Started Black Plague pretty shortly afterwards and it is easily surpassing its predecessor in how engaging it is.  The first game starts off kinda slow, you're in an old mining cave for most of the game and your major enemies are various creatures.  There's a lot of awesome puzzle elements throughout both games, and the atmosphere is amazing, but the game does start relatively slow.  It ends on a cliffhanger, though, that ties directly into Black Plague.  Because of all the work the first game did in building up the atmosphere and situation, the second is far easier to get into for people continuing from the first. 

Though the game does take a wildly different term in what's going on.  There are clues and hints throughout the first game about what's really going on, but you don't really get a good idea of it until you get a little bit into the second. 

And then shit gets weird.

I'm loving it a lot right now.

Owning a cat is totally different than living with a cat.  I merely lived with Orangey, who belonged to Nicole.  She was a great cat, I loved her, great personality.  A total bitch.  A really loving cat who, if you showed her she could trust you, was all over you.  It wasn't out of the ordinary to have her spend the night in my bed, stomach exposed.  She was my buddy that summer.

On Janaury 6th (happy birthday, Brian!), Sarah and I adopted our cats.  Hers is a small tuxedo named Pinto.  He appears to be part oriental based on his face and love of jumping.  Duster is my dude, a blue cat with very light tabby markings that appears to be at least part Chartreux based on a wide variety of characteristics (communicates mostly by chirping; when he does meow, it is high-pitched; dainty feet; hair on and near his spine is water-resistant and more wiry than the rest of his hair, eventually becoming almost fleece-like on his underside; green eyes (he has some green, but they're mostly yellow.. so that's why we suspect he's either an undesired Chartreux (only solid green eyes are allowed in competitions) or part Chartreux); kitten like until 3 years of age (usually that behavior dies out around 1 year, he's about two months beyond that point as just as childlike as ever); full of energy; and many others).

These guys are a part of the family.  I'm usually greeted by Pinto when I get home from work and then Duster usually won't leave me alone once he wakes up.  Orangey would rub the hell out of me, very forcefully, but she was... a pet.  Nicole's pet.  Duster and Pinto?  They just seem like more than that for some reason.  It's weird.  It's really freaking cool, though. 

The best part is that they freaking love each other.  They've been having a few dominance fights lately, which causes Duster to emit this really pitiful sounding cry (we suspect that, because he's older than Pinto by four months, it's meant to be intimidating in some way; Pinto just ends up hopping on him), but when those are done they're grooming each other and playing with each other and having a good time.  I'm really glad that Pinto is challenging Duster, now that he's old enough to understand dominance.  Duster used to push him around and sit on him and Pinto usually just let him.  Pinto is small, fast, and muscular.  Duster is bigger, still pretty fast, and not as muscular.  Duster doesn't have a hope of winning until he begins to use his weight, but that might take a bit more intelligence...  Chartreuxs are supposed to be pretty intelligent, but Duster?  Sometimes we question him...  I think he might have some form of ADHD, the way he'll sit there and "watch" nothing, then run around and get distract by... nothing.. and just play with... nothing...  It's cute as all get out.  Both of them are.

Man, if I've already written about these guys I'm going to feel like such a dick.

Work flew by today.  I don't get it.

My Chicago Card Plus finally came in today.  Put the wrong zipcode on the mailing address, so that delayed it nearly a week beyond Sarah's.  I can't wait to use it.

My mom telling me, in my new apartment that she hasn't seen, that I shaved my beard unevenly.  So much so that it was four inches longer on one side than the other.  This was not the case in the dream, nor is it in real life.

My bracelet breaking again.

The State Street Chicago River draw bridge rising up as I was walking towards it.  Not even as I was walking on it, just towards it.  So I had to wait, and then I woke up.

Weird dreams.

Got the script working and implemented into the whole thing.  Fixed a few other issues that popped up.  Day goes by fast when I actually have things to do.

Writing documentation isn't as bad as I thought it'd be.

I honestly still have no drive to update this thing despite having an accessible client (the web interface is accessible, but.. :/).

Right now I'm trying to figure out just what the hell is going on with Groovy and SoapUI properties.  Groovy seems to insist on storing properites as strings.  This is fine, until I need to do some math on -- holy shit.  I can probably just store it as a global context variable, but I might get the same issues.

Nope.  Same shit.  Properties are strings, and none of the java functions (parseInt, getInteger, valueOf) seem to be able to pull the value of it!  GRR!

