Zel-kun’s Words

Finally, after two weeks, it has slowed down a bit at work, actually giving me time to breathe.  So, I suppose I should give a rundown of events…

Last week was just one thing after another.  From the time I got in until the moment I left, I was busy, constantly working, and working on overdrive at that.  I guess it was a good week for everyone in the world to break their computers.

I got a raise, and a pretty good one at that, which in another time may have been terrific news.  It is still good news, but the fact of the matter is I’m putting my resume out again for something close.  But at the very least I’ll be taking in more money in the meantime.

I finally finished Star Ocean: ‘Till The End of Time.  Its been on my shelf for over a year, and I finally finished it.  I must say, I’m less than impressed.

The game has a very nice feel to it.  The controls are smooth, the music is beautiful, the character design is unique, and the battle system is quick and intuitive.  It was obvious that a great deal of effort was made to ensure the player was entertained by the gameplay.

The plot was good for the most part.  You start off on this resort planet, which gets attacked by aliens (aliens are always cool).  So you take an escape pod from them and land on a medieval planet.  After doing some cool stuff you escape the planet and get shot down by the same aliens to crash land on ANOTHER medieval planet, where most of the game takes place.

They did a good job, in that the planet had its own plots and sub-plots.  It was quite obvious you were in a completely different world from the sci-fi one you started.  It could have been a game of its own, which is really the problem.  The entire plot of the game is basically put on hold while you’re wandering this medieval world.  Sure, you’re fighting monsters and meeting new people, but in the back of your mind, all you’re thinking about it, “Who were the aliens?  Why are they hunting me?  What happened to the rest of my family?”  And you have to play for hours and hours before you get any clues whatsoever.

Finally, as disk two begins, you escape the planet.  But the escape is short-lived.  After about five minutes you go back.  Your entire experience with the expansive sci-fi world in the game is limited to a couple ships and a couple dungeons.  The game’s intro paints beautiful scenes of a futuristic Earth and amazing technology, and so very little of that is experienced.  I would have been happy with being able to visit just one of Earth’s cities (like New York, which was shown in the intro).

Really, a minor re-write could have likely taken out all of the sci-fi elements without really changing the game, and that’s disappointing.  Add to that that the ending doesn’t even really make sense, and it just adds to how the whole experience just fell short.

After finishing that, I finally popped Wild Arms 3 in.  I played through most of the game TWICE before, but never finished it.  Its an amazing game, excelling in all areas, and yet for whatever reason, I keep getting distracted.  So, seeing Wild Arms 5 in the store, I figure its time for me to get my butt in gear and catch up.

But for now… still at work.

Zel-kun out.

 First off, sorry for lack of updates.  I’ll explain myself later, I promise!

Went to the Moon Festival in Chinatown today.  Didn’t do a whole lot of festival specific activities.  We mainly walked about and bought various Chinese candies and trinkets.  And I found a VERY nice katana, wakizashi, and tanto set for only $50.  Though I should question the authenticity of Japanese swords sold in Chinatown…

There was a stage set up where music was playing, but by the time things were really getting started, we had already been there for five hours.  And if you know me, five hours on my feet on a weekend is a pretty good day.  It was still fun, and I got to see a couple of Chinese kids practicing martial arts.  I’ve seen martial arts countless times on TV, but to actually see the motions and stances in person was quite breathtaking.  I probably could have stood and watched for hours.

We had a guest with us, Zai’s friend’s daughter Stephanie.  She may very well be the most intelligent twelve-year-old kid I’ve ever met.  On getting in the car, she asks me if I’ve played BioShock yet (sadly no, sorry Pete, I swear I’ll get it soon), which stunned me because its not the sort of game I’d expect a little girl to be into.  Then she goes on to say, “When I heard it was some people from the 40’s who went under the sea in an attempt to build a Utopian society, I knew it would have to be very interesting.”

Ehwa?

