Thursday, May 27, 2004

Let's Do the Time Warp Again

	Well, I haven't done a real update in a while. . . . So let's go back and take a look at the past week or so in the life of Drake Desbreko, shall we? Some interesting stuff happened, and I figure I might as well sum it all up in one post. Easier for everybody that way. (Warning: Extremely long post ahead). Friday, May 21, 2004 I was a bit nervous when I got up; it was my last day of school, and I'd be taking my two-hour algebra final from 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM. I made sure to get up and get ready plenty early to make sure I caught the bus on time -- it wouldn't do to miss my final and instantly lose 1/5 of my grade. That would just plain suck. I would've still gotten a B, but still . . . that would suck. So I got dressed, had my morning coffee, put on my suave "Chrono Trigger blue" Hawaiian overshirt -- a name I started using for a certain blend of blues after making this banner -- and my Kick-Ass Shades (© 2003 Drake Desbreko), and went out to school. Now, normally, I'd have an hour free before class during which time I'd hang out with friends in the cafeteria, but this was the last day of finals week. So, 1) there'd probably not be anyone there, and 2) my final was two hours long and started at 12:00 PM instead of 1:00 PM. Straight to class I went. Overall, the final went pretty well. There were two word problems that I really had no clue about how to set up an equation to solve them, but yet, I prevailed. (Or at least I think I did -- I haven't gotten my grade yet). Since it was a multiple choice final, I just started with the answer that looked right and plugged that value into what the problem was and checked to see if it equaled out. It's hard to explain without an example, but yeah, I'm pretty sure I ended up with the right answers. And I'm also pretty sure I got an A on it. After I got home from the final, I decided to play Zelda: The Wind Waker. I've already made a previous post about that, which is the second one below this, so just take a look at that if you want details. That evening I went to the Friday night Bible study that my youthgroup has (almost) every week, like usual, and ended up having a friend over to spend the night afterwards. We mostly played multiplayer in 007 NightFire on my new PS2, which was a lot of fun. (And I still haven't gotten tired of saying "my new PS2," heh). On one setup, we were playing 2 vs. 2 team arena, me and him against two bots on the Skyrail level with sniper weapons, which was probably the most fun. At one point, we had both of the bots pinned down in the cabin at the bottom of the hill. I was sitting about halfway up the hill with a Winter Tactical Sniper rifle, and he was controlling one of the little mini-choppers, flying around outside the cabin. (His character was all the way up at the top of the hill, controlling the chopper). Whenever one of the bots would try and make a run from the cabin, I'd either pop it with my sniper rifle before it could get a shot off, or my friend would mow it down with the chopper's machine gun. Great fun . . . but it ended when the bots started spawning in up at the top of the hill instead of down by the cabin. Then my friend, still up there but controlling the chopper, got slaughtered because he couldn't see what was hitting him, heh. Saturday, May 22, 2004 Now, I say May 22, and it technically was, but this was still more night than morning. We stayed up so late that it became early, heh. Like, 5:00 AM, early. (Which, coincidentally, is actually an hour earlier than it is right now as I type this. Looks like there'll be no sleep for me). Fun. Anyway, I showed my friend this website that one of my brothers showed me: Realultimatepower.net. It's "The Official Ninja Webpage," and it's devoted to ninjas flipping out and killing people. Because, as we all know, the purpose of the ninja is to flip out and kill people, right? . . . Right? Um . . . yeah. Moving right along, we watched the Super Mario Bros. movie after that. Yes, I actually own the Super Mario Bros. movie on DVD. I'm pathetic, aren't I? Ironically, though, we watched it in my room on my new PS2. (There's that phrase again!) Kind of weird to be watching a movie based on a Nintendo game using a Sony game system, heh. (Sort of like when I first got my Zelda: Ocarina of Time soundtrack and I listening to it using my brother's PS1). Myself, I managed to stay away through the whole movie, but my friend made the mistake of laying down while watching it. I'm not sure how long he lasted, but I don't think it was much more than half an hour, heh. After the movie, though, I decided I might as well get some sleep too. Not much point in being up if there's nothing to do. Later that morning and into the afternoon my friend played Discworld II: Mortality Bytes (a PS1 game I have), but there was no space left on my PS1 memory card, so he wasn't able to save his game. Which sucks -- I don't see why they couldn't have made the PS2 cards compatible with PS1 games. You can even copy PS1 saved games to PS2 cards, it's just that PS1 games just can't read PS2 cards. Argh. After my friend left, I basically just loafed about, sleeping some more in the afternoon, but the part that's worth mentioning came that night. Somehow, while doing crap on the net, I managed to get my PC infected with a ton of spyware and viruses, which thoroughly mucked up Windows. I tried to fix stuff, but since I didn't know all that much about that sort of thing, I ended up just turning my PC off that night and I decided to have my oldest brother