This should work.  It doesn't.  This is annoying.  I don't like trying to fix the same damn bug all day, but I've got nothing else assigned to me... soo...

Fellow tester just said 'sephamore' instead of 'semaphore' .....

Working at Law Bulletin again.  Same place I was at two years ago.  Let's just hope that nothing else from two years ago comes back...

Sold the Lumina.  Somehow we got $1500 for it instead of like $200.  That's how I'm gonna survive the rest of the summer, and then excess money from student loans plus work study should help me out quite well each semester. 

Why things are getting better, I think:

• I'm able to monetarily survive the summer.
• I've got my own apartment, where I can do my own things, and cook my own food, and lounge around petting cats and watching Conan on hulu.
• Nicole's cats are freaking awesome.
• My new computer (by need, remember?) is performing great and is allowing me to catch up on some much needed gaming.
• I'm getting back into Animal Crossing (on the Wii now).
• Hanging out with good friends (Casey, Jeremy, Amber) quite a bit these days thanks to the Tai kids.
• Helping out again with the Taiwanese Cultural and Academic Exchange program.
• Got my first above 3.0 semester GPA this past Spring.
• Because of that, I am still allowed to attend IIT! :D
• My beautiful girlfriend comes back to Chicago in less than a month!
• In six days we'll have been together for four months (this still surprises me immensely, to be perfectly honest).
• She's bringing her ferrets back with her and they're going to stay at my place! (this has me extremely excited for some reason :razz: )
• She is learning German and this is the perfect reason to brush up on my skills with the language!
• I bought a game for the first time since... forever.  I honestly forget the last game I bought prior.  Last weekend Frictional Games was having a sale on the Penumbra trilogy (a survival-horror/puzzle/adventurer series).  It was $5 for all three games and they were on Linux.  This is not something I could pass up.  I love survival-horrors (as much as they get to me), I love puzzle games that make you think (as much as they frustrate me), and I love supporting developers who release their games natively on Linux.
• I've been following the Hundred Push-Up Program and, while I've had to repeat two weeks already, I already notice a HUGE improvement in my strength and muscle mass (then again, any muscle mass is a huge improvement over none :razz: ).
• Because of this I have a greater confidence in.. me and my presentation.  It's kind of surprising, really.  I wasn't at all embarassed when I took my shirt off at the beach the other day, for example (I've always been kind of self-conscious about my extremely skinny and muscle lacking body, but I'm actually doing something about it now, which itself is also a huge improvement).
• Summer is flying by, despite every day being pretty much me sitting in front of my computers doing nothing productive.

I apologize that this summer isn't nearly as post-heavy as last summer.  I believe there are reasons for that, though (mostly lack of generally interesting stuff to talk about that hasn't been outlined above and lack of boredom at work.  Boredom at home leads to me dicking around on the web.  Boredom at work led to me writing because I couldn't dick around on the web.  Well, led to.  Since I don't have work this summer.).  I think it's also due to a lack of.. doing things.  If I'm in a doing things mood I tend to think about updating the site more often.

Things with Sarah are going pretty damn well, I'd say.  We had a couple of misunderstandings or little fight-type things near the beginning of the summer, but definitely nothing too serious.  I'm more excited for her to come back than I am for the ferrets to come with her, than I am for everyone else to get back in the city, than I am for James to move out, than I am for.. a lot of things.  I try not to let my mind think about.. much beyond the next couple of days, but sometimes it's hard (nothing more than like.. a season or two...  I'm having thoughts of us just cuddling up on the couch under a blanket drinking hot drinks and just hanging out in the winter, for example.. perhaps after ice skating or something (I can't ice skate, by the way, Sarah.. It could make for hilarious times)).  It's a mental defense I've set up thanks to previous relationship failures.  And, really, why think too much about the future?  Obviously one has to have goals and stuff for school, work, general life things; but one does not live in the future, one lives in the present, they're living NOW.  I try to focus on what's going on now and make the most of it.  No point in worrying about the future or lamenting the past (as much as things tend to pop up and try to distract you, it's just something one has to deal with).

It's been really nice to get out of my apartment for hours at a time last week and this.  I am going to be kind of sad when the kids leave and I really won't have a need to leave my apartment...

Anyway, four fourty-eight is kind of a late time to finish up a post and go to bed..  My sleep schedule was good for like.. a total of two weeks this summer.. not even consecutive weeks at that...

