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M. Hamilton (DJplaeskool / Syara )
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[07 Nov 2009|12:54am] |
Today, at new job, a co-worker was reading Twilight, specifically, New Moon.
It's a 20 year old man.
I can't decide what's worse, faggots who go MOEHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH over the latest Mamiko Noto/Kugi Rie character, or faggots who read books written for 12 year old girls. At least the former is straight right? The latter is like a grown man fapping to Hetalia vampire yaoi doujins. I DON'T EVEN WANNA IMAGINE THAT. FUCK I JUST DID NOW I CAN'T UNSEE IT.
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| My Worst Critic |
[05 Nov 2009|06:18pm] |
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Why must I settle for mediocracy when I strive for exellence? This is a quote I came up with last night that I posted on my Twitter after a particularly hard day in the field. To the casual observer, yesterday probably didn't look too difficult, but I've had a lot on my mind lately. Some of it just stems from the condition of being human and not living up to my perfectionist ideals I set for myself. Some of it stems from the balance I am trying to find between my job, my family, God, and myself. This has put me at an emotional standstill, fighting depression, and quite frankly, looking at myself as substandard.
For a noncomissioned officer such as myself, "substandard" is about the worst thing you can be. If you cannot meet the standards, how can you lead soldiers and train them to properly meet the standard? I constantly strive to meet standards--Army training standards, height and weight standards, physical fitness standards, and so on. And as time has gone on and I have had to deal with illness and injury, it has become more difficult to maintain those standards. But as an NCO, not only do you need to meet the standards, you need to exceed them. For somebody clawing at just meeting the standards, exceeding them seems damn near impossible.
And the truth is I haven't met a standard. I had someone carry me through it on his back and I've felt guilty ever since.
I'm still here, and I'm still trying to prove to myself and others around me that I am not a waste of space and that I am here as an asset to my unit and the Army. I also have a family, a husband I love dearly, who is often forced to take a backseat to my mission and my soldiers. And he understands this, but still I feel a substantial amount of guilt about not being able to put him first.
I have spent the last 10 years putting the Army first. And I'm not getting any younger. Neither is my husband. We want to move on with the next stage of our life together. And we were going to start trying to get there after I took my next Army Physical Fitness test, now scheduled for mid-November. And despite that, I have been wondering about my unit. I don't want anyone to have to pick up my slack, but here I am, contemplating a move that would force my soldiers to pick up my slack for the next year and a half.
Today I found out that we have a major training event scheduled in May, one that I do not want to miss. Why? Because I am the type of leader who wants to train and fight with her soldiers. Before I deployed to OIF 1, I watched a bunch of females dodge deployments simply by getting pregnant. I don't want to be "that female." I am a leader and I have soldiers and officers and senior NCOs counting on me and competence on my areas of expertise.
On the other side of the coin is the promise I made to my husband who has been waiting 8 years for me to finally settle down and start a family with him.
I have the Army for 10 more years. I have my husband forever. So some people would look at this situation and know exactly where my priorities should lie. But I love and respect my unit more than words can define and I already feel that I am substandard. I don't want to let them down either.
And my relationship with God has gotten lost in all this. I don't depend on Him like I should, I don't pray to Him and cry for His help like I should, I don't read His word as much as I should, simply because I don't have any energy. And He should be FIRST, not last.
Right now, I'm trying to work up the courage to talk to my chain of command. They want to know about any major life changes we're considering and I respect that. Maybe they can give me some perspective on what I'm feeling. My commander and first sergeant both have families of their own and are familiar with the difficulties of juggling family and work. But neither one is a woman. And neither one would probably appreciate having one of their NCOs on restrictive job limitations for a year and a half.
God, please help me!
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[05 Nov 2009|06:37pm] |
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/lego-universe-hands-on
>Quick-building will be familiar to anyone who's played a Traveller's Tales LEGO game: simply run up to a pile of bobbling bricks and assemble them into their pre-determined model.
>LEGO Universe doesn't believe in a class system, and all abilities are linked to accessories. So if you want to be a tank, you equip armour; if you want to train animals you equip a whip, and so on.
>The world is a series of seemingly infinite floating islands, with each covering a different LEGO theme: pirates, castles, space, city and so on.
>After choosing either a spear, sword or hammer, you must coral a bunch of chaos-infected mechs. Awesomely, once the mechs are destroyed, they can be rebuilt into Aliens-style sentry guns (just try doing that to a World of Warcraft Murloc).
>An early mission sees you navigating your way to the top of a mountain while being pushed back by a series of fans. You can build switches to stop them, build around them, or break through walls to avoid them completely.
