infinity zone

First off... *kicks internet* I swear, it cuts out at the weirdest times.

Let's see... Not getting as many projects at work as I would like (for the money), but it's nice to have the free time. My manager tries to keep me busy by having me do scheduling and little note-taking jobs, but it doesn't add up to an eight-hour day or anything. Ah well. As long as I have enough hours per month.

Yesterday, I went to the gym by myself for the first time in months. It was nice. I need to get back in the habit of kicking myself into going every other day or so. Wasting that gym membership needs to stop.

Also went back to the university campus for the first time in ... geez, a year or so? It's weird going back as a visitor. I think it'd be even weirder to go back to high school as a visitor, but you need to do all that stupid security (checking in with the front desk, etc.) to go onto high school campus. No thanks.

I got to see my cousin's design show while on campus, and it was nice to analyze his work and offer him compliments on a critique level. Our majors shared some visual design elements, so I enjoyed hearing him explain his typography and design formatting choices. It also gave me some affirmation that I still recall my major well enough to talk about it, which is ... well, comforting after being away from school for three years. (Geez, three years already.)

Hopefully going out to karaoke tomorrow night. Being stuck in my car on the freeway for an hour gave me a good excuse to belt out songs. ...Even if things like Simple Plan and Bowling for Soup aren't doing anything for my tone. Pfft.

On the RP front, tags have slowed down to a crawl while I've been doing other things offline. I really need to backthread some things, but my interest comes in small bursts lately. At least I have an idea of all the things I need to do with my characters.

Currently playing Disgaea Infinite, which I oddly enough found out about only yesterday (the day after it was released) while shopping for other things on Amazon. It's a nice change of pace from Record of Agarest War, which I've been taking a "forced" break from while my brother plays catch-up to me. (Record of Agarest War is super long and much more of a day-killer, just because of how long a single battle can take.) The time loop function of Disgaea Infinite was just getting to me when I finally made headway with the storyline, so I can safely say that I'm still enjoying it. And it's longer than I thought, which is a pleasant surprise.

...But that means I won't be able to finish it tonight. Which means I'll have to somehow force myself to turn it off. Dang.

edit: As suspected, I couldn't turn it off. ( Mild spoilers )

It's a lot of fan service, and I enjoy it greatly. The database and character profiles are neat, and it actually makes me a little interested in Disgaea 3.

I have nowhere else to ramble about this, so here goes.

I've been ridiculously active with Minato for this nightshift at Damned. I can definitively say that I haven't been this active since his Special Counseling, and it's pretty thrilling to see him actually getting to explore different areas of the institute. I usually just ... sorta forget about Damned once nightshift comes around, and then derp-thread him collecting things.

At least he got his metal for Leon's alchemy, I guess. So it wasn't like I was wasting his nights.

It helps that the event is allowing him to enter all of these rooms, and I'm really motivated to try and get him warped back to his world. Granted, he'll end up in Tartarus, but. Headphones. All his Personas. HIS MP3 PLAYER. And fighting Shadows. Alone.

...Practically alone. He'll have Brook there.

That in itself is another awesome part of the nightshift: his traveling partner is Brook from One Piece. If they end up warped to the One Piece world, Minato will get to see Brook in his skeleton form! The mental image of how the two will react is just ... priceless. Writing with Brook-mun has been very smooth, too; Brook talks enough that I don't feel awkward having Minato respond with short sentences, which in turn speeds up threading.

I really hope they get to warp to one (or both) of their home worlds.

In the mean time, their third warp of the night landed them somewhere awesome. I hadn't expected it at all, since I assumed that they could only be warped within the institute grounds. It's like the mods read the thread, laughed maniacally, and dropped them in Doyleton.

Doyleton. At night. Zooombiiiiies.



In other news, I've been wanting to write something about Luceti since I was inspired sometime last week. I could have sworn I had a file with some written paragraphs, but I can't find it. Maybe I just wrote the story directly to LJ?

