Always back to the Haruhi...

Before I get into the bulk of what I hope to be able to talk about in the time I have -- I mean, we shut down our ability to process any sort of payment for an hour and didn't suffer at all because of that -- just a few minor notes/errata to get out of the way. First of all, the Christmas Loot should've been 4 PS2 games besides the two I'd asked for, namely 3 .Hack games (I'm told it's the first and third games, plus GU) and Dark Cloud.

David and I are both getting very short on patience with Neverwinter, which seems to have roughly all the stablity of Sacred (If you've ever played Sacred, you know what I talking about). Actually, thinking on that, I get the feeling that might be sort of generous to NWN2 to say.

Also, the dog is annoying the crap out of me, but at least it's easy to play with. It's mostly a personality conflict though -- it likes scratching and licking, and I happen to be semi-neurotic about cleanliness and not being scratched. It's definately a ball of fun though, which is fine when I'm looking for it, not when I'm trying to game or getting to the shower or leaving for work.

Now then, what I actually wanted to say.

So, via ANN--

"ANN recently stated that Bandai Entertainment had licensed The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, which has created some confusion in regards to what role Bandai Entertainment will play in regards to the show. Kadokawa Pictures USA is actually the North American master licensor and will handle all licensing matters. Bandai Entertainment will handle all aspects of production and distribution, as they do for most titles that they have licensed. Bandai Entertainment's Sam Maseba states, "As always, we like to work closely with the creators."
Regarding the actresses playing in episode 00, which is currently available on the asosbrigade.com website, these are not the actresses that will be used for the English dub. Maseba states, "We do not have anyone lined up for all the characters on this show."
Meanwhile Bandai has sent out a press release about the Haruhi Suzumiya Myspace Blog being among the top 50 user pages."

Blergh, just gonna blitz the core and jump onto a new topic.

What strikes me is the polls, and the manner of them. There's barely a vestige of corporate entity here, and for once they seem to be asking for things that people actually care about, like DVD Content and Voices, even if they're doing it in some sort of induced viral manner, eg: Mikuru & Yuki. Will anything come of this? Who knows. But part of me does want to applaud the gesture or taking opinions, the other half is just appalled by the internet-meme-rich handling and execution.

Bits and Pieces

Distracted from my other post by a short day at work and trying to piece together the Cartoon Network airing schedule. We're so close to Renji, and thusly Soul Society's arcs, yet still not there.

Mark your Calendars:
Afro Samurai (Spike TV) -- Thursday January 4 11:00pm - Episode 1 "Revenge"
(Repeats Thu Jan 4 11:30pm, Fri Jan 5 12:30am, Sat Jan 6 1:30am)

Mind you, I do think "Revenge" is an odd title for a first episode.

Spirited Away (Cartoon Network) -- Saturday December 30 6:30pm
Well, so much for Prince of Tennis and MAR. And PoT was kinda funny too.

Bleach (Cartoon Network) -
Sat Dec 30 11:00pm - Episode 1
...
Sun Dec 31 5:30am - Episode 14

Celebrate New Year's Eve Eve by staying up for 7 Hours of a Bleach Marathon? I'll pass, but I've seen the eps at least once in each language already. If you're missing out on Bleach, this is good catchup.

Naruto(Cartoon Network)
Sun Dec 31 9:00am - Episode 42 "The Ultimate Battle: Cha!"
...
Sun Dec 31 9:30pm - Episode 67 "Late for the Show, But Ready to Go! The Ultimate Secret Technique is Born"

12.5 Hours of Naruto. Actually a good thing since I've been watching sporatically, though I have seen definately the first and last 4 in this set, and a few in between (still planning to just borrow from Kyle probably, though I don't care which langauge I'm watching, the show does amuse me and Kyle's got enough that it'll still be a year for Adult Swim to catch up)

I swear some of these episode number orders are drawn by lottery.

Pokemon (Cartoon Network)
Tue Jan 2 7:00am - Episode 417 -- Tue Jan 2 5:00pm - Episode 381
Wed Jan 3 7:00am - Episode 418 -- Wed Jan 3 5:00pm - Episode 382
Thu Jan 4 7:00am - Episode 419 -- Thu Jan 4 5:00pm - Episode 383
Fri Jan 5 7:00am - Episode 368 -- Fri Jan 5 5:00pm - Episode 384

The 5pm showings make sense, even if they are 30-40 episodes behind. The 7am almost do, but fall short on Friday. Be thankful I spared you the episode titles.

Pokemon Chronicles (Cartoon Network)
Tue Jan 2 5:30pm - Episode 16
Wed Jan 3 5:30pm - Episode 17
Thu Jan 4 5:30pm - Episode 18
Fri Jan 5 5:30pm - Episode 21

Seems Friday is just special. And yes, I did just provide the Pokemon listing for amusement at the episode orders.

Christmas Post -- Loot edition.

Loot edition probably isn't a necessary descriptor since I don't think I'll have another Christmas-centric post, just subnotes to other posts relating back, at most.

Just got a good 10 minutes of amusement watching a flatbed driver unsucessfully get a forklift onto his truck. Problem was the ramp was graded steeply enough to prevent the forklift from managing the climb. And I must say, watching a forklift 95% up a ramp, wheels spinning and smoking, but not actually moving, is pretty fun.

I didn't ask for alot this Christmas (since I went with a modified form of the original list -- trimming the Xbox entries) so I got all I expected.

The list, combining the family's gifts (well, relevant to the cause), longer explanation items will be detailed/explained/etc in the rant below, so as to not disrupt the list's flow.

Doom the Boardgame, and Expansion -- Rant below.

Cradle will Rock (DVD) -- David's movie

Basement Jaxx - The Singles (CD) -- Great stuff.
Andy Bell - Electric Blue (CD) -- Good stuff.

Guild Wars: Nightfall (PC)
Neverwinter Nights 2 (PC) -- More specific rant below.

.Hack ... and .Hack .... (PS2) -- Yes, I've forgotten which two Dot Hack games specifically, but two different onces.
Valkerie Profile 2 (PS2) -- Holy crap that's pretty cover art.
Guitar Hero 2 (PS2) -- See below.

Kirby Squeak Squad (DS)
Children of Mana (DS) -- Haven't played much at all, but good stuff.

Nintendo Wii / Legend of Zelda -- Yep, see below.

So, if you've been keeping count, this little rant should include the Doom Boardgame, Neverwinter Nights 2, Guitar Hero 2, and the Wii/Zelda, plus whatever else I opt to throw in there.

The Doom Boardgame falls into the Scenario style games, using planned missions rather than freeform random generation, though the latter could easily be performed. The game is objective driven (ie, escape with your life) rather than combat driven (kill all the enemies) and the ruleset enforces this (monsters generally hit harder than you, don't worry about ammo, and the only cards that get played to influence this are played against you). It's pretty amusing, but horrendously difficult if you take a gunslinger approach. You have to focus on moving fast enough to evade your enemies while acquiring the weaponry to suit your talents before you're really able to fight back against the hordes. It's fun and everything, but it'll take awhile to get through. If you've got that much time to spare, go ahead and spend the extra hour or two for a came of Call of Cthulu instead, cause that game is creepy-good (scales better too).

So, my inital pass at NWN2, which was a hefty install and a heftier set of patches, I recreated Loriel. I played the original game through as her, Half-Elves Rogue, Dual Wield feat progression for maximal sneak attack potency, giving her a mix of Skills (8+Int tw) but very few of the personable ones. Present version has 9 Skills -- Appraise, Craft Weapon, Tumble, Use Magic Item, Hide, Move Silently, Search, Disable Device, Open Locks -- I tend not to use Slight of Hand anyways, though I should've purchased some form of Diplomacy/Bluff/Intimidate. Either way, I'll probably be recreating, much as I like the class, the additional work of moving behind an opponent to get my Sneak Attacks, while an appropriate change, is just extra management on my part, and I keep losing time when the game decides to crash (twice so far).

Guitar Hero is great, like tons of fun great. Both of the brothers seem to have gotten the hang of it, Ian even played a song I'd been playing cause he liked the rhythm (He even passed it, despite having only ever played Level 1 or 2 Songs on Easy, and it being a Level 5 Song on Medium). We've gotten one Uncle to play, it was Christmas after all, and my father once, though we'd like to see more out of him doing it. Rocking out with Judy Nails as my Avatar of choice (well, first pick and only pick so far too), out in the UK-Stonehenge venue for now, that's about 4 hours worth of playtime, in the Face Melter's category. Very afraid of Free Bird.

Songlisting (The Cross signifies a song where Co-Op gets Rhythm Guitar, if unmarked the other option is always Bass)
Main setlist
1. Opening Licks
"Shout at the Devil" - Mötley Crüe
"Mother" - Danzig †
"Surrender" - Cheap Trick
"Woman" - Wolfmother
"Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight" - Spınal Tap † (Encore)

2. Amp-Warmers
"Strutter" - KISS †
"Heart-Shaped Box" - Nirvana
"Message in a Bottle" - The Police
"You Really Got Me" - Van Halen
"Carry On Wayward Son" - Kansas (Encore)

3. String-Snappers
"Monkey Wrench" - Foo Fighters
"Them Bones" - Alice in Chains
"Search and Destroy" - Iggy Pop and The Stooges
"Tattooed Love Boys" - The Pretenders
"War Pigs" - Black Sabbath (Encore)

4. Thrash and Burn
"Cherry Pie" - Warrant
"Who Was in My Room Last Night?" - Butthole Surfers †
"Girlfriend" - Matthew Sweet †
"Can't You Hear Me Knocking" - The Rolling Stones †
"Sweet Child O' Mine" - Guns N' Roses (Encore)

5. Return of the Shred
"Killing in the Name" - Rage Against the Machine
"John the Fisherman" - Primus
"Freya" - The Sword "Bad Reputation" - Thin Lizzy
"Last Child" - Aerosmith † (Encore)

6. Relentless Riffs
"Crazy on You" - Heart
"Trippin' On a Hole in a Paper Heart" - Stone Temple Pilots
"Rock This Town" - Stray Cats
"Jessica" - The Allman Brothers Band †
"Stop" - Jane's Addiction (Encore)

7. Furious Fretwork
"Madhouse" - Anthrax
"Carry Me Home" - The Living End
"Laid to Rest" - Lamb of God †
"Psychobilly Freakout" - The Reverend Horton Heat
"YYZ" - Rush (Encore)

