Back to school again. As sure as the rising of the sun it has to come again. But everytime it comes back it feels wrong. Unnatural. As if I’m not supposed to be there anymore. I’ve always had this feeling. The end of high school felt so final that returning to a class room setting is just strange. An unexpected second act.

I kind of blame my job. I blame my job for far too much but I think it made me grow up a little faster than I wanted too. I remember sitting in meetings reviewing product test plans with engeeniers and quality managers. I was a 19 year old kid. I should have been home playing video games insteading of evaluating medical software.

Since community college I’ve been planning, scheming up ideas to follow my dreams. Media companies mostly. I wanted to start them now and do something with my life. Create something, not sit in a classroom and be part of a 100 year old broken system. Be someone.

But in order to be someone I need to pass this test. This four year gauntlet.

I only come here when I’m in some kind of crisis. i should talk about my blog more or my plans for steamlining my life but I think the result will be the same.

I’ve stopped myself from buying an abundance of new games over the last few months believing that they would distract me from school since I was already playing Left 4 Dead 2 and Borderlands as well as trying to rewatch all of Battlestar Galactica. During those lulls where I did have time I have started to go back and play games I have never finished. The two specific ones being Shadows of the Colossus and Okami.

And no, I didn’t bite the bullet and buy Modern Warfare 2.

I’m mentally torn at how to proceed with Modern Warfare 2. On the one hand, the game is supposed to be an extremely well made game. Perhaps the best shooter since the previous Modern Warfare. However, there are things that Activison, the publishing company, and Infinity Ward, the developers, have done that clearly show an abandonment of the PC as a platform.

While the real advances in Modern Warfare 2 are in its extensive multiplayer the design is clearly meant for a console experience. No more dedicated servers, no more custom game mods, and a player limit of 18. Granted the design of the multiplayer is meant for only 18 players it still doesn’t excuse the lack of features that PC gamers have enjoyed since early in the Internet era. They even increased the price of the PC version to $60. $10 more than the standard PC game but equal to the average PS3 title. So while I am in protest of this trend away from PC gaming and towards the more controlled, stable environment of consoles I want this game. I should play this game.

The game is being celebrated by fans and critics, has broken or nearly broken most sales records, and at this time will probably be the mist successful game ever made. Not buying the game because of lack of features is futile. If PC gaming actually want to participate in activism they should actually buy the game and show Activision that there are still a strong PC community willing to spend money on their game.

I am so conflicted! Bu the single player is what really drives me to the game. I’ve been replaying the original Modern Warfare (The original Call of Duty 4… look what they’ve done to me!) which has reminded me exactly how amazing the game play is, how breathtaking the story is, and the presentation is the best I’ve seen in a game since Half Life 2. But every time I go to buy MW2 I stop. I can’t seem to make it past the landing page.

I know all this seems silly. But I just can’t seem to shake it. MW2 represents a disturbing turn in the future in multiplatform shooters where the PC is neglected. The PC version of GTA4 and Batman Arkham Asylum got later and less commercialized releases. But this has never happened with a shooter.

- Destructoid

I am once again hopelessly addicted to Battlestar Galactica. It’s a sick disease. But the show grabs you and refuses to let go! I had to pull myself away in order to do some readings for tomorrow and prepare my classes to register.

I hate taking a foreign language. I haven’t mastered English yet and they want me, at 22 years old, to start attempting to learn a new Language? And they are going to hold my degree from me if I don’t pass? That sounds insane. We live in a world where the majority of the population speaks English. English is the language of trade, it is the language of science, and it is the most advanced literary language in the world. I want to master it. I want to be a good writer! I’m not going to refine my spotty grammar if I have to start a new language from scratch! So I’m going to spend my Winter Break attempting to catch up on Spanish so I can enter Spanish II in the Spring and actually pass. Any native Spanish speakers want to play me for three semesters?

Went up to Mohegan Sun this weekend. I haven’t played Poker in almost two months. It was beginning to drive me a little crazy. I played for a good eight hours… I only made $12 but that number is way above my lowest point. But I played well. I only made one serious bad decision that cost me about $150. But I also played a lot of good, solid, bold poker.

