The Home Stuck Dream

Before you read on, you should know that this dream contains some serious spoilers to the beginning of Homestuck. Considering the dream is based on it, I have to discuss the mechanics of how things work, which include some serious referencing to the comic. Unfortunately, my dream repeats a lot of what is in the comic so some silly scenes are about exactly what happens in the comic, just personalized to my house really. I will also be jumping back and forth to say how things were in the comic and then how things worked out in the dream. I imagine this to be a fairly long read, so... you have been warned. I'll be gone for 2-3 days so take your time in reading it if it's too long for you. Or just look at the silly/bad pictures I drew in paint, gives you an idea of what my house is like in some of them. :D

Also, general explanations will be in BOLD, the dream will be in a different font so if you want to skip explanations, you can just try to follow the dream sequence.

This dream involved my friend and I getting into the game called, "Sburb," which is a game that starts the journey in Homestuck. Starting up the game puts one person and their house as the playing field while another can interact with the environment. Homestuck refers this relationship as the Client and Server player respectfully. I will be referencing in a different manner to (hopefully) make sense of it more. The person who's home becomes the playing field I will refer to as the "player" character and the one whom interacts with the player's environment I'll refer to as the "Controller."

In my dream, my best friend, Sierra* and I simply knew Earth was like in doomsday mode. I was on my laptop IMing her links and she was linking me too about reports around the world with meteors striking specific areas and homes. She and I were panicking about it. I don't recall the specific conversations, but a lot of CAPS and exclamation points were used.I decided to check out the latest homestuck for one reason or another, and found a Sburb download. Knowing the comic, I knew this would be a way to save ourselves, and thus linked her to it, urging her to download it!

*Not her real name, just a designated one for easier clarification..

In the comic, launching the game and completing certain tasks would send you and your home to another world, which I suppose is the main part of the game. Also, as far as I can gather, when it comes to the player-controller relationship, they can not do dual duties for the same person. That is, the player can not ALSO take on the controller role for its own controller. For instance, let's say A is the player, and B is taking on the controller role for A. After A gets warped to the other world, he can not then become the controller for B to get him to the world, B would need to find someone to be their controller. Let's say B finds C. Now B remains the controller for A, but is the player for C. This makes C the controller for B, but needs to become a player so they can get warped too right? Well now C can ask A to become the controller for him, and thus the circle is complete. In this case it is A -> B -> C -> A. In the comic, this is not exactly a rule, it just works out this way. My dream follows the above logic

After we downloaded it, which of course was super fast despite what had to be an enormous file size, we installed it (instantly of course) and started it up. It was decided I would be the "player" and Sierra would be the "controller" for me. When I told her about the rule that I can't also be her controller, she got a little distressed, but I told her another friend of ours could take that place in due time. For now we had to set up quickly. Since I knew how homestuck was, I had a general idea of what we needed to do and started IMing Sierra some details on what she could do. As the controller, she could see my whole house, navigating through an interface on her computer. To get an idea of what this looks like, I taken the liberty to yoink this from Homestuck itself:

Obviously, instead of the person you see there, it would be me and my room. Like I previously mentioned she could navigate throughout the house, away from me as she wished. However, her range was limited based on my position. That is to say, she can't go over to my neighbors and poke them or something. In fact, she can't grab me either, but can grab things around me. Which... she did. As I typed to her on my laptop, I saw a green mouse cursor hovering around, going through walls and what not. She must have been exploring around and testing what she could do. I heard a crash and left my room to discover she threw the living room couch out the window. I ran back to my room yelling at her to quit screwing around. Just because she CAN lift things around didn't mean she HAD to. Sierra made the excuse that my house is too crowded anyway, I could live without a couch. 

I started IMing her instructions on what her role as the controller was to do, and even linked her to some info the comic provided (A character in the web series made her own walkthrough, so I just linked her to them. I magically had them bookmarked apparently). Besides moving objects around, she also could expand my house and build things but at a cost of something called building grist. To simplify, just imagine a gauge that goes down as you build or expand the house, as well as uprooting fixtures connected to the house. (The sink would lower the gauge since the pipes are interconnected to the house thus counts as remodeling, but just moving the couch would not cost anything)

In the comic, the controller needs to deploy 3 machines and one special card. These three machines would be what helps the player get warped into the world. ...I started to explain this, but then I realized this is getting overcomplicated as they have a small part in my dream. I'll keep it as simple as I can:
-One machine you have to activate by smashing a button, to which then starts a countdown to let you know how long you have until a meteor smashes your location. It also deploys a blank sprite that follows you around and will act as your guide (will explain more on this later), and a special material needed in other machines.
-The second machine carves the special material you got from the other machine with help from the special card the controller needs to deploy (card acts as a guide for the carving machine).
-The final machine takes the carved material and turns it into the object that you have to do something with (eat it, break it, drink it, hatch it, etc) in order to be warped into the game.

Sierra only skimmed through the guide links I gave her, but generally listened to what i told her. As previously mentioned, my house is extremely crowded, so in order to fit the machines, she had to do some remodeling. She put one machine in the living room where my couch was, expanded MY room so she could put another machine in there, and the third machine was placed in my cellar. This caused problems as I had to run up and down the stairs later. I was about to get up and explore, but didn't want to be lugging around my laptop, so I went to grab my cell phone to text her. That's when the game decided to throw an inventory system at me.