8. Face-Melters
"Beast and the Harlot" - Avenged Sevenfold
"Institutionalized" - Suicidal Tendencies †
"Misirlou" - Dick Dale
"Hangar 18" - Megadeth
"Free Bird" - Lynyrd Skynyrd † (Encore)

Bonus tracks
"Arterial Black" - Drist †
"Collide" - Anarchy Club
"Elephant Bones" - That Handsome Devil
"Fall of Pangea" - Valient Thorr
"FTK" - Vagiant
"Gemini" - Brian Kahanek †
"Jordan" - Buckethead
"Laughtrack" - The Acro-brats †
"Less Talk More Rokk" - Freezepop †
"The Light that Blinds" - Shadows Fall
"Mr. Fix-it" - The Amazing Royal Crowns
"The New Black" - Every Time I Die
"One for the Road" - Breaking Wheel
"Parasite" - The Neighborhoods
"Push Push (Lady Lightning)" - Bang Camaro
"Radium Eyes" - Count Zero
"Raw Dog" - The Last Vegas (Winner of the "Be a Guitar Hero" Contest)
"Red Lottery" - Megasus
"Six" - All That Remains
"Soy Bomb" - Honest Bob and the Factory-to-Dealer Incentives †
"Thunderhorse" - Dethklok
"Trogdor" - Strong Bad †
"The X-Stream" - Voivod
"Yes We Can" - Made in Mexico

For the sake of Contrast, Guitar Hero's Tracklist:

Main setlist
1. Opening Licks
"I Love Rock & Roll" - Joan Jett & The Blackhearts
"I Wanna Be Sedated" - The Ramones
"Thunder Kiss '65" - White Zombie
"Smoke on the Water" - Deep Purple
"Infected" - Bad Religion

2. Axe-Grinders
"Iron Man" - Black Sabbath
"More Than a Feeling" - Boston
"You've Got Another Thing Comin'" - Judas Priest
"Take Me Out" - Franz Ferdinand
"Sharp Dressed Man" - ZZ Top

3. Thrash And Burn
"Killer Queen" - Queen
"Hey You" - The Exies
"Stellar" - Incubus
"Heart Full of Black" - Burning Brides
"Symphony of Destruction" - Megadeth

4. Return of the Shred
"Ziggy Stardust" - David Bowie
"Fat Lip" - Sum 41
"Cochise" - Audioslave
"Take It Off" - The Donnas
"Unsung" - Helmet

5. Fret-Burners
"Spanish Castle Magic" - Jimi Hendrix
"Higher Ground" - Red Hot Chili Peppers
"No One Knows" - Queens of the Stone Age
"Ace Of Spades" - Motörhead
"Crossroads" - Cream

6. Face-Melters
"Godzilla" - Blue Öyster Cult
"Texas Flood" - Stevie Ray Vaughan
"Frankenstein" - The Edgar Winter Group
"Cowboys from Hell" - Pantera
"Bark at the Moon" - Ozzy Osbourne

Bonus tracks
"Fire It Up" - Black Label Society
"Cheat on the Church" - Graveyard BBQ (Winner of the "Be a Guitar Hero" Contest)
"Caveman Rejoice" - The Bags
"Eureka, I've Found Love" - The Upper Crust
"All of This" - Shaimus
"Behind The Mask" - Anarchy Club
"The Breaking Wheel" - Artillery (Now known as Breaking Wheel)
"Callout" - The Acro-brats
"Decontrol" - Drist
"Even Rats" - The Slip
"Farewell Myth" - Made in Mexico
"Fly on the Wall" - Din
"Get Ready 2 Rokk" - Freezepop
"Guitar Hero" - Monkey Steals The Peach
"Hey" - Honest Bob and the Factory-to-Dealer Incentives
"Sail Your Ship By" - Count Zero
"Story of My Love" - The Model Sons

So obviously the Tracklist of the First game is far more recoignizable, but both sets have their merits, and I'll probably pick up the first cheap after I've torn the second one apart.

Not much to be said about the Wii save for the fact that we did get one. Haven't set it up or played with it yet, too busy with Guitar Hero, Setting up NWN, and Family.

The Pre-Christmas Post

Which actually got posted on the rollover of Christmas Eve Morning, but close enough for my purposes.

Uncle reccomends soldering to fix the Hard Drive issue, which seems highly plausable, that'll probably be a goal for next weekend. Not much else to rave about at the moment, as getting some rest is much higher on my todo list.

Yes, I do plan to at least touch on the images recently used, as well as my selection in general.

Subnotes: 1) Damn Inuyasha for movies that Adult Swim marathoned instead of Eureka Seven's Astral Apache (that's the assault on the Capital for Norbu, aka the ultra-cheese moment), as well as Renji/Kuchiki (not gonna try his first name) beating the crap out of Ichigo. And whatever Trinity Blood has up it's sleeve next.

2) Yeah, this isn't part of the original upload, but it's Christmas, and otherwise I wasn't going to have a picture at all, though the Haruhi trio with presents will probably be tomorrow's (today's) image -- that's a most excellent blush.

"Same thing we do every night, Pinky..."

Kinda creepy how giving Gmail permission to "remember me" on this system in turn causes Google-Blogger (Or Ex-Beta Blogger, or New Blogger, or whatever you wanna term it) to automatically log me in as well.

First Blogger, then YouTube, then Nasa. One has to wonder who's next.

Elementary, my dear Watson...

So, I've traced the problem with the 160 Hard Drive. It's 4 pin power only has 3 pins. Now to stir the waters of my font and divine what resolution I can. I need my access to Haruhi~

Work sucks, no shock there, more updates later.

I totally changed this title

Playing with a few layout options related to pictures still, and although this one has so very little to do with Christmas I figured I'd exhaust the supply of Holiday themed pictures I'd included in the first upload (Which does imply that there is another collection of pictures beyond the original 317 forming, and that it has some more holiday pictures).

Ooooh, the new Google-Blogger hybrid Bloggers system is pretty nifty, and when I throw in an image it keeps it there while I'm posting instead of a hunk of WYSIWYG HTML Meta-garbage.

I won't be playing with my labels section quite yet, and I don't think this image ties to what I want to say about anime. I'm no authority on the system, I certainly don't and won't manage a blog devoted just to the topic, but still I do have an attachement to both Webcomics and Anime.

Either way, plenty to get done.

♫ Making Christmas, Making Christmas ... ♫

Leaving it as shortlist, actual list ended up trimming the Wii / 360 items and just tacking on some music from that post a few months back.

***
NWN 2


**
Wii / Twilight Princess
360 //
/ Gears of War.
/ * Enchanted Arms
/ Burnout (The 360 version, grrr)
/ * Ninety Nine Nights
Valkerie Profile 2

*
Guitar Hero 1/2

Thursday Doldrums

I've decided I'd like to alternate my Text-light Picture posts with my more rantish ones. Give an alternation of text and picture. Alternatively (and yes, I do recoignize how many variations of this I've used) I could just tie the pictures more into what I'm writing about and combo them every time; though I might find it more constraining to write to a picture, rather than just using the picture where it goes well with the words.

Anyways, I've got a fair chunk of time (though still mail and lunch to burn some of that) and no coworker, so not only is there solitude broken only by the annoyance of customers - and I hate Christmas season because it's no longer people with 1 box, it's people with 16 boxes - and the radio. The River does not have enough variety, but at least I can stomach half it's playlist, and zone the rest mentally.

Picking up with FFXII chatter I've finally reached the Knight of the Round status, having beatdown every hunt offered to me before Giruvegan (where I should be headed now). I've gained acceptance to the Rare Hunter's club, with no kill past the first turtle (There had better not be any other Rares that are triggered by "Stand in place X for awhile" cause that's just fucking stupid) turned in, but I think 3-4 Trophies earmarked. Beatdown the Hell Wyrm, which was more than I'd bargained for going in blind. It was a particularly brutal battle without Holy Absorb but I triumphed after about 2.5 hours of straight battle (Epic, yeah). Cost me 7 Phoenix Downs, 1 X-Potion, 1 Hi-Ether, and 1 MegaElixir (After a particularly bad Judgement).

I've decided after playing all this time with it, that the Gambit system is like 70% of what I desire out of it. The automation of mundane rebuffs, target acquisition, etc, is brilliant, but it's flawed. What gets me is the acquisition of Gambits.
Take them out of the stores, give me like 10 generic ones to begin with (really broad, like the HP Triggers as 1, MP Triggers as 1, Enemy Types (Flying, Boss, Regular), Spell-Effect Present, etc.) and make their refinements or improvements be granted storyline. In fact, I heartily reccomend giving Gambits as a reward for fights that would've been best served with the Gambit, proving your worth. Right now they're far too swingy, either useful or useless depending on the situation. The fact that I have to specifically trigger on various status-effects irks me, or on Elemental Weaknesses. And the game doesn't respond too brilliantly to "Immune" or "Reverse" or even Stealing. The game could've been smarter, and really I think it should have been, but the gambits should've been harder to obtain to balance it. Even better, they could be some token system, so that there's some strategy in the selection what Gambits you're going to need/use and what the player is going to do himself.

Aside from Stealing, and smart casting spells without taking all the lines to do it though, the system does function, and I do it mostly by hand anyways (Like anyone who's played Baldur's Gate will). So why the rant about Gambits? Easy, because of the rant about Treasure Chests. Overlooking the whole "Don't open these chests" thing for the spear (Note to designers, if you're going to pull that kind of crap, at least do it Crono Trigger style -- That is all) the random chests are pretty much my bane. 90% of the time, even with the Armlet, they contain plity amounts of gil, potions that I have had 99 of for ages (and nothing to do with them, unlike FFX where it's Bahamaut has learned to cast Cure, which while useless, was cute and solved the problem of having 99) or they give me a Gambit. And not just any Gambit, but the same Gambit, over and over and over. I swear, I have Gambit: Self at least 6 times, and Every Copy of Gambit: Hp % twice, including something like 12 copies of Hp 60%, for no good reason. The gil I can store at least, even though I have 1 mil, with the tiny donation of 50K from Montblanc for the Hell Wyrm kill (Worst, Clanleader, Ever), the potions I could at least use with aplomb and replace them. But getting a Gambit I already have? Fucking stupid. There's probably some piece of FFXII's code in there that's commented out, advising development that a redundancy check on the Gambits would be wise, because there's no point to addition copies (And this is have the reason I say they should be bought with special Gambit Curreny, if you're going to sell them instead of making the Sidequested).

