Germboy has returned

So, I beat penumbra last night, and unlike Condemned 2, which left me with nightmares that involves miles of gore and no real coherent plot, Penumbra's nightmare had a great, awesome plot.

I was a superhero by night with minor telekinetic powers- I could move a certain number of atoms, and I knew how to arrange them in such a way that I could pick up various large objects and throw them, or possibly toss someone's head in the wrong direction and break their neck. By day, I was a doctor.

My superhero team has this airship, and my mom is on the team, as the administrator/airship keeper. I get sent out to investigate this town where a meteor just hit, and I go. It's more or less like Tacoma, but very much on fire, and I manage to make my way to the hospital, where I work on patients for a while. There seems to be a plague going around, and one of the patients I see, a teenage boy with long hair, has it- I try to talk to him, but I see in his mind he's somewhere else- a back yard of sorts, while his body lies on the bed, foaming at the mouth. I restrain him and give him a tranquilizer, but then I realize that I've been infected.

I run to the basement, and people start coming after me. One of the patients followed me, and next thing I know, I'm stabbing him with a scalpel. The people watching are aghast, but then I'm at a happy victorian dinner party, dancing with a woman. Flash back to reality, I'm surrounded by the corpses of everybody who came down into the basement to check on me, and I've carved 'BLAME' into my face. At this point, I had managed to control the hallucinations, and I get out.

I realize what the virus does- it makes you a homicidal, insane maniac, while giving you hallucinations of peaceful things. I get back to the airship to recover, and do so for a while- I take a short vacation at my parents house, and brag a bit about my mutilated face. Anyway, after I've healed more or less, I go back to the hospital, this time with a gas mask, and do the doctor thing again. They're understanding, as they've had a number of infected go on killing sprees. I continue to heal as many as I can, and finally end up in front of the hospital lobby, where some asshole steps on my gas mask after I take it off for a moment. FFFFFF. And then I wake up.

Anyway, cool dream. The sequence with me in the basement/stairwell thing with blame carved into my face and the bodies interspersed with the Victorian ballroom was really epic.

Germboy, out/Peace.

So, Penumbra, Black Plague.

I know it's wrong to play the sequel of a game first, and this last moment in Penumbra, Black Plague, might have forced me to go back and play the first one. Not because I necessarily need the backstory, but because I need a break.

After getting about 3-4 hours or so into the game, I experienced one of those moments in gaming- When you realize James killed Mary, when you find out Polito is Shodan, the golf club scene in Bioshock, Tranquility Lane in Fallout 3, when you find out pac man is the real ghost, those scenes. Those scenes are scenes that shock you, and are so incredibly well written that you have to step outside of the game to take a bit of a breather from the shock, trauma, or general WTFness.

Here's what happened...

( Spoilers. )

Anyway, for those of you who didn't read, Penumbra: Black Plague is System Shock 2 in arctic black mesa run by the illuminati. Great, scary game, with storyline that is just... Incredible. The puzzles are still a bit annoying and stupid, but aside from that, the gameplay is terrifying. And this is the first time in probably ever that I've had to set down a videogame out of emotional duress.

Great game. Flawed, but as I've said earlier, a game can be incredibly flawed, but if it has one of those moments, all is forgiven. And tonight, I had probably the most painful of those moments I've ever had.

EDIT: Just beat it. After the brilliant moment in videogame storytelling, the rest really isn't as good. Guess it just doesn't shine, but in the end, it's a decent videogame. Fun, creepy, great atmosphere, but the end is odd and the puzzles are kind of annoying. Still, a few REALLY good moments make it worth it.

Germboy, out/Peace.

Hey, Penumbra, remember when I said you were crap?

I take it back. Thanks for giving me nightmares for a year.

Germboy, out/Never sleeping again.

Dear survival horror people. Please, please, please, please stop making point and click survival horrors. They don't work. You make it so ridiculously buggy that if you get one thing in the wrong order, it messes up the entire thing and you can't proceed through the story. I mean, I'm sorry I discovered the cursed lamp earlier than I should have, and even though I didn't do anything with it, that shouldn't bar me from progressing and being able to open the door I was supposed to.

Something to this extent happened while I was playing Penumbra, a game I just got for cheap on Steam. It reminded me of Scratches, a similar point and click horror game. Great atmosphere. Creepy, genuinely creepy. Hinting at a good storyline.

