Category: IRL

“Boo!” and such

As you can see, I’ve slightly altered the site to look more in the spirit of the Halloween. I don’t really have any Halloween-type articles or reviews in line, but I’ll see what I can dig up. I’ve got almost a whole month, so it should be enough time to get at least one spooky bit of writing out there. I do have a review for a zombie movie in mind, and that’ll be done on Thursday. Why Thursday? Because I like writing on Thursdays. While you’re waiting for me to pull something out of my ass, make sure to visit I-Mockery and X-Entertainment for all your ghoulish needs.

As for work, it gets a little better every day. I’m becoming more accustomed to actually serving people and understanding those accents that just aren’t made to be understood. I’m also finding myself to be happy while I work (which I never expected), particularly in the last couple hours when the people I’ve made friends with start working. And on a similar note, being the naive and hopeless kind of guy I am, I’m very confused about some recent events. Can anybody tell me if I’m charming at all? Do I have what it takes to make someone particularly enjoy my company? Would it be an accurate statement if someone were to to call me handsome (I’m still pretty sure it was jokingly though)? I once thought I was totally undesirable, but now I’m very, very confused… But you don’t want to hear about this crap. It’s sounding too much like a real blog.

Now, let’s see. What kind of entertaining spiels can I come up with on the spot? Oh yes. Much like I would, I bought a couple of the MegaMan NT Warrior action figures. (You must realize that it’s the collector’s spirit. I don’t actually play with these toys.) They’re of solid construction, and have some neat features. The only problem is that there is one little point of articulation missing in the arm that just skews the glory of being the ultimate toys that they would have if the elbow were there. On the upside, they look awesome posed on my dresser along with my other MegaMan toys. Oh yes, and they all came with battlechips, which makes the little PET game so much easier. If you’re into collecting toys, or you’re a fan of the blue bomber, I totally suggest you pick up a couple of these guys. Sure, they don’t look quite as cool as some of the Spider-Man figures out there, but you just cannot resist the awesomeness that is ProtoMan.

Lastly for today is something very important to me. I don’t remember if I’ve ever linked you to them before, but you should totally go to OC Remix and download The Atomizer and Haunted Hell. Easily two of my favorite remixes ever, and they blend in perfectly with the season. So yes, that’s going to be it for today. I really need some new concluding phrases. These ones I’m using are getting real stale.

Good riddance to bad work

I’ve been thinking it over, and I like my job, but I detest working. Full time, anyhow. It’s just way too much for the guy who’d never worked a day in his life to take in all at once. But I’m not going to give up because it’s a little rough, that wouldn’t be like me. Not anymore. I guess it’s time I started facing reality and stopped running from everything that showed even a slight sign of hard times.

But enough of my whining and revelation crap. I’m gonna start sounding deeper than I actually am. Ugh. So the band of the month isn’t decided yet, and I haven’t made the September archive either, as I’ve been working all morning and napping until like 20 minutes ago. Naps are great. They make me feel happy. You should totally try them out. All the cool kids are doing it.

I’ll have the BotM up either Sunday evening or some other time around then. as for the archive, that’s easy, so I’ll do it up now… or not. But first, there are important things to take care of. Things like links.

SuprNova.org – It’s not the site you need to see, but some things the site provides. Do a search “Mario Big Band” and download the result. It’s a sweet live performance of a bunch of Mario and Zelda tunes. Just the Wind Waker theme alone is worth downloading the entire package.

Halloween X-E – Matt’s favorite time of the year has come around again, and that means another Halloween countdown along with it. That’s one article – albeit a short one – a day. No wonder I idolize the guy.

GameFAQs – Character Battle #3 is nearing it’s end, and it’s looking to end up much like it did last year – with shitty results. Don’t let that weener Cloud win again. Help fight the good fight by voting for anyone else and telling your friends to do so as well.

Shopping for Danger – The third installment in the best G.I. Joe parody ever – Cheat Commandos! How could you possibly resist? Rock, rock on!