I could rant about the Loot System, and how it'd be 100x better served by a Sidequest Recipie-Driven segment for the ultimate weapons, ala Final Fantasy VIII's Weapons-Magazines or a Tiered Craft system functioning like Kingdom Hearts Synthesis; but that's really all I have to say. The blind aspect isn't cool, it's just complicated and annoying, especially with the interaction of multiple recipie loot elements.

Emphasis on Quasi

It kinds occurs to me that I could've just directly uploaded these thing from my computer, but given that this was meant as a worktime diversion (which I no longer need, in recoignition of the pressures of the Holiday Rush) this method suits my purposes.

Asuna is <3. Negima?! is absoutely wonderful, as are the seasonal OVAs that I don't actually have my hands on yet (despite what the hicks assaulting Jiaz's blog via comments might say). I have at least another one of her, with her sword, in the picture trove that I'll get to someday. Negima art isn't too frequent, but at least I don't have to sort through tons of tag-content filtered pages like I do with Bleach (What's that, a Harem series without tons of H-art attached, unthinkable).

Asuna's long hair is totally victory though. Not really a Casual Tag, and the lack of a substancial top removes the chance at a Midriff Tag (another of my favorites, alongside Choker). The perennial hunger, plus the Cosplay card, aren't really my favorites, but the bells are fun, as is the sleeping. Pretty, but not wallpaper worthy.

Quasi-Daily Picture #1

The odds of this being a daily trend are probably pretty small, but since I got Flock to upload all the pictures (~330) that I'd gathered off Danbooru, and because I'm stuck late at work, I figured I'd start this idea of mine up and running. And perhaps this way I can slim down the collection or add to those of my reader (I might've made that plural, but optimism isn't my venue).

Given the nature of my choices, this'll probably never be SFW, but most of choices don't get more risque than implied or veiled nudity.

Yorichi to start it off with (there's no sorting, just the original filenames as they were collected, reversed due to the upload process). I'm a huge fan of the "casual" tag on Danbooru (Bonus points because the images have to involve clothes for the tag in the first place, so my tag-blogging doesn't come into play) and Yorichi was a great mystery for awhile. Plus, flaunting her sexuality on Ichigo was amusing to no end; her being a badass ex-ninja elite doesn't count against her either. Extra score for the pun on the shirt. And on top of that, it's an inoffensive artist watermark. Jeans and Midriff are big on my list, and the sulty look and gloves are pretty nice as well. Sorta an odd head position, but oh well. I need some more of these, they're just nice. Same reason I love the art accompanying Bleach OPs 4 and 5.

Less than a month till Christmas

So no Jiaz, I couldn't think up a witty title for myself either.

Fscking Tech hasn't replied back, guess I'll send another email, she's probably on vacation again, just cause they like doing that sort of thing without notice to those of use who'd care. Procedural systems suck, and I really haven't found any backup plans of merit, but this working at $8 isn't going to fly much longer (and definately shouldn't have flown this long).

I begin to find the sidequests of FFXII a tad discouraging. I love that there's so many of them, and that you can do them from so early on. How they build upon each other, and the puzzle elements to some of them (Sochen Cave Palace doors); but frankly. Some of them are ridiculous. I look at the FAQs and I don't get what ties these seemingly random NPCs together for some of these things. I got to fight and defeat the Earth Tyrant on total luck, I talked to the wrong named person trying to find the giver of a hunt in the area and unlocked something I'd never have stumbled upon normally. The first 20 hours of the game I've been talking to NPCs with absolutely no rewards, and suddenly they start mixing them in, it doesn't compute. It's like they had something going for them, and then scrapped the full implementation and attached the pieces to some scattered NPCs and called it done. I don't like things that I can't do without the aid of a guide. I mean, FFVI was difficult to figure out some of the stuff, fighting Zoneseek, getting Gogo, but it wasn't impossible or anything. This one everything is in the most random of places. I hadn't planned for this to be the FFXII discussion post, but since I'm already here, no reason to stop now.

Spoliers, duh.

Still using Vaan, Balthier, and Ashe. Vaan's still the tank of the group, Runeblade (I haven't opened Barheim yet, I didn't figure out where to get the key, the hints do not lead where it actually starts), Demon Shield (I failed to steal the Genji Shield, so sad, but I prefer the higher Evasion on the Demon, I use Aegis for Casters), Genji Helm/Armor, and Genji Gloves. Balthier's got the second gun from Gun IV, whatever that may be and some Mud ammo (3 Power, adds Blind, Earth Element) and as I've gotten further away from big armored mobs, the gun is more lackluster. It's slow and not all that powerful. I'd rather give him my Yoichi Bow (75) + Arrows of the Goddess (5 Power Ranged!). He's wearing nice Medium Armor, about 9.8K life under the effects of Bubble. Ashe just went from Defender to Masamune to Save the Queen for weaponry, wearing a Golden Skullcap and some Heavy Armor VIII, I think. She's back to being the resident thief and acts as primary healer (though with Faith everyone can Curaga for about 5-6K, which balances almost any incoming damage).

Cid is. Odd. Al-Cid needs to make a reappearance. The game also seems to promote overleveling to a degree that's nearly unheard of (And that's coming from someone who loves Disgaea). Gilgamesh was pretty beatable at 59 for my party. Immunity to his Level 2 Sleep / Level 3 Disable / Level 4 Break was pretty nice, though his accuracy in combat was disgusting. 5 Hit chains + never-missing = dead character. I didn't actually ever land a MQ on him, for fear of coming up short and leaving myself vulnerable. Which is my major annoyance. I want FFX back. I want mobs where I know not only their HP/MP, but their weaknesses, and what specials I can land. This system of hurling 30 Blinds and getting Misses, then getting an Immune is stupid and pointless and feels like a major step backwards.

About all the time I have right now, so I'll leave this not fully wrapped up, pick it up another post another day. Just some closing remarks

Danbooru's been having difficulties the past few days, makes me sad.

Tsubasa Chronicles finished getting Subbed, so hopefully I can pick that up, need to get the big HD recoignized again though, between Stepmania, my still unsorted Music, WoW and BC Beta, I'm greatly low on disc space, and Nero's on the other drive >.>

I swear Ashe's middle name is a Lovecraftian reference...

...I initially typed Lovecrafting, and that would not have done, at all.

(105 Minutes later)

King of Distraction that I am, I nearly got completely sidetracked from what I mean to do, namely, talking about Final Fantasy Twelve. I like how it looks written out, but FFXII is a hell of a lot easier to type, not that I expect to be needed it too frequently.

(100 Strips of Megatokyo later, the first 100 to be precise)

Focus!

Alright. Spoilers will likely be present.

Visually, FFXII is pretty, the eyecandy level isn't stellar, I've never really been a fan of vast sweeping landscapes if you're not going to give me a self-controlled Airship to navagate them, but it's definately present. Some of the architexture is amazing, as are some of the revamped creature models. The Slavens and Treants aren't what I'd call bland, merely stupid looking; but the models for the higher-grade undead of each tier and the slepnir (armored horses) are very nice. Turtles seem to lack heads, and the croc mobs are plain bizzare. Espers and Judges are well defined, the rest of the mobs (Elites, Bosses, and Hunts) sorta blend into each other but there's still a fair deal of mob types. And when it's not sprite based, palette (two l's?) shifts don't bother me.

Musically I've yet to be impressed, but I've also not started turned off my sounds in favor of Winamp/Pandora backgrounds, so that's good. The Chocobo remix was, interesting, though in a good way. And the Congratulations classic victory music is great, though it's a bit zoomed out, and the styles are a bit generic. Nothing has gripped me in the cutscenes, but that's mostly because they're powering the plot/drama though words and actions, rather than the music all the time. (Squall says ...)

Speaking of, cutscenes are generally wonderful, as to be expected, though I don't think the linework for the words always matches up. I worry that the villian might end up be exactly who I expect it is without any secrets in the back or tricks up his sleeves. I'd hate for this to be another Seymour (who's reasonably powerful in his own right, but still just one person) summons Anima moment. I'd like a bit of a twist that isn't Overall Baddie Alpha summons the Esper X+1 (where X is the final storyline summon).

Castwise I don't think I've had enough time to deal with them all. Most of my time has been spent on Hunts and Chains and Exploration, and not a whole lot of plot (Mt. Bur-Omisace with 40 hours of the clock, 6 of which were idle (not paused, which doesn't count)).

Vaan -- Zidane/Early-Tidus level annoying and ignorant, but at least I sense potential. He probably doesn't deserve quite the prominent role the storyline is trying to give him as there's no reason it cannot be just a main party rather than a main character, especially given the flexibility of the game.
Ashe -- Headstrong and prosiac at times, but if love develops I could see that softening. At least her garb is nice. Though the ghost of her husband, and the fact that she was married just kinda sit awkwardly so far.
Basch -- A Steiner/Celes remix, just hear me out. He has a comitted duty but he also feels tainted by past failures and betrayl (His brother, Vossler). His outfit is stupid though.
Penello -- Makes a nice foil to Ashe, intentional or not, but she ultimately doesn't seem particularly useful to this point. Her relationship, as she desires it, with Vaan is what I'm personally hoping for, but I think that Ashe might just botch that all up. Her holding his arm at the very beginning was probably the best moment she's had.
Fran -- Honestly, I'm not a big fan of the bunny girls. Viera seem to have a Germanic based language, at least the names (Fran, Mjrn, etc) which gives an awfully harsh overtone to the language of the passive woods-dwellers. She's relatively cool otherwise, though the script sucks at explaning or demonstrating Mist very effectively. Everything keeps talking about it like there was some 3rd Grade History Course everyone took, but that's pretty clearly not the case. I really wish that when she was leaving Eruyt village only Balthier would've been visible. Vaan had no place standing there.
Balthier -- Rocks. Plain and simple. His Mist Quickenings are amusing, his attitude is awesome. It's essentially the re-envisioned form of Setzer from FFVI, the way he should have been in KH2. He's not afraid to admit his piracy, he's got an airship, he "kidnaps" damsels. All we need is an assault on an opera house to really finish the picture. Sadly this leading man seems to be losing his top billing to Vaan.

I don't know how much more game there is to be played. I think it's a large amount though. I know there's 45 Hunts (I've done maybe 20?) and 5 Espers in the main storyline (I've got 2 of them), which gives me a rough idea of how things stand.

45 Hours in, did Stil-Shrine (Crappy ass dungeon) and returned to Bur-Omisace. This'll do for a first post, working solo is very non-condusive, blogging tired isn't either.

Suffering made manifest -- Okay, it's really one of the endings to Zelda CD-I, but that's basically the same thing.

