The Rani's Asylum

Today I got to read the final chapter of the Inuyasha manga. I'm glad Takahashi gave it a happy ending.

My grandmother was having a nervous breakdown tonight because her cordless phone's battery ran low, so I went over to her place. While there, I reminded her about the special needs of cordless phones (occasionally being charged, for example), and I had to explain it about 10 times.

Her: "So we should go to the store and buy a new phone, right?"
Me: "Um. No. You should leave this one on its base all night so it will recharge. It'll be fine in the morning."
Her: "But it needs new batteries, right? It said, "Low Battery", so we should go buy some batteries for it?"
Me: "Nope. It just needs recharging. Leave it on the base tonight."
Her: "But what do I use to call people tonight?"
Me: "The other phone that isn't cordless."
Her: "But I can't take that one in the other room.."
Me: "That's right."
Her: "Can't we just buy a cordless phone that doesn't need any kind of charging?"
Me: "There is no such thing."

Then she wanted me to bring her someplace.
Me: "You're in your pajamas."
Her: "No! I wear this every day!"
Me: "Yeah. It's the same pajamas you wear every day."
Her: "I can't go like this?"
Me: "If you go anywhere with me like that, you're definitely not getting out of the car."

Later, while still wearing those same pajamas, she said, "I'm gonna go in the other room and change into my pajamas." I was like, "But you're.. ah, never mind.."

It's been a fairly eventful week so far, filled with many shiny acquisitions and accomplishments.

I have moved most of my belongings into an actual bedroom for the first time since I moved out of my grandmother's apartment. Once my sister comes back for the rest of her stuff, I can finish moving my books and kaleidoscopes, and start putting my posters up.

I have acquired a nice full-sized bed. A used but lovely metal frame that's in fine condition, and a brand new Sealy mattress have combined to give me a sleeping experience I have not enjoyed for years. Namely, the sleeping experience of rolling over and Not falling on the floor.

I am now the owner of a device known as an EZ-Flash V. It took some quality time with various websites, FAQs, Wikis, and forums, and extensive use of my fingernails and teeth, but last night I finally managed to get Nethack running on my DS Lite. It's tiny, portable Nethack with stylus support!

My best friend gave me a used Oreck XL electronic air purifier yesterday which has done a fine job of making my bedroom stop smelling like dogs, despite the lousy reviews the device got. Considering this thing was free and it did exactly what I hoped it would do, I'm not complaining.

And then there's my new cell phone. My first cell phone ever. It is taking some getting used to, but so far I managed to learn how to make a call, set up voice mail, store a friend's phone number, download a ring tone, put it on vibrate, and recharge it. I really didn't want to get this thing. It was my father's indecisiveness about whether he wanted to get rid of our regular phone line (in order to save money) that ultimately prompted me to break down and get a cell phone.

In other news, a tornado hit the town where I grew up yesterday, hitting a hospital and a grocery store. That was pretty freaky. We rarely get tornadoes around here. It's normally the hurricanes that hit us.

For the past few days, I've been taking a break from Etrian Odyssey to catch up on some reading.  I started out with the first six Slayers novels.  I'm half done with book six now.  I can't wait for January, when books 7 and 8 will finally be available.  I'm reading them rather quickly, averaging a book and a half per day, and really enjoying them.  I would have gotten through them even more quickly if I hadn't stopped to read the entire Midori no Hibi manga. 

In other news, one of my D&D characters, Myotani Isuzu the samurai (Oriental campaign), got beheaded last night.  Sometimes the dice can be mean.  Since the characters in this game are fairly low level (4th & 5th level characters), I seriously doubt she'll be coming back to life.  It seems likely that I'll be replacing the headless samurai with Yoshihara Jin, a one-armed 4th level psion. I do enjoy playing Jin, but I have to wonder if replacing a warrior chick with a magical girl is going to mess up the party dynamics.  Time will tell, I suppose.

I adore this week's Inuyasha manga. Chuck Norris wishes he was Sesshoumaru. Nobody blasts their way out of tentacles as awesomely as Sesshoumaru! Nobody!

