Why can no one ever get my name right? I am constantly called, Josh, Ian, and Kyle. It's really something that is more of a minor annoyance than something worthy of a full-blown rant, but there are moments when it's really really terrible. Like when someone berates me for not responding after they shout something other than my name at me. I've gotten used to responding to BFG, I was used to responding to JC, I even responded to Norm for awhile (though I can prove that I sound quite different from the gentleman). I kinda have the height of Josh, I work with Kyle and Ian, but are those really fair mistakes? I don't claim to be perfect; honestly I've had many many difficulties with the trio of Veronica, Victoria, and Virginia, but there I think I have an excuse since they are all so similar. Uh oh, customer...to be continued...

Hmmm. I was here lamenting my limited HTML coding skills, since I wanted to do something to spruce (isn't that such a cool verb) this place up, but of course I haven't the vision nor the ability to do so. I was going to check out the getting started part of the Blogger Forum, but of couse that happens to be down at the moment, because of bad coding nonetheless (Which I think is Irony, though it might not be, I'll have to consult the sheet that Scher gave us). I'm really disappointed in the depth of the Orange that Blogger generates, since all the tabs for Previewing, Safe mode, Publishing, are a deeper Orange than the font color. And the Blogger symbol itself is deeper than even those. I wonder if I could find a HTML site somewhere that has some nice things I can add. Since I have very little use for what I do know. This is something, but it's not really fantastic, and beyond this and images and weblinks, I've exceeded my knowledge base on this subject. . But, I plan to experiment and thus get better, so, perhaps in a few years this will be a pretty place to visit.

Well. Happy Halloween to everyone. Not that it's really much of an event, but it's still a reason to celebrate. It's kinda eerie celebrating the eve of a holiday, but we do the same on December 24. Again I have neither a costume nor plans, nor do I really even care. Fun on this holiday is scaring the living daylights of out people and the occasional obscure candy you get for your travels. All Saint's Eve. Now that's a much cooler name than Halloween. I mean, "ween" is such a pitiful sound to add to any word. All Saint's Eve is just soo much cooler, if only I knew any of the Saints, but thats a inquiry for later. May your candy be plentiful and your travels safe.

Daylight Savings Time Celebration, Part 2:

I seem to be stuck in a paradox. My mother wants me to complete my applications this weekend, and has threatened that I will not be allowed to go to school if I do not finish. I have written all the required essays and short answers, filled in all the info for everything else, and submitted my transcript. The issue here, and the paradox thereof, is that have neither submitted my SAT scores to UGA nor have I put in my teacher part of the deal. The paradox being that I can't finish without going to school, and cannot go to school without finishing. So if I'm not there on Monday, that's why. I asked why she wanted me to submit to UGA, and she told me because if I did decided to take the path of a musician. Please note that this is the same woman who tells me that I will not be going into music as a major activity. Sigh, ranting isn't worth the effort at the moment, since I really don't understand everything myself. But that would happen to be life sometimes.

Daylight Savings Time Celebration, Part 1:

Yay! I got 8 hours of sleep before today (Saturday today, not the actual Sunday Today) and then a nice 3-4 hour nap, all that to balance out the extra hour I'll be around thanks to Daylight Savings time regressing. Speaking of regression...while that would be the perfect Freud transition, no one wants to see me stereotyping Freud this late/early, or ever for that matter.
Onwards to something slightly more interesting: all that which Michael D'Orazio has wrought. Note the lack of a decisive noun, since I can't think of whether it should be called good, or evil, or whatnot; futhermore, there'd be arguement anyways.

Firstly is the power of Dvorack. For those of you that don't know what Dvorack is, it's a different keyboard setting. For example, asdfg in Qwerty (the standard: eg. What you're using right now) coincides with the vowels aieuo in Dvorack (though not nessicarily in that order). The thought behind this is that in Dvorack, common spelling errors like the, of, etc. are made far less often, and in general words can be typed alot faster. Honesty, how many times have you hit v, x, or even z while trying to get to c buried between them. So as you can, there is great style in Dvorack, though you have to learn in before it makes any sense at all.