Only 17 Days till Thanksgiving. Here's hoping by then I'm Thankful to have the other 50% of my SCSI interfaced items working again (namely the Maxtor HD and the Samsung CDRW/DVD)

Looks like Adult Swim pulled a Kansas City Two-step on me, moving Trinity Blood/Bleach/Eureka Seven forward half an hour, to an 11:30, Midnight, 12:30 lineup. So I missed Trinity Blood, but I think that was the last episode I saw before I ran out of Disc Space last time, so it's all good still. Don Kannoji on Bleach next week, I'll be sure to miss that. Eureka Seven's not longer got the "One day we will all own Giant Mecha" preface and now has an extra violence warning (Woot for uncut though).

Ah, Irony, Girl and Mother (with CA Driver's License) walk into the store. Girl is coughing on and off; not quite coughing up a storm but definately a hearty, flem cough, so obviously sick. Anyways, mother had me notarize a "XX does not have an Immunization Record due to religious beliefs." And to that I say O.o, what the hell kind of death-religion is this?

Speaking of confused suprise...I just had a customer ask if he needed to unstable his papers before putting them in the copier if he wanted both sides. Honestly, I don't think anyone's visions of the future have included a copier that could copy things that freely, perhaps we should get to work on it. Doesn't beat last week's customer. Strolled in here with an opened box, that she tells me was addressed to her but was meant for someone in Seattle, and that it needed to be returned. So I look at this box, Farscape Season 1. Look at the Return Email she printed, Laguna Beach Season 1, note a RMA but no UPS Number/Barcode. Explain that she'll have to pay to send it back in absence of any UPS Account Number. We go back and forth for a few minutes, me stalwartly maintaining that the package is not going anywhere unless money is involved, her arguing that it's not hers so she shouldn't have to pay. Eventually it clicked and she left, who knows what'll become of it.

I think the FFXII playclock reads 16 hours, that or 14, but like 2-4 of it is just idle time during meals etc. Not quite the same level as my normal first weekend (actually, about par for what Disgaea 2 was, as I got that on a Saturday afternoon), a well below the total domination of Kingdom Hearts 2, though I maintain that FFXII is good so far.

PC Mag and PC World for my Lunch reading. The former mentions Nabaztag at the end, which is still a totally awesome creation. Also, USB-Charging AA Batteries have gotta be the future, that's just plain awesome.

Anime post delayed yet again, too much going on these days, I'll make a point to get to it once GG gets out Code Geass 5 and I can experience C.C., decide if I like her more or less than Kallen.

I think I completely blended the words Cloister and Closet for that abomination of a spelling error in my last post. Though I recreated it trying to type closet again, so I'm not really certain what flavor of neurosis has taken grip at the moment. Probably nothing serious; bodes poorly for NaNoWriMo though. Haven't decide what story to expound upon, or genre or whatnot. Action (and I nearly wrote Shounen there) tends to get length fast thanks to combat, but I'm having trouble stringing ideas together. I'm not officially participating in any capacity, but what effort I put forth will show up on Foundry (my Wordpress, not that there's much of anything there atm, just some half-done saved drafts not on display).

The PS2 should be making it's return tomorrow. Would've been today, but Sony ships 3-day select with UPS, so 2 day ground takes 3. I'm not certain what would take more than 3 days with a Texas origin, but somehow 3-day select just doesn't seem like the solid option from that perspective. Ah well, I'm gonna be too busy before the weekend to even think of FFXII / Disgaea.

Happy Halloween

There'll likely not be the anime post today either. Can't get a writing groove with an angry claim customer in the room.

That and Katie (I debated awhile which moniker to choose), got me hooked on Futility Closet. Case in Point.

All Hallow's Eve Eve

When you get old enough to stop thinking of Halloween as Trick-or-Treating you really begin to just consider the holiday as a prelude celebration to All Saint's Day. Okay, maybe that's just me.

Oct 30, which means Children of Mana and Final Fanstasy XII tomorrow, course the PS2 hasn't arrived at Sony for repairs quite yet (but yes, I did actually send it), but I wasn't in a rush to get FFXII anyways, mucho other stuff to do.

I was gonna write up Eureka / Innocent Venus / Code Geass, but I've been conscripted, so that'll have to wait.

So, this is worth what, 2000 Words? I'll try to match that later.

"So, this Neo-Kyon moves into a town where all the girls are Neo-Mikuru..."

Sorry, totally an amusing quote. And no, still don't plan to watch Kanon, we'll see how long it takes before most of the Anime Blogs drop it to, it just doesn't seem to have the kick everyone wants. ./pity the Sad Girls in Snow.

I'd wanted to do an Eureka Seven'd Anemone x Dominic post entitled "Oh well" in commoration of the start of ep 48, but I think I'll just wait until I finish the series and hammer everything all in one giant post. Plus I really wanted the "Is this Love" image of the two, and I'm not about to go browsing Danbooru at work to find it, I'll just upload it from home. I'm halfway tempted to screencap, but VLC really doesn't support the idea, so it's not gonna happen without some prodding.

That said, Sakuya > Eureka. Long purple hair and facial markings ftw.

Gao Gao Stegosaurus

And despite that fact, this post'll have nothing to do with Air or Kanon for that matter. Okay, almost nothing, I just wanted to go so far as saying I'm not watching Kanon and it's likely I won't at all, well maybe, if it convinces me it's cute enough.

...

Actually, having spent 4 hours trying to coax Blogger into letting me post, the inertia has returned.

Woot. Long Pants Weather...

Which shall soon turn into Hot Tea/Chocolate weather, but hasn't quite yet. I've had some Hot Tea, but that was cause I opted for shorts in what was clearly pants temperatures.

Celebrated my birthday, nothing special whatsoever, which is how I like it anyways. 30g iPod and Lucky Number Slevin on DVD. I might use some of the birthday cash to get a few of those CDs I talked about. Spent the weekend mixing Burning Crusade Beta with various tasks; haircut, flu shot, CHS Orchestra dinner theater.

Ouran Host Club wrapped up, doubtful there's much hope for a second season here (Which is always a prominent question on my mind when anything enjoyable ends) though I don't know how much of the manga is left intact to be covered. It'd be nice to see Eclair and Tamaki's mother 'saved' as the rest of the club is/becomes to a degree, but that doesn't seem to merit a whole season on it's own.

The revival of the lightbulb, the seamless blending of the ED with the episodes final events, as well as the full circle closure (crashing in a Pumpkin Patch whilst in a horse-drawn carriage anyone?) made the episode really really good.

I'm hoping to be watching Punpkin Scissors, Negima?!, D.Gray-man, Death Note, and Code Geass this season, however the groups I desire to be subbing them (Lunar-Anime, A.F.K., Mahou, Static-Subs, Eclipse, Nanashi, heck even Froth-Bite) haven't really made a dent in that lineup for the most part. Too much obsession with Fucking Kanon, grr. I am watching Black Lagoon's continuation though, though the albino vampire loli-sis-con are creepy as hell.

Innocent Venus has got me really enmeshed in the mystery and backstabbing, despite Gora's attempts to fuck the entire series over by rolling all 3 of Eureka's children into one horrifying Jarjar Binks/Inspector Gadget clueless-hero-who's-not-trying-to-be-heroic-but-does-feel-motivation-by-more-than-the-base-greed-at-times.

Speaking of Eureka, Nanashi finished, so I've got 39-50 to watch, well once the dls finish. Here's hoping that 42 picks up where 39-41 have been exposition/explanation/metaphysic slouch and gives me back the action and violence and pink explosions we all know and love.

Burning Crusade Beta is more of the leveling / character-improvement we all know I love. Especially the new rep rewards. Only done two of the instances, and there's tons more to go, but it's good to be doing Dungeon Crawls again, even if I feel I'm limiting my contributions with my spec atm, though I seem to be fine outside of Dungeons as main healer with no spec for it but totally geared. Seems like Holy might be more viable than I had considered if SoRight stays as it is, but for now I'm still planning Ret to Holy Strike (sweet sweet Holy Strike, you're totally worth the cost of dispellable Divine Shield).

Made myself a Wordpress account/blog. Gonna use it for writings mostly, or at least that's the plan as stands. I've only tinkered with it a bit, edited the welcome post, added about 1/4th of another post, we'll see how far I make it with it before I lose the urge for creative writings again.

Made my day

Truly a good day for Overheard in the Office, Quote 1, Quote 2, Quote 3.

Post 415

Okay, so I couldn't think of anything exceptionally creative, nothing shocking there.

I stumbled upon The Daily WTF today. It's pretty much the nerd version Overheard in the Office, expanded into full stories of events or code snippets, rather than just indivdual quotes. Alternatively you could consider it long-format Bash.org with maturity, since that jumps to the core of the nerdy spectrum for all intents and purposes. I was actually looking for remnants of the ill-famed Dysfunctional Family Circus when I came across this, but it's certain worth it, the archives should provide a fair bit of amusement before I have to find something else, and it's already on my list of sites to check daily. Why? This alone was enough to seal the deal. I've been laughing for probably 5 whole minutes about the Cell Phone error. That said, the fact that I'm versed enough in SQL and Java for this to be amusing is really really wrong...

Aparently damage cap in Makai Kingdom lands somewhere just short of 7 mil, 6.7 something iirc. Disgaea 2's is in the vicinity of 2.6 bil, or so I'm told, haven't called Sony, been busy earlier in the week at work. Today is dead though.

Despite that, I think WTF is gonna eat the rest of today, so we'll call it a short Post 415.

Life's trying to give me a nervous tic...

Which is sadly seems to be the honest truth seeing as my right eye has been twitching all day.

Yesterday was such an...experience. Awoken at 5am to be told that the power had blownout and asked when I needed a wakeup call so I could be up in time, which ended up being unnecessary as power came back on before I was able to fall asleep again, so I reset my clock alarm. Then, fattie that I am, I broke the button off my khakis sitting down in my car.

Work for the day was mostly uneventful, minus customers wanting everything under the sun before it'd warmed up (Copies, Color Copies, Laminating, Binding (Yeah, technically the binder is always warmed up, but I included it anways)). And the one extraordinary customer, a slightly older man, who wanted "some help bringing in packages". Turns out it was 4 large boxes (29"x15"x15") all in the 55-65 lbs range. He didn't help at all, but it's all in a day's work. He tipped me $3 for it. I wouldn't have accepted but I didn't realize he was doing it until I'd already taken it. (Sidenote, why the hell is the proverb 'Don't look a gift horse in the mouth' still being propagated? It makes zero sense. In fact, it makes less than zero sense when used analygous with the Trojan Horse lesson) This $3 cash would come into play later.