I have notoriously terrible veins. They are tiny, they move around constantly, and if you're trying to draw blood from them, you're lucky to get even a tenth of a vial before it clots. Getting sufficient blood from me to do any sort of extensive blood work is a real pain in the ass. I've had days where they had to stick me more than five times in different places to get even half a vial. I bet I could make a vampire weep in frustration. So today, when the nurse managed to draw a whole vial on her second try, I was really impressed. Last time she tried it, she stuck me several times, and I nearly fainted, and she still didn't get all the blood she required. I'm glad I don't get my cholesterol checked very often.

In other news, I've ascended yet another Oxycore Disco Bandit after killing the NS on my first try! I've gotten pretty good at it.

My NS-slaying technique involves:
1. Dual-wielding. My first hardcore permanent skill was Double-Fisted Skull Smashing. I use the wand in my main hand, and something with lots of bonus melee damage, like a batblade or a stainless steel shillelagh in my off-hand.
2. Torso Awaregness + Vampire Cape. It heals me whenever I crit, and I don't have to worry about silly stuff like trying to drink red potions in the middle of combat.
3. Goober the Cocoabo. He does four different things, three of which are actually useful in combat vs the NS. He can debuff her, he can hurt her, and he can heal me. Or he could just give me some meat. So 75% of the time, if he does something, it's very helpful.
4. The Furry Suit. The NS does damage based on your Moxie, and with this outfit on, she was doing only maybe 6 or 7 points of damage to me whenever she hit me. Note that this generally requires me to make the wand o' zapping, but I don't mind that at all.
5. Melee damage accessories. This time I wore a couple of mittens and a hobo glove.

This ascension, I made Torso Awaregness permanent, so I can try out a non-Moxie sign for a change without altering my technique, and so I can get the vampire cape that much earlier in my character's career. I went with the Vole sign this time, because I love a nice crit. During this stint as an Oxycore Seal Clubber, I'll be making Pulverize permanent. I figure since I love playing Oxycore so much, I might as well find a way to make my spleen useful. And since I prefer dual-wielding, if I don't feel like using my second plexiglass pike pike with whatever class I play next, I have the option of crushing it and eating it!

Last week the summer schedule began. It's bad enough that the work days start earlier and last much longer than usual, but it was worse than usual last week, because one of my co-workers had just married off her child, so my office was constantly full of people coming in to gawk at the dozens of wedding photos. I can't concentrate very well when I'm surrounded, and I found myself constantly running out of nice. Then there was the horrible headache, the locked-in-the-building incident, and the dog-sitting incident, and multiple nosebleeds (I bumped my nose walking into a wall in the dark). After all that, I couldn't even think straight, and I didn't remember there was a game that night until the following day. The rest of the week was slightly less horrible because I used some vacation time to leave early.

After work on Thursday, I began watching Sailor Moon. I had read the manga ages ago, but I'd never actually seen the anime, so I figured it was about time. My first thought was, "Want some cheese with that whine, Usagi?" My second thought was, "Clearly, the motto of the animation team was, 'Reduce, Reuse, Recycle'." My third thought was, "This is certainly very different from the manga.." It's pretty entertaining anyway though.

Yay! I have some money now. I went to the grocery store and stocked up on food, and brought my grandmother along for the ride since she was low on cigarettes and tired of being cooped up in her apartment.

I think later this week, I'll visit the local Office Depot and buy a new computer chair. The back has fallen off my current chair, so it isn't so much a chair now as a stool on wheels.

Ichigo, Rukia, Sado, Uryuu, and Renji have all graduated from Sim State University. It amazed me that even with me issuing no commands other than making them claim a dorm room and pay their bills, five out of six Sims 2 characters managed to graduate from college with a C average, and none of them died. It was amusing while it lasted, but now I think I'll go back to Titan Quest.

( I thought I'd show some pictures of my Bleach Sims 2 University experiment. )

As you can see from the pictures, Uryuu and Sado have broken up. I bought everybody double beds in their junior year, just because a certain person asked me to, but not only did none of them share their new beds, most of them continued their habit of sleeping in everybody's bed except their own, and in some cases, on sofas and love seats and recliners. I thought, "Hah. I'll fix that.." and I deleted all the love seats and sofas and recliners and replaced them with ordinary chairs. Then I watched as Renji got tired, and decided to sleep on a chair. Chairs don't even have an energy score, Renji..

