The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

wow, my sleep schedule has reached a new level of fuck-upedness



went to bed at 4am yesterday, woke up at 5am because of grandpa making breakfast..at 5 in the freakin morning! I felt awake though, until i found myself trying to cut my egg with a spoon.



stayed up all day until 8pm when i crashed, woke back up at 12am and have been awake ever since, despite my best efforts to get back to sleep. Not even educational television's boring enough to make me tired. hahaha



i have a dentist appointment later this morning and i guarantee i'm gonna start feeling tired around the appointment time



at least i have more time to play video games. hahaha

finished off all of my psychology assignments aside from the group project. The grading system's got me slightly confused though.



i added up the point values for each assignment, the "jumpstarts" are worth somewhere between 20-25 per assignment, and i'm thinking each test is worth 100 points.



so that means the total amount of points would be 800.



i got an 84 B on my last test, don't know how though, and i'm assuming i'll be getting higher than a D on my last jumpstart thingy. So i'll be in the low A range, at 730ish points.



Not as high as i'd like but i only opened the psychology book 3 times this semester so, i can't complain. An A is an A! And an A means i get to exempt the final exam!



i'm really excited about next semester, i got a few of the teaching classes i need, so i'll finally be learning something useful! Psychology is always useful of course, but everything else i took these past 2 semesters was just a time filler.

so far i've had about a full day to play Morrowind and i do like the game. Kinda hard to get past the graphics but they're not all that bad.



To be honest, if i played this back in 02 when it came out i'd of shit myself. hahaha It's very detailed from an art standpoint but it's not detailed in proportions. Like you can see individual fingers but they look drawn. Kinda reminds me of a cartoon, a good cartoon though.



People were right about the factions. There's a lot of them! You can even join the Imperial Legion and the church. They're organized differently than oblivion though. In oblivion one could easily join and advance through all factions with little effort. This isn't the case in morrowind. Not only do you have to preform tasks to advance in factions but you also have to increase your skills to certain levels.



The mages guild for example, to advance to Apprentice you not only have to do this little fetch quest involving shrooms, but you have to get one of your spell skills to level 10.



The for the Blades, your endurance and personality have to be at least 30 to be promoted, which it is by the minimum default, but still, good example.



On one hand this helps individualize your character, but it also takes a tiny tiny bit of fun out of it. Mainly because the Legion specializes in heavy armor, and i use light armor so i wouldn't advance far there at all. Sure i could always level heavy armor but i'd never use it in combat.



As far as combat is concerned, everything is done by invisible dice rolls. A percent chance if you will. I'm personally indifferent towards this, i'm not jumping for joy over it but i don't mind it either.



What i mean is, say you slash at a target, even if you connect with it on screen, there is a chance that the enemy dodged the attack based on your stats and the stats of the enemy. Same goes for your character, although the enemy's attack could connect, there is a chance that you dodge it, although there is no dodge animation.



There is also a chance when casting spells. Like a healing spell. When cast there is a 63% chance the spell will work. The chance goes up as the player becomes more skilled in that area. Same with combat, as the player is more proficient with swords, spears, ect, the chance to hit massively increases.



Fatigue plays a larger role in this game as well. Your chance to hit decreases as you get tired, as well as the chance spells cats correctly. So if a healing spell has a 63% chance at full fatigue, it may have a 30% chance at 0 fatigue.



Fatigue also drains a lot easier as well. Running causes it to drain, unlike in oblivion, so the player is "encouraged" to walk more often. Which isn't bad, because although the scenery is low quality, it's still nice. The water and sky graphics are especially nice.



One thing people weren't right about is the size of the game world. It is big, but it's not bigger than oblivion. Although it gives the illusion of this because of all the walking. I walked from one town all the way to another huge one in about a day and a half - game time - and if i were to walk from the Imperial City in Oblivion to Chorrol, it would take around 3 days.



i do really enjoy the game though, despite its age. And it's nice to play an xbox game without having to think about the achievements, like Oblivion.



Anyone who hasn't played morrowind but liked oblivion, i recommend tracking this game down, it's well worth it.

yet another splinter cell complain, this is due to the ignorance of the players though. Simply put - people do not read!



You can tell a lot about a person by how observant they are. And the majority of the people on splinter cell conviction are not very observant at all.



People have complained both to me personally and on message boards about the lack of silenced weapons in the game. As soon as i hear this i want to back hand them so damn hard.



*The 5-7 hand gun in particular confuses people. It's like a mechanical process i swear.



I've had about 8 people tell me straight up that the gun is "not silenced"



then i shoot them with it and they complain that i'm cheating because the sentries can't hear the shot.



i ask them if they've ever used the gun. To which they ALL replied "no".



I ask them if they read the gun's description. To which they ALL replied "no".



I tell them that the description says the 5-7 has an internal silencer. Then they say either "oh, ok" or something along the lines of - i don't see it.



If they say the latter, i ask them if they know what the word "internal" means. To which they reply "yes". Which honestly makes me laugh like hell.



For those of you who are dim-whited, internal means it is part of the gun - located inside the frame. An external silencer would be the ones you screw onto the barrel of a gun. Guns with internal silencers, do not need external silencers to be silenced. Simple concept right?



*Then i've had people tell me that they're pissed because none of the assault rifles have silencers. This more or less plays out the same way because the M4 rifle i used is silenced.



What happens here is people assume every upgrade for every gun is the same. They think that all guns have 1 ammo, sight and scope upgrade and that's it. Of course if one were to actually READ the upgrades they'd see that some guns - like the M4 - have a silencer upgrade instead of a scope.



I've had a few people outright accuse me of cheating because i "used a pistol like a machine gun" to which i've said "that's because it was a machine gun!"



the stupidity of people never ceases to amaze me. It's sad how unobservant people are when the information is handed to them, i'd hate to see how they;'d do if they actually had to figure things out on their own.