I went down to Tech, because I'd discovered that if you're re-apping from drop there's 2 extra forms. One of which I knew about and had completed, but another that took me by suprise. So I boogy-ed down to school, parked in the Physics Visitor Lot (which'd later cost me $1.50, thus why the cash mattered) and dashed to see my advisor, who kindly informed me that I'd wasted time and gas because in EE that extra form gets completed after inital acceptance, rather than earlier. Then traffic getting back sucked.

Well, course of the week: Arrange PS2 repairs (and to not have to pay for them), get new pants, convince Kyle to trade me Saturday for Saturday so that I can get a Flu Shot on the 14 since plans have already been laid for that day (Dinner Theater as well).

Okay, this story amused me somewhat. Lady comes in to send a fax (her resumè to the Montessori School, I want to spell it Montressouri for some reason, having never researched the pedagoloy of it before this moment, but that's neither here nor there). After convincing her that I don't charge for coversheets and they're helpful, I explain to her how to fill it out, and then give it back to her so she can write the fax number in the space provided so I can actually send it. Now, not only does she misspell Montessouri School (which I admit I did as well, but I'm not the one applying to the place so I have some leeway), but also resumè (and we're not talking the accent here (0232 this time)). Course, perhaps it's a match made in heaven, as the fax failed to go through the first time since someone over there answered the machine... And then the lady called them on the store phone, for reason I don't understand, as she listed her cell on both the Resumè and the coversheet. Some people confuse me.

Welcome to the Pumpkin Patch

Happy October.

It's finally getting chill out, but not quite time for the total conversion. Changed over to long Khakis for work, and jeans for lounging at home, but I'm still drinking my tea iced.

Seems that Meebo is a total Net Hog on this connection, which means I've been spare on it, since it destroys my ability to work effectively, though I pop on to get updates etc.

Character Battle 5 is in the second division of the males, I've already been pretty much culled, but I'll worry about a retrospective when all of the first round of battles finishes up.

I've declared the PS2 to be dead by virtue of Disc Read Errors, so I'll call up Sony and have arrangements made for repairs. According to what I've read it should just cost me shipping, and DREs are pretty common as the machine ages. I've read some pages that give step-by-steps for opening and manually testing/tweaking the machine, but I think mine is past that level for the most part. Course, this means that I'm in complete Disgaea 2 withdrawl, and also that I won't be buying Valkerie Profile 2 just yet, although, given the parameters I've read, I should be able to get the repairs arranged, the PS2 Shipped (gee, I wonder how I'll accomplish that), and it back to me before my birthday.

Thanks to the withdrawl:
Trailer for the Disgaea Anime (Which sucked), from Disgaea 2, amusing nonetheless.
Disgaea 2 Trailer, JP version still nice at showcasing major characters and attack animations (not enough spells). Compare with Disgaea 1 Trailer English version, just notice how much better Dimension Slash looks in Disgaea 2.
And just for good measure Disgaea 2 Opening.
Ah, the usefulness of Youtube sometimes.

Shame I'm busy, I'd love to talk about the ending to Ouran, but I'll toss that up a week later, once the new season's started and subbed and I have a broader specturm to talk about, plus I gotta end this fast a-fore I start gushing about Disgaea again.

Meandering Mountain Paths...

...Crossing each other as they wind down to the town below.

Horror #1

I totally cannot make shit like this up:

-----------------------------------------------
Show Channel StartDate EndDate OnDemandSection / SubSection / SubSubSection

Life of Man-Faye Anime Selects 09/07/06 02/12/07 The Cutting Edge / Anime Selects / Man Faye

Knowing Man-Faye Anime Selects 09/07/06 02/12/07 The Cutting Edge / Anime Selects / Man Faye

Q&A Man-Faye Anime Selects 09/07/06 02/12/07 The Cutting Edge / Anime Selects / Man Faye
-----------------------------------------------

That's right, not only does Anime Selects have not 1, but 3 shows dedicated to this atrocity of cosplay, but it's got it's own Subsection dedicated to it. Running until the middle of next February...

Assorted Miscellany

So, Sam and Fuzzy actually has the titular characters again, for those who've complained that post-guess Sam Logan revamped the storyline I present Exhibit A and then the core of what some might call misdirection Exhibit B.

And really that's all I had to say, or else risk repeating the Webcomic block of death from a few posts ago (Wall of Text is bad), but speaking of misdirection, looks like Lucky Number Slevin came out on DVD back on an early "teenth" of September (I looked it up once, I think it was 12 or 13 (Anyone pointing out the fact that 12 is not a "teenth" has been beaten to the punch by this line) but I don't recall precisely), I checked Comcast's OnDemand schedule to see if it was slated anytime soon, which is what preciptated my discovery of Horror #1.

Actually watched Jinki 1 over the weekend as accompanyment to Saturday Breakfast (Mmm, doughnuts). I think it was an untouched OP/ED on the basis that I don't think it has the OP/ED in the first ep, though it does play the ED when there could have been an ED, which it did, until ep 2 when it becomes a Panzinger-Z parody (or you know, however that show is spell, my cocern is far remote here). All it did was show me that the Extend part of the show kicks Jinki's ass, oh and the VA for the Ep Preview is horrible horrible horrible.

While we're on the OP/ED tangent, since I got back into Eureka Seven for the Ray and Charles subarc culminating in the raid on the Capital, it's awful to see that they've horribly trimmed OP2/ED2. Trinity Blood still runs full OP and a half length(double speed images + normal speed song) for the ED which at least shows the full ED. Kiddy Grade went and had theirs dubbed over, which I guess is indicative of the lack of faith in the sale power of less J-Bands.

The return of the Lightbulb in Ep25 of Ouran was amazing, and Kyouya's 'Pineapple' Computer is visionary of what I could see as a sucessful line of either shirts or Apple Laptop/ iPod Covers.

I don't know the new iPod Song, this saddens me.

RadioBlog is still midly amusing, at least for catching a few of the Pandora songs that I really like but haven't secured anywhere else and being able to spam-repeat them. Course the really good ones I can't find there, but that's a different problem. That said as per my Pandora profile, I'm totally considering buying (best song noted):
Mountaineers - Messy Century - Track 12, Apart from This.
Andy Bell - Electric Blue - Track 11, Delicious.
Venus Hum - Big Beautiful Sky - Track 3, Soul Sloshing (And it costs less than the Single for it, which is an Import) and The Colors in the Wheel - Track 11, Pink Champagne (Note that I can buy The Colors in the Wheel combo with Big Beautiful Sky for savings, but BBS is packaged with a Blue Man Group Album if I try to start from there instead...)
Tsunami Bomb - Ultimate Escape - Track 2, Russian Roulette and Invasion from Within (EP) - Track 1, Invasion from Within plus Track 5, Lemonade and Definitive Act - Track 6 - 4 Robots and an Evil Scientest.
Basement Jaxx - I just went with a full listing. I want mostly the Single's album but that's an Import again.
Not a complete listing, there's no Daft Punk or Go Betty Go! or some more Import stuff there, but those are my big aims at the moment.

Retrograded Firefox to a level when it's compadible with FlashBlock again, which nipped my Flash-Errors-crashing-Firefox problem completely. Still having issues with Asgard and the Maxtor drive, which is bad because I've found the utilities to rebuild it, but I sorta want to extract the data first. Order of the day, get a DVD Burn Program and make it function, start making space on the small drive to pull and burn stuff from the Maxtor.

Got a CD sleeve from the Red Cross to put in my car. It's actually way too small, and I worry about getting the CDs in and out with any ease, but I'm gonna give it a try anyways.

Tech better fucking give me some confirmation that I've sucessfully reapplied, because deadline is 4 days and I've not heard a peep, which is very very stressful.

David's PS2 is pretty much dying, takes forever to make it play Disgaea 2, which is horrible because the game is so awesome that I want to play it so much more than I am, I've not even gotten the 6th skill for every weapon yet (though my Rogue has unlocked top tier, Master Thief, and has Divine Comet (which is so much fun to use)). Got Megaman ZX but haven't been playing too much. It's really damn tough.

Valkerie Profile 2 out on the PS2 as of yesterday (or today, depending which store you getting it from I guess) but I've got Disgaea and the PS2 is flukely so it can wait. Still want Ninety-Nine Nights and Enchanted Arms though. White Knight Stories looks beautiful and could be great, I'll wait till I see the level/ability systems before further comment.

I think it's time for a complete Password System overhaul on my end, I need something new.

Blindsided

Wow...it's AWA starting today. I totally missed that memo somewhere along the way. Looks like they really moving into the fansub showing direction, because there are quite a few things on the showings that I know aren't even licensed yet. Some good stuff going on though, Hellsing Ultimate, FMA: Conqueror of Shambala (Listen to me fuckers, SHAM-Ba-La -- commercial pisses me the hell off). I'm on the fence whether I'll go or not, leaning pretty heavily towards no though. Dealer's room doesn't have anything to my tastes at a price I like except artbooks, and that's a slippery slope right there.

I've seen 90% of what they'll be showing, and the stuff they have listed that I haven't seen are final eps that won't be airing there anyways (like the end to Otome, though watching the first again would be amusing)

Net crashed out from beneath me last night, so I've got about half the Nipponsei releases I was looking for (ZnT OST, BlackLagoon OST), and I haven't checked out the other jewel of humor that Jiaz tracked down for me yet.

Check the Wiki for Disgaea, seems I'm still grooving with Rank 23-27 weapons, but since I'm focused on burning up Tiers rather than powerleveling (boring). I think the solution right now is to stack some Felony charges so I can pass the Cave or Ordeals using Felonies as sway. 6 Pirates down, 10 to go, those events are completely amusing still though, even if it's pretty much Ambling over and over.

I wonder if time has dulled my senses, everyone comnig in today has mentioned that the place smells like pizza. Which, given that they're nextdoor, isn't suprising, I guess I've just been desensitized.

Blitz:

Lenny (Innocent Venus) = Meg (Burst Angel) = Levy (Black Lagoon). Meg really doesn't have the attitude.

Bleach English VA in Ep 2? I can handle it. Chad probably should be deeper, Rukia's "jeepers" was uncalled for. Now to convince D: to cooperate, figure out what the hell she says in the original that ended up "jeepers"

Trinity Blood 2 still kicks total ass, "Gunslinger" out of ammo ftw, I should hunt down a batch of that and Solty Rei when I free up the Drive space.