>Interestingly, the game's levelling system is less WOW and more Zelda. There are no RPG levels as such, and progress is instead marked by your health and items.
>If it all gets too much, you can always retreat to your own patch of land and build to your heart's content.
GAME OF THE YEAR, ALL YEARS.
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[05 Nov 2009|04:57am] |
Today while playing TF2, someone asked another guy whether he's watching FMA Brohood, then I realised why I hated that shit even though I never watch past episode 1. :( It's took up the Sunday TBS 5pm slot which were for Geass and Gundam 00, both of which were very interesting to watch Live with the lolwut spams on IRC, /a/ and /m/, and FMA just doesn't have that lolwut effect.
Feels so empty man.
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[03 Nov 2009|10:29pm] |
Team Fortress 2
Added Bill's Hat for players who pre-purchase Left 4 Dead 2
What
The
Fuck
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| Real Quick Update |
[01 Nov 2009|02:47pm] |
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Haven't had much time to blog--or do much of anything--lately. I've spent the last two weeks in a challenging military school and next week I'll be gone on a field training exercise with my unit. Then in about three weeks, I have another intensive training event. So work has been hopping lately. I'm exhausted, and looking forward to the holidays for a bit of a break.
FFXI wise, I've gotten BST to 56...hoping to get on and get 57 tonight so I can wear my Scorpion Harness. I'm so excited--Oshi's got a Haubergeon +1 that I plan to borrow when I hit 59. It'll make my BST look sexy! :D
Now off to a late lunch/early dinner with Oshi at Olive Garden, before I have to face a week of field chow.
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[31 Oct 2009|11:44pm] |
TF2 trolling
Select Spy
Equip Dead Ringer
Disguise as friendly Heavy with fist/KGB
Activate Dead Ringer
Get hit (I've had highest chances with HS from snipan rifle)
Disconnect countdown
???
Profit
Nintendo trolling
Release DSi
1 year later
Announce DSi XL/LL
???
Profit
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[29 Oct 2009|04:27am] |
Funny thing, when I came home today, my mom was watching this Million Bride Korean drama, then when she heard the people speaking Chink, she's like FUCK DIS SHIT. So I asked her, why not? It's something you understand instead of moonspeak, and she's like THEY DON'T SOUND NATURAL, etc.
Then I asked my sister, so what's mom's problem with watching dramas with chink dub, and she said the same thing.
I love my family. Dubs suck, regardless of medium and language. I shouldn't have to put up with horrible voice acting in my vidya gaems cause kids nowadays are too fucking spoiled and can't read. MUTE IT THEN YOU WHINY LITTLE FUCK, and miss out on the music? Fuck you.
Only exception is certain HK movies, cause you can tell from the lip sync that some actors speak in Cantonese when recording, and some in Chink, so in the end the lip syncing doesn't look right for either language.
... Damn it they should have kept the original track instead of dub in the blanks and those who can't understand Mandarin AND Cantonese can just read the fucking subtitles. :(
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[27 Oct 2009|12:53am] |
I can't believe I'm saying this, but my current job is actually WORSE than NS.
Less pay, longer working hours, no free lunch, and no transport subsidy. My basic just barely cover transport and food daily. $18/day for 9 hours, food $10, transport $5. Commissions are retardedly low that you either have to cheat to get enough numbers to crank it up to $6/hr, not my style, or to just do grunt job and no double confirmations, also not my style, or I'm just plain doing it wrong.
Good thing I can quit anytime, and I think I'm gonna do it this week.
I'm an idiot and I brought this upon myself, so life lesson learned. I also realized I can't use the overworked and underpaid line anymore for the rest of my life because I don't think anything can be worse than this. Then again, I remember that life always set itself out to prove me wrong and that things can always get worse, like working in a real sweatshop WHY WOULD I DO THAT.
Seriously, at $18/day and not having enough sleep, I rather stay at home and fap myself into a concussion, much more productive that way. I bet the 16 year old students working at Starbucks at $4/hr make more than me. I hate myself.
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| GOTY ALL YEARS!!! |
[26 Oct 2009|04:52pm] |
I wasn't sure at the time as to why but I really wanted to complete Uncharted 2 in a single sitting. It didn't take too long for me to figure out the answer to that, though I sadly never got to achieve my goal due to a two hour gym session and the game crashing thirty minutes before the end with my eyes bleeding. People will always hark back to the Metal Gear Solid franchises as the example of games trying to be movies but Uncharted 2 absolutely trumps the entire franchise. Flaws 'n' all, I'm a big fan of all MGS games but Hideo Kojima could learn a lot from playing this game and discovering what can be achieved without a convoluted mess of a script. I assume most people's pound of flesh with Uncharted 2 would be it's length at around twelve hours but is that really unreasonable in this day and age? I don't even know anymore. Irrespective of that though, the story never felt like it was being artificially extended nor that it died half way through because an exec decided he wanted his healthy dividends this fiscal year.