And then the gameplay hit. Some of the puzzles are really logical, but some of them are so ridiculously badly coded that if you get one thing off, everything gets fucked after that. And more and more, I'm just getting sick of downright unplayable survival horror games that are unplayable due to stupid puzzles.

That's why I like condemned, the original one. Yes, it was a first person bumfight, but it was creepy as hell. The puzzles were minimal, and while the fighting was challenging, at no point did you have a 12 gauge with 100 shells, like so many other supposed survival horror games that really don't prove to be scary if you have a shotgun. Fear comes from being unarmed, hunted, and terrified. But fear is quickly disabled by having an annoying puzzle that requires things to be put in a certain order before you can proceed, and then wasting 30 minutes trying to do this puzzle before realizing that you have fucked up everything beyond comprehension and should just restart from the last save point. And even better, Penumbra uses actual save points, not the ability to save at any point, which while a rather retro move, is frustrating as hell.

So, I will continue to play you Penumbra, but you have lost my genuine interest. You had potential, atmosphere, great sound, and the possibility for a genuinely creepy plot, but you blew it all on bad puzzles. One bad puzzle, and the atmosphere is destroyed, the scariness is over, and the game is ruined.

But maybe I am being a bit hasty. I'll give it another try later, see if it redeems itself. I mean, Silent Hill had some godawful puzzles (not as ridiculous as some of the ones I've seen in point and click survival horror, though), but it was creepy. We'll see.

Germboy, out/Peace.

I've been reminiscing about mac games I played in the 90s, as that was the most gaming I ever really did in that era. Sure, I might go to a friend's house and play SNES or Goldeneye (some of my favorite childhood memories), but there are a lot of games that I really enjoyed that simply aren't talked about anymore, although when I bring them up, people say to me, "Oh, yeah, I remember that."

Firstly, I'd like to bring up The Dig. This game was done by Lucasarts, and was apparently one of the better point and click adventure games out there. I played the crap out of it, although a few of the puzzles defeated me thoroughly. It followed a team of three astronauts as they seek to blow an asteroid away from Earth, but said asteroid turns out to be an alien craft that takes them to a point and click beautiful, but sinister alien world. The three astronauts are Low, the typical gruff white guy with brown hair and stubble that every videogame is required to have as a protagonist, Brink, the snooty academic German scientist who I identified with immensely, especially after he dies and gets resurrected by a life crystal, turning him into a maniac, and Maggie, an annoying reporter who nobody likes, but exists only to be the female on the mission, even though she really doesn't do much. They end up solving the problems and bringing back the lost race of the planet, and finding their way home. All in all, it's a well written game, as Orson Scott Card and Steven Spielburg both worked on it. The soundtrack is phenomenal as well. The truly sad thing about this game is it really does seem to be buried in time, as people rarely talk about it, despite it being a pretty solid game- its one fault being the difficulty curve on some of the puzzles.

Another interesting game is Gadget. While not being so much a game as a superlinear myst clone, this game had style and messed with your head like none other. It has a deep plot, although you need to read the artbook to fully understand what is happening. It follows a military agent in a eastern european facist country that combines 1920s retro style with futuristic technology as he investigates several scientists who worked on a brainwashing project, and are now trying to build a spaceship to escape a comet that is headed towards the planet. Psychadelic, nightmarish, and overall great, it lacks a challenge, and thus few people really remember it.

The next game I want to talk about is the Journeyman project. This game was a myst clone, but set in the future, past, and other timelines. You play a temporal agent assigned to stop an alien ambassador from being killed by re-rewriting history after a crazy person tampered with it, triggering an interstellar war. Great story, weird gameplay. Good graphics for its time, and a very good soundtrack, although it's impossible to find these days. There were sequels to this game, but I never played them. Still, the idea of being a temporal agent has stuck with me for a long time, and I would love to get apparel for this series, if there is any.

I would talk about Marathon here, but I talk about Marathon too much. Marathon was good, blah blah, Bungie should remake it, blah blah, Master Chief is the marathon guy, blah blah.

Going a bit simpler, I really enjoyed the game Bolo. This simple tank game could be played over the earlynet, and it involves a tank, an island, a little guy that could build things, gather things, and randomly die, and pillboxes. It was simple, fun, and easy to play. Dustin mentioned remaking it, perhaps on flash, and I think that's a good game.