We've just had what i like to call "drive by lightning". This is where a lightning storm speeds into an area, a single heard shot of lightning hits the perfect area to take out the internet and/or power for the area, and then is gone as quickly as it came.



fucking storm rolled in an hour ago, took out the internet and was gone in less than 5 minuets. I know florida storms are unpredictable but that's just ridiculous.

finally tracked down a copy of Morrowind for the original xbox. Only played through the tutorial because i wanna finish everything on Oblivion first but i can tell it's gonna be a good game. Graphics aren't good of course but i can tell what everything is so that's a plus.



Got my ass kicked by an old lady orc though, hahaha.

Just went out to punch a random person to end my test of the game and it ended badly. hahaha



At least with less graphics there's more space for content. And i heard there's a hell of a lot to do on that game even without the DLC stuff so i should have a lot to keep me interested.

i hate to steal the line from Penn and Teller but - the xbox 350 is BULLSHIT!



short version - ps3 is better. Larger memory, better capability, better reliability and more user freedom.



Xbox - small amount of memory, limited potential because of the whole HD DVD versus Blue-ray thing, severe lack of user freedom, and what little you can do you have to all but sell your soul to access it.



Long version



i used an xbox 360 for a few years now and it's always felt lacking to me. A huge hit was when my first xbox crashed just over a year, and my ps2 still works after like 8 years of nearly non-stop play.



Then, i ot the ps3 over Christmas and it only took me a few hours to say the ps3 was better.



Let's start with what you cann't do with the xbox.



For one, the applications on the xbox are limited. Sure you have facebook, netflix and zune, but that's it. Free-roam internet access is just not possible.



Then, on the xbox you have to pay an arm and a leg for nearly everything! Like shows for example, if i were to pay for all the episodes on a DVD from the xbox, i would be paying 20% more than i would if i just got up and went to the store to buy the DVD. I know convenience items are supposed to cots more, but when the price reaches a certain point, it's no longer convenient.



Then there's the whole "avatar" thing on the xbox which is an utter waste of time on the developer's part and a waste of memory on the consumers part. You spend a decent amount of money to dress up a little character that you only see for a maximum of 1 minuet per day: 10 seconds or less when yo log onto the xbox live, and another 10 seconds or less each time you go to the dashboard. All it's really there for is to show everyone how stupid you are for putting so much money into something so incredibly useless.



Then there's the sloppy account security.



The xbox puts a good deal of restrictions on accounts under 18 - even after they're over 18. Even "graduating" your account to an adult account requires you to put in new credit card information, however the younger child has free reign to charge things to the parents credit card without so much as a warning. I used to ask my parents simply out of courtesy before i bought something, there was nothing on the xbox preventing me from bleeding the bank account dry - presumably because that's what Microsoft is hoping stupid kids do.



MS does make clear that there are no refunds for any purchase, no matter how vague the items description is. So with every download you're playing Russian Roulette with your money.



The only thing the xbox has going for it is the ability to listen to your own music while playing a game, but then you really don't have time to do that since the music muffles duologue, foot step noise and in some cases makes the game run slower.



Now onto what you're able to do on the ps3.



My biggest thing for the ps3 is the unrestricted internet access. Going onto the internet literally opens its own browser. You can do nearly everything you can do on a home pc or laptop from your ps3, of course you are at equal risk for viruses and the like but Sony relies on the ps3 users to have some amount of intelligence when using this.



Downloads still cost money but they are considerably less expensive than the xbox, and because of the un-restricted internet, you have access to youtube! So why buy it from xbox when you can watch it on a big screen TV from a ps3 for free?



Hell, i bet i could look at porn on the ps3 with no penalties if i wanted to.



Then there's the graphics and general memory capacity - the ps3 has more memory than my god damn laptop computer! 90 GB! The xbox came with somewhere around 15 GB. Sure there are larger memory packs but you have to "buy" them, the ps3 already comes with more memory than you'll ever need.



The ps3 can also hold 6 times more dats on the CDs than an xbox CD can, which means greater potential for games in all areas. One thing that personally amazes me is that despite this, the metal gear team was still incredibly close to using all the memory on the disc.



There are a few bad things about the ps3 though. For one, Sony has about as much business skill as a new born baby. Blue-ray was a great move, not making the newer ps3 backward comparable with the ps2 was a fucking stupid move, making the newer ones able to play ps1 games and still not ps2 was a move i just can not comprehend. This also means that the second copy of ROTK 8 that i had to track down is still unable to be played.



Also handing the licenses to great titles like the Ace Combat series is xbox was another fucking stupid move.



And to top it off, "borrowing" the xbox achievements system under a new name is just pathetic. Show some dignity and stick to your own ideas. And fire the toddler who's in charge of your budget.



Despite those flaws the ps3 is still a vastly superior system, this is coming from a former xbox player. True i do still play xbox but that's because of two reasons



1 - dead rising

2 - i'd rather not fork out another $500 in games i already have. Every new game i get is going on the ps3 though you can be sure of that.

got a perfect example of "quality over quantity"



my dad and grandpa both bought cookies today.



Grandpa only paid 69 cents for like 3 packages of 24 cookies, which were all practically stale right out of the package.



Dad paid a little over a dollar - i think - on a single pack of cookies that were soft and fresh.



i can tell you right now that i am never gonna touch the stale cookies. hahaha

finally got around to watching the entire Zombieland movie, xbox was finally good for something. Gotta say, that movie kicks freakin ass!!!



I'm not really a movie person what so ever so if i take an hour and a half out of my time to watch something, you know it's damn good.



i love the whole zombie premise. It would honestly be horrible if it actually happened but to some extent it would be freakin awesome! Horrible because you have the threat of being slow and viciously devoured by people you probably knew, but awesome for me because you're basically given a free pass to explore anywhere you want!



I'm generally a curious person so i love looking around places, But of course you've got private property and employee only areas that regular people can't get into without penalty. But in a zombie Apocalypse no one will give a shit. unless someone has a sniper rifle, then you stay away, far, far away.



