First up, I apologize for poor formatting. The text editor is performing oddly tonight.

So I've been pretty busy for the past few weeks. School starts tomorrow and I still have pneumonia, which I've had for about two weeks. I've been to the doctor and gotten some medicine, so I'm slowly recovering, but still not fast enough. Hurricane Irene hit us last weekend with barely any damage at all, despite the doomsayers and short fuses freaking out about it. There were a few tornados a county or two north but, other than that not much.

So I bought Minecraft a few days ago after months and months of indecision, and so far I have to say I am enjoying it overall. I started off on a map that wasn't too good for me and my base and gear was eventually destroyed by creepers. I was trying to build a lookout post of sorts out of glass and i climbed up the ladder to show my sister where it came out. Turned out that a creeper was right there, and since I hadn't built the glass yet: boom, there goes my base. I got killed two or three times on the way back so I couldn't get my stuff either. I decided to just start on a new map.

So today I've managed to build myself a house, find and mine some redstone, get a full set of iron equipment, and make myself a map and compass to explore my world. I was feeling pretty accomplished until I realized that I was bored from not having much to do and playing too long. On the bright side I haven't played RuneScape in two days, which may or may not be a good thing. There's a bonus experience weekend coming up and I'm debating renewing my membership for $5.95 for a game who's owners are only interested in money. It's like Battlefield Heroes: Electronic Arts really doesn't care. If they can convince you to buy something for $10 just to improve your character without utilising any skill or practice, they're happy. Hopefully Jagex (the guys in charge of Runescape) won't do the same thing - but a lot of players are arguing that they're moving towards it.

I think I've ranted enough for now, so I'll be turning my attention to Gamespot's newest bracket-competition-thingy: The All-Time Greatest Game Sidekick! I think it should be obvious by now that the only characters that are going to get anywhere are mainstream, heavily-monoposiled, iconic characters (unless everyone realizes that Luigi is as spineless as he really is) but I'm still glad that GameSpot included some old favorites. I was really glad to see characters like Prinny (d00d!), Albert Einstein, Vivi, and even Lucca and Frog from Chrono Trigger! Choosing between Lucca and Wakka was tough, but I figured that Chrono Trigger was more shall we say... timeless? Nostalgic? Inspiring?

As usual, I set my bracket up according to which characters I thought were the most popular. I was also glad to see characters like Tails and Captain Price in the mix as they're some of my favorite video game characters. If the bracket was more like a "who do you want to see win?" kind of thing, I probably would've voted the Final Fantasy/Chrono Trigger characters up to the top (and Prinny would've probably won in the end). If any of them get high in the rankings, I will be content.

Anywho, I guess that's all I've got for tonight. I would've been asleep by now due to school tomorrow but with pneumonia there's no way I can actually attend school until I'm better. I guess I'll just sit around drinking tea, watching television, and taking my medicine until things improve. Goodnight everyone!