While Dvorack in itself may seem fairly harmless enough, but what it created is the truer evil: Dvorak. The difference made by that one letter is a great one. While Dvorack is a keyboard typeset, Dvorak is a completely freelance card game. The rules of Dvorak are really simple: There are two types of cards: actions and things. You can play one of each, each round. A round starts with drawing a card, and ends with discarding down to 5 cards if you have more. It gets more complicated from there, but what it boils down to is that you can always be creating new cards and new rules, as long as there is group consensus, in an effort to win game. Winning, in itself, is fully subjective as well, since the terms for winning can be decided by the cards as well.

Some random poetry:

What makes us real is not some existencial quality like thought or breath
It is our immunity to that which unmakes the unreal:
We are not the ones who disappear when we walk away from the mirror.

We are not defined by those acts that we perform nor the friends that we have
It is the acts we cannot do and the friends we don't make that are our limits:
It is not the furniture, it is the walls, that makes a room.

Our nationality is not shown in the slant of our eyes, the sound of our words, or the color of our epidermis
It is revealed by our prejudices and shortcomings, watered down imperialism
Any nation is a hegemon in the mind of its citizens.

We style ourselves as humans first and kingdom animalia last
Ironic that we purposefully invert our precious leaned sciences to please ourselves.
It is in man's nature to deny the nature in man.

A Symphony of Mishaps

Well, the orchestra concert was this night and while both orchestras sounded awesome (Symphony too), there were some things that could have gone better:
1) I'm in the restroom changing into my tux, when suddenly I realize that I don't have my pants. Now it's like 20 mins until I have to be somewhere, so I jet home and still can't find them. So I throw on a dark pair that's as close as I'm going to get. For reference, they were in my closet, I just for some reason couldn't find them.
2) The stage was hot and bright. You could barely see the conductor, and it was really really really hot.
3) My bow was cracked before the concert. After Sinfonietta got through and I got my bow, it was in really bad shape. And during the second to last song it broke, leaving me bowless. So I had to dash as fast as I could back to the Orchestra room to get another, which had no rosin on it anyways so it wasn't making much more noise than I would have without a bow. This process of course left me winded, since I was running really fast and I have no endurance.
Beyond these little incidents, it was a good performance at least. Though we did rush our last string piece to an extreme tempo, but that's typical of us.

And it continues some more...

Sorry for my obvious lack of topical diversity, but I had to do something to prevent me from finishing Heart of Darkness or working on Calculus. After working strait through Saturday on non-academic stuff I just didn't have the motive to expend any really productive effort. I played LoD instead. My complaints still exist, though I have found some redeeming features that will be mentioned after the non-redeeming ones. First on the complaints is that I seem to be spending an awful lot of time preparing for parties and banquets. I never really considered that to be much of an activity, esp. since you don't change clothes ever and since I you never get any close-ups so makeup wouldn't matter. The love story's pretty sappy too, though there was a really cool cinematic involving a lost love. The musical score could still seriously use some work. And the game of storyline tag on the boat sucked. Here's the tag run-down. You start as the femle lead, who goes hunting male lead, who in turn seeks the myserious female counsellor who knows more than anyone else, who then seeks the aged, questing martial artist, who in turn begins looking for the powerful giant who starts trying to find the generic king traveling with the heroes who then goes to seek the immature female warrior who then goes and gets the male lead then both go hunting the mysterious female again, whereupon you find a ghost ship. The body count is suprisingly high for a RPG. I have not yet fought any enemy twice and still had them walk away except the Barbarian who is now a member of my party. The other cutesy little thing is that perspective affects a few things. The female lead sees a spice rack as "You see 20 spices at a glance, someone likes cooking" whereas the male lead sees the same wall as "You see lots of bottles." Anyways, today I defeated a dishonored bandit who was also kicked out of his martial arts training by none other than our questing martial artist and his thief sidekick (who has the RPG-banned abilities of both being unhittable (literally, he teleports out of battle except to hit you) and of having a reusable, remove-from-battle attack (which is precisely what Sephiroth did to Aeris, since remove-from-battle prevents the use of recovery magic). Speaking of magic, only in a dragoon state do you get it, unless you're the enemy who can cast it whenever, wherever, you get the idea. Which brings us to the next in my list of kills, the jetpacked female energy-boomerang weilder who then returns as a water Dragoon with a water dragon (easier than it sounds). Apparently, those not in the party get a mere 1/3 of the exp of those in party (though those who are not alive when the battle ends get 0). I also fought a pack of ghost knights (4 regular at ~300 hp, and their leader ~1000 hp) who revived when it was their turn if they were dead unless they all collapsed. So between that and their sleep, fear (no defense), life-drain, heavy combat damage, and the fact that I ran out of mp, it was nearly a loss. Which would not have been cool cause the damn ghost ship has no save point and it takes about 10 minutes not including the 30 or so battles from all the nearby enemies everywhere to get to that fight, but we pulled it out thanks to some heavy combined Dragoon firepower after using a MP restoring item. Speaking of items, the game lets you carry a max of 200 something weapons/armor/accesories (which you never find and rarely can buy a better one) but only 32 items of any nature. The attack items are usually a waste of effort but the mass area pumpables (everything involves button mashing in this game) can do some damage to weak enemies en masse I've gotten the hang of both of Lavitz's additions, I can pull off Spinning Typhoon (3 presses) with decent accuracy as well as the Wind Dance or whatever its called (6 adds). Though, unfortunately, both of my other two favorite heroes have reached their equivelents which I have yet to get the hang of: Dart (what a horrible name) with his Maddened Hero (what a horrible name too: 5 buttons, all really fast one-after-another) and Rose with some similar 5 button attack with a massive pause in the middle. But now it's time to see if I can makeup some stuff for the French debate of wars without using RPG quotes ("Humans have to make themselves insane to fight, and really insane to make war (LoD is not a good choice for quotes)) and finish the last 60 pages of Heart of Darkness with some degree of fact recollection.