Also i love the idea of being able to go around without there being people. That's why i love silent hill so much. It's partly because the town changes from regular to demonic on a dime, so you've got 2 towns in one and there's always someplace to explore. And partly because, aside from all the monsters, the town's deserted. You can go where you want, relax and not have to worry about people.



other silent hill fans say that the town would drive a person insane over time, but i'm already insane so if silent hill can do any more damage i will be thoroughly impressed. hahaha



getting off track though - yay zombies!!!



i honestly think i would do well in a zombie Apocalypse. Not so much because i'm bad ass - because i'm not - but because i'm a good planer. Provided i survive long enough to get there, i could theoretically have a well defended shelter up and running in about an hour. My old high school's got sturdy gates, 3 floors counting the accessible roof and is surrounded by fast food places. yes i think about this too much but i think about everything too much so...fuck. hahaha



aside from the planning i've got speed and a really good jumping distance on my side. I know from practice i can jump onto a trashcan, then onto the roof of a 1 story house with little effort, especially if it's a running jump. And because i love jumping, i'm really good at finding fun and/or useful places to jump to/from. The death grip from holding video games controllers helps. hahaha



wow this got off topic. hahaha but hell, i've been up for a full 24 hours so......wait what? hahaha



wow i'm going to bed now.

this is something funny i did in splinter cell. I was playing Hunter with some random person online on the first level, just to have a little fun. Mainly i was hoping he'd be grabbed by the enemies so i could free him from the choke holds for that challenge, but for fun also. hahaha



i found out that if you're holding an enemy hostage, and you pres B and forward to throw him when you're right up against a wall or a railing, he'll bash the hostage's head against said wall or rail.



so, while my partner was crouched down at a corner, i walked up to the wall and proceeded to bash the enemy's head into the wall full force, to which my partner said "Damn! I felt that from here!" hahaha it was great.

got my first C in psychology today, pissed me off. it was on one of these little assignments that you do for test review, of course i spent more time during lecture trying to understand the ruby code than listening to the professor so i was kinda asking for it.



here's hoping i do better on the actual test!

got in a fight with my dad today, i mean a full on fight, not an argument.



i didn't win but i held my own surprisingly. got him with my trip where you kick out the back of the leg and push down on the neck, sent him to the ground, but i couldn't keep him there for long. He got back up, got 2 good hits to the ribs before i could get behind hi, then i had 1 hand behind his back and was getting him in a choke hold. He let himself bend back, grabbed me by the shirt and pulled me over his damn head! Then i was the one on the ground. hahaha got back up and tried to block his punches - didn't work - finally i got my hand onto his shoulder, if you press your thumb in at a certain angle a person will lose around 90% of the power of their punches. so i did that and punched him in the stomach a few times - which did absolutely nothing - still can't hurt people hahaha. Then the punk decided to tackle me, must have gotten a flash back to his line backer days, managed to keep myself up just enough to be able to roll from under him and got him in another choke hold, 1 hand behind his back again. He still managed to grab my shirt and stand up, holding me by the shirt. i slipped out of my shirt and tripped him again, then jumped on him and kicked him a few times. he sat up, i got him in yet another hold, when he went to reach for me i grabbed his hand and twisted his arm back, using that angle to kick him in the chin. that was followed by an elbow to my stomach and a slam to the ground when he got back up, followed by pinning my arms behind my back and grinding his knee against my damn spine. took me 30 seconds of struggling till i gave up. hahaha



it was interesting though damn. don't know how i did it but i'm a decent amount stronger than i was a year ago.

As much as i love this game, it's only been out for a few days here and i'm already seeing people use the "dashboard" technique to abort fights. That is where you, on the xbox, open the menu and press Y to return to dashboard, effectively negating the fight.



People do this all the time on Armored Core, another great game with ruined online play, and coincidentally, a little under half the people who've done it on Splinter cell have also played Armored Core.



At least they had a reason for it on AC, a bad reason though, but at least there was one. On AC there was an active leader board with ranks from E-A. Kinda like a school grading system. The better you were, the better letter grade you got. Winning matches increases score, losing decreases, draws do nothing. And going to the dashboard turns the match into a draw regardless of who was winning. So the score crazy people would always dashboard when they were about to lose.



Anyway, there does not appear to be a leader board on splinter cell. No ranking system, or even a way to make matches ranked or un-ranked. So winning or losing effects absolutely nothing, So i am thoroughly confused as to why people do it, yeah there were a few matches where i got lucky and ended up getting 50 points to 10, that i can understand a little, but most of them were even fights. I guess people don't want to fight people equal to or above their skill level?



personally the only reason i'd fight against less skilled players is to teach them better tactics so i'd have more of a challenge, like i did with Armored Core.



It takes the fun out of online if whenever you're about to win they abort the match, wish there was a way to block that ability but there's not without taking the feature out altogether.

this is an extremely recent picture of my girl Kristen just before she went to work.







this is cake! Cake that she made herself, practice for making me dinner I think.







sexy girl and delicious cake, this is what heaven feels like. hahaha damn i'm hyper.

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birra
14:35 Apr 21 2010

That's a damn tasty looking cake.



However, the photographer in me wants to move it to the table, with linens and stemware around it... not next to the sink...



*distracted by background*

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rape is never a funny thing, except in this instance.



this lady my grandpa always helps out with yard work and repairs in her house accused him of sexually assaulting her. Not to his face but she told these people who live further down, who then told the cops.



she said that while he was over the house fixing her fridge, he pushed her against the wall, lifted up her shirt and sucked on her breasts. After the incident she claims to have run to a friends house - who is right across the street, crying.



There's a few things wrong with her story.

the major one is that dad went to her friends house and they denied that she ever came over.

Secondly, the people who called the cops are known criminals who are arrested for petty crimes on a monthly basis. These people always try to blackmail the older folks in the development, although they are fucking horrible at it, so my dad and i highly suspected that she put the girl up to it with either threats or some kind of bribe.



still, to be on the safe side we questioned grandpa when he came home. We told him what she said, the whole story, then he said all defensive



"Well i didn't push her!"



then dad and i just looked at him, not saying a word for almost a full minuet. finally i said



"did you do anything else?"



which was followed by



"NO!"



i honestly don't believe he did it but the "well i didn't push her" thing was hilarious! we've been messing with him about it all day. when he left to go to mcdonalds a few minuets ago i said "don't rape anyone while you're there!"

