So, in Metroid Prime 3, there are four collectables that you get for doing various things. They are called 'credits' and there are four main types Red (for scanning creatures), Blue (for scanning Lore), Gold (for beating bosses), and Green. Green is where the real trick lies. Green credits are called "Friend Credits". It is impossible to actually earn Friend Credits in the game, instead you earn "Friend Vouchers". Friend Vouchers are sent to other Wiis and produce "Friend Credits" on their Metroid Prime 3 game. It seems as though it requires approximately 15 Friend Credits to unlock everything. Luckily, I have exactly 15 Friend Vouchers. If anyone is interested in setting up some kind of trade, let me know.

Also, apparently I am coming down with a cold. I slept 10 hours yesterday (4 immediately after work). I dislike being sick. This is especially true when being sick causes me to feel like my ear needs to be popped constantly.

Published by XPost

Last night, I heard an advertisement on the radio for a place that did rent-to-own for rims. I consider this one of the signs of how far America has fallen. This is, of course, secondary to the Loonie reaching value parity with the US dollar.

Published by XPost

Last night, I went to the Caltech Anime Society meeting. It is striking how much different CAS is from RHAS. The club consists primarily of former students (I'd guess there were maybe 2 people who were current caltech people there), and is run from a room not entirely dissimilar to a lounge using a television rather than a projector. They were showing Hare+Guu which was pretty funny, and a few other things. I'll probablly stick with this for a while, until I get bored of it.

Published by XPost

So, today I was running a few errands and I found something that I'd been looking for since I arrived in Pasadena. You see, I'd say that maybe one third of streets around here have the word "Oak" in their name. There's Fair Oaks, Oak Grove, Oakland, Grand Oaks, etc. Today I finally found Oak Avenue. It was about as exciting as I'd expected it to be, which is to say not very.

I've also found that there is not a single grocery store that can satisfy my shopping lists. One of them has a bakery and a butcher; the other carries IBC and pretzels. Unfortunately, together this means that I cannot simply go to one and get supplies. I find this irritating. What is more irritating is that the closest grocery with Jiffypop is nearly an hour away (two if traffic is bad, according to google).

Published by XPost

Penis?

This weekend was homecoming back at Rose. I had decided sometime in August that I was going to come back for it and in fact did. I had a ton of fun and got to see most of the people that make up my memories of Rose. Almost all of my time was spent at Theta Xi. It was a very different experience not having to be responsible for getting things done, but it was a lot of fun as I got to see all of my pledge brothers and most of the brothers with whom I spent the most time. It was also good to get the 004 show back together. We were missing a couple of people (Andrew, Nate), but we had the rest of the cast from all 3 years that we did the show. I'll try to get a recording of it up in a reasonable time frame but no promises.

Now, I am back in Altadena. Tomorrow I go back to work. Fun fun.

Published by XPost

Wis.dm is a site that lets you ask people questions. I find it mildly interesting. I asked the following question:

Published by XPost

There are several things that I'd been meaning to post about recently. I'll try to do all of them now.

I got my power bill for the month of August last Thursday. It was $370. I find this irritating. The worst part is that the power company uses a tiered system to determine how much your power bill is. For the first 350 kWh (or so), the cost per kWh is only $0.022. The price then goes up in tiers based on what percentage of that 350 kWh value (the so-called 'baseline') you exceed it by. I exceeded it by over 200%, which means that the last 350 kWh or so were $0.25 / kWh. I've turned down my air-conditioner somewhat, but the real power usage is the 8 computers (9 if you count the xbox) that never turn off.

Command and Conquer 3 has a notable cast. It has Lando, Sharon from Battlestar Galactica, Dr. Cameron from House, and the teacher from Starship Troopers. Command and Conquer 2 had James Earl Jones in it, so I guess I shouldn't be too suprised.