There you go

Yay for me! Yay for a day off! I’m gonna make $564 every two weeks (before deductions)! It may not seem too impressive, but it’s $564 more than I was making before. And that’s if I don’t take any extra shifts. And speaking of that, it turns out that my shifts on both last Saturday and Sunday were extra, so I could have had the weekend off, but I didn’t really have a say in the matter. They just told me to come in on those days.

In other news, I finally did that article I was supposed to do last week. This is just my first day off since Friday, so I’ve had a lot to do lately. You can find it here. Or at least I hope so. I have a history of bad links.

I also bought Donkey Konga. God damn it’s fun. And I’ve become more accepting of certain musics. A lot of the stuff on there is poppy or not what I would normally listen to. The only songs I can’t stand are “Rock Lobster” and the children’s songs. I mean, they have “Bingo” on there, and it’s remixed in this “funky” new way with the kids yelling stuff like “Go Bingo, go Bingo” and “You can do it Bingo!”. You can do it Bingo? Geez, he’s Bingo, not Lil’ Brudder. He lives on a goddamn farm. He doesn’t need encouragement. Stupid Bingo. On the upside, there are some great songs on it like “Rock This Town” and the “Kirby: Right Back At Ya!” theme. And, it took me this long to figure it out, but the Pokémon theme is a kickass song. Sure, it’s a song about Pokémon, but it’s got a sweet guitar solo and, well, just awesome music. But yes, overall awesome fun to be had. Even the one of my brothers who doesn’t do much gaming at all thinks it’s a brilliant idea.

I guess that’s it for today. It’s been a nice little break, but it’s back to the grind tomorrow, and Saturday. Ugh, Saturday. So damn busy.

The kid is beat tonight

Wow. Working sure is different than lazing about all day. Not really in a bad way, but it’s sure a huge change for me. Anyway, work is great. It’s easy shit. Either I’m punching in orders and making change or pouring coffee. And on the odd time I get to lift heavy things that the womens can’t handle. I guess I never mentioned that 90% of all the employees are female. Yep. And I’m the only guy working on storefront. Ever. Only all the women that are posted there as well are far too old for my liking. Except for one, and she just happens to be my current partner. We’ve even started up a friendly rivalry after working together only twice. Funny how everything seems to be coming together at once for me. In any case, I love my work.

The biggest downside is that not being in school, I’m working full time. That’s five eight-hour shifts a week. It could be a lot worse though, so I’m not going to complain about it too much. The other bad part is that I’m on my feet for the entirety of those eight hours and then I walk home. By my own will, of course. But that means that by the time I get home, both my legs and back are totally burnt out, making moving an unacceptable option. At least my parents aren’t bugging me to help out around the house or to get a job anymore. And I’m starting to smell like coffee, which would be rad, but I’m not all too fond of the stuff.

In non-work related stuffs, I’ve bought MegaMan X Command Mission, the first real MegaMan RPG. Boy it’s sweet. It’s not quite as active a battle system as Tales of Symphonia, but at least you actually use all the buttons rather than just choosing “hit” or “potion”. Lots of neat customization options, but not too far from most of the usual types of RPG cust opts. Graphics are superb, flawed only by the common little oopsies that come along with cel-shaded graphics. And there are a lot of nice little bonus options and mini-game-esqe features like treasure hunting using the GBA as a radar, and being able to pick the color of X’s “cape”. And speaking of X, If you’ve seen anything about the game, you know that he’s been totally redesigned. At first I was a little bugged by it, but looking at all the new characters and even Zero and Axl, if they’d left him as he was, he would stick out because he’d look so plain. And lest I mention, the game is fun. The bosses can give you a run for your money if you don’t play perfectly, and the story is usual MegaMan X fare, just without all the plot holes (so far, anyway). So yes, worth buying if you like RPGs or MegaMan, and definitely worth a rent if you’re not truly into either. Not a groundbreaking title by any means, but I like it good.

