Not bad... not bad at all. It was worth getting, I'd say (though I don't know if I could've gotten it any other way than through eBay). It's an RPG - a real one, where the entire game completely revolves around the plot, and there are no battles to worry about. Instead, time is what you need to worry about - almost constantly. You see, the game revolves around time - you go back and forth through time, trying to solve problems. Well, one big problem, really; Namely, the fact that you have this knack for... well, being murdered. Someone's after you, and you have to find out who and why - but you can only go to specific time frames. The story is affected by the choices you make: the things you say, the things you do, and so forth. And while the story does get a little complicated - like most time travel stories tend to be - it's actually fairly easy to follow. I think they leave a few ends untied, but... I guess that's the price I pay for getting the "D" ending. There's five endings apparently (A through E, naturally), but it seems you only get to know this after finishing the game at least once. What's nice about this game, though, is that you keep using the same savegame (Well, if you want to, anyway.), even after the game's over: If you load a completed game, it starts over, letting you play the game over again, and try to get a different ending... ...plus, all the cutscenes can be skipped. You can even skip the introduction. We'll see if I can get another ending...

So stressed these days. At least I can take some comfort in knowing that my copy of 9Tail Fox has arrived...

Once again, my blog's been upgraded. 9.0 -> 9.1, so it's nothing much; Most of the fixed bugs didn't apply to this installation. Unfortunately, it seems to have caused the calendar to display improperly for FireFox users. Sorry about that. If the horizontal scrollbar bothers you, just hide the calendar by clicking on the -. As for access issues... they continue, but they seem to be more erratic than consistent, which is nice, but not optimal. Honestly, I think I'm going to switch to DSL because of this; Unfortunately, Sympatico is not an option, and I'd have to provider my mother with one hell of a good reason if I want this change to happen. Not likely. I while ago, I went to see a Just For Laughs performance live. It wasn't too bad; in fact it was fairly good. But I draw the line there, as the "stupid humour" infection has managed to spread it's poison here as well. Some of the Just For Laughs comedians need to clean up a little. The opening show / warm-up act done by the "New York Street Boys / Lipton Laugh Trackers" was nice. They did their job well as a warm-up act, and without speaking a single word (if I remember correctly). Shaun Majumder (Canadian) really doesn't strike me as brillant... especially since his main joke was on a kid in the audience who had just reached puberty - and thus Shaun had nicknamed him "Pubes". Guess what? Some of the comedians also greeted him that way. It was fairly lame, in my opinion. Then again, Shaun never really impressed me: the "Back stage pass with Shaun Majumder" skits during the usual Just For Laughs T.V. episodes were really horrible. Scott Faulconbridge (Canadian) was fairly good; He did pick on pubes in his opening, but he was the first one on stage, so I suppose he was trying to humour the host (Shaun). Or maybe just using a joke that worked, since (I have to admit) part of the audience did enjoy it. Anyhow, he was a pretty good "start", so I'd place him second best. Next up was, if I recall correctly, was Ryan Belleville (Canadian). He wasn't all that good, perhaps because I simply didn't like his type of humour, or perhaps because he kept going on the same joke (That beavers supposedly chew off their own testicles as a method of defense.). Next. Rocky Laporte (USian), who I believe was italian, was a little better than Ryan. He also re-used jokes, but didn't just keep going on the same one; He also is able to go off on a tangent, return from it and keep it funny, which is admirable. I'd class him as third best. The only black man in the performance (And my mother would also point out there were no females 9.9), Rod "Rodman" Thompson (USian) did okay. I wasn't able to follow very well due to the accent; I've never been very good with that type of accent for some reason =/ Finally, but definitely not least (It's a good thing they placed him last!), was Carl Barron (Australian). Thankfully, I've had some prior experience with the australian accent, so I had no trouble following (Can't say the same for my mother. I feel she missed the best comedian of the set!). He was probably the most original comedian that night, as well as the most applauded. My sides hurt I was laughing so hard. ^_^; Well, that pretty much wraps it up on that... I'm finally getting some interview proposals. I have one tomorrow, in fact, and may have another in the near future. Wish I knew what makes me so... uninteresting. =/ I hope I do well on the data-entry job, because it sounds like something I could do excellently - there's nothing like a job you can do without a problem. (I'm not saying I don't want to have to learn, but there's something appealing about not having the fear of going "Oh, I have no idea how to do that.".) Notes to self: plug-ins, template, colors, users/groups, validity check!.

This goes back a little... to when exactly, I'm not sure. Honestly, her beliefs aren't exactly unfounded: It's the way things used to be, I suppose. Lemmings was a game that used classical music, for example, for many titles - until Lemmings 2: The Tribes, if I recall correctly. Old movies probably did, too. But nowadays, game makers and movie writers often hire composers to create new music, especially for that particular game or movie. We were watching (Well, she was watching - I was just looking at snippets every now and then.) Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and at the end, she commented that the music sounded like it was taken from a known piece, a finale. I tried to explain to her the brain-numbing concept of originality, but she didn't believe me. Finally, I had to look up the soundtrack to HP-SC to prove to her that it was originally composed for the movie, and nothing had been taken from elsewhere (though only the composer knows what inspired him, really). Then I had to do another search, adding words such as finale, just to further prove it. Yeesh. I wonder sometimes just how much she's been left behind... ...or is lagging behind, whichever.