LEGO Star Wars II isn't as good as LEGO Star Wars. They followed the standard "3D platformer sequel plan" which consists of two steps. First, keep the gameplay almost identical. Second, add arbitrary collectables of dubious value. If you were thinking about collection all 99 gold bricks in LSW II, I'll go ahead and tell you what it does: it gives you a LEGO stud (i.e., money) fountain. This is handy if you have a lot left to unlock in the store. I only had the higher-value money multipliers left to unlock, which made this reward something of a let-down.

If you haven't played Halo 2 yet and you want to play it on a PC instead of a machine not designed for FPS games, you should wait until Halo 3 PC is released. The game pulls a XIII, though at least we know that there is a Halo 3 in the works.

Also, Halo 2 for the PC is a bitch to play. You have to sign up for an XBox Live account to be able to play it--even in single player. I find that to be an idiotic design decision. The most annoying part is that Microsoft Passports are the basis of XBox Live, but you can't simply use a Passport account--you must first go through a registration process before being able to use the account you already have.

Speaking of passports, I got my US Passport today. Now, if I have to go to France in January, I'll be able to do so. Also, it will be significantly easier to prove my identity (yet again) during the rebadging process at JPL. I had to prove my identity to them twice since I started working there. I had to prove it again at the California BMV. I am growing tired of having to prove who I am. Apparently a passport is a one-stop item for doing so.

I've recently begun converting my DVD collection into a more useful form. I'll post more about this at a later date.

I haven't heard anyone complaining about being unable to access the link or blade.io. I wonder if people other than me can access them...

Today is my birthday; I turned 23. Earlier today, I had difficulty writing the date down on a piece of paper because I am used to writing today's date followed by my birth year instead of 2007. I then had to think really hard for a few seconds to determine what year it was that I should be writing next to my birthdate instead of the one that I was mechanically programmed to write.

The unifying theme of this post is the lack of unifying theme. This sentence contains 54 characters including period. This sentence does not refer to any sentence in this post, including itself.

Published by XPost

So, last week I finally filled out the paperwork to be reimbursed for my move. The travel department had complained to me that I should have filled out the work over a month ago (though I was unaware of such a need), so I just sat down and filled it out. I figured that this week, I would have a little bit more in my paycheck due to the reimbursement. Unfortunately, the finance people decided that it would be a good idea to also have me pay all due taxes on the parts of my move that were paid for by JPL such as the relocation of my things, paying for my hotel, etc. The net effect of my reimbursement was that my paycheck was approximately one-third of what it usually is. I find this irritating.

I also filled out the paperwork for the HSPD-12 badge. This required me to, among other things, list everywhere I've lived for the past 5 years (along with people who can verify that). I also had to list various other things such as my selective service number, a list of everywhere I worked for the past 5 years (which would include my unemployment during high school), 3 people who "know me well" and cover the last 5 years, and other such nonsense. It was a giant pain because pretty much everyone I've known for the past 5 years has scattered to the winds. At least it is done and I won't have to worry about it anymore (assuming that my badge is approved, that is).

Published by XPost

So, I've mentioned before that Lego Star Wars (and its sequel which I am playing now) is an amazing game. Up until now, I haven't explained why the game is good. I intend to change that now.



LSW doesn't have any dialog in the game (Legos can't talk, after all), so all interactions between character are carried out using mumbling or facial expressions. The real amazing thing is how expressive the legos can be. Solo still has his half-smirk, Tarkin still has his grimace, etc.

Of course, Legos also don't bleed which makes the game take on a more humorous tone in many places. For instance, when Han shoots Greedo, Greedo's chest piece flies out behind him followed by him looking down before falling part ala Looney Toons--very good stuff.

Since both games are $20 or less now, I suggesting picking them up. Ideally, you should pick them up for the same system so that you can use the "Use Old Save" feature of the second game to bring Episode 1-3 characters into the Original Trilogy.

If nothing else, you can see Chewbacca try to put on a stormtrooper helmet which is hillarious enough on its own.

Published by XPost

So I play in two RPGs now. The first is the Warlock (Caltech D&D) game which I have talked about before. The second is a rotating HERO game. It turns out that one of the people in that game does the lettering for comics. Apparently, he does lettering for The Avengers. That would be about the closest I've ever come to someone famous in the comics industry.

