Damn and thunderation! I do this whole “Whoo, i’ll make ROBOTS!!” thing, right? I decide i’ll be a roboticist if i can finish my BS and MS, and guess what happens? Boeing beats me to it. Their X-45 is suddenly flying pretty much autonomously. Well i’ll be in on, if not the ground floor, atleast the mezzannine. If that is how you spell that.

I do certainly believe in the flangy distributed internet spell-checking algorithm. That is 1. Put something on the internet, 2. get comments on your misspellings.

Ah well, one day i’ll build robots, or when the perfect Skynet defence system decides to take care of us meat puppets then i’ll know how to defeat it. One or the other, i do have job security.

One thing i forgot to mention about Episode II, it has Vahnatai. This is a good thing, and i think i should tell Chatty to go see it. Of course i’d also have to explain my multi-year absence from the EGC.

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So apparently God is angry, because Gravity can’t manage to go to E3 and sell their product without the servers exploding into blood-flecked shrapnel. Seriously. For all of Saturday, no server saved personal information, and no two servers were connected to each other. So you could toss around any amount of the same items by dropping an item and then logging off and back on. Combine that to the fact that nobody could leave town, and everything went to hell quickly. People were complete bitches and didn’t think that they should be culpable. There are people on kousetsu that seem to be surprised that they are not allowed to keep “3 tiera 3 safty ring 32 mill zeny 20+ santa and bunny.” That’s crazy. I mean i’m pissed because i lost 2 job levels and 2 azure gemstones that i legally obtained. *sigh* then they do the rollback to last wednesday and i lose the muffler, boots, and another two levels (both Char and Job). Oh well, my girlfriend was rolled-back to 1/1 novice after she got up to archer. Not that i’m pissed, i really am not. This is a free game: if they want to suddenly pack up and stop making games tomorrow, then that is their prerogative, and no issue of mine.

Go look at this article that the family found while cleaning out my Grandfather’s house. It adds creedence to my story, and i love the voice it is written in. Check out the “running shoes.” Fair warning, it is 2.5 megs, so if all of you download it, and i get about 100 extra viewers, i may exceed the bandwidth allowances. (hah)

So i saw “Insomnia” last night, and i have to say it was enjoyable. There are about 4 or 5 scenes that are incredible, and all of them involve Al Pachino. That man kicks ass, but its something of a typecast role. Still, if you don’t have anything better to do (Seeing “Spiderman” again comes to mind) by all means, go check it out. Robin Williams is… interesting as a villian. Of course he’s going for the stalkative villian thing in “One Hour Photo,” and we’ll have to see how well that works. I’ll probably see “Enough” tonight or tomorrow, and i’ll let you know how that goes.

From the “Things i forgot because i never thought i’d have to remember them” files: How the hell do you drop an Apple ][e to BASIC? I got one from work (They really really didn’t need it), and i can’t for the life of me figure out how to make the damn thing do that. Though Apple Fritter does have some interesting mac-hacking FAQs. Now to get a G4 Cube so i can make it dual processor. Damn but that would be the shit.

By the way, go to thematrix.com and download the teaser if you haven’t already. Seriously, check that stuff out wow, but it kicks hardcore.

Now Star Wars is exclusively advertising the Yoda fight scene as the reason to see Ep II. Now that is kinda true, but seriously, that’s in the last 30 minutes. Though that 30 minutes (Combined with the Fetts) is all that makes the movie really “Star Wars.” Though those two features do make it a pretty decent Star Wars movie. The rest i found really disappointing. The whole Anakin/Amidala thing was boring, the lame quasi-attempt at noir with Obi Wan hunting Fett down didn’t fly at all. It could have been the lack of an internal monologue, or the fact that the whole segment was too damn bright. But ah well, atleast it was better than “Phantom Menace:” I left PM with a 20 item list of complaints, and that’s never good.

I’m thinking about finally buying and reading some Harlan Ellison and some Phillip K. Dick. Watch for my upcoming nihilism as i steep myself in distopia. If only i can get to the damn bookstore and purchase some short stories without saying “Oh, i’m here to get some Dick, no not like that. Phillip K, i mean. I love women!“

Hm. There was something else i wanted to say, but i can’t remember it… Oh well.

