The beard madness continues! At this point, people have sarted to realize that I’m not just too lazy to shave, and am actually growing facial hair on purpose. Many are asking why, but I never really have an answer. Just because.
I should also mention that I’m in the midst of writing not one, or even two, but three articles. I’d hoped the first one would be up just less than a week ago, but you know how I procrastinate. In any case, there’s actual content in the works, so stay tuned!
So completely randomly, about two weeks ago, I decided that I wanted to start growing a beard. Now, while I love the prospect of having a beard, there are three little catches that will more than likely keep me frm achieving my goal:
1. I’ve tried this before. It didn’t work out. As far as I can tell, my face doesn’t have what it takes to grow a proper beard. It grows very unevenly, faouring the left side, and after a couple weeks the growing just stops and it stays at the “long scruff” phase until I shave it off. I’m hoping it’s just because I didn’t wait long enough before, which leads to point two.
2. I’m too impatient. Since my facial hair (and regular hair, after a certain length) grows at a snail’s pace, I’ll most definitely get bored of this long before I have anything resembling a beard. To help imagine how long my hair takes to grow, it takes be approximately three days to grow in a proper five o’ clock shadow.
3. My girlfriend is not a fan. I asked her at the beginning of the relationship how she felt about facial hair (because I shave maybe once a week at most), and she said she wasn’t big on real facial hair, but could deal with the stubble. I did tell her my plan, however, and she seems okay with it, if not even supportive. I was ready to give up after just over a week, but she told me to hang in there a little longer, just to see how it goes.
So why am I doing this? Dunno. Boredom, I guess.
That aside, I’ve decided that this year I’m just going to mash up all the pictures I took instead of trying to do anything more inspired with them. No categories, no long-winded stories, no character commentary. Nope. Just going to put them on the page and make some quick notes where I deem necessary.
Also there are tons of pictures,. Enjoy 😉
And that’s pretty much it. Following in the general spirit of this “article”, I really don’t have much more to wrap up with, so I’ll leave it at that.
~FIN
The woman and I took the yearly trip down to Fargo last Wednesday afternoon, and stayed until Friday night. It was a pretty paint-by-numbers expedition, but there were a few highlights. For one, we explored a bit farther than the shopping/hotel part of the city and checked out downtown Fargo a bit. It was actually pretty cool. We saw some interesting shops, a liberry, and we even got stuck in the middle of some kind of classic car show. It was a ton of fun, and of course, there was a ton of shopping to be had.
She’s been absolutely picture-crazy ever since she got a camera for her birthday, and I felt I needed to compete during this trip. I took a big handful of photos over the course of the two-and-a-half days, and my original intent was to take compelling pictures of strange, wonderful, or curious things and make an awesome gallery of intrigue. However, most of them ended up being of all the things I normally take pictures of. And my girlfriend. There are lots of her. Because, you know. Overall, I’d say her gallery wins. If only because it’s a lot bigger (though it should be noted that she wasn’t stuck with a crappy 16MB memory stick).
That gallery, while much more tepid than I’d hoped it would be, will be posted later this week. Today, I want to talk about the single video game I purchased during the trip: Teenage Zombies: Invasion of the Alien Brain Thingys. Yeah, it’s one of those Ninjabread Man scenarios where the title and theme seemed so awesome that I couldn’t resist. Fortunately, Teenage Zombies was only half the price of Ninjabread Man. Also, it isn’t horrible.
I don’t want to be too harsh on TZ though, as it is a pretty fun game, and I expected much, much less for $10. The biggest complaint I have is that unlike its Nordic counterpart, TZ has you hot-swapping between zombies. The Lost Vikings had all three characters on-screen at once, and you’d often have to combine their skills to overcome the trickier puzzles. Hitting L or R to replace zombies when one isn’t doing the trick isn’t as satisfying as teaming them up would be. The levels are still pretty clever, requiring almost constant switching of zombies. The first few chapters will seem like a breeze, but about halfway through the game I found myself dying several times before making it to the next checkpoint. And it never really felt cheap or dull either. The game is constantly giving you new power-ups, but very rarely tells you when, where, or in what order you need to use them.