I’m still trying to summon up the will to do that article, as I’ve got a new game to play and such, and writing articles is kind of long and uneventful. I’m gonna do it, just not today. Probably Sunday. There’s another one in the works too, and I’m thinking about adding more to that there new art gallery. Updates will now probably be a lot more spread out, as I’m probably only going to post on my days off. I like the idea of sleeping workday evenings away. So yes, I’ve covered everything I wanted to. Stay tuned to find out what happens next on this wild rollercoaster that is my new/working life!

And God said “A small coffee and a chocolate dip, please”

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted, and there is much to tell. But I’ll get to all the other stuff later. Firstly and most importantly, I’ve finally got a job. The call came in this morning and now I’m the newest donut wench at Tim Horton’s. Yay for me. Now I’ll be able to afford my precious when it arrives later this year. That is assuming that I don’t screw up too badly at giving food and such to people. If I’m lucky, they said they might even place me on dish washing duty, a task at which I excel. So yes, I’m a little nervous about giving up most of my time to actually do something, but overall I’m overcome with much joy. And if absolutely nothing else, I’ve finally got something to go on the ol’ resume.

Second of all, I broke down and bought one of the new Pokémon games. It was mostly for the wireless adapter that came with, but you all know I enjoy my Pokémon, so I won’t bother making up any other excuses. The game itself is great, being a port of the first game (which was my favorite) with a whole bunch of new stuff crammed in. The bulk of new areas and quests come after the credits roll for the first time, but there are tons of new gizmos and such for you to toy around with before then. Most outstanding though, are the graphics and music. While they look a lot like the Ruby and Sapphire versions, these new games have a few little extra touches that make it just that much sweeter, like coloured text! And a pretty new font to go with it. The music remixes are great, and hopefully they’ll attract a little attention from the OverClocked Remix community. I’ve always wanted to hear the battle theme in metal, but there isn’t a single Pokémon remix on there…

Thirdly, SKY CAPTAIN! Flippin’ awesome movie. The kind a man like m’self, who doesn’t buy many movies, would buy. And not even because of all the special bonus crap they’re bound to pile on the DVD. Yes, it’s that good. Well, I thought so anyway. The plot goes a little here and there about halfway through, but I’ve never been too picky about a bad story, so it didn’t bother me at all. The only thing I didn’t like is that there weren’t enough of them big robots that steal the spotlight in the trailer. Nope. To be honest (tiny spoilers here), they really don’t play as much a part in the movie as the trailers might have you think. But again, great action flick, go see it.

And last but probably not least, I’ve opened a Geocities account which I plan to use as space to house all of my recent scanned stuff. It’s a little different that what I’m used to, so it might take me a while, but I intend to have the “second” gallery up tomorrow after work. If it’ll happen, I’m not sure, but keep your fingers crossed. Or not. Just do what you like. So I guess I’ll be seein’ yahs then.

In the nick of time!

GorillaMask.net has gone through a major change. It’s been totally revamped, and you probably wouldn’t recognize it at a glance. And to think that I stole the site layout for myself just more than a month ago. That certainly was close. I guess this means that I’m not directly copying anyone anymore? Oh well.

There is more than that little note afoot, however. Two things, to be exact. Firstly, and it’ll be more important to my friends than anyone who’s stumbled across the site and has kept reading for whatever reason, I’m going to stop drawing new Spare! comics. As much as I loved doing it, I’ve realized that this comic endeavour is more of a big joke than anything else. Ever since I started reading Penny Arcade I’ve wanted to write my own webcomic. Reading Real Life made me consider starting a new site devoted to the comic, but there are two major obstacles in my way:

1) My source material is gone. With no more school to attend (for the moment), I’ve got nothing to write comics about. Sure, I could try to make some up on my own, but looking back at the fictional ones that I’ve already done, they’re some of the weakest ones there (bar the “imaginary girlfriend” saga, I really like those ones) and I’m just not good at writing funny. If someone would like to write for me, that would be excellent, but out of the people I know, and no offense to you guys, we’d need a whole team of writers to get anything done.

