Good Morning, 2010! The Princess' Diary Intarwebs Edition

[Captain K.]

*rimshot*

Haven't you, like, died of old age yet, Cap?

Nah, I'm kept alive by my wheelchair, kind of like Von Bolt in Advance Wars DS.  I plan on staying alive until I leech all of the money out of Social Security that you kids are feeding into it.

[NotMiki]

Joke's on you!  We'd need jobs to do that!

[Cmdr_King]

ALternate joke!

Aww, you should really plan to live longer than 3 years.

[Idun]

It is just people being people.  They will stop one day, everyone does. Then if they are lucky there is still someone to mourn them.

Now, I believe I am more confused by the ultimate optimism from this response.

[Bardiche]

After a long time of A) having someone else cook for me, B) eat at my mother's and C) take-out food, I've decided that December is Cook It Yourself Month for me, with Sunday 5th being the first day. (birthday parties and excuses for before that)

Yesterday I made sausages with spinach and mashed potatoes, today is chicken wings with chicken soup, rice and an assortment of vegetables I got out of a package. I'm actually not that disappointed with my cooking (although I failed the spinach). Tomorrow sounds like a Rice Day so I'm going to try and make saté myself. Still need to ponder veggies... what goes well with rice and saté?

[Grefter]

It is just people being people.  They will stop one day, everyone does. Then if they are lucky there is still someone to mourn them.

Now, I believe I am more confused by the ultimate optimism from this response.

It is incredibly easy.  You remember that you aren't honestly that much better than everyone else and hey if we all end up dead then at least you got what you ultimately wanted.  If we keep living then hey that is pretty cool for a bunch of people as human as we are.  I am not really good at this optimism thing.

Seriously though, Vonnegut.

[Tide]

So for everyone who was a) not at mini-meet b) doesn't have my facebook entry I passed 3/4 of my CPA exams and I got the letter today that I passed the UFE (the Canadian standardized test for accounting). So yeah, life is good~ Taking a year off for self studying looks like its paid off. Now to actually find a job.

[NotMiki]

It is just people being people.  They will stop one day, everyone does. Then if they are lucky there is still someone to mourn them.

Now, I believe I am more confused by the ultimate optimism from this response.

It is incredibly easy.  You remember that you aren't honestly that much better than everyone else and hey if we all end up dead then at least you got what you ultimately wanted.  If we keep living then hey that is pretty cool for a bunch of people as human as we are.  I am not really good at this optimism thing.

Seriously though, Vonnegut.

Try this!  Always cheers me up.  Probably because my mom liked to sing it for us when we were kids.

[Idun]

No clue why I thought his voice would be a bit deeper.


Happy thoughts: Roland is four months old and bites his leash at the door when he needs to go outside. Despite not walking him because I've been sucking the last month, his last trip to PetsMart was interesting. When he meets new dogs, all he does is whine and shiver, haha. Bought him some toys.

Sucky thoughts: I have to work.

[Lady Door]

Mandatory 2 hour company meeting tomorrow. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?!

To catch up you folks who don't remember/don't know the circumstances: my company has all-employee meetings quarterly-ish, but last year, shortly after I was hired, they had a couple meetings in a row where the company was repeatedly downsized. The position into which I had been hired was eliminated, but they made the position I have now and moved me to a new department. They entirely eliminated our warehouse staff. We lost about 20 employees overall, leaving us at about 70.

This past year, we've had dire numbers. 5 people (give or take a few, I don't remember) have left the company in the past 3 months; most of them were not replaced. The Sales department was entirely restructured, resulting in 2 more people leaving the company. Earlier this fall we had a "focus group" set of meetings wherein 25 people from the company got together to brainstorm a new direction. I was part of those meetings. The CEO and COO were supposed to meet with our parent company in Germany in November to propose a new 3-year plan. We hadn't heard what came of that yet, and I assume tomorrow will be the unveiling.

Can't wait to see what tomorrow brings.

[OblivionKnight]

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!

Passed the BCPS. 

With a crazy high score too >_>

Good times.  Now for alcohol and ice cream

[Tide]

Hurray for passing!

[Lady Door]

Congrats!

... though who the hell didn't see that one coming?

[OblivionKnight]

Congrats!

... though who the hell didn't see that one coming?

Which part?  The ice cream?

[superaielman]

Congrats!

[Lady Door]

Congrats!

... though who the hell didn't see that one coming?

Which part?  The ice cream?

Yes. We all know you are an ice cream fiend, after all.

[Idun]

My professor seems to have mailed me my letter of recommendation for a college. Yes, I held it to intense light. "Superior character." Aw. Let's see what she put for weakest traits . . .

[NotMiki]

That Julia's such a character...