In the comic, in order to hold onto any object, a person has to use an inventory system (this goes for their entire life btw, but this only activated for me when I started the game). This isn't like Legend of Zelda where you can just take an item and it goes in your inventory or whatever, no no! Each inventory type has specific rules. The only shared rule of inventory systems is you are limited by how many inventory cards you have. Each card holds one item (some exceptions, but not relevant to this). If you fill up those cards and try to pick another item up, one of your held items will be ejected (usually shoots out like a cannon)
-Example of an inventory system: One character has something called a "stack" modus in which his inventory system behaves like a stack of cards. To get a better idea how this works, imagine you have 5 cards stacked in a pile. You can't just grab a card in the middle or else you will end up disassembling the pile. This is how a stack inventory system worked, you could only take from the item on top. The last item you pick up would be on the top. So if you were to first grab a pencil, it would start on the top of the pile, but if you grabbed an eraser, the pencil would be below the eraser and inaccessible until you use the eraser for whatever reason. There are other modes with different functions as well, but I think I'll save you all the reading. here's a visual of a stack modus I so awesomely made in paint.

The green slot would only get ejected if inventory was full of course.

Back to the dream, when I went to grab my cellphone, it simply disappeared. Needless to say, I freaked out a bit, and tried to grab a flashlight which disappeared too. Getting frustrated, I started grabbing things willy nilly, and after grabbing a sixth item, my cell phone went flying against the wall. I started to realize that I was given an inventory system just like the comic. Sierra IMed me asking what the fuck was I doing and I let her know the situation. The things was, I had no idea how to access my inventory. In the comic the characters just magically grab the items out of no where. Sierra somehow managed to figure it out when she hovered her cursor over me. She told me to look down and I saw little holographic cards in two piles around me. I didn't know it at the time, but my inventory system rule had to do something with odds and evens, but behaved like the stack rule mentioned above. I had two piles I could take from though, so I had two items I could have accessible. I think it worked like if an item an an odd number of letters in its name (cellphone = 9 letters = odd), it would be put in the odd pile, and even number of letters (pencil = 6 = even) it would be put in another pile. After I noticed where the cards were, I was able to just tap on an invisible pile and would be given the top card item. Was kind of cool after i got the hang of it. 

More lovely paint art showing how the inventory system appeared to me.

I went to retrieve my cell phone from across the room, but when I did, my flashlight came shooting out and broke against the wall. Bah. Sierra laughed at me via text message, then told me how she positioned the machines. She ended up putting the machine with timer in my living room, the machine with the carving instrument down stairs, and the machine that would create items in my room. I went to my living room and tried smashing the button to start the timer with my fists but no go. I texted Sierra maybe she could grab the tv and smash the button, but there wasn't enough room to maneuver it.Sighing, I went downstairs to grab a sledge hammer from my dad's work area. Of course, I had to maneuver around the carving machine which was in the middle of the room (There is really no room down there, like everywhere else in my house). I have taken the liberty to go paint some more shitty art, this time of my house.

Forgot to label the gray image on basement floor, but its the carving machine. The rooms not mentioned in the dream are so full of crap or messy that putting something in them would be even more ridiculous than the placement these were put in originally. Although in retrospect, the kitchen could have been a useful place for a machine if the table or dishwasher was taken out. Upstairs was inaccessible because I share my home with neighbors and they lock their doors. Anyway, I grabbed the sledgehammer, which was then put into my evens inventory pile and shot out a random object I grabbed previously, and got upstairs. Sara helped me lift the hammer up (just like what happened in the comic), and i smashed down on the timer machine's button. I knocked the ceiling fan in the living room a bit too. Anyway, the timer was starting which was like 8 minutes. Also, as described, out popped the floating guide thing and some material needed for the carving machine. 

Now about the guides... In the comic, they are called kernelsprites, and you can customize them with objects around the house. Usually in the comic someone has a dead being or something somewhat humanoid to become the guide. You can customize it twice, but whatever you customize with it before you get warped to the other world will be the main monster you begin to fight when in the other world. So if I were to customize my guide with a superman action figure, I would end up fighting little supermen in the other world (kind of a bad idea). 

Having read the comic, I knew this guide could also bring back dead ones if you had the ashes around, and so I decided I would bring back my dead dog, Buddy, who's ashes were in the living room. BUT, I knew I wouldn't want to face enemies looking like my dog, so I figured as soon as I warped into the other world, I would customize my guide a second time then so it wouldn't be an enemy. I texted Sierra to find something humanoid in my house and drag it into the guide sprite while I get to work on bringing the material. I wanted something humanoid specifically so that when I do put Buddy's ashes into it, it hopefully could talk to me instead of barking. Sierra searched around, and of course found the thing that used to creep me out when I was younger: an old ventriloquist doll we had buried in the storage. Having that thing follow me muttering nonsense scared the crap out of me. 

The next part was rather rushed in my dream sequence I quickly ran downstairs, Sierra deployed the special card for the carving machine, and I got the special material carved. Then I ran back upstairs, (meanwhile texting to Sierra how pissed I was about the dummy being the thing she chose as my guide, as well as the positioning of the machines), ran back to my room and started the item-making machine. What was created was a green pear, which reminded me of the scene in Homestuck where a player has to eat an Apple. I was about to bite into the pear when I just remembered: None of my family was home (nor neighbors but they really weren't relevant to the story)! i quickly got back on my laptop and IMed Sierra, asking her to please get in contact with them and get them to her house so they could be brought into the world she gets warped into! She said of course she would, but to hurry as there was like 1 minute left. I bit into the pear, and a blinding light came from my windows. After I could see, I ran to the living room window and looked outside. Everything looked eerily the same outside, except no cars were outside and it was very very quiet. I tried to text Sierra but my cell had no signal. Ran back to my room and was able to IM her still. Asked her if it worked, but she ignored me and was typing about a large explosion she heard. 