2) No webspace. Yes, I have a few options, but none of them sit quite right with me. Making another site on Angelfire is not something I want to do. Hell, I can’t wait to find an alternative for this one. I hate having to rely on free providers. A friend’s webspace? No. That way, I lose a lot of immediate control. And I wouldn’t be able to put up spur-of-the-moment stuff like this. It just wouldn’t be right. I could make my hard drive into a web server thing, but then my site would be a number, and people are less likely to remember a number than a name (not that “Torrential Equilibrium” is easy to spell either…). Someday, I’ll buy space and a domain name, but as it stands, that won’t be happening soon.

So as it stands, the comic is dead. I’ve begun the slow and painful process of Painticizing them, but that’s not looking too bright as an option. Nobody would respect a webcomic done in Paint. I’m probably gonna get a scanner for/around my birthday, so I’ll at least have them all up for viewage in a month or so.

Now, onto the other thing I needed to rant about. Damn, I went on so long about the comic that I’ve forgotten. Well, I’ll just leave this then. My brothers and I have all decided to forsake our Christmas presents this year, and will instead be getting a new computer (hopefully) sometime in November or early December. Yes, it’s a long time away still, but I’m pretty pumped. Obviously, there aren’t any ideas on the table yet in regards to specs or manufacturer, but it’ll certainly be able to run Doom 3, so I think that “the shit” is a pretty good ballpark description. Personally, I’m most looking forward to the possibly huge (looking at 200+ GB) hard drive. Living with ~10 (considering space for other users) gigabytes of storage space is very hard these days, what with current games taking anywhere between 500MBs and 6GBs each. Now that I’ve let out enough geek for the day, I think I’ll go do something productive, like mowing the lawn. Yeah right.

Ah, Hell. Now I remember. Planet MegaMan is currently offering MP3s of the entire soundtrack to RockMan X Command Mission. A pretty good bunch of tunes, if I do say so. Not quite as great as the original NES games’ tracks, but enough to tide me over until the game is released over here in the West. Go and download them now if you want ’em, as they probably won’t be up there long.

Boo curfew

My dad has received the title “Computer Nazi”.

All summer, my brothers and I have all been vying for time on the internet-ready PC. It’s usually theirs during the day, and every couple nights, I manage to get on during the split-second that they try to switch off. I like to think they’re working against me. So one of us is usually on until the wee hours of the morning. Just look at most of my posting times.

My parents do not like this trend, and have reinstated a new regiment so that my brothers will get back to a normal sleep schedule before they go back to school. The new rule is that no-one is allowed on the computer after midnight. Bullshit? Yes. But they never really enforced it until last night.

I was casually flipping through the Real Life archives, and my dad came down at exactly midnight, and hovered over me until the PC was turned off. I tried a menacing glare, but no such luck. I gave up and sought to come back an hour or so later when he’d be gone to bed. I went upstairs to take a bathroom break, and as I turned back, I saw him unplugging the computer.

Now you see that giving him the nazi title is totally justified. I don’t see why this rule should affect me, as I’m not going back to school right away. In fact, I’m trying to get the midnight shift at the local Tim Horton’s.

The situation was dire, but as I pondered a way for revenge, I found my loophole. If he had only taken the power cable, I could simply steal the modem and hook it up to my PC with my TV’s cable line. I had been wanting to try this out for a while now, and never had the right opportunity, so now was definitely the day of reckoning.

As things turned out though, he had not stolen the power cable, as I had previously assumed, but in its stead, he had removed the cable that connects the modem to the PC. This was a stupid move, not so much because my plot was foiled, but because his rule was breakable. The PC was still in working order, there was just no internet access. So I was free to do all the non-internet things I wanted. Unfortunately, the internet is like cyber-cocaine for some (me included), and a PC seems totally useless without it. Gah, this blows.