[Dhyerwolf]

Mini-mini meet summary! So since Super was here in LA for a few days, we got to hang out on Friday and Saturday. I had one of the incredibly rare times of calling into work on Friday to avoid it. Not too much game playing on Friday since I my plan was to (successfully!) get Super to watch Legend of the Seeker since I didn't plot enough to get people to watch it at con. Luckily he definitely enjoyed it, and I think we got through 2 episodes on Friday and another 2 on Saturday? Watching on Saturday was even his suggestion! He was able to recognize the scene was my avatar came from despite the board having been dead for a while before then.

Saturday I think Super looked over my book collection and made me very wary about putting any more time into the mess that is Dark Tower; I had a spare copy of Spirit Gate by Kate Elliot, the book I was reading at the last con, and gave that to him.

Niu showed up around 2 on Saturday, PSP in tow. Two seconds after walking in the door, he really strongly insults Super and gives off an extremely insane crackle. Reminds me that I really need to hang out with Niu more. After Niu ranting a bit on the absurd time sink that is TO's remake, Super suggested we play Soul Blade. Which all of us had forgotten how to play. My strategy is doing flip kicks with Sophiettia, but the buttons aren't being my friend. So then we play SFA3. My strategy is doing flip kicks with Chun Li. Despite knowing it was coming, this works surprisingly well on Niu. That said, we had all forgotten how to play this too (After 10 years of not playing, I'm inept at qcf and qcb now). We switch over to RS, where my strategy is to...endlessly flip kick with Akira. If only I found my Tekken 3 copy, because that game I'm always be able to legitly play (...by backflipping with Xiaoyu, predictably).

Super heads off after this, and Niu and I go off to dinner (after I discover that he's fatally weak to both pickles and Ginger). Highlight of the dinner conversation is that I realize that thanks to bad bad FF 7 retcons, I'm now fairly sure that Aeris' actual murderer was Cloud. I think my explanation makes Niu laugh for a few minutes straight. Back at my house, we finally break out some RPGs. I show Niu  show to trivialize demon path Rakshka even without extra levels, and after some DL shop talk effectiveness of final bosses versus DL performance, I put him up to showing me how to make Luther look like a low Light (mostly since I'm not that great at SO 3!). And oops, turns out that US Luther is apparentally completely different in some major ways as Niu figures out by having Luther kill him the first few times. Niu's respect for him jumps about 2.5 divisions; I promise not to post this fact before him. We go over a good other number of RPGs discussion wise and he tells me what to look out for coming out next year. Think he left around 1am.

[superaielman]

I had fun in LA, hung out with a cousin and got to spend some time with Dhyer and Niu.

Traffic in in Hollywood and going towards Santa Monica is somehow worse than you'd expect. Edit: Legend of the Seeker was really awesome and is so much better than the sword of truth.

[Cmdr_King]

How does this FFVII retcon work?  Tell tell!  INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW!!

[Dhyerwolf]

Well, thanks to AC, it's fairly obvious that named FF7 characters can't die from unnatural causes. Get slashed and thrown across a room by Sephiroth's sword slash? Full recovery. Top of a building that's hit by missiles and completely explodes? Well, you'll live, just be stuck in a wheelchair. Impaled on Sephiroth sword? Sounds like's a full recovery...if you aren't at a bottom of a lake. Thanks to their willingness to make clusterfucks, post AC, it makes the most sense that Aeris probably drowned.

[Cmdr_King]

Ahh, that.  Damn, I was hoping for a new one.

[Niu]

As in, she drowned, but insatntly revived, but drowned again, and then instantly received, then repeats indefinitely thus making Aerith stuck in a loop of pain forever. But you know what, I think this is very deserving for a FF& character.

Lucy's change in US version is the most DL friendly change I have ever seen. I would say the English Lucy in the end is weaker then the JP version, his steel body is not as tough and his recovery is bad. I mean, I was really shocked to see a full Acrobat Locus combo landed on him. But... none of these matters too much in DL, on the other hand, his new invinci frame in Perfect Symmetry had made that move stupidly accurate, effectively making him not a light any more in my eyes. Crap crap crap!!!

[Lady Door]

Fancy pants company meeting pretty much meant jack and shit for my department, THOUGH one of my bosses is retiring next June (yay!) and I have a "new" boss. The "new" boss was a former consultant.  He's still officially a consultant, but he's also the pro-tempore head of my department. The cool thing? He's a guerilla marketer! So I get to sit through a few months of someone telling the department to do exactly what I've been telling them to do, except this time they're going to be doing it.

Theoretically.

(The meeting was mainly that we reconfigured a few things, but it's almost literally slapping a new coat of paint on old infrastructure so I don't think it's going to be that much of a change. We did eliminate a layer of management (though no one was fired), and that can only be positive.)