Lali ho.
Don't worry. I know what you're all thinking. You're thinking that you'd like to be led on a giant pillow floating in a swimming pool full of unmarked bank notes, being fed chocolates as a beautiful member of whichever gender you prefer services your lower half. Hell, we're all thinking it. But after that you're probably thinking 'oh great, something's gone wrong with Blaze again' based on the title. Never fear. It's not as bad as it sounds.
As you know I'm currently off work due to extensive injuries to my leg and various other limbs. Well, boredom is setting in mighty quick. I hacked my PS2 but regretably the blank DVDs Heather has about a million of don't work for reasons beyond our understanding. Can't even be the ISO files or the burning process as we tried the exact same way I made Ape Escape 2 work and didn't get a damn thing out of it. Strange. Which regretably left me with only 2 DVDs I could write to, 2 old rewritable disks which were so badly scuffed that one won't load at all and the other crashes minutes into the game. Damn
Incidentally if anyone happens to know if you can use ESR patched NTSC games such as Tales of Legendia on a PAL PS2, gimme a holler 'cause I'm not absolutely certain if the Tales of Legendia disk's faults are caused by the disk or the file as I've never tried an NTSC game before. I'm to understand you can convert PAL games to NTSC so surely you can reverse the process if needs be, right?
Anyway, moving on. I got so bored these last two days with Heather not being here much that I decided to finally clean my room. I keep it in reasonable order most of the time but recent events have caused a bit of a mess. I'll spare you the details, suffice as to say that washing strawberry smoothie out of textured wallpaper isn't as fun as it sounds. So I've totally restored the entire room, head to toe. Washed everything, dusted, polished, hoovered, I even made the ill-fated decision to clean under the bed, which has formerly been regarded as a Buffy The Vampire Slayer style Hellmouth. But after two days and a ridiculous number of bin bags, my room is about as good as I can get it. I was so thrilled with my work that I made a little video proof that there is in fact a carpet in my room.
But all this cleaning has really taken its toll. My leg is worse than ever, which couldn't have been timed worse as I have to return to work soon unless the doctor agrees that I need more time, which on the one hand I can't really afford to take off but on the other hand my leg is no better than it was when I first saw him, implying that there may be something else to this. I've got a LOT of bruises along my right arm, which is odd because I don't recall taking any hits there. My back is painful, my chest is really bad, I feel just as bad as I have these last 3 weeks, worse even when I get stressed. I'm NEVER going under the bed again. There were books under there with early drafts of the Ten Commandments doodled on the back pages.
Still, there's light at the end of this tunnel, and for once it's not an oncoming train. My job hunt has really taken off. I finally got my review portfolio to a level I felt covered all the bases with a reasonable display of talent, and so it's been deployed to countless gaming magazines, websites, even my local paper. Unsuprisingly most of my responses have been the usual 'thanks but no thanks' bollocks, but a decent supply of 'you've got my attention' messages have arrived too. Hell, my local paper have pretty much stated that I can work freelance for them if I want. It may only be a few quid extra a week, but since I write these reviews and things all the time anyway I may as well make some money out of them. Seems all that work is finally starting to pay dividends. Give it time and I'll be writing pro. Hell, even Screwattack are hiring new writers at the moment. I know my chances are akin to the chances of my cuddly chocobo suddenly mutating into a vicious killer space donkey and eating my arse with a golden spork, but it's worth a shot.
In other news,
- Dad is being a cunt, but then that's nothing new. What is new is that now people are actually leaving the house in disgust when he starts being a prick. Our neighbour drops by to play Scrabble most days and she's been leaving mid-game the last few days because Dad makes some stupid comment or starts giving me a load of bullshit. He's also stopped mouthing off to me in front of Heather since he knows that if I don't snap and kick his ass, she will. He knows that if he so much as attempts to interfere in our relationship, he'll die. She drops the L-Bomb every day before she heads off to work so he knows it's not just some childish romance, we actually care for each other. He's not so stupid as to stand in the way of that.
- Trying to download Kingdom Hearts BBS for my PSP since I can't burn any more PS2 games right now and I needs my KH fix. Bloody downloads keep freezing, or in some cases resetting half way through. Even the mighty J-Downloader isn't helping. It's a pain in the anus. Still, got four of the 7 parts at time of writing, with part 5 about to start. Shouldn't take long. Just gotta delete that crappy Pangya golf game I decided to try for the lols. It sucks. A lot. There's no challenge in it because the AI's a fuckin' donut. Every now and then it'll swing and miss the ball entirely, giving me a straight up 1 shot advantage. Couple that with how stupidly easy it is to get holes in one, eagles, etc, I'm pissing all over the AI, even on the hardest difficulty. And unlike the Japanese version you don't seem to be able to unlock Ayane or Kasumi costumes, which immediately robs it of 50 Cool Points.
