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!

Everybody Konga!!

Sorry it’s late, but the new gallery is finally online. And it looks pretty slick. Or so I think. It’s not full yet, because there have been many distractions in my way, but I did get it up and running. And that’s all I really intended to do.

In other news, having a job has totally overwhelmed me. I didn’t even do anything today and my head is running in circles. Oh well. They did let me go an hour early, which segues nicely into the bigger events of the day.

First, and very most importantly, I went to Toys R Us. Why did I go there? Well, you see, there’s this thing I’ve been obsessing about lately. It’s what they like to call “Donkey Konga”. It’s not out until the 29th, but TRU conveniently has a demo station. So I went and I played the crap out of it. Well, maybe not that much, as I only played one song. But I do intend to go back tomorrey and have at it again. Anyway, the game is a blast. Even though I was only playing on “chimp” level, it was fast-paced and exciting. Through the whole jam session I was smiling and trying to restrain myself from really giving ‘er and acting like a lunatic in the store. I even used subdued claps when they came about so as not to attract too much attention. But Hell, that game brought me more joy than most things have lately. The only thing that upset me was that the demo didn’t provide any of the songs I wanted to play (read: the Legend of Zelda theme and We Will Rock You). Totally buying it.

But it got better. I found two really awesome things in the store, and I’m going to review them by the end of the week. Maybe you won’t see the awesomeness they bear, but I love both of ’em, and I’m glad I picked them both up without hesitation. But that’s all I’m telling you for today. Just go and enjoy the pretty pictures.

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.

“Tonight I dine on turtle soup!”

Ah. It’s nice having everyone else go off to work and school all day. It won’t last long though, so I’ll be making sure to relish it. I’ll be noting a few important things today, and that will probably tide over my need to post for a week or so.

First things first, I finally got around to watching my old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles DVD. It took me all day to watch those nine episodes, and I loved every minute of it. It’s hard for me to remember the show at all, since the last time I watched it on TV must be well over 8 or so years by now, and watching a couple episodes really brought me back to the good old days. Damn, do I feel old saying that. Anyhow, it was an overall pleasant day, dog crapping all over the living room aside, and I even learned a couple things (none relevant to anything, of course). You remember when I complained about how there were only five “regular” episodes on the TMNT DVD? Well it turns out that those five episodes are indeed the entire first season. And then the four bonus episodes are from season ten, two of which are from a 5-part mini-series that aired in Europe as a pseudo-movie. “Never before seen” my ass. Ah, the things I would never have known without the good old TV Tome.

In other news, my brother has been spending entire days on the computer lately because… He’s got a website? Arooo? I guess I should give you the link, as I would with any other website I mention, so here you go. As much as I hate to say it, there are a couple funny things there. Most are horrible spelling mistakes, which is for the most part only funny to me (I find spelling errors funny because I’m great at spelling, like a mathemagician (Yes, I think people who are good at math are using magic (God I use too many parentheses)) would with mathematical errors), but there are a couple other things that made me laugh out loud as well.

I gots me the Pikmin 2 a while ago (I just couldn’t resist. I’m weak) and it is a truly amazing game. I played through Pikmin several times over because I loved it so much, and the sequel is about a zillion times longer. I haven’t finished it yet, but I am drawing close, and I’ve only barely scratched the surface of the excellent (and hard!) new Challenge Mode, which just happens to allow cooperative play. The 2P-Battle mode is also a blast, featuring a sort of capture the flag gameplay, but substituting a marble for the flag. Plus, you almost have to work together with your opponent to stomp the neutral enemies roaming about while still trying to get away with his marble, giving it a kind of Four Swords-esqe mix of cooperation and competition. If you were putting off buying the first Pikmin even though you loved it, this is exactly what the doctor ordered. Definitely a wad of bills well spent.

Still haven’t fixed the banner… I want to, but it’s just a task that I don’t have the patience to complete. Can’t put it off forever though…

That’s all for now. I don’t think I’ve forgotten anything that I wanted to say, so I’m out. This is RyanMan reporting on the scene for Torrential Equilibrium News. Back to you, Gene.

Tweaking on Pepsi and sleep deprivation…

Yeah. Not feeling too good right now, and very very twitchy. As you can see above, new banner is made, but looks like crap. Sorry, accidentally saved it as JPG and don’t have copy of source image. I’ll fix it tomorrow… later… or something. And I’ll add up some new pictures and such to the gallery between now and Wednesday. Holy crap, need sedative. Scanner for birthday, and working nicely. That is where my new gallery posties come from. I’ve told you they’ll be there, so not gonna make a new post when I put ’em up. Even this post is containing very little. Must stretch out longer, but want to go run in circles. I drew two really cool things today. A battle-damaged robot man and a cowboy. The cowboy is bad ass. He’s got a huge chin. And stubble. Those will be up, and there will be different drawing phases of them too. Like penciled, inked and colored and that stuff. Not going to go into CG for them though. I like the hand-done stuff good. OK, that’s enough for now, I need to go run a few laps around something. Adios.

