Thursday, August 12, 2004
Blog Update of the month
Hi! Don’t worry, my blog hasn’t gone the way of Duy’s blog or Alan’s blog or anything. I’ve just been… well, busy’s not the right word… maybe procrastinating? Anyway, I said I would do a really big blog update, so today might be it! Today is Thursday, August 12, 2004, and yes, I’m gonna make my really big blog update today!
Today I’m doing something different… well, everytime I have something to blog about, I open up the update file in notepad and write a couple words about it, and then when I do my blog update I look at all the words in that and update based on that. Today, since the blog update is so long (based on all the words I’ve collected during the last week, and previous weeks where I didn’t update about what I wanted to update), I’m gonna periodically just blog in Word, and then at the end just copy and paste it into blogger. So instead of taking 1 hour out of my life to update, I’ll be taking several 30-minute portions out of my life today to update.
So… lots to talk about. Anyway, I started this document around 12:15, and then we watched Family Feud, went to eat, and came back, and I finished working on a Magic deck, and now it’s 3:45. Man, the day is disappearing fast… I still haven’t packed.
Packed? WHAT? Apparently, there are still some of you that don’t know. Either July 15th till July 23rd, or July 24th till August 1st, I was supposed to take a family vacation, either to Miami or to California. That didn’t work out, and long story short, the vacation was changed to Cancun, and the date was postponed till Saturday, August 14th, until Saturday, August 21st. So, we’re going to Cancun in Mexico, for a week.
So what does that mean? Well, for one thing, we’ll be absent all next week. I won’t update for a week (I’m sure I won’t try to do so while I’m on vacation, although I’ll try to occasionally check my e-mail), and nobody can come over or anything :P So I’m updating today, and I probably won’t be updating for at least 10 days. So I’ll leave you all with this monstrous huge update, and you can read it and leave a monstrous amount of comments.
Actually, to make sure I’m not writing this just because, anyone who reads this should comment; if you can’t think of anything, just write “I read it”; otherwise, write more. Anyway, now that we’ve got the basics covered, let’s get onto the journal entry… yeah, I wrote a page so far about how I’m gonna post today, and how I’m not gonna post for a long time… and now I’ll write that I’m currently listening to http://www.baomon.com/spoons/oc10.mp3 , another OCRemix, based on various songs from Super Mario World. It’s in a remix style, with various different instruments and loud drums – so not just techno, not a piano arrangement – so it doesn’t sound so focused with any particular themes, but I really, really love this remix. Partially because I love the Super Mario World Castle theme. So, have a listen, and hope you enjoy it. Of course, you can download the other OC remixes (1-16 that I uploaded), but you won’t know what they are until you download them. Maybe later I’ll upload a few more that recently became part of my ‘favourites’ list.
So… update time, maybe now? First, I’ll write short little messages to different people, and then I’ll write some thoughts, and then I’ll write about stuff that has happened, in BACKWARDS chronological order, most recent things first, since those are freshest in my mind. So… here we go!
Ray! How’s AVP? I guess I’ll see it if other people see it. I haven’t seen a lot of aliens nor predator, so I’m not sure. And thanks for your advice about Cancun. Oh yeah, although I’ve heard mixed reviews, have you ‘obtained’ Doom 3 yet? :P It sounds like it has a lot of atmospheric mood stuff, and interactivity (kinda like Metroid Prime?), but with some weird… stuff…. Sounds interesting… so I’d like to try it :P
David! You’re crazy! I heard from my mom you called today and asked HER if you could come over! That’s crazy. It works much better if you leave the negotiations to us. Anyway, hopefully you can come over waaay later tonight, or tomorrow, and we’ll play some poker. I’ll write more about poker a little later in the update.
Jason! Stop forgetting to bring your magic cards!
Jia! Come over again soon so we can play more Symphonia. Oh, and wanna go to CN Anime? I checked the ticket prices, so I’d rather go for just Saturday than all 3 days for $45. I assume just Saturday will be $25. Oh yeah, this message goes to everyone else too. The more the merrier.
Ambrose! I guess you’re done exams now. YAY! And if you’re not, you shouldn’t be reading this just yet. I’ll burn some anime for you so you’ll have something to do in Ottawa… oh yeah, I’ll also have to burn some FMA for Ray… although Jia can give it to you via cd too..
Wen! The other day you mentioned that Bill Clinton was going to be on the Daily Show, and you implicitly asked for it to be taped, so I taped it (onto my computer). I’ll put it on cd or dvd for you, along with some other stuff, although the video is massively uncompressed… well, not too massive, but not un-massive either… Oh well.
Umm… Alan… update! Actually, now I’ll take the time to update for both Alan and Duy. So, first Alan:
This summer I went on 2 camping trips. I had lots of fun with friends. I’ll blog about them later.
Bao’s last D20 game was fun. I’d blog about it, but Bao will probably blog about it, so there’s no point.
… I can’t think of anything else. Now, let’s see what Duy’s been doing.
So… lately, my average day goes something like this:
25% sleep, 15% not computer (50% food and tv, 50% misc), 10% games, 10% misc, 40% computer (7% work, 13% misc, 5% d2x, 75% ffxi)
Trainer sessions are going okay. Some days I can’t play as much ffxi cuz I have the online dnd game, and some days people come over and we play games like Smashy Smashy and Old Smash, and sometimes Tales of Symphonia too. But whenever they’re doing something I don’t care about, I go back to FFXI, so I can still stick in some of that into the day. Also, sometimes my dad makes me play pool so I do that too.
… Okay, that’s enough for now. So that’s Alan for the summer, and Duy for the summer.
Anyway, let’s continue with the blogging (of Bao). A few entries ago, I said that I would write a huge entry about Full Metal Alchemist and other anime I’ve watched… well, I won’t do it this time either. But I do have to ask, why is Full Metal Alchemist so good? Why are we still watching after so many episodes? What sets it apart from other series that are more than 26 episodes? Do we still like it for the same reasons we liked it at the beginning? Has the quality (of story, characters, etc) reduced over the span of the series? Answers to those questions and more, will come in another entry in the distant future.
I also wanted to write something about Initial D, but that’ll have to wait too.
Anyway, I just watched a monkeyball clip, so I procrastinated again, and now it’s 4:30. So now I’ll do a backwards chronological update, with thoughts squeezed in at random parts. Oh yeah, since it’s been a long time, I’ve probably mixed up some dates with other dates, so I’m not sure what happened when.
So… backwards chrono order… 1 minute ago I made me a cone of frozen yogurt. Now I’m typing with 1 hand… brb.
Okay! 4:45! Time to stop procrastinating, and start blog update. Sigh… I’m making it sound like blogging is work… but it’s not. Anyway, I guess it’s time to blog! So… just had a cone of frozen yogurt, yummy… today, we had a late lunch around 1:30, I’m not sure why it was so late. Went to the other house to eat, turned on the tv, to TMN, and I watched the last 20 minutes of a movie called “Better Luck Tomorrow”, blah blah blah, I don’t think you care, I don’t care either. It was okay though. Then I saw the first 40 minutes (except the first 7 minutes) of “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind”, starring some guy, Drew Barrymore, George Clooney, and some other people. It was… weird, but interesting. Well, I think it was a bit interesting… nothing that I’d usually rent, but I wouldn’t mind watching on TV.
We’re out of trainer sessions, our contract ended. Anyway, yesterday we were supposed to go to the gym, but I was a little bit sick, and Jia was still over, so today we went to the gym for a little bit. Duy didn’t exercise much, I exercised a bit more but not overwhelmingly more. Anyway, our main reason for coming today was to pick up some protein powder from our trainer. Protein = good, and mixing powder with stuff is a good way to get some protein into the system. Sure, we could just have some chicken, but protein powder is good too. I can put it into smoothies! Also, psychologically, when I put protein powder into smoothies, it feels like I’m drinking something healthy! So yeah.
Anyway, Cindy wasn’t there today, so we’ll go again tomorrow morning during our regular scheduled trainer time, since she has people before and after our slot. And maybe we’ll do more exercise tomorrow…
So, that wraps what happened on Thursday so far. Let’s rewind to Wednesday. Ooh, this feels like Memento… I mentioned Jia already, and now you have to wonder why he was still there Wednesday morning… mwahahaha…
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Last night, I played poker with Jia, Dad, and Vinks. It was fun. Well, I guess I’ll have an aside and talk about poker now.
