It's Been a Quarter!?

Guess what I've been doing. If you guessed not working, laying around, procrastinating, or being lazy, you're right! Well, not entirely. I have been trying to write a zombie flick, doing a lot of "research." But the thing is, the only zombie movies I own are in the Resident Evil series, so that hasn't really been much help.

I've also been playing tons of new games. I downloaded a copy of Theme Hospital and have been playing that. I forgot how fun it was, but I remember the Playstation version being a lot easier. Heroes of Might and Magic is another game from my childhood that I've gotten back into. It's pretty fun too, but I need a new strategy that involves multiple heroes because flying solo doesn't work too well in this game. Tetris has found it's way back into my daily routine, as has Amplitude.

And then there's Resident Evil: Outbreak. There are only 5 short scenarios, but I've already invested more than 20 hours in it. There are lots of little things to unlock; there's an Event Point Checklist (on which some of the events seem completely impossible), about 500 hidden items to find (which is impossible without a checklist), strict time limits to beat, no weapon and no damage clears to achieve (especially difficult in the missions with boss battles), and 7 characters to beat each scenario with. I'm probably not even a quarter done and I'm already completely sick of the game, but I'll keep playing as long as there are secrets to unlock.

I've also been considering creating yet another blog, but I probably won't because I don't maintain the ones I have now. I seem to have a knack for creating special interest blogs and shortly thereafter abandoning them. But that's life and I'm not going to complain. Whoever happens to be reading this (if anyone) can feel free to though.

Things I should be doing right now:

Sleeping
Looking for a job
Writing one of my various movies
Finishing one of my many short stories
Rewriting the template for 2 of my 4 blogs
Working on Ubuntu Beginnings
Writing a satirical article
Packing for my outing tomorrow
Performing my duties as the costume guy
Perfecting my photography
Brushing up on my Algebra
Posging myspace bulletins about the shortcomings of humanity

It's Been a Month!?!

Since the last time I blogged I gave up on San Andreas. I bought the airfield and did most of the missions for Wu Zi, but the missions at the airfield for Toreno are a bitch (belated spoiler warning) and it started feeling like work. I did tie up a lot of loose ends and customized my cars (a silver bullet - not to be confused with the vibrator, a blue Banshee with a white race stripe, the yellow Infernus - more of an orange but close, a bright red Cheetah, a jet black Turismo, and a white Comet) that I keep in the garage in Doherty and the safe house with the big garage around the corner and down the street in Hashbury. Does knowing directions between any two major locations mean I've been playing too much?

I installed Windows on my old 333 so I could study security and it took three hours, not including tweaking and installing IIS and other imortant software. The problem was that I couldn't get my mouse installed without installing a ton of other (non related) software. Then I was playing around with some NTFS tools that I never used before and scratched the whole installation, so now I have to do it again, but I can't get the GeForce driver installed. I'm still working on it between some games I've been playing.

EDIT: I installed an older version of the Geforce driver and now Windows blue screens at boot. It could also be that I installed more than one driver before rebooting. @.@

Might & Magic 6 has been consuming a lot of my life. I recently created a party with 2 clerics flanked by 2 sorcerers. I maxed out their Endurance stat (to give them a ton of health) and Intelect/Personality (to give them a lot of magic points) and let the rest of the attributes slide. Who needs luck, speed, and accuracy when you have fireballs and spirit arrows? In all fairness, I did buy the entire party a bow because MP runs out pretty fast when everyone is casting both offensive and protective (or ability) spells.

I've been meaning to write a short script to film when all of my friends come back home (which they all happen to be doing at the same time), I just haven't told any of them yet. The problem is that I have no idea what I want to make the short film about. I was thinking piracy, video game violence, or something nerdy, but a lot of my friends aren't into that kind of thing. Maybe I'll make another cliched, melodramatic, nameless romance that I'll never finish? Either that or a sci-fi flick. I love me some sci-fi.

