shadowstar's Journal

Hal's dad has a name, and it is Huey! (Well, okay, I'm guessing it's Hal's dad, but seriously, why would they use the same voice actor, in a science-y role, if it weren't? I mean, this series has actually gone and done the trick of making us think, oh, yeah, Master Miller and Liquid Snake share a voice actor because they're too cheap-- WAIT WTF YOU MEANT IT? So I'd be really surprised if Huey wasn't Hal's dad.)

So, just one question: Does Kojima have a book of bad English baby names or something?

Huey. LOL. Now we know why he named his kid after a computer. He was named after a duck. LOL.

I re-read one of the books I read when I was a kid, and... wow, it was so "short." I've read fanfics longer. I've... written longer fanfics. I'm sure it took me a week to get through when I was a kid, and now, 2 hours. The book felt way more epic when I was a kid. Now it felt like so much was glossed over and things were just rushed past... is it because I read faster that the book felt so hollow, or is it because I've read so much more in general? Or is it the ultimate disappointment that is ship-breaking, since I've found out that the characters I thought would end up together... didn't?

I kind of feel bad. If I bought books like I read stories, I'd be on my way to my dad's library, and (given the cost of books these days) I'd probably be broke. Mind you, with no bookstores near me in SoCal, I'd probably be fine-- I can't buy books en masse from Amazon! I'd feel like a nutcase! (Somehow, I'd feel like less of one if I were buying them from Chapters or WHS or something.)

I wish I could write as fast as I can read. Or even a little faster, because 50K words takes me months to write. Although, I'll grant that I can write 10K in a night without much problem.

Maybe I should go play Batman some more!

Aww! No fair. Peak shooting star time, and it's CLOUDY in CALIFORNIA.

Doubleyou. Tee. Eff.

Okay. So. It's two years since I was on LiveJournal starting tomorrow. They haven't done anything really stupid to piss me off in about a year. The communities here haven't even pretended to take off. I think I may go back to LJ.

Merlin: Awesome, or awesomest?

I'm hooked! :D Those who complain about it not conforming to history, shut the hell up, it's Arthurian LEGEND not Arthurian history, ya weirdos. Plus it's got Arthur Stewart-Head, the guy from Buffy. I wonder if it's bad that I recognized his name and none of the others? Apparently some of the others are somewhat known...

But why do they keep talking about magic (which is illegal) when the doors are open?

They "borrowed" off of Smallville for it, apparently, but so far I haven't felt like I'm dealing with the Kryptonite Monster Of The Day, so hopefully it'll last for me a little longer than Smallville did. (Man, that show started out fun but got boring so fast... and yet some people loved it forever! Just like the X-Files, really... I stopped having interest in it when a lot of others got on board, just because I'd seen it all already by that time...)

Glad Hulu told me about this show, though I wish they'd just put the whole series out since it's already been played in the UK for a while. I know, I know, NBC wants to try to get its ratings, but it isn't getting mine anyways...

Megabyte is DEAD? Since 2006???

And so it Baloo from TaleSpin (and other stuff).

WTF?

Remember that "wanna feel old site"? I think they should have "a bunch of the cartoons your remember from childhood are cast by now-mostly-dead actors" as part of it.

Really. Megabyte? Shere Khan, Death, Mason, Chairface Chippendale, Dr. Lipschitz... wow. Wow.

Well, I guess that kills all my hopes for Reboot having another chance because some other network decided they loved Mainframe, Inc.

*thinks after a while* You know, maybe I did know this before and had forgotten that Megabyte was dead... It's still sad though.

My Roomba was kind of not working. I could probably have found a battery somewhere, but I wasn't sure if it'd work, and Big Lots had a newer model (the 500 series) available for 150$, so I bought it. Yay! Now I once again have a working Roomba. It seems the software's been upgraded; it doesn't seem to be having the same troubles of getting stuck under the couch that it used to. (Every time I turned it on, the old Roomba would somehow find it's way under the futon and then not get back out. It would make it's little sad "I'm stuck, help me" cry, which was fine, but meant I couldn't turn it on and go to work. It did try to climb up my piano stand, though. Huh. Still, better there than under the futon where it's hard to find it.