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caelenium
22:24 Apr 20 2010

Last year 2009 in April a girl in her thirties living next door to me accused me of raping her. The police did the DNA tests both on me and her too. My innocence was forensically proven. My feeling is that certain girls and even certain older woman are best kept at a distance. They have some kind of insanity going on. My opinion is that they drink too much alcohol, mixing it with drugs and they smoke tobacco, which further restricts the flow of blood to their brain. Basically be careful going anywhere near these nut case woman. Obviously men are even worse in that there is always a fight.

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today a squirrel actually stole my twix bar!



i was sitting outside of my psychology class eating one of the 2 twix bars i had, i looked up to see the class letting out and when i looked down at the candy bar, a squirrel was climbing onto my bag, before i could even do anything it bit into the bar and ran off with it. Then a few minuets later i saw it again sitting right in front of me like it was begging, looked up at the bar i was still eating. i had to give it to the squirrel, too awesome not to feed.



i want one of those a a pet!

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birra
19:51 Apr 20 2010

I call those squirrels, "Politicians."



Too friendly when they shouldn't be.



They'll reach right into your pocket for whatever they can get.



Then they come back and ask for more.

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I was bored so i started watching political videos on youtube. Interesting stuff. Of course with every video there are dozens and dozens of stupid people who "think" they know the way to fix the economy.



I hate how people think politics and economics are simple constructs and can be fixed easily, because that's sure as hell wrong.



here's a pretty good example.



Say you own a car, said car breaks down and you know nothing about cars. If you open the hood and look around, you can probably get a decent idea of how the visible parts of the engine work, but you still don't know a thing about the internal parts.



So, the smart thing to do would be to take the car to a mechanic, because they know how everything in a car works and they know how to diagnose and fix the problem.



Sure you could take the engine apart, learn what each piece is and how to solve the problem yourself, but a lot of people aren't willing to do that.



in out of example terms.



the person with the broken car is today's average citizen. The mechanic is the government and the people who have learned how cars work as a hobby are the highly educated citizens.



i myself don't know the answer to fix the economy or to better run the government, but i do know that i don't know enough about how it works to make any sort of valid statement, and until i do i keep quiet. I just wish the other ignorant people would do the same.



i'm also glad that stupid people don't have any political say, otherwise i'd move to Canada.

I finally, FINALLY got the perfect hunter achievement on splint cell, the one where you gotta go through all zones on deniable ops without being detected. And i got 2 words for ya - Navy Seals!



Instead of trying to sneak up on ones that are separated from the group and ultimately being spotted by some bastard who was just too close, I relied mainly on my silenced assault rifle to get their attention.



See, when they're searching for you they have no patrol "rout" per say. They scan the whole area, very intricate scanning yes, but it also opens up a few vulnerable points. Based on where they think the shot comes from they form a type of line, everything behind the line they deem secure, everything in front they search. So if you're able to get behind that line, you're able to pick off the flank man and just annihilate the search team.



I did this on this first area, i was thinking about going to the Russian embassy level because that one is my favorite out of all of them, but decided to just go with the first for the hell of it.



I played the first 3 zones like i normally do - stealthy sneak up on someone, break their neck, use mark & execute to eliminate everyone else before they can finish the sentence "what the fuck?" Then when i got to zone 4, that got forsaken strip club, i switched to the divide and conquer style.



Shot the lights in the area they couldn't see so i'd have a safe place to fall back to and maneuver around, then killed the guy who everyone was looking at, only fired one shot so they didn't quite know where i was. Then fell back to my safe place and flanked behind the search team, gunning them down before they knew what happened. Then the remaining 4 guys were too scared to move so i just walked - not literally - up behind them and took them out CQC style.



After i realized that what i had done actually worked - i was scared to move through the last zone. so much so i actually got lost becuase my mind was in panic mode. hahaha



But i got it together after 4 guys came into a room to investigate the broke light, executed them, then picked off the remaining 3 - already killed 3 before this - while they were just walking around.



M468 assault rifle is my friend!!!



Another feakin awesome thing i did on a different level.



It was on the level Printing Press, I had gotten spotted and killed most of the reinforcements. i love the detection music by the way.



1 guy was scanning the area, the other 5 were hold up in this room with all their guns on the door, which was closed. I got the guy who was scanning in a hold and used the sonar goggles to mark 4 of the 5 in the room. Then i got right up on the door, threw the guy into it, killing him and while they were all freaked out that one of their own guys was just sent flying through the door, i walked in and executed 4, the 5 aimed at me btut i shot him in the leg before he could get a shot off, walked up to him and did the hand to hand finish of punching him in the face, grabbing his shoulder and shooting 2 rounds into his chest before throwing him to the ground.



I gotta get the recording software for this shit i swear.

Been playing more splinter cell, doing the deniable ops specifically. I've more or less abandoned the stealth approach in favor of navy seals style elimination. Still got my five-seven pistol but mainly i'm using the m468 assault rifle, and it is very very nice.



Got far range to keep me at a safe distance from the enemies, got good stopping power and it's silenced!



I still try to eliminate as many as i can without being seen, but once they spot me, it's on! I've actually not died from this method despite it being on realistic and being outnumbered 12 to 1 on most places.



actually wait there was one death, was climbing up a pipe when someone shot me with...something, looked like a concentrated shotgun burst but i was way too far up for that to work, ended falling a hell of a long way down. hahaha



I also love the music that plays when you're detected so that, my guy's near black uniform and my awesome rifle make this a hell of a lot of fun, just as much fun as the sneaking way, except less frustrating.

so, playing the new splinter cell, doing one of the Hunter games on realistic, trying to get the perfect hunter achievement for not being detected and stealth killing everyone.



