it is hampered by various bizarre bugs that make the gameplay less consistent. Notably among these are the game's strange behavior in deciding when an enemy has actually hit you. Sometimes, you are invincible during combo, other times an enemy will hit you and break a combo attack sending you flying. Despite this, the gameplay tends to be fun so long as you doing get killed by something arbitrary (I was once stun locked by about 5 dozen enemies and slowly went from full health to zero over the course of about two minutes without a chance to break out).

The game also has atrocious voice acting and what can generously be called lousy writing. Although you can play through several different scenarios, the first two available fail to make much sense. In them, you are hunting down and genociding goblins for reasons that are never well explained. In fact, it doesn't particularly seem like your characters are in a defensive war, more like they've decided to hunt down and destroy anything that isn't human in some sort of holy war.

Also, the final boss can only be beaten by reaching max level (nine) and hoping to find a specific random item drop in the final level. This is due to the fact that normal attacks do basically zero damage to the final boss and the special attack that can hurt it drains a non-renewable resource unless you have said item.

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So earlier today I opened up an investor account through Bank of America. I did this with one specific goal in mind: speculating on the recovery or acquisition of Citibank. Citibank is currently trading at its lowest ever share price, about $1.2/share. I have often thrown money away on silly things (random computer stuff, fuufs, etc), but I haven't yet really gambled any substantial funds away. As such, I've decided to throw a few hundred bucks at this struggling company to see what comes of it. I've been kicking myself ever since I failed to buy Qwest stock during the bursting bubble when it was sub dime, so I figure what the hell. When I inevitably lose my money, I'll probably go back to more conventional investment vehicles, but it will be an interesting experiment nonetheless.

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I've recently been watching Maria Holic and I suggest that other people watch it as well.

Premise:

A closeted lesbian enters an all-girls missionary school in an effort to find a true love (like her mother did). On the way into school on the first day, she meets the beautiful granddaughter of the school's board of director's chairman who turns out to be a boy crossdressing in order to attend to school. The boy uses the fact that he has power (by being the chairman) and the fact that he immediately recognizes her lesbian tendency to force her into a subserviant role. Hilarity ensues.

Although I initially found the show interesting when I saw the first episode, it wasn't until I saw the opening in the second that I realized the show was, in fact, brilliant. If nothing else, find a copy of the opening and watch it. Unfortunately, they seem to be pulling down the opening off of you tube (a copy with Spanish subtitiles).

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Yesterday I got word back from my dad that he'd finished my taxes. Apparently I will be getting back about $800 from my federal taxes and about $100 from the state taxes. Unfortunately, since those are California state taxes, I probably won't ever see them. Maybe I can use them next year as a credit against any potentially owed taxes. I was hoping the refund might be a bit higher, but it turns out that I don't really do that much that I can write off. It would've been nice if I could have written off my donation to Theta Xi, but they haven't yet gotten off their asses to make it possible for me to do such things yet. I suppose that the best thing that I could do from a tax standpoint would be to buy a house (of course) so that I could be writing off the interest on the loan. It turns out that being a homeowner has additional benefits from the home itself.

The handy thing is that that $800 refund will cover roughly half of my remaining college debt. I am clawing ever closer to being debt-free.

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Why was there a huge build up/reveal of Lost Planet 2 on Xbox live? The first game was, at best, mediocre. The gameplay was shaky, the plot was thinner than rice paper, and the controls seemed to not have actually been playtested by anyone, ever.

I just don't get it.

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So last night, as I was coming back from CAS I happend to be listening to the BBC world new broadcast on NPR. I joined part way through a discussion about the upcoming Oscar awards. In the discussion, they had a moderator/host and a pair of other people who were collectively discussing what they thought should awards. The moderator then asked the person with the distinctive Chinese accent what he thinks should get an award to which he said that he thought the opening of the Beijing Olymics should get an Oscar. I think that there must have been no way for him to understand how ironic such a statement is given that

1} Oscars are given to films. Though the Beijing Olymics opening was partly a work of fiction, it was certainly not a film. They might be eligible for a Tony though.

2} The Beijing Olymics opening was not supposed to be a work of fiction in any way.

It seemed as though the host was as taken aback by the comment as I was as he stammered through a comment like "it certainly deserves something". Unfortunately, when they did the closing identifications, they only identified the people by name and didn't give affiliation so I wasn't able to tell if this person was a PRC shill. The whole thing was rather ridiculous.

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So, given my current debt paydown rate, I should be debt free within the next few months. This had led to me beginning to look into buying a home, especially one near my current abode. To that end, I spent some time today (while various tests were running) looking at Realtor.com and the similar Yahoo sites. Based on my analysis, it looked like there were quite a few places near me in the $250k-$350k range which is probably what I can afford. Hopefully prices will continue to decline while I build up a savings to use as a down payment.

