Recently, amazon had a ton of deals going on for Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Hearing Test Thursday (they're still going too). You know those lightning deals, where they give you a clue and post a time and then a countdown to the deal? Then you check back at said time, click buy and find out that its sold out? This happened to me.

I was on there most of the week and couldnt resist getting Rayman +an artbook for 39.99 and they also had AC: Revelations for 34.99 which I picked up. They also had clues to the deals coming up, and one pretty much told you that it was Uncharted 2. I figured if it was gonna be cheap, I may as well, as I'd never played it.

So I wait til 10pm or so and see the timer counting down and when it hits 0:00. Uncharted 2 GoTY Edition pops up on the page for the low price of 14.99. I immediately hit the add to cart button only to find out that its 100% sold out? what the heck?? Here's the funny part. Now that its no longer on sale, the regular price is a whopping 17.00. Somehow, I just cant bring myself to buy it at that super inflated price. Is that weird?? Heck, I've paid more for nail polish.

In other Alli News, my new Wii (a b day gift) came yesterday. Its still in the box, but I'll be hooking it up soon, hopefully. Its that red bundle that comes with a red wii, red controller, and New Super Mario Bros /Wii Sports. Now I want that flame red 3ds bundle to match.

After the odd occurances scheduling my last ultrasound (UCLA has a reception desk, with a large sign that reads "Radiology" and "Scheduling" over said desk, even though the woman working there has the enviable job of telling people that they dont schedule radiology appointments there, despite the large signs. This has become my new dream job, slightly edging out Elevator Operator and Snooty Parking Lot Attendant, if only because of the minimal responsibilities.) I wasnt expecting much from the dentist.

I call and I think Its the same receptionist I talked to two years ago.

Me: Hi, I need a dentist.

Her: Who was your last dentist?

Me: I don't know her name. I hear she finally succumbed to gingivitis after a long battle.

*long pause*

Me: that was a joke.

Her: Oh. Ha. Ha. Very Amusing.

(Actually my dentist graduated, which isnt surprising, given that she was this asian lady who looked like she was 12 years old.)

Her: do you have any preferences?

Me: preferences? do you have a menu? Oh I would like one who is an expert in the art of causing as much pain as possible.

Her: excuse me?

Me: I want my money's worth. (Though technically I'm not paying.)

*long pause*

Me: That was a joke.

Her: Very Amusing.

The best part about the dentist isnt the scheduling, its the journey. To get to the dentist, you have to first open these two double glass doors, taking you into the main lobby. You then have to go to this elevator around the corner. This takes you to subbasement B, 10,000 leagues under the sea. You then take this long east west hallway, heading west. There's no pictures on the walls, which are a really fugly shade of grey. After about 20 minutes of walking down this long hallway, you come to this other elevator, which has ...wait for it. ...different colored buttons! You then take that elevator up 2 floors. You're now about halfway there. (This is in the old building so there's no shortcut.) You go through a couple more hallways and take one more elevator before passing through the shrine of the silver monkey and then you see a small window set in the wall. This window has the express purpose of telling you that dental reception has moved around the corner, despite more confusing signage.

Tune in next time when I take you on the harrowing journey to the optometrist. >.>

So after a year of pretty much constant use on my lappy, last week I was getting frequent BSOD's and crashes. Most of the time these things happened at really inopportune times (typing school assignments, watching questionable videos, etc). So I back up everything onto a usb drive and I go out and buy windows and office. (I know, I coulda just done a system restore, but I've been wanting to do a clean install for awhile now.) I install windows and format all the partitions, deleting the recovery partition, which I didnt need.

So I get to windows and its all shiny and bright eyed and bushy tailed and its so clean! Its like having a new pc! (that's one year old. >.>) So I install every updated driver I can find (except the BIOS update, which I'm considering..) and I install office and it gives me some dumb pop up that says you might be a victim of software counterfeiting. wait, what?? O.O

So it makes me download this windows validation tool thingie and it proceeds to validate windows. Apparently I'm not a bootlegger since the feds didnt arrive at my house shortly after. So today I boot up the lappy and it asks me for my product key again, because it doesnt think my windows is genuine.

O.O

I put it in and apparently its satisfied. For now. This is so silly. How many times do I have to prove that I'm not a terrorist? I just wanna use my own computer. Unless newegg has started selling fake software, I should be okay, right?

Oh by the way, any software you guys think are "must haves" for a super clean pc? >.>

I was at Best Buy earlier, buying a friend some headphones, a mouse and a lock for the new lappy he bought (he really skimped on it too, it has integrated graphics. Oh, the humanity!) We went early and there was no one there. Naturally all the new games were prominently featured on a table near the front of the store. The two contenders vying for the consumers this week (and month), were:

Uncharted 3 and War in the North.