I like poker! Anyway, there are 3 things that are important to having a fun poker game. The first, is yourself. You have to like poker, or, if it’s your first time, you have to be open to the game and try to enjoy it or whatever. Additionally, say, if you’re playing for free or if you’re playing for $200, then you have to play with a good mindset. The 2nd element is your opponents. Similarly, if they don’t enjoy it, then there will be some kinda tension during the game, and there’s a certain etiquette that they have to play with so that the game is more fun.
The last is the atmosphere – the room, the place, the music (if any), the cards, and of course, the chips. Having these 3 things makes poker more fun! (Yes, this is all leading up to a point of some sort)
When I was in Waterloo, I had all those things – I was happy with poker, my friends enjoyed poker, and the atmosphere was always good. Here, there are a few differences. First of all, the first element, me. Nowadays, my element is no problem. Even if we’re playing for free, I play as if I have $10 worth of chips. In other words, I’m not playing really tightly, nor really loosely. I’d pay a chip to see the flop, even if my hand is below par. And etcetera.
Atmospherically here, everything was good except we had plastic chips. Psychologically, somehow, using plastic chips affected the gameplay, especially if we were playing for free. The feel of really thin pieces of plastic… well, it feels like we’re playing a children’s game. And losing a bunch of thin pieces of plastic doesn’t seem like a big deal. I don’t know, it’s really weird and psychological…
So… why are pieces of clay so much better than pieces of plastic? Once again, it’s somewhat psychological. When I have clay chips, I feel like I have something to lose. Secondly, there’s feel and sound; clay chips feel really nice, with a nice texture. They’re also heavier than plastic, so … it feels like they’re worth more. Lastly, when these chips touch each other or the table, they make a real sound, instead of a cheap plastic sound. So, as I said, it’s pretty damn psychological, but now with clay chips, I can enjoy a poker game, even if it’s for free.
Lastly, the 2nd element was the opponents. As I said with myself, I play games as if I had something to lose; I don’t have $2000 to lose, but it’s not free. It would be nice if my opponents also had this mentality. People like my dad, Rama, and David have this quality. They play realistically for the most part, taking time to think, bluff, sense motive, etc.
Then there’s Ambrose and Jia. They both keep going all-in, and most of the time they just get eliminated by the 2nd round. Well, sometimes Jia keeps going all in, so we give up and he gets our blinds and antes, but he keeps going all in and eventually he loses. Ambrose even has the mentality that they’re just chips and it’s free, like a “who cares” mentality, which is really unenjoyable. At least Jia tries sometimes.
So, to summarize, clay poker chips are awesome. They make poker much more fun than plastic chips can. Everywhere I go (except in public), I usually carry 3 poker chips with me, doing tricks, holding them, etc; sometimes I had 6 or more, to practice shuffling. Anyway, continuing the blog update.
After the poker game (Jia gets eliminated, I let him borrow 10 bucks, he makes more, he gives me back 10 bucks, then Jia and my dad get eliminated simultaneously, and then I beat Vinks), Jia decided that it’s finally time for him to leave, so he walks out to the bus stop.
Anyway, going more backwards (Memento style), we were having dinner. During dinner, we were watching ‘Most Outrageous Game Show Moments 2’ on TV, and Billiards during commercials. It was a pretty funny show, with an awesome final clip that had Jia and I laughing like crazy. Jia started laughing first, then I quickly caught on, while Duy and Vinks didn’t know what was happening. We also watched Jeopardy before that. Mozart was a composer, right Jia? :P
After that, Jia and I watched the first 40 minutes of Reign of Fire on TMN; ya know, the one about humans vs dragons. So, it starts with a… I dunno, 1960 England or something, maybe older, and a little boy loses his mom to a dragon, and then it fast forwards to a post-apocalyptic kinda future, with little stuff going on, and people living in fear of the dragons. It was okay, judging from the first 40 minutes. Dragons are cool, and smart. It’s nice to have a smart bad guy for a change, although I’m sure they’ll do something stupid so they’ll all die at the end…
Okay, let’s skip all the way back to Wednesday Morning. For no reason at all, I wake up at 8:30. For some reason, I wake up with the sniffles, and my nose was runny, so that was odd, but oh well. So I was a bit sick. Anyway, I go downstairs, and the parents weren’t awake yet… well, I think my mom was, but I didn’t see her. I go to my computer, and a few minutes later Rama emerges from the basement.
A few minutes later, Duy wakes up, and then Jia gets up as well. At around 9, Rama leaves to meet someone at EMTC. We all have breakfast (pizza slices, muffins, et al), and then we start a day of Symphonia. I think we played from about 9:45 until 12:15 – got much accomplished. Kratos is awesomer now, since he can cast spells like mages, that draw attention to him. His spells also do area affect damage, and they look wicked cool. I guess I’ll dedicate a paragraph to Tales of Symphonia.
Tales of Symphonia… I like it! I like the characters, and they’re still developing a relationship with each other. Lloyd hugged Colette the other day, which I thought was pretty good. Graphically, the game is superb, but we all know that already. The celshaded anime-textured 3d characters on a lush 3d background… ahh, it’s nice. Story is developing okay – nothing breakthrough amazing, but it’s not boring. Battle system is fun – not a brainless button masher, although it doesn’t have to be too technical. It’s just fun. Anyway, back to the update.
Then it was time for lunch, and we watched Family Feud, Celebrity-Look-alike special. However, half-way through, WGRZ channel 2 on your side (channel 17) ninjaed us out with a Special News report, about a priest in Buffalo. Do I look like I’m in Buffalo? NO! Gimme my gameshow back! Anyway, that’s the rant for that.
Came back, then I forget what happened between 1 and 4. Umm… oh yeah, we were supposed to do work, but we… oh yeah! No no, we played Symphonia from about 9:15 until… say, 11:45, so still 150 minutes, but then after that we went downstairs to build a shelf. Well, I didn’t really, I was sick and that sucked so I just relaxed a lot. After lunch, we did more shelves, and… I think we also had a game of Settlers of Catan on a random board. It was Duy’s idea, so we randomized the board – harbours were allowed to be in the middle, and it wasn’t in the shape of a hexagon either. Anyway, the game proved to be interesting, and at the end I nudged it out so I won.
After that, around 4:30, we drove Vinks to Piano, and we talked about RPGs and stuff while Vinks was doing his panino stuff. Afterwards, we drove back home, and… I think, we then proceed to play another 2:10 of Symphonia! So that takes us from 5:15 until 7:25, so 4:40 of Symphonia today, and that brings us to dinner, which I already talked about. Or, in the sense of Memento: we were having dinner. During dinner…
Anyway, back to… say… entirety of Tuesday? Sure, I can do that. But first, I take a break… it’s 6:00 pm, so I’ve been here for a bit more than an hour, so it’s time for a short break.
Okay, it’s 6:20, so I’ll continue writing for now, until another break time comes up. Anyway, during the break, I talked to Ching on msn, she’s doing good in Australia. I talked to Jia, he made it home safely. Lastly, this door-to-door person came by trying to promote an arts museum and he wanted to sell some paintings, but we decided we weren’t interested. And then he asked if he could use our bathroom, so I agreed, so he used it, and now he’s gone. And now that I think about it, I gotta use the bathroom… so I’ll do that in a few minutes.
Anyway, back to the entirety of Tuesday. Tuesday morning, went to see our Nutritionist, Mona, at the fitness center. She got jealous when we told her about Cancun, and she told us the same thing Ray told us, about not drinking water, and not drinking ice, and getting vaccinations and stuff. Mom said we didn’t need to get vaccinations, that we’re going to Cancun which is probably nicer and more Americanized than other parts of Mexico which will be more diseaseful. Mona also told us to bring Diarrhea medicine, and both Ray and Drew Barrymore (from confessions of a dangerous minds) mentioned Montezuma’s Revenge, Mexico’s Diarrhea. So, now I’m terrified of leaving, but really I’m not.
Okay, just went to the bathroom – towel still there, soap still there, and I doubt he stole toilet paper. And he didn’t place any explosives by the flush button or anything, so it’s all good. Anyway, today we planned to have ‘Brose, Jia, and Rama come over for a day of fun. Darbha (I prefer Dharba, but oh well) has been out of town forever, so now he’s back and we’re having fun that day. Before they came, I watched Full Metal Alchemist 44. Paragraph time!
