Three till Seven

I’m hanging out at Todd’s parents’ house, where I’ve been since Friday. I took a three-day weekend this week to spend more time with Todd, since he’s leaving for an eleven-day trip to Ireland this weekend. He and Brent are going just for a vacation, and I’m so jealous because they’re going to visit all over the country and take lots of alcohol-related tours, I think including Guinness and Jameson.

I didn’t mention it last time, but I sent my Wii off to Nintendo on Monday because its disc drive doesn’t work. It’ll either not load a disc at all, or it’ll load but then crap out with an error message in the middle of a game. It did this for Wii and Gamecube discs, and I think it was due to a recent thunderstorm because my cable modem also got wiped out at the same time. The Wii is still under warranty, so it’s getting repaired free of charge; Nintendo even covered the shipping with UPS by mailing me a shipping label. The DS Lite has been very nice because I’d probably be going through withdrawal symptoms without some form of Mario in my life. :P I’m still chugging away at Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time (I’ve progressed a lot in it, actually) and Super Princess Peach, but then yesterday I bought The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass.

I had read on IGN that Phantom Hourglass is an awesome game, and so far I’ve really enjoyed it. This is only the second Zelda game I’ve ever played, the first being Twilight Princess on the Wii, and so I’m not used to seeing Link as a little boy, instead of sexy!Link in Twilight Princess. It’s neat because I get a ship that I get to route around the ocean, avoiding traps and docking at islands. One really cool DS-specific feature that’s used is the touchscreen, not just for ordinary movement and combat, but also to make notes on my maps. For example, I’ll go into a dungeon and I’ll make notes on my map about where a treasure chest is, or where I entered the dungeon, or where I’m supposed to take some key. Another cool use of the DS is with the microphone:

• There was a lady behind a door, and to get her to open the door, I had to call out to her via the mic.
• There were some candles and to solve a puzzle, I had to blow them out by blowing into the mic. That caused Link to blow them out in the game.
• I got a dusty sea map and had to blow the dust off.

I just find it really clever when a game causes me to interact like that, translating my real-life actions exactly into the game.

While I do enjoy the swordfighting in Phantom Hourglass, all this stylus waving is making me miss the Wii’s Twilight Princess because, with that, I got to wave around the Wiimote and it felt more like I was waving an actual sword. I just need to restart that game because it’s been so long since I played through the majority of it (seriously: I got down to the last area where I was going to fight the boss soon, and just got tired of playing; enough frustrating timing puzzles and discovering the Magic Armor at the very end, after I’d already absorbed all the bug-money, will do that to you). I still have my friend Chris’s copy and he’d probably like that back at some point…

So I have a job for the fall, huzzah. I’ll be working [again] at Lexmark, this time back in my old department in the commercial division. I’m excited because 1) I’ll be working in Linux again and 2) I’ll be programming in Ruby again. This new area I’ve worked in this summer has been okay, but I’ve had to work in Windows, programming Windows applications, and I’ve had to do it in Visual Studio. Gag me, please. My absolute detest of Windows and Microsoft hasn’t reduced any, and I’m anxious to get back to an operating system that doesn’t piss me off just by its existence.

This fall, I’ll be working as an AYPT student: Academic Year Part Time. That means I’ll work 15-20 hours (probably 16 for me: two eight-hour days) per week while taking a full load of classes. I’m taking a couple of non-major classes, though, so I’m hoping the class load won’t be that rough. The two non-majors are Asian philosophy (counts for a Cross Cultural requirement) and astronomy (counts for Natural Sciences).

After this fall, I’ll be left with a requirement of 7 more hours to meet the minimum number required to graduate, and of that 7, I need only one particular class: senior design for computer science. I’ll finish off my undergraduate career in spring of ‘09, probably taking more than 7 hours just to get in a few more enjoyable classes before I graduate. Then it’s on to a career for me, and repayment of my ever-increasing student loans.

Just a short note to say that I bought a Nintendo DS Lite on Monday and have been enjoying the heck out of it since. I’ve bought two games so far: Mario and Luigi Partners in Time, and Super Princess Peach. Partners in Time has been my favorite because it’s like the first two Paper Mario games in that it’s turn-based, and it’s also very cute. I’m running around with baby versions of Mario and Luigi, plus there’s a baby Peach, a baby Bowser, and a younger Toadsworth. I’m currently on Yoshi Island putting out fires by 1) letting baby Mario drink spring water, causing him to get all round and squishy, then 2) having baby Luigi whack baby Mario with a hammer, causing Mario to spit out some water onto a fire. It’s completely adorable and I’ve been enjoying spitting up everywhere.

Super Princess Peach is also enjoyable. It’s like an old-school Mario sidescroller, but Peach doesn’t die upon being touched by an enemy, which I always thought was more frustrating than enjoyable; instead, she has three hearts that diminish when she gets hit. She has different moods you can invoke that trigger different things. For example, you can make her angry and she gets so mad that a fire starts, allowing you to burn obstacles and enemies. You can make her really happy such that she flies, allowing you to gather extra goodies in the air. It’s a ridiculously girly game, what with Peach squealing and running around with her yellow parasol Percy (or is it Perry?). Percy-Perry is tougher than he looks, though: if you’re holding an enemy and duck under the parasol, the parasol “absorbs” the enemy to refuel Peach. “Absorbs,” my ass! I see Percy licking his lips after Peach stands back up; I hope she never gets on his bad side.

Holycrapholycrapholycrap! Portishead, one of my all-time favorite bands, has not released an album for eleven years. When I first stumbled across them back in high school, I bought all their albums, I bought their t-shirt, and I thought for sure I’d never see anything else from them. The lead singer, Beth Gibbons, did a solo project a few years back, I think, but it had a completely different sound from Portishead. Now, I just found that they’ve released a new album, Third, just this year. I’m previewing it now on Amazon, which is where I’m probably about to buy the MP3’s. I’m so very excited about this because I think their music is uniquely jarring (see “Cowboys”) and creepy (e.g. “Mourning Air”).

Once again, iTunes is hardly putting up a fight. I can get the album for $10.99 there and it’s not iTunes Plus, so it’s DRMed AAC’s. Whereas Amazon MP3 has it for $8.99 in DRM-free 256 kbps MP3’s. There’s an obvious choice here, and Apple needs to wise up about this competitor.