Go vote for Celes, don't let the Boss win this one >.<

Jinki Extend on Anime on Demand, I should see how that is.

Eureka last week was the awesome Renton violence ep, Next week is Ray and Charles (Who's VAs are solid, trans is pristine too), the start of the next awesome arc, hell they'll catch up to where I'm at subbed soon >.>

TODO:
* Get some sleep, work early on Monday
* Build up some Felonies for Disgaea 2, get a Rank 35+ and start burning through to deeper, get Tier 4 units.
* Check out redeeming other people's copies of the Microcenter coupons, hit up CD warehouse/Frye's while in the area.
* Pick up formatting on Music folders, start processing Moy's and Danbooru's Walls, scrap the worthless, poll some opinions on the questionable.
* Find a way to survive 6-8 hour work days for the next few weeks.

I actually didn't get yelled at...

The customer came in mere hours after that post, much to my amazement. Apparently her husband had lost his cell phone, which was why it was blocked like that. Got a home number for them, got them the packages, and everyone was happy, except for me not having an excuse for future packages for them.

GameFAQs Character Battle V has begun, on round 3 already, it'll be running for quite awhile.

(Game Futures)
Wii now has a release date (Nov 19) and a price ($250), which is excellent news, we'll see how that stuff impacts the Character Battle. I haven't actually looked at any Wii info in a long time except for a few ad/previews on Cinematech, and frankly I kinda liked a static controller, but we'll see how the Wii plays out, I'm getting Twilight Princess either way, so I have to get the Wii anyways.

Finally tracked down alot more info about the specifics of Disgaea 2 (Specialists, Lovers, Felonies, etc). This game'll be amusing for months to come. I also still think I want Ninety-Nine Nights and Enchanted Arms, but I've got patience and don't really have a 360, which works to my advantage, monetarily.

Megaman ZX came out on Tuesday and I'm thinking I'll have to get that for a kickass DS game, pending the reviews from friends and webcomics.

(Massive Comics Block-o-Text)
Speaking of, Hellbound today is pretty subpar, but that's only on a relative scale against itself, and after the "What Box?" it's got pretty tough competiton. Red Meat is recycling, without making any pretenses about it. Real Life is still bleh. Ctrl Alt Del is doing god knows what. Order of the Stick is picking it back up thanks to it being September, which is awesome news given where we stand in the story. Megatoyko's alternating awesomeness and bleh with the standard filler, and Dom owes us several rants. Mac Hall is still MIA, but that's par for the course, I wonder what Matt's up to though. Dominic Deegan is up and running now that September is here, and I've gotta admit, Best of DD was a pretty nice filler streak, though cutting back from 7 to 3 was hell on my bookmarks. It's good to see it going again, it'll be awhile building conflict before we get to the tension climaxes again, but I have patience. LICD's latest arc was suitablely more amusing than I'd expected, even moderately heartwarming (well, as much as it could be, given context). Penny Arcade mentioned Prinnies, which was a new peak and then went back to their usual high level of alternating hits and misses. VG Cats still owes us a #200, but at least he seems to be hammering them out with consistency and humor again. Questionable Content seems to be trying to get us to forget that he killed off a portion of the conflict, and he's probably suceeding; moreover, it's still really fun. Sam and Fuzzy is building towards something really great, has been for awhile, but I'd kinda like to actually, you know, see Sam as Sam sometime soon, lots of unanswered questions here. Adventurers is pretty much wrapped up, maybe 3-4 more strips to go, I think I'd rather have seen RPGWorld get an ending, I liked those characters a bit more, but Adventurers did keep it in color, just less sex appeal, fortunately this'll mean more AntiHero for Hire, which has been less rocking of late, but should pick up nicely. Pointless should be kicking it again when the grind gets going, which'll be a welcome re-addition to the lineup. 10K Commotion should be wrapping up the final (but not last) chapter sometime, which'll be sad to see the ending but I'm sick of the cliffhanger. Candy is just doing odd things, managed to blow away most of the tension with distraction and I don't think a few offhand comments and allusions are going to be enough to get it back full force. Goats is, you know, Goats, and that's just about that. Able and Baker has been awhile without a solid standalone god-pun, but it's still amusing. At least I'm focusing on the comic instead of the fact of the day, that's improvement. Something Positive is doing what it does best, and that's more than enough for me. Queen of Wands' rapid-fire reruns seem to have dried up just before the good parts too. I'd love to see the attached commentary there. Kawaii Not is a veritable mini-goldmine of a style of humor I could get used to, would like to see more updates though. Adventures with Play should have a crapton of stuff to do with the Burning Crusade stuff floating around, but I'd settle for just short one-shots again. Chugworth seems to again be moving thankfully, not that storyline is one of its strong points, and Cat and Girl was arguably worth the read to get to the end. Alot of it went over my head, but what I could get was great. Gigaville is stagnating with setup, but I think there'll be a hefty payoff as a result.

(Current Gaming)
Started replaying Starcraft: Brood Wars: Campaign for some bizzare reason. Siege Tanks still make me happy, though I should probably focus more on objectives and less on leveling the map entirely. This could've been avoided if I somehow had both my WarIII discs, but since they seem to be scatted to winds, or with Cindy despite her having her own copies, I might just pickup the Warchest again if I can get it cheaply. No Footman Frenzy sucks.

I'm trodding through Heroes of Might and Magic V's Campaign, too much blitz emphasis and using stall/diversion tactics to break even in fights, gets old fast. The Hero Progression system is awesome, but has too few options. Having to get Recruitment out of Leadership to get the Racial Specials in that tree everytime is annoying, since Recruitment is a pure Garrison ability.

(Anime Frontier)
Innocent Venus looks like it could be good, I'll pass judgement after I've seen more than the first episode plus assorted screens.

Still waiting on Ergo Proxy, luckly I'm patient.

Zero no Tsukaima is getting close to the end. Feels like a rushed ending, but with 13 episodes there's only so much that you can do.

Ray the Animation got finished, batched, I'm almost tempted to grab it just to see where the hell that series was going in 13 eps.

Ouran Host Club keeps me amazingly happy, though I feel that the only option is a more-of-the-same style ending. Not that that would make me unhappy persay.

Coyote Ragtime is gearing up for a lot in a short amount of time. There's a ton of reasons-behind and reconcilliations to be done and not a whole lot of time to do it in, somehow I think they'll manage, but we'll see.

Other than that, I've got to get Asgard to start behaving with regards to the Auxillary Hard Drive and Adobe Shockwave Flash (errors out all the time, and FlashBlock apparently hasn't been updates for the last 3 waves of Firefox updates, over a year ago?!) At least Pandora seems to run again, most of the time.

World of Warcraft's Forums are ghetto as hell, they really suck a prepairing for the bandwidth/usage hit. They should just anticipate 60% of their unique users and work from there, cause having the forums down amid Alpha-Leakage of Burning Crusade is uncool, as I'm curious and love scrouging for data when there's little else to do at work.

I'm totally going to get yelled at by a customer

And honestly, I don't give a damn. They're going to complain about this overnight DHL Letter, arrived 2 days ago, when they show up again in a month. And somehow this will be percieved as my failure. Let's face the facts shall we? Why would you have things shipped to a place you don't check? Especially important things, shipped quickly? They, or I should say she as only the wife has shown herself both to open the box and to get the mail, have only shown up once to actually get their mail since opening it two month agos. So, she arrives and waves the little red tag we put in the mailboxes to signal packages that require a signature from the customer, and so I go and faithfully retrieve a pair of DHL overnight letters from the back, dutifully marked in sharpie with date of arrival, some 2-3 weeks ago. She unleashes on me, proclaiming that we had advertised notification of packages, and thus should've called when these things came in. I resisted urges to say snide things (typically you have to request that we notify you on package arrivals, we've got several customers we do it for), and told her I'd make a note on her mailbox, which I dutifully did.

I've not been here for a few days, Boss man got ill so I had to cover down at the other store, I get back and discover that this mailbox holder has a package. So, true to cause, I go into the files and drag out their given phone number, dial it up, and guess what? They've had incoming calls disabled on their phone. I'll get yelled at for it when they show up in a few weeks, but till then, I'll be laughing about this one.

I think this copier is lying to me

Though why the hell you'd put a picture of a 2 x 3 image replication on the picture of a feature that can only do reps in the vertical dimension is well beyond the scope of my understand.

Copier hassles notwithstanding, Disgaea 2 time.

Nippon Ichi has really patched up what made Disgaea not so great and enchanced what did make it great. As if the first game didn't have infinate replay to begin with, Disgaea 2 expands upon that. Much of the core system, Attributes, Extra Gain, Master and Pupil bonus, Mastery Bonuses, Item World and Innocents (Specialists), Reincarnation (Transmigration), Dark Council (Heavy variation though), Geo Panels, Lift and Throw, and Rarity Chaining still remain.

I debated for quite awhile if I was going to retain my Disagea personas into the second game; Claire, Candace, Ivan/Evelinne, Sean, etc, but after a perusal indicated that Ronan had become a male-only class, I scrapped it and went with a fresh force.

So, what has changed?

Overall system changes.

You can now Attack while holding people, creating what is called a Tower Attack, generally weaker than each person would be individually, but good for gaining an extra square of attack distance and for fighting strongly in tight spaces. Also, you can now throw a Character or stack of Characters onto another Character or Stack and have them catch and automatically Lift the group. You can also throw diagnally by tossing while switching directions. I'd say it seems like a glitchy thing, except the game tells you how to do it.

The Counter-Attack system has been revamped. Instead of Counter, Counter x1, Counter x2, Counter x3, etc it's been changed to Counter, Counter-Counter, Counter-Counter-Counter, which is infinately more amusing.

Special attacks can now Critical, Hit, Nick, and Miss entirely, as can spells. Multihit attacks speed to be entirely binary in this respect, it's wholely all or nothing.

You now have options to turn off the special attack animations of Allies, Enemies, and Geo Panel Destruction, each individually. So if you're tired of Omega Star, you can now turn off Ally Anims and lay waste to your heart's content.

Weapons:

The classic weapon categories return, with one addition, however building on their sucess of implementation of tweaks in Phantom Brave and Makai Kingdom, they're slightly revamped. I haven't had the time to play up to Skill 40 or 60, or wherever the 6th Weapon Skill lies these days (Actually, only Adell and Rozy have even gotten the 4th skill, at 10 in Fist and Guns, respectively, so far).

