Monday/Tuesday - hangin' out an' nothin' much

I seem to be doing my journal in chunks of two days. Wacky.

Monday was pretty fun. I woke up late, and rkane called me at like 3ish because the Magic gang was finally up and going to get food. I drove to the houseboat and we carpooled down to Shanghai Garden, which I hadn't been to in a bazillion years (maybe not even since I left Amazon, heh). It was uh, Mark, Mike, Steve, and Phil (who I still don't think I ever saw speak), and Chris met up with us at the restaurant. We had lots of crispy fried meat with various spicy or sweet sauces, essentially. It was tasty food, and fun to hang out with people.

Afterwards I ended up going back to the Houseboat, where I played some Mario game on the Nintendo DS, which was mostly mini games involving guessing cards and drawing trampolines to make little Marios bounce up in the air. Everyone else seems to be obsessed with this "Bomb" minigame, which I scored abysmally at, but apparently Phil 0wn3z0red Chris's old high score or something. I rode down to the airport for the first wave of dropoffs (Steve and Phil had earlier flights back to CA), which would have gone a lot quicker if I hadn't been sitting there breaking Steve's hi-score on the trampolines-and-rings mini-game. After that, we went back to the houseboat and watched the movie Donnie Darko, which I had never seen before. I am still a little bit mind-boggled by it and I'm not sure I really understood the whole movie. Mike and Chris claim it makes more sense if you read up on the details on the web and then watch it a second time. I'm not so sure, as I thought I'd actually picked up a LOT of the details. The kinda neat thing is that there were these scenes in the movie where there'd be explosions or whatnot, and Chris's houseboat would rock back and forth at the same time -- kinda disconcerting. Ah well. After the movie, Mike and Mark went off to the airport to fly back east... I guess I'll see them all at Carnival or something.

Afterwards I got Skype working and talked to Lejerque for a while, and we played a big drinking game on PP while yelling "DRINK THE HOOK!" at each other. We dragged Weaver in a bit later, and went on a pillage while all Skyping. I suppose I've missed the big PP Skype wave by several months, but it was pretty neat to me. Carl, you should get a headset. :) Just kidding.

Today I didn't do much. I went over to QFC to do some grocery shopping, and I also picked up a birthday card and present for damienroc. I rule. I wanted to go for a walk around the lake after that, but I opened my car door into my leg really hard and didn't really feel like walking 3 miles on it, so instead, my healthy-intending action was to get a salad at Whole Foods and some Jamba Juice with super-vitamin boost. I dunno. I came home and played PP for several hours, then spent like half an hour doing Para Para routines for exercise. The upshot of that is... my arms are WEAK AND GIRLY. Ugh.

I'm slowly still working on doing job hunt things, too. Honest.

Illusionz

I went to Illusionz tonight. I'm not sure why. I was in a kind of lousy mood after we lost the final OCL brawl match. I mean, I expected us to lose in some ways, but I was disappointed that I never got to actually fight Whinefire. (The matches we were both in, Cioj was told to take me out.) He said something rude about Buri after the match, and I challenged him rated; he rejected it. I challenged him unrated, and he rejected it. What a bastard. He also whined about it in the forums, despite them winning. So, I think I will be calling him Whinefire from now on.

Anyway, I went to IZ. It was a ghost town. I got there around 8 and got a two-hour timecard because I figured I'd have no trouble bouncing from machine to machine. I didn't. I played a ton of DDR 4th mix -- and it actually died halfway through one game and I had to get an attendant to fix it. I played a ton of PNM of course, because that's my favorite bemani game, and it was also in the best working condition. I played some PPP, and man, my arms ache. I am so out of shape. I played one game of DM, but it was painful.

Drummania: Cymbal totally doesn't work. Most other pads are really unresponsive too, the red and green are't bad, the pedal sucks, and the drumsticks they have there are split.
PPP: the left-most sensor can't actually hold notes.
DDR 4th: all sensors were just bad
DDR Ex by the rockclimbing: 2P side had sensor issues, 1P didn't seem too bad
PNM: fine working condition, but the white button is sticky -- as in, someone spilled something on it, maybe? but the key functions fine.

They've also gotten rid of the whole line of machines along the same wall as PPP... like all the Capcom vs. SNK and such games,

Ah well. Anyway, it was funny, since back in the day, I used to be at IZ every Wednesday night with Farren and people. And that was neat. And now it's like... it was a ghost town. And even if anyone else had been there I probably wouldn't have felt like talking anyway. I did see Hyunsuk and his wife on ITG, but I don't really know them.

Bleh.