Band of the Month – September ’04

Yes, it’s that time again. Time for me to take a band and review it! Only, this time I kinda misjudged how much time I actually have to do it, so this one is probably going to be a little short and typo-filled. But in light of that little oopsie, the show must go on.

September’s BotM is one of my favorite (and apparently not too well-known) rock n’ roll bands,  Firehouse. While most hair/rock n’ roll bands were having their best times in the 80’s, Firehouse started up (or at least released their first album) in the 90’s. Probably right after the tides of pop culture had shifted, and this could be why they aren’t quite as popular as say, Poison. Actually, I don’t really have any idea exactly how popular or whatnot they were, but nobody I know personally has ever heard of them, so I can only assume that they’ve spend most of their career just under the big time radar. Nevertheless, they’ve released a grand total of 6 albums, one hits collection and one live performance disc, spanning all the way from 1990 to 2003. Not bad, I say.

While I’ve never been able to track down any of these discs (and looking at the track lists, I know I’d pick up at least one or two), I have listened to a lot of their stuff, and I’ll just make various assumptions about some of the CDs. The first one, a self-titled debut (which seems like a rather common way to name a debut), is all-around pretty awesome. It’s got a lot of their best stuff, like “All She Wrote” and “Shake & Tumble”. Also in this little bundle of joy is “Oughta Be a Law”, which at first listen I thought was Motley Crue. Possibly my favorite song on the CD too. And then down near the end is without a doubt their best slow song “Love of a Lifetime”. The next release was Hold Your Fire, and I’ve only heard one song from it, “When I Look Into Your Eyes”, which is pretty good, but if I based it alone versus any of the songs off Firehouse, it really wouldn’t hold a candle the the first disc.

Next up comes 3. Short, appropriate, and to the point. Not generally what you look for in an album title, but it works well. Again, I’ve heard very little music from this disc, and I can’t make an appropriate judgement of this CD. But the few songs I have heard were pretty good, so the rest is probably along that track somewhere. Then came the hits collection, Good Acoustics. Haven’t heard every single song on this one, but it’s a hits collection. It has to be good if it’s made up of their best stuff. After that comes Category 5 which seems pretty good, if a bit out of order. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems as though slower songs work best near the end of a CD, especially with rock bands, and this one’s got a really slow song, “Dream” right in the number 4 spot. But it starts with another of my favorites, “Can’t Stop The Pain”, so I’m not going to ding any points.

And that brings us to the live CD, entitled Bring ’em Out Live. This is pretty much a second hits album, just recorded at a live show. Then we get to the twentieth century albums, O2 and Prime Time, both which I have never heard a single song from. But I have read a couple reviews of them on Amazon and the reviewers seem to think that they don’t even come close to the stuff on the first two releases, so I guess that’s all I’m able to tell you about ’em.

As a quick conclusion, I love the music. It’s really not quite up to par with some of the bigger bands of the genre, but it could fill in in a pinch. I’d love to talk about what parts of the music I like, but I really have no clue what’s going on there. I’m not really licensed to review music. Anyhow, great band, and you should definitely download a couple songs to see what they’re like. And if you ever, EVER see one of their CDs in a store, you tell me. That’s an order. I guess this got a little longer than I expected, but there was quite a bit to say. And to make up for what’ll probably become a post drought (yes, this month will probably be pretty uneventful), here are some links that I fancy.

Ninja Turtles anime, reviewed – Yes, a Ninja Turtles anime. You will be 100% surprised at what goes on here. Unless you’ve seen it, of course. But still. Six pages of wacky Japanicised Ninja Turtles. I’m still in shock. And toying with the idea of squid ink pizza.

TMNT musics! – More turtles. A bit of an overdose for a normal people, but for a TMNT fanboy like myself, this is just icing on the cake that was that review. Oh, and they’re soundtracks and such from different TMNT stuff, like that live concert (which I have the original tape of!).

The Number 000 Blues – *sigh* Another webcomic. I’ve gotta stop reading new ones. It’s just too much to keep up with. This one’s a sprite comic about what goes on behind the scenes before and during the first MegaMan game. Pretty interesting for someone such as myself, probably mundane for someone such as yourself.

Spider-Man reviews crayons – If you thought the bullshit was done, here’s some more! Seriously, if anyone but Matt (except maybe -RoG- of I-Mockery) had done it, it would be stupid as hell. But somehow, it works and it’s hilarious. Must be another six pages here, but it’s mostly pictures.

Articles and rants and dogs! Oh my!

Remember yesterday when I promised I’d write an article? Well I did it. Surprised you, didn’t I? You can find it here. And now that that is done, I have some news.