Then I woke up. Like I said, incredibly long, one of my more detailed dreams. I have them every now and then, and usually have to type them up right away in order to remember such details. In this dream's case, i told three people which helped me remember more details. If you didn't read the whole thing, I can understand, but at least comment about the really bad drawings I made then. :P If you read the whole thing, I appreciate it!

In lieu of the Homestuck dream I mentioned, I will be asking for opinions on banners. As previously mentioned, I've been dabbling with imaging, as well as been trying to make a banner for the blog. My friend who is better at imaging than me was going to design a banner, but she needed some idea for what I wanted out of it and I really had no clue so that went no where.

Instead I've taken it upon myself to make banners by carefully cutting images... or not so carefully really. I just went for what sort of looked cool. Still, I've never made myself a banner really, so opinions could be useful, or ideas based on the ones I present.

I really have no idea how to make a banner, so I just though of strips. I've seen full size images before, but none of the images I have seemed right for it really. Images above depict interests of mine, two specifically from Homestuck, one of Neopets and other Donkey Kong Country Returns. I figured I should try two homestuck ones since I am going with a new design on the blog.  Please let me know some ideas on the  banner above.

Also, i could use some help on the new design. Sucio mentioned it was harder to read in my previous post so I bolded the text for everything to made it more apparent. I prefer to keep the background for the post text to be transparent so the image stays in view since I hate it when designs have a background image you can't see thanks to the text background. I'd change the transparency colors... if I knew how to. I seriously just experimented with the Design tab  and looked for what seemed okay. Also, with the blog description, I found a random CSS code that was SUPPOSED to stretch the image completely but instead positioned itself where the blog description was, so I went with it as a background. :X

TL;DR? Design help. Opinions, ideas, specifics with what is wrong and how to be made right. Thanks.

EDIT

Changed the layout dramatically. Tried to go with a blue hue and threw in Chrono Cross. Also found out how to do ONE transparency for the blog description background but can't do it for the post's background, because it requires me finding another code. Bleh. I hope this is better looking at least. None of my other Homestuck images really was background material without interfering with other parts of the blog so that's why the dramatic change.

Also, tried new things with banners since text over image seems to not be so great. best that came out were these two.

Probably going with the blue to match the theme, but I really like how the text came out on the red. I have no idea how i did it either. Tried to replicate it again and just couldn't in blue so tried something different.

Shit just got real; Homestuck

I have been following Homestuck for awhile now, have even re-read the entire series twice, and I gotta say, this shit is bananas! Bringing together video game logic, epic adventures, sciency stuff, and hell, even friendship (but in a totally not-kiddy way). I've already discussed Homestuck somewhat in the past, but it was just a small feature. For those who want to get into reading it but have a hard time grasping or getting into it, I have an image to help you read it. I found it online, I can't say it really will be useful, but gives you a better sense of the web series without me pretty much copy and pasting a summary online.

I edited this to make it easier to see and have it at it's largest available to me. Want to read it better? Either manually zoom (Hold shift and use mouse wheel scroll-up for zoom in) or save it and zoom in via image program.

Only one semi-spoiler up there, and it's not really much of one by this point. As for what has happened really, well... I am going to state what happened without mentioning names nor will I be too specific, so fear not of spoilers. If you are worried it will give away the story too much, however, just scroll down to the second image.

See below this image for story stuffs going on

Characters are dying. One lovable character was killed some time back, which was a little sad but nothing too traumatic compared to others deaths. Fans are speculating he will be brought back to life in an awesome way, but nothing is confirmed. This guy was more like a lovable oaf anyway.

A person who probably could be considered a background character has VERY RECENTLY killed two girls and is going turncoat. Makes some sense considering how little attention was given to him (this could be said on a few characters really). The first girl to die was a nice one, but like the previous death mentioned above, was nothing too important. The second one to die however... well... it was a bit tragic. She seemed like she would be one to survive and was getting a lot of dialogue lately. It's a good plan to make the death more traumatic I suppose, taking the viewers by surprise.

Besides the turncoat killing, another character, who too, seemed like a background character has now gone insane and is pledging to kill everyone, or at least so it seems. No killings yet, but it just turned this story into a survival/horror phase.

End of story discussion

I'll admit, the current story led me to download a notifier for when the site updates. Normally, I wait a week and catch up on the weekend, but I'm going to follow closely until the story changes the point of view. Silly, yes, but I grew attached to some characters and wish to see what will happen to the.

Next update (or the one after that, depending my mood) will be about a dream I had related to the comic. It was pretty cool and will be explained as it would to someone not familiar with the series. I told this to three people who know nothing of this and they were able to grasp it pretty well. I just hope I can type it up decently. May even have to draw a few things. Till next time.

A mish-mash.

About a week or so ago, I lost my Neopets account. It was my own fault, really, having such a simplistic password. I never got around changing it since the e-mail I used for it was no longer active, and was too lazy to change my main e-mail address... I figured it'd be a lot of annoying work, though it obviously is a lot easier, and has no connection to changing my password either. What happened was someone cracked my password and changed it in the matter of minutes. I was playing a game while it happened and then when I finished, it was logged out. tried to log right back in, but no, nothing could be done. I'm not too upset about it really, as I can focus on other games I should be finishing up, just it sucks since I put a lot of work in it to get a bunch of trophies and achievements.I already filed a ticket with Neopets staff saying my account was stolen, but they never check those things and haven't heard back from them yet. I imagine the person made off with all my things already by now.