A game that nobody seems to remember is Mantra. It is somewhat of a Zelda clone for mac, but it had great music, decent graphics for what it was, and was just a solid, fun game. It follows Saric, a shipwrecked traveler who washes up on this land controlled by an evil wizard. You must find the mantras, which are elemental spells, and collect them to kill the evil wizard and free the land of tyranny. It's a simple adventure game, but it is genuinely entertaining, and the cute graphics and good music really make it work.

Exile is a rather plot heavy game that seems to also be lost in the sands of time, despite several sequels. It is a very complicated rpg, despite the graphics being fairly simple. The plot is you, and some friends, commit some defiant act in a tyrannical kingdom and are sent through a dimensional portal to a cave world, where other criminals and the like have already created settlements. Overall, this game was very frustrating, with a very high difficulty curve thanks to random monster groups that would occasionally spawn after you slept. Most of the time you could handle the monster groups, but one monster group in particular, called the slith, came in massive hoardes with wizards and archers, and could waste an entire party in no time. Even better, these enemies could spawn at any time, screwing you over right after you leave the first town. Even so, the rich characters and interesting plot kept me playing this game, despite leaving me screaming and swearing at my computer every now and then if I forgot to save.

A similar game was Realmz, although this game had a much better difficulty curve. You could genuinely survive most encounters, and loot was easy to come by- every enemy you killed would usually have chest armor, a helmet, and a weapon. If you could identify these, you could become rich very quickly. The general plot was akin to a dungeons and dragon game, and there were multiple scenarios you could buy. I only played the shareware version, so I got one scenario, but the level of detail and craftsmanship that went into it was really amazing. The one fault I would give to this game was a lack of music and awkward graphics at times. Even so, it was a fun RPG for what it was.

Finally, there was my favorite RPG, Taskmaker. This game followed the path of a young warrior as he did 10 tasks for the Taskmaker, the king. It was a decent rpg with no real music, sub-par graphics, and lots of little things you could do to get epic level weapons before completing the first task, but it was fun. Furthermore, it had a lot of humor, and didn't take itself too seriously- Lord British is one of the NPCs, and you can fight evil macintosh computers. The real appeal of this game, however, was after you defeat the final boss, you gain the 'master's menu' which allows you to control the game- you can rebuild levels, create npcs and monsters, and pretty much recreate any of the levels to your own desire. I spent more time doing this than actually playing the games, and in one of my saved games, ended up making most of the levels into completely different levels. Even so, this game is relatively unknown, and despite it being fun to rebuild the levels, doesn't hold much value these days. Storm impact, the company that made this, is also known for Skifree, which was far more popular, but I will always hold Taskmaker in very high regard. There was a sequel, Tomb of the Taskmaker, but I really didn't care for it as much- it lost a lot of the humor of the original, and became a bit too complicated.

Anyway, those are my favorite unknown mac games from the 90s. If you have heard of these, then props to you. I really would like for some of these games to resurface, as it would be tragic for them to be lost to history. Furthermore, once I get a decent webcam and a mac emulator, I would like to possibly do reviews of these games.

Germboy, out/Peace.

It's been a while since I've had one of these.



An old classic. GO!

Germboy, out/Peace.

( Temporal Revenge. )

This is a story about a psychologist interviewing a man who claims a time traveler went back and erased his wife from history. I'm rather proud of it, and it came to me completely randomly, but I think it's one of the best stories I've written. Enjoy!

Germboy, out/Peace.

I had an amazingly trippy dream last night that had the annoying thing where you take rules and thoughts from the real world and combine them with what happens in dreams. In this, it started out with my grandpa and me playing Garry's mod. In real life. And we were putting together a library of sorts, but he was having trouble spawning items. It was very strange.

I decide to go on a walk with Chris, who has gone full blown communist. He sees a car with my old classmate from Geiger, Tim, and a bunch of other kids, and opens fire on them. They speed off after taking a few bullets, and Chris and I go into hiding with Kyra, who is somehow in Tacoma. Suddenly, Tim busts in with a bunch of thugs intent on killing/hurting/reavering us. Chris stabs one, and I manage to get a leatherman and use the little knife to gut the fat one holding a Kukri to my neck, then I stab a few others, and manage to get them on the ground where they're bleeding out. Chris and I run away together, and Kyra, who wasn't involved with any of this, calls 911.