John Hodgman’s new book was finally released in Audio. The standard word filled version has been out for a while but I wanted to wait for the audiobook because Hodgman puts on a great performance during the reading. He also included guests in the cast such as nerd rock star Jonathan Coulton. They’ve been friends for decades and play off each other very well. It’s a wonderful listen. The book part you will devour quickly. It’s well written and commentary and music provided by Coulton enhance the content. The second part is a little more tedious but just as well written. Hodgman includes an audio page-a-day calendar. He just reads every day one after another. It can get a little boring. The final hour and a half of the audiobook is devoted to the live recording of the 700 Moleman names. John Hodgman reads all 700 names and professions while Coulton plays “The World Turned Upside Down” over and over again. They are both incredible talents and I highly recommend the audio version of “More Information Than You Require.”

I’m falling way behind on my Anime watching because of my poorly timed desire to watch The Simpsons, my rematch of Battlestar Galactica (on blu-ray), and attempting to finish Tenchi GXP. I’ve placed too much on my plate and I’m suffering for it! My reading for pleasure and video game time is also taking a large hit. So I decided to reduce my netflix subscription to 1 DVD at a time which I won’t use much. I’m really maintaining Netflix for the streaming. Which will be coming to PS3 very soon!

I bought seasons four, five, six, and Seven of the Simpson; I have all of Drew Carey, I have anime piling up, and now that I started watching BSG I can’t stop. Panic! Panic!

So I’m cutting myself off until all of that is watched. Limited Netflix usage, no new DVDs, and trying to sneak anime in whenever I can. Wow my priorities are skewed.

I had forgotten just how good Battlestar Galactica is from the beginning. Some of the aspects that felt out of place towards the end are being seeding at the start. I’m going to enjoy watching those revalations appear and exactly how they hint and build up towards those moments. Ron Moore is probably the best writer in Hollywood right now. I hope he is working on something new. We need an epic space series back on TV from a person who knows what he is doing. From THE person who invented the modern Sci-fi drama!

Busy weekend coming up. I’m going to the Casino Friday night, have a paper to work on, and it’s the one year anniversary of my Grandfathers death. I’m not cut out for stress and it just keeps mounting.

I’ve always been interested in stories that attempt to pit magic against technology. The two opposite dynamics of genre fiction coming together creates an interesting feel. Guns and machines against Wizards and Dragons. It has so much potential to be great Van artwork.

Seriously, the concept probably intrigues me thanks to Final Fantasy 6, my favorite of the series, where the Empire fuses magic and technology in order to create the center of its army, the Magitech armor. It comes to the heroes to learn how to use Magic in order to combat and stop the power of the Empire. The aesthetic is very much steam-punk but not the traditional copper on everything style. A more gritty gray and full metal look.

A story seed popped into my head suddenly while I was doing some reading for school. The idea centers around a world, like Final Fantasy 6, caught somewhere between modern technology and Steampunk suddenly being overthrown by magic users. But the protagonist would need to be a magic user! He would help form a resistance using his knowledge of magic to infuse the machines with a new found power.

The problem with creating a world with technology and magic is that one usually dominates the world. A balance needs to be found. For example, the magic users could use water and ice to dampen gun powder. But their shield spells need to have a low limit on the number of hits they can take. Finding that middle ground is going to be what makes a story that combines Science Fiction and Fantasy successfully.

This is mostly a ramble. But it helps me to define what exactly how a world that I described could work inside of a story.

For a long time now I have been primarily watching anime in Japanese with subtitles. The belief being that Japan has the best trained voice actors in the world… and the majority of American voice actors who do anime are aging nerds with no other job skills. But there is a problem I ran into last night while watching “The girl who Leapt Though Time” english dub. Not only was not… not bad. But I enjoyed it more and understood it with less effort. Reading subtitles adds more work when I’m already listening to the music, looking for visual clues, and hearing the actors. So now I’m at a crossroads. I’m sure most of the anime watching I’m going to do will be in Subtitles (fansubs, FTW) but I’m going to be at least testing out the English dubs more often. There can only be positives. I can watch anime while doing something else that doesn’t consume a lot of my attention (like reorganizing my file system, downloading files for class or formating documents for homework I haven’t started yet. And I’ll get a lot more anime watched because I don’t have to keep 100% of my attention glued onto the TV.

This is also a little conflicted with most of my values and belief about anime as a medium and an art form… but values are easily thrown out the window.

I baked cookies today! I don’t know why I just had the urge to bake. I’m going to try it a few more times. It was enjoyable to start with a munch of ingredients and wind up with a tasty finished project at the end.