I'm thinking that it allows restarts just because of how few points you get for doing it. Beating all hunter maps on realistic gives you 50 points, which is easy, while beating a single level without being seen on realistic only gives 20, which is a BITCH!!!



So, i decided to test it out. It too me an hour and a half and 21 attempts, all retries were on the 4th zone, that little strip club where every enemy is watching the backs of each other and is a fucking ambush beyond reason.



I finish that finally with 40 stealth kills, and move onto the last area. I breeze through that, no one saw me at all, but the game decided to only give me 49 stealth kills instead of the 50 you need for the achievement, so now i gotta start it all over! and i just got 2 words for ya, FUCK THAT! going back to oblivion for the rest of the night and trying this again tomorrow.



if anyone wants to test my theory feel free, and good luck, think i woke up my neighbors with how much i was cussing.



*and another thing, i think the game monitors where the player is and changes the guard routs accordingly.



perfect example, the first play through, attempt 1, i was in the strip club place watching everyone's movements. i sat in that spot for 10 minuets because i just could not find someone to kill who wasn't either in ear shot or in visual range of someone else. I finally took a risky move and eliminated the guy i needed to who's death made about 5 more vulnerable. but just when i did that, all 5 of them changed patrol routes. They were still unaware i was there, and unaware the guy died, they just all went on a different patrol pattern, i get behind one, and then it switches again. it's freakin evil!

just as a side not to the previous journal, the bonus SMG is the same rifle the PMCs use in MGS 4 - my favorite rifle - so now i'm in heaven!

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vladstick
00:47 Apr 18 2010

I like the Barret .50 cal Auto with API myself.



vladstick

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Got and beat the newest splinter cell, 1 and a half days after it came out. hahaha this'll be my little review of the game for anyone who's interested, need a small break anyway.



first i wanna mention the game's difficulty settings. They have rookie, normal, and my favorite; "realistic". which is supposed to be the game's hard difficulty. What realistic does is make Sam's life and the enemy's life the same, meaning everyone takes about a 3-round burst to kill, obviously a little more for people in full Kevlar though but generally everyone has a 3 round burst limit. So Sam and the hordes of people who are trying to kill him are on an equal playing field.



You've still got your stealth of course and that's what you use to get through the levels.



One change from most stealth games is in this one the creators not only expect you to kill people, they encourage it! In sneaking games like metal gear and previous splinter cells, killing is looked down upon, preferring you to avoid or if need be incapacitate your targets. In this game Sam just doesn't give a fuck and kills every single person he comes across.



I absolutely love the game's "mark & execute" feature. What this is is an instant-kill auto aim feature. Depending on your gun and the upgrade you have for it, you can "mark" or target anywhere from 2 to 4 enemy soldiers and then press the Y button for Sam to drop them all in less than a second. Works great for when the more advanced soldiers use storm tactics or when you're able to kill everyone in a room without others noticing.



There is a catch to it however, because of how good it is. In order to be able to use the mark & execute feature, you must first preform a hand to hand kill on an enemy. There really isn't a mechanical reason for it, it's just the developer's way to put a restriction on it so the player doesn't walk through the game. There is one point though where Sam is extra, extra pissed off and the mark and execute regenerates each time he sees an enemy. This part lasts about 5 minuets and is simply kick ass!!!



Another cool thing about this game is the environments. For some portions of the game, Sam is in civilian territory, like walking down a crowded street to get to this mansion. Or in a carnival. You can hear people talking with each other and it really feels real, except when there are some problems with the looping and a girl suddenly talks with a man's voice. hahaha



The enemy duologue is cool too. In every new area they say different things, usually all guards in the game have about 30 generic sayings they can use throughout the entire game, on this one they have about 50 sayings for each area.



one of my favorite ones is on the level called White Box. I got detected and was hiding in the shadows and one of the soldiers said "If you find a scientists while you're hiding, kill em! It's the final phase."



The enemies also get scared once you kill a few of them, they'll hold they position and say things like "I'm not going in there! Come out here instead!" Makes them really easy to shoot and easy to flank for a hand to hand kill.



The hand to hand kills are brutal too. It's not just a snap of the neck. Sometimes it's a shot to the back followed by two shots to the head and then the snap of the neck. Or a shot to the leg, a knee to the face and 3 shots to the back of the head as they fall. Sam is very....proficient with his kills.



Over all it's an awesome game! And aside from the story line there's also the co-op story and a bunch of challenges which i will be checking out..now!

finally starting to get a grasp of the RGSS code, but as soon as i do, i get stumped. hahaha figures.



What i'm trying to do is replace the "playtime" code with something that displays a variable i set up for an in-game karma system.



I'm using code i found to replace the "step count" with map location as a template but i'm stuck.



The code i found is -



#==============================================================================

# ** Window Location

#~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

# This window displays the name of the map that the player is on. It replaces Window_Steps

#==============================================================================



class Window_Steps < Window_Base

#~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

# * Initialize

#~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

def initialize

super (320, 64, 160, 96)

self.contents = Bitmap.new (width - 32, height - 32)

# Draw Location Signifier

self.contents.font.color = system_color

self.contents.draw_text (0, 0, self.contents.width, 32, 'Location')

# Draw location

data = load_data("Data/MapInfos.rxdata")

self.contents.font.color = normal_color

self.contents.draw_text (0, 32, self.contents.width, 32, data[$game_map.map_id].name, 2)

end

end



and the changes i've made are -



#==============================================================================

# ** Window Karma

#~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

# Displays current karma level for entier party.

#==============================================================================



class Window_PlayTime < Window_Base

#~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

# * Initialize Scripts.rxdata

#~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

def initialize

super (320, 64, 160, 96)

self.contents = Bitmap.new (width - 32, height - 32)

# Draw Location Signifier

self.contents.font.color = system_color

self.contents.draw_text (0, 0, self.contents.width, 32, 'Karma')

# Draw location

data = load_data("Data/Scripts.rxdata")

self.contents.font.color = normal_color

self.contents.draw_text (0, 32, self.contents.width, 32, data[$game_variables.variable_id=[0001]].name, 2)

end

end



what stumps me is the last line of code. the ($game_variables.variable_id) and so on, i keep getting either a syntax error or a method error depending on how i change it.