...almost! I give some shit, just not all of it!

Today, I also saw the series finale of Medium. My family and I grew to love that show thanks to my mother getting us into it, and still found it to be a great show overall. I'm a bit upset they had to end it so soon as it felt it could do with just one more season, but no other channels wished to take over it anymore. As for the final episode itself, the ending was very bittersweet, and it got to me like the finale of Lost did (meaning I teared up and was put in a bit of a mildly depressed state). I pretty much react like this whenever a series I really liked ends, books included.

I sad...

When I read the final Harry Potter book, that haunted my dreams for so long! Of course, it didn't feel like it was gone as much since movies were still coming out, though I predict I shall be feeling this way when I see the final part of the last movie this summer. I suppose this can be your extremely early heads up, heh...

This one still bothers me, but when the web series, Bonus Stage ended (and quite abruptly) I was put in another "Show over" state of depression. Not like a real depression where it becomes hard to function, but a sad feeling that there will be no more to watch. I even saved the episodes to my harddrive so I would always have them in case they went down... which unfortunately, the website for Bonus Stage did die. Someone posted them all on youtube, fortunately, but that's the only place to find them now, or someone has to give them to you. (youtube channel with the episodes here, it gets better in the later episodes as a lot of the humor was topical of the time)

Was a T-Shirt design for Bonus Stage. I never got a chance to buy it.

I get this way when I beat a really good video game with characters I enjoyed as well. Grandia II is a great example there for me, as i really enjoyed the story and characters. I don't remember it as much now, however, and probably will replay it sometime after I beat some other games for a first time.

I suppose I'm just in a nostalgic mood right now, thinking of the great episodes Medium had, and it brought back the feelings of the other completed series, games, and books I've been into. At least Medium had a somewhat proper ending, unlike shows that get canceled before answers are given. Dead Like Me was a show that suffered that traffic fate, but were given a final opportunity to make amends with fans of the show in a DVD movie that MOSTLY wrapped things up.  I suspect I'll be in my Nostalgic-depression for a short while till i can distract my thoughts with something more intriguing. It's funny, i started this entry and a general update of what's going on with me and ended up nostalgia-ing all over the place.

I bring news of the gaming variety!

Thanks to a friendly message from someone, I was alerted that a canceled fan-made game project has had a mostly-complete leak. It is called, "Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes." It tries to be a Chrono Trigger 2, to help bring together Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross. Both are games I enjoyed a lot when I was younger, as I was hungry for RPGs after beating the two Dragon Quest games that did not make it to USA at the time. Someone directed me to Chrono Trigger and I was hooked. (Download site for Crimson Echoes here. Follow what it says on the instructions, you will need ZSNES [other emulators crash it supposedly] and to download the prepatched link on bottom)

In mild celebration, here's some fanart of Chrono Trigger's Crono!

In any case, this fanproject was going to be 100% complete and released to the public for free until Square-Enix took notice of the online publicity it had and mailed the project group a Cease-and-Desist order. They were 98% complete when the summon was issued to them. Since they could no longer work on the project or distribute it, they decided to just record the gameplay of the project on youtube (The channel and play list). It's a long 90 videos, some of which could probably use some editing out but they wanted to show the difficulty of the monsters compared to the original. I watched them all and found the game to be utterly epic, despite some of its few flaws.

For one, the character that generally represented the player as the main character no longer can be defined as such. He is designated a name and is no longer silent, but just another character to play as. The idea behind it was to bring the idea of there not being just ONE main character, but EVERYONE is a main character. It's not a bad reason, but it still irks me a little. I'd probably prefer if he just remained silent and other characters say what he says in general. The other thing is the personalities of the characters were slightly altered. This is to be expected in a fangame, I suppose; not everything can be perfect. In either case, I started to play the game already, and already died a few times. The monsters are indeed tougher, but I enjoy following along the story all over again.

While I know ROMs are illegal, I disagree on the lines of fangames based off ROMs. To those worried about such things, then I recommend NOT downloading and playing it, but instead watching it on youtube. It still is a decent homage to CT and CC.

Enjoy the CC wallpaper as well.

A blast from the past: My first DDR Tournament.

This is taken from my 15 1/2 year-old self's perspective of when I still was on livejournal. As such, there will be spelling errors, walls of text, and general overexcitement because I was a teen. Throw in some angst too, while we are at it. Only editted parts are the names of people and places.
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I eneterd my first DDR Tournament today and guess what? I made third place in perfect attack! Besides that, it was ctually a quite weird day.

WOke up early unwantingly, but quickly remembered about the contest through L, or Little Butterfly as she is named (Who is on my friends list here) in her journal. I went to ask my mom about it, we went through this whole ordeal of "Its probably Free style and you don't like that," or "You had to sign up earlier didn't you?" and so on. I'm glad I didn't let i get me down, though I was VERY stressed out, I did show lots of childish frustration, such as banging my head on the wall, exasperated groans and sighs, and whining. :p I called S and got more info on the contest, and a great thanks to that, otherwise I would of had to lie more... :D Anyway, I had to tell my mom that no matter what, at the time Lord of the Rings starts, (ARound 9pm or so) I must leave earlier. I agreed to this since I thought I had no chance at all.