I hate it when I do that; I lose track of whether I have backups of stories that way.

In any case, I haven't written anything Luceti-related since that 'Paradise' nightmare scenario. I think I just need to make peace with the idea that anything I write won't jive with Luceti's plot. It can be hard sometimes.

And I'm happy that I could have a little fun with Walter for once. I don't get him out often enough, and I'm thankful Doumeki-mun poked me about them interacting.

Someday, I hope to use this icon in an IC situation. And someday, I will give Leon more icon space.

...

That is all.

So Kukki and I were talking last night, and I suggested that she figure out what she wanted to do with Stella's room in the Ferines house. I started putting something together for Walter too, and got Yosh thinking about it.

And then I started fiddling around with it a little more...

( Cut for huge )

Oh, and I also made a picture of the floor plan in respect to the rest of the village. ...It looks really weird after designing it in the original floor plan's template. Here's the transformed floor plan.

Leon profile pic is looking better. I think I'm almost done with it; just gotta clean up some shading on the clothes. The original, now this. Thanks for the help with the wing shading, Reine~ And the reminder about lighting positioning. ~_~ My brother even pointed at a spot on the screen where I should be imagining the light coming from, and I totally forgot.

...And that's all I had to post about. :|; Maybe I'll do memes later. Dunno yet. Hurray that it's Friday? Actually, hurray that I finished my project a day early.

...Well, I should be doing my taxes, but I'm only slowly making progress. Pfft. Since I'm bored, and honestly kinda curious, I'll open up a question for my RP flist:

List all of your RP characters that you have dropped in a game you're still in. You can also add why you dropped or struggled with them or your current interest level in the character, if you want.

I think it's kinda fun to see past fandoms and who you were inspired enough to play. Let's see...

( Cut for Luceti list )

Made by Eggy, ganked from everyone doing it. :|

List your characters. Then pick a trait from each one that the two of you share and explain it. If you don't share a trait with any of them, put N/A.

( The Self-Insertion Meme )

Ganked from other people:
Ask me about any character I've played, and I'll let you know what drew me to them in the first place, what I like most about them, least about them, my favorite RP memory (if I can remember it!) and if I'm likely to ever write them again.

And something else I've been thinking about lately...
List any characters that you have considered roleplaying, but never have. Explain why you like the character, then explain what it is that keeps you from playing them, be it a lack of canon knowledge, lack of confidence, or too many people playing that character!

( Never Have, Probably Never Will meme )

What an awesome Luceti event. I'm glad to have gotten so many different experiences in the week, even if they were mostly with Albert.

Edit: Finished Ace Attorney Investigations. Just a random thought that isn't a spoiler for the game, but more a thought towards Edgeworth over the course of all the games: Maybe the creators chose the English name "Miles" in reference to the fact that Edgeworth does a lot of traveling? >_>

Thank you to everyone who offered their condolences. My older brother and I headed back to our parents' house last Tuesday evening to bury our guinea pig, then were back in our apartment by Wednesday evening since my brother started work on Thursday. I'm really grateful he drove me out at that time; I really needed the closure. Cindy was buried in the tulip patch, so hopefully the bulbs there will still grow despite being disturbed.

We've bought two new guinea pigs since then, both of which are male and not firmly named yet. The younger of the two, bought at the beginning of the week, is tentatively named Captain Ahab, since my older brother thought he looked like a pirate with one black leg and an eyepatch. The elder of the two was bought Thursday evening and was actually a cagemate to Ahab, but I was hesitant to get him at first because I wasn't sure the size of our cage was big enough for two guinea pigs. When my younger brother mentioned he was alone in the pet store now (the other guinea pig had also been bought), I caved and let him buy the other one. They're getting along for now, but I'll be keeping an eye out to see if they bite each other or anything.