But on the upside, it’s been a month now since I redesigned the site, and I must say it’s been a huge success. Not only have I been posting a lot more (it helps that posts are easier to write than articles), but my hit counter has been steadily increasing as well. For a while before I changed the site, it was stuck at around 800 for days, and within a month, it’s gone up by approximately 150. That’s pretty awesome for a site that nobody knows about. And that means the 1000 hit celebration is due any day now!

This is so morally wrong

Okay, before we continue, I’m going to make it clear that what I’m about to do is very, very wrong. It goes against my policy of not invading other people’s privacy, but I’m going to do it anyway. Besides, do files that are left out in the open on a PC even count as private stuff? Yeah, I know they’re supposed to be between only those who made them, but when you save your chat logs, you’re pretty much looking to give them away to those who have nothing better to do than go through every folder on the hard drive. I guess if I do have a purpose, it’s simply to show how bad kids are at typing. The fact that the horrible “slang” is intended is just the icing on the cake of my hatred. What can I say? I can’t stand net-speak.

So if you personally have a problem with looking at these, then by all means – don’t. I put them up here for the sake of light entertainment and not to reveal any deep and scarring secrets (although…), so make your own decisions, but you’re responsible for what you read.

(NB: the files have been removed. It was just so… not cool of me to put them there in the first place)

This first one is the long one. It’s just babbling between my brother and his girlfriend. Like I said, these aren’t anything really important.

I just wanted the link from this, really. There’s nothing else of interest.

Very debatable if this should be here. It’s kinda personal, and something I probably should confront him about. But, it’s for the sake of me exposing something else to be pissed at: IM chain messages. God, it just gets worse and worse every day.

There you have it. Nothing else of specific interest, or even a proper length to waste time with. Tomorrow or later today I’ll post something else that is a little more revealing of my own state of mind. And sanity. Oh I feel like something’s gonna bite me in the ass for doing this…

My brother is an asshole

REDACTED

(07/16/2021 – I’m all about preserving my writing history as a reminder of what a butthead I was in the past, but it’s okay for some things to be lost to time. This is one of them. But hey, at least there were some links included so this post isn’t completely deleted. Try clicking to see if any of them still go somewhere!)

Peasant’s Quest – This game looks freaking amazing. I really, really hope they’re not just screwing with our heads about this one. Though it does seem to be too good to be true.

New Weebl and Bob toon – Actually, it was new a couple days ago, but you can’t possibly expect me to stay on top of everything. The difference between me and other sites that feature cool daily-ish stuff is that I don’t have readers e-mailing me about cool stuff.

GISH? The Hell…? – New game review is up on I-Mockery, compete with an interview, Photoshop contest and a free demo dowload. Hoo-ray!

The final stage

Yay! I’m not dead! Sorry if you missed me. For a week there my internet connection was down again, and I believe the cause was much more evil than just not paying the bill this time. And then last week I was out at the cottage, so that pretty much clears me of any claims of laziness. And now that that’s out of the way, lots of big, big news.

First, and possibly least related to the site, we now have two dogs. The new one is named Harley. He looks exactly like Gizmo, except his paws aren’t white. They’ve both gotten pretty good at the housebrokenness, so they no longer really need to be watched over all the time. That means I’m not so damn busy watching them any more.

Nextly, I’ve been fooling around with FrontPage all night (morning?), trying to create (steal) my new layout. For the most part, it’s coming along really well, but my limited amount of experience with web design is keeping the final product just out of reach. It’ll probably be done by the end of the week, if I keep working hard.

Finally, this will more than likely be the last news post of this kind, assuming that I don’t just totally abandon my hopes of burning this site and resurrecting a new and better one from the ashes. That means no more song-titled news posts, no more me trying to convince you I was too busy to finish the latest article, and most importantly, making the full-length articles a lower priority.

Now that I’ve made clear everything I set out to say, it’s time to head on back to site design. I just hope that with the “new” site, the message boards will also get something of a revival.

~Ryan out. For the last time.