My sister was chosen to drive me there. We had to stop at her friend's house for some reason, I didn't care. We eventually made it to ARCADE. My sis was instructed to wait for me so I can check out if the contest is set and such. It was, gave her the ok, and thus began my little adventure. :)

I signed up, found both C (Mr. Roboto or the 20 year old one) and the other C+ with his wife (Both who are 28) there, along with L/Little Butterfly, unknowingly for awhile. Basically I had talked to Married C+ and he explained the tournament and such. It gave me an idea as what to do, but oh well. :D I then found out that a girl nearby was L by C+, and Introduced myself as [LJ name here]! :D Let's say we were both hyper in the tournament, singing all the songs nearly, talking of better music, and who has more of certain music and such. :D

Anyway, during the time I more formely met L, The ladder was set. It was Double Elimination round. I was the first to go up, and it wasn't good who I faced. I faced J, one to be known as the best (officially) in the east coast. Pressure from married C+ and L wasn't helping. :p (On a note, I only talked to Roboto C a few times) Anyway, the first round began. I shook hands with J wishing luck for both myself and her in a sense. Then the choosing began. Character chose. I was first to pick a song. I thought of something tricky and enjoyable: God of Romance. That song was now known to be my prime song to help me become tricky and andmake people think of me as strategic and crazy. In that round, I beat J. J picked Can't Stop Fallin' in Love [Speed mix]. Big mistake, I think she took me as no threat, though I thought the same. In that song, she didn't beat me by much. Then the last song was I think by audience pick. It was somthing I didn't expect, Paranoia Eternal on TRICK! I didn't know that was allowed. Oh god, I messed up on here, but nopt too badly. But I believe it gave tribute of my low perfect attack score. In the end, J beat me by 15 steps, however, there was a double elimination, and I was put in the Loser's bracket so I could face all tose who lost once, but I must keep winning, not lose anymore, or I was out. Songs and people went by, I ate two funnel cakes, and then I've been known as a tricky player.

My songs did me proud. My most valuable songs were God of romance, Sante ete ante molle te (I know wrong spelling, but S knows what that is), No Limit, Do Me, and Lupin the 3rd. The songs that did better however were God of Romance and No limit, they saved me a lot.

Through out the tournament, I was contantly bugged to call my mom, since she thought I was not in some important tournament I guess. I kept begging, using C+'s wife's cell phone as well as L's. I was able to luck out I guess though. :)

I don't want to go into detail, but withe these 5 songs, I overcame the Loser bracket, and soon made it up high. However, before my matches, the semifinlas were C (roboto) and J. I rooted for J only since she beat me, and I could say I was beaten by the best. However, she lost, and was placed on the Loser's bracket, but as the last threat before finals. I had to face her again, and I thought I was rready, but I apparently wasn't completely this time. It was 2 out of 3 match, and I lost both, but with the songs I chose, for not just the match against her, but with all my matches, I always won the song I picked. I did lose and all, but I was happy still. I came in third, and won $20,double my money back of what I spent. :)

I watched the finals between the rematch of J Vs C (Roboto). Man, that was a good match. At one point, they had tied perfects, and went by greats next. In the end, J won, I yelled out I was beaten by the best, and C took the defeat fairly humbly, saying encouraging things that I don't remember. I got my name announced in the speaker thing, picture taken for some websites (Not just me, but the top three did), and a bunch of people kept saying,"You went from nobody to somebody!" I mean, yeah, I am unknown compared to C and J, but I DOUBT I'm of any popular now than I was before! Maybe in TOWN I am, but that's all.

15 and a half year old has made it good. No one believed I was that old, they thought I was 17 or something. Not sure if that's a compliment or not, but oh well.

Made lots of friends, everyone I beat I talked to after the match and apologized for such odd songs, but they understood (at least they say they did). I loved this experience however!
:D

At the end of the tournament, I had another funnel cake and some fries that I split with L since I used a lot of her cellphone minutes. I talked too much, played doubles and failed Stomp since I tripped, and was too tired to bother to save myself. No I didn't fall, but I couldn't summon the energy to myself. Parents came in after that, and I was forced (it was in another agreement) to watch Lord of the rings. This is why I'm typing so late.

Out of everyone to thank, it must be these people:
1) S-She told me info on the contest!
2) L-I heard the contest from her first, she let me use her cellphone, and she gave me moral support, plus a great fun evening of singing and talking of DDR! :D
3) C+ (Married)-He explained to me what the ladder matches were like, bragged about me to advanced players (It was nce of him, but I felt more embarassed then thankful... o_O), and gave me some backround on some players.
4)L+ (Married C+'s Wife)-She lent me her cellphone and her support too! :)
5) Funnel cake-This was my meal of breakfast, lunch and dinner. Fries were more just extra dinner. :p
6) Family-Though very stressful and agitating, if they didn't help me, I'd not have been there.

Ok, that sounds corny, I left info out, but I'm getting tired, mom nagging to get off, time to go!
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It embarrasses me some on how I typed back then, but I suppose is helped me improve upon myself today. That was a really great day though for me. Sadly a lot of drama came in the next tournament I entered though... I also don't talk to ANY of these people anymore, save one via texts on special occasions. I miss when I had such metabolism. It's a little shocking to know this was close to 10 years ago. o.o

And now I leave you with an image I recently editted.

Update of the general variety.

So the whole fridge/freezer ended up dying. We now run up and down the stairs for food. At least it will get us all some exercise I suppose.

The snow that came was really not THAT bad. The earlier snowstorm was much worse. This time, our upstairs neighbor actually helped out with the shoveling. It wasn't very good, but it made things easier for my sister and I to shovel. Normally, he and his wife don't do shit to help us, just wait for us to clear a path and then they dig out their cars.