They had both collectors editions out there too. The Uncharted one looked okay, and all. But have you seen the War in the North one?

I'm a huge sucker for CE's, typically. I have every Blizzard CE put out, I have the original Baldur's Gate II CE and Ultima IX Dragon Edition. I even have the Vampire the Masquerade Redemption CE with kindred necklace. >.>

I'm no stranger to these things. But that oversized quiver that comes with the War in the North CE just strikes me as too nerdy. What the heck are you going to do with that thing? Hang it on your wall? Strap it on and go as Legolas to your upcoming family Turkey Day dinner? Get a blonde wig and reinact the Battle of Helm's Deep in your backyard, using your pets as the armies of Saruman?

Best Buy wisely chose not to display the price on this thing for fear of inducing a stroke in any of their valued customers. (Amazon currently has it listed at 139.99.)

Are these things getting too nerdy?

Name:

Moonlight

Story:

Darkness settled over the Empire of Ladonia, after a thousand years of peace and tranquility. The moon, main source of power for the magic using inhabitants of the world, had fallen out of orbit and was slowly heading towards the planet. The moon was also phasing in and out of reality, causing the magical energies of the world and its inhabitants to stop working, more or less. As a last ditch effort to preserve their way of life using magic, the ruling council of magi banished the magically inept inhabitants of the world to the dark realm below, believing them to be the cause. This is where our hero wakes up and begins his journey. The hero would quickly find a young lady named Kyra who is alone and she would join his party early on. The game would have a day to night cycle in game, something like 2 hours of real time would be a day or so in game. At night, the young lady would transform into a ferocious creature, increasing her attack power by +50 or so, and giving her a unique ability dependent on the phase of the moon. During the day she is normal, a physically weak attacker who learns a few spells.

Gameplay:

It would play like a pretty traditional RPG, more or less. There would be quite a few towns and dungeons to explore, each town offering our hero at least one quest to complete. These quests would range from exploring a dungeon and defeating a miniboss to finding an artifact to escorting a person to another town. In this way of helping various townsfolk with their problems, you would slowly start to put the world back together, so to speak, a piece at a time. Quests would eventually hit the main storyline about restoring the world's magical energies and there would be a sidequest involving a cure for your lady friend's transformations.

Starting Characters:

Hero:

HP: 22

MP: 0

Str: 10

Agi: 6

Res: 6

Wis: 5

Kyra:

HP: 15

MP: 20

Str: 5 (+50 at night)

Agil: 5

Res: 6

Wis: 15

Systems:

360, PS3

Miniboss Example:

Name: Razzio

Level: 5

HP: 75

Abilities: Future Sight, Blind.

Razzio is a large, floating bloodshot eyeball connected to a pair of claws. He has the ability to blind opponents, drastically reducing their accuracy. He also has future sight, which lets him "see" an incoming attack and avoid it completely. He also hates people who wear eyepatches.

Why its worth playing:

I think the whole Lunar mechanic would give it a unique feel compared to most RPGs today. The transformation system seems a bit unbalanced early on but it would balance itself out as you get to the higher level monsters.

that's right, today is my last official day of class. Take that, Back to Schoolers! (though theres an optional day on the 7th.)

Its the Summer of Alli! This is the longest possible time before more school, (which ironically starts Sept 7th, so I only get a week off. >.> ) Yay, one whole week of debauchery!

I wtill havent decided what I'm taking next quarter.

Some of the optional electives include:

-Writing About Dreams

-Mythology and Writing

-Writing the Sci/Fi-Fantasy Novel

-Writing for the Youth Market

-Writing for Comic Books, Anime and Manga

They also have a few Screenwriting/Poetry type classes as well. My problem is, they all sound pretty interesting.

There are many names for it. Piddler, Procrastinator, Russian Cosmonaut, etc. Basically the class final project that I've known about for the past three weeks is still not done, even though its due tomorrow at the stoke of midnight. Its not like I have nothing down on paper, I just have a few scenes to go really. Its been like this for awhile though. I never did papers or anything until the last night before class in middle or high school. Sometimes I'd do first drafts on the bench outside class 15 minutes before the teacher arrived and I'd still get straight A's. That's when I figured out the school system in the US was a bit off. (I mean K-12, university level is generally pretty good.) Heck, I'd probably be doing it now, but it still feels a bit early. None of that pressure to finish yet, so maybe tomorrow. >.>

The class itself has been a lot of fun. This is week nine of a ten week quarter. The best part is the teacher is extremely nice about telling people they suck. She made it clear early on that critiquing is supposed to be nice and helpful and all. For example, after you read someone else's piece, you're supposed to start with a positive, like "Oh I loved your opening line," and then add what you didnt like about it, and how they could make it better. I've noticed this doesnt really work in real life all that well, when put into practice, but maybe I'm doing it wrong.