It's also much quieter-- the last time I had the other one on, it was very noisy. Seems to be a bit faster on the "brushes need cleaning" side, but maybe that's just because the old one didn't care if it wasn't picking anything up. This one comes on and tells you. ... Yes, it talks. I wish it didn't, it doesn't feel as much like a pet when it talks. ;)

Someone seems to have stolen one of my lighthouses, though. That's sad. :( Ah well, I guess I don't care enough to go to BL's and complain about it.

I'll have to find out where to throw out the battery from the old one... or do I need to throw the whole thing out somewhere special...? I don't know yet.

Awesome fun! Not much to say because the game media will, of course, cover it far better. And good for them, 'cause I'm tired after one day!

So!

Wii Motion Plus. It's not as good as Nintendo say, and there is no one to one there, but it's still fun to play the games. Of course, I thought that about the waggle stuff, too. You're just, you know, pretending it's one to one. SMB for the Wii was fun too. Of course, no one outside the press can see the oether two at the conference right now.

Arkham Asylum was pretty cool. There were some strange graphics, though-- Batman looks awesome, but you look at the guards close up and they look... wrong. Or, they have this really awesome looking street scene, but there's this badly polygoned curve just staring your in the face. Gah! But it's a good game, or at least, what we played of it was.

There were way too many rock band demos, though. I mean, I had fun getting a Zindagi band together to do "Song 2" at Lego Rock Band, but... well, yeah, just too many Rock Bands. There was an "Abbey Road" "building" thing for the Beatles Rock Band edition though. The outside of it looked interesting, though I never went in.

It was also a lot of fun to see some of the people who'd gone to other companies.

White Knight... hmm, I don't know. It's nice, but I found the controls were strange. Maybe it's because I haven't played a JRPG in forever? (Well, I mean, other than Valkyria Chronicles.)

There were a bunch of strange games that clearly weren't targetted at anyone I know. And we did pass by Sony's Hannah Montana (or however you spell it) lilac PSP. I wonder if anyone played that game at E3... I mean, there's certainly a target market for it and all, but I don't think anyone at E3 cares, unless it's maybe other makers of things for that group... Ah well, I guess even those kinds of games have to show somewhere.

Not sure there's much else to say. I tried a few other games, but nothing particularly memorable.

Donatello / Sophia

Naysayers call it a mild dementia, but the truth is that you're the smartest and most technical-minded of the Golden Girls. You construct diverse gadgets to help your friends fight crime and to help you go to the bathroom. You're the inventor, the hacker, the engineer, and the combat medic of 6151 Richmond St. You also show the most kindness, though it's hidden deep under your Sicilian cynicism. You're no slouch when it comes to fighting, either. Your bo is a formidable weapon.

Awesome, guys. Just awesome. Now, the morality choices at the beginning were stupid. But the ones nearer the end... wow! Great job with them. Now, it was all standard comic book / game story, of course, but the ending was also really well done. Despite the fact that I guessed the big reveal before the first boss fight (well, not all of it, the time travel part wasn't quite what I'd been expecting), it was well done enough to keep me on my toes trying to figure out how it could be that I wasn't wrong. Because I knew I wasn't, there was too much obvious... foreshadowing? is that the right word?... for that (note to your authors, might want to hold back just a little... but then, maybe most people didn't figure it out until they were told. Even though it totally felt like, "hey, guess what, you're _______" while I was playing it...)

I think you left a few loose ends, though. What was up with Sasha? You had her mind controlly voice show up near the end but didn't do anything with it. Huh? Also, I think Cole's an idiot, and you didn't make me like Trish enough for it to be a really good scene. I liked her a little, so it was bothersome in that damn-I-know-I'm-supposed-to-be-upset-here way, but I didn't like her enough to be really mad. Now, I did like Zeke, though, which is why "Cole's an idiot." I mean, how in the world would it have helped anything at the prison? He'd just have had a dead best friend. And then, for Cole not to predict calling him to go up to the tower would be disasterous, yeah, DUH, moron-- after you kept going on about him not having powers and him continually complaining that you're treating him as useless because of it...? Bringing him to the tower was a really stupid thing. I didn't quite understand why he needed to be there anyways, all deus ex machina like. (I do understand the whole blaming him for what happened thing at the end, though I hope he can get over it since it wasn't Zeke's fault.)

Still, it brought about that not-happy ending, so I'm cool with it. I wonder what was going on over there when Kessler and Zeke were together though? I mean, Zeke wanted super powers, right, so did he get them? Or was Kessler just getting Zeke away for informational purposes?