On top of that, when we went for Chinese food, ate with chopsticks, tried some of my eel sushi (it was called a Yummy Yummy Roll, I kid you not), and even tried the wasabi.  I asked Zai if we could keep her.

So I got home, set up my sword set (complete with stand) and began to work on her laptop because I am, after all, the friendly neighborhood IT guy.  We’re about to drop the kid off and get some carne asada as a reward for taking her out for the day.

Woo!

Zel-kun out.

This week I have been selected to help with a retail project, upgrading a number of stores to Windows XP.  While I know it seems almost outdated as all new computers are coming with Vista, it seems to be the norm.  Most companies I have worked for have a standard Windows 2000 image.

This isn’t a bad thing.  Windows 2000 works fine for most business applications, especially if the company in question has proprietary software designed for 2000.  So if it works, there’s no reason to pay for a new OS and then pay more to have people install it.

I’ve been waking up at 4:30am to be out on the road by 5:00am to get to work at 6:00am.  It has always been difficult for me to wake up while it’s still dark out.  My body refuses to acknowledge that I actually want to get up and move around while there’s still perfectly good sleeping hours left.

I even arrive at work while it’s still dark, having to use my security card to enter the building and activate the elevators.  I arrive in my office in time to see the first rays of the sun peek over the distant horizon, just north of downtown, so even from thirty miles away, the skyscrapers are clearly visable in stark silhouette.

We gather up our things and leave.  About a block away, I realize that I forgot a can of air, which is sitting right there on my desk where I thought I wouldn’t forget it.  So I run back into the building and back onto the elevator.  Its about 7:00 now and I’m in an elevator full of people.  I impatiently wait for the elevator to get to the eleventh floor, already running a few minutes behind schedule.  Ninth floor, it opens and some people get off.  Tenth floor, eleventh floor, and nothing happens.  The doors sit there, the ‘11′ in red lights mocking me.  I hit the ‘Door Open’ button with no response.  The elevator is broken again.

Great.

After a long moment, the doors open, except it’s not the eleventh floor before me, its the tenth.  The light still says ‘11′.  Great, the elevator lost count of the floors.  The doors close and it goes to the twelfth floor, where the rest of the people were going to get off.  Luckily for me, it thinks the eleventh floor is the twelfth floor, so I can get off.  Unfortunately, the workers from the twelfth floor (call center), don’t have security access to the other floors, and have to take the stairs.

I run to my desk, grab the air, and run back to the elevators.  I summon an elevator and I hear *ding* on the floor below me.  I press again, and again the elevator opens on the floor below me.  Great.  I then run down eleven flights of stairs, because I was already running late enough.

And I can’t help but wonder what would happen if I went to the fourteenth (top) floor.  Would is crash through the ceiling?  Go to the first floor?  Who knows.

Anyhow, glad to no longer be working the early shift.  Even though it was nice to be home by 4:30, with enough time to catch the elote street vendor.

Zel-kun out.

Yeah, I know it was yesterday.  I didn’t forget, honestly couldn’t forget with all the documentaries about it playing on the History Channel all week.

Not sure what I can say about it that hasn’t already been said on news sites and blogs across the world.  It was a horrible event that was entirely targetted at civilians.  Men and women, going off to work and live their lives as they had any other day, snuffed out.

For a brief period afterwards, the people of America were united in their grief.  A flag flew on every home and a good deal of cars.  We looked to our president for answers, for guidance, for a reason to why it happened.  We went to war, because he said they needed to pay for their crimes.  We’ve been at war ever since, in Afganistan and Iraq, metering out our own brand of justice.

Maybe war was unavoidable, I will admit that I wanted someone to pay for what happened.  But when I think that we’ve been at war with Iraq for five years, and that there’s children there that now know nothing aside from war, its almost as if we’re breeding the hate we set out to quell.

Do I believe we should pull out of the war?  Ironically enough, no.  I wish we never went there and I want the troops home safely, but the fact of the matter is that if we pull out now, the country has a good chance of collapsing in on itself.  And that wouldn’t be good for anyone.