- Got a tonne of work done on my new main project. I started a new story now that Requiem is finished and Sliding Doors (my other FF7 fanfic) is nearing completion. I felt like going original this time. No Square Enix characters. All mine. Albeit some aspects of them being loosely based on people I know, but that's how art works. It started off as a crazy dream I was having and was oddly able to remember when I woke up. The plot seemed to have potential so I wrote down all I could remember and it just sort of blossomed from there. A big sweeping fantasy story, swords and magic and maybe a dragon. Would work well as an RPG plot one day, maybe. When it's finished I might send it to Square Enix and say 'Look, most of your games lately have sucked balls. Try this and see how it goes.' May as well, what does it cost me? Sod all. What could it win me? Best case scenario, a job. Middle case, a small payment for the rights and a step on the ladder. Worst case, fuck all but at least I tried and they know I exist and that I'm writing this sort of thing. Better that than nothing at all.
- My Mario Hat DS Case FINALLY arrived from Club Nintendo. It sucks. But whatever, didn't cost me anything really, and it keeps my 3DS safe and clean. All I can ask for, really. Just waiting on my Zelda CD now, which I doubt will arrive with any sort of haste.
Anyway, I'm gonna go retrieve my curtain from the washing line. It's still not clean, it'll never be clean. But I don't have the money to replace it right now so it'll have to do. Heather will be home soon (yeah, she still crashes here every night, she's just on a late shift tonight) so I want everything to look good when she gets back. Only fair, she's been working hard. So I've done all the cleaning, cooked dinner, and even managed to hobble to the shops and back to replenish her supply of scented bubble bath to help her relax. Fucked my leg up doing it, but whatever. She makes it feel better. Anyway. Toodles.
Blaze.
Instead of a quote this time, I thought I'd share a little treasure I found while cleaning up. A file I found from an old job hunting course I was stuck on. A list of obstacles between us and working me and my group had to come up with. Including but by no means limited to...
- Lack of transport
- Lack of jobs in area.
- Lack of funds to print off CV, etc.
- Lack of qualifications.
- Depression
- Major medical issues
- Terrorist attack
- It's too cold
- Too hungover to stand
- House has burned down
- World Cup is on
- Second coming of Jesus
- Insanity
- Illegal Immigrants
- Addicted to smack
- Can spell own name (doesn't seem to be a plus point any more)
- Armageddon
- Just can't be arsed.
Don't worry. I know what you're all thinking. You're thinking that you'd like to be led on a giant pillow floating in a swimming pool full of unmarked bank notes, being fed chocolates as a beautiful member of whichever gender you prefer services your lower half. Hell, we're all thinking it. But after that you're probably thinking 'oh great, something's gone wrong with Blaze again' based on the title. Never fear. It's not as bad as it sounds.
As you know I'm currently off work due to extensive injuries to my leg and various other limbs. Well, boredom is setting in mighty quick. I hacked my PS2 but regretably the blank DVDs Heather has about a million of don't work for reasons beyond our understanding. Can't even be the ISO files or the burning process as we tried the exact same way I made Ape Escape 2 work and didn't get a damn thing out of it. Strange. Which regretably left me with only 2 DVDs I could write to, 2 old rewritable disks which were so badly scuffed that one won't load at all and the other crashes minutes into the game. Damn
Incidentally if anyone happens to know if you can use ESR patched NTSC games such as Tales of Legendia on a PAL PS2, gimme a holler 'cause I'm not absolutely certain if the Tales of Legendia disk's faults are caused by the disk or the file as I've never tried an NTSC game before. I'm to understand you can convert PAL games to NTSC so surely you can reverse the process if needs be, right?
Anyway, moving on. I got so bored these last two days with Heather not being here much that I decided to finally clean my room. I keep it in reasonable order most of the time but recent events have caused a bit of a mess. I'll spare you the details, suffice as to say that washing strawberry smoothie out of textured wallpaper isn't as fun as it sounds. So I've totally restored the entire room, head to toe. Washed everything, dusted, polished, hoovered, I even made the ill-fated decision to clean under the bed, which has formerly been regarded as a Buffy The Vampire Slayer style Hellmouth. But after two days and a ridiculous number of bin bags, my room is about as good as I can get it. I was so thrilled with my work that I made a little video proof that there is in fact a carpet in my room.
But all this cleaning has really taken its toll. My leg is worse than ever, which couldn't have been timed worse as I have to return to work soon unless the doctor agrees that I need more time, which on the one hand I can't really afford to take off but on the other hand my leg is no better than it was when I first saw him, implying that there may be something else to this. I've got a LOT of bruises along my right arm, which is odd because I don't recall taking any hits there. My back is painful, my chest is really bad, I feel just as bad as I have these last 3 weeks, worse even when I get stressed. I'm NEVER going under the bed again. There were books under there with early drafts of the Ten Commandments doodled on the back pages.
