D2

A new part of my Sunday morning routine is to cut out coupons from the Sunday section of the local paper. I've always thought about doing this, but I was too lazy. But now I'm trying to ready both my mind and body for the routines I'll be practicing as a poor teacher.

p.s. I'm having too much fun with LJ's Create a User Pic feature...

[Poll #1385139]

-It's a bright and sunshiny day today.

-I went on an icon craze and added over twenty icons in the past two days.

-My piano playing and singing sucks. I know this because no one commented on my audio post yesterday.

-I filed my taxes last month. It's a lot easier when you just work at one job at a big corporation like Sears.

-Sears is changing my work uniform from black and white shirts to blue shirts. It's any shade of blue though. They're going with the "Blue Crew" advertisements for some reason.

-I won a $5 dollar gift card for finishing first in Protection Agreement Sales last week in the entire department. This is the first one I've won, and I don't win often because I only work part time (although my manager was the one who actually sold the Protection Agreement).

-I ran into a girl I knew from somewhere, but I couldn't remember where. Fortunately I remembered on Facebook and messaged her and it was indeed her. Thanks Facebook!

-You can now comment on wall posts separately on Facebook now.

-Facebook has a new "Everyone" setting for your profile. So yeah, now everyone can see my profile, whether they're in my network or not.

-I started playing Lexulous on Facebook (it's like Scrabble but better). It's rather addicting.

-I've started reading Crazy Love by Francis Chan. I'm analyzing it on Facebook for a friend of mine.

-I visited my American "grandparents" yesterday. They're not biologically related to me but for all intents and purposes they're my grandparents. It was good visit, as I showed them the DVD's of my sister's wedding.

-I did my entrance loan counseling for my student loans. Time to wait around.

-I plan to make chicken alfredo with leftover rotini noodles today. I'll share the recipe if it turns out okay.

Is it me you're looking for?

[Author’s note: This post is in thanks to das_hydra who made me two excellent icons.]

I started playing video games during the heyday of the original 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment Systems. So I’m a bit biased, but I believe many of the harder games ever made are from the NES. Okay, maybe not the hardest games but definitely some of the more difficult ones to beat. NES games often had only one difficulty setting, often told you to obtain something with no hints, tortured you with intricate jumping patterns and less-than-fine controls that frustrated many a gamer. Also, the lack of 3-D meant the NES would recognize hits on you that you simply do not expect in today’s games.

The hardest game I’ve played and have never beaten is the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game for NES. Good grief, what were they thinking back then? Yes, you have four Turtles but Donatello’s extremely long reach makes him the best by far. The enemies come from all angles and you’re quite limited in your responses. Also, in between levels you have to diffuse bombs underwater and if you fall into the seaweed you automatically lose a Turtle. I tried playing it again recently and gave up because it’s way too annoying to advance far into a level but lose all that progress because I screw up on a simple jump. I concede.

Also, I have to make a special mention for the original Ghosts and Goblins. This is a game with infinite continues and yet I could not get past the third boss. Each time you die, the map scrolls from the beginning to the end. At first, it’s pretty cool. But after you die for the twentieth time, you realize something: Oh @#$^#!, I still have three more bosses and countless enemies and mazes to go through?!? I put in a cheat code once to fight the final boss and he’s actually pretty easy. So kudos to those who actually beat it fair and square. Unfortunately, it’s one of those games you have to beat twice to get the good ending.

As far as the hardest game I have ever beaten, I’m going to say a little-known game from the NES called Silkworm. It was on the arcade for awhile as well. The story is that an evil entity has taken over the world and you must save it. How? Well, fortunately, we’ve trained a helicopter crew and jeep to defeat the armies of evil (many NES games pitted your one fighter against the entire alien force...how that worked out logistically we’ll never know).

