journal for 2003-01-01

FF7

Gloria and I almost never rent movies from Blockbuster. In the last few months, I don’t think we have at all. We go to Hollywood Video, which isn’t a very good store, organization-wise (and selection-wise, in many ways), but they charge one shiny dollar for five days, which beats the pants off of Blockbuster. Also, they don’t have most of Blockbuster’s traditionally ridiculous policies. Sadly, their video game selection bites.

They have about ten GCN games at any times, and their PlayStation selection isn’t much better. I made Gloria stop at Blockbuster a few times over the holiday so I could consider trying out some of the games on which I’ve had an eye. They never had enough in for me to rent anything, but my resistance was broken down, and I bought FF7.

Final Fantasy VII may be the best video RPG ever. The plot is good, the characters are relatively interesting, and the world is just massive. I wanted to convince Gloria to play, but that may be a lost cause. I settled for getting her to watch, but pretty soon I was in the zone, lost to everything but the fate of Midgard and Planet. I keep waiting to see the world map—the city is so huge and detailed, and then you get to find out that it’s only one of many cities (granted, it’s the largest) on Planet. Also, the graphics are just phenomenal. The characters may be blocky, but the background art is awesome; it might be a little low-rez by today’s standards, but not much. Also, style outweights resolution, in this case.

Anyway, I don’t know if Jennifer would find FF7 interesting—it depends on whether she likes video RPGs, I guess. I also ebayed Parappa. I really hope (and think) Gloria will like it; Jennifer might, too.

I can’t believe I played four hours worth of FF7. I’m still not tired, but I need to sleep so I can go to work tomorrow. It’s been nearly two weeks since I was in the office (to work) and I really don’t know what to expect.

wedding

My old friend Katie got married on Saturday, and it was a nice wedding. The priest got the groom’s name wrong more dramatically than Brother Mike got mine at our wedding; it was pretty amusing, but not a big deal from what I could tell. I got a lot of blurry pictures. They’re on their honeymoon, now, or at least preparing. Once they’re back, we really need to get them to come by for some Monkey Ball and Scrabble or something.

photos

Working on jGal and organizing my digital photos has made me want to scan my old printed photos. If memory serves me right, my co-worker Ryan has scanned photos for people, in the past, for a small fee. I’ll have to see if he’ll do that for me. I really don’t feel like scanning two hundred prints! Cataloging them will be work enough.

Of course, if I get that done, I’ll really need to work on jGal’s sub-gal functions, and possibly also my image database thingermado.

portablemonopoly

The Portablemonopoly.NET Saga continues. He sent me an update, I thanked him for it, and he got snippy because I filed a complaint and then had the nerve to be polite. Honestly, what the hell?

Meanwhile, YourHappyPlace’s owner has promised, personally, that my GBA will ship Friday. Rock on. I could be playing Metroid Fusion or Link by Monday. Of course, I’m really getting over video-gamed, lately. I like video games, but despite appearances, I’m not a serious junkie. I’m more of an afficionado, I think. Video games are like Phil K. Dick books: they’re a lot of fun, but too much in a short period of time shrivels the brain.

too much PKD

I’ve had too much Phil Dick, too, lately. I got some books for Christmas, and I was just finishing one, anyway. Clans of the Alphane Moon was pretty good. The Man Who Japed was better. I’m working on Counter-Clock World, now, and it’s not so great, at least so far. The black religious leader keeps reminding me of Percy X from The Ganymede Takeover, which was a truly dreadful book.

Anyway, I really like reading his work, and I love the fact that all of his settings blend together into a sort of weird schizophrenic gestalt in my head, but… his writing is so weird that it hurts to read it after a while. The Zap-Gun looks really good, but I think I’ll need to take a break and read something else.

sleep

Ok. I’m sure there’s more I could relate, but I need to sleep! This isn’t so bad, though. I mean to get up around 0600, so I’ll be getting six hours of sleep. I want to get a solid seven hours every night, but getting six could be OK, for now. I’ve been sleeping ten or twelve hours, lately, and I don’t want to waste half of my life asleep!

Written on January 1, 2003