My friend and I played Donkey Kong Country for the first time yesterday, which was quite fun! It reminds me of the epicness that was the New Super Mario Bros for Wii, though only two can play at a time. I should tell a story about some of our NSMB:Wii adventures in a later post, I'm don't think I ever did... But anyway, the graphics are amazing, the gameplay is great, and we already beat world 1. Still need to gather some extras here and there, but that's what extends the game-life. I really love the one level that looks like an iPod commercial, haha!

Just was so awesome looking to me, despite it being simplistic and hard to see.

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is frustrating me... I'm at the point where the dungeons now go for longer than 20 floors, and one mistake wipes out the team. Also, I keep running out of inventory space because of all the treasures on all those floors... I still want to beat the shit out of the game though.

Dragon Quest 9... I'm fading out on some. I continue on doing the DLC quests but otherwise gave up on legacy bosses, leveling, and so on. It's getting frustrating to deal with these random grotto maps that don't provide the monsters I need for leveling. Damn my perfectionism!

Dragon Quest 6 DS coming out on Valentines day on the otherhand... I'm all sorts of excited for! My favorite of the series despite playing it in Japanese originally. There's a preorder bonus that comes with it if you do so at gamestop; a mini slime plushie! Despite my hate for that store, I'll end up preordering from there still. They just better not cheat me out of the item like they have a few other preorders ago... (MANY years ago though)

Got a bunch of random trophies for Neopets again. I really seem to have the luck with the chance games, heh.

Having weird doomsday dreams lately. Nothing remarkable to note about them, though, just the world ending and there's nothing I can do about it. I just hope that's a stray thought and not my mind sensing things to come (lol cause I'm totally psychic). Also had a cool HomeStuck related dream. I may go into detail about that sometime.

Thanks to Sucio Sanchez introducing it to me as well as providing tutorials, I have been fooling around the image program, "GIMP" to make icons and better images. Unfortunately, my creativity is a bit limited, considering my imaging skills evolved from MS Paint... Hopefully the more tricks I learn from SS, the better my imaging skills shall get.

My attempts at iconning seen from left to right from a select neopets image. Seems boring to me...

An exhausting day.

Besides that we have a snow storm due in about 2 hours, my family and I are going through a freezer problem.

I went to make toast some Chocolate Chip Eggos (because that shit is so good tasting) and noticed they weren't frozen. They were a nasty, sponge-like substance. After then shaking some ice cream, I came to the brilliant conclusion of our freezer not doing its job correctly. Informed mom and we moved the meats and anything else expensive to our downstairs refrigerator/freezer unit. It's smaller, but was able to hold all the important things. The junk and stupid snack foods are riding it out and we are hoping for their survival. If not, well... some casualties were expected.

Mom came to the conclusion we needed back up, so we journeyed to Target for a portable freezing unit. We located it with ease thanks to my past Target experience. Unfortunately it was quite bulky for me to handle (and mom can't really lift), so a handtruck was required. We had one, but tired were flat. Another journey was required, this time to Home Depot! This was a pretty cut and dry fetch quest. However, mother noticed we were also not far from a bulk store that holds her favorite sorts of hot cups, and so an elective quest was taken over to that store.

My reward for these annoying and tiring quests? A glorious feast. But not just any feast! It was a SONIC'S feast. My stomach was lined with food that still lingers in my burps. Unfortunately, I ate a bit too much, and it resurfaced as heartburn as I moved the portable freezer into our seller. It was worth the effort, I suppose.

Now tomorrow, I have some snow shoveling to look forward to.

Going crazy with add ons.

As of late, I have been getting so many add-ons for firefox in attempts to be secure or convenient. Many are probably not needed, but I have found them to be immensely useful, so I figured I would share some of them, even though I'm sure many of you already have at least one or two of them.

First up, one everyone should ALWAYS be familiar with is AdBlock Plus. Never has it been easier to navigate the internet without this valuable add-on. I don't have to worry about annoying advertisements suddenly appearing on my screen while playing neopets (and these ads have been containing viruses lately). I don't have to worry about those REALLY FRUSTRATING pretimed flash ads on blogTV. No more pop-ups  on just about all sites, though on a rare occasion one might appear. I believe ads are getting smarter because of all the precautions out there, which helps to keep the ad blocker up to date. Sometimes it blocks things that should not be blocked though, but it is not too hard to whitelist certain sites as needed.

The next add-on that goes hand-in-hand with AdBlock Plus would be NoScript. This one starts off as a bit of a pain in the ass, but is such an important thing to have! You will have no worries about a website trying to install something in the background, or playing annoying music, or what have you. The beauty of this add-on (as well as a bit of a pain) is it blocks EVERYTHING excluding its own website and google pages. What this means is you will have to manually choose which sites you want scripts to be running which can be annoying as it can become trial and error. For instance, a blog I follow changed their comment structure and NoScript blocked it. I didn't know which site it was that was blocking it, so had to unblock each script one by one until it worked. This also happens when checking bills or ordering things, unfortunately... so I had some trouble with filling out information. I cannot tell you how frustrating it was for me when I had everything filled out on a page and tried to submit only for it to not work. I backed up what I could but still had to go line by line to fill things out again.I find it a small price to keep me safe however.

