Category Archives: Activities

More computer fail

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The PC version of Grandia 2 I bought a couple weeks ago arrived. (It actually arrived last week, but the front desk didn’t send a package received notification like they usually do…)
Tried to install and play it and proceeded to get blue screens of death and/or various other crashes. From the internet, this seems like a very common issue with the game if you’re not running Windows 98 or ME (ewwww). Various fixes were suggested, but I don’t want to try them until I (somehow… probably when I get a new computer) have a VM up so I can mess with it all I want.

So yeah, the attempt at getting Grandia 2 screenshots for RPG Get! kind of failed. (At least I only paid $4 for the game.)
I think other game expansions will have to wait until I (somehow… when my parents next visit or when I go to visit them) get my Dreamcast and Gamecube here and have a usable video capture card again. Ugh. I guess it will be PSO TCG v3 for now. That’s not entirely bad, but kind of against the entire point of RPG Get! :P

I suppose, in general though, work on RPG Get! is going to slow down. I tried making more cards the other day and my computer was doing a weird thing where the desktop and taskbar (explorer.exe) seemed to crash, then the entire computer would reboot. I’m hoping it was some weird fluke, but I haven’t really had the desire to try it out again since them.

Computers are so frustrating. Why can’t they just work?
It seems like the more technology “improves”, the less reliable it is. I never used to have issues with programs not working and hardware misbehaving. Now it seems like everything I try to do just causes computer problems.
Just because I have the technical knowledge to work around or fix problems doesn’t mean I want to have to do so constantly. (And, as many people can attest to, having computer problems tends to cause me severe emotional issues… the last computer I had that completely died caused me to cry for something like an hour, and simple things like doing a clean OS install stress me out way too much.)
(I suppose this is part of the reason I find myself so reluctant to spend money on a new computer… I’m not convinced it will actually improve anything, and I’ll simply be out several hundred dollars.)

Also, annoyingly, it seems that LJ syndication is broken as it has not picked up yesterday’s entry yet.
Error Message: 500 Can’t locate object method “new” via package “HTML::HeadParser”
That makes no sense. Livejournal epic fail.

Also also, had a bit of an annoying experience on PSO today that basically made me stop playing for the rest of the evening. I was in a vhard game (level 65) playing with a level 85 Racast and we were doing fine. A high level Fonewearl (level 140) joins the game, complete with a Simple merge and Summit Moon (meaning she deals something like 1500 damage to enemies with her simple techniques) and proceeds to mow down entire rooms of enemies before the Racast or I can get a hit in (and therefore get experience from the kill).
As if that wasn’t bad enough, she gains a level and proceeds to quit a couple rooms before the boss fight (where her tech strengths would have actually been helpful) without so much as a “Thank you” for having her in our game.
Seriously, if you’re going to enter a game that you are overpowered for, you are there to *help* the players in that game, not steal all the experience for yourself. Whenever I join such a game, I limit myself to buff and debuff spells (that don’t deal damage), and only kill enemies when told it is okay to do so (and, even then, only after the other players have tagged them).
I should really stop playing in open games. Most gamers are just so rude.

As if that wasn’t enough to make me unhappy, the world just feels extremely wrong right now. Hopefully this will remedy itself on Monday when there is communication again, but for now I just feel like there’s a huge part of my life that’s missing. Blah.

Hmm

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It’s been an interesting couple days.
Last night, for some reason, I couldn’t sleep. I started browsed Schthack’s forums instead, and went through various image files from PSO in an attempt to find the photon blast and tech images from the game for use with RPG Get!. Succeeded, and continued messing around online, and not feeling tired. I eventually went to bed around 7 and woke up at 8 for work. That was interesting. Surprisingly, I wasn’t too terribly tired at work. I’m also surprisingly not tired now.

Work had free pizza during a presentation at lunch. Then there were leftover sandwiches from a different meeting. Then we had our Friday dev meeting and there was cake. Tasty.

Spent most of the day finishing up creation of a new object type in our code. Unfortunately, around 4:30, we found out that we were actually missing some fields that were necessary (that we hadn’t thought about before). As a result, we’re going to have to remake portions of it. Meh. This means we’ve gotten one story done this sprint, and that was a carryover story from last sprint. We really should add things we’ve been doing in as stories, because from a report standpoint, our team has been seriously slacking these past two weeks. :P

After work, I went to Safeway to buy foodstuffs, where they overcharged me $0.90 on my yellow squash (in addition to charging $4.50 for 3 avocadoes that I hadn’t bought). Safeway customer service people processing the refund can’t do math… because apparently 1.3 pounds of yellow squash at $0.99/lb comes out to $2 in their mind. Oh well.