As promised, the Legends of Dragoon Rant continues...

Apparently Sony does not know how to properly go "back to the basics," cause their fundamentals are very lacking in some areas. Don't get me wrong, they did do some things right. They got the same hint that Squaresoft got after Final Fantasy 8, that gamers don't need a freaking 5 minute animation ever time they summon, no matter how much damage it does. Even still, the animations are still painfully long, though its more of a slight burn as opposed to the red-hot poker jammed into the gamer's eye that was the load/wait/animation time on Eden. The "innovative battle concept" (okay, maybe that's paraphrasing) of LoD is that you can perform what are called 'Additions.' Which mean, if you press the X button at the right time(s), you can do a cute little combo whereby your character gains a bit more SP (which are how you turn into a Dragoon) than often and (in true anime style) shout the combo's name. Now the cute part of this is that you don't start with Dragoon powers, meaning that SP aren't really useful (ie: they're worthless). The other fun fact is that the game's major female, who it appears is in love with our intrepid hero, Dart, doesn't even have any additions to begin with. She just shoots a single arrow, and for very little damage. The final great irony is that all these combo's have their own rhythms, and in the case of the party's spearman, that rhythm isn't very constant. Well, it's constant in a way. You start with Lavitz, who has a nice slow combo rhythm, and then he gets replaced by Alfred, whose additions (while being the same one's as Lavitz's) require the same kind of inhuman reflexes that can be aquired only after a month of DDR training. As if the little Addition concept wasn't bad enough, enemies can break your combo's. To do this, all the enemy has to do is make a little red flash, and then you have to press O instead of X. Fail to do so and your combo will break And you'll take damage. Which is a great way to get killed, since you effectively get hit twice for the price of one enemy attack. Dragoons are nearly as much fun (fun in the sadist's way of thinking mind you) since their attack strength is set by hitting X at a certain moment, with decreasingly long intervals between them. I had to press less buttons playing Kirby Golf for God's sake. Fortunately, after Final Fantasies Six and Ten, button combos are a forte of mine, but the average gamer will be hard pressed to pull them off, and thus very challenged to win any battle. Well, it's decent for a first attempt at an RPG, but sometimes I have to wonder what Nintendo and Sega know that Sony doesn't.

Mommy, Mommy, can I go save the world now?