This next add on acts more like a medium for other add-ons. It's called GreaseMonkey and it is best described as a webpage customizer. If you are handy with scripts, you can make your own customization to a website and this tool enables it. However, if you are like me and know shit about writing or making scripts, you go to http://userscripts.org/ and find scripts based on what you want. The downside of using the website is you have to check its source codes for bad scripts... There are often people sneaking in things like cookie grabbers (google mostly defines this for neopets only, in which people can steal your account information, but its possible to affect you on other websites), links to bad websites or otherwise to spam you, and other such bad things. Usually there are reviews and comments on the site that will let you know but not everyone makes the effort to say something. Usually you can tell when it is a bad script by glancing over the source code, but when it doubt, don't download it. Still, this customizer has been great for me with making websites more manageable. One code I have makes it so you don't have to wait for rapidshare or megaupload times for downloading (the initial wait, not inbetween downloads waiting time). There are also a ton for neopets, but most involve cheating which I rather not do. Instead, I just make clicking easier on certain games by rearranging the way the buttons are laid out, and putting ads on the bottom in case they get through adblocker or no script. Use the search function to find and make some websites more easy to navigate.

Ever see a video on youtube you liked so much you wanted to download it? Or perhaps uh... a porn video you wanted to keep for... later. Download Helper is here for you! It has worked on so many sites... though it does not promote piracy, and thus doesn't work on some online episodes of TV shows. At least that I know of. I totally do not endorse using this for anything illegal, so use it for your own discretion. This sometimes becomes a bit of a turkey shoot as it also looks at image files or other media on webpages, be warned of that.

There might be another add-on that works better, but I became comfortable with Aviary for taking screen captures of websites or parts of websites. It's great when say a whole page on the site is interesting or useful and you want to save it for future sharing or just as a reminder. Printscreen can't everything afterall, so this becomes extremely handy. You like a fellow blogger's post? Use this to capture the moment, and perhaps repost it for the future! (Though be nice and credit them

This add-on I just recently got and has been just incredible. WebNotifier gives you alerts on all your designated e-mail accounts. I have a gmail account separate from this blog, which also uses google log in. Now I don't have to log out of blog to check my e-mail or vice-versa. I also don't have to continually go to the e-mail websites to check my mail, which is really helpful considering all the e-mail addresses I have accumulated. For e-mails not supported by this, forwarding filters help.

Lastly, this add-on is for forgetful folks like myself. ReminderFox helps alert you of things you need to do or be aware of every time you start up your browser. not good at remembering birthdays? Set a reminder on the day of a birthday and set it to a yearly setting so it reminds you every year! It also reminds you of upcoming reminders so you won't be last minute shopping for them either. It works also on daily, monthly, and other sorts of settings in case you have a bill to pay, or have to check something daily such as a contest going on. You probably could use your Operating System's designated remind tools (if any), but I never could get into using those. it just seems easier to have a browser reminder.

Feel free to share some of your favorite add-ons, but i will edit out any that seems it could be used maliciously. I do not wish to promote piracy, hacking, or otherwise illegal actions. As it is, Greasemonkey is borderlining all of that.

Fucked up games of the past.

As I said in my last entry about friends, there were some fucked up games my cousin and I came up with. I find it odd I can remember some of these so clearly being so long ago, but I have a weird vivid memory thing going with odd events.  (I have memories of still being in diapers, and even my first nightmare)

This image is a disclaimer to the following entry as it is composed of a kid's imagination with fucked up stories.

We had a lot of bullying plotlines, which I think to be normal. We'd have one set of toys be bullies (but we both HAD to have a bully toy AND a victim/hero toy or we would bicker) and then decide certain characters be picked on. I remember our pound puppy phase where we had so many of them, and we designated this one special colored blue dogs with dalmatian spots to be a special "race" with weird powers and shit. They would often be our favorite ones to play as, and thus the group that gets picked on. One pair of members of the blue dalmatians would be the youngest and therefor be the victims of mean things while others would be the big brave older ones who would stand up to the bullies as best they could. The bullies ended up being black cat toys for some reason. I think it's because one of them was really fat, so we made her leader and other black cats would be followers (some unwillingly). We based a lot of this off TV shows and video games.

Keeping the above in mind, we then went into some creepy dark territories as well. Sometimes, the bullies would actually KILL someone, and so the other dogs would go on an adventure which would take place across the room tracking down those bullies who would lay traps and evil creatures on the way. Sometimes we creeped ourselves out a bit much because we combined horror movies/stories with our games and then we couldn't get to sleep. One time we had a motherly toy die and come back as a ghost haunting and killing the children. I don't know where it came from, but it properly freaked us out so we stopped playing and watched Nick@Nite to shake it off.

One game gained attention from my cousin's mother. To those that remember the cartoon Tiny Toons, there was a character called "Shirley the Loon" who had psychic powers. I decided to make up a story to my cousin, saying there really was a person named Shirley out there who had psychic powers and apparently lived in space and was also a duck. Furthermore, this is what the cartoon character was based off (so I told), and sometimes she would contact those who were also psychic. We then dived into trying to be psychic by mimicking the things Shirley did on Tiny Toons. eventually, we confessed to each other of having visions and such, and claimed we were small psychics, haha. We just claimed to have visions, not read people's minds or anything. We would look hard into our dreams and claim they had significance in seeing the future. We said we should never tell anyone since no one ever believes in psychics and that it would be our little secret! However, one should always know that kids can't keep secrets very well.

My cousin made the mistake of telling one of her friends the story of Shirley that we made up at a sleepover of hers. Her friend then got freaked out and told her mom who then told my cousin's mom. My aunt freaked out at the idea of her daughter seeing things and possibly hearing voices, and made her go to a psychiatrist/therapist/whatever. My cousin told her it was just game she plays, but her mom didn't really listen. She made sure to not implicate me in anyway so I wouldn't fall to the same fate. However, she did mention saying she played it with me, but never said I was one to hear voices and see things and such. I was strongly urged by my mother to go with my cousin since the therapist wanted to talk to me too. My cousin and I made sure to rehearse our story of it just being a game while telling each other it's just a lie. It was really just an overreaction to the games we played.