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So yeah, i’ve had to delete everything and start all over. The old archives are still there, as i’d hate to delete those. I’ll be able to import the old GM entries again, and everything should be cool up to about march. March through may i’ll be needing to enter by hand and date-change until everything is golden. I’ve saved my templates, so everything should be back to normal shortly.

Let this be a lesson to all prospective Movable Type users (i’m looking right at you, Martin): Make frequent backups. Use the “Import/Export” icon right now, and export to a flat file. Then you can re-import your whole site if there is ever a problem like this one. If i’d made weekly backups i wouldn’t be in this pickle right now.

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So i’m going to Star Wars tonight at 8:40 over at the Grande. Should i wear my Imperial Red Guard mask? Wait, what am i asking, of course i should, that goes without saying. I think just a red cape is all i need to complete the costume. What? I started this with the Nazgul thing for Fellowship, and i’ll definately be continuing it for Two Towers.

And i need more time to play RO. I’m level 10, but only level 4 in Thieving. I spent an ass of time levelling up before i went about becoming a thief, i was level 10 before i even set foot in the pyramid. I think it was a good idea, but the new plan is to run to Payon’s jungles, and kill baby birds until i’m so encumbered (with beaks and feathers) that i can barely move, then i go to town and sell ‘em all. After that i’ll repeat until i’ve got something like 10k Zenny. Then i spend it all. Sounds like a plan, I think.

I’ve burned one hell of a CD though , it contains only the RO installer, the RO icon, and an .inf file, but this makes the CD change the drive icon to the little Ragnarok head icon. If i got off my ass and re-installed Visual Studio i’d even write a little VB program that would ask if you wanted to install, copy the installer, or eject the CD. I’m really easily amused, and there are better things for me to be doing, i assure you.

I’m setting up a 98 box at the moment, so i’ve got some time to post while i run Windows Update. The guys around here have been making Red Hat machines like its going out of style, and i have to say that i’ll have to finish that other computer sometime quickly because i’d love to mess with that OS. Anyhow, back to the daily gind.

And i’ve fixed a minor site-related issue. The icons in the upper right-hand corner had a slight backgrounding thing going on. I got rid of that. On other site-related news, i think i’ll be making those two other blogs pretty soon. I’ll just copy this one over really and change the header (in icons only, the rest is blog variables). None of this multi-category thing for me, no, i’ll be doing this the hard way. Though i have to say, the fact that this server has IMAGE::MAGICK installed so i’ll be able to whip up one hell of a screenshots directory. Assuming i want to, that is. I may even whip up some Item and Monster tables, but that’s something for the future.

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Whoo hoo! Payday! I might be able to go back to the jiffy lube and get those other fluids checked and changed.

So yeah, i’ve upgraded the woman’s network segment again. The HP hub i plugged in was a little too industry. To the point that the power supply had a fan. Not only that, but it was somewhat annoyingly lound and humming. So that just had to go bye-bye. I replaced it with a nice, quiet little netgear and all is good. I’ve got her old 200mhz humming too, i put Win95 on because its what came on the thing. I’d love to play with linux, but i think that’s something i should mess with first…

And i’d like to play more RO. I keep sleeping in the afternoon though, so it keeps getting put off. Ah well, i’ll get back to it later this week, i’m sure.

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Yup, i’m back from the weekend, and no worse for wear. The dog, cat, and fish all lived, and the house wasn’t broken into, even though i did not go obtain firearms. My paranoia is starting to look really irrational. Of course, being a man alone in a home has to look less attractive than a female alone in a home.

I didn’t finish Amber, but i did get my woman’s two computers hooked up through the HP hub i grabbed off the trash here at work. The hub has a cooling fan, so its a little loud. I may be replacing it with a netgear 24-port, because the damn thing is both silent, and it uses a standard power cable rather than those lame ass bricks.