Everybody is passing now. They all have a C average or better. Rukia somehow even managed to make an A in the second semester of her Junior year. I think the remaining 5 will probably manage to graduate. Sado, Ichigo, and Renji have all maxed their logic skills. Uryuu and Rukia aren't quite as into chess as the others, preferring to play the bass guitar and draw pictures.

Everybody is also fat now, except for Sado. The only reason Sado isn't also fat, is because every time the gym teacher comes around and yells at people to exercise, the only one home (or paying attention) is Sado. He has a Body score of 3. Everybody else is still at 0.

It amuses me that the only one who ever wanted to buy new clothing was Uryuu.

Rukia and Sado passed their third semester of college with C's (Sado's finally a Sophomore! Way to go, Sado!), and everybody else amazingly got B's. Since Rukia and Uryuu have become fat, I bought a fancy treadmill for the dorm with their scholarship money, but nobody seems to want to use it. Ingrates. Sado still regularly talks to his volleyball, while Ichigo has pulled himself out of his funk for the time being by painting a picture on a day when he happened to want to express himself creatively. Rukia still cries a lot, and Uryuu has also started crying pretty often. At least they haven't started talking to volleyballs yet. So far, out of everybody, Renji is definitely the most mentally stable one of the bunch. He has yet to have an aspiration failure, and he never worries or cries. If I had to bet money on who'd be the last one to flunk out or die, I'd vote for Renji.

Sado and Renji seem to be competing to become the next Bobby Fischer. They're Always playing chess. They've got like 7 points of logic each, so far.

Uryuu and Sado still love each other, and likewise for Renji and Ichigo, but for some reason, for the past day or two, Uryuu and Renji have gotten pretty close again, and wanted to flirt and play with each other. Are they planning to cheat on Sado and Ichigo? How cruel!

The second semester and the days following its end were rather eventful. The biggest thing that happened was the expulsion of Orihime. Her grades simply weren't up to snuff. The fact that she had No skill points at all was the main problem. She suffered one aspiration failure when she allowed herself to get fat, and then she started painting her very first picture mere Minutes before her final exam. Too little, too late, honey.. The taxi came for her. And then there were five.

Meanwhile, on the romance front, Uryuu declared his undying love to Sado in the cafeteria, in the presence of Renji, who was crushing on Uryuu at the time. This pretty much broke Renji's heart, and now he no longer is crushing on Uryuu, and he doesn't like Sado much anymore either. Then Renji found comfort in the arms of Ichigo. Rukia cries a lot lately. I think she's probably feeling like Joan Cusack's character in In & Out, who screamed at the night sky, "Is Everybody gay?" Yes they are, Rukia-chan. It appears to very much be the case. You will not be finding a boyfriend in this dorm. But don't give up hope. Maybe now that Orihime has left town, the cow will be available..

Ichigo also has finally befriended Sado. The two of them realized just how much they had in common when they pulled out matching volley ball professors and aspiration failure'd simultaneously.

I've been playing around with Sims 2 for the past couple of days, and I created the cast of Bleach as university students. In this particular game, I'm not controlling Anything except making them claim a door and pay the bills. At first, it mostly consisted of Ichigo, Rukia, Sado, Orihime, Uryuu, and Renji and a lot of gratuitous kicky-ball.

They all became friends within the first few days Except Ichigo and Sado, who don't actually hate each other, but their relationship is definitely in the negatives. All of them are Knowledge Sims except for Orihime, who is a Romance Sim. Ichigo, Rukia, and Renji all aspire to be Mad Scientists, while Uryuu wants to max all his skills, and Sado wishes to be chief of staff. Orihime wants to be a celebrity chef or something (which is pretty amusing, considering the weird stuff she cooks in the anime).

The first and only one of the Bleach Sims so far to actually fall in love with anybody was Renji, who is apparently head over heels for Uryuu. So far, that affection is one-sided.

Judging by some of Uryuu's queued and then forgotten actions targeted towards Ichigo, I am starting to wonder about him. I mean seriously, Uryuu. Kissing up Ichigo's arm? Giving him a backrub? What Are you thinking? I mean, you're a Quincy, he's a Vaizard.. it'll never work.