Chris eventually takes a bus and goes into hiding, and I think I end up at Kurt's for a while where he nurses me back to sanity with beer. I get a video message from Chris- a documentary on how capitalists are evil, but that's all I hear from him. And then I think, "You know, I just used up all the karma I had been gaining from all the shit that had happened to me. Thank god I wasn't hurt." Spork was somewhere in that mix too, but I think she was just sending me texts about TF2 stuff while I was talking to Kurt.

Then I get worried about the court and the police, but Kurt tells me it's reasonable self defense, and I'll be ok. After that, I decide to live with my parents for a bit, as it's safer there.

And I begin to see Pepper. Everywhere I look, there's Pepper. And I tell people, I keep on seeing her, I keep on seeing a ghost of my dog. They begin wondering if I have a brain disease, and I get kind of nervous, as I know she's dead. Then, she appears as she did at the end of her life, puts her head in my lap, coughs up some blood, and dies. It was like Silent Hill with my dog. Dream fail.

At that point, I wake up. There's a bit about a new job I have as a courier, but that's about it. WTF dreams.

In the real world, not a lot to report. We are most likely going to get a new dog, more on that later.

Germboy, out/Peace.

So, last night I had a dream where I was a friend of Zoro, from one piece, who only had a cameo in the show. I was a long haired swordsman who guarded a priest, and wore blue clothes and carried a Katana. The priest and myself ventured to some strange abandoned city where we were supposed to find another priest, and the priest went off to look for him, leaving me to wander around the city alone. I remember being attacked by owls and swarms of black insect like things on multiple occasions, but I managed to survive.

Cut to the priest, who has met this eerie looking voodoo priest who invites him to sit in his hot tub. The priest blesses the water, causing the skin to fall off the voodoo priest, exposing him as a demon. My boss explains to him that he'll have to leave this town or he will be exorcized, but the voodoo priest just laughs and tells him that he's bathing in holy water like it's nothing, and that exorcism won't work. From across town, I hear a series of explosion, and I try to get out of town, until three of the demon's henchmen stop me. A townsperson they were taking off to sacrifice managed to grab my sword and kill one of them, while I splashed holy water on the other, deforming him horrifically. After that, the two alive fell upon the townsperson and tore him to shreds, and I managed to escape.

There were other parts involving a criminal, his lawyer- Karnes, and a batch of strange monkey-cat like critters that had Frisk's eyes and could blog. And another part with cops, and a long search to find good food. But the main interesting part was the part with the voodoo demon. At least, visually it was very... horrible. But detailed. The demons also had interesting things going on with mirrors- they looked the same as anyone else, but certain parts of them were magnified so they looked disgusting and strange, and occasionally it would zoom out to reveal a horrible face, then back to the regular face. Odd stuff.

Anyway, dreams are cool.

Germboy, out/Peace.

Now they're finding planets in other galaxies.

It might just be a brown dwarf, but there is a chance that it is actually a planet. Woah.

Germboy, out/Peace.

So, this year is finally beginning to catch up to me. I've been taking it pretty well, I think, but it is getting to the breaking point, the stress is triggering a depression, and one more bad event, and the levy will break.

I've noticed that there is about one bad event every month. In January, I put that as being the general time my car got stolen, even though it was stolen on Christmas eve. That wasn't so bad, just annoying. Then, in February I believe, I got mugged. I survived that, but I don't think I'll ever be the same. I am paranoid as fuck now, when I'm walking, and I really don't like that. I don't trust people anymore. I really needed some night air last night, so I went on a walk down to the end of the block, and I was constantly looking over my shoulder, and realizing that there was a time where I could go on a night walk in peace- I even do that during the day, if I notice sketchy looking people. Anyway, after that, March happened, and I think that was when Dane killed himself. That hit me hard for a few days, but I coped with it. Then April happened, and the whole Optic Fusion get/loss and car accident happened. That was the big hit, the one that really got me good. And then, last month, Pepper died, and that's just been a slow burn. And this month, I found out I need 2500 dollars worth of dental work relatively soon, and I have no dental insurance. It's inspired me to apply for jobs like crazy and look at temp services, as apparently they are the best way to get permanent jobs, but thus far the temp agencies seem to not want to work- I got involved in one yesterday, they told me to send them a resume, which I attempt to do, and get a daemeon error.

So, I'm at the breaking point right now. If anything bad happens, I'll probably really crash. If it weren't for Anique, I would have crashed already, and I probably wouldn't be here today. But she persists in being a really good thing in my life, and I really can't imagine where I'd be without her.