Sony should not be allowed to make RPG's. I would have found that fact out a long time ago, but thankfully I prevented myself from playing much of Legends of Dragoon, until now. My mistake was a product of great boredom, and quite a bit of desperation (with a lot of stupidity obviously included). I've gotten to the point where my "Dragoon" power (basically the only way you have a glimmer of hope of beating a boss) was stolen by some thief leader that I was trying to kill. Apparently I keep this very valuable sphere of power stored in the very tip of my sword from some inexplicable reason. Nonetheless, to go where they've taken my power, I have to get a pass from the King, and I need to get someone to vouch for me to get to see the King. For once I find myself not only taking other people's tasks upon myself, but also having to ask for the permission to do them. I don't recall having to ask the Mayor if I could help the old lady across the street back when I was in Boy Scouts. Oh well, there'll be more rantage on this game at a later point.

Alright. Today we cover the topic of *Cue Trumpets* Online Comics. Most of these can be found with a simple Google? search and I'm too lazy to copy and paste hyperlinks, so, yeah. I think I'll do a 5 star rating system to compensate from my chronic lack of postage.

First in the list of randomly order is Little Gamers: A very random, some profanity, about a group of guys (I think that number is 4 but I could easily be mistaken) with tons of references to video gaming and computers. Nothing complex, so anyone could enjoy it with just basic knowledge, but it's really not all that funny. The art isn't much to look at, plain black and white simple figures, with an occasional color image. Some shining moments but mostly just random stupidity. ***(3 stars)

8-Bit Theater: This comic requires a decent background in the Final Fantasy series to understand as well as passing knowledge in Dungeons and Dragons and minor knowledge in Warcraft as well (well, all of 3 strips I think). It's a bit light on speed of action, but not that you'd ever notice since the humor covers that well and there are never any non-comic days, so yay to that as well. The art is mostly refined 8-bit sprites, but remember that those are 8-bit Final Fantasy sprites so it's not nearly as grievious. *****

Dragon Warrior: You don't actually have to understand Dragon Warrior at all though it helps with the inside references. This is basically the Dragon Warrior version of Final Fantasy. For the unenlightened in my audience, Dragon Warrior was, errr... is, a long running RPG famous for having slimes as the basic enemy (Final Fantasy doesn't have slimes, go figure). It's famous for other things as well, but not having played it I'd hate to speak without authority. Never an off-topic day. Appropriate and cool 8-Bit sprites here as well. ****+(*/2), anyone who has a better way to do half a star, please tell me.

Angst Technology: This comic is updated daily, and it's brother comic Weakend Warrior not nearly as often. The first is a computer gaming company comic and is great as long as you are versed in the latest releases. The latter is a fantastic paintballing comic that even I appreciate despite never having gone paintballing. Both are black and white, but they rarely have any dead-artist days, and never have shirt guy dom (more on him later), so yay. ***+(*/2)

RPG World/Adventurers: Yes, these are seperate comics, but so similar that I've decided to save space and group them together. These basically take Final Fantasy (the later, as opposed to 8-bit) and make fun of their logical fallicies in every way gamers have wanted to, ever. Wonderful, color art, but unless you've played some RPG's there isn't to much reason. Well, even then you'll side with the characters who don't understand RPG mechanics either. Best when taken with the List of RPG cliches sitting on another Internet window. *****

Exploitation Now: Now a dead comic, but still worth the intrest. Very graphic and often profane. It starts off far more random and hits plot more occasionally towards the end. It's a bunch of creepy sci-fi Deus Ex Machina, but still it's worth a look. Some great jokes throughout and some running gags. Requires a wide versing of random knowledge with specialization in anime conventions (see the Laws of Anime for reference). All black and white but very well drawn, too bad it has stopped. ****

Sparkling Generation Valkerie Yuuki: Kitty-Hawk's replacement comic for The Jar, which I quite a pity, but even extending a mere dozen-pages, it's worth its weight in gold. Not much knowledge needed yet, though versing in North Mythology and Magical Anime Girls (read: Sailor Moon) is fun. Large, lush, and full-color. *****

Bob and George: Another of the comics that have the quanity over quality slogan. A daily comic that doesn't seem to have a plot that alternates between badly drawn scanned images and awesome Megaman 8-bit (and higher, and modified versions) sprites. The Megaman is funny, and not really Megaman specific, but it's not much to write home about. **+(*/2)

Not Gonna Take It: A really weird hand-drawn comic that is sometimes in color, sometimes not. It's good art but after awhile all the characters really really start all looking the same. Sometimes I'm lucky if I ever get the gender of the person down before a pronoun rolls around. It's a good story-driven plot, but it is also really invested in the paranormal. It's like the X-files plus Dawson's Creek, played out by bipedial cats. And it devolves into furry sex a bit too often. Worse, there's a huge like 4 or 5 month block where no comics got done. ***