The cow mascot visited their dorm one day, and tormented Rukia and Renji for most of an evening. Throwing water balloons at them, joybuzzer shocking them, setting off water sprinklers, etc. Renji got a cleaning point just mopping up after that cow! The cow tormented Sado and Uryuu and Ichigo, too. Then the cow went upstairs where Orihime was napping on the sofa, and set off the sprinkler there. After which Orihime decided to hang out with the cow, and became good friends with him. And now one of her wants is to become best friends with the cow.

The next day, I saw Orihime hanging out in Sado's room with some hunky blond guy in his pajamas, and it took me a few minutes to realize that this was, in fact, the cow, without his cow suit on. Now I begin to understand.

One of the sillier things I've encountered was the fact that hardly anybody sleeps in their own room. One will sleep in another's bed, prompting the other to sleep in someone else's bed, and then that someone else will sleep on a recliner.. etc. I wonder why I even bothered getting them to claim rooms.

Sado experienced constant aspiration failures, starting when he flunked his first semester of his freshman year. It usually involves him having conversations with a volleyball with a graduation cap on. He has also seen and been treated by an imaginary psychiatrist.

Orihime also flunked her first semester, and is probably going to flunk it again. She has yet to acquire Any skills. She's doing so poorly in school that Sado wants to help her with her homework. Sado, you don't even do your Own homework!

Everybody else passed their first semester with a C. In some cases, barely. It will only get harder for them, from here on out. I'll probably continue to watch them until they all flunk out or die, or by some miracle, graduate.

I got Dad's computer fixed yesterday after lunch. This is now the second computer I have repaired with Mom's tools. I'm glad that it was just a damaged Ethernet card though, and not something more serious. My uncle tends to keep spare Ethernet cards around, but I doubt he's got spare motherboards.

After reading the hilarious Sims 2 comics at http://www.pockethouse.com/, I ended up staying up extremely late last night playing Sims 2. That's some extremely funny shit. Especially that Adam guy. One of these days I should buy the rest of the expansions for that. I only have the University one. Actually, what I should do is finish playing all my Titan Quest: Immortal Throne characters through Epic and Legendary before I let myself get distracted away from it by more Sims 2 expansions. I'm hooked on quite enough games already. On the other hand, I want wolves and robots!

I stayed late at work today, because the software we were using was taking an unnaturally long time to respond to our commands. Eventually, around 6pm, after half an hour on the phone with tech support, a solution was found to speed it up. The solution was to turn off the pictures. The software likes to refresh the screen every time you tell it to do something. And every time it refreshes the screen, it has to download the pictures again from the server. That's what made it go so slowly. Apparently, there was a way to turn the pictures off all along. It wasn't a particularly obvious way, mind you. There was no "Pictures Off" button or anything so simple. It was more a matter of changing the location that the software looks for the pictures, so that it looks for them in a place that has no pictures. *sigh* Now that that's fixed, I think I may actually have a prayer of meeting my deadline this week. Yay!

Last weekend a festival took place in the park across the street from me, and it was incredibly noisy, and it made going anywhere a pain. In order to go to church, I had to get two people to move their vehicles, and then I had to play dodge-the-pedestrians until I got out of my neighborhood. I'm glad that festival is only once a year. Being subjected to lousy music from two different bands on two different stages simultaneously is rather annoying. And having so many strangers around, and so much noise drove our dogs crazy, which drove Dad crazy, which drove me and my sister crazy. Sooo happy it's over.

I returned to work Monday after my 10 day vacation, and went back to the massive piles o' paperwork that some of my co-workers like to call "job security". Because they think it's funny. For the first half of today, I was unable to make any headway at all on this work, because the software in which I'm supposed to enter the data was not working. Then, after a woefully unproductive day, I got in my car to go home, and it wouldn't even start. Turned out some part of my battery wasn't connected properly. Luckily it only took an hour to get it fixed, thanks to Dad. Now I won't have to worry about who's going to bring me back to my piles o' paperwork tomorrow.