Maph, a buddy of mine since junior high, and I one day determined that we would beat the evil horde of Silkworm. FYI, “Silkworm” was the name of the invincible missiles that would appear from time to time. He played the heli and I played the jeep. The key to the game is that there are midbosses are each level that provide powerups. If you beat them fast enough, you get two powerups instead of one. This is important because the quicker you power up, the quicker you advance your rank. Once you make Captain, you retain the two power ups of the game: Twin and Turbo. Twin doubles your shot and Turbo speeds up your shot, and both are necessary to stand a chance. Oh, and if you level up fast enough instead of power ups you get point bonuses. This is critical because you obtain an extra life for every 50,000 points you earn.

The game consists of eight waves of enemies, each with a level boss that flashes white when you hit its weakpoint (Penny Arcade would say, “These weakpoints are a f***in’ liabilitiy!”). Some of the enemies are plausible, and some are silly like the flyswatter tank that tries to run into the jeep. There are also mines that one must be aware of. However, if you shoot the mines, they can spring forth a starry invincible shield. You can either pick up the shield or shoot it. If you shoot it enough times, you can destroy all the enemies on the screen (at certain junctures you must do this or die).

You do get two continues, so it’s not completely impossible. The heli and jeep both have their pros and cons. The heli can fly around most of the screen and is more maneuverable, but it can’t fire backwards and there are more flying enemies as well including the aforementioned Silkworms (they can only be avoided). The jeep doesn’t have to worry about silkworms and you can point the cannon in five directions including backwards, but it’s harder to move around and it’s easier to run into a mine or hole.

As to be expected, the game ramps up in difficulty each stage. The stages are played at various stages of the day, from bright day to early dusk to late twilight to the pitch black of night. When you get to the boss, the background fades. The boss is announced with the warning music and then it’s battle time. The one saving grace is that when there are many enemies and bullets on the screen, the game actually slows down because the poor NES processor is trying to keep up. Although, one could argue it makes the game more dramatic and is perhaps a visualization of what happens in our heroes’ minds. Either way, it makes the game possible because you would otherwise not be able to avoid certain Silkworm formations (trust me on this one).

So one day, we managed to survive the eight waves and fight the final boss. By the way, in the eighth level the Silkworms start shooting their own tiny indestrucible missiles as they pass by. So yeah, the final boss just keeps shooting Silkworms and these annoying missiles that follow you around the level and which you cannot shoot down (you have to hope they hit the ground or fly off the screen). It’s all about pattern recognition, and once we played enough times, we got good enough to get in a few good rounds before we died. And then, one day, glory was ours. Yes, we beat the final boss. Maph and I jumped for joy!

We were eager to see what the end was going to be like. The game automatically drives your heli and jeep to the end. Then the screen faded to black and boss warning music was played. Oh noes, the real final boss has appeared! Wait a minute, he’s like HUGE. By himself he takes up a fourth of the screen, and he flies. His body reflects your bullets, which slows you down because the NES allows only so many of your bullets to be on screen at one time. His shoulders and knees fire those annoying tiny indestructible missiles. His first move was to charge forward, raise his hand, and shoot a Silkworm missile from his hand. Oh yeah, we died before we busted out laughing at the absurd difficulty of the real final boss.

Through many deaths and billions of dollars of helis and jeeps, we slowly learned the nuances of the game. One of the first things we learned was that if you got to real final boss, your continues became null and void. We could not die on the first three levels because we wouldn’t advance ranks fast enough to become Captains for the later levels. Some level bosses we knew so well that we would be firing at their weakpoints before they even came on screen. The heli and jeep need to cover each other in certain areas because the heli actually kills ground enemies easier and the jeep’s ability to fire behind the helicopter is important for the enemies that approach from the rear (of which there are many).

The real final boss is weak only at one point: His heart opens up for a second after he fires his Silkworm missile. At all other times you must crazily avoid his volume of missiles. When he rolls forward, the jeep needs to cover the heli by shooting some of the missiles that can be shot down. When he rolls backward, all you can do is pray that you’re quick enough to avoid death. Slowly but surely, we got closer and closer.

