Monday, July 26, 2004

FAILURE

What the hell...Kenny got the stupidiest fat guy in the entire driving department.  He did everything perfectly...up until he met the stalled car.  Anyway he comes to a four way intersection, stalled car in opposite side/lane.  So the guy is like make a right turn, so Kenny does, cept there was a car BEHIND the stalled car that sped up right as he was making his turn.  This car had come AFTER kenny to the FOUR way stop sign intersection.  Anyway the stupid fat guy was like oh you should have fucking YIELDED to that car, drops four violations and Kenny fails.  Excuse me fucker, I thought at a four way stop sign the car that comes after goes AFTER.  This isn't a fucking STACK, no last in first out shit here.

Thursday, July 22, 2004

Driving to Newburgh, Part II

wahaha.  Tomorrow is Kenny's (younger brother 1) road test, so guess who getes to wake up at like 6-7 to drive to an 8:30am test in Newburgh.  Me.  Not that I mind, considering my sleep schedule lately has been late to bed and early to rise cause I'm actually taking a 3 hour nap where my 8 hour sleep block should be.

I feel this A+ review book insults my intelligence, and yet the author does it in such a helpful way that I can't hate it.

Wednesday, July 21, 2004

End of an Era

Luminescence, my first Ragnarok guild and the one I have been in for over a year, is officially dead.  It is rather sad how we lost our core, and after that it was sort of a flimsy shell.  Well I'm in .hack now, we'll see how that turns out.
 
Formatting error
When did google put all these formatting keys in?  I'm so used to doing the crap myself, you know " " for bold, etc.  Geez I already broke the bold button on this thing, now it bolds when the button is not depressed.  I'll be sticking to manual for a bit longer if this is how things are going to turn out.
 
Fulltilt
To continue my so called gambling "training" induction, I watched Ocean's Eleven (nothing with gambling and all about theft), Rounders (nothing with theft and all about "gambling"), and started reading Bringing Down the House.  The amateur mocked in two of these three mediums?  That's me.  It was funny though how in Rounders, which I have never seen in my life, I already knew what was going to happen when I saw the first hand.  Matt Damon was going to get OWNED by pocket rockets.  There this funny theme that runs through both Rounders and Bringing Down the House, it's the insistence that "It's not gambling."  And yet it is, in two very different ways. 
 
The reason why hold'em is popular is fuckers/morons/noobs can get pocket rockets and rape your full house with a higher one of his own.  That's luck/gambling to counter the skill.  It is true that if you're playing cherries it doesn't matter how the cards fall, you're going to kill them.  But playing another pro OR EVEN a remotely skilled player...well if Teddy KGB gets pocket A's and that kind of flop, you're gone.
 
Blackjack is not gambling, not for a genius from MIT who can memorize everything and cut to a chosen card on a dime.  To turn such a percentage against the house, it means the longer you play THE more the house loses.  But it STILL is gambling, cause you're trying not to get caught.  It's not illegal to count cards, but it's still gambling, cause it's how much can you legitimately make before getting kicked out and blacklisted from that casino.

Thursday, July 08, 2004

You can't make a left from the right lane. Watch me.

Long three parter.
First part, well I met Peter's friend Al. Godamn, if only his family had moved here earlier. But yes his parents no doubt have decided to move into Spackenkill to send their brood (it's a lot of kids I forget how many) to the oh so great elementary/middle/high schools. AHAHAHAHAHAHA ok yeah. He is a damn cool guy, just a fucking horrible driver and a Linux nut (which isn't bad, it just might turn off you BSD people =D) Also he's a very good programmer I bet, which brings up the fact that PETER HAS NEVER HEARD OF A FUCKING MAKEFILE. Seriously. Fucking project maker programming apps, they make it all so layered with bullshit. Also it seems Al never gets mad. Annoyed maybe, but not mad. I couldn't say the same for his girlfriend, cause he tortured us all with his driving in that car. By the way it was to go see fireworks, which lasted 5 minutes. Which was lose, so we went to a diner (sound familiar) and ate things.

Kaze yo
Peter lent me Soul Calibur II. I unlocked everything in two days. I love Talim, and I started looking up more information on serious play. From what I'm seeing, the entire tier system is trash, because the former number one unbeatable person was Dan the Nightmare using...Nightmare. And then Aris trained VOLDO and completely schooled Dan in the world championships. So you have Nightmare, who's pretty low on the tiers, and Voldo, who's like what low-mid? as first and second in the world. Fourth is a asian french girl under 18 o.Oa who uses Xianghua and TALIM. I <3 Talim, even if she's bottom tier. Screw you tiers! But yeah I beat the entire weapon master with Talim, never switched once even for one stage. Go me. As a result I like to say I can sort of do well with her. (Hahaha what I mean to say is that I can kick the crap out of Mike and Pete with Talim...but only her. Although my button mashing Killik can get the best of Peter's Killik sometimes.)