The biggest problem I have with the game is that it’s a bit light on enemies. There are rats, and brains. A couple different types of brains, but nothing radically different. I suppose it’s more of a boon that combat is simple though, because what is there is a bit rough. Attack animations are slow, and most of the time you can only hit one enemy at a time, regardless of how many are within your range. Sometimes your hits don’t even connect at all. The other thing I have a minor complaint about are the stylus mini-games. They’re boring and (almost) frustrating to control. Fortunately, you’re only forced to play each once, and you can move on regardless of your performance. The one mini-game that is fun is the one where you put a zombie back together by dragging his parts around. It’s really simple, but a neat distraction.
You’ve seen the pictures on Facebook, now here’s the video!
Despite the fact that they were way outside my budget, I went out and bought tickets for No Doubt and Paramore this morning. They’re sorta crappy seats, but they were the cheaper ones and still so much more than I should have spent. But you should have seen the way here eyes lit up when she told me that her two favourite bands were coming to town together. There was no way I couldn’t get the tickets. Oh well…
Oh, and don’t tell her about these! They’re a surprise!
I’ve got a new predicament these days. It’s a rather sticky one too! See, I’ve grown less and less fond of my job over the last… well, however long it’s been since the last time I said I liked my job. At this point, I really want to go out and find a new one, but not something that’s just as bad as what I’m dealing with right now (keeping in mind that it’s not really that bad at all). I can barely even summon the motivation to send out online applications, nevermind actually go out and hand out resumes to random workplaces. It’s because I know that I’m employed, have guaranteed hours, and don’t really have it too bad. I’m in a decent place, and while it could be better, that decency is keeping my ambition locked away.
That said, there’s a job posting for an assistant manager position that I would love to have. As much as I want to move away from my current workplace, I also want to move up the management ladder, take over the damn place, and rule with an iron fist. The problem is that if I put in for this job and somehow land it (not likely. I’m pretty sure the boss hates me), I’ll have even less motivation to get movin’ on than I do now.
So I’m a bit stumped. Being an assistant manager – even of a crappy toy store – would be a huge achievement for me, because by nature I’m a follower, not a leader. I want it so bad! Primarily for the extra money and great addition to the resume, but also to prove to myself that I’m not worthless. I also kind of feel like it would prove to everyone else that I’m not worthless. Not that even one person has ever said anything of the sort to me, but my low self-esteem causes that whole feeling inadequate thing. I mean, I know I’m capable of accomplishing lots, I just have no ambition. So this would be taking the easy way out; moving up, but not really making any significant change.
I guess I still need some time to think it over, but I think I’m most likely to go for it. And I know this post is a little rambley and a lot disjointed, but it makes me feel a little less confused to have all my thoughts put down on virtual paper. It’s not so much for your reading pleasure as for me to sort out my thoughts. But if you have some insight, don’t be afraid to put in your two cents (just click on my name up there).
Ah, a new year. We’re already a few days in, but let’s talk about it anyway. I know I’m usually more of the cynical type, but I’ve got a good feeling about 2009. Not that 2008 wasn’t a good year. Oh no, quite opposite in fact!
2008 was a pretty great year in and of itself. There was that one rough patch in March-ish, and the last week of the year was a little touch-and-go for a while, but overall I’d say 2008 was a rousing success. The belated release of Super Smash Bros Brawl was more than enough in itself to make me happy with last year, but let’s not forget some of the other great things that came to us like No More Heroes and Fable II. Oh, and Tales of Vesperia too, which I am still spending a solid chunk of my free time playing (damned achievements!).
I also got a promotion earlier in the year, and though I enjoy the little bit of power I’ve been granted, it’s still not nearly enough to make me like my job. But that’s okay, because recently a really huge opportunity has shown its face and I’m really hoping it works out. I won’t go into any more detail because the more I talk about it, the less fate will think I deserve it, but I will say this: it would be my dream job.