Fist Weapons - Damage dependant on a mix of Attack and Speed, High Counterattack value (Claire would've loved this variant).
Skills : Triple Strike - Same as before, 3 hits and a 1 square knockback, looks 300% more awesome now.
Tiger Charge - Revamped, now strikes for 4 squares away with on a 1 square knockback requirement.
Lion's Roar - Same as before, hits twice, once at 25% and then once at 100%. Not sure how the damage is relative to the first game, seems overall higher.
King of Beasts - The quintessenial Fist Skill returns. Like most of the other skills, this now deviates from the Disgaea system of 11 hits at x damage, instead opening with a upper cut of light blows, a few moderate damage aerials, and then a punishing meteor strike. I kinda like that the damage is no longer a flat constant, though in the end, it's just the total damage that matters.

Sword Weapons - Attack based damage, very rarely any movement or knockback spaces required.
Skills : Blade Rush - Same as before, 3 squres needing an open one behind, still highly useful in a variety of situations.
Hurricane Slash - Depending on whether Nightsever makes its return, this might be the essential two hit Sword skill.
Moon Slash - This one's new. Strikes a 3 target line, perpindicular to your facing. A ranged slash that crosses the T, great for when you can't move up and around for a Blade Rush on a line of three.

Axe - Strength Based damage, comes with negative Hit values but a high critical rate and damages the target's Defense.
Skills : Only unlocked the first two, and their identical to Disgaea's.

Spear - Attack based damage, comes with additional Defense. Gives a chance to Guard (reduce category and damage) of strikes from the front.
Skills : Secondary skill has been changed out for a 5 hit semi-ranged attack that lands you behind them, rest are same except cooler looking.

Bow - Attack and Hit combined-based damage. If it lands the killing blow, has a chance of spawning a treasure chest.
Skills : Against, a host of single target skills with status effects. The secondary is an attack called Raiden shot, that can actually by targetted anywhere within the normal firing grid.

Gun - Hit based damage. Has 1 Range greater than the bow, but can only be fired in straight lines. Decreases Speed on the hit target.
Skills: Changed to non-elemental, single target skills with just distance requirements. Several of them don't even have the distance req, letting you fire the skill anywhere the gun could already shoot.

Staves - Same workings as before. Increase with use or castings. Increase Potency, Cast Distance, and Area Affect of Spells.
No Skills.

Monster Weapons - Now come in two flavors. Melee with Strength and Hit and Caster with Strength and Intellect. They've added several Caster variety monsters, who damage with their skills based on Int, to go with this.
No Skills.

Classes:

Some classes got slight alterations. Lords were removed in favor of Geomancers, Ninja was made a dual gender class, Ronin was revamped to be male only. Alot of the classes now have a special feature during certain situations, alot of them are Stat X Up during Critical Health.

Warriors - Male and Female (Best weapons Sword, Spear (F), Axe (M)) - Attack Up (M) and (F) on Critical Health.

Skulls and Mages - Male and Female Skilled Caster Class - Of the Red, Green, Blue (and later Star) variety) - Faster Magical Growth (M) and Decreased SP Cost for Spells (F). Gain debuff skills, Break Armor (decrease Defense), Blind (decrease Hit), Slow (decrease Speed), etc.

Clerics - Still Female Only (Equal skill (C) with Bow and Staff) - Adds to Resistance of nearby allies (I think the actual Res Stat). Gains buff spells in addition to healing magic, Magic Wall (increase Resistance), Shield (increase Defense), Braveheart (increase Attack), Magic Boost (increase Intellect), etc.

Geomancer - Caster/Geo class - I think if they hadn't made this the crotchety old man class I'd have an army comprised of them. They're immune to Geo Change Damage, come with Star Magic and Healing right from the start, and they have Geo Change. Their attributes are mediorce at best however.

Sinners - Male Fist Weapon Class - Counterattack Damage Up in Critical Health

Gunner - Male Gun Weapon Class - Damage Up in Combo Attacks.

Archer - Female Bow Weapon Class - (I've forgotten)

Ninja - Male and Female Skilled Class - Dodge Up in Critical Health (M) and Extra Attack in Critical Health (F, absolutely badass). Males get Utsusemi (replacement jutsu) which cracks me up. They disappear in the puff of smoke and are replaced by a log while they strike the opponent from behind. Females seem to have Status Effecting attacks. Their primary Paralyzes the target by throwing Kunoi into the target's shadow, their secondary is a sleep-inducing effect.

Heavy Knight - Male High-Defense Class - The game loves to throw these things at me with spears in Stages where I can't sidestep them. They've got brutally high natural Defense and Health, and they get Defense Up on Critical Health.

Thief - Female Skilled Class - I think these things were male, based on voice, in the first game. That is no longer the case. Not only can they steal, but they actually have a variety of status effects, termed as stealing various intangiable things. Poisoned is Steal Health, Paralyze is Steal Freedom, Sleep is Steal Consciousness. They've lost their long throw range, but it's worth the cost.

Chaos Warriors - I think these are akin to the Earth Defense Force soldiers of the first game, but you have to get to New Game + to unlock them, so I'm uncertain.

Beastmaster - Female Skilled Class - I kinda find the furries cute. They're similar to the Catgirl Monsters, but human. They amplify attributes of nearby friendly monsters, and their Skills are Monster-specific buff spells (ultra powerful version, their secondary adds Attack, Intellect, and Hit all at once).

Knight - Female Skilled Class - The Knight revamp is amazing. Instead of adding a random spell to their attacks, they cast a spell to channel any element into their weapon, retaining it until they change elements. In addition they have spells to increase Elemental Resistance (Fire, Ice, Wind). Sadly, giving them a Sword severely hampers their cast-range, but it's a small price to pay for kicking ass.

There's a nice host of monsters, some with execeptionally cool abilities. Zombies gain life when they finish an opponent, Ghosts regenerate with each round. There are a few with select Elemental Immunities (Like Hounds are immune to Wind), and of course, Prinnies explode.

Currently my army consists of Adell, Rosalin, the female storyline Snow-Clan Ninja (Replacement jutsu with a Snowman with), Male Warrior, Female Warrior, Thief, Red Skull, Priest, Female Ninja, Knight, Beastmaster, and a Warslug (Named Sluggy. He's Immune to Ice, Intellect based Damage. Primary is a 5 Square Lightning Spell, Secondary is a self-targeted Intellect Boost).

Geo Symbols

The Geo System functions the same as before, they've just added some cool new Symbols to the lineup:

Move +1, Move -1, Attack +1
Attack +50%, Attack -50%, Defense +50%, Defense -50%
Heal 20%, Damage 20%, Ally Damage 20%
Enemy Boost +50%, Enemy Boost x3
Exp +50%, Mana +50%, Hell +50%
No Entry, No Lifting, No Close Combat, No Ranged Combat (You can use multisqure attacks, just only the point blank targets get hit), No Tower Attack
Stage Complete (Storyline only, not item world. Stage ends when you end turn with a character in it)
Warp, Clone, Fusion (Fuses Enemies on these squares, leveling them as if they had been thrown together), Invulnerablity, Encroach (Your character cannot leave these squares), Enemy Level up 10% (10% Chance of a Level up for each enemy on these squares. Ie, each enemy has a 10% chance to level, not 10% each per monster), Split Damage (Damage dealt to any of your characters on these squares is split evenly amongst them).

45 Second Blitz

Argh, I get paid far too little to hold this franchise world together.

GameFAQs Revisions planned but not made, check back by the end of the week for the comprehensive rant-fest (in a good way) of Disgaea 2 and touching on it's predacessors, hopefully.

Till then, I'm gonna hope I somehow make 4 less hours of sleep a day and 4 more hours of work a day @ triple workload a workable system.

GameFAQs Character Battle V (Very Long, no suprise)

Typical format for this thing, Bold for Winner, Italics for personal pic if it differs.

Nice one this time around, 8 Divisions - Top 4 Female, Bottom 4 male, all named for the top seed, and you're supposed to pick the Top 6 at the end, with quite a few unprovens this should be interesting.

As usual, all gut instinct and no past-run probability other than as memory serves, Statistics aren't my forte.

Just the first round, I may comment on the big matches of subsiquent rounds after I decide I like what I have here first.

Spazer Division
Samus Aran (Metroid) vs Nidoran F (Pokemon) - I like seeing Nidoran F as a contestant, even if it's a middling pick. It's an original pokemon, so appealing to the older generations who started with one pokemon but not the subsiquent, but not a very boldly known pokemon either. Still, nice to see them mixing it up.

Ada Wong (Resident Evil 4) vs Jade (Beyond Good and Evil) - I don't think BGE got too much fandom, it's still sorta an underground/indie game, that an Ada kicks total ass in RE4, both as a story character, in Mercs, and even in her story via the PS2 version. She'd probably go another tier up if it were something less than the top Seed of the division she'll hit next.

Rikku (FFX, FFX-2) vs Lenneth Valkerie (Valkerie Profile: Lenneth) - Even with the rerelease of VP:L for the PSP I don't think that it has any hope of overcoming a Final Fantasy, even one associated with FFX-2. Plus, personally, I liked Rikku.

Kairi (Kingdom Hearts) vs Claire Redfield (Resident Evil 2) - RE2 is pretty dated, though Claire has shown up in a variety of other things since that game's release, so I'm counting on the popularity of KH to outshine that of an older Resident Evil character. Certainly, the inclusion of other RE characters might help Claire's performance overall, but even with that and Kairi's wallflower status in KH I don't think it'll be enough.

Limit Division (They're stretching here)
Tifa Lockheart (FFVII) vs Ivy Valentine (Soul Caliber) - Nice to see Ivy make the list though I don't think there are too many characters in this list she'd prevail against, especially not against an FF, and definately not a FFVII. Dirge of Cerebus might not have invoked much bonus support for Tifa, but she won't need it with the legion of Sephiroth fanboys out there.

The Boss (MGS3) vs Celes Chere (Final Fantasy VI) - *Close Call*. I honestly can't say I know which way this one will go. VI is pretty vintage, MGS3 is not, and Celes, though also a tragic figure, doesn't have nearly the graphic support to her story that The Boss does. There's alot to be said of the Boss's role in MGS3, but I'm counting on the FF support to win this one by for Celes but not expecting to happen (Here's hoping they use Opera House scenes for her vote pics anyways).

Jill Valentine (Resident Evil) vs Sheena Fujibayashi (Tales of Symphonia) - Sheena's cute, stacked, and in a pretty good game, but somewhere along the way we've already established that as nice as ToS is, its fanbase is still lacking and Jill may be another vintage RE, but she's been in a ton of them as well as several games, so I think she has the edge.

