| (no subject) |
[Nov. 14th, 2009|02:51 pm] |
RIP Little Baby
A Kitten of 16 Years
1993-2009
I know I was your favorite. You were my favorite, too. Shine on, you crazy star. |
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| World of Warcraft |
[Jun. 22nd, 2009|01:31 pm] |
I would like to play a fantasy adventure MMO. But I do not want to play World of Warcraft. That's about the only option out there and I dislike it. There are so many things that annoy me that I can't remember them all.
Mostly, though, it's lousy game design. The game is like a prom dress make of carpet remnants (thank you, Futurama) in so many ways. Whenever enough (or loud enough) players whine about a problem, the developers nerf it into the ground, then tweak the game's math to keep it from popping back up. My friend Bryan left WoW for six months and now he barely recognizes some of his old characters. His priest, a healer, is now the #3 damage-dealing class in the game. Why do the developers make such huge changes? Because their original class designs were cobbled-together, rushed, and never playtested adequately. As of the initial alpha version of the game, there were no class designs. Each class was "you have this armor, these types of weapons, and these spells". The only differences between two characters of the same class was going to be the gear they found. So they rushed the talent trees into the game and have been fixing them ever since.
The whole game is just so... bleh. |
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| ConCarolinas! |
[Jun. 1st, 2009|10:31 pm] |
I was at ConCarolinas all weekend, playing some major D&D! I played five LFR modules and judged two more. I had a ton of fun, but the con experience has its upsides and downsides. You meet a lot of new people and can earn some major xps, but some of the people you run into are just... special. The gaming coordinator, Greg, was pressed for DMs, so I was on a table judged by this lady with serious pronunciation difficulties. I don't want to be insensitive, but when you're basically going to be talking for four hours straight in a loud room and you have to deal with all kinds of random fantasy names, speaking clearly is vital.
( Magic item woes ) |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 24th, 2009|04:37 pm] |
My hurt wrist is doing better, but I still have to favor it some, so my other wrist is getting sore from the extra strain. Last night the were even more heavy-ass boxes than usual and I was so sore when I got off work I just wanted to cry.
I've been talking to the ranking official on duty during my shift for almost a week now. He says that the hub manager had to ask Legal what he was supposed to do. That secretly pleased me, because it means that FedEx could be legally responsible for my injury and thus my bills. Basically he said, "We're asking our lawyers if you can sue is. If you can, we'll probably pay." |
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| *flops like a noodle* |
[Mar. 11th, 2009|08:34 pm] |
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Waaah. So tired. Right now I'm on "light duty" at work, which means fewer hours in a different area. Instead of picking up boxes and loading them, I'm moving certain boxes from one conveyor belt to another. There's rollers in between the two (thank goodness), so I'm just sliding the boxes, not lifting them. Even so, I can't really favor my hurt wrist much. And it's still hard work. |
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| Ow ow |
[Mar. 6th, 2009|12:47 am] |
fell at work yesterday night. Caught myself with left hand, bruised wrist. V. painful. People at work didn't say jack crap about seeing a doctor, but during training they said that you're supposed to see the company doctor first. Not that I recalled that little detail while I was sobbing in pain! So after i left work, my mom took me to the emergency room. Mind you, she spent 30 mins on the phone trying to get through to the people at work and left a message which nobody returned.
So tonight they basically bitch me out for not following procedures. I didn't wait to see the company doctor, I didn't call them back in the morning. I don't even remember them saying to call them in the morning. I was scared, in a lot of pain, and shaken up. Bah. |
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| Work |
[Mar. 3rd, 2009|04:29 pm] |
Work is hard. Working at FedEx is a bitch. I've been there three weeks and I'm still sore as a--anyway, really sore. Standard load rate is 400 packages an hour which is about 9 seconds per package, up to 75 pounds by yourself. At the end of my second week, I was up to about 250/hour, which was looking good because the minimum for working there is 290/hour. Last week, though, my productivity slowly dropped down to 200/hour. I've never been in shape before, and this job definitely demands muscles and speed.
My brother's load rate has been consistent and about the same as my lowest. However, my manager has been more forgiving and when it's obvious I can't keep up with the flow of packages, she's gotten someone to jump in and help me. My brother's manager has pretty much let him sink or swim on his own and if he doesn't get his load rate up by the end of the week, they're going to fire him.
Carlos, my sister's boyfriend of three years or so, is who told me about this job. Apparently, his father told him he wouldn't be tough enough to keep the job, so he got angry and wanted to prove him wrong. Also, apparently Carlos had a freakish obsession with being at the top of the productivity chart. I don't want to put myself through this much pain. I've been taking ibuprofen every night when I get home from work because I've been so sore.
Oh, and another thing. My shift is from 11:00 at night 3:30 in the morning. Night shift workers are at a greater risk for depression and sleep problems. As a person who's already being treated for both, I'll need to change shifts as soon as I can if I'm going to keep this job.