One day, in between practices for the musical Oklahoma!, Maph and I played the game to kill some time. Our good friend Riest happened to be there as well. Our teamwork was exceptional that day, as we got to the eighth and final level without using a continue. Then we purposely died to get a full stock of lives. We managed to beat the final level without losing a life. We sensed that this might be our best chance. The real final boss rolled forward, we dodged. The real final boss rolled backward, we died. Rinse and repeat a couple times and Maph has used up all of his lives. I’m driving back and forth in my jeep and blindly connecting a few hits while frantically evading missiles (with the heli dead I was more focused on not dying than hitting the boss).

Then it happened.

The boss flashed red.

He was dead.

At that point, we waited to make absolutely sure. Sure enough, the final cut scene played. And for all that effort, what did we get?

CONGRATULATIONS YOU HAVE SAVED THE WORLD!

Just a text message saying we had saved the world?

Saving the world has never been more disappointing.

One of my college buddies, renough, made a video for a contest. He's the guy who made this Final Fantasy Bard icon playing the piano. It's only three minutes long and well made. Please check it out!

[Author’s note: This post is in thanks to das_hydra, who has made me two excellent icons.]

What can I tell you about Arkansas? Well, when someone mentions “Arkansas”, the first thing they’ll most likely think of is William Jefferson Clinton. Indeed, Bill Clinton (and Hilary) have done many things for my home state. What most people don’t know is that Bill Clinton was actually defeated after one term as governor for a variety of reasons. My parents always tell me that one of the reasons is that Hilary refused to take his name (she was known as Hilary Rodham back then). Hey now, we’re in the South here and our women are submissive to their husbands (and yet few people quote the second part of that Bible verse, that husbands are to love their wives as their own bodies). She changed her name and they came back strong the next time, and the rest is history.

Arkansas is in the bottom five states in terms of education and salaries. On the other hand, we have a low cost of living and you can buy a spacious house at a great price. Arkansans are constantly the butt of jokes, that they’re hillbillies who don’t wear shoes or marry our cousins. Okay, so in certain parts of Arkansas that happens but that’s beside the point. We also contain the remnants of the KKK, as in we have people who will still dress up in the white garb you might see in D W Griffith’s Birth of a Nation. You’ll see people hanging Confederate flags and singing Dixie. If you travel in the river delta part of the state you’ll definitely get to hear an ubiquitous Southern drawl from all the citizens.

We have no professional sports teams, so people follow the one big college team, the Arkansas Razorbacks. Since we’re in the South, the head football coach (that’s American football for my European readers) of the Razorbacks is more recognizable than the governor and may arguably be the most powerful person in the state (he’s the highest paid state employee, at least). Entire talk radio shows dissect every decision the coach makes, from spring football practice to disciplining players to the minutiae of boneheaded game decisions (even in victory the coach makes dumb moves). Basketball and baseball are fairly popular here as well.

Thanks to an abundance of natural resources, Arkansas is nicknamed “The Natural State”. We’re supposedly the state that could be self-sufficient. We have the only public diamond mine in the United States (which is why there is a diamond in our state flag). We have twenty five stars because we were the twenty fifth state to join the Union. We sided with the Confederacy in the Civil War, though no major battles were fought here. Our state capital is in Little Rock, so named by some French explorer.

The state legislature is heavily Democratic, reflecting the fact that the majority of Arkansas is farmland. Governor Huckabee became governor because we elect our lieutenant governors separately, and the guy before him fell in a major scandal (many conspiracy theorists claim that this guy fell on his sword for the Clintons). The current governor, Mike Beebe, was previously Attorney General and while popular, had no chance of making this state purple for Obama. Our Senators, Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor are considered to among the most moderate Democrats. Mark has his Senate job for life thanks to his dad, David Pryor, who was a governor as well as a U.S. Senator.