Obviously, and most importantly, 2008 is the year that I started dating my girlfriend. It’s been fantastic, and while there are a few very minor drawbacks (I sometimes miss having copious amounts of free time), I finally understand just why people always seem so desperate to be with someone. We’ve been on several vacations together already, and have a designated movie night. Working at the same place has its perks too, of course.
So yeah, 2008 was good. Maybe not perfect, but that’s what 2009 is for, I guess. Hopefully this year I’ll make a little more time for my website(s) and write up more than five articles. I mean, that’s less than one every two months. Unacceptable! Perhaps I’ll finish refurbishing the “Spare!” comics. Who knows. Though I’m fairly sure I’ve mentioned that at least a million times in the last few months and nothing’s come of it.
Anyway, that’s my two cents. Here’s to the new year and even better times!
I don’t know if I ever told you, but in April of 2005 or so, I grew a wart on my left middle finger. I hadn’t had a wart in forever, so I was a little worried about it at first, but as time went on, I realized that it was perfectly harmless. Of course, it only lasted long enough for time to have gone on because the wart medication in the house was ancient and had clearly lost all potency. I asked for new stuff, but it never came.
A year or so later, I was looking at the wart, and decided that it was time for it to go. Probably about a week after that, I got up, went out, and bought my own damn wart remover. It was one of those neat home freezing kits that you see boasted about on TV so much. I tried it, and I thought the sensation was really cool. Two weeks after that, I realized that my little friend had retained his residence on my finger. So I used another blast of freezing, but I upped the dosage to enough to take out a heavier wart, as the manual instructed me to do. It did not work.
Time continued to move forward, and I think it must have been about a year ago, maybe a little more, that I noticed there was a second little wart growing just south of the original. Earlier this year I consulted the doctor about getting rid of them. She said that if I shaved them off with a razor and applied some new gel, they would disappear. I routinely chopped the little buggers away, but never got around to purchsing a new tube of wart gel, so they never disappeared.
It’s now been over three-and-a-half years since my first little friend made his appearance, and what exactly is the moral to this long, seemingly pointless story? I just wanted to have sufficient reason to post this picture, really. To be honest, I wanted it to be long enough that it would push the picture down beyond the main view of the page, but I just can’t drone on any more, and I’ve puffed the rest of the story as much as I can! Ah well, here’s the grossness!
The days are getting shorter, the weather colder, and the job annoying…er. What does this mean? Vacation time! Well, not really, but I am heading out to Grand Forks this weekend to enjoy one last moment of happiness before the Christmas season explodes and turns my life into a retail nightmare. For the third time. Why am I still at this stupid job?
Anyway, Secret of Mana is finally on the Virtual Console, which is fantastic. It wasn’t exaclty at the top of my wish list, but it’s a step in the right direction. As far as I can tell, most people consider it to be one of the greatest games on the SNES, though a recent playthrough with the guys has left me asking if it was really that great. Of course, I still love it and will now play it over and over and over ad infinitum, but it just seems like it could benefit from a few tweaks. A less broken battle system would be nice (maybe nerf magic a little bit so cheesing over bosses isn’t as viable a strategy), and some improved hit detection would make a world of difference too. Oh, also a new translation. Square-Enix has gotten so much better at that lately, and Mana is one of those oldies that would most definitely benefit from a rewrite. Still, it’s plenty of fun, and I’m pretty sure that it’s the only game where you get to beat the snot out of Santa Claus.
SNES games be damned though! I haven’t shared my opinion of it yet, but the DSi does deserve a couple words here. All in all, I think it’s cool, but I’m still technically undecided about it. I mean, I know once it launches I’ll be one of the first in line to get one, but for now I’m taking the relaxingly uncommitted “on the fence” stance. I suppose that if the whole DS Ware thing means I can download Game Boy classics, it’s a must-have, but the camera and media player don’t really do much for me. I’m in love with the idea of a built-in internet browser though; as long as it’s more functional than the PSP’s, that is. And if it has the ability to search for a word on a page, I’ll pay double for the damn thing. If there is one thing the Wii internet browser could benefit from, it’s a ctrl+F function.