I expect my power bill to be higher this month than it was last month. I say this because I have already used more kWh this month than I did last month. Hopefully, my bill won't go past $300...

Figuring out how to get things to build with libpurple was a pain. I blame glib and its backwards "you must use pkg-config to produce appropriate gcc flags" mentality.

There are $11 left in my National City checking account. Now I just have to figure out how to spend exactly the remaining funds.

I have to play through Bioshock again because everyone I know played through it with the same mentality.

Published by XPost

So, for the past week or so, the temperature hasn't dropped below 65, not even at night. This has resulted in my apartment's tiny airconditioner being unable to decrease my apartment's temperature to a livable one. As such, I have come up with a plan. I have purchased a portable air conditioner.

Usually, setting up one of these things would be trivial, but unfortunately, my apartment has only suicide windows. As such, I have also ordered a large piece of clear acrylic plastic in order to cover a window to use in order to vent the exhaust outside. Hopefully, this won't be too difficult to set up.



Published by XPost

So, I had a few more pictures from recent times that I wanted to post.


1. This was on the back of a panel truck. The lock in the center is probably 4 inches in diameter. An identical one was on the side. This was panel van was parked at my hotel before I moved into my apartment. The van itself was driven by a middle-aged asian woman and someone who looked to be her mother. I can only assume that nefarious things were hidden behind that lock.


2. With the advent of Lego Fruit Snacks, the era of children being told not to play with their food is over. I am still curious as to whether or not the Lego blocks that you can eat fit together with the ones that you cannot. I hope that they are universal so that you could design joints at slight angles using non-rigid Legos.


3. Math Blaster has gone Xtreme--anime style. I would have thought it was a joke if not for the fact that I saw it with my own eyes.


4. I went to an eye doctor earlier this week since I was over-do for my yearly checkup. While waiting, I saw this apartus on the wall. This particular item is a projector, which is nothing iteresting. What is interesting, however, is how it was used. Since space is at a premium in the LA area, this projector was pointed at a mirror that reflected an image of a standard eye chart onto the wall behind where I was seated. I then was directed to look through a different mirror in order to read the chart. It seemed more complicated than what is usually necessary for such situations.


Eventually, I will post pictures of my apartment, but I doubt that will be for a while yet. I want to make it somewhat presentable before taking images that will persist for an indeterminate period of time.



Published by XPost

For the last several days, the temperature in my apartment has been unreasonable. It has been at least 80F pretty much constantly, and much worse right after work. This is probably due to the fact that the temperature outside has been a high of over 90F (it is 100F right now), but it hasn't gotten below 65 at night. I don't think my little window air conditioner can fight that kind of battle with any success, but turning it off would lead to heat stroke.

Aside from the heat, I've learned several things this week:

1. SVG renderers aren't ready to render ~200k elements in a single image. I think this is probably not an unreasonable limitation, but it does cause problems when trying to use SVG as a graphing output format.

2. I consume a lot of electricity. I got my electric bill on Monday this week. It was just shy of $250 for the month. My power usage was 1.75kW (thats 42kWh/day). Computers consume a lot of power when left on 24/7 as does the 800W air conditioner that can not be turned off without fear of death.

3. The deer on lab at JPL don't seem to consider humans as threats. They just wander around anywhere they want to go. You can even get up rather close to them without causing them to panic and flee. Example:



4. Daria is as good a show as I remember it being. So far, I've watched the first two seasons and am almost done with the third. I believe this show was MTV's greatest achievement.

Published by XPost

So today, I purchased a plane ticket to come back to Homecoming. Tom was nice enough to agree to pick me up from the airport and take me back. It'll be weird to be back without having to do schoolwork or being in 004, but I figure I'll just crash at Theta Xi for the weekend. If the actives do a good job, I'll may even break out my checkbook.

In other news, I have the XBox working again. If you had something stored on it that you need, I can probably get it for you.

Published by XPost