Even so, I really need some good to happen. I know I am being a whiny bitch, but fucking shit, my life has been kind of fucked up this year, and I NEED SOMETHING GOOD TO HAPPEN. Seriously.

The dental thing is really a big hit on me, as I really don't have that money, and the idea of needing major dental work is not something I like, especially when if I don't get it fixed now, it will get significantly worse.

So, if anyone has any leads on any jobs with dental coverage, I need that. I'm slowly adapting to job search mode, as my study of IT isn't helping much, and I need the job/money/life now.

And really, if I could just get a job with dental benefits, a decent job that I am capable of doing and proud of, I'll be happy. I'll be able to live my life, and be more relaxed. That's all I need. That's all I need.

There's also the issue of my crisis in faith, but I really don't want to get into that.

No more bad luck. I really, REALLY need some good to happen. I'll keep working, but if there is a pattern I've noticed, it's that bad luck happens for no reason, good luck doesn't exist, you just work your ass off and sometimes it pays off. Sometimes, bad luck just fucks it all up. And that has been this year.

I don't like this world anymore. I want to make another one.

Germboy, out/Peace.

So, I went to the dentist's today. I hadn't had an x-ray, so they did one, and I need 11 fillings on the insides of my teeth, totaling 2500 dollars. I don't have dental insurance, nor do I have any money to afford this. My only hope is to find a job asap with dental insurance, whether I like it or not. Or possibly sell the nice new corolla I got, and drive the recently resurrected echo. I'll probably go with that option.

What frustrates me, ultimately, is that this is just another case of something nice being taken away. There have been a few occasions where I get something really nice, and it gets taken away- the office job for FHS, which paid really well and had full benefits, the optic fusion job, and now my nice car will probably end up going away.

I can't have nice things.

This is just another blow in the massive pummeling I've received this year. If it weren't for Anique, and a few other key individuals who have given me moments of genuine happiness at certain key points in my life, I would not be here, or at least, I would not be this person. I would have gone to the void, fully.

I want to curl up in a ball and hide till the end of this year.

I realized something. Bad things happen with no effort at all. Shit just occurs to you, fucking over your life. And if you want something good, you have to work your sorry ass off for it. And even then, shit can still happen, making you lose everything. Only one really good thing happened to me this year, as far as life events, and that was me getting the optic fusion job- I had to work hard to get that, and network a lot. And I lost it arbitrarily.

At this point, I am just on the breaking point. No more. I can't take another hit, I'll crack...

Germboy, out/Peace.

So, I met with an old friend today, Yi.

It amazes me that I am still able to walk, given the amount of time I was on my feet, probably 4-5 hours, walking on Owen's beach, and then another walk with Jess later in the day.

But overall, today was one of those days that I just... Really enjoyed. I meet with Yi once a year to catch up, as we've been close friends for a while, and she's only in Tacoma for one week or so out of the year, and every time we try to have an adventure.

This one started out with us meeting at Taco Del Mar for burritos, then hitting point defiance. After parking, we walked to Owen's beach, and walked down for about two hours before realizing the tide was coming back in. About halfway in, I noticed a strange gelatinous mass by one of the rocks that retracted when touched, having a brownish-green color and an unpleasant feeling about it. I decided not to meddle with such a thing, but soon found these strange masses covering the rocks and sand, and it became impossible not to tread upon them, for they were literally everywhere, as common as barnacles. After time, I realized that they were most likely sea anenomies, or possibly seed pods of some evil lifeform come to invade from the deep.

Anyway, after finding these masses quite resilient to any sort of attempts to do anything to them, we realized the tide was coming in rather aggressively, as though our attempts to meddle with the masses were not appreciated by the deep ones, and we returned the way we came.

After we finished at Point Defiance, we got soda at the soda fountain place, which was possibly one of the most refreshing drinks I've had in my life, and then I drove Yi to Dr. Merrit's house, an old teacher of ours, where he was having her over. When he saw me, he invited me to come stay for food, which was BBQ shrimp, a delicious Gin and Tonic (second most refreshing drink in my life), and salad. It was like a amazing party in my mouth, with interesting conversations about all manner of things. He also confirmed that the strange masses were not algae filled anemones, but in fact a new species spawned from elder ones in an attempt to retake the land from the filthy apes that had destroyed it for so long.

