Pence loves you!

A new old habit

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 19:41:26 GMT

Hm, maybe it's time to pick up inane, self-serving blogging again. You know, stuff that's not really important, but isn't quite short enough for twitter. Such as the events of my life:

-I got my diploma
-I'm working full-time
-I'm moving into a new apartment in a week

And I just found some cheap(er) Ikea furniture c/o craigslist. Shit's workin' out.

shiren 3

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 11:11:20 GMT

It's coming here, thanks to Atlus. I'm struck by the urge to immediately fire up the 16-bit game and Take Table Mountain (By Strategy).

FADC xx Ultra

Tue, 19 May 2009 23:16:46 GMT

I found a stick at MSRP, blame lack of sleep and a lightning fast purchase-finger.

inconvenience

Sun, 17 May 2009 21:26:48 GMT

Tomorrow's my first full-time day at work, and the starter on my car just got stuck in the 'on' position. I'll be able to make it there, it's just hilariously inconvenient. And probably expensive, since I was just about to get it inspected this Friday!

kitty train

Thu, 14 May 2009 05:18:32 GMT

It's time for... cat-train!

Sometimes, we all need a giant cat-train. Skip to 2:00 if you don't believe me.

twee 'em up

Sat, 09 May 2009 07:36:31 GMT

Huh, tonight I got to catch up with someone who has lived within walking distance of my house for over 10 years and talk endlessly about stupid video game trivia. This is a guy who knew that Shining Force CD is ACTUALLY a port of Shining Force Gaiden 1 + 2 from Game Gear. Hardcore, right? I started talking about Parodius after the topic of shmups came up, but I think I bored him away.

SO, in keeping with the horrifically cute theme I have going, I will now play pandaland.

hands on the dash

Thu, 07 May 2009 03:43:11 GMT

Parents got me an EZPass for my birthday, I'm gonna have to re-train myself to stop driving through the cash-only lanes. This thing also comes with its own :tinfoil: bag so you can drive through a toll plaza without getting billed.

tobin + sway

Wed, 06 May 2009 04:12:22 GMT

Huh, first I've heard about this. Amon Tobin and Doubleclick on the track, Sway on the vocals:

usually you get klonoa from a fish taco, but this time...

Tue, 05 May 2009 02:37:55 GMT

I know that the sheer amount I have budgeted for games this past week seems sickening, but bear with me since this is worth sharing. Witness the strangest cross-promotion I have recently found inside a DVD keep case:

Wahoo's fish tacos. Because Klonoa says 'wahoo', you see. Choice IM conversation:

(10:19:49 PM) Santa Bizarro: Klonoa Wii has an insert in front of the manual cross-promoting WAHOO'S fish tacos
(10:20:04 PM) Santa Bizarro: that's actually kinda brilliant
(10:20:09 PM) CJVsTheInternet: that is not the correct name for a fish taco place
(10:20:45 PM) Santa Bizarro: hoohas?
(10:20:58 PM) CJVsTheInternet: COOTER'S FISH TACOS
(10:21:08 PM) Santa Bizarro: PUNANI'S PANINIS

toomanyimports

Sun, 03 May 2009 23:44:21 GMT

Went on a lightning tour of TooManyGames this afternoon. If you're not familiar, that's when a whole bunch of guys who sell games fill a flea market hall in eastern PA and sell cool stuff. Stuff like this:

That's Genesis hookups, Vampire Saviour/Darkstalkers, Cotton 2, Tetris (for two_pi_r), Sonic CD, PaRappa the Rapper, Salamander Portable, Parodius Portable, and Mega Man Legends. The bulk of my expenses were those imports, the three domestic games cost me 25 dollars in total. I got really excited when I saw Persona for PSP, and Devil Summoner for Saturn, before remembering that I can't read Japanese. Best to stick to shmups and fighters.

On the way home, I rocked the tunes from Xexex on Salamander Portable in TJ's car. I wasn't really feeling the game that much, but it was surprising to see an R-Type style Force in a Konami game. I didn't get to see if it ate bullets or not, but I'll give it a shot when I'm not in a moving car.

too many of 'em

Sat, 02 May 2009 07:02:40 GMT

Took quite possibly the last final of my undergraduate career today, 100-level Biology. Then drove down to Springfield to chill out for a few hours, which involved checking to see if Star Trek was open yet. No, that's next week... shows how much I know when I'm not connected to the internet.

But, I found the coolest damn GameStop in the most run-down shopping center. The sort where a bearded man behind the counter will talk about Atlus for 10 minutes. The kind where a creepy customer will talk that dude's ear off about how he never played Chrono Trigger in the 'NES days' (Neither did I!). Fortunately, I know enough to avoid butting in with trivia corrections. I did, however, get some games

This was a good idea, two days before TooManyGames!

i didn't raise my hand when he asked if there were any homos in the audience

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 05:21:16 GMT

Got to see Adam Ferrera tonight. Denis Leary was pretty good too, but I could've done without the other two dudes. Oh well, ticket was free!

almost out

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:35:29 GMT

Now that I'm driving down to hand in this paper, the only academic responsibility left in my school career is my Biology final. Feels like I must be missing something.

break the seal

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 10:30:39 GMT

Some days you just stay up all night crawling around in dungeons and go to sleep when the sun comes up. These days are not necessarily something to be proud of!