So I’ll write a full-fledged review of FMA in a later blog post, but FMA 44 was awesome. All FMA 40-44’s pretty awesome, as they should be. The series is coming to an end on episode 52, and so the story’s just getting more intense and information is just flowing faster than ever. Anyway, FMA 45 will probably be subbed on Sunday, and FMA 46 will be subbed next Sunday, so I’ll probably see both FMA 45 and 46 when I come back.
Anyway, mowed lawns, etc, had lunch, etc, then Ambrose and Jia came over. Rama couldn’t make it until 5:30, and I asked Hawk to come too, so he did. I also e-mailed David, but he didn’t respond, but he did talk to Duy later that night, so maybe he’ll come over tomorrow (since he can’t today).
Smashy Smashy? Indeed. Played lots of smash, didn’t tape it, since taping isn’t a great idea, since it’s a painful process re-capturing… well, it really isn’t, with my new external tv tuner card, so maybe we can start taping stuff. Eventually Rama came over (and then Brose too, again), and we played a lot more Smash. We also played Burnout 2; well, Hawk and Rama did, and they did pretty good, and it was pretty damn entertaining. Lots of entertaining moments yesterday.
Everytime Rama comes, there are entertaining stories about times at Mac, and that’s always fun to hear. As for us? Sure, we have entertaining times at ‘Loo. Most of our entertaining times are pretty pg-rated, dealing with inside jokes, videogames, and nerdy things we do. Rama and Jia always retell stuff about extremely hard courses and they always have something to rant. We? Sure, we have hard courses and tests, but we don’t have beast courses or beast tests, or, at least we don’t retell them as beast tests. Whenever Rama says something, it’s so loud and energetic, that it must be funny, or extreme. See, we don’t do that. And Rama’s always talking about other people, and we… we don’t talk about other people. Even though I don’t know Flood, I heard his name before, and hearing about him was pretty funny.
Waterloo stories are pretty boring in comparison then. But we still have fun at ‘Loo. Our stories just aren’t as wild.
Later, the others played Pool, but Duy and I didn’t participate. Well, Duy was doing his dnd thing, and it was pretty scary down there. Well, not scary, but they’re a wild bunch. Hehe. They go wild at mac, and they go wild here too. Anyway, etc etc, eventually Ambrose goes home, and then Hawk goes home, and Jia and Rama are still here. Oh, we also played poker before, and then we played poker again. A typical poker game starts with a hand or two, Jia losing all his money (sometimes all to Rama, sometimes all to me, sometimes split between us two) and then a 2-player duel. Eventually, we all go to bed.
Wait. We had pizza too. I like pizza. Anyway, eventually, all went to bed. That reminds me, on Tuesday morning, I had the worst cramp ever! I pushed my feet against the end of my bed, and in my left calves, there was this cramp! I touched it, and it felt like a rectangular prism! Well, a bit softer around the corners, but it wasn’t round at all! It was so rectangular! It was pretty freaky and weird! And painful! AHH!! And then I curled my toes up toward me, and eventually it was gone… that was the weirdest cramp ever. AHH!
So, back to Monday. Trainer session that morning, last session. Um… since we weren’t gonna be here in September, we had a lesson devoted to free weights, so we did that the whole time. Came back home, umm… I don’t remember what happened. Let’s say we worked on revising a document for my parents, and… umm.. lemme ask Duy. Okay, Duy can’t think of anything, so let’s pretend we didn’t do anything on Monday. Oh wait… we went to Untouchables on Monday. Ahh, that’s at the bottom of my list of words, so.. yeah…
So, Monday August 9th, bought magic cards today. Well, the last time I went to untouchables, I opened up a booster with an Arcbound Ravager, which was worth maybe $25 at the time. I haven’t gone to Untouchables for a while since we’ve been busy, and the guy who buys cards is only there certain days, after 4:00 pm, so today we went.
Unfortunately, the price has gone down to $17, which means they buy it for $8.50 cash, or a bit more store credit, and for some reason, they wouldn’t buy it because they already had one in stock. So, the guy said that it’ll probably be gone in maybe a week or two, but I’m on vacation that time. Also, now that it’s selling for $8.50 rather than maybe $13, then maybe I don’t need to sell it anymore. Well, I probably still will, or maybe not, depending how lazy I am. Besides, I put it into one of my 2 primary decks, so it might prove useful.
Anyway, it seems that I’m back fullswing into playing Magic, buying cards and stuff. That day I spent $13.50 on 25 singles and bought 3 mirrodin boosters. I decided not to buy the silent arbiter for $5.00, at least, not until I sell the ravager. The silent arbiter would be a great addition to any deck of mine, or almost any deck. Both my current decks could benefit greatly with it. But alas, I bought a few commons, a few uncommons, and a few commons priced at uncommon price and a few uncommons priced for $1.00. For now I’ll keep what I bought a secret, to later be seen in a magic game. As for the 3 mirrodin boosters, they were rather disappointing, although I got some nice cards. I’d rather buy darksteel boosters… Anyway…
I think I’ll still buy more cards, even if nobody else is, as long as I don’t spend more than $5 ever on a single card. I gotta know my limit… so I’m improving my game, little by little, with cheap little cards and hoping to get something good via random boosters, and then hoping I can trade with other people for the better cards.
Hmm… let’s skip the entirety of Sunday, as it was very unimpressive. Anything worth mentioning about Sunday will be combined with the Saturday entry. So, we’ll do Saturday now.
Saturday, August 7th, 2004. This was the date of the final d20 game of this term, May 2004 to August 2004. I was the primary GM, Alan was the co-GM, and the players were Duy, (Alan), Wen, Jia, Ambrose, Ray, Jason, Ricky, and David. David stayed for about 1.5 games, and then his character died. Alan was a player the first game, and then he was drafted out of the military and became a co-GM.
7:15. Time to go to the other house, eat Dinner, watch Jeopardy, etc. I’ll probably be back around 8:30, or maybe 9:00, or we’ll see.
Okay! It’s 9:11 now. Watched Jeopardy, it was cool this time. Well, it was teen tournament still, and that’s cool and all… at 8:00, saw my first episode of Extreme Makeover. I can’t believe they do that on television… well, at least, I can’t believe ‘The Swan’, but then again, that’s Fox, and I guess this day in age nothing’s really taboo. Anyway, it was pretty interesting, so after coming back here at 8:40, I proceeded to watch the rest of the episode. Which brings us to 9, and now it’s 9:11.
Before I continue, before I forget, here’s the list of anime I have on dvd. Of course, there’s lots of stuff on my computer, and lots of other non-anime related stuff, but here’s the type of stuff I have already: http://www.baomon.com/board/dvd-toc.doc It’s a word document. Anyway, I’m looking through this document (the journal entry, not the dvd thing), and it’s really long! So here’s another song to get you through. http://www.baomon.com/spoons/oc1.mp3 - This is Aeris’ theme from Final Fantasy 7, in a Summer Sambo theme. It sounds pretty Sambo-ish. Duy thought it was weird, because you think of a sad moment when you think of Aeris’ theme, and this song sounds really happy.
Now, where was I? Oh yeah, the d20 game. Originally, I thought the d20 campaign was gonna be spread over ~10 games, that’s on average a game every 2 weeks, plus more, but summer is a busy season, so that didn’t work out. And I thought the after the 2nd last game, there would be 3 more games, but that didn’t work out either, so we had to squeeze everything into a final game. The final game took a bit more than 5 hours, with a dinner break in the middle.
Anyway, our Nutritionist told us that on Saturday and Sunday, we should try a detox, or detoxification. That is, we drink nothing but juice and water the whole day. I did that during the 30-hour famine, OJ and water, and I also tried not sleeping for most of the 30 hours. That was interesting.
Anyway, so in the morning the detox was going okay, but around 3:00 I gave up, and had a Lean Cuisine chicken dish, and then later at dinner we went to McDonalds, but I was health-conscious so I had a salad and Fruitopia rather than some type of burger and some type of softdrink and some type of fried potato.
Anyway, so the day starts, and eventually at 12, Jia, Ambrose, and Alan show up at the door. A lot of Smash occurs, and eventually other people show up. Ricky and Jason came, Wen came late, but he didn’t miss a lot. Anyway, the final mission was pretty fun, and had some twists in the story. I finally incorporated something from someone’s backstory, Ambrose’s to be exact. Actually, on the first day, they met a person named Suca in the bar, and a guy was beside her, who was Tau, who was in Alan’s backstory. But, Alan then left the game to help me out, so Tau was unneeded.