After that, I went home and spent some time with my family and our remaining dog, took a nice bath, and discovered rather rapidly that I had been horribly burned from the long exposure to the sun, but somehow it worked with the red shirt I was wearing.

So, here I am, tired, happy, full, and sunburnt. Not a bad day at all. In fact, I was expecting to get sunburnt, as part of me wanted that experience. I haven't been sunburned for a long time, and part of it feels like a sort of... Tactile connection to the memory. It hurts, but not terribly, and it's enough to look at and make me smile as I remember a great summer day. With elder spawn eggs.

Germboy, out/Peace.

So, I just watched a Spanish film called Timecrimes, which I throughly enjoyed. It is a psychological thriller where a man living with his wife in a nice country home sees a naked woman in the woods, and goes to investigate. He finds her unconscious against a rock, and is immediately stabbed by a bad scarecrow cosplayer. While fleeing, he wanders into a seemingly abandoned research station, where he is able to contact one of the researchers, who tells him to get into a strange pod where he can hide.

He emerges from the pod, only to find it is an hour and a half earlier. Wacky hijinks ensue.

As per time travel movies, it's one of the best ones I've seen. It's believable, it doesn't try to explain the physics or pseudoscience of time travel, and it deals fairly believably with the paradoxical nature of time travel. At the same time, it's compelling, dark, and interesting, with a main character who seems like a regular guy, not particularly likable or repulsive, just normal, a trait that I rather like about a lot of foreign films, their ability to make characters seem like normal people, while still conveying believable emotional responses.

Overall, it's a very strange, but one of the better time travel movies out there. And the bad scarecrow cosplay scenes are extremely creepy, and the entire thing had a relaxed, well thought out pace that reminded me a bit of the Silent Hill games when they were still good. There was a lot of subtlety and attention to detail, and all in all, it was just a really good movie.

So, if you like foreign film, Time travel, and psychological thrillers with eerie Scarecrow wannabes, check it out.

Germboy, out/Peace.

So, I had this rather incredible dream about Terminators. Specifically, it was about a future where skynet had been stopped, and humanity still existed in all it's sprawling, polluting glory. It was no happy utopia, as Skynet had failed to gain control of the nukes, but there were still a lot of problems, and Skynet had more or less gone underground until it could gain access to nukes, which is was apparently predestined to do on a certain date.

I was involved with the Skynet resistance, and we were constantly in a sort of intelligence arms race with Skynet, as both parties would get messages from the future, and have to decrypt them, then keep them safe. There were all sorts of new terminators, but for the most part, they were not combat models, instead being more like infiltration units. Many of them were incredibly human looking, and they even had these little metal parasites that would attach to your nervous system and control you, effectively turning you into a sleeper agent.

Spork and Nei were a major part of the resistance, and Deb was our cipher. My job was partially to weed out infiltration units, and Deb and I were able to talk in a special code that the terminators didn't understand- it was a mix of lolspeak and special grammatical errors and puns that we could make sense of, but the terminators would start freaking out if they heard. Shane and Whitney were there too, and I ended up going on a road trip with them and everybody else, but while we were stopping at a restaurant I saw a metal bit on Shane's head, meaning he was a sleeper agent, and we left him there with Whitney, so he couldn't activate and kill us.

After that, we ended up in this giant industrial city with these massive towers, coated in brown grime. There, we discussed what was going on with the Terminators, and I realized the reason I was still alive was I was valuable to them. They couldn't kill me, as I was one of the translators, and they were instead trying to set parasites after me. Following that, I became paranoid and ended up setting up shop in a rural area, and the dream ended with me looking at a bunch of hay in a nearby barn, and hearing something skittering about inside it, one of the metal parasites.

Odd dream. But good visuals.

Germboy, out/Peace.

( Cyber-breakup. )

Done with this beast. Now one more story inside my head, but I'll write that later. This is the story about the couple breaking up because the guy starts cyboring himself. It's been in my head for a long time. Hope ya enjoy it!

Germboy, out/Peace.

These things keep on getting better and better. It's like, the longer the wait, the more freaking AMAZING they are.

Germboy, out/Valve.

So, Swine flu.

Aside from obsessively watching its progress on google maps, and making fun of it on my twitter and facebook, I have actually been taking it somewhat seriously. Chances are good nothing will really come of it worse than what already has and the hype and hysteria is all lulzy, but it's still food for my ever hungry mindbox.