The Inuyasha manga is getting rather awesome. Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru are having what will probably be their final fight. Hopefully they'll both survive this fight, even if their weapons don't.

In Titan Quest, I found some armor with better resists for my Seer, and switched her from the Wrath trance back to the Convalescence one. She's doing a little better now. I'm probably going to add Storm as her second mastery, but Nature is still tempting me with its pretty Heart of the Oak buff.

Update: I went with Storm after all. She's using Squall and Distortion Wave as a sort of 1-2 punch for destroying groups of trash mobs, and using Distort Reality (with maxed Temporal Rift) as an "Oh crap" button when she gets surrounded, and for boss fights.

I went to the Easter vigil mass with my grandmother and one of my sisters, and then we ate out at a fancy restaurant afterwards. This of course was accompanied by the traditional grandmotherly chaos and drama, but we love her anyway. I didn't get home from the restaurant until around 11.

Then on Sunday, I relaxed at home, playing Titan Quest most of the day. My Seer is in Act 4 Normal, and is turning out to be a lot more fragile than I expected. Everything is hitting her for like half her hp. Even little trash mobs. Her resistances suck too much. She's dying too much. I can't decide whether to use her for a mule and start over from scratch, or just try to find her some better gear to patch the holes in her resistances. I could also try to level her up and add Spirit as her second class, and give her some auras that make enemies not hit so hard. Alternately I could add Nature, max Heart of Oak and its modifiers to give her more HP, speed, and elemental resistances, so that I can focus more on things like pierce and poison resist, and wolves to tank for her. Decisions, decisions.

I didn't remember about KoL until that evening after rollover. So I missed out on the Oyster stuff. Rats. On the happy side, I did ascend my hardcore Seal Clubber, so it ended up not really mattering. I took out the Nasty Sorceress on my first attempt this time. Didn't die once. And then after I ascended (Hardcore pathless Seal Clubber again), Baron von Ratsworth slaughtered my sorry low-level ass several times. Heh. I got so used to oxycore ascensions that I started relying on those cans of air to help me in the beginning. After I ascend this time, I think I'll go back to oxycore ascensions. I wonder if I'm the only KoL player in existence who actually prefers playing oxycore. The canned air is so very nice, and plexiglass is so very wonderful, and I don't have to worry about what to eat or drink. When I get used to playing like that, it's hard to get used to playing any other way again.

My Kingdom of Loathing character has finished her second Oxycore ascension, this time as a Disco Bandit. She now has shiny new plexiglass pants in her inventory! She also will now eternally enjoy the benefits of an overdeveloped sense of self-preservation. She has begun her new life as a pathless hardcore Seal Clubber. She's going to go for permanent Eye of the Stoat and a stainless steel shillelagh this time. She can finally eat and drink again. At least for the next couple of lifetimes. The plan is to go again as a pathless hardcore Seal Clubber for a second shillelagh and permanent Lunging Thrust-Smack. She has no permanent skills yet for food or drink preparation. I figure if I'm mostly doing Oxycore runs lately anyway, I don't really need to make those a priority. Personally, I think the hardest thing about Oxycore is the inability to acquire (and properly make use of) Chronic Indigestion ;) It will be worth it in the end though. Someday, she will have made all her favorite skills permanent, and be running around in Normal, clad head-to-toe in plexiglass (Shocking!) and LTS'ing everything to smithereens with dual-wielded stainless steel shillelaghs! It's nice to have a dream ;)

So far this week, I've missed work twice because of my seasonal allergies, and I'm about to miss it a third time today. I have a doctor's appointment today so I can get some drugs that actually work. Even after having taken a couple of extra-strength Tylenol, my head still hurts so much that if someone offered to behead me, I probably wouldn't decline.

I have beaten Jade Empire. For something that took almost an hour to install, it sure doesn't last long. If I'd actually bothered playing the mini-games, it might have lasted another hour or two, but I'm not really into mini-games. The plot was pretty good, and most of it wasn't even recycled. The henchmen were awesome. Especially Wild Flower. The martial arts stuff was quite fun. Especially swords. Once I mastered the longsword style, it got rather gory. I'll probably play this again after I tire of the Titan Quest expansion, which came in yesterday.