( Read more... ) |
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| Job! |
[Feb. 2nd, 2009|08:05 pm] |
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FedEx called me back! I'm supposed to call back tomorrow and they'll tell me when I can start! It'll be on the midnight shift, 11pm to something as a package handler. I'm still not sure about working at night. Although the night shifts pay $1.00 more an hour, I'll need to walk there at least sometimes and I don't know if there are lockers or anything to keep stuff like a flashlight in. Still, yay job! |
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| State of me |
[Nov. 12th, 2008|12:19 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  morose | ] |
Currently my hair is getting long, which means it says HAY GUYS I'M WAVY. When brushed, it does this synchronized wave thing so I have a long furrow in my hair. Plus, it's so thick, it takes a ridiculous amount of rinsing to get all the shampoo out of it.
Currently in the doldrums of depression and I keep getting the urge to eat myself happy. I keep wanting to eat pizza and ice cream, but it always reminds me how crappy I'm feeling. I'll be seeing the psychiatrist at the end of November. It's the earliest appointment they had.
I may be able to get a job with the sheriff's department. Apparently, most people who've actually had a job don't really like the sheriff's department. It may be the fucked-up work schedule: twelve hour shifts for three days followed by three days off. But no drugs and no criminal history is a cinch for me. I don't know if my metabolism will agree with their break schedule, though. Or my 10 hours a night sleep habit needs.
Also, I hate working with my parents. They bicker over every. little. thing. When I moved into my second apartment, I wasn't really sure why I loathed the idea of moving home.
I've been really irritable lately and when I get angry at my mom, I keep trying to justify why I'm angry, but it always winds up that I'm angry because she loves me. So I'm angry because I'm feeling shitty, which makes me feel shitty about feeling shitty... |
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| Pre-release, whooo! |
[Sep. 30th, 2008|12:03 am] |
Saturday I went to the Shards of Alara pre-release event with my friend B. It was my first ever Magic: the Gathering event; mostly I've played against B or on the free servers of Magic Online. B is quite experienced at this and used to be an official Magic judge. He could've even gotten paid to judge Magic, but that takes a bit more dedication to it than he wanted.
I had two major problems Saturday. The first was that I was only half-rested after sleeping on B's couch, I hadn't eaten much that morning, and I was nervous as hell, with the butterflies in my stomach that I get when D&D combats get really intense.
On the other hand, I had been following the spoilers closely. I knew what to expect as well as you can when you've never played an event before. In this respect, I had a significant advantage over the young kid who was there, cheerfully commenting on the cards he was opening in a Ralph Wiggum-style voice. "There's an awful lot of gold cards in this set." "Ooo, a dragon! Did you get a dragon?" Etc., etc.
The great thing about sealed deck is that your budget doesn't matter. Everybody has the same chance at the same cards. It's on you to build the best deck you can and squeeze all you can out of it in play.
But sometimes, there is nothing you can do with the cards you get. That was my other problem. I opened crap. Every single good card I got is the kind that gets awesome if you have enough of the right stuff to support it. Afterwards, B gave it a shot and even he couldn't do anything with it. There are a number of big, beefy creatures in this set that pretty much say "I win". This card pool has none of those.
I'm looking forward to trying it again, though. There's no way I could get screwed this hard twice. |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 24th, 2008|11:38 pm] |
When I moved back home, I found a little notebook of scratch paper from high school. I mainly used it to write down assignments, but since I always had it with me, I would jot down poetry in it, too. As it was starting to get full, I began writing poems on the backs of pages that had assignments on them, so it's like this capsule of nostalgia. On one page, there's a note to read "Chapter 17 age of exploration and the scientific rev," then Jack London's The Iron Heel. I don't remember ever reading that book. Then there's a sketch choreographing a 3D animation I was making. Then there's "Tuesday AP exam II".
And on the other page, there's ( angsty poetry ) |
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| Weird dream |
[Sep. 22nd, 2008|01:23 pm] |
Oh man, I has the weirdest dream last night. It started out at Autobot headquarters, where their main computer was running out of power, so we needed to recharge it. However, at just that time, some guy from around town discovered a device that turns any vehicle into into a Decepticon! And he started tooling around town in a crane and attacking the Autobots with some bucket appendage.
Then it got really interesting. I could either hide in the Autobot base or I could go do something helpful. So far, the dream has been extremely vivid and real and I was afraid of getting clobbered by the Decepti-crane, but I realized it was a dream and told myself that if I get hurt, I'll just wake up, so I can go have adventures.
Then I went to some big store, where I ran into this lady with about five dogs on leashes. One of them was Falkor the luck dragon disguised as a small dog, so I held his little paw and wished for the ability to turn a vehicle into an autobot to help fight the bad guys.
Soon I would up at the bad guys' apartment, where I found some large truck operating manuals. I picked one of them up and wandered outside, where I found fire trucks and power company trucks the bad guys had stolen. right about then, the bad guys noticed the manual was missing and started chasing me. I had to run a ways and found a place to hide and then I woke up. |
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| Media Opinions |
[Sep. 17th, 2008|03:23 pm] |
There's this new show on Fox called Fringe. It premiered Sunday and they showed another episode yesterday. It's got a similar basis as the X-files: FBI agent investigates weird stuff. This time around, though, the FBI agent is actually part of the cover things up. Supposedly, there's all these incidences of sciency, high-tech things that could be put to sinister use and they're supposedly part of some larger strategy by whoever's creating them.