My first experience with the entire Uncharted series was downloading the multi player beta and seeing Rahla kicking ass at my house. Even vicariously it seemed the shit, though my sole attempt at playing it a few weeks later were laughable as I had no idea what I was doing and promptly got rolled. I doubt I'll get too stuck into the multi player side of it too much. I guess it'd be fun now I know how to even play the game but death match type play isn't my type of thing. Now co-op? Fuck year! I asked one of my friends I met playing Rock Band: Beatles if she'd like to try it out to which she was happy to. After I FINALLY figured out how to get my fucking mic to work over PSN, we tried the Sanctuary level and it was great fun. There's my longevity with the game if I felt it needed justification.
One reviewer was noted as saying Uncharted 2 was the best single player experience he ever had. I'm not sure I'd go quite that far but it's certainly up there and worth your money.
I first heard of this game when GameCentral, the only gaming journalists I trust unequivocally, started harping on about how amazing it was. I soon found out that specific Asian versions have a full English language suite and decided to order it only to find out it wasn't in stock and I wasn't willing to pay the eBay price. I somewhat let my enthusiasm die down a little only for it to flare right back up when the game was released in America and a new thread was created on /v/ to discuss it every five minutes. I realize only a fool would take anything posted there as fact but when someone said it's the first game in the longest time that makes you want to get out of bed in the morning, I knew I had to have it. After canceling what would've been a much delayed order from DVDBO, I manned up and paid £52 for it on eBay from someone in my own country.
People had said Demon's Souls was hard and they weren't fucking joking. Though I was pretty sure it was intended, I was amused to be one shot by the boss at the end of the tutorial stage. Every enemy in the game needs to be treated with respect. Sure, you've got the odd enemy that take one hit to kill but if you get several at the same time through carelessness they can put a dent in your HP. I remember the first time I saw the Red Eyed Knight in 1-1 and got promptly one shot, I decided there was no way he could be killed. In the other direction though was a Blue Eyed Knight who did massive damage and healed himself if given the chance. He killed me once or twice before I killed him, and know that if you die in Demon's Souls, you lose all your gained souls (the games collective currency for buying anything and leveling up) and have one chance to get them back. It was pretty satisfying when I killed that guy. You can die and die in Demon's Souls and the game will keep taking your souls away but it can't take your experience away. Which leads in to the next stage.
1-2 is a pretty straight forward level. It's a long bridge with a few stop offs and a few different directions. If you're careful and time your runs, you can just sprint route one and get to the end of the level in a few minutes with relatively little trouble. The problem comes right at the end. After the final sprint from the Dragon breathing fire up your ass, you're confronted by three archers firing at you, two more up the top, little cover and a Blue Eyed Knight right behind them. It's impossible to take the three archers out as melee without aggroing the knight (whose hits still do half my life bar), if you back up too far the Dragon's breath and roof archers will get you, if you go too far ahead, a second knight will activate and this is all in a confined area. I'm not kidding, I must've wiped on this pull about thirty times in my pursuit of getting to the boss just ahead. It was infuriating. Every time I died, I'd scream in a way that only Megaman 9 can evoke... then go straight back in and try again.
The boss was a different matter. Of the countless times I'd wiped on the level, I'd only made it to him about four times. I knew how to kill him, I just couldn't pull it off. I'd go up, clear out the archers, come down and get raped trying to get behind him. I'm ashamed to admit it but in the four or five attempts I initially made, I hit him ONCE. It was at this time I was questioning if I was just too terrible to be playing this game. I knew I could create a caster and have the game be a lot easier but I didn't want to do that as I was enjoying the playstyle of Temple Knight. I decided to stop running at the brick wall and try 2-1 which helped more than I could ever have guessed. I didn't finish the level but I opened the first shortcut, found a new weapon and felt buoyed by the fact I'd actually made progress.
I went back to 1-2 the next day and everything clicked. I got through the hell pull first time and was so close to killing Tower Knight. The second attempt at the level, I destroyed the knights again which left me wondering why I was having so much trouble for so long. And then I raped Tower Knights face (well, ankles). Let me tell you, I cannot think of any game in the past few years where I have felt so relieved and happy at making some particular progress in a video game. Even including WoW, no boss kill has ever felt as satisfying as this.
And that's the point of Demon's Souls.
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