So the ailment that affected my computer didn't last long. I'm still not entirely certain what caused it, but it seems that temporarily turning on the driver verifier did the trick - possibly because it slowed down the computer to a horrible crawl while it was on. Thankfully, things seem to be back to normal now. Thanks again to Flames Delvar for the suggestion of going to The Elder Geek's website. Yesterday, I got bored and decided to play around with my sound editor. I popped in a song, cut it off at about 30 seconds (approximately right before the singing starts ;P), then started experimenting with it. I ended up cutting it down to 17 seconds, but it loops cleanly. The odd loop was then popped into a Flash file, to see what others had to say about it. I've been a little too addicted to UT 2004 lately. It wouldn't be so bad if I could find more people I knew who want to play it, but just about every time I ask someone to play, they're busy, not in the mood, or otherwise won't play. Ah well. I've been reading more Piers Anthony books lately. I thought I'd mentioned it, but apparently my last post was at the beginning of this month... guess I kept wanting to say something and never did. I finally borrowed the last book of the Adept series - Yes, it made it out - and read it. Pretty good, but at the end of the story, I could tell why it wouldn't be continued. He really screwed with that planet... I decided I wanted to read more of his books, though, especially since I had finished The Dastard, so I borrowed Currant Events, and Virtual Mode. One is of the Xanth series, and the other, the Mode series, which is supposed to be similar to the Adept series. I'll see how it is, soon. I've been furiously trying to work on the shoutbox lately. I say furiously, because I can't concentrate on it. I was told I should probably have other projects to work on, but I'm not sure. I don't work much on this one as it is. I tried, instead, to work on the (X)HTML part of it, but that didn't help much; I found out that the Dojo Toolkit causes loading lag (Though I seemed to experience the most of it) no matter which way you use it; thus, I'm going to wait for it to mature before trying to use it... So much for fancy effects. At the same time, I still need to design the administration section anyway. I can't decide if I want to use cookies (*sigh*) or some form of dialog-based authentication (e.g. WWW-Authenticate or one of it's better "ancestors"). Meh... maybe I should roll it up into a beta version as soon as I can, and that way I'll get feedback. Or something. I just used "lately" three times in a row on the opening sentences. My vocabulary is obviously not up to snuff. Serendipity 0.9 was finally released. Naturally, I'm going to upgrade this blog to it, but I'm also going to try making a multi-blog host with it - should be an interesting experience. No ETAs on that, though. Also, I may swap phpBB for punBB, especially if it makes integration easier. I still want to integrate the users and groups of phpBB/punBB, gallery, and S9Y. Nobody seems to have done this, so far... Oh. And I still need to redo the S9Y template so that it's XHTML valid (Assuming 0.9 doesn't fix that.). I have no cash... I need job, me bum.

Serves: 3-5, or more with optional refried beans and bread. Preparation time: 5-15 minutes Cooking time: 20-30 minutes

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(I did not make this recipe, thus does not contain my name in the title. The recipe category on this blog will be used for every recipe that I've tried, along with notes or modifications I've made.) Serves: 2-6 Preparation time: 15-30 minutes Cooking time: 5 mintes/pair (Frypan -- see notes)

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...if you change your regional settings, C# will no longer recognize "1.5" as a valid decimal number.

Don't get me wrong: I'm okay with dogs, as long as they leave me alone, or are someone else's; I, however, will never, ever own one. Some time ago, my mother ran by me the idea of dog-sitting while dog's owner was gone. Yes, she wanted to let someone leave their dog here for a while (and I think the initial timeframe was a month!). For those of you who don't see why this is a problem: I have a cat. Who's fully grown. Who's never had to share his space. I blew up when she suggested this, telling her it would be impossible and that they wouldn't get along; were it another cat, or had Gizmo ever had to share his space in his younger years, it may be possible. However, I knew my cat, and I knew what he went through in the neighbourhood: the strays and other cats were are not friendly. I thought the idea had been dropped, but yesterday, my mother tells me that the dog would be dropped off today. Dropped off. No "let's see if they get together", no "but if it doesn't work out, there are alternatives". Gizmo did not take this well. My mother, fawning over the dog, didn't give Gizmo much of a change, either: I understand hitting the cat with a broom when he attacks the dog, but if he's just growling (or whining, as it sounded), to let him be a sour puss. Eventually it was decided that we'd keep Gizmo locked in the basement (where, I remind, his litter is, and where my room is, as well). For those of you who haven't been told before: he does not take well to being locked in the basement, even with his food brought down there. This goes double if he's alone, as he wants to be near someone, even if he's not being paid attention to. This is day one, and already Gizmo looks defeated (or depressed, whichever you're more likely to believe). I still think my mother is a fool.