So, to recap for Ray and a bit for David but not really, at the end of the 3rd game (there were only 4 games this summer, by the way, which seemed really short), the party was going to try to get the gem back, from Lederer, who was meeting the buyer, Marvin Shanken. Anyway, a battle ensues, with a mystery sniper, who was *spoiler* Suca *spoiler*, and she escapes later. The leader drops a pez dispenser, which comes from Ambrose’s backstory.
Eventually, stuff happens, and the doctor goes missing. (As an aside, in the previous mission, you got hints that Mason, leader of the mask-gang, was going to kidnap someone. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough games, so you didn’t get to go through a full-fledged hostage situation negotiation mission, so I combined it here and had Mason “kinda” kidnap the doctor. Yes, Mason was the coward who kept pissing his pants.) So, eventually the doctor is spotted on a pirateship, heading for the Galapagos2 Islands, with Mason.
Turns out the doctor was really Bar-BoBoBo-Sa, Arch-Enemy of Jack Sparrow’d. Anyway, they arrive on the island, and well, they didn’t do as much stuff as I thought they would. I thought the island would be a good time for people to use skills they never could’ve before, such as Track and Swim. NOBODY EVER USES SWIM. I guess nobody takes it, because nobody ever used it. Anyway, there were caves and treasures everywhere, but they didn’t find too many. I had a Zelda-like adventure going on, which was pretty cool. But they didn’t take part in it.
Anyway, later the group fought clones, and to make it harder, I had Jia turn evil and fight them too. Jia killed of Jason with a series of lucky dice rolls, and then killed of Ambrose, and then Jia had some crappy rolls, so Wen was able to kill him off. After dinner however, with divine GM intervention, I had everyone come back to life, for more fun.
Anyway, they kill the doctor pretty easily, but unfortunately they didn’t activate the super ability. They didn’t find the mox diamond, so they couldn’t open the cave of wonders, which holds a time machine and some other stuff, as well as a bracelet that would give someone super powers and some GM powers as well. Oh well. At the end, they fought a cyborg, modeled after the level 10 hero (tough 6 / thrasher 4) Combo Bracher from the school-term-campaign that Wen was GM-ing. He proved to be a fun boss.
Afterwards, we had some fun, played games, played pool, etc, Jason watched FMA 43, fun and fun. Anyway, maybe later I’ll make a more full post about the d20 campaign, but I’ll leave it at that for now. Hopefully you’ll have fun at Ricky’s d20 session on Sunday.
Oh yeah, so on Sunday, we did more detox, but we were so tired the whole day we couldn’t do anything, so at dinner we had real food again. So, that ends that weekend. Now, the rest of the week prior, well, that’s a long time ago, so the dates and details are a bit fuzzy, so now the backwards chronological order stops, and now it becomes fuzzy random order with random thoughts all over.
So… we had a fitness re-test done… that is, at the beginning, when we started training, they tested us, for body-fat composition, weight, height, strength, number of pushups you can do, etc, and now we had our retest, so we can see how far we’ve progressed. Anyway, turns out I didn’t progress too much… actually, body-fat composition has gotten worse, so that sucks. I tried to do more pushups, so I did, and more situps, although they were hard. However, for the wall-sit thing, I tried harder this time so I… well, did much better. Oh well.
Anyway, so we talk to the nutritionist, Mona, who’s pretty cute, and she’s telling us how to change our diet. Basically, the easiest part for me, and most fun for me, is to drink more smoothies! Well, that’s what I took from it; less icecream, less chocolate, etc, more smoothies. And I like smoothies, so that’s a bonus, so that’s the most enjoyable difference in my diet.
So I started making smoothies, and it’s nice. I like making smoothies. Also, she mentioned about working out in Waterloo… so… working out in Waterloo? Perhaps. She said that I should try swimming before class. Anyway, I don’t like feeling time pressured, so perhaps I won’t go swimming before class, but I do like trying to help my body become better.
So I’m considering going swimming in the morning, Tuesdays and Thursdays, were I don’t have classes until night (Thursday I’m free all day). Of course, it’s a plan, so it’ll probably fail, but maybe, we’ll see. We’ll also buy weights and stuff and do some exercises around the house, and I’ll keep making smoothies with protein powder in them and stuff.
So it’ll be fun. We won’t be health-nazis or anything, we’ll still go out and eat stuff. First Wednesday back, we’re going to Bloom’s for wings, or Fiasco’s for wings or whatever. Hehe.
Okay, so all the way to the 2nd last update, Sunday’s update, I came back from camp, and the next day, a whole slew of people were supposed to come over. Anyway, so originally, it was Wen, Ricky, Jason, Alan, Andy, and Ray, or something, but then Wen and Ricky had last minute canceltations. Ricky had a bbq at home, I think Wen had to do yardwork; Andy also dropped out, also due to Yardwork. But Jia came, so Jason, Alan, Jia, and Ray came. I don’t remember what happened, but we played games and stuff I think, and then Jason and Ray left.
For dinner, we ordered KFC, and we used 3 coupons; 3 classic sandwiches for $5, chicken strip meal for $5, and (spicy) big crunch meal for $5, and we ordered 10 nuggets for Vinks, so he had the most expensive meal. Can you guess who had what?
I hear Alan wants me to make him a video clip, showing all my cool premiere skills. I was thinking of making one, but it’ll have to wait till later. Anyway, that’s it. Oh yeah, the other day I had two conversations with Alan. The first went something like this:
Alan: hi!
Bao: hi.
And then nothing for many hours. A few hours later, I come back from dinner, and then Alan started a new conversation. Something like:
Alan: hiya!
Bao: hello!
(10 minutes later)
Bao: … say something!
… worst. conversation. ever.
On Thursday, Alan and Jia came over; Alan helped me with the campaign for a few hours, and later we played a bunch of games. That’s all I remember about Thursday.
Full Metal Alchemist 43 was a good episode. Nowhere near the caliber of 42 or anything, but it was an enjoyable episode, with action and comedy. Jason liked this episode better though. I predicted 44 would be a very informative episode, and yes, yes, it was.
The Beyond the Clouds Pilot (trailer) just surfaced again, along with 2 other trailers. Does this mean it’s actually coming out now? I think it does… so we’ll wait for that.
Anyway, so I saw… BoBoBo episode 5! So, my new favourite Bobobo episodes, in order, are 2, then 3 or 4 (tied), then episode 1, and then episode 5. Episode 5 was pretty bad. There were a few good parts, but typically the episode felt kinda bland. Sure, it has its ‘from where’ moments, but they’ve gotten old, or, most of them have. Sure, perverted parts here and there, but they’ve lost their touch too. Oh well. With a release every 6 months, I might as well continue downloading the rest. Maybe it’ll get better. I did see ep 17 raw many months ago, it wasn’t bad.
So… my camping trip was fun. Maybe I’ll post some pictures later.
It’s a link in Brose’s blog now, but if you haven’t seen it yet, go play Peasant’s Quest! It’s gooood. It took me about 65 minutes to play, and I took a few screenshots on the way, I’ll post them, maybe… so I got 145 out of the 150 possible points… here’s a hint – watch the trailer, it might give you a hint.
Also, on the videlectrix site, there’s another game called Hallrunner, I think. It suxx0rs. Every 7 obstacles, there is a new message, which is cool, but it’s a crappy game. It also has autosave, so if you try to get a negative score, you’ll be stuck at a negative score almost forever.
According to word, we’re on page 13! Times New Roman, regular margins, 12 point size. Well, the update is almost over. Everything that needs to be covered, seems to be covered. I’ve been lazy, and I still haven’t mailed out the poker chips yet, so that’ll have to be done tomorrow. Also, at night, my uncle and cousins from Quebec are visiting, as well as some relatives from France. It’s kinda odd, since we’re leaving Saturday morning at 4:00 am, so it’ll be an extremely short visit.
Anyway, I gotta get packing, which will take a couple minutes… shouldn’t take long, right? I should also make a couple music cds for the plane ride… etc, etc… as for tomorrow, I don’t think we’re terribly busy during the day. I think David wants to come over, so I think he can. Jia should come over too, not concurrently, so we can play Tales of Symphonia before David comes. I have an urge to play magic, since I have 3 decks now, wheee…
Hmm… it’s 10:05 now… this blog update took me a while to write… and it’s soo long… anyway, you have about 7 days to read it. When I get back, I’ll probably check the comments. I better see a bunch. Haha. I’ll probably check while I’m there too, I just won’t update. Anyway, now I gotta copy, paste it, colour it if I had to…
I hope you enjoyed reading it. Leave comments below.