About halfway through each episode, they use some pseudoscience method to gather information that their resident nutty professor actually proved could work back before he was committed to a mental hospital. In the first episode, they read a comatose man's mind by synchronizing brain waves with him (which can supposedly also be done on a corpse up to six hours after death). That didn't really rub me the wrong way. However, in the second episode, they recreated the last thing a dead woman saw by using a superscientific camera to photograph her eyeball. "We just need something to convert the electrical impulses so that we can display them on a TV!" Uh, no. Nerves "conduct electrical impulses" by moving potassium and chlorine ions to ( blah blah blah )
It's not a terribly interesting show, so if they keep making mistakes like that, I don't think I'll bother watching it. |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 15th, 2008|02:43 pm] |
In the past, the games of D&D I've been in pretty much fell into place without much effort on my part. This semester, though, there aren't as many games running, so it looks like I ought to start one to fill the gap. I had wanted to stick to playing D&D so that if/when I get a job, I don't have to worry about breaking my commitment to run a game. Getting Fridays off while working Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays seems like a fair trade, but I don't want to get too picky.
The Gamer's guild has two schedules of games that run on alternate weeks, so you can play in one game while still Dungeon Master-ing, or just have two characters at once. The fact is that both weeks could use another game running, but I'm not going to be the one fix [i]all[/i] their problems. |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 20th, 2008|11:54 pm] |
You know, I love my mom. She's done a lot of great things for me.
But my god, she is fucking annoying! Some of it is my depression surfacing again now that I'm completely off antidepressants. Everything just makes me so angry.
Currently, she's blaming me for our cable box breaking. Why is it my fault? A month or two ago I came to house-sit while my family went on vacation. My mom conveniently scheduled a visit from the cable guy the first day they were gone. She still claims that she told me everything about it, but the only briefing I got was a note on the dining-room table that said "get two new cable boxes". Am I supposed to just demand two new cable boxes from the guy? WTF is wrong with these? I called mom and got her to tell me what was going wrong with them, and the guy fixed one. I couldn't demonstrate the problem with the other. Now, both are having problems. At some point, my mom is going to return them, (one at a time so as to allow us to keep watching her precious goddamn soap operas) but she's really not a go getter. I wonder where I learned to procrastinate... |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 2nd, 2008|11:26 pm] |
( The AC business )
In other news, I found myself mentally congratulating my sister the other day. My mom is frequently saying "we need to do this" when she really means "you need to do this." She said it the other day and my sister replied, "Are we going to rotate the laundry, or am I?" My mom quietly accepted the correction. I rather enjoy seeing my mom actually be wrong about something, because 99.9% of the time, because my mom has the supernatural ability to not be at fault for anything. It's never her fault. |
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| Oh my god the junk |
[Jul. 29th, 2008|04:58 pm] |
Right now I'm staying at my parents' house. The stuff I decided to not put in storage is still in one of the pick-up trucks because there's nowhere to put it if I bring it inside.
My mom didn't understand why I was very upset that I had to move home. When my brother and I moved out, we left extra space. One of my sisters colonized our room and junk has filled up any extra space. If something has any kind of slight value, any potential for getting used in the future, my parents try to find a place for it. But we they really don't have that kind of room!
A few months ago, when my mom was trying to tell me that they have just about zero extra money, I suggested that if they really needed to they could sell some things, like some of their extra power tools, or maybe the Wii that they don't ever play, or one or two or five laptop computers. Then she tells me this: "It's not that we don't want to help you, it's that we don't want have to sacrifice anything to help you."
That made me angry. As often as she tells me she loves me? As often as she says she'll do as much as she can to help us? As often as she says she wants to see me succeed? When she lives in a house full of junk, she doesn't want to sell some of it to help her sons? "I want to help you, but I don't want to get off my cushy ass to do anything about it." Thanks, mom. Thanks a lot. |
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| Box box box |
[Jul. 27th, 2008|11:42 pm] |
Oh god I hate moving
Yesterday, we didn't get to move much into storage, just my bed and the couch. This is because my Grandma fainted. ( Tangent )
So because my mom had to go take care of that, we only had one vehicle to fill up today while we moved instead of two and a trailer. A friend of ours kindly let us carry stuff in his minivan, but my brother picked the wrong-ass shit to put in it. ( and other stuff happened... )
I wish we'd just gotten a giant U-haul van. But why would we do that when we've got two pick-up trucks, a brand new van that doesn't even have shelves to take up space, and multiple trailers?
I feel like there's this façade I have to put up for my family. But when I'm alone and I keep thinking about shit like today, I just scream and cry in frustration. But it doesn't matter how I feel, because Mom had to put up with her shitty mother today and Dad works hard to take care of us. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 20th, 2008|08:31 pm] |
*creeeeak, dust dust*
So I pretty much fucked up. Two years ago, me and my brother moved out of my parents' house and got our own apartment while we went to college. ( Read more... ) |
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