This line of thought also led me to actually buy a copy of my full credit report (with score) from Equifax. It turns out that my credit rating is currently 737 (they range from 310 to 850) which is much better than I expected. The only "negative" parts of my score are the "total length" of my history and the "average account age" which are (for obvious reasons) not up to the 8-12 year desired range.

It amazes me how little it takes for me to pull a copy of my entire financial history from a company that I never before today had a relationship with. It seems crazy that, given my name, SSN and a single challenge questions, I can get a full listing of my account history from so many places. It may be a necessary evil, but it still seems troubling.

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Things that I approve of:

1. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

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So, a few months ago, I made a post which ended up becoming a place where myself and other Theta Xis exchanged Xbox gamertags. This has resulted in me having a bunch of TXs in my friends list, but no one else that I know. As such, I'd like to reopen such an exchange by offering the following thoughts:

PSN ID: guyblade
Gamertag: Guy Blade
Wii Code: 8936 7597 9141 1035

Are there no members of 004 with such systems? What of those lost to me from years hence who I knew but in high school? Only such a dialog can reveal.

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So, about an hour ago, I finally beat Lost Odyssey. It is a Japanese-style RPG for the 360. Overall, the game was probably above average. It was solid enough and managed to make a good number of design decisions--most notably the Suikoden style leveling system wherein the game automatically helps you if you fall behindin leveling. The premise of the game is that the main character is a thousand year old, unaging immortal (with amnesia, of course). This leads to various interesting gameplay mechanics such as your character simply standing back up after they've been KO'd for a few turns.

Where the game really shines, though, is in a part of the game which is almost incidental: the Thousand Years of Dreams. These are short text-only sequences which tell snippets of the main character's memory from his long life. All of these are incredibly well written (possibly better written than the main plot) and build to describe the sheer lonliness and isolation that would occur for a person who outlives everyone they will ever meet.

The game itself is in the $20-$30 range right now and I suggest picking it up if you're looking for a good, somewhat formulaic RPG.

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I think I've finally discovered why Adult Swim licensed King of the Hill. There are two reasons:

1. If KotH comes on after midnight, it means that it is time to go to bed.
2. If KotH comes on before midnight, it means that I should change to Comedy Central to watch Futurama--a good television show--instead.

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So, I beat Operation: Anchorage (the Fallout 3 expansion) a few hours ago. It was probably about 3 hours of content, but that may be due primarily to my character's build. Since the expansion takes place in a "simulator", you don't get to make use of any of your normal equipment. Instead, you are given a handful of weapons that never degrade and told to go do some objectives. It turn out, however, that nearly all of those weapons qualify as small arms. Among them was a particular favorite of mine--the sniper rifle. Since you are fighting humans almost exclusively and due to the 3x multiplier on sneak attacks, I basically snuck my way through the entire expansion dropping enemies in one shot with sneak attack head shots. Since this expansion wasn't explicitly targeted at people who were level 20, I think I may have had an easier time than was intended. In fact, the only times I died were when I stood too close to an explosive that I set off and when I ran out of ammo for the sniper rifle while too far away from an ammo drop.

It probably makes sense to pick up the expansion if you are starting a new game so that you can get access to the good equipment that it provides relavitely early, but it doesn't necessarily seem like something compelling for people who've already cleared the game.

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So this morning, while on a telecon, I started downloading the expansion ("DLC") for Fallout 3. This forced me to make use of the Windows LIVE Marketplace which is a strange enough beast alone, but which provided this strange genre description:



I realize that "A Post Nuclear Roleplaying Game" has been the subtitle of the series since its inception, but I am loathe to accept the notion that three games constitute a genre. That would be like offering up the genre of the Katamari games as "World Consuming Adventure" or some other tripe. I think it would have been acceptable to place "Roleplaying" or even "First Person Roleplaying" in that box (yes, I realize you can go into third person; no, it isn't a good idea).

Filling the genre box with unnecessary information doesn't make it more useful, it makes it less.

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So this morning, while on a telecon, I started downloading the expansion ("DLC") for Fallout 3. This forced me to make use of the Windows LIVE Marketplace which is a strange enough beast alone, but which provided this strange genre description:



I realize that "A Post Nuclear Roleplaying Game" has been the subtitle of the series since its inception, but I am loathe to accept the notion that three games constitute a genre. That would be like offering up the genre of the Katamari games as "World Consuming Adventure" or some other tripe. I think it would have been acceptable to place "Roleplaying" or even "First Person Roleplaying" in that box (yes, I realize you can go into third person; no, it isn't a good idea).

Filling the genre box with unnecessary information doesn't make it more useful, it makes it less.

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So, it's hailing here--approximately pea sized. I've not seen it hail here before. I'm glad my vehicle is in a covered carport.

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