The Republicans:

They put an Arabian Horse Judge in charge of disaster management.
They put oil company lobbyists in charge of our energy policy.
They put Dubai in charge of our port security.
And they put a child predator in charge of the Committee for Missing and Exploited Children.
Who will you put in charge in November?

And the Broken Oaths meme:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Repost. Remind. Remember.

How White and Nerdy Are You?

So after moping about it for way too long, I've grabbed myself by the scruff of the neck and started doing something about what's been making me most unhappy lately. I've got three vouchers for three Office certification tests, and I'm spending all my free time at work plowing through as much of the free online training as I can manage.

I'm still waiting for the shit to hit the fan where I am, but at least now I know where my path leads for the next couple of months.

*puts on my best Vampire Willow face*

Bored now...

Absolute best shitty translation EVER...

Publicons.de is a German page that does those neat little "Fan of" icon things that you see people use all over the place. I ran it though Google's translation thing just to get a better idea of what it does, and it spit out this wonderful bit of mis-translation...

Retarded treatment of Sponsoring inquiries
Between that 09.09.2006 and that 16.09.2006 it can come in the course of a revision of our Sponsoringsystems to delays in the completion of E-Mail inquiries. No message is lost, does not surprise you however please nevertheless not, if an answer takes time some days.

*falls over and dies laughing*

Hmmm, guess I should catch up...

1) Birthday went good, except for the Panthers getting their asses kicked by the Falcons. The final tally was: $20, a new coffee pot, "Sims 2", "Dragon Quest VIII", and a pasta cook book.

2) Been a bit down/out of it/sick since then. Part of it is my arthritis, part of it is my sinuses, and part of it is despising the people I work with. I'm doing what I can about all those situations.

3) New computer is amazing.

4) Buffy season 4 starts out like shit, but I'm told it gets better, so I'm hanging in there.

That's all I can think of for now.

*coming up for air*

Computer is working wonderfully, in the process of transferring and uninstalling and reinstalling and all that jazz. Be online when I can. :-)

There's something about J-Pop that is so inherantly joyful... I put on what little I have, mostly the incredible T.M.Revolution, and my mood immediately improves. I am a child of the 80's, so I'm probably remembering the pop radio music of those times, which had a similar feel.

"Sometimes I catch and hold
love and pain, tightly in my arms.
It will fade away, but
I will remember it... Always...."
- "Radical Dreamers", Yasunori Mitsuda

Hey, yo, these are some serious times that we living through
And a new world order is about to begin
You know what I’m saying?
Now the question is are you ready
For the real revolution
Which is the evolution of the mind?
If you seek then you shall find
That we all prove from the divine
You dig what I’m saying?
Now if you take heed
To the words of wisdom
That are written on the walls of life
Then universally we will stand
And divided we will fall
'Cause love conquers all
You understand what I’m saying?
This is a call to all you sleeping souls
Wake up, and take control of your own cipher
And be on the look out for the spirits tonight
Trying to steal your light
You know what I’m saying?
Look what beside yourself
For peace
Give thanks
Live life
And release
You dig me?
You got me
- "He Got Game", Public Enemy

Well, by this time next week, I should have a new home computer. This one is dying, and it was cheaper to buy another one than to repair and upgrade this 4 year old one. Looking forward to being able to Sim. ;-)

Guess who's getting that burning excruciating pain in her left shoulder again?

*sighs*

*eyeballs Vicodin*

*makes note to call doctor*

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day does a very good job of illustrating our solar system and gives a good visual reason for the demotion of Pluto. Be warned, though... when it says click on the picture for a bigger version, they're not kidding: the original is 1.3MB, 6000+ x 3500ish pixels. Perfect for teaching aids, if you've got a big color plotter than can handle something like that.

Between August 7th and August 19th, I closed 235 help desk tickets and worked 17.5 hours of overtime.

No wonder I'm exhausted. :-p

On Normal difficulty, it took me 11 hours and 30 minutes to beat Dirge of Cerberus.

*lets that sink in*

This was disappointing. The story takes a left turn into WTF land during Chapter 11 and never comes back. There are some cringe-inducing, eye-rolling dialog and stuff that really trashes the FF VII gang at the end.

About the only real good thing was the introduction of Shelke, who is a rather interesting character... too bad she was mostly fan service and sicko jail bait (19 year old mind, 10 year old body! File this under "I'll pretend you said you were 19..."). :-p

I can take bits and pieces of this, mostly bits that are casually mentioned by various minor characters, and incorporate it into my personal writings, but man... I never thought I'd say this about a Final Fantasy game...

This suxx0red.

About 2 1/2 "chapters" into Dirge of Cerberus... mixed feelings so far:
- It's very pretty graphically.
- The voices are OK, although I still long for a Japanese subtitled version, since Vincent's voice is better, and admittedly I haven't had to hear Cid's south Texas drawl yet (rant pending, I'm sure).
- The controls are a pain in the butt. I think I have the difficulty with the targeting system mostly figured out (ramp up the speed and turn on automatic tartget locking), but for a shooting game it's rather inaccurate.
- I haven't seen enough of the story yet to make much of a judgement, but the new characters are fairly interesting.
- The music is very good... Masashi Hamauzu did some of my favorite tracks from FF X (Crisis, Challenge, Assault... notice a theme here? *grin*), and does an incredibly job with the whole score here. He ever made me like a Gackt song, which I had never thought would happen.

More updates on it as I go along... although I think I've figured out Weiss's secret already. ;-)

I don't get it... all of the gaming sites, SquareE's webpage, and even my local newspaper say Dirge of Cerberus comes out today. But... not really, according to the Game Stop store. It only ships today. It's not actually available until tomorrow.

So, why say it's out today?

Oi...

You never realize just how ambidextrous you are until you toast your bad shoulder during 11+ hours of weekend overtime...

If you want to know why I haven't been posting much lately... it's work. Here's an example from my weekly status report:

August 1 to August 7, I worked Tuesday, half of Wednesday, off Thursday, half of Friday, and all of Monday. In those basically 3 whole business days I opened and closed 94 help desk calls.

My co-worker can barely do one thing, and is completely incapable of multi-tasking OR remembering something you told him how to do the day before. My new boss is convinced she's overwhelmed, so I'm doing half of her job for her, and getting yelled at for it.

Meanwhile, I have a sinus and ear infection that won't clear up (wonder why?).

I'm stymied, creatively. I have this character in my head who desperately needs to be written, who deserves life, and I can't get her on the page because I'm too busy and too exhausted.

Meanwhile, Mom's been diagnosed with small vessel disease in her brain (and heart, too, probably) and fears she'll come down with dementia in the next 5 years. She'll be 61 Friday. So she's pushing for us to live together, and while that may work for her, it really would not work for me. But I feel guilt, because I really will be the one who'll have to take care of her since I don't have my own family, and my being sick just pushes her to push me more.

So... I'm snarly a lot. If you can't deal with that, don't try to talk to me, I cannot gaurentee I will always be my usual polite self.

I know, it's terrible that I should ask this but... can someone point me to where I can find cheats for NES roms? Specifically FF 3 (j)? I have gotten to one point where I literally cannot get past because the mobs split when you hit them and you can never run/escape from them. :-p

Otherwise, I'm OK...