**** Serious RO ranting ahead, if you don’t go for that sort of stuff, don’t look here. ****

And there was much Ragnarok played. Sorry i didn’t get in touch with ya, Jason, but i didn’t have your ICQ number on the woman’s computer. Ah well, if you’re ever on the Loki server and you catch wind of a purple-haired one-eyed thief named Johnny Appleseed (Joe Strummer referance) running around Morroc, then that’s me. I have to say, almost nobody that i’ve seen has chosen a class. I mean if i had to pick people out, i see tons of novices, a few swordsmen, a few mages, very very few archers and acolytes, and a respectable number of thieves. That being because theives rock ass, and when they add in assassins (Thives can become assassins, or will be able to) and the ability to add cards into weapons, then thieves will rock hardcore. The trick is that thieves have an ability called “Double Slash” that allows them to attack twice with a dagger where other classes only attack once. This gets better when assassins can use two daggers at once. That would give four attacks. Then if you plug sidewinder cards into your weapons the weapons get the “attack twice” attribute. So an assassin with two knives full of sidewinder cards would attack eight times at once. That seems a little too good, so we are either never going to see that happen, or assassins will become far too popular.

The one thing i’ve noticed about choosing a character is that after you do it, everybody becomes your bestest friend. They all ask you if you’ve chosen a party, if you want to be in theirs, if you have anything you can give them, and whatnot. I mean honestly, what makes people think that, as a theif, i’ll be handing them free stuff. Hell, if you want free armour, i’d go ask an acolyte or something, they are the nice guys. Me, i’m a theif, i’m not Robin Hood. I’d steal your pitiful little shoes if they were worth my time and i could get good money for them.

That being said, i’m a nice guy in RO, and i’ll tell people who ask me for stuff that i don’t have anything to give. I mean the most recent dagger i bought ran me 1,200 zenny. I think cars cost less than that, and it took me 2 days of stabbing baby birds for their delicious beaks to get that cash. Its not like i’m just going to drop that sort of dough on somebody because they said “plz.”

Get this, i was in Pronteria for no good reason, (i suddenly started respawning there after the Loki downtime from the last few weeks, go fig) and i’m in the weapons shop. Now everybody else is in there for some reason. I mean the eqivalent of about 35 people are standing shoulder to shoulder on top of the legit arms merchants, and i can’t get out the door. Apparently if too many people stand on top of one another, you can’t get around them. So me and a few other people start politely asking people to move themselves out of the doorway. What do people respond with? One starts a chatroom (the way you barter in RO) titled “Will move for 1k Zenny.” Honestly, the nerve of that damned novice. If PK was enabled, there would have been a reckoning.

Interesting side-note, i’ve been completely eschewing the way-too-expensive teleport people and walking overland from town to town. Morroc and Pronteria are way too overcrowded, but Payon is nice and free of people. Too bad all the theif stuff is sold in Morroc. *sigh* I like the jungles though, when i get good enough stuff from Morroc (the next few daggers and a flu mask) i think i’ll go prowl the jungles for a while. The enemies are nice and killable, unlike the desert, and the people aren’t really all that dense. I haven’t been to Alberta or Izlude. Mayhaps next time i’ve got a minute and i’m not trying to earn enough money for crack.

I think i shall make a seperate index for RO. Possibly link it off the Jelly Cube up in the header. I’m sure i can make a MTEntries tag that only displays posts from a “Ragnarok” category, but how to make something display all posts that AREN’T “Ragnarok” i don’t know. I guess that’s a little checking up that i’ll have to do.

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My girlfriend’s grandfather died yesterday. That is blunt, yes, but i honestly don’t enjoy dressing these things up. They’ve decided that i’d be the perfect person to watch the house for them, so i’m now set up on their couch (well, i’m at work, but metaphorically i’m sleeping on the couch until sunday). I don’t know, it is alot of responsability. I have to keep the dog, cat and fish alive for two days. I assume i have to keep robbers out, but for that i’d need weaponry. Ah well, i’ll go get the P-38 from dad. Defend my GF’s house with Megatron. *G*

So it looks to be a weekend of finishing Amber (The Zelazny, not anybody’s friend), playing Ragnarok and setting her other pc up. I think i’ll really enjoy the last one, hooking up that HP hub and getting RAdmin running on the second computer will really be a fun thing. God, i’m too much of a geek sometimes.