look at it the next day. Before shutting down, however, I still managed to get through with the week's Now Playing midi. Nothing short of a complete system failure will stop Now Playing being updated, heh. Sunday, May 23, 2004 I didn't really think about it at the time, since I was busy with worries about my screwed up PC, but I ended up getting very little sleep that night. And when I got up and went to church I didn't even notice, since like always, I filled up my big, insulated, stainless steel travel mug with coffee and brought it with me to finish at church. No matter the amount of sleep I've gotten, that keeps me going till about 1:00 PM at least. After getting home from church, though, I started to feel the effects of getting little sleep over the previous two nights. I was tired and felt sick to my stomach, which really sucked because I was supposed to go over to a friend's house (the same one that had spent the night Friday) at 3:00 PM and spend the afternoon and evening with him and two friends that were (and still are, actually) in town from out of state. All four of us know each other from our early gradeschool years -- they moved away when we were in junior high, I think it was -- so we go back quite a ways, and it's nice to get together and do something whenever they're back in town visiting. To pass the time, I played some more in my minimalist game of Zelda: A Link to the Past. I made almost no progress however; if I had, I would've beaten the game. Right now I'm stuck on the end fight with Ganon, and dang is he hard when you have to use Spin Attacks just to do any damage and when getting hit four times kills you and you don't have any bottles for potions or fairies. I've gotten so I can do the first stage of the battle without getting hit, but when he starts throwing around those fire bats, I die all too quickly. Those things are near impossible to dodge when they're coming from the wrong angle. After that I played some more on my single player game in 007 NightFire. I actually ended up having to stop and leave part way through the mission I was doing because I couldn't find this stupid safe that I needed to get into. The thing blends into the rest of the surroundings way too well -- I must've spent 20 minutes hunting for that thing. I'm glad to say that, despite feeling really tired and sick to my stomach on the way over to my friend's house, the day turned out absolutely awesome. Once we started talking and catching up on things together, I pretty much just forgot about the sick feeling and fatigue. And especially when we started playing Kirby Air Ride, which my friend had apparently rented. Being "too dang good at games like this," as my friend said (I think that's close to an exact quote), I won six out of eight races, heh. It's a pretty simple game -- I mean, heck, it uses nothing but the control stick and the A button -- but it was fun for a while. After those eight races, however, it was getting kind of old. A good rent, maybe, but it's not a game I'd buy, even if it does have tons of unlockables to try and keep you playing. So after that we played Mario Kart: Double Dash!! which I had brought with me. Most of what we played was cooperative battle mode, which is a lot of fun when you and your partner get to know how each other work. I did most of the driving, with one of the visiting friends in back using items, and though we were mainly losing for the first few matches, once we got used to our rolls we started winning every time. We also played some Super Smash Bros. Melee after getting done with MKDD, and despite my ranting -- and there was plenty of it -- they turned on the auto-handicap option. Now, I made a prediction about that, and it came true almost down to the letter: After my player's handicap got down to 2 (I'm the only one out of us four that owns the game, so obviously I'm a lot better than they are), I got dead last in the next match. Then I didn't get last in the match after that, after my handicap went up to 3 for the next match, but I didn't get first, either. Then I got first in the match after that, after my handicap went up yet another level. Then finally -- and this is the only part of my prediction that didn't happen exactly as I said it would -- my handicap dropped back down again because I got first, but in the next match I only tied for last place after fighting dang hard. So I didn't get dead last again as I predicted, but pretty dang close, heh. If you can't tell, I really dislike the auto-handicap system in SSBM. It pretty much just makes me have absolutely no chance at winning for 2/3 of the matches. Like in one of the matches, I had gotten my friend to over 400%, and Roy's side smash attack sent him flying all of five feet. I didn't get a single KO that match. I did a buttload of damage, but I just couldn't knock anyone far enough to KO them. Ugh. Anyway, after that it was time for dinner, which was also cool. My friend's mom got a big . . . I guess you'd call it a tub . . . of fried chicken from the supermarket, and we just sat around eating chicken and talking for a while. And what could be better than sitting around with three of your best friends and talking, eating, and betting on which of four CPU players in SSBM will win the match? (One of the visiting friends won, betting on Link, though I was second, betting on Ganondorf. Should've known, I guess; Link always wins, heh). Nothing that I know of can top that. ~_^ Next came my favorite part of the entire day: I had brought both my GBA and GBA SP, plus my two GCN-GBA link cables, and my friend had his GBA and his dad's