Meandering Mountain Paths...

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

Horror #1

I totally cannot make shit like this up:

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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
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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.