Me: I love those shoes! They certainly take the focus off your giant head!

Other Person: wait, what??

Me: I said I love your shoes!

Other Person: awww how sweet!

****

Me: Those glasses are so nice! They really draw attention away from the rest of your face, thank god.

Friend: excuse me???

Me: I said I like your glasses.

Friend: awe here, have a candy!

***

hang on, maybe it does work. >.>

In gaming news, I've been playing an awful lot of the new Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I started over, after screwing up in my first playthrough and am enjoying it a lot more now that I know what I'm doing. I also found out that its infinitely easier on a PC with a gamepad, as I plugged in a USB 360 controller and all the prompts changed to the gamepad buttons right away which was very nice. If you havent read about it, you play as an ex cop turned security chief for this large corporation. The year is 2027 and its in detroit, and the corp you work for makes augments, or cyber enhancements for the body. Naturally there are tons of people against this, much of it seems political, etc, which makes for an interesting backstory. You also get points you can spend on augments as you level up. This time, I went with the social enhancer, which lets you measure someone's heart and blood pressure and see their psych profile on screen as well as release phermones to influence their actions. This is really useful and I've used it a few times already to talk myself past people. If you're playing Deus Ex, I recommend getting it. It has an open world kind of feel, as in you can walk around the city, do sidequests, etc. It feels a lot like Vampire: Bloodlines, mixed with Shadowrun elements, if that makes sense. I'm enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would.

Hello, my lovelies!

I hope you're all happy and healthy and playing lots of fun stuffs!

I've had quite a few projects going on lately!

First, I'm sure many of you know, I'm back in school at UCLA. It seems like my cIass just started and its already almost over. (its on the 10 wk quarter system) I'm planning on taking 2 courses next quarter, though I must be out of my mind. I'm doing the writer's program and currently trying to finish my creative writing degree. What's kind of nice is that the teacher has put up a bunch of links to places where you can submit your stories to for publication, which I like. Our final story is due on the 29th and I've got a few scenes typed out, though its all planned out in my head, I think. >.>

I've also been wanting to get a forum magazine going for the Legacy board here on GS. Its still in the early stages, but will basically feature articles written by GSers, focusing on the retro stuff, mostly, (think NES through PS2 games). It'll at the very least give the Legacy board regulars something to do.

I've also got to brag here a moment. I just finished Pokemon SoulSilver, using only a 55 Typhlosion, 47 Lugia and 35 Electrode. I think its at least a little bit impressive, given that most of the pokes range from 45-50, including Lance's two 49 Dragonites, 48 Charizard and 50 Dragonite, not to mention a 48 Gyarados. No No, I'm no hero, I'm just a regular person. ...a person who's a hero, >.>

I dont mean mine. =P

It seems that just because I'm on my lappy a good 12 hours a day, people assume I know something about computers! Isnt that kind of like assuming that just because someone has driven to work for years, they can rebuild an engine?

So a friend brings over his quite old Dell desktop over, maybe two weeks ago, with the assumption that I can fix it in 2 seconds. Suddenly I've somehow become The Flash of computer repair, despite a nonexistent marketing and advertising budget. O.O

I put off dealing with it, until a few days ago, despite repeated, "is it fixed yet?" queries.

So I turn the thing on and it gets to Windows, and instantly 30-40 programs try starting up at once, as soon as Windows starts, like a line of large, hungry people scrambling to be first in line at a buffet.

The sad little hourglass appears to be trying to give some of them a timeout, but cant seem to keep up. The hundred or so icons on the desktop are unclickable, and the Start button looks like its painted on and just there for decoration.

Well this is easy, I figured, I'll just reinstall Windows!

I throw XP in the cd drive, and boot up.

....No dice. Apparently the cd rom isnt even an option in the boot order, which I find out by going into the bios and setting it to boot first.

I get into Windows Setup and it asks for a product key. No biggie, I figured, as there's one on top of the computer, obnoxiously printed in small print, right under "Genuine Product Key".

Apparently "Genuine Product Key" stands for "Invalid Product Key", because thats what I get when I enter it. I tried a handful of times, in case my quickly going sense of sight somehow caused the error.

So now I'm looking around for another windows cd, in the stacks of cd's that I have lying around. This is why when people ask if I know anything about computers, I shake my head furiously and say, "no habla ingles!"

Now you too can experience the thrill of this pseudo sport without any effort on your part, thanks to this lovely vid!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A-s-MJ2Leo&feature=player_embedded

(By the way, is it just me, or is this a new level of nerd-dom? I havent seen this much raw nerd since peeking in the back room of the local comic book store after hours. >.>)