Marvel vs...ccg?
Like near the beginning of the week Kenny was whining to go to Dragon's Den but I was tired, so Brady picked him up. I followed later. Turns out they were holding a demo session of a new ccg, Marvel vs. It was...FUN. It's creature based combat that doesn't suck cock like Yugioh but borrows from both Yugioh and Magic. (By the way yugioh is all about control now, oh no what a strategy shift...fuck that it's still a pathetically worthless game.) Anyway one thing I sort of like is there's no such thing as mana screw. You started with four cards, you draw two every turn, and every turn you can lay down ANY card in your hand face down as a resource. Think mana. Oh yeah you draw simultaneously, whose "turn" it is, is basically whose inititive it is, i.e. who attacks first. Yes the guy without inititive gets to attack after the first guy does. Anyway you have two rows for both players of characters, front row and back. You can't hit a char in the back if someone's in the front covering him, and the guy in the back can support the one in the front. All characters trample. Both players have 50 life points, and anyway combat consists of choosing which of an opponents uncovered back characters or front characters to attack. Unless you have flying/range, which lets you attack what you want. Characters don't get "killed" they get stunned, meaning flipped over. Every round at cleanup you can choose one stunned character to flip back. Oh yeah you can't attack an already stunned character and stunned characters you can't flip back up get koed/discarded. You can also only have one type of any character on the board, if you have a different version you must discard the previous one. (Unless the character has the "army" attribute, i.e. SENTINELS) You can also discard an exact version of any card on the board as an instant to add +1/+1 to the char in play. Instants are plottwists, basically remember those resources you put down? If you have a plot twist resource you can flip it face up to use it one time to add bonuses or do special things. Same with territories, cept they are usually continuous once flipped face up. Min deck is 60 cards, only 4 duplicates allow of any card unless it has army attribute, in which case unlimited.

Some thoughts. There are plenty of 20/20s or what not for like 10 resource, but the thing is the game is usually over by turn 7 BECAUSE both sides will never miss a resource drop. If you get a drop higher than your opponents, it is a VERY serious threat and can steamroll anything weaker he has. Also if any character gets stunned, the owner loses the resource cost in life points. Add this to trample damage (everyone tramples) and people can lose a LOT of life fast.

Let's use an example of Berserker Rage Wolverine. Wolverine can untap whenever he stuns a character of 3 or less resource. He's like a 15/something. Seeing as you can CHOOSE any front line characters, a wolverine vs say...a sentinel deck with all 1 resource characters...will attack a sentinel, deal 15 damage (1 resource for the sent, 14 trapmle), UNTAP, and can attack again. This way he can deal easily over 50 damage in a single turn.

I use this example because the cheesiest crap I've seen so far is of course Kevin Poncelet's Sentinel deck. These little buggers all cost one or four, can all gang up (yes gang up attacks exist, just choose a group of people to smack one guy) and can SUPPORT each other. A note about support. If you have a character in the front who gets stunned, a character in the back row DIRECTLY behind him can tap itself to prevent the trample damage. Meaning you can beat on the sentinels, Kevin will take one damage, the rest of the trample gets nullified if there's a sentinel in back of the one you attacked.

There are no sideboards, but there need to be I think. Only two things can really screw Poncelet up, flame traps (Stun all characters that cost...2 or less...or was it one...doesnt matter) and Berserker rage wolvering, who's a 7 drop. Seven is about the highest you will see in this game.

Anyway, I think it's a pretty neat game...give it a try people.

Thursday, July 01, 2004

You can't return...

Well Christ unless I get a job I don't think I can ever return to normal sleeping times. What is it, fucking 5:30am? Bloody hell I can't sleep. I can already imagine how this will rape anything (jobs, classes) I try in the morning, I mean heck I had another dentist appointment at 9:45am yesterday and it was murder. I think I passed out when I came back, plus I had to drive like I was stoned there and avoid morning traffic.

Can anyone recommend good sleeping pills (Not the kind that'll kill me), because I don't think I can keep this up.

Oh yes in RO related news Jazzy hit 99 a while ago. A pity you can't do 99% tax, all that wasted experience could be used to benefit someone like me.

Halo is weird, I think the CE clan I'm trying out for is inactive or nigh dead, and there's a really tempting offer from a retail clan. Cept noobs play retail. All the clans that matter play CE, which I admit is on the whole better. Just the GIGANTIC cutdown on pistol leading (random too on CE) hurts. Switching between the two games constantly really bites, also almost no one plays CE at 5am in the morning EST. Seriously though if retail halo could well...include the F3 (show teammates option) and make rocket hogs like CE's, it'd be essentially the same to me.

Brady took the Gamecube away again for his girlfriend...two player Wario ware what is he thinking!

Man it was pretty damn lonely with just me and my mom for the past few days...good thing my dad came back and soon Kenny returns from diff eq in Baltimore. I think in all honesty my mother is sort of right, Kenny knows when shit will make a difference, I mean he got a damn 90 on the diff eq midterm. I don't even try until like 2 hours before the test. Most likely he WILL find work before me...

Listening: L'Arc en Ciel - The Fourth Avenue Cafe
Oh yeah, Otakon scored L'arc stateside! Too bad I can't go...well I could theoretically vanish for a weekend but my parents wouldn't buy it at all. Plus preregistration is over...and godamn it I want to go. Maybe I really should, just tell my parents I'll be returning to bmore for a weekend and pay at the door.