My patience is still frayed from Cindy's death, and it's slow to return to normal with stress from work just getting worse. I keep saying it, but I really need a vacation -- and I should really mention it at my next one-on-one ... which has thankfully been rescheduled for tomorrow instead of Monday. The random template update requests today irritated and stressed the heck out of me, and then there's the added stress of knowing a new contractor needs to be onboarded and it'll likely be me doing the training. Ugh. Just ugh.

I need to do things on the RP front too. Luceti character relationship blurbs, informational posts, etc. I usually have fun doing those things, but work has me passing out before I ever get back to my personal laptop. Hopefully I'll be able to relax with the new event coming up.

...At least Minato has his sword now? I still need to finish that thread so I'm not wasting Leon's time. My castmates must think I'm full of fail with my slowness.

Currently playing Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride and Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time. DQ5 has been interesting because of the conversational aspect, but my favorite thing so far is probably how it relates to DQ4 with the Zenithian legend. Very neat.

I still need to buy Ace Attorney Investigations and update my PSP to play Half-Minute Hero. Slowly but surely.

Ugh. Well, ending the weekend on a blah note is pretty telling for the upcoming week. I'm in charge of managerial duties while my manager is on PTO, and I received e-mails on Saturday from designers already requesting alerts when I'm finished editing files due this next Friday. Good grief. I've never flagged so many e-mails in my entire career as I have in the last two months.

Travian's s5 war wrapped up at long last. FUSE (Fully United SE quadrant, headed by the former PD meta) built their World Wonder to level 100 first. Everyone in the Outlaws started sending out their goodbyes and congratulations for making the full 300-day commitment. Thanks, Sapph, for dualing with me for the last ... how many months? Five? Nearly half the game, or maybe even longer. I ended with 20 villages, in the top 700 players on the server, and with over 57k troops left in reserve.

I was happy to get messages from other alliance-mates who knew I had been with the alliance since the beginning of the server. I'm so proud we finished third in the game, even if I was an overstressed diplomat and lousy leader.

I'm not playing Travian for a long, long time, though. Keeping up with it has burned me out continuously.

Except I can't blame it for this funk I've slipped in since Sunday. Travian goodbyes were actually the highlights of the day. The quietness led to me contemplating if I should spend less time online. Hrm...

So remember how I mentioned awhile back that I bought the three Mario & Luigi games? I received them today.

Superstar Saga was a demo version that you would have seen in game stores. It even has the NOT FOR RESALE sticker on it.

Partners in Time was obviously a knockoff, with off-color covers and a noticeable cut on the instruction manual.

Bowser's Inside Story looks slightly off, with a wrinkled back cover. Like a game that was rejected from in-store sale.

......

When my dad mentioned that a lot of the scammers and whatnot had been moving from eBay to Amazon, I didn't really believe him. I sure believe him now.


I've sent messages around and am in the process of looking for another copy of Superstar Saga. In the mean time, I'm gonna go back to RPG Maker VX. I've gotta convert my RPG Maker XP data manually.

...I used to mess around with RPG Maker 2000 and RPG Maker XP awhile back. I decided to play around with the game again when I noticed there was a new version out.


Meet Factival. The inspiration for the character should be obvious.

( Lots of images under the cut )

In other news, went to the office yesterday for a team meeting. Got a contractor badge, so I can get into the building whenever I need to without my manager needing to buzz me in. The team meeting was the best part about work yesterday. When I got back home and started working (heh, how many people can say that?), I was flooded with e-mails about different projects and crap. Ugh. I've thankfully been able to finish the two immediate projects, and I can sleep in a little today.

And I'm sick, to boot! What a lovely week this is turning out to be.

*stares at the 7 AM reading on the clock*

...Geez, it's been months since I've had to do all-nighters this terrible. I'm glad I'll be moving on to a new project tomorrow.

I need to nap. Then pick up my package from the post office. And then go back to work. Sigh.

Weeks like this make me kinda wish I didn't work so I could indulge in all the little things I want to do, like do those voice recordings for that old meme, or work on icons or drabbles.

I'm really glad it's been awhile since I've had to do this.