I already want to play it again. Evil this time. Oh yes. Although, I don't quite know why he'd be evil starting out, since as I said, the moral choices presented at the beginning were... pretty clear, and since he wasn't supposed to be a bad kind of person before, I don't see how he'd just suddenly become one. Also, some of them seemed more like neutral choices rather than evil, as it were... standing back and not helping someone isn't... you know, supervillain worthy or anything. It's not good by any stretch of the imagination, but evil? I don't think watching a firefight instead of getting involved is going to make anyone think of someone as a particularly bad person-- maybe it's because if you were playing as evil, you start out with the terrorist thing anyways, so it alters people's perceptions? Yeah, I dunno. Anyways, it was only in the last two major choices that I felt myself truly swayed by the "evil" choice.

I guess everyone's a hero, in their own not-that-heroic way?

Good bye, K. It was nice to work with you. Awww.

Mm. E3 pass. I will be going on Wednesday. Anything someone wants me to look at?

I appreciate you!

My internet went down yesterday because of a hardware problem. It is back up today. And the cable guys are all, "yeah, we could do that too..." but then, why didn't you when I did have problems, huh? Schedule an appointment for the end of the week? Humbug! Yeah! I'd rather potentially pay for a service call than go the weekend without the net :D (Or... you know, go the weekend mooching the net off of the apartment complex.)

Also, thank you google, for still being my number one ping spot. 209.85.171.99 FTW.

Lessons learned:

1. Two people are required for crostoli. Little, thin bits of pressed dough begin to dry out immediately. The time it takes to walk over, pick up a few pieces, cook them, and sugar them is the time it takes a few more pieces to dry. Oh yes.
2. Don't do exercise the day before. If you know you're going to be making pasta, let that be the exercise for the whole week. Post-weight lifting burn is awesome, but does not go well with making pasta.
3. Do not let pasta dough dry out. Or, maybe don't let it freeze. I'm not entirely sure which mine did. An egg and some flour later, it was okay, but shiiiiit, even with that it was hard getting it through the machine for a while.
4. Your pasta maker is not necessarily the same as my pasta maker.
4a. My pasta maker works best if the dough is cut in eighths or sixteenths. That actually works quite well for it. Probably because its largest setting isn't that big.
5. Sugar is awesome. Okay, no, I already knew that, but I wanted to mention it. Mmm. Powdered sugar.
6. Two people are required for making pasta. I suppose that it can be hacked around by not putting much pasta in the machine, see 4a, but... yeah, it's much easier when you don't have to worry about it all clumping up at the bottom or tearing at the top while you're making it. Perhaps a motor would substitute...
7. Clamping your pasta maker to something that can move is better than not clamping it to anything, but... lacks in lateral stability. I guessed that before, but I didn't have much choice.
8. You know, powdered sugar on anything deep fried is delicious. But... mmmmmm... it's even better on thin wafers of delicious pasta dough.
9. VITAMIX DOES NOT MAKE PASTA DOUGH. No it does not. Others say they've made pasta dough with it, and I can only assume they're lying. Pasta dough is heavy. Pasta dough just gets stuck under the blades. It does not form a ball. It just sits there and tries to damage the machine. It doesn't even mix, for goodness' sake... Vitamix makes flour, not dough.

All this leads me to

10. NO WAY CAN I MAKE A PROPER LASAGNA IN THIS KITCHEN, ALONE, WITH THIS EQUIPMENT. NO WAY.

and

11. Should I try anyways? I mean, they did get done, and they are tasty, and it'd be cool to make a lasagna, even if it's not as awesome as one we'd make at home...

Total cooking time: 1 hour dough prep, 1.5 hours fixup and rolling dough, .5 hours cooking. And let's call it fifteen minutes cleaning up...

Damn it, why are my eyes watering... did I get something in them? That'd be just great...

They delivered my pasta maker on Saturday, after Amazon said it wouldn't be delivered until today, which is good, but they DON'T BOTHER KNOCKING ON MY FRIKKIN' DOOR!?

I was home, ya jerks! So now, my package is sitting in the office and it'll be annoying to have to get it. Maybe I'll do it tomorrow sometime near lunch, although that's always a hassle because I never know when the office staff are going for lunch...