I dunno, ever since the car sold I've just felt really good about things.  That lifted a huge burdon from my mind and now I'm looking around realizing that I have quite a few good things going on.  I am immensely happy I asked her out.  It almost didn't happen, but I forced myself to NOT think about it and just see what would happen.  It was a twofold decision, really...  On the one hand, it was kind of like an experiment.. in that whole "can I actually get a date with someone that I barely know? (as opposed to having been a friend for some time)" way, and on the other it was a necessary step forward, to move on.  It seems like kind of a weird way to look at it, but that's how I've rationalized it out in the time since.  And I've had a lot of time to think about it (four months worth, to be almost exact :razz: ).

Gah, five oh-six.  I really need to get to bed.

...I mean it.

Update @ 05:21 06/04/09: Added more to the "About Me" section.  I will continue to tweak and play with that part until I am comfortable with it.  I may never be comfortable with it.  One of the things I strongly dislike is trying to sell myself.

Ordered Ophiuchus.  I hope.  Money I need for rent.. newegg/Charter One constantly declining my card.  Newegg claims C1's fault; C1 newegg.

CMC still hasn't approved resume.  Cannot upload files (to monster.com) from Wii.

Dumb.

I miss Sarah.

Update (17:11 1/25/08): Becky and Aunt Marilyn have both come to me with website propositions.  If anything, I could just do one for the class project and then do the other ones over the summer or something (again, most likely for free since I would still be building my portfolio).  Thanks for the interest, guys!

Update (01:35 1/26/08 Happy Birthday too me): Add Linda's dad to the list as well.

The Request: Anyone need a website?  Or know someone that does?

For my ITM461 class we are going to be doing a big project throughout the course of the semester, adding to it as we learn new things, and the professor wants this project to be for someone or a group that needs either a presence on the web, or a better looking / more functional presence on the web.

During the semester, I will be learning:

• HTML and CSS
• Graphics, design, and navigation
• Javascript and AJAX, javascript frameworks
• Google web services, Search Engine Optimization , analytics
• Small amount of PHP
• "Other fun stuff" (I do not know what this means, but the professor really knows what she is doing so I don't doubt it will be useful and cool information)

The professor has said that if we are interested in something beyond the scope of the course and would like to try it out in our assignments or projects, that we would get the equivalent of bonus points (she doesn't have a grading scale, per se).  Personally, I'm interested in learning more than just a "small amount" of PHP, so that would definitely be one area I would be expanding upon (perhaps in relation to MySQL databases).  She has also stated that she would ensure us not only a functionally sound website, but also a well-designed (read: pretty; or handsome for those of you who don't like "pretty" things) website that will not turn off customers and clients alike.

What would the cost be to you, the client?  Zero dollars.  I am doing this as a class assignment, but more importantly this would be the first real piece upon which I would feel comfortable building a portfolio.  I do not feel it would be right to charge a customer money when they have no idea what the quality of my work will be (this website was not designed by me, it was a free theme I downloaded months and months ago; when I get more confident I will redo this to reflect my own abilities).  Besides, you, the customer, get a free website and I get a free addition to my portfolio.  It works out well for both of us.

There is only one "problem" that potential clients may have an issue with: The project will be completed somewhere around the end of April or the beginning of May.  Since this is a semester long project and we will be applying what we learn in class to the project, it is inappropriate to say that the project will be done before I have learned everything that I need to complete said project.

About me: I have been doing web design in bursts since I was roughly ten years old.  I am currently a twenty-one year old (well, I will be twenty-one two days after this is posted; it is just easier to round up at this point) junior at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.  Because I have been fooling with web design for so long, I am incredibly comfortable with playing around with various tools and technologies as well as trying new things.  I enjoy learning about new techniques on my own, but other aspects of my life have been pulling me away from web design, so this class is a great excuse to get back into it.  The way that my major and minor are taking me, I would most likely end up working in some sort of systems administration type role.  Systems administration does sound like a neat job: to be responsible for making sure possibly hundreds of machines and servers are not going to blow up just sounds fun; but to be able to freelance web design for clients on the side (or eventually as my main source of income) is my ultimate dream.  This is the kind of work that I love.

If you or anyone you know are interested, please contact me via one of the following methods:

• Email: satoshi@sugardeath.net
• AOL Instant Messenger: itstonylol
• Google Talk: satoshi1@gmail.com (this should work no problem, since I log onto Google Talk with Pidgin using the Jabber protocol (since it's the same thing in the end), but I've never actually talked to anyone on Google Talk :razz: )
• Jabber/XMPP: satoshi@sugardeath.net