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Today I’m doing something different… well, everytime I have something to blog about, I open up the update file in notepad and write a couple words about it, and then when I do my blog update I look at all the words in that and update based on that. Today, since the blog update is so long (based on all the words I’ve collected during the last week, and previous weeks where I didn’t update about what I wanted to update), I’m gonna periodically just blog in Word, and then at the end just copy and paste it into blogger. So instead of taking 1 hour out of my life to update, I’ll be taking several 30-minute portions out of my life today to update.
So… lots to talk about. Anyway, I started this document around 12:15, and then we watched Family Feud, went to eat, and came back, and I finished working on a Magic deck, and now it’s 3:45. Man, the day is disappearing fast… I still haven’t packed.
Packed? WHAT? Apparently, there are still some of you that don’t know. Either July 15th till July 23rd, or July 24th till August 1st, I was supposed to take a family vacation, either to Miami or to California. That didn’t work out, and long story short, the vacation was changed to Cancun, and the date was postponed till Saturday, August 14th, until Saturday, August 21st. So, we’re going to Cancun in Mexico, for a week.
So what does that mean? Well, for one thing, we’ll be absent all next week. I won’t update for a week (I’m sure I won’t try to do so while I’m on vacation, although I’ll try to occasionally check my e-mail), and nobody can come over or anything :P So I’m updating today, and I probably won’t be updating for at least 10 days. So I’ll leave you all with this monstrous huge update, and you can read it and leave a monstrous amount of comments.
Actually, to make sure I’m not writing this just because, anyone who reads this should comment; if you can’t think of anything, just write “I read it”; otherwise, write more. Anyway, now that we’ve got the basics covered, let’s get onto the journal entry… yeah, I wrote a page so far about how I’m gonna post today, and how I’m not gonna post for a long time… and now I’ll write that I’m currently listening to http://www.baomon.com/spoons/oc10.mp3 , another OCRemix, based on various songs from Super Mario World. It’s in a remix style, with various different instruments and loud drums – so not just techno, not a piano arrangement – so it doesn’t sound so focused with any particular themes, but I really, really love this remix. Partially because I love the Super Mario World Castle theme. So, have a listen, and hope you enjoy it. Of course, you can download the other OC remixes (1-16 that I uploaded), but you won’t know what they are until you download them. Maybe later I’ll upload a few more that recently became part of my ‘favourites’ list.
So… update time, maybe now? First, I’ll write short little messages to different people, and then I’ll write some thoughts, and then I’ll write about stuff that has happened, in BACKWARDS chronological order, most recent things first, since those are freshest in my mind. So… here we go!
Ray! How’s AVP? I guess I’ll see it if other people see it. I haven’t seen a lot of aliens nor predator, so I’m not sure. And thanks for your advice about Cancun. Oh yeah, although I’ve heard mixed reviews, have you ‘obtained’ Doom 3 yet? :P It sounds like it has a lot of atmospheric mood stuff, and interactivity (kinda like Metroid Prime?), but with some weird… stuff…. Sounds interesting… so I’d like to try it :P
David! You’re crazy! I heard from my mom you called today and asked HER if you could come over! That’s crazy. It works much better if you leave the negotiations to us. Anyway, hopefully you can come over waaay later tonight, or tomorrow, and we’ll play some poker. I’ll write more about poker a little later in the update.
Jason! Stop forgetting to bring your magic cards!
Jia! Come over again soon so we can play more Symphonia. Oh, and wanna go to CN Anime? I checked the ticket prices, so I’d rather go for just Saturday than all 3 days for $45. I assume just Saturday will be $25. Oh yeah, this message goes to everyone else too. The more the merrier.
Ambrose! I guess you’re done exams now. YAY! And if you’re not, you shouldn’t be reading this just yet. I’ll burn some anime for you so you’ll have something to do in Ottawa… oh yeah, I’ll also have to burn some FMA for Ray… although Jia can give it to you via cd too..
Wen! The other day you mentioned that Bill Clinton was going to be on the Daily Show, and you implicitly asked for it to be taped, so I taped it (onto my computer). I’ll put it on cd or dvd for you, along with some other stuff, although the video is massively uncompressed… well, not too massive, but not un-massive either… Oh well.
Umm… Alan… update! Actually, now I’ll take the time to update for both Alan and Duy. So, first Alan:
This summer I went on 2 camping trips. I had lots of fun with friends. I’ll blog about them later.
Bao’s last D20 game was fun. I’d blog about it, but Bao will probably blog about it, so there’s no point.
… I can’t think of anything else. Now, let’s see what Duy’s been doing.
So… lately, my average day goes something like this:
25% sleep, 15% not computer (50% food and tv, 50% misc), 10% games, 10% misc, 40% computer (7% work, 13% misc, 5% d2x, 75% ffxi)
Trainer sessions are going okay. Some days I can’t play as much ffxi cuz I have the online dnd game, and some days people come over and we play games like Smashy Smashy and Old Smash, and sometimes Tales of Symphonia too. But whenever they’re doing something I don’t care about, I go back to FFXI, so I can still stick in some of that into the day. Also, sometimes my dad makes me play pool so I do that too.
… Okay, that’s enough for now. So that’s Alan for the summer, and Duy for the summer.
Anyway, let’s continue with the blogging (of Bao). A few entries ago, I said that I would write a huge entry about Full Metal Alchemist and other anime I’ve watched… well, I won’t do it this time either. But I do have to ask, why is Full Metal Alchemist so good? Why are we still watching after so many episodes? What sets it apart from other series that are more than 26 episodes? Do we still like it for the same reasons we liked it at the beginning? Has the quality (of story, characters, etc) reduced over the span of the series? Answers to those questions and more, will come in another entry in the distant future.
I also wanted to write something about Initial D, but that’ll have to wait too.
Anyway, I just watched a monkeyball clip, so I procrastinated again, and now it’s 4:30. So now I’ll do a backwards chronological update, with thoughts squeezed in at random parts. Oh yeah, since it’s been a long time, I’ve probably mixed up some dates with other dates, so I’m not sure what happened when.
So… backwards chrono order… 1 minute ago I made me a cone of frozen yogurt. Now I’m typing with 1 hand… brb.
Okay! 4:45! Time to stop procrastinating, and start blog update. Sigh… I’m making it sound like blogging is work… but it’s not. Anyway, I guess it’s time to blog! So… just had a cone of frozen yogurt, yummy… today, we had a late lunch around 1:30, I’m not sure why it was so late. Went to the other house to eat, turned on the tv, to TMN, and I watched the last 20 minutes of a movie called “Better Luck Tomorrow”, blah blah blah, I don’t think you care, I don’t care either. It was okay though. Then I saw the first 40 minutes (except the first 7 minutes) of “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind”, starring some guy, Drew Barrymore, George Clooney, and some other people. It was… weird, but interesting. Well, I think it was a bit interesting… nothing that I’d usually rent, but I wouldn’t mind watching on TV.
We’re out of trainer sessions, our contract ended. Anyway, yesterday we were supposed to go to the gym, but I was a little bit sick, and Jia was still over, so today we went to the gym for a little bit. Duy didn’t exercise much, I exercised a bit more but not overwhelmingly more. Anyway, our main reason for coming today was to pick up some protein powder from our trainer. Protein = good, and mixing powder with stuff is a good way to get some protein into the system. Sure, we could just have some chicken, but protein powder is good too. I can put it into smoothies! Also, psychologically, when I put protein powder into smoothies, it feels like I’m drinking something healthy! So yeah.
Anyway, Cindy wasn’t there today, so we’ll go again tomorrow morning during our regular scheduled trainer time, since she has people before and after our slot. And maybe we’ll do more exercise tomorrow…
So, that wraps what happened on Thursday so far. Let’s rewind to Wednesday. Ooh, this feels like Memento… I mentioned Jia already, and now you have to wonder why he was still there Wednesday morning… mwahahaha…
----------------------
Last night, I played poker with Jia, Dad, and Vinks. It was fun. Well, I guess I’ll have an aside and talk about poker now.