This Week in GTA

While I should have been working on the screenplay that I've been trying to get started for what seems like a year I've been playing a lot of San Andreas. I've unlocked all of the cities at this point and have been going through doing some of the odd jobs. My accomplishments:

All R3 Missions complete
50 Taxi passengers in a row
All Oysters collected
All Grafitti Tags sprayed
All Snapshots taken
All Horseshoes but 2 (that require the jetpack)
All Gym challenges completed
All Trucking missions complete
All Courier missions complete
Full lung capacity, muscle, and stamina
Got a yellow Infernus (a tough find, and my favorite car)
Most properties outside of Las Venturas

Unfortunately, I spent most of my money on the various properties and now I can't afford to by the airstrip for the Verdant Meadows mission. I'm only $10k short, but that's a lot of cash when you've already completed all of the side missions. But I have a sweet ride, so it's all good.

Post of the Month

Ah, it's been a while since I've posted here. I've been going through kind of a rough period, but now hopefully I'll be back to stay. Recently (i.e. in the last two days) I've worked a little bit on Ubuntu Beginnings, although I haven't posted any of it yet because it's still not done.

I never knew it took so much work to blog about technical things. First you have to spend forever researching the perfect tool for the situation, then you have to test it to make sure it's the right one after all. Then you have to repeat the process and take screenshots along the way, cropping the image to include only the window in focus. Then you have to write the article and it's just exhausting. But I'm still doing it and it will eventually get done.

I've been playing lots of games of course. I'm almost 80% complete with San Andreas, which is by no means an easy task. Especially when I'm trying to have good stats (no deaths, no arrests, few safehouse visits). I've been trying to get Half Life to work with WINE again too because it's such a great game. Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga has been taking a lot of my time too.

That's it. I don't feel like putting any more effort into this post.

Another CSS Project

While I should have been working on the film I told people would be ready to film in a month's time, I updated my myspace profile. I didn't make any of the images, and I stole the code from Jason, but I still put a good deal of effort into it. It's not quite done; I'd like to make the borders a little nicer and add a nice music piece. I've been searching myspace music for almost 3 hours and I still haven't found anything that's just right. I'm almost ready to give up and just stick an MP3 from ocremix" on there. I won't embed it because then people can't stop it, but I really don't like the default player that appears when you stick an MP3 directly on the page.

Things I should be doing:

Finishing the movie I started months ago
Finishing the script I started weeks ago
Finding out why I can't SSH into my server
Cleaning my room
Writing an article about installing Ubuntu
Making the world better for all mankind

Three Full Hours and All I Got Was This Lousy Template

I think it's fairly obvious what I've been up to, other than playing more Diablo (giving up hope on my druid and returning to my warrior, only to return to my trusty druid once again, and completely ignoring my horrible sourceress), Rollercoaster Tycoon (once again, trying to get through all the scenarios and create the best parks ever), and San Andreas (trying to get 100% with good stats, i.e. not dying/failing missions/getting arrested/saving too much). It took nearly three hours to get this done because I had to learn (with Jason's help) CSS and find some nice colors to make everything. In case you were wondering, the background is supposed to look like a notepad like the one in the userbar. That's why the table borders are pink.

Even thought I did learn a nice amount of CSS today, I could have been working on one of my other blogs, writing the script I promised I'd have done a week ago, installing Linux on my two potential servers, or working on an anti Vista poster that I started ages ago. But I did find a really good color choosing tool for Linux and I can use my new CSS skills elsewhere.

Productive Procrastination

I suppose the best part about having something to put off (such as this blog) is that it forces you to work on something else. While it may not seem like much, since the last time I posted here, I made the first real post on Ubuntu Beginnings. That and I played a lot of Diablo II.

You may notice that I started to work on the theme and then gave up. I'll save it for a day when I really need to put out a Rich Magazine article and then I'll make something fantastic. I did end up making a userbar though, because that's what I've been doing a lot recently.



I think a big problem I have is I consider playing Diablo (and pretty much any game) somewhat of an accomplishment. Killing enemies gives you experience, experience allows you to level up, leveling up allows you to use better equipment and skills, better skills allow you to get farther in the game, getting farther increases the difficulty and starts the cycle over. I just want to see the end of the game. And then beat it on Nightmare. And again on Hell. A friend once told me that playing games is not a waste of time because the creator put a lot of effort into making the game and it's a waste of all that work not to play the game. I like thinking of it that way because it makes me feel less like a waste of space and more of a productive member of our information driven society.