Emptyeye

Yep. I’m working my way through the campaign mode, again, and saved once in the middle of Terran Mission 9. After realizing that my previous strategy wasn’t working out (Hooray running out of minerals), I re-loaded from the save and tried a different tactic: Mass Battlecruisers. I managed to have just enough resources to make 4 Battlecruisers, which got me just enough land to grab an expansion that formerly belonged to the computer-controlled Protoss. I then lifted off my command center to the area and dropshipped my SCVs there to get more mineral collection going, made more Battlecruisers, and completed the objective.

It’s funny that most of you won’t know what I’m talking about, and those that will no doubt agree with the topic title. Oh well.

This actually came to me yesterday sometime, but oh well.

Essentially, I was thinking about the absurdity of the fact that the U.S.’s top basketball players make hundreds of times the salary of the top high school teachers, and suddenly realized that, quite frankly, the fact that Korea has Professional StarCraft Leagues is actually sane in comparison.

Yeah.

A bit of background to the title of this post: I despise the so-called “fair-weather fan”. This hatred culminated in an angry away message the morning after the New England Patriots won Super Bowl XXXVI, essentially asking everyone at my alma mater (Then called Franklin Pierce College) where their support was at the beginning of the season when the Pats were 0-2 and everyone figured their season was lost. As a result of this, I can’t really call myself a big fan of the Boston Celtics, though I liked them in my early schooling years (Ironically after their greatest success) in the later days of the Bird era.

That said, given that the choices in this year’s NBA finals were the Celtics and the Los Angeles Kobe Bryants (Formerly known as the Lakers), which one to root for was a pretty easy decision. So I give a belated and hypocritical congrats to the Celtics for defeating their hated rivals and sending the namesake of the Kobe Bryants moping off into the sunset for another year.

(I had planned to put up some video of Kobe “I Ran Shaq Out of Town” Bryant complaining about Gilbert Arenas not being a team player after Arenas dropped 60 on the Lakers in a game not long ago, but can’t find said video, unfortunately…)

Not to be all super-mopey-depressed or anything, but between our newly installed digital cable not working (It’s a very bizarre problem..everything seems to work okay except for the channels themselves. Like, I can clearly see that I’m changing the channels, and I can even access information about the program I’m supposedly watching..just no audio or visual), my Cobalt Flux randomly deciding to stop working completely (I suspect the grounding wire), plus the previously documented apartment issues, it hasn’t really been a good day.

On the plus side, Puzzle Quest is really fun, as is Gemsweeper, now that I don’t have to worry about my computer shutting itself off in the middle of the thing. I also have my own Internet service, finally, and even managed to secure the network so no one can hop on it the way I hopped on someone else’s for a week-plus.

In the early 1980s, a company called Sir-Tech released a computer game titled Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. The game, heavily inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, was a huge success, spawning an entire series of games before the American division of Sir-Tech folded in the early 2000s due to a variety of reasons. Interestingly, the Canadian division is apparently still in business.

I first became acquainted with the series through the NES port of Wizardry I, and later of Wizardry II, plus the SNES version of Wizardry V. For some reason, the series didn’t do that well console-wise here in the States, though it’s apparently a phenomenon in Japan. One of the various console collections released in Japan was a collection of Wizardry I through III, on the SNES.

Earlier today, I found out that someone had patched said collection into English. So I eagerly downloaded it, since II was the only one of the first three I’ve actually beaten (And I’ve never even played III). So I fire up Wizardry I, and create my party. They were ready. They were willing. They were gonna kick Werdna’s butt and do the Mad Overlord proud!

Roughly 5 minutes later, 2 of the six party members were dead, a third was paralyzed, and I had no real recourse for bringing them back short of wiping out the entire party and creating a new one. I had apparently forgotten how hard it actually was to get started in these games.

And that’s when I got to thinking: There’s almost no way the learning curve on these games would fly today. Reviewers and gamers alike would dismiss them as being way too hard to actually get anywhere in (Indeed, this session served as a reminder of why I never really got anywhere in this game, even with a strategy guide for help–a guide that actually encouraged use of the Reset button to get yourself out of a tight spot…THAT’S how hard the Wizardry series actually was). This isn’t even getting into some of the fun unexpected ways to obliterate your entire party (My personal favorite: casting a teleportation spell such that you reappear high above the city and go crashing to the ground–and your party’s collective death). And the way Wizardry works, once your party members are dead, it is VERY hard to bring them back to life (Hence the “quickly reset before the death scene plays out” method of survival).