I like poker! Anyway, there are 3 things that are important to having a fun poker game. The first, is yourself. You have to like poker, or, if it’s your first time, you have to be open to the game and try to enjoy it or whatever. Additionally, say, if you’re playing for free or if you’re playing for $200, then you have to play with a good mindset. The 2nd element is your opponents. Similarly, if they don’t enjoy it, then there will be some kinda tension during the game, and there’s a certain etiquette that they have to play with so that the game is more fun.
The last is the atmosphere – the room, the place, the music (if any), the cards, and of course, the chips. Having these 3 things makes poker more fun! (Yes, this is all leading up to a point of some sort)
When I was in Waterloo, I had all those things – I was happy with poker, my friends enjoyed poker, and the atmosphere was always good. Here, there are a few differences. First of all, the first element, me. Nowadays, my element is no problem. Even if we’re playing for free, I play as if I have $10 worth of chips. In other words, I’m not playing really tightly, nor really loosely. I’d pay a chip to see the flop, even if my hand is below par. And etcetera.
Atmospherically here, everything was good except we had plastic chips. Psychologically, somehow, using plastic chips affected the gameplay, especially if we were playing for free. The feel of really thin pieces of plastic… well, it feels like we’re playing a children’s game. And losing a bunch of thin pieces of plastic doesn’t seem like a big deal. I don’t know, it’s really weird and psychological…
So… why are pieces of clay so much better than pieces of plastic? Once again, it’s somewhat psychological. When I have clay chips, I feel like I have something to lose. Secondly, there’s feel and sound; clay chips feel really nice, with a nice texture. They’re also heavier than plastic, so … it feels like they’re worth more. Lastly, when these chips touch each other or the table, they make a real sound, instead of a cheap plastic sound. So, as I said, it’s pretty damn psychological, but now with clay chips, I can enjoy a poker game, even if it’s for free.
Lastly, the 2nd element was the opponents. As I said with myself, I play games as if I had something to lose; I don’t have $2000 to lose, but it’s not free. It would be nice if my opponents also had this mentality. People like my dad, Rama, and David have this quality. They play realistically for the most part, taking time to think, bluff, sense motive, etc.
Then there’s Ambrose and Jia. They both keep going all-in, and most of the time they just get eliminated by the 2nd round. Well, sometimes Jia keeps going all in, so we give up and he gets our blinds and antes, but he keeps going all in and eventually he loses. Ambrose even has the mentality that they’re just chips and it’s free, like a “who cares” mentality, which is really unenjoyable. At least Jia tries sometimes.
So, to summarize, clay poker chips are awesome. They make poker much more fun than plastic chips can. Everywhere I go (except in public), I usually carry 3 poker chips with me, doing tricks, holding them, etc; sometimes I had 6 or more, to practice shuffling. Anyway, continuing the blog update.
After the poker game (Jia gets eliminated, I let him borrow 10 bucks, he makes more, he gives me back 10 bucks, then Jia and my dad get eliminated simultaneously, and then I beat Vinks), Jia decided that it’s finally time for him to leave, so he walks out to the bus stop.
Anyway, going more backwards (Memento style), we were having dinner. During dinner, we were watching ‘Most Outrageous Game Show Moments 2’ on TV, and Billiards during commercials. It was a pretty funny show, with an awesome final clip that had Jia and I laughing like crazy. Jia started laughing first, then I quickly caught on, while Duy and Vinks didn’t know what was happening. We also watched Jeopardy before that. Mozart was a composer, right Jia? :P
After that, Jia and I watched the first 40 minutes of Reign of Fire on TMN; ya know, the one about humans vs dragons. So, it starts with a… I dunno, 1960 England or something, maybe older, and a little boy loses his mom to a dragon, and then it fast forwards to a post-apocalyptic kinda future, with little stuff going on, and people living in fear of the dragons. It was okay, judging from the first 40 minutes. Dragons are cool, and smart. It’s nice to have a smart bad guy for a change, although I’m sure they’ll do something stupid so they’ll all die at the end…
Okay, let’s skip all the way back to Wednesday Morning. For no reason at all, I wake up at 8:30. For some reason, I wake up with the sniffles, and my nose was runny, so that was odd, but oh well. So I was a bit sick. Anyway, I go downstairs, and the parents weren’t awake yet… well, I think my mom was, but I didn’t see her. I go to my computer, and a few minutes later Rama emerges from the basement.
A few minutes later, Duy wakes up, and then Jia gets up as well. At around 9, Rama leaves to meet someone at EMTC. We all have breakfast (pizza slices, muffins, et al), and then we start a day of Symphonia. I think we played from about 9:45 until 12:15 – got much accomplished. Kratos is awesomer now, since he can cast spells like mages, that draw attention to him. His spells also do area affect damage, and they look wicked cool. I guess I’ll dedicate a paragraph to Tales of Symphonia.
Tales of Symphonia… I like it! I like the characters, and they’re still developing a relationship with each other. Lloyd hugged Colette the other day, which I thought was pretty good. Graphically, the game is superb, but we all know that already. The celshaded anime-textured 3d characters on a lush 3d background… ahh, it’s nice. Story is developing okay – nothing breakthrough amazing, but it’s not boring. Battle system is fun – not a brainless button masher, although it doesn’t have to be too technical. It’s just fun. Anyway, back to the update.
Then it was time for lunch, and we watched Family Feud, Celebrity-Look-alike special. However, half-way through, WGRZ channel 2 on your side (channel 17) ninjaed us out with a Special News report, about a priest in Buffalo. Do I look like I’m in Buffalo? NO! Gimme my gameshow back! Anyway, that’s the rant for that.
Came back, then I forget what happened between 1 and 4. Umm… oh yeah, we were supposed to do work, but we… oh yeah! No no, we played Symphonia from about 9:15 until… say, 11:45, so still 150 minutes, but then after that we went downstairs to build a shelf. Well, I didn’t really, I was sick and that sucked so I just relaxed a lot. After lunch, we did more shelves, and… I think we also had a game of Settlers of Catan on a random board. It was Duy’s idea, so we randomized the board – harbours were allowed to be in the middle, and it wasn’t in the shape of a hexagon either. Anyway, the game proved to be interesting, and at the end I nudged it out so I won.
After that, around 4:30, we drove Vinks to Piano, and we talked about RPGs and stuff while Vinks was doing his panino stuff. Afterwards, we drove back home, and… I think, we then proceed to play another 2:10 of Symphonia! So that takes us from 5:15 until 7:25, so 4:40 of Symphonia today, and that brings us to dinner, which I already talked about. Or, in the sense of Memento: we were having dinner. During dinner…
Anyway, back to… say… entirety of Tuesday? Sure, I can do that. But first, I take a break… it’s 6:00 pm, so I’ve been here for a bit more than an hour, so it’s time for a short break.
Okay, it’s 6:20, so I’ll continue writing for now, until another break time comes up. Anyway, during the break, I talked to Ching on msn, she’s doing good in Australia. I talked to Jia, he made it home safely. Lastly, this door-to-door person came by trying to promote an arts museum and he wanted to sell some paintings, but we decided we weren’t interested. And then he asked if he could use our bathroom, so I agreed, so he used it, and now he’s gone. And now that I think about it, I gotta use the bathroom… so I’ll do that in a few minutes.
Anyway, back to the entirety of Tuesday. Tuesday morning, went to see our Nutritionist, Mona, at the fitness center. She got jealous when we told her about Cancun, and she told us the same thing Ray told us, about not drinking water, and not drinking ice, and getting vaccinations and stuff. Mom said we didn’t need to get vaccinations, that we’re going to Cancun which is probably nicer and more Americanized than other parts of Mexico which will be more diseaseful. Mona also told us to bring Diarrhea medicine, and both Ray and Drew Barrymore (from confessions of a dangerous minds) mentioned Montezuma’s Revenge, Mexico’s Diarrhea. So, now I’m terrified of leaving, but really I’m not.
Okay, just went to the bathroom – towel still there, soap still there, and I doubt he stole toilet paper. And he didn’t place any explosives by the flush button or anything, so it’s all good. Anyway, today we planned to have ‘Brose, Jia, and Rama come over for a day of fun. Darbha (I prefer Dharba, but oh well) has been out of town forever, so now he’s back and we’re having fun that day. Before they came, I watched Full Metal Alchemist 44. Paragraph time!
So I’ll write a full-fledged review of FMA in a later blog post, but FMA 44 was awesome. All FMA 40-44’s pretty awesome, as they should be. The series is coming to an end on episode 52, and so the story’s just getting more intense and information is just flowing faster than ever. Anyway, FMA 45 will probably be subbed on Sunday, and FMA 46 will be subbed next Sunday, so I’ll probably see both FMA 45 and 46 when I come back.