I just had this crazy dream where aliens (or something) attacked LA, and for some reason, the decision was made to go to an even smaller town than Camarillo to avoid them. (Obviously a logic flaw-- if everyone moved to Bakersfield, it'd be big, right?) I didn't get so far as the highway, just spent my time locking doors. I woke up before we got in the car. And I'm not entirely sure where I was, maybe camping or something? I was at this cabin-like thing which didn't really have enough doors to close. I suppose that's why whoever I was visiting hadn't bothered locking up. I was all for staying, but no one else wanted to.

I was talking about how aliens weren't real, then pointed out some strange movements in the sky which suddenly got more complicated, and then there was a comet-like crash and an earthquake-like shock that freaked everyone out, and we all agreed a comet had just hit LA (why a comet and not a meteorite?)... and then another comet hit LA, which freaked everyone out... it was strange.

Oh, and there was cake. Moist, delicious cake. But no one wanted to take the cake with us. I think I called people stupid for that, I mean, it's the end of the world or something, and there's cake, but you're going to leave it there for the aliens? That's just dumb, right? I still don't know why no one wanted to take the cake. It had one of those plastic cases and everything. Maybe it was just a really crappy cake. People were concerned about the silliest things, too-- "no, we don't want to take the cake, but we'd better lock the doors to keep the vermin out of the house." Um, okay?

I wouldn't even call it a nightmare, except that I woke up based on it. You don't generally wake up in the middle of "dreams," so it must have been a nightmare. Strange, though.

Ah, well. I, for one, would have welcomed our new alien overlords.

Yes, I saw it tonight. I know. I know. Star Trek movie whose trailers sound like Star Wars. And not just any Star Wars, but Star Wars prequels. But you know what? It was worth it.

It really was Star Trek. Okay, yes, it was updated, but there were enough references that it felt like Star Trek. No, there was no Gary, but hell if they didn't put Pike in a wheelchair. They were all awesome. I hope that this IS still the odd movie curse, because just imagine how awesome the second movie will be if it is...! My only complaint was that there was just that smidgeon too much emphasis on Spock and Kirk which to the detriment of the rest of the cast.

McCoy was... was channeling Deforest Kelley or something, just spot on.
Kirk was great.
Spock was great.
Scotty was OMG WTF WHY DIDN'T HE HAVE MORE TO DO!?
Chekov was pretty fabulous, though not enough "Russia invented this and that and the other thing" from him for him to really feel like Chekov. Still, he was cute, running around and figuring things out. His excited "I can do that!" was uber-cute and funny.
Sulu... had a cool swordfight, I guess? Kind of disappointed in him. I didn't feel the Sulu charm, though I'll grant he never got that much to do in the series.
Uhura... Really, I wish she'd been a bit more than what she was, but communications has never given much. Her and Hoshi, criminally underused. I guess she was pretty?
Chapel's name was said. I think. When McCoy was trying to get some... cortisol, I think.
Nero... meh. But then, Star Trek villains have rarely made me excited. I mean, sure, there's Khan, but my favorite Star Trek movie was IV. The one about the whales, which didn't really have a bad guy. :) Hm, I should say, movie villains, because Q was kind of a villain, and he was the most awesome of awesomes.
On a really shallow note, Sarek was kind of ugly. (He seemed to love his son a lot more than he did as his old version, until the TNG eps, anyways.) I miss the real Sarek.

Canon-breakage, okay because it's alternate reality (nice way to wipe the slate clean, guys. No, I mean it, I didn't feel too pissed off about what you did with the red matter because you acknowledged that it was an alternate reality. Enterprise didn't do that, so when they did shit like blow up San Fran, it just made me feel it wasn't worthy of being Star Trek.) History reconverges to some extent, too, which is fun. Musical reminiscence was expected, but enjoyed, though I kind of would have liked a bit more of a connection.

Seriously, though. They delivered. It was awesomesauce. If I weren't such a cheapskate, I'd probably go to the theatre and watch it again. (But I am, so I won't.)

I wish this were the show so I wouldn't have to wait for a few years before the next one.

Not too far from us, either, though it only lasted maybe half a second.

Hm. Recorded as 4.4 now. Kind of neat to watch the earthquake report information.

Bouncy's good after an earthquake for mood, doncha think?

You gave me a few golden television memories, so, goodbye, Dorothy.

Huh. She died one year after her "mother" on the show.