And i’m messing with the site. You kids can’t see it, but i’ve set the “Ninjasuperspy.net” thing at the top to the MT tag “blog title,” and i’ve exchanged the hr divider thing with an MT “blog description.” The GF doesn’t really dig on it and i’d like to get it to center without using a center tag (it messes up the padding), but otherwise i kinda like it. Comments?

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So i’ve enabled the calendar feature on the right there, and i kind of like it. Yes, the little header-bar is all baby shit green, but i think that works too. Well, with the whole color thing i’m trying to do now. And i moved the search box above the links box, just to group the site related stuff together and move the stuff that isn’t mine down. Don’t ask, it makes sence to me.

And yes, i know i haven’t been posting for a while. I accidentally deleted the main index template a few days ago while i was messing with this new menu script (which you won’t be seeing for quite some time, if it keeps up the way it is), and didn’t notice it until today. Yay for me. But it all works now, and the thing is using more of the MT features all at once. Now i just have to upgrade. Yes, its version 2.11 now… Luckily its just uploading some files, CHMOD-ing them, and running a script. We’ll see how well that goes tonight.

Speaking of tonight, i’ll be formatting and re-installing windows because i’ve finally got a copy of Win2k that isn’t an upgrade CD. Yeah, its pretty schweet. If i’ve still got a copy of the Ragnarok .exe i’ll be all up in it. Otherwise i may reconsider… i don’t want to dl that again.

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So, wonder of wonders, the (damned) Bond Referendum has passed. Only by about 1500 (approx), to 1000 (approx), but it still passed. And this surprises me for several reasons. First off, i just think people are incredibly stupid. I think they’d vote down school funding just for fun. I mean they don’t have none of that book learnin’ and why should their chillun’. Should be raised up right, pickin’ the crops. Second, there is a substantial amount of people who seem to think that the government runs on moonbeams and fairy rings, thereby excusing them from paying taxes. There is a candidate for governer who’s platform boils down to “The solution for higher taxes is lower taxes.” Meaning “Who wants to pay these things anyway, lets just all not.” And incredibly, 1500 people actually said, yes, i will pay 50 million (or is it billion) for such things as making Lakeview not leak and bringing Davis’s cafe up to health code.

And the whole area was saturated with this horrible low-lying, acrid smoke. Turns out the Okeefenokee swamp was on fire. Lord that thing stinks when it burns. We need to get cops working on making sure that doesn’t happen anymore.

No comments on Molly? That’s too bad, it does look somewhat interesting. I think i’d like to see it in 2 years, but then i have odd taste. If you have time, you may want to check out the message board. Its a bunch of phillisines and artistes argung about what makes anime into anime, and so forth. Really fun for the whole family.

So yeah, Ragnarok is going places. (click the link for “Main”) Its on Tripod, so steel yourself for more pop-ups than should be legally allowed, and a healthy amount of broken english. However, the gist is that i could have a legit ninja. Thieves can become assassins, get Katars (yay), ride those big birds, and get quite a few hats. Now they just need to get on that for the English servers. And while they are at it, get a few more servers. Just having Loki and Chaos is leading to some silly kinds of overcrowding. I mean i’m running to the middle of nowhere to find some porings that aren’t being camped.

I’d like to start an RO guild one of these days. Well, not a guild, those are capital Gee Gay. More like a party. One of those things where if somebody else is on, i’d have the option of not running around on my lonesome being bothered by Noobs. (And yes, i know that i’m only 3rd level, but hell, i was alpha-testing this bitch. My big ass merchant didn’t cross over, so i have to start again)

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Hey, before i run off to the girlfriend’s, check this out. Its the two minute “pilot” to an anime-inspired french-created show called “Molly Star-Racer,” and it looks like alot of fun. That is to say that it seems to indicate a frenetic pace for 2 minutes and change, and seems to have a decent artistic style. There isn’t any dialog or anything to go with it, so i can only surmise that it kicks ass. I’ll have to leave a little note to me to remember it until 2004 when they’ll be done with it.

Ooh! They claim that they were influenced more by Mignola and Wacky Races than by manga… Heh, that i like. And the kana for “Mori” on the ship’s cover, that’s fun too.

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