Nobody will really care too much about this one, but we finally got a new van. That’s right, no more rickety bucket for us! It’s a 2001 Windstar Sport and it’s pretty sweet as far as I care. It’s really a nice van, and it sure beats the hell out of old red. Everyone in the family is pretty worked up about it, so I figured it was important enough news to mention on the site. And since the news is out of the way, it’s ranting time! I’ve got a monkey on my back, and it’s screaming for a rant. Oh it’s screaming. And it’s an angry rant, too!

What the hell is with stupid kids and their shitty websites? I really have no place in ranting about something as such, as my site is very novice-style, and I just got over my huge design change, but really people. This goes out to every kid who’s signed up with a free webspace provider in hopes of making a personal site with no actual relevance. I hate you all for creating such crap and polluting the already shit-on-by-not-nerds internet. Your little pages are 100% crap. You have no reason to have webspace, and I hate you for wasting the time of everyone who stumbles upon your crap.

Now you may be saying something along the lines of “but Ryan, your website isn’t exactly purposeful or relevant to anything.”, and you know what, you’re right. But at least my website has stuff on it that people can use for even a small bit of entertainment. the sites that I’m talking about are a dime a hundred dozen, and I can run down every element of them without breaking a sweat.

The index page is possibly the worst. Littered with tons of gifs and usually a full MP3 (loading hell for dial-up), they have a scant “hey this is my *current buzzword* website. It’s real kewl and I hopes you love it. luv ya, -*owner*” And it doesn’t stray too much from that. Sometimes there might be another phrase or something describing the “content” of the site, which is never much. Oh yes, and it’s almost always written in a terrible combination of net-speak and keyboard symbols. See my mock page for an example of this jargon.

The second page on the page list is the “all about me” page. This one is always the same too, giving out every single detail of personal information that this person has, including full name, exact location, and about three trillion photos. My parents never wanted me to have a web site so that I would never put this information out on the internet, but I went and did it anyway, becasue there’s one little factor that plays a big role in this. I was a 16-year-old male when I made this. Low predator rate there. Not zero, but a helluva lot lower than for 11- to 15-year-old girls, the group that makes up about 98% of the population of idiots who own these crap pages. Not only that, but these girls are flaunting all this shit about being dead sexy and how they love to get with boys and shit like that, and if you ask me, that’s just demanding that they be raped. Maybe I’m jealous because I’m ugly, but these girls really need to learn a lesson.

And next, we get the “mi friendz” pages. There are usually one or two of these, and they show a bunch of pictures of all their friends. Not only is this a waste of a page (nobody cares about your friends), but they’ve also got all their friends’ info stuffed on there as well. Maybe I’m taking this too much like a parent (How many kids have been stalked/raped because of a personal site? Not rhetorical, I’m really asking), but it angers me that people would not only tell the world who and where they are, but put out all of their friends’ personal information as well.

And then there’s the guestbook. Filled with words of praise from all of their stupid friends who think the site is so shit-hot. Are these people blind retards or do they just not register the lack of any actual content? It makes my blood boil that people will be proud of sites that are so crappy and that other people will actually go and tell them that it’s a good site. Me, I get compliments , but I also get constructive criticism. Never has anyone just flat-out said my site sucks (which would be a respectable opinion, I know it’s not as great as I want it to be), but people have commented on my writing style, what articles they liked, what articles were weak, and which parts of the site just weren’t interesting to them at all. And if this were in my guestbook, I would not just delete the post and accept only praise like these kids do. I’ve posted many a message pointing out bad points of their site and how to get around them, and every last one of those posts were deleted. To all aspiring webmasters, take advice from people who know what they’re doing (that doesn’t mean me), God knows your site will only benefit from it.

And after all this, sometimes there are other pages, like quotes pages and random pictures pages. These are equally stupid. The quotes, no so much, if you want to make a large collection of your favorite quotes, but it’s still unappealing for readers. As for random pictures pages, I have one word. Why? That is what your entire site is! Why do you have to make a whole other page for it? I’m probably being too critical about this, but if you ask anyone who has a website that isn’t described in the above paragraphs, they will probably agree with me. While it is all about creating
something that you like, it should still avoid looking like a piece of crap and having absolutely no content besides pictures of you and your friends. Unless you’re making an online photo album, but Yahoo will do that for you for free.

Oh it’s nice to have that off my chest. It’s been buggin me for a long time now, and I just needed to get it out there. It is kind of comforting to know that there is a kind of website that I hate more than the blog. If I were making what I hated most, it would look pretty bad. Heh. In light of all I’ve typed today, here are some pictures of my puppies. They’re growing quite well. On the left we have just Gizmo, and on the right are both Giz and Harley.

That’s all I neeeded to get out today, and that’s probably all I’ll be doing for a while. I’ll have the new Band of the Month pic up on the 1st, but the actual review probably won’t be seen until Sunday or so. Maybe on Thursday or Friday at the earliest, but not before that for sure. I still don’t know which band I’m reviewing.