I’m also debating if I should just buy Season 4 and the next few after that. I’m consuming them extremely fast and having a great time doing it. But Netflix can be slow… and I’ll probably end up buying them anyway. They really aren’t that expensive. A whole season costs $23 on Amazon. That is about what a movie costs, and an entire Simpsons season provides more than 5X the amount of entertainment.

I really need to get into the habit of writing ideas down when they come to me. Sometime in the past few days, I can’t even remember when god I’m an old man, I came up with a wonderful idea for a novel. One of those ideas where once you have the first image in your head the entire finished project comes instantly into light. But now I cannot remember it. I could have been anything! I’m begining to think that I just dreamed the feeling of having a great novel idea, but I really didn’t have anything. Ugh, well I’ll continue thinking.

I’ve recovered a bit from my funk. Still don’t feel like doing much work. My 18th Century British Lit. Professor allowed us to keep our papers for an extra day but I only mangaged to find two or three small things I wanted to change. I probably should have just handed it on and forgotten about it. I’m catching up in Logic, after falling way behind due to Italian taking up so much time. Tomorrow I’m just going to send the last few homeworks (one required, one optional) and hope my midterm grades come out all right. The second half I should have much more time to focus on that class… and I only took it because I figured four classes were too few! I really overestimated my motivation this semester.

A Tweet from John Hodgman lead to me finding this gem:

Brings tears to my eyes.

Abbey Road on Beatles Rock Band tomorrow. Looking forward to it!

Something seems to have sucked all the creativity out of me in the last few days. I’m lethargic, I have trouble writing (especially for poetry class), and in general just feel like I’m going though the motions everyday. I don’t like it and I hope it passes soon. The cause is probably the two large papers I just wrote. That shouldn’t be just a big hit on my system but those big papers have always taken a lot of me. Soul sucking, I call it. After I wrote my final papers for both Shakespeare and English 301 last semester I couldn’t do anything for weeks. When I came out of it I revived Time Travel is Awesome and worked to build it up all summer. So I know this brief spell will pass… but more are to come. I’m only half way though the year.

I’m fairly confident that if I kept taking my language I would have lost my mind this week. With exams, those two papers, and the general homework I get it would have torn me apart. I would be doing nothing but schoolwork. Even the idealized version of myself floating above the clouds controlling things with his mind wouldn’t be able to do it. Ok, that’s not realistic… of course he would. Hyperbole is my weakest trope. But seriously, the extra time I get in the mornings has helped a lot. Giving me some extra time to work and just some time to mentally prepare for the day. I’m not the type of person who can keep going from place to place and task to task without a break in between and that’s how my Mondays and Tuesdays were and it drove me to the very edge of sanity.

It’s going to be a busy and exciting weekend. Windows 7 and the new Beatles Rock Band DLC (Abbey Road) comes out on Thursday. I can’t wait to play with the final version of Windows 7. It’s the first time I’ve been excited to use a Microsoft product! I’ve been running the Release Candidate for the past few months and I’ve had no issues. But I want to see how polished the final version comes out. Hopefully some minor issues, like a memory leak in the Sidebar, will be patched up. I’m also hoping for some performance improvements but I doubt that I’d notice even a tiny beat of fine tuning at this point. Can’t wait!

I have a terrible habit when I have papers due. I have the idea that I’m going to write the paper early and get it out of the way. But then I end up finding some way to procrastinate for hours and wind up awake at two in the morning still working. I know that if I just sat and worked the whole time the paper would be done in an hour or less, but I end up sitting and wasting time surfing the Internet or singing along to music, or wondering into the Kitchen to watch baseball instead of getting words onto the page. Maybe it’s the fact that I need to really think out formal essays before writing them. With most of the writing that I do I just hit my keyboard until I have enough words on the screen and then I fiddle with it until it makes sense. Or, in the case of these blog posts, skip step 2. Even with articles I have written recently (not many, unfortunately) for Time Travel is Awesome I’m able to slam out something fairly quickly and then agonize over it for hours until it’s perfect (or reasonably legible). But with formal essays the process is never that simple. I need to create an argument and back it up with facts. Ugh, what a hassle. So I wind up wasting all my agonizing time as I’m writing the paper.

What I really need to do is use my essay writing stratagem to work on my blog posts or fiction. I mange to turn off all forms of Internet or other communication with the outside world and just work for hours. Some of those hours might be spend just staring at a black screen… but at least I’m in mode that lowers the opportunity for procrastination. Unfortunately I don’t normally go into this mode until hour four.