To make myself feel better, I wrote a thesis paragraph for my video game violence in the media paper. To kinda break the seal. Now I can sleep.

gogol break

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 05:29:19 GMT

I find myself simultaniously attracted to and repulsed by Eugene Hutz. Physically, I mean, musically it's all gravy:

drive-by

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 04:57:24 GMT

I got drive-by trolled by a sedan full of lads today. I am 'ugly as shit', which is patently false, my mom always said I was handsome. West Chester, as a town, needs to lay off the stimulants.

This octo-gate fight stick I've been using for the last week feels really strange, and it's difficult to do dive kicks with it. Which is probably why I'd rather spend 4 hours/day on The Dark Spire rather than SF4. If this keeps up, I'm going to need to start picking up hackmaster books for tabletop play.

false alarm

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 01:23:33 GMT

Nevermind, we did (BS'd) that walking tour today, so I don't have to worry about that class again. More time for dungeon crawling and self-abuse in The Dark Spire.

class is for squares

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 06:33:55 GMT

Hm... did I choose a bad week to skip Urban Geography last week? Tomorrow's the last class, I see something in the syllabus about a walking tour of the university, and I never did that. Per everyone's warning, I might have less 'free time' after I graduate, but my scatterbrained self will probably incur fewer stress-induced forehead wrinkles.

dungeons and makefiles

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 03:56:06 GMT

Ever have someone e-mail you at 4:30am asking for help writing a makefile for a project due at 5:00am? When you don't know how to do it, yourself? And he speaks english as a second language? I exercised google fu as well as I could, but that can't perform miracles. On the upside, I can now write rudimentary makefiles, which is a useful skill I did not previously possess.

Another skill I did not previously possess was the ability to disarm traps in The Dark Spire. I've never had the werewithal to complete a dungeon-crawl RPG before, but the combination of the DS's portability and my advancing age (I'm like an old man here, 22) means I'm all about walking around in a dungeon and slowly exploring identical tilesets full of descriptive flavor text. Sometimes I wonder if I came to this naturally, or whether I'm being affected by the enthusiasm of a discussion board which I originally joined to talk about the Retronauts podcast. Actually, I think those are one in the same.

octogate sanwa

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 13:12:33 GMT

I played so much street fighter 4 tonight my legs are a bit jello-ish. A friend from a Philly arcade, UP, has even trusted me with ownership of his extra stick and a ps3 copy of the game, since he didn't have any extra X360 sticks. We were going to play until maybe 3am, but that turned into 4am, and rather than risk getting mugged in the streets of Philly on the way to my car, we kept playing until 7am. And now I'm not even tired, so I'm waiting for that copy of the game to install to the ps3 hard drive.

Since no one on my friends list plays fighting games, I won't bore you with the details, but it was super hype tonight.

storage math

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 05:22:59 GMT

I purchased 4GB of solid-state storage today. It cost $10, so ~$2.50/GB. I plan to use it in my Wii.

If I were to purchase 120GB of storage for my xbox, on a hard drive, it would cost $160, so ~$1.34/GB. I understand the rationale, the proprietary enclosure, all of it, but there's no way anyone could spend money on that and not feel ripped off.

a bullet versus 30 stories

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 05:30:25 GMT

All the things you've heard about Mirror's Edge are true: it's awesome, terribly flawed, and I want a similar game that has less writing, more running, and no combat. I haven't quite finished the last level yet, but I'm pretty sure I get the idea by now wrt big rooms full of armed guards.

This is uh, research for that paper about video game violence I'm totally doing. Seriously, I'm exploring nonviolent methods of overcoming obstacles, like punching a policeman off a building instead of shooting him.

frugal dracula

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:45:35 GMT

A Play N Trade just opened in Chalfont, so I drove down and bothered the dude behind the counter with questions (do you have Panzer Dragoon Orta? Drill Dozer? Any PSOne games? Fightsticks? Where did you buy a Famiclone that plays Genesis games?). I also spent $21 for a copy of Super Castlevania IV in-box, because that was a reasonable price. But $20 for a bare Metroid cartridge? You'll have a hard time suckering anyone into that one.

that amazon thing

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:28:59 GMT

I have an inherent distrust of people acting en masse on the internet, perhaps stemming from the fact that I'm on the other end of such behavior more often then not (protip: making someone mad on the internet is about as easy as coming up with a funny dead baby joke). I never want to be the guy that ends up on the groupthink/submissive end of a psychological experiment.

Like this: http://prehack.org/pranked-kfc-workers-pee-on-themselves-get-naked-and-more-with-audio
Or this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strip_search_prank_call_scam

Yesterday, my twitter homepage was full of tweets (and retweets), an echo chamber of #amazonfail information, mostly posted by one damn person. I mean, I respect him - but when he tells me that amazon.com (the corporate entity) apparently donated to the RNC and DOMA, yet can't cite any sources, then he has succeeded in becoming mad at absolutely nothing.

So before you bring down the wrath of the internet hate machine on amazon, read here: http://gawker.com/5210142/why-it-makes-sense-that-a-hackers-behind-amazons-big-gay-outrage
And lul a little. It feels good, and you'll live longer.

trollink

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 03:04:19 GMT

http://tehdely.livejournal.com/88823.html

Obligatory link to a plausible theory. Regardless of whether or not amazonfail is intentional, there are lulz lurking everywhere.