Well, nothing more to say on that.

Zel-kun out.

Saturday started out pretty good.  I woke up around 8:00am, and played some Star Ocean, finally catching up to my old save file from when I initially stopped playing it a year ago.  Zai woke up and suggested we go to breakfast.  Breakfast is always a good idea, so we hoofed it to Las Esparanza’s, a little Mexican place just downstairs.  It takes us a whole minute to get there.

I sat there looking at my chorizo gordita, which looked a lot bigger on the menu, and decided that that night, I wanted to go to the Grande Lux cafe downtown.  They have a buffalo chicken sandwich there that’s as big as my head.  Zai, always willing to go downtown, thinks this is a wonderful idea.

At about 3:00pm, she begins getting ready, and I wait patiently, playing more Star Ocean.  I figure once she’s done I can start getting ready.  I’m pretty hungry at this point, breakfast was tiny and I skipped lunch in anticipation for buffalo chicken nirvanna.

Then it happens.  She starts calling for me in the kitchen, “I need your help!”

I go there and she’s standing there on one foot, “I stepped on a piece of glass, help me to the couch.”

I comply, sitting her on the couch, then sitting down myself to take a look at it.  I made a very big mistake.

Hell hath no fury like a woman with a shard of glass in her foot.  She yelled at me to get tweezers, then yelled at me when I asked where they are.  I decided to just keep my mouth shut and offer whatever assistance I could.

The assistance I could offer was apparently breaking the part of the glass outside her foot off while she screamed in pain, so she had a nice little piece dug deep into her heel.  I suggest going to the hospital to get it professionally removed.  She was not fond of the suggestion.  She recommended that I continue to poke around in her foot, regardless of how much she cried and screamed.

I finally convince her that she needs to go to the hospital.  I ask her what hospital she goes to, and she says she’s never been to one.  I then ask where the nearest hospital is, and she doesn’t know.  So we end up calling her mother up so she can drive us to the hosptial.  All the while, Zai trying to rationalize not going to the hospital.

“Maybe it will just fall out.”

For those curious, the hospital is about ten miles away, and I pass it on I-290 on the way to work.

So we go to triage, and sit and wait.  Hospitals have always given me a queasy feeling, and even moreso now that I’m older.  I can’t help but look at any number of people sitting near me and think, “they might be dying, they may walk right into that room with the doctor to get some very bad news.”  That notion just does not sit well with me.

You may end up in the graveyard, but the process of dying usually begins in the hospital.

I see a man missing most of his teeth walk up to the counter.  After him was a lady carrying a plastic shopping bag full of at least a dozen pill bottles.  An old woman in a wheelchair sat in front of me in a hospital gown, eating a well past its prime banana, its peel far more brown than yellow.

Finally, we’re called by the nurse, who leads us into a room with three hospital beds divided by curtains.  We sit and wait, Zai continuing to make up excuses why she should just leave.  Incredibly scared of getting a shot in her foot.  I tell her firmly to sit down, that she is going to get the glass taken out of her foot.

Finally, after an hour (its 5:30 now, we got to the hospital about 4:30) a doctor asks Zai her last name.  We are then informed we’re not in the system.  So we’re entered into the system, and now we OFFICIALLY begin waiting.

At 6:30, the doctor finally arrives, pokes at Zai’s foot and says, “Yeah, there’s glass in there.”

Thank you, Doctor.

So another half-hour passes, the nurse brings a tray of medical implements including a syringe, scalpel, and what looks like a tiny triangular spade.  The doctor fills the syringe with anesthetic, and Zai begins whimpering.  The doctor warns her not to move her foot, and instructs me to hold her down.

Ehwa?

So, I hold her down, which was a good thing because she would have likely kicked the doctor in the face.  After giving her the shot, the doctor took the mini-spade and dug the piece of glass out, a nice small bloody hooked piece of shrapnel.

