Category: IRL

Live fast, ’cause it won’t last

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!

It’s been too long

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!

It’s what’s left of the little motherfuckers after the doc burned the shit out of ’em. good riddance. I suppose if you’re still looking for a moral, it’s that you need to nip these things in the bud as fast as you can unless you’re eager to have them as a permanent fixture in your life.

Autumn vacation

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.

More, more, more

Today was the “grand re-opening” of my store. Though for the record, we never closed down aside from regular non-work hours. That tidbit aside, it was nucking futs in there for the first couple hours. Amounts of people like I’ve only seen at amusement parks and sporting events. The day had left me completely wrung out; my legs wasted from being on them and running back and forth all day, my arms and back sore from lifting more than usual, and my head a mess from dealing with inexplicably inept customers. It was a long day, and I’m glad it’s over, I just wish I had tomorrow off to recover.

Also, damn my lust for consumer electronics that are impossible to find due to high demand and low production numbers!

I suppose picking up Wii Fit and “playing” it for over an hour was a bad activity choice after a day like today then. To be honest, I wasn’t really planning on buying it in the first place. My fitness is not something I’m overly worried about, and I don’t need a video game to tell me I have almost inhumanly poor balance. But it’s just so popular! Everyone’s always fighting for them, and the fact that I was able to secure one against all odds (it was actually rather easy, there still five left by noon, when the tickets handed out before the store opened became invalid) made the victory all the much sweeter. I guess it’s kind of neat to have – crippling pain aside – but really it’s just an expensive way for me to feel like I’m part of some elite group. After all, based on the lines that form outside the store on days when we’ve advertised that we have Wii Fit in stock, it would seem that there are a lot more people who want the non-game than those who own it.

I see my Marianne walking away

So I just got back from Alberta this afternoon. Canmore, Alberta to be specific. I’ve never been any farther out of Manitoba than Kenora, Ontario, so it was one Hell of a road trip. Just the 16-hour drive would have been enough for me, but the added joy of the woman’s siblings fighting in the back seat all the way there and back made it the Most Wonderful Journey Ever™!

Okay, well that’s actually Banff, but you get the point. Mountains! Mountains are entirely new to me, having lived in and visited prairies exclusively. Kenora has a few foothills, but nothing jutting up into the sky all majestic-like. I suppose I’m not as completely in awe of them as my travel companions were, but they’re nice to see no less. I also got my first tastes of whitewater rafting and horseback riding, and they were mostly pleasant experiences (bad weather and leg cramps, respectively, made the activites less than perfect). So it was an awesome journey overall, even with the small hiccups. I think just being able to spend 6 days straight with my girlfriend was more than enough to leave me satisfied.

Two lovers in love, we was lovin’ a lot

Not as though I’d be doing too much blogging anyhow, but for the next couple days we’re heading down to Fargo to celebrate… well, not working for like four days? I dunno. Going down to the States to celebrate Canada Day seems a little dumb, but there really isn’t any other occasion. I suppose it’s just for the sake of shopping and getting away. Yeah.

So how about that Mega Man 9 news? Pretty damn awesome, I’d say. This is exactly what digital distribution is all about. I suppose that means that Capcom will finally be putting all the old Mega Man games on the Virtual Console then? I have the Anniversary Collection, so I wouldn’t be buying them, but it would be nice to know that they’re there.

All the times that we suffered

Wow. It’s funny how fast life can turn itself around. For all the shit I’ve been putting up with over the last while, this week has been exceptionally awesome. I guess the most important thing is that I took a trip to the optometrist yesterday, and it seems that I don’t have eye cancer. But that wasn’t really an issue anyway. Also, I won’t be needing glasses for a while still, which was infinitely more likely.

Less importantly to my health, but more important to my happiness, work has been great this week! I’ve actually had time to get some things done, which has been getting increasingly more difficult over the last few weeks. I almost forgot what that sense of accomplishment after a long eight hours was like, since I’ve basically just been running inconsequential errands all day for what seems like forever lately. But this week has been better, and it’s only going to improve, because after plenty of stalling and excuses, I’ve finally been promoted. It’s not much, and not exactly what I was aiming for, but at least now I’m officially in charge of the outdoor world at my store. I suppose that sometimes there’s something to be said for laying all your cards on the table, especially when your employers know that they desperately need you. Or, you know, maybe I just deserve it. I sure think I do. I’ve certainly fought through enough crap to have earned a little retribution and that shiny badge.

And AND I’ve learned today that Namco-Bandai is not only making a Tales of Symphonia sequel for Wii (really old news), but there’s also a new Tales game coming to the 360! If you didn’t know, I am as fanatical about the Tales series as the garden-variety gamer is about anything with Final and/or (but usually and) Fantasy in the title. It’s my RPG series of choice, and the fact that they’re using the Tales of the Abyss battle system helps a lot, because it’s unquestionably the best one yet. Well, except maybe for those FOFs. They’re cool and useful, but really just too hard to make good use of. Anyway, I’m pretty happy right now. Life is good.

Getting “the talk”

My mother turned the most mudane conversation into a completely uncomforatable experience today.

You see, we were simply talking about shoes. I’m not a big shoe-type guy, so at one point I mentioned that I felt that shoes were little more than foot protection. And then she noted that I was going to be needing a lot of foot protection soon. Only “foot” was a euphamism.

There’s a story about why exactly I’d be needing such a thing, but we’ll save that for a more appropriate time.

Photo fun

You know what I really love? Facebook. For one, it’s actually rekindled my sense of friendship. It’s not like MySpace was, where all I’d ever do was change my profile song. I’m actually posting on people’s walls and pictures, and even playing Oregon Trail online! Oregon friggin’ Trail! I’ve been kind of down on people for the last however long, but as of late, I’ve found that I’ve become much more comfortable around people on the whole, and I credit this development entirely to Facebook, for giving me an easy way to dip my toes into the waters of socialization.

But even better than that, it’s a place where I can post the most inane photos of myself and people can’t help but see them! Yeah, I can put up all the pictures I want here, but like three people will ever see any. Facebook pretty much forces them on others. Take the moustache picture I posted a while back, for example:

Totally hilarious, and people actually brought it up in not-internet conversation. It’s hard to come up with gold like that, but I’m thinking that my Facebook page will now play host to a gallery of humorous pictures of myself, along with the ones that are there simply to please my vanity. Now it’s just going to be a challenge figuring out things that will be just as or more funny than that picture up there.