Mac Hall: As Duke Nukem liked to say "Hail to the King, baby". Mac Hall is a comic about college life and it's bust-a-gust (not to be confused with either Bust-a-Move? or Bust-a-Groove?) funny. It's full color with tons of great jokes. While there's not much of a storyline there are extended comics and the whole thing does tie together pretty well. *****

Critical Fumble: This comic requires quite a bit of skill. From trying to read the randomly included weird fonts (or the drunken british style Dwarves) to the required Dungeons and Dragons/RPG knowledge that is entailed. All done in color with really cool Capcom? sprites that I still haven't found the source for. A working plot, if a bit random. ****

Oldskooled: A comic done for those of us who still remember nearly every NES game there ever ways. Both the really obscure and the mainstream (if any of those can still legally be called that). A fabulous use of sprites though it hasn't been updated in quite some time. Try the trivia and see how sad your childhood really was. ***

Wendy: I read this at work cause I was bored one day. It seems to gain a plot near the end, which hurts its best qualities, which happen to be cute girls who have a habit of doing sexual things both on and offstage. Never any of the graphicness of Exploitation Now, but this is a comic made for people like Jeff and Brent. A real pity it tries to do something at the end, and goes black and white doing so. ***

Life of Riley: Another of das uber comics. This one really doesn't need background, it explains itself as it goes, or at least explains as much as you need. Great drawings, though also very Deus Ex Machina at times. It's kinda cliffhanger at some parts right now, but time will fix that. ****+(*/2)

Megatokyo: This deserves seven or eight stars really. It's fabulously drawn, intriguing, great plot, humorous. Cute anime-style girls and totally random events for Largo. There is the danger, as with all intensely good comics, of Stick Guy Dom, who also did stand-ins at The Jar. All I can say is be very afraid, but read the comic anyways. I'll stop myself at that, else this could run on forever. *****

A pox on Nintendo, and their children, and their children's children; no one should be allowed to create such addictive games. I was going to do a happy Birthday post, but then I made the mistake of doing a tournament of 64 players against my brother. With 4 minute rounds, not counting victory time and sudden deaths, so it was well into today before we finished, especially since we started at about quarter till midnight (Tis the witching hour, curses are half price).

America, Home of Required Freedom and Land of the Poorly created Govermental Forms. No, I'm not whining about tax forms, it's a given that those are ridiculously complex. Nope, I'm talking about the Selective Service! Yes, that happy little green and white form of basic info that all males between 18 and 25 must fill out or be charged with a felony punishable with "$250,000 in fines, up to 5 years imprisonment, or both." Scary, no? Well, what is getting to me is the registering website's first question, check it out for yourself at https://www4.sss.gov/regver/register_nc.asp
is gender, followed quickly by a note stating that "current law does not permit females to register." So I'm sitting here wondering why they even ask the damn question in the first place if there is only one legal answer. Sigh. I also got my Voter Registration Card today, so now I can participate in elections which may, or may not, be a good thing; for further info please reference the long discussion had by Mr. Gray, Michelle Li, and Julie Ceigler in Mr. Gray's car on the way back from Academic Bowl at Ezell-Harding. Anyways, back to the selective service. The second question is First/Middle Name. Ambiguity is apparently the Goverment's strong point here. Plus, the draft is kinda common knowledge. At least the date is better than the example on the Mailed card; January First 1998, which becomes 01-01-1998. But 01 for Month could easily be the 01 for date. Sometimes I get really worried by the idiots behind our Government, then I see Bush on TV and things just go downhill from there. Note the bottom question: "How did you find out about this registration?" Well, considering that it's a manditory service and they mail you this happy green and white card with a PIN number, which doesn't seem to be used either, I don't see why that question is there either. Notwithstanding that arguement, I'm debating what answer to put there, I can rule out common sense cause it's not there, so I think I'll go with parent to humor them. There, I'm done and my PIN was never used. How not suprising. Say hello to 84 - 0962048 - 4, aka: me. This was so sad, I think I'm going to go cry. But remember, it's never the smart people who do politics.