Posted some photos from the picnic last week. Tasty food.

Also got revisions of RPG Get! posted. If you’re at all interested in the game, you should go check them out.

Found and installed this amazing interface reskin for PSO. My action buttons look amazing now. :D


Meow
Yeah, that’s really it.

Past Few Days

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Recently, there have been board games, a tasty BBQ at work, a bit of work on the RPG Get! CCG, and lots of PSO.

I’ve ordered a copy of Grandia 2 for PC with the intention of capturing screenshots for further RPG Get! sets (so the game doesn’t turn into PSO TCG version 3).

Yesterday, I also attempted to get a couple Dreamcast emulators working so that I can run (and screencap) Skies of Arcadia. The first one was disasterous, as it required installing Daemon Tools to mount the CD image. My computer bluescreened during the install, then rebooted, then proceeded to bluescreen and reboot in a continuous loop. I had to boot into safe mode and do a system restore. Boo Daemon Tools. The second one doesn’t work because my laptop doesn’t have a graphics card, which is apparently required. Boo stupid laptop.

PSO-wise, I got my Fomar to level 152 (finally) so he can use his Aura Field. Meph played today and helped me get another level (yay for Phantasmal World #4), and we got a HotFencer too, which is awesome. Meph also helped level up my Fonewm, who is now 43 and can survive the beginnings of vhard mode. I also purchased a L&K for my Fomar, which actually seems rather useless as his ATA maxes too low for such a weapon to hit with any acceptable accuracy. On the plus side, with his Zero Divide or Asteron Belt, he can actually do decent damage (200-600) in Ultimate Ruins (with a full set of buffs and debuffs). Melee forces are fun. I should play my Ramar some more.

But yeah. This post was originally going to include some photos (or screenshots, or something), but I find myself uninterested in going through photos right now.

I guess I’ve just been feeling rather off lately. I suppose part of it is the growing uncertainty in the lives of those closest to me, and that has a disorienting effect on me as well. At least there’s one certainty in my life right now… but circumstances make even that rather unfortunate (or, at the very least, a ways off).

Zoooo

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Matt, Katrina, and I went to the zoo this weekend. The first animal we saw was an ostrich, which proceeded to turn its butt towards us and pee, and then poop. Other animals throughout the day also did so, including a rhino who sprayed pee all over the metal bars of its enclosure. It was very odd. We also saw them feed the penguins, which was awesome. Apparently the chick of the two gay penguins is named “Chuck Norris”…?
















I have been playing PSO again. I miss having friends on there to play with, because public games are full of greedy and/or incompetent people. Blah. On the plus side, 3 level 80+ Fomars (I’m 150) versus vhard TTF = massive pwnage. There was gifoie everywhere. Vol Opt’s first form died in literally 15 seconds (one set of screens and a couple pillars was all that got destroyed). Yay for spellcasters.

Workwise, we moved buildings this weekend. I am not a fan of the new place. The kitchen is tiny (and there’s only one, versus the three in the old building), the bathroom is tiny (and there are huge gaps in the stall walls so you pretty much see someone sitting on the toilet when you walk into the bathroom), and there are only two conference rooms. Meh. Hopefully it will grow on me.

RPG Get! and Coding

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This has been a good week for completing old goals.

On Saturday and Sunday, I worked on the RPG Get! CCG website and got it (along with a beta of the base set cards) up. This is a game that has been in progress for over four years, so finally having something to show for it is awesome.

Today, I decided to finally finish up the AlanvDotOrg backend rewrite. This had been started over a year ago, and stalled due to my computer catching a virus, rendering it unable to connect to the internet after Norton had its way. Nevertheless, I had a bit of inspiration today at work, came home, and started hacking on it at around 5:30 PM. It is now 10:30, and it looks like it’s mostly complete. The backend is done, so you can once again comment on news posts. I also got three skins ported over, so you at least have a little bit of choice there. I’ll work on porting more skins tomorrow. I also have a couple ideas for new skins that I think would be awesome, so there will definetly be some of that too.

Work has also been full of accomplishing old goals. There’s been a few bugs we’ve been pushing back for a few releases, waiting for the right time. This week, we squished most of them dead (or are at least in the process of doing so). Yay for working on old bugs. We’ve also been increasing code coverage in our packages, including some of the legacy code we inherited. A little boring, but it’s nice to see numbers go up and to have increased confidence in the correctness of the code.

So yeah. Two of my big projects have finally reached some level of completion. This is awesome.