Still, there's light at the end of this tunnel, and for once it's not an oncoming train. My job hunt has really taken off. I finally got my review portfolio to a level I felt covered all the bases with a reasonable display of talent, and so it's been deployed to countless gaming magazines, websites, even my local paper. Unsuprisingly most of my responses have been the usual 'thanks but no thanks' bollocks, but a decent supply of 'you've got my attention' messages have arrived too. Hell, my local paper have pretty much stated that I can work freelance for them if I want. It may only be a few quid extra a week, but since I write these reviews and things all the time anyway I may as well make some money out of them. Seems all that work is finally starting to pay dividends. Give it time and I'll be writing pro. Hell, even Screwattack are hiring new writers at the moment. I know my chances are akin to the chances of my cuddly chocobo suddenly mutating into a vicious killer space donkey and eating my arse with a golden spork, but it's worth a shot.
In other news,
- Dad is being a cunt, but then that's nothing new. What is new is that now people are actually leaving the house in disgust when he starts being a prick. Our neighbour drops by to play Scrabble most days and she's been leaving mid-game the last few days because Dad makes some stupid comment or starts giving me a load of bullshit. He's also stopped mouthing off to me in front of Heather since he knows that if I don't snap and kick his ass, she will. He knows that if he so much as attempts to interfere in our relationship, he'll die. She drops the L-Bomb every day before she heads off to work so he knows it's not just some childish romance, we actually care for each other. He's not so stupid as to stand in the way of that.
- Trying to download Kingdom Hearts BBS for my PSP since I can't burn any more PS2 games right now and I needs my KH fix. Bloody downloads keep freezing, or in some cases resetting half way through. Even the mighty J-Downloader isn't helping. It's a pain in the anus. Still, got four of the 7 parts at time of writing, with part 5 about to start. Shouldn't take long. Just gotta delete that crappy Pangya golf game I decided to try for the lols. It sucks. A lot. There's no challenge in it because the AI's a fuckin' donut. Every now and then it'll swing and miss the ball entirely, giving me a straight up 1 shot advantage. Couple that with how stupidly easy it is to get holes in one, eagles, etc, I'm pissing all over the AI, even on the hardest difficulty. And unlike the Japanese version you don't seem to be able to unlock Ayane or Kasumi costumes, which immediately robs it of 50 Cool Points.
- Got a tonne of work done on my new main project. I started a new story now that Requiem is finished and Sliding Doors (my other FF7 fanfic) is nearing completion. I felt like going original this time. No Square Enix characters. All mine. Albeit some aspects of them being loosely based on people I know, but that's how art works. It started off as a crazy dream I was having and was oddly able to remember when I woke up. The plot seemed to have potential so I wrote down all I could remember and it just sort of blossomed from there. A big sweeping fantasy story, swords and magic and maybe a dragon. Would work well as an RPG plot one day, maybe. When it's finished I might send it to Square Enix and say 'Look, most of your games lately have sucked balls. Try this and see how it goes.' May as well, what does it cost me? Sod all. What could it win me? Best case scenario, a job. Middle case, a small payment for the rights and a step on the ladder. Worst case, fuck all but at least I tried and they know I exist and that I'm writing this sort of thing. Better that than nothing at all.
- My Mario Hat DS Case FINALLY arrived from Club Nintendo. It sucks. But whatever, didn't cost me anything really, and it keeps my 3DS safe and clean. All I can ask for, really. Just waiting on my Zelda CD now, which I doubt will arrive with any sort of haste.
Anyway, I'm gonna go retrieve my curtain from the washing line. It's still not clean, it'll never be clean. But I don't have the money to replace it right now so it'll have to do. Heather will be home soon (yeah, she still crashes here every night, she's just on a late shift tonight) so I want everything to look good when she gets back. Only fair, she's been working hard. So I've done all the cleaning, cooked dinner, and even managed to hobble to the shops and back to replenish her supply of scented bubble bath to help her relax. Fucked my leg up doing it, but whatever. She makes it feel better. Anyway. Toodles.
Blaze.
Instead of a quote this time, I thought I'd share a little treasure I found while cleaning up. A file I found from an old job hunting course I was stuck on. A list of obstacles between us and working me and my group had to come up with. Including but by no means limited to...
- Lack of transport
- Lack of jobs in area.
- Lack of funds to print off CV, etc.
- Lack of qualifications.
- Depression
- Major medical issues
- Terrorist attack
- It's too cold
- Too hungover to stand
- House has burned down
- World Cup is on
- Second coming of Jesus
- Insanity
- Illegal Immigrants
- Addicted to smack
- Can spell own name (doesn't seem to be a plus point any more)
- Armageddon
- Just can't be arsed.