I'm trying to make the script recall the variable 0001 and keep it constant, i know i'm supposed to add a refresh after but i'm focusing on this problem before.



on the off chance anyone reading this knows ruby code, could i get some help?



the site i've normally used hasn't been helping as of late and i clearly don't know enough about it to make even a simple change like this.

this is just fucking childish, my own mother and sister are ignoring me because i took dad's side in an argument.



i would explain the entire situation but i got the feeling that's gonna come back to haunt me, so i'm not. hahaha but basically my mom's trying to brainwash my sister into not liking me dad, i defended dad, now she's brainwashing my sister into not liking me either.



i don't live with those two anymore, which is nice, but i lived with them for 18 years and it's a little depressing to be ignored by them.



can't wait till they lose that damn house, they deserve it.

got like 10 minuets before classes start and i am bored. so, i figured i'd share my education goals for anyone who is equally bored or semi-interested.



As far as work goes i'm planning to being a history teacher, preferably for either high school or college. The main reason for this is because public sector jobs are more or less stable. As long as i do my job and don't do anything morally wrong, i'm guaranteed a nice, stable long term job even in this economy.



From there i'm planning on getting a stock broker's license and start investing in stock myself. That way i eliminate the middle man and ultimately increase profits. I'm fairly decent at reading the trends of the stock market, i haven't invested any more - mainly because i have none - but i've spotted good investment opportunities for fun for the past year and a half or so. So when i'm able to invest there is about a 60% chance i'll be getting a good deal of money back in the short term and about a 90% chance i'll have a crap load for early retirement. hahaha



I know there's bound to be flaws and problems with this little plan of mine but over-all it should be doable. I may not get rich from it but i'm almost guaranteed to have a nice sum of money to live very comfortably within around 5 years of getting my license.



and that killed exactly 10 minuets! psychology time!!!

I swear my girlfriend and I are twins. Not biological of course...that would be creepy. But as far as looks and personality are concerned - aside from obvious gender differences - we're twins!



we both got the same skin tone, eye color and we have the same natural hair color, she died hers red though. Normally i'm not a fan of hair dye but it suits her well so i'm good. hahaha



and personality wise, we are like 95% alike. Think the same way, act more or less the same way, she's just a tad bit more shy about it than i am but she's getting more comfortable to expressing her awesomeness.



I get all the fun of talking to myself without the possibility of having schizophrenia! hahaha



and what is really funny is we even get sick at the same time, with the same cold. Athlete's foot aside, we're both sick with the same symptoms and fever. hahaha



There is not a word to describe how awesome this is!



nice to have someone who understands how i think too, because not even i do half the time. hahaha

i'm starting to wonder if i have athlete's foot or some other type of foot infection.



for one, it seems to actually like the Tinactin spray. i spray the rash with that an the thing gets bigger within a few hours, so i'm wondering if i should stop spraying before my whole foot becomes a rash.



i'm looking at the symptoms an my foot isn't itching, it only burns when i use Tinactin and it's not wet or oozing, i do have an infection between the 4th and 5th toe, but that's the only symptom. so i guess i could have athlete's foot coupled with something else?



worse still what ever it is is spreading to the other foot. pissing me off as well.



slightly considering amputation because i just don't feel like putting up with this shit. hahaha yay for quick fixes!

manage to convince my dad to let me stay home today so i got a long weekend. I am somehow going off of 1 hour of sleep so provided i don't pass out i am looking at a very long day. hahaha



i only have art appreciation today so i'd only be there an hour, but grandpa - who is my only source of transportation - is bowling today so he wouldn't be able to pick me up for 3 more hours, so there's no point in going.



i got into one of those "yes/no" things with my grandpa this morning, it was kinda amusing actually.



it was

"dad said i could stay home today/"

"He said you could stay home?"

"Yes"

"No?"

"Yeeessss"

"then you better go."

No, he said yes"

"He said yes?"

"YES"

"Not no?"

"No.......yes? Yes he said i could stay home"

"oh!"



hahaha frustrating at the time but now very amusing.

i am seriously, seriously wounder if i have some kind of mental issue. The people i live with treat me like i'm still a little kid and i can't find a reason for it. I'm not talking about babying me, i'm talking about "let me show you how the toaster works" or "this is how you cut strawberries" kind of treatment.



It doesn't help that teachers have been trying to put me into special education classes through out my public school career. They've failed on every single occasion but they still tried, a lot. And for a while i was riding the special ed bus. My parents told me it was because they didn't want me walking to the bus stop with my poor vision, which i still thought was utter BS at the time.



i know i think differently than most people but i can reason just fine, i think. I would hope so considering where i am - college going for masters degree.



But it doesn't make sense how i'm treated like a kid, like i don't know how to take care of myself. It's insulting actually.



it's a low possibility, like a 5% chance but i am considering the possibility of me having some kinda mental issue that my parents just aren't telling me about. Why else would they treat me like i have one.



Either that or they just really do not understand how to deal with blind people. hahaha

it's the 11th of April and i have literally finished all of the work i can possibly do for this semester in college. All of my classes, save for psychology, had work to be done on your own time through out the course of the semester, only reason to go to those classes is for attendance purposes.



And i know i'm getting on the dean's list this semester so that's freakin great!