Anyway, mowed lawns, etc, had lunch, etc, then Ambrose and Jia came over. Rama couldn’t make it until 5:30, and I asked Hawk to come too, so he did. I also e-mailed David, but he didn’t respond, but he did talk to Duy later that night, so maybe he’ll come over tomorrow (since he can’t today).
Smashy Smashy? Indeed. Played lots of smash, didn’t tape it, since taping isn’t a great idea, since it’s a painful process re-capturing… well, it really isn’t, with my new external tv tuner card, so maybe we can start taping stuff. Eventually Rama came over (and then Brose too, again), and we played a lot more Smash. We also played Burnout 2; well, Hawk and Rama did, and they did pretty good, and it was pretty damn entertaining. Lots of entertaining moments yesterday.
Everytime Rama comes, there are entertaining stories about times at Mac, and that’s always fun to hear. As for us? Sure, we have entertaining times at ‘Loo. Most of our entertaining times are pretty pg-rated, dealing with inside jokes, videogames, and nerdy things we do. Rama and Jia always retell stuff about extremely hard courses and they always have something to rant. We? Sure, we have hard courses and tests, but we don’t have beast courses or beast tests, or, at least we don’t retell them as beast tests. Whenever Rama says something, it’s so loud and energetic, that it must be funny, or extreme. See, we don’t do that. And Rama’s always talking about other people, and we… we don’t talk about other people. Even though I don’t know Flood, I heard his name before, and hearing about him was pretty funny.
Waterloo stories are pretty boring in comparison then. But we still have fun at ‘Loo. Our stories just aren’t as wild.
Later, the others played Pool, but Duy and I didn’t participate. Well, Duy was doing his dnd thing, and it was pretty scary down there. Well, not scary, but they’re a wild bunch. Hehe. They go wild at mac, and they go wild here too. Anyway, etc etc, eventually Ambrose goes home, and then Hawk goes home, and Jia and Rama are still here. Oh, we also played poker before, and then we played poker again. A typical poker game starts with a hand or two, Jia losing all his money (sometimes all to Rama, sometimes all to me, sometimes split between us two) and then a 2-player duel. Eventually, we all go to bed.
Wait. We had pizza too. I like pizza. Anyway, eventually, all went to bed. That reminds me, on Tuesday morning, I had the worst cramp ever! I pushed my feet against the end of my bed, and in my left calves, there was this cramp! I touched it, and it felt like a rectangular prism! Well, a bit softer around the corners, but it wasn’t round at all! It was so rectangular! It was pretty freaky and weird! And painful! AHH!! And then I curled my toes up toward me, and eventually it was gone… that was the weirdest cramp ever. AHH!
So, back to Monday. Trainer session that morning, last session. Um… since we weren’t gonna be here in September, we had a lesson devoted to free weights, so we did that the whole time. Came back home, umm… I don’t remember what happened. Let’s say we worked on revising a document for my parents, and… umm.. lemme ask Duy. Okay, Duy can’t think of anything, so let’s pretend we didn’t do anything on Monday. Oh wait… we went to Untouchables on Monday. Ahh, that’s at the bottom of my list of words, so.. yeah…
So, Monday August 9th, bought magic cards today. Well, the last time I went to untouchables, I opened up a booster with an Arcbound Ravager, which was worth maybe $25 at the time. I haven’t gone to Untouchables for a while since we’ve been busy, and the guy who buys cards is only there certain days, after 4:00 pm, so today we went.
Unfortunately, the price has gone down to $17, which means they buy it for $8.50 cash, or a bit more store credit, and for some reason, they wouldn’t buy it because they already had one in stock. So, the guy said that it’ll probably be gone in maybe a week or two, but I’m on vacation that time. Also, now that it’s selling for $8.50 rather than maybe $13, then maybe I don’t need to sell it anymore. Well, I probably still will, or maybe not, depending how lazy I am. Besides, I put it into one of my 2 primary decks, so it might prove useful.
Anyway, it seems that I’m back fullswing into playing Magic, buying cards and stuff. That day I spent $13.50 on 25 singles and bought 3 mirrodin boosters. I decided not to buy the silent arbiter for $5.00, at least, not until I sell the ravager. The silent arbiter would be a great addition to any deck of mine, or almost any deck. Both my current decks could benefit greatly with it. But alas, I bought a few commons, a few uncommons, and a few commons priced at uncommon price and a few uncommons priced for $1.00. For now I’ll keep what I bought a secret, to later be seen in a magic game. As for the 3 mirrodin boosters, they were rather disappointing, although I got some nice cards. I’d rather buy darksteel boosters… Anyway…
I think I’ll still buy more cards, even if nobody else is, as long as I don’t spend more than $5 ever on a single card. I gotta know my limit… so I’m improving my game, little by little, with cheap little cards and hoping to get something good via random boosters, and then hoping I can trade with other people for the better cards.
Hmm… let’s skip the entirety of Sunday, as it was very unimpressive. Anything worth mentioning about Sunday will be combined with the Saturday entry. So, we’ll do Saturday now.
Saturday, August 7th, 2004. This was the date of the final d20 game of this term, May 2004 to August 2004. I was the primary GM, Alan was the co-GM, and the players were Duy, (Alan), Wen, Jia, Ambrose, Ray, Jason, Ricky, and David. David stayed for about 1.5 games, and then his character died. Alan was a player the first game, and then he was drafted out of the military and became a co-GM.
7:15. Time to go to the other house, eat Dinner, watch Jeopardy, etc. I’ll probably be back around 8:30, or maybe 9:00, or we’ll see.
Okay! It’s 9:11 now. Watched Jeopardy, it was cool this time. Well, it was teen tournament still, and that’s cool and all… at 8:00, saw my first episode of Extreme Makeover. I can’t believe they do that on television… well, at least, I can’t believe ‘The Swan’, but then again, that’s Fox, and I guess this day in age nothing’s really taboo. Anyway, it was pretty interesting, so after coming back here at 8:40, I proceeded to watch the rest of the episode. Which brings us to 9, and now it’s 9:11.
Before I continue, before I forget, here’s the list of anime I have on dvd. Of course, there’s lots of stuff on my computer, and lots of other non-anime related stuff, but here’s the type of stuff I have already: http://www.baomon.com/board/dvd-toc.doc It’s a word document. Anyway, I’m looking through this document (the journal entry, not the dvd thing), and it’s really long! So here’s another song to get you through. http://www.baomon.com/spoons/oc1.mp3 - This is Aeris’ theme from Final Fantasy 7, in a Summer Sambo theme. It sounds pretty Sambo-ish. Duy thought it was weird, because you think of a sad moment when you think of Aeris’ theme, and this song sounds really happy.
Now, where was I? Oh yeah, the d20 game. Originally, I thought the d20 campaign was gonna be spread over ~10 games, that’s on average a game every 2 weeks, plus more, but summer is a busy season, so that didn’t work out. And I thought the after the 2nd last game, there would be 3 more games, but that didn’t work out either, so we had to squeeze everything into a final game. The final game took a bit more than 5 hours, with a dinner break in the middle.
Anyway, our Nutritionist told us that on Saturday and Sunday, we should try a detox, or detoxification. That is, we drink nothing but juice and water the whole day. I did that during the 30-hour famine, OJ and water, and I also tried not sleeping for most of the 30 hours. That was interesting.
Anyway, so in the morning the detox was going okay, but around 3:00 I gave up, and had a Lean Cuisine chicken dish, and then later at dinner we went to McDonalds, but I was health-conscious so I had a salad and Fruitopia rather than some type of burger and some type of softdrink and some type of fried potato.
Anyway, so the day starts, and eventually at 12, Jia, Ambrose, and Alan show up at the door. A lot of Smash occurs, and eventually other people show up. Ricky and Jason came, Wen came late, but he didn’t miss a lot. Anyway, the final mission was pretty fun, and had some twists in the story. I finally incorporated something from someone’s backstory, Ambrose’s to be exact. Actually, on the first day, they met a person named Suca in the bar, and a guy was beside her, who was Tau, who was in Alan’s backstory. But, Alan then left the game to help me out, so Tau was unneeded.