Princess Peach vs Princess Daisy - Not bothering with the game denotations here, just about anything Mario will suffice, though Peach recently got her own DS game. I think Daisy has a bit more of the sex appeal vote (You never get me to admit I just typed that) but Peach has ultimately been in more games (SSBM as keynote) and frankly "Hi, I'm Daisy!" is well more than enough to convince me that "Yeah, Peach has got it!" is the better alternative.

Triforce Division
Zelda (Legend of Zelda) vs Carmen Sandiego (Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego) - I laughed so hard at this pairing. I'm only vaguely aware that Carmen even has games. It's a creative entry, but really also a fairly wasted spot. Sure, Zelda will trump most anything placed against her (Short of stronger FF characters), but I'd have liked to have seen a challenge here.

Terra Branford (FFVI) vs Sarah Kerrigan (Starcraft) - Even though I pulled for Celes earlier, I just didn't like the "main" character of FFVI (though that's debatable, the way the game is set up, I didn't use her once I could manage not to, aka past Banon (Nearly typed Baron, damn you Aquarion!)). I don't think there's a big SC community on GameFAQs, but I think Kerrigan'll win anways, and I'm glad to see her on the listing.

Kos Mos (Xenosaga) vs Amy Rose (Sonic) - It's been covered before, but I don't support Sonic much. And despite how well my despised Hedgehog tends to do, I don't think it'll carry over to the pink one, at least not with enough force to prevail over Kos Mos.

Aeris Gainsborough (FFVII) vs Marle (Crono Trigger) - Final Fantasy fandom will prevail of that of Marle, despite how decently Crono tends to thrash in these events (at least it's not Serge). Again, I didn't miss Aeris, FFVII wasn't really a healing req'd game, and even then the Materia System sorta voided the need of a Caster even for healing.

Aeon Divison
Yuna (FFX, FFX-2) vs Roll - Yay Roll. Admittedly you don't stand a chance, but you're a very underplayed Female Power card that Capcom's held for quite awhile. Please Capcom, give her her own series or major role, and stop making X and Zero sound like girls to compensate without her.

Joanna Dark (Perfect Dark) vs Cortana (Halo) - Errrm... This is a hard call due to overall level of suck. Perfect Dark 0 was a lackluster game, even against games of the preceeding generation and it's originator on the N64 was both doomed on a stupid system, and basically a marginally updated version of Goldeneye (I concede, best worked bots I've seen in a game in a long while (Or at least for a Console System, UT/Quake Bots ftw)). That said, Master Chief goes down early in these things, and while I don't expect Cortana to fare too much better, digi-boobs or not, I do think Joanna is that much weaker that Cortana will win out.

Chun Li (Street Fighter) vs Kasumi (Dead or Alive) - I'm uncertain why these two are so different in their original seed value, as I think they're pretty close. I've underestimated SF values in the past, and with all the "vs. Capcoms" out there it's not hard to see why. But I think that DoA4's freshness combined with the forthcoming Beach Volleyball 2 will give the Kasumi's digitally mastered jiggle the edge it needs to surpass Chun Li.

Lara Croft (Tomb Raider) vs Alyx Vance (HalfLife 2) - I admit I've not played HL2, but I don't think Alyx is all that major of a player in it. I may not personally go ga-ga over Lara, but I think her games have notably improved, and that there is a fanbase there that Gordon Freeman's continuous bad performance will show that Ms. Croft will be the victor.

Patriot Divison
Solid Snake (Metal Gear Solid) vs Soma Cruz (Castlevania) - That's right folks, Solid Snake can beat even the mighty reincarnation of Dracula himself. Soma's a badass, complete and total, but he's not got a prayer again Solid Snake. Glad to see Soma make the list, shame he'll be off it right quick.

Squall Leonheart (FFVIII) vs Tidus (FFX) - Gunblade > I'm a dream and my dad is the source of all your woes *Disappear*. Enough said.

Riku (Kingdom Hearts) vs Yoshi (Anything Yoshi, anything Mario) - I feel odd and uncertain betting against the SSB character to win, especially for a virtually non-present Main Character that gets credit only for partial FF relation. I think Yoshi is minor enough to not win this, but I won't be floored if I'm proven wrong.

Dante (Devil May Cry) vs Ryu Hayabushi (Ninja Gaiden) - This reminds me that I need to play Ninja Gaiden. Other than that I think that Dante's popularity has been proven, especially since the level of suck in his games has dramatically lessened over the course of the series. Sure, Ryu's a ninja, but he'll need something bigger than that to win this matchup.

Destiny Division
Sora (Kingdom Hearts) vs Tingle (Zelda) - Damn, we're scraping the bottom of the barrel with this one. I'll be interested to see if Tingle's Zelda ties net him more votes than CATS, since I'm convinced both are roughly equal jokes at this point.

Pheonix Wright (Pheonix Wright: Ace Attorney) vs Gordon Freeman (Half Life) - Eh, I'm basically flipping a coin here, but I tend to do well hedging my bets against Gordon and I see no reason to change that now. Just get a few of those Objection URLs flowing on the forums and it'll be a clear win.

Kratos (God of War) vs Ryu (Street Fighter) - Here we go with undervaluing Street Fighter again, but I think God of War has the edge here, especially with being the newer, prettier game.

Mega Man (Mega Man) vs Axel (Kingdom Hearts) - As incredibly fucking awesomely badass as Axel is up to the moment of his premature Nobody-Death I don't think him or KH's popularity will overtake Megaman.

Blast Division (See, that's how much I dislike Sonic, I can't think of the top seed without looking)
Sonic the Hedgehog (Sonic) vs CATS (Zero Wing) - As much as I root for CATS, Sonic is gonna win, and it isn't going to be close.

Ganondorf (Zelda) vs Vincent Valentine (FFVII, Dirge of Cerebus) - As per Jiaz's line of thought, Dirge of Cerebus is going to give the Final Fantasy fans the motivation and call to overcome Zelda's power backing Ganondorf, even with SSBM credit, but this one should be close.

Kirby (Kirby) vs The Prince of Persia (Prince of Persia) - Yeah, the game denotations were totally not needed. Two Thrones could've been cool but it's not overtaking SSBM and the rest of Kirby's fame.

Luigi (Mario games) vs Zero (Megaman, Zero) - This could be closer than I think or even swing the other way. With Luigi getting the votes that Mario usually would, but I think Zero's got the power neded to overcome Mario's green inferior bretheren, SSBM or not (Plus, Luigi isn't so great in that).

Time Division
Crono (Crono Trigger) vs Captain Falcon (F-Zero) - It took way too much effort to think of Captain Falcon's game. Seriously, they're pulling out the stops to prove my SSBM theory wrong here. Anyways, Crono wins, easily.

Bowser (Mario) vs Leon Kennedy (Resident Evil 4) - I'm thinking that the awesomeness of RE4 will overcome SSBM fame, but this one I'm shaky about.

Auron (FFX, KH2) vs Alucard (Castlevania) - Thanks to Soma Cruz stealing his mojo I think that Alucard isn't going to be able to scrounge up enough support to overcome the "Greatest Dead Warrior". SotN was great, but the more recent games have been Feat. Reverse Dracula less and less and more and more focused on the Belmot descendants and other oddities.

Master Chief (Halo) vs Sub-Zero (Mortal Kombat) - MK hasn't had a game in awhile and I think the hype is mostly dead these days. While I don't value Master Chief in these things, I don't think even Sub-Zero'll overcome the severe handicap that MK has.

...and your family's family, which is really just your family.

Had a customer come in today, wanting to ship out a set of golf clubs to his kids in California.

Me: So, you've set to this location before?
Him (Rolling the box over to show the address): Yeah, it's for my kids. I'm hoping to get them interested in a hobby so they'll spend less time drinking and partying.
Me: And your first though was... golf?
(At this point we both dissolve into laughter)
Him: Well, it takes awhile to play, I figured it'd keep them busy.
Me: I see.
(Transaction finished, he leaves)
Me (To Co-worker): Golf eh?
Co: What's to keep them from drinking before they golf?
Me: Or while they golf?
Co: Would definately make it more interesting.

In reading all of Bash I think I linked maybe 10-20 quotes out, Overheard in NY's Overheard in the Office did give me this jewel that totally merits linkage though

Virtual Spittakes

So, I was doing the Friday routine: MWF Webcomics (Penny-Arcade, Sam and Fuzzy), Daily Webcomics (Questionable Content, Least I Could Do, Sinfest), the Friday comic (A Softer World), ANN's "Hey! Answerman". Finished up the core routine and expanded onto the usual activities, Google News, Thottbot News, GameFAQs. So I find that the user-created Top 10 list on GameFAQs is at least a topic I might be responsive to, Video Game Relationships, and unlikely to be 100% Final Fantasy fanboying, so I read it. Lo and behold, #10 at the top. Koudelka / Edward. I mentally-hang for a moment, trying to remember who's who in that game. Piece it together and read the entry:

"This one is a bit tricky, because no signs of a relationship show until the end. During the entire main game, Koudelka often spits out harsh words at her two companions, and while she's really not as harsh on Edward as she is on James, her actions lead you on that she really doesn't care about the two in any way whatsoever. But they still manage to stick together, and help each other out. However, Koudleka and Edward seemed to have formed something, after Edward plows Koudelka in a tent in one of the endings."

At which point my brain fires off the following; Wait, what?! Koudelka had multiple endings? Wait What?!?!.

So yeah, I guess I've gotta dig it out again and coax the PS2 into playing, because reading about multiple ends inspired me to look at it again. For those who don't know, Koudelka is loosely tied into the Shadow Hearts (sometime during the original) series. It's got lovely FMVs and a title song worthy of my winamp playlist, but this also appears to be where about 80% of the game's funding went. It runs slow, it has no music to speak of outside of battle and the occasional FMV. But it does support one of the RPG-core theories, which involves insta-death at a particular part of a game if you don't have a certain item with you.

Anyways, speaking of moments of sheer 'What?!' finished off Black Lagoon since Shinsen put out 12. And, uhh, stoner Legarch doesn't make any more sense than last time. The episode boils down to his hallucinations and Rock's melancholy while Levy and Shenhua trade profanities while wiping out their meager opposition. It doesn't feel like a closed-case in the least, so even without knowing that there is a second season you know there is. Closing question, was Captain Picard and Klingons really the best thing for him to be shouting about, how recoignizable is that sort of thing in Japan?