The doctor bandaged her up, and a nurse came by to give her a tetanus booster.  Then we waited to be released.  It was 7:40pm when I finally had enough and we just walked out.  What can I say, I was starving.  The doctor caught us and gave us the release papers, and a small lecture on coming back if it turns red, swollen, or begins to leak pus.

Nice.

So, finally, at 8:30, we return home with Quiznos subs to relax with some anime.  It was a fun day.

Oh, and Zai’s sister, being the budding artist that she is, has provided this artistic interpretation of the day’s events:

Free speech… its always been what seperates us from the more un-enlightened… a true bit of freedom.  And yet, there’s people who would take that freedom away.

I’ve always been opposed to censorship.  If you don’t like what I have to say, then you don’t have to listen.  I’m not prying your eyeballs open and forcing you to read what I write.  Nor am I sitting outside your window with a bullhorn reciting Tales of Retail.

Besides, words and ideas only have the power that you give them.

And now, a man who I am vaguely familiar with is having his freedom of speech imperiled.

Mario G Nitrini

If you visit Perrero, you may know him as that guy that talks CONSTANTLY about the O.J. Simpson case, and always signs his name twice.  I’m not his biggest fan (don’t find O.J. interesting in the least), and I tend to skim through his posts.  But if he finds the controversy behind the case exciting, even after years, then more power to him.

In the past few months, along with commenting for Perrero, he has also been contributing.  And apparently someone out there doesn’t like that.

“Well, as you may not have noticed since the changes were retrospective,  a strongly worded legal-type letter has caused a redaction of some old Mario posts.”

- David N. Scott

So many posts of Mario’s were either altered or deleted altogether.  I don’t blame Dave in the least, he’s in no better position than I to fight lawyers, that would be an awful lot of money.  Though it is sad that justice can be bought… didn’t I talk about that at some point in the past?  I’m sure I have.

Regardless, this is wrong, and freedom has been cast aside by those folk known as lawyers.  I hope there can be some kind of peaceable resolution this whole thing, but somehow I doubt it.

And Mario, you keep at it.  Its your right to say whatever you believe.

Zel-kun out.

Labor Day Weekend.

Nothing quite like three days off.  Especially since I was actually able to relax this time.  I spent Saturday doing as little as possible (mainly playing Castlevania: Curse of Darkness), and Sunday having a nice dinner at my mother’s house.  Labor day I spent playing Star Ocean, an RPG I’ve had sitting on my shelf for ages, and I’m almost at the part I was before I put the thing down in the first place.

And, for the first time in ages, I sat down and watched some anime.  It was an interesting little series entitled Chevalier d’Eon (I had to look up how to spell that).  It definitely gets points for creativity.  Unlike 99.9% of anime (pulled that number out of my Astounding Statistic Synthesizer), it does not take place in Japan or China.  No, it takes place in France, not long before the French Revolution (the time of Louis XV).  Its also very well-studied, the names and places, even most of the characters, are historically accurate (with a few liberties taken to make the story interesting, of course).

The anime details the story of D’Eon Beaumont, a Dragoon and member of the King’s secret police, as he attempts to unravel the mystery behind his sister’s murder.  It is a story of political intrigue, swordfights, with some sorcery thrown in for good measure.  The characters are interesting, and the plot is involving, the series succeeds in almost every way.

Sorta-Spoiler (you find this out in the end of the first episode):

There is a completely unnessessary aspect of the series: his sister’s soul is trapped inside him.  So, whenever he gets in a fight, she takes over, and slices the enemy up, all the while the camera-work making him look like a woman.  The whole thing seems detrimental not only to the character of D’Eon, but to the series as well.  Luckily, this aspect isn’t used very often.  And who knows, maybe it’ll evolve into something interesting, I’m only on episode four.

I can’t really hold that against the series, though, considering the life of the historical D’Eon Beaumont.

So, I’ll see how that goes.

Zel-kun out.