As I've said before, there is a reason there aren't outbreaks of plagues in the United States, and that's because for the most part, we handle disease outbreaks very seriously. The CDC doesn't mess around, and when ever there's a plague scare, people tend to freak out enough to wash their hands, shut down schools, and wear hazmat suits when they cook bacon. If there is a major outbreak here, I'll be rather surprised, but from the looks of it, I don't think much will come of it.

And if it does, I hope nobody I know gets infected, but at the same time, I have a feeling like I'll want to have a swine flu outbreak party if there turns out to be an infection in Washington state*. I can't quite explain my feelings on this- it's a mix of giddy satire of the stupid hysteria, which seems to be a fairly common perspective, but also a cold fascination. This plague could turn into something big. It probably won't, but it could.

I've always been fascinated with viruses. I've been sick for large portions of my life, mostly in my childhood, my physical form constantly plagued by a chronic coughing that became my auditory signature, with no real explanation but viruses. I grew up with the little buggers, grew to know them, resent them, accept them, and in some cases, admire the bastards. While chemists and biologists tend to agree they are not a form of life, I feel they deserve a little more respect than that. They are the biological equivalent of fire, and I can't help but be awestruck by their simplicity and power.

Still, something tells me that this won't be the one to bring down mankind. Now, airborne Ebola with a nice, long incubation period featuring flu like symptoms, that'd be the one.

How are you taking the swine flu panic?

Germboy, out/Peace.
*Said party would feature beer, bacon, and mandatory face masks.

And now I'm just waiting in Seattle for spork and anique. Also, got some free salumi. More when I'm not on a touchscreen.

Germboy, out/Peace.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

So, I had a conversation with my parents yesterday, and a lot of stuff came to head. A lot of it had to be brought up, like how I should figure out what the hell I want to do before I jump into it, but then that became a rather unsettling argument when it became a criticism of my interest in IT, and the fact that while I have my A+, that's not enough to get me hired anywhere nice. Which was part of my interest in optic fusion- I was looking forward to the training and knowledge I would glean from that position. And honestly, entry level IT work would be fine for me, as that's what I want. But sadly, such positions aren't easy to come by.

It's strange, because my dad thinks I should go in all sorts of directions, but that seems like terrible advice. Sure, that means more opportunity, but if you don't focus in one direction, you get nowhere. I'm all for keeping my eyes open, but he's talking about me getting into human resources, doing grad school again, back into social work, going to TCC, and doing the JET program. Although the JET program was brought up as a possibility while Anique possibly does grad school in Georgia, looking at the itinerary, there wouldn't be much overlap at all, and she'd end up coming back 8 months before I returned to the states. Although I do want to find something to focus on while she's gone so my mind doesn't go to bad places. And I want to try to make the long distance thing work for a year. And if she is coming home every few months for a few weeks at a time, I could probably handle it. Back to my dad, he also suggests I should take a few months to find a job, citing something about every month in the job search equates to 10k a year, and I should be spending 40 hours a week doing job hunting. I don't know how I would do such a thing, but that's pretty gonzo advice. It'll be interesting to see how that goes, should I go crazy on the job hunting thing. I just don't know how to do it, really. I mean, I can do 10 hours a week job hunting, but 40? Where do I start? Door to door at skyscrapers with a stack of resumes? I feel like such a n00b at this sometimes.

Anyway, my mom's advice is much more sound. It says, try to find your niche. And that's good advice. I bought a book on matching your personality type to your job, and I'm pondering speaking with a counselor, although I seriously doubt they'd be able to tell me anything major I don't know already.

I guess my conundrum is this: I want to get into IT. I have an A+, but the economy stinks. Should I A: Try to get an entry level IT position, B: Go back to college, get a minor in computer science/take computer classes at TCC, C: Pursue more certification, D: Hold an innocent Apple Macintosh SE hostage until I have a tech job, or E: All of the above.

I'm thinking E. But right now, my main concern is finding a short term solution, which I have two of right off the bat: Begging to get my crap job back at CCS, but I'm very much against that. The other is MDC, the detox place, if they're hiring. I went to their website and it didn't have the position up, but I also tried to search and got a massive php error. But, I'm thinking of stopping by the office and asking about it personally, and hopefully the head of the detox center will remember me.

In any case, input of any kind would be appreciated. I'm still dealing with emotional shit, so I'm not going to make any choices till after Sakuracon.

Germboy, out/Peace.