Of the four congressional districts, Northwest Arkansas is the bastion of Republican conservatism. Oh hey, look, Wal-Mart and Tyson foods is headquartered here. Ah, yes, Wal-Mart or Wally’s World originated from the town of Bentonville. I live in a border town called Fort Smith, right next to Oklahoma. We’re famous for Hanging Judge Parker, who kept law and order by publically hanging criminals (and as our National Historic Site will remind you, it was considered a family event complete with picnics).

My parents like to joke that there’s a church on every street corner here. Well, it’s not quite true but church is part of the cultural fabric (ironically, though, we have one of the highest teenage prenancy rates in the nation). In my town, which is especially conservative, people protested the opening of a Hooters franchise on pure principle. It took several years to get a state lottery on the ballot (but when it did it passed). Strip clubs and other similar entertainment venues are shackled by all sorts of zoning laws. We don’t sell liquor on Sundays. Things close at 9pm weekdays and at 6pm on Sundays.

As you might imagine, it can get rather boring here. Then again, it’s nice and quiet. Plus, there’s the whole Southern hospitality thing. Oh yes, you must have some biscuits and gravy or grits or fried okra if you come by here. We also refer to all carbonated drinks as “cokes” even if it’s not Coca-Cola (it ain’t soda and it ain’t pop either).

On a personal note, my town actually has quite a few Asians because nearby Fort Chaffee is one of the major entry checkpoints for immigrants and refugees. Overall, I think it’s a great place to raise kids. And hey, I didn’t turn out too badly having lived here all of my life!

Are there any other Arkansas related questions you’d like answered?

Yet another awesome song I heard on the radio the other day...

Last Friday, I posted a poll on the use of one’s LJ. Thank you to everyone who voted! Obviously, since it’s a poll, it tends to favor those who consistently use their LJ. The question that asked if you logged onto LJ at least once a day on average? If you voted in that poll, the answer was overwhelmingly yes. I’ve learned more about the dangers of small sample size from LJ than anywhere else.

Looking deeper at the numbers, I realize that I have way more female friends than male friends on LJ. This was done on purpose. You see, most of the females in my analog life are cordial but they will rarely talk about their personal lives. On LJ people seem to share much more freely. I can honestly say I’ve learned more about how the other half lives more from LJ than anywhere else (with the usual statistical disclaimers, of course).

In terms of politics, I’m confident in saying that over 80% of my friends list leans to the left side of the equilibrium. This makes sense: the split in 2004 on LJ was 83-17 in favor of Kerry. I consider myself a moderate Republican (yes, I am a registered Republican). I live in a town that borders Arkansas and Oklahoma, and both red states came out heavily in favor of Bush and McCain. I spent a summer interning for Senator Inhofe, who believes that global warming is a bunch of baloney. What can I say, I’ve learned more about the left side from LJ than anywhere else.

In terms of religion, I understand that most of my LJ friends are agnostic, liberal Christians, or spiritual. Having grown up in a Southern Baptist church, it’s been fascinating learning the similarities and differences between various religious ideas and beliefs. I once was on the leadership team for a college ministry, although my faith has shifted more towards Buddhist ideas recently. I’ve put “Balance” as my religious views on Facebook because I’m more concerned with the balance in my life than anything else. Oh yeah, I’ve learned more about non-fundamentalist religions from LJ than anywhere else.

On the personal side, many of my friends bat for the other side or swing both ways. Quite a few are proudly polyamorous as well (how odd, Microsoft Word 2007 does not recognize polyamorous as a word). I surmise this is because the central hub of my LJ friendships branch out from theferrett and zoethe. My parents taught me that Asian culture demands faith to one’s spouse and family, so it’s been enlightening to read the counterarguments. Indeed, I’ve learned more about LBGTA from LJ than anywhere else.

In conclusion, I’ve learned a lot from LJ and still have more to learn. My music knowledge has increased greatly from the classical base I knew in high school. I am constantly entertained by the variety of links provided by my friends list, which in turn has helped me entertain my 1000+ friends on Facebook. You’ve answered my random real life questions, including cooking, credit cards and web design. Although, right now, I do have one more question to ask.

Have you learned anything from reading D2’s journal?