Despite that, I’m having fun thus far. After learning some restraint in the early game–Level 1 Thieves are in fact totally incompetent at disarming traps–I seem to be up and rolling in Wizardry I for the moment. Fun stuff, this Wizardry.

Seriously. I suppose in effect this raises the issue of “Should a person post on their blog every day for the sake of posting?” Some might argue “No”, and they’d have a fair argument. The thing is that at the moment, while I finish working on The Six Day Exile, the blog posts are really the only thing I have that signify I’m still alive (And who knows how long that will last if the apartment thing gets finalized as I expect it to), so I almost feel obligated to at least put something up each day.

In that vein, you’re all familiar with the Rickroll by now, but have you checked out the Ricroll (Note the missing “k”)? I can’t help that I’m custom made…

(Final PS: For some reason, the Richard Dawson “September” clip I linked to a bit back shows up in a search for “Ric Roll” on Youtube, which I find amusing)

In considering future ways to grow what I hope will become the Emptyeye Empire, one of the things I will eventually do is offer t-shirts with some design on them for sale (Vague, I know). One potential plan was to use iron-on transfers for this, with the goals of 1. Keeping costs down, and 2. Actually using this as a selling point, pointing out that I would personally iron the designs onto the shirts myself (Which would no doubt amuse pretty much everyone I know, since I try my hardest to avoid ironing my own clothes in just about all circumstances). You know, make me seem human as opposed to some cold, calculating robot on the other side of your monitor.

I got to look at the prices for iron-on transfers at Target…and quickly decided to come up with a new plan. Suffice to say that, unless I can get iron-on transfers at a huge discount for buying them in bulk like I could with the shirts themselves, I’m better off just wandering to the T-Shirt place not far from my house and paying a bit extra to have them professionally done. I knew transfers were expensive–I didn’t think they’d be over $2.00/transfer expensive for dark t-shirts, though.

I had fun tonight. More tomorrow. For the moment, here, have Gil Thorp’s head exploding. Thanks to This Week In Milford for the image. Good night.

Yeah.

• My original idea for today, that thankfully never got past the concept stages, was to release a new song and hype it as my best work to date. The actual song would have been a cover of “Never Gonna Give You Up“. I reserve the right to do this in the future (As I’ve mentioned in a serious manner before, his vocal range is generally similar to the range at which I’m most comfortable singing).
• Speaking of “Never Gonna Give You Up”, Youtube had my favorite prank of the day, taking you to the video for the song in question whenever you tried to watch one of their Featured Videos. Honorable Mention goes to Dancing With the Stars, where I’ll admit I didn’t catch on until about halfway through the segment.
• Continuing to speak of “Never Gonna Give You Up”, fully two thirds of search strings that led people here today were Rick Astley-related. I find this highly amusing.
• I note that my Project Wonderful ad campaign for some reason didn’t update at all today. Weird. I tried raising my overall spending limit a bit, so we’ll see what happens with that.
• Speaking of Project Wonderful, tomorrow I’ll be replacing the Donate button with a small ad. As I mentioned yesterday, literally anything I get out of that will be an improvement over the donation button.

I really didn’t intend for this to be a regular feature, but nonetheless, here we go.

• I found out this weekend that my aunt owns a vinyl copy of the album Whenever You Need Somebody, which is best known for having this as its lead song. I’m pretty sure this makes my aunt like 20 years ahead of her time, or psychic, or something.
• I also found out earlier this week that in my NCAA tournament pool at work, I am second-to-last, with two of my Final Four teams (Including my national champion) eliminated. I am in excellent position to make a huge comeback and take the whole thing!
• I found out yesterday that I play DDR badly when I’m tired. Oh well. Obviously I’ll just have to sleep a lot between now and Saturday.
• Don’t forget to vote in the poll I created yesterday!