My friend and I always compete with GPA and this semester is a complete reverse of what happened last semester.



last one i had 3 Bs and 1A. He had 4As.



this semester i have 4As and he has 3Bs and 1A.



i'm not saying anything bad about him but he was acting like i failed college for the Bs last semester so i got to return the favor. hahaha



next up is economics! that's gonna be awesome!

apparently i got athlete's foot, minor but it's there. finally looked it up today because the toe was bugging me and found the exact type right away.



first instinct was to just carve out the fungus part. hahaha yay for extremeness! That's probably not gonna work though so i'm just gonna get some stuff for it tomorrow.



what i'm confused by is how i got it in the first place. i'm in my room 99% of the day and that's more or less a controlled environment. Then the other 1% is just at my college, but i'm still sitting in 1 spot for hours on end, no exercise or anything.



it's got me paranoid though, becuase a few weeks ago my dad mentioned a bunch of infections that you could get, the two that i remember him saying are athlete's foot and crotch rot, and not long after he talked about that is when i noticed the foot thing so......crap! i feel like one of those....what are they called, the people who think they have something because they have one symptom. starting to slightly freak out over the slightest itch. hahaha

my dad and i have always been in a debate over which is better: tap or bottled water? he insists bottled water is healthier for you and tastes better than tap water. I tell him that the only difference between bottled and tap, is that bottled costs more. And that just because the bottled water companies are named after springs and natural water sources, doesn't mean that's where they get the water. I even showed him the little "municipal water source" label that's on some of the websites and he's still in denial. so i got an interesting little idea to prove my point.



he always buys these big things of bottled water, like in bulk. Every day i'm gonna systematically empty and fill 3 bottles with tap water and tighten the cap up so he won't notice. Then i'm gonna see if he can tell the difference. The reason for only filling 3 a day is in case he does notice, he'll still have some of his water left, i'm being nice. hahaha If he can't tell the difference, i'm gonna bust him once he drinks all of the bottles. hahaha



it's gonna be so much fun!

You know, i wonder how effective hiding in a box would actually be? In the right setting it seems like it could really work. Maybe not against trained soldiers but with regular people.



I've been tempted to get one of the boxes my grandpa has left over from his little construction hobby and sneaking around with it, somewhere, not sure where, since i could probably get in trouble if caught.



really though, when people normally see a box that wasn't there before, they normally assume someone just put it there for now. They normally don't check it out unless they see it move or notice it's following them. hahaha



i'm gonna try that out one of these days, it's gonna be fun as hell!

can't wait for the new splintercell game! It's coming out on the 16th, i think. Gonna be kick ass from what i saw of it!



yeah i know, die-hard metal gear fan excited about splintercell, it is a good series though, just metal gear's better. hahaha



i have a hard time calling it more "realistic" because of the damn green NV lights on sam's head but the sneaking seems more practical. like the people you're sneaking past are real people because they get into conversations and stuff and do a little more than patrol, makes for a good gaming experience.



I absolutely loved double agent for the xbox too so i can't wait for the sequel. People who haven't played the games won't know this but the double agent games actually change depending on the system. The storyline is loosely the same but it is literally 2 different games with 2 different focuses. Confused the hell out of me when i rented the ps2, then bought the xbox version later. hahaha



hope this one's just as good/better than double agent.



and i can't wait for the co-op sneaking missions to show my friends how much of a sneaking god i am. hahaha

This is a picture of a trophy i got a while back. showed it to Kristen a few days ago, figured i'd put it here too.







it was a charity race hosted by the Lyons Eye Institute, i think they have one every year. I went there with the Tampa Lighthouse for the Blind a few years ago, it was a hell of a lot of fun!



The trophy's worthless but it's still 1st place damn it! Not in total though - in my age group - there were some professional runners there and there's on way in hell even i could keep up with them.



I was the only one in jeans though. People were messing with me about it before the race, i was easily identifiable. hahaha "Which one's Matt?" "The only one in bluejeans"





My favorite art of the whole thing was - i left home around 6am, everyone was still asleep, i got back around 9am, they were still asleep, so i walked into my mom's room to show them the trophy and she was so confused. hahaha the last time she saw me was when i said goodnight to her, then it's like "Surprise!"



i got 2 other trophy's too, one for being a smart ass and the other for archery. I dont' got pictures of those though. They're both somewhere at the old house.

why is it that i take 6 quizzes, the one i study for i get a 60% D, the 5 i wing i get 100% As to 90% As? How the hell does that work? it's awesome don't get me wrong but i wish i didn't study for the D one now. hahaha let me slack off and re-take it in a month! hahaha

I wish scams were as entertaining as they used to be.



Like those emails that you get where you actually are in contact with the scamer, they try to build a small relationship before going along with the scam. Those were entertaining. You follow it along, get their hopes up and then just mess with them, it was awesome!



Now they just flat out ask you for information right from the get go. Do people actually fall for that?



it seems like most con artists lost their motivation or something. Making the scams far less entertaining...

i can describe my family in one word - unreliable.



they're very reluctant to give help, and if they do decide to help, they'll give up if things get even a tiny bit complicated.



Today for example, I have to fill out this application for the Pell Grant to get financial aid. I honestly have to get rejected for the grant and then DBS will pay for college, that's the procedure here. But i still have to apply for the Pell Grant which means filling out their insanely long application. Because i am still a "dependent student" i need my parents financial information to fill out the application, which is aleeady close to the deadline because of the family procrastinating like hell. They have it somewhere in the house, they know where, i don't. They refuse to give it, they get mad when i try to look for it and outright refuse to put the info on the sight because a government site is "not safe". Despite it also having the "https" in the address bar.



So, i finally convince my dad to get out the information, things are going ok, then we get to where we need to enter my mother's information, and sine they're both fighting, dad refuses to cal her on his phone, and she's apparently mad at me so she won't answer her phone when i try to call. It's like they don't understand that i need to do this to get financial aid, unless they'd like to pick up the 10k tab themselves, which is what they're gonna have to do if they keep fucking things up.



sometimes i swear i'm adopted because i just do not understand how these retarded people think.

COMMENTS

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darkangelsblood
02:38 Apr 08 2010

know the feeling...

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POST COMMENT

can't believe how freakin fast this year is going. Even with college, everything's just flying by.