GBA SP along with two cables of his own, so we all got ourselves plugged in and ready for a game of Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles. Right, so, eight words: DANG IS THAT GAME AWESOME WITH FOUR PLAYERS! I had thought playing with two was fun, but there's just no comparison to playing with four. Even though the visiting friends had never played before (though I have to say, they did pretty good for not having any previous experience with the game), we managed to work together pretty well. And though they died a few times each -- which was to be expected, since they were using new characters for fighting second cycle enemies -- we were never all dead at the same time, so we never got game over. Though, I can't help but mention that this was partly due to my expert handling of the Cure spells, heh. Whenever we play FFCC, I'm always the one that keeps the Cure Magicite; after all, white magic is my specialty. If we're able to all get together again before the visiting friends have to leave this Saturday, I'm hoping to try out some of the later dungeons after we upgrade our equipment. Even if enemies are stronger with more players, having more people definitely helps. Especially on that big orc boss in the mines. The more people you can have surrounding him, the more damage you'll be doing, since he can only attack one person at a time. Though of course, you'll need an expert healer (~_^) that's able to track everyone's life levels and coordinate group healings (having people gather together to all be healed by the same cure spell, then splitting before they can be hit by an attack from the boss) in order to keep everyone alive. And this is besides running madly about, dodging attacks from the boss and the smaller enemies that periodically spawn and join the fight, trying to stay in the circle of the chalice so as not to be hurt by the miasma, and also throwing in an attack or two in between cure spells. All in all, playing the healer in FFCC is no easy task. About 10:00 PM we finally had to leave, however, so I came home. . . . Home to my virus-ridden PC. I got my oldest brother to look at it, liked I had planned, and he said I should update the reference file for Ad-aware and see if that could fix it. So I did that, and Ad-aware was able to get rid of the spyware, but funky things were still there. So my brother installs Norton Antivirus, and -- guess what? -- I had about 20 viruses. WTF, mates? ^^ So we have Norton Antivirus get rid of the viruses too, but wait! There's one file that's apparently in use, so Windows won't let us delete it. So we reboot and log on to Windows in safe mode. Well, the file is still in use, even though nothing but the bare minimum required to run Windows is running. Again, WTF, mates? ^^ So okay, we've still got something else left to do. That is, strip out all of the other crap that's starting up yet shouldn't be there. This takes at least an hour, and it's starting to get close to 3:00 AM by this point. So with that done, we reboot again, and . . . THE FILE IS STILL BEING USED! Argh! We have no idea what the heck is using this file, but he tries one last thing to try and delete it before looking for something that will force the deletion of the file even if it's being used. He boots into safe mode again, but this time using only the command prompt instead of the normal explorer shell. He goes to the directy, tries to delete the file . . . and it deletes it this time! Yes! That's it, then; problem solved, right? Everything's been stripped out, so it should work again, right? Yeah, that's what I thought, but nope, not by a long shot. Apparently the viruses did something to screw Windows up permanently. My brother's final conclusion: "[censored] it. Re-install Windows." Yes, that's right, all those hours of work were for nothing. I'm feeling pretty tired and pissed off about then, so I just turn the PC off and go to bed. Monday, May 24, 2004 The next day when I got up, I was faced with the task of backing up any files that I wanted to keep, before I reformatetd my C drive and re-installed Windows. Luckily I could still burn CD's fine, so I used three to back up dang near everything that wasn't part of Windows itself or an installed program. (I'm just thankful I have my Game Archive and Game Music folders on D drive, which together are close to 10 GB, so I didn't have to back those up). The only thing that I forgot was my collection of fonts, which are now being sorely missed. It sucks when you've got a good idea for a banner, but don't have any suitable fonts for the text. Later that evening I reformatted and drive and re-installed Windows 2000, as well as transfering all my files back from the CD's onto the hard drive. I didn't want to bother with re-installing a bunch of programs, however, so I left that for later. Tuesday, May 25 through Wednesday, May 26, 2004 These two days I spent gradually re-installing various hardware drivers, installing programs, and changing program settings back to how I had them. A very annoying process indeed. But, at least almost all of it has been taken care of. Thursday, May 27, 2004 So this brings us up to the present time: Me sitting at my PC typing this post, a fresh install of Windows running and nearly everything except my printer drivers re-installed, and my coffee mug sitting empty on a marble coaster in front of my twin monitors, having been thrice drained of its contents during the course of writing this way-too-long post. It's now 9:00 AM, and I haven't gotten any sleep yet. Goodbye.

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