So, to recap for Ray and a bit for David but not really, at the end of the 3rd game (there were only 4 games this summer, by the way, which seemed really short), the party was going to try to get the gem back, from Lederer, who was meeting the buyer, Marvin Shanken. Anyway, a battle ensues, with a mystery sniper, who was *spoiler* Suca *spoiler*, and she escapes later. The leader drops a pez dispenser, which comes from Ambrose’s backstory.
Eventually, stuff happens, and the doctor goes missing. (As an aside, in the previous mission, you got hints that Mason, leader of the mask-gang, was going to kidnap someone. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough games, so you didn’t get to go through a full-fledged hostage situation negotiation mission, so I combined it here and had Mason “kinda” kidnap the doctor. Yes, Mason was the coward who kept pissing his pants.) So, eventually the doctor is spotted on a pirateship, heading for the Galapagos2 Islands, with Mason.
Turns out the doctor was really Bar-BoBoBo-Sa, Arch-Enemy of Jack Sparrow’d. Anyway, they arrive on the island, and well, they didn’t do as much stuff as I thought they would. I thought the island would be a good time for people to use skills they never could’ve before, such as Track and Swim. NOBODY EVER USES SWIM. I guess nobody takes it, because nobody ever used it. Anyway, there were caves and treasures everywhere, but they didn’t find too many. I had a Zelda-like adventure going on, which was pretty cool. But they didn’t take part in it.
Anyway, later the group fought clones, and to make it harder, I had Jia turn evil and fight them too. Jia killed of Jason with a series of lucky dice rolls, and then killed of Ambrose, and then Jia had some crappy rolls, so Wen was able to kill him off. After dinner however, with divine GM intervention, I had everyone come back to life, for more fun.
Anyway, they kill the doctor pretty easily, but unfortunately they didn’t activate the super ability. They didn’t find the mox diamond, so they couldn’t open the cave of wonders, which holds a time machine and some other stuff, as well as a bracelet that would give someone super powers and some GM powers as well. Oh well. At the end, they fought a cyborg, modeled after the level 10 hero (tough 6 / thrasher 4) Combo Bracher from the school-term-campaign that Wen was GM-ing. He proved to be a fun boss.
Afterwards, we had some fun, played games, played pool, etc, Jason watched FMA 43, fun and fun. Anyway, maybe later I’ll make a more full post about the d20 campaign, but I’ll leave it at that for now. Hopefully you’ll have fun at Ricky’s d20 session on Sunday.
Oh yeah, so on Sunday, we did more detox, but we were so tired the whole day we couldn’t do anything, so at dinner we had real food again. So, that ends that weekend. Now, the rest of the week prior, well, that’s a long time ago, so the dates and details are a bit fuzzy, so now the backwards chronological order stops, and now it becomes fuzzy random order with random thoughts all over.
So… we had a fitness re-test done… that is, at the beginning, when we started training, they tested us, for body-fat composition, weight, height, strength, number of pushups you can do, etc, and now we had our retest, so we can see how far we’ve progressed. Anyway, turns out I didn’t progress too much… actually, body-fat composition has gotten worse, so that sucks. I tried to do more pushups, so I did, and more situps, although they were hard. However, for the wall-sit thing, I tried harder this time so I… well, did much better. Oh well.
Anyway, so we talk to the nutritionist, Mona, who’s pretty cute, and she’s telling us how to change our diet. Basically, the easiest part for me, and most fun for me, is to drink more smoothies! Well, that’s what I took from it; less icecream, less chocolate, etc, more smoothies. And I like smoothies, so that’s a bonus, so that’s the most enjoyable difference in my diet.
So I started making smoothies, and it’s nice. I like making smoothies. Also, she mentioned about working out in Waterloo… so… working out in Waterloo? Perhaps. She said that I should try swimming before class. Anyway, I don’t like feeling time pressured, so perhaps I won’t go swimming before class, but I do like trying to help my body become better.
So I’m considering going swimming in the morning, Tuesdays and Thursdays, were I don’t have classes until night (Thursday I’m free all day). Of course, it’s a plan, so it’ll probably fail, but maybe, we’ll see. We’ll also buy weights and stuff and do some exercises around the house, and I’ll keep making smoothies with protein powder in them and stuff.
So it’ll be fun. We won’t be health-nazis or anything, we’ll still go out and eat stuff. First Wednesday back, we’re going to Bloom’s for wings, or Fiasco’s for wings or whatever. Hehe.
Okay, so all the way to the 2nd last update, Sunday’s update, I came back from camp, and the next day, a whole slew of people were supposed to come over. Anyway, so originally, it was Wen, Ricky, Jason, Alan, Andy, and Ray, or something, but then Wen and Ricky had last minute canceltations. Ricky had a bbq at home, I think Wen had to do yardwork; Andy also dropped out, also due to Yardwork. But Jia came, so Jason, Alan, Jia, and Ray came. I don’t remember what happened, but we played games and stuff I think, and then Jason and Ray left.
For dinner, we ordered KFC, and we used 3 coupons; 3 classic sandwiches for $5, chicken strip meal for $5, and (spicy) big crunch meal for $5, and we ordered 10 nuggets for Vinks, so he had the most expensive meal. Can you guess who had what?
I hear Alan wants me to make him a video clip, showing all my cool premiere skills. I was thinking of making one, but it’ll have to wait till later. Anyway, that’s it. Oh yeah, the other day I had two conversations with Alan. The first went something like this:
Alan: hi!
Bao: hi.
And then nothing for many hours. A few hours later, I come back from dinner, and then Alan started a new conversation. Something like:
Alan: hiya!
Bao: hello!
(10 minutes later)
Bao: … say something!
… worst. conversation. ever.
On Thursday, Alan and Jia came over; Alan helped me with the campaign for a few hours, and later we played a bunch of games. That’s all I remember about Thursday.
Full Metal Alchemist 43 was a good episode. Nowhere near the caliber of 42 or anything, but it was an enjoyable episode, with action and comedy. Jason liked this episode better though. I predicted 44 would be a very informative episode, and yes, yes, it was.
The Beyond the Clouds Pilot (trailer) just surfaced again, along with 2 other trailers. Does this mean it’s actually coming out now? I think it does… so we’ll wait for that.
Anyway, so I saw… BoBoBo episode 5! So, my new favourite Bobobo episodes, in order, are 2, then 3 or 4 (tied), then episode 1, and then episode 5. Episode 5 was pretty bad. There were a few good parts, but typically the episode felt kinda bland. Sure, it has its ‘from where’ moments, but they’ve gotten old, or, most of them have. Sure, perverted parts here and there, but they’ve lost their touch too. Oh well. With a release every 6 months, I might as well continue downloading the rest. Maybe it’ll get better. I did see ep 17 raw many months ago, it wasn’t bad.
So… my camping trip was fun. Maybe I’ll post some pictures later.
It’s a link in Brose’s blog now, but if you haven’t seen it yet, go play Peasant’s Quest! It’s gooood. It took me about 65 minutes to play, and I took a few screenshots on the way, I’ll post them, maybe… so I got 145 out of the 150 possible points… here’s a hint – watch the trailer, it might give you a hint.
Also, on the videlectrix site, there’s another game called Hallrunner, I think. It suxx0rs. Every 7 obstacles, there is a new message, which is cool, but it’s a crappy game. It also has autosave, so if you try to get a negative score, you’ll be stuck at a negative score almost forever.
According to word, we’re on page 13! Times New Roman, regular margins, 12 point size. Well, the update is almost over. Everything that needs to be covered, seems to be covered. I’ve been lazy, and I still haven’t mailed out the poker chips yet, so that’ll have to be done tomorrow. Also, at night, my uncle and cousins from Quebec are visiting, as well as some relatives from France. It’s kinda odd, since we’re leaving Saturday morning at 4:00 am, so it’ll be an extremely short visit.
Anyway, I gotta get packing, which will take a couple minutes… shouldn’t take long, right? I should also make a couple music cds for the plane ride… etc, etc… as for tomorrow, I don’t think we’re terribly busy during the day. I think David wants to come over, so I think he can. Jia should come over too, not concurrently, so we can play Tales of Symphonia before David comes. I have an urge to play magic, since I have 3 decks now, wheee…
Hmm… it’s 10:05 now… this blog update took me a while to write… and it’s soo long… anyway, you have about 7 days to read it. When I get back, I’ll probably check the comments. I better see a bunch. Haha. I’ll probably check while I’m there too, I just won’t update. Anyway, now I gotta copy, paste it, colour it if I had to…
I hope you enjoyed reading it. Leave comments below.