I remember high school the years just dragged on like a bitch! Even the good years. Now nearly 9 months have gone by and it feels like it's been 1 or 2.



i don't care what anyone says, college is way freakin easier than high school. it's like i get a vacation every day. hahaha

there's this quest in the Dark Brotherhood - which is a group of assassins for anyone who hasn't played the game - where you're the killer in one of those murder mystery things. Where 6 people are locked in a house and they start dieing one by one. One of my favorite quests in the whole game to be honest. So, i'm talking to people, wondering how i'm gonna go about killing them, when one of the girls summons a battle axe and cuts one of the other guests down. I talk to her and she says "did you hear? one of the guests has been murdered!" And i had to say out loud "yeah, yeah i gathered that....." had to reload the save becuase that took the fun out of it. Ended up making this ex-soldier kill the guy he suspected as the killer in the end, then he and i had a small duel in the main room of the house, i was holding back to drag it on becuase 1 punch was all it'd take to kill him. hahaha it looked so cool though becuase when he killed the guy, i walk down the stairs all cocky like and draw my sword, which was a katana.



also something else i love in this game is knocking people off ledges. You get special attacks that have different effects on people. one strips their weapon, the other knocks them back and the last one paralyzes them. The game is picky about what ledges they can fall from though when being knocked back. If they fly over a guardrail they'll teleport back onto the floor like they didn't go over the edge, but on ledges where you can walk off, they'll fall all the way down. so i've had situations where i knocked someone off the floor of an oblivion tower, and they hit this beam of fire on the way down and just got engulfed in flames, it was awesome!

i know probably no one's gonna know what song i'm talking about because i haven't taken the time to even think of the title, but anyone know of that semi-new hip hop song where half the thing is utter gibberish? someone please shoot the singer....multiple times

Finally finished Oblivion's main quest. The ending parts make up for the beginning being so damn boring. And unlike Fallout without DLC, Oblivion continues after the main story is done.



Now i have the controller propped up so my character is constantly sneaking against the wall, hahaha, i'm lazy.



I love the last few fights of the main story, the one where you have to hold out until the great gate opens and the one against Cameron. Jauffre and Barus always seem to die though, i think it's set in the story that they die because every single damn time, no matter how many towns i have helping - this time i had every single one - those two die, even if they're alive when i go into the gate. It annoys me. Great fight though.



The one with Cameron took a good 15 minuets too, partly because i was savoring the moment and partly because Cameron is a good fighter. Actually his son is the good fighter, all of Cameron's spells just bounced right off me and he ended up silencing himself a lot. hahaha Same with his daughter, but Cameron had a good healing spell so he took a while to bring down. Kept killing his son too to get a crap load of mundane rings, that was fun, till my weapon came close to breaking, then i resorted to this poison i made to kick Cameron's ass. I like alchemy.



it kinda sucks how nearly everyone i encountered in the main quest line is dead. It'd be kinda nice to have at least one survive but i'm not curious enough to start another oblivion campaign for at least 2 or 3 years. I still have a crap load of this game to go, still got all of the guilds to do and a mountain load of side quests not to mention the DLCs. I put everything off when the ful on "oblivion crisis" started up because it's unrealistic as hell to see guilds complaining about their petty problems when gateways to hell are opening up right outside their door. Realistically everything would have shut down travel wise, so that's what i pretended happened.



There was this one temple, my absolute favorite fight. I was kinda tired from playing so wasn't paying much attention to my surround9iings, i stepped on a pressure pad i didn't see, then all of the doors in the room sealed shut and poison gas started filling the room, to make things even more interesting a crap load of deadra spawned everything. I said out loud "You just......made my day!!!" The fight itself was easy but the situation was freakin awesome!



Also found out something funny about the temple you have to raid in the main story, to take this Great Stone thingy. When you take it a shit loud of zombies pour out from trap doors and swarm you, but my sneak was so high that as long as i wasn't in direct light they wouldn't see me, but they still followed me. At first i thought they were just going at random, then about 3 hallways later i stopped moving and they stopped right behind me. I had a Dread Zombie escort party until i got into direct sunlight and they saw me. I was really amused by that.



I am now the ultimate scout too thanks to oblivion gates. I got a detect life in 180 feet stone so now i can practically every living and undead thing in a 5 mile radius. It's probably not 6 miles but i can see their outline way, way, before i can even seen them even with the bow zoom. Right now i'm about as good as i'm gonna get without becoming a vampire, which i will not do most likely. Yeah the perks are cool and all but i don't like vampires, yay irony! hahaha



On a somewhat different note i got my girl Kristen interested in this game, i think being able to be a vampire sealed the deal. hahaha



i'll be taking some pictures tomorrow and will probably put them on here as well.



probably gonna go through assassin's creed 1 and 2 when i finished up oblivion in a few weeks. The main story and a shit load of side quests are done but i still have way over 100 hours of game play left, and i have yet to kill me a unicorn.

this happened a while ago but it's still funny.

People at my college are dense as hell, dense or just incredibly unobservant.



We have a printer/copier in the library as i'm sure 99% of all colleges do, and while printing in itself is a huge cluster fuck of a mess, it's when the printer goes down that people suddenly get stupid.



The printer went down for a while ago, so they set up a backup in some other building. Right as you walk into the library is a sign saying that the printer is down and to go to building...5, i think it was, to print. The sign is right in front of your face, no way in hell you could miss is. Then 5 steps further down the hallway, is the same exact sign, then 5 more steps, same sign, 5 more, same sign.



The sad part about it is i don't there there were enough signs, because there were still people complaining to the front desk that the printer wasn't responding. How incredibly dense do you have to be to miss a bright white sign on a dark backdrop? I'm legally blind and i can still see it plane as day. It amused the hell out of me to be honest.



on another note, we took this student survey thing today and i swear the survey was geared to clinically depressed and/or racist people.



Like, for 2 of the questions we had to circle 1 of 54 options, something like "Very often, often, sometimes, never" that kinda thing. And 2 of the questions were "How often do you interact with people of other racial backgrounds beside your own?" Then there was "how often do you interact with people of other religious views other than your own?" honestly unless you're taking all on-line classes you can't help but interact with other people, it's unavoidable, so that made me laugh.