Another thing we did involved imaginary friends. Of course, we took our imaginary friends from things we saw. Mine were Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles since I was really into my Sega Genesis at the time with Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and hers were mostly Disney things like Nala from Lion King. I don't remember her others, but she ended up having a lot of cat-related ones. These games were less fucked up than our above mentioned ones as we only implemented these when we were forced to go to a cousin's baseball or soccer game, or while in the car. One game which I think is still kind of fun is while in the car, we would imagine our friends running outside on the scenery to keep up with us. Sonic would be running along the powerlines while Nala would weave in and out of traffic, and our flying related characters (she had one; mine was Tails) would play recovery for when their path is cut short or they fall behind (aka no more connecting powerlines or at a traffic standstill).

Best friends.

Over the years, I have gone through a lot of people that I considered a best friend. Some betrayed the trust we had, others started good then just fell apart, and one went on and off.

The earliest best friend I had was my cousin, whom I have referred to as "O" in past entries. We still are best friends to this day, but not as close as I'd like to think, but that's another story. As kids, she was the bossy selfish one, and I was the one that could tolerate it best. I was able to reason with her selfish, bossy ways enough to make things enjoyable for the both of us, and she even started adapting to things I liked, such as video games, and having our toys fight each other instead of stupid plots of a surprise party for her animals, owning a store, and what not. Actually, some of our stories started getting really fucked up, but that sounds like a whole separate entry altogether. I essentially got into the toys she got into. I was one of the few boys who had one of those original "Littlest Pet Shop" toys before they redid the image. Course, we played with them a lot different as intended, with deaths and shit.

Around late elementary, early middle school is when we had a dry period of just not really talking, which is about when I got another friend who I consider to be my best mate (Call him X). It was his first day of second grade and I just went right up to him and said, "Hey! Are you new here? I don't remember seeing you around!" From there, we became best friends for about... 2 and half years. We had a real key difference in that I was an inside kid and he was an outside kid. He managed to get me out of the house a lot more than I wanted to, but I enjoyed exploring the creek near our houses, and going deep in the woods of it. In fact, there was a time during the winter where the creek froze up, and we were just jumping up and down on it, surprised how solid it was... and it broke! We were so soaked and freezing!

What happened to us was we got into some rather nasty verbal fights (and a few physical ones), and he found another person to string along with us that actually liked the outdoors as much as he did so we became "enemies." It was more like a darker side of rivalry, but we considered ourselves to be enemies. Things got a bit dark here in terms of friends, since my cousin was getting busy with school by this time, and X had gotten a lot of the school to hate me since he suddenly became popular. I started to hibernate in my home right after school, getting very depressive. Parents threw me into a special class called, "Art Therapy" to help express my feelings through art projects. That never really helped.

My next-door neighbor who was a friend (but not really best friend; he was a kid 5 years younger than me) introduced me to the person I would consider a best friend in high school, but nothing more than just a friend  until then. She was a year older than me like my cousin O, but she was more of a tomboy. She helped get me into the WWF (when it was called that), and also became the bad influence for my younger neighbor friend with drugs, stealing and shit. We became a group of friends around the neighborhood with another girl, always hanging out at the playground. However, our group was very fickle with each other, and played very nasty pranks on each other. Once was invited over to Tomboy's house, so I walked over and she left a note saying she went to the movies, k bye. However, Neighbor Kid and Other Girl's bikes were parked in front of her house. HMMM. We also played nasty tricks on neighbor kid, saying he had an older brother that used to be here but was killed, and on Other Girl with her weight, so we all were rather vicious. Only Tomboy seemed to have no real pranks played on her, being the oldest I suppose elected her as leader and thus unfazed by pranks.

Our group was joined by two more girls who were sisters, which was funny because our age/grade difference went into a straight line then, haha. Tomboy was oldest, then me, then Other girl, Brunette of the sisters, Blonde of sisters, then Neighbor kid. By high school, Tomboy was my best friend, while my cousin was coming back into the picture somewhat as a friend. Tomboy and I would go to the mall all the time, either getting a ride from our family, or walking the 3-5 miles to there. Neighbor kid and others would sometimes come along, but it was mainly Tomboy and I every Friday night. I would go into the arcade, she would get drugs and socialize outside, and we'd meet up every now and then. She also stole things and had me hold onto them for her since I always brought my backpack with me for water and such.

Doesn't sound like much, but it worked for us. We both needed company, we just had different sets of friends (I had arcade idiots, she had druggies that hung outside the movie theater). We stood up for each other too.... well usually. :P

Towards the end of high school, however, the neighbor hood crew started to disperse. Tomboy was going to college soon, and she started flaking out on us. Neighbor kid by now was such a weasel with his tricks on me, I started to ignore him completely and Other Girl disappeared. I was still good friends with the sisters however, just we weren't exactly close. We all used to hang out every new years at Neighbor Kid's house, but one year he decided to mess with me saying he wasn't having a party this time and the others weren't coming. I said fine and invited an older friend I made in high school to my house for a small gathering. Later in the evening, Neighbor Kid admitted he was lying and said I could come over, but I told him to piss off, I had company. That company became my best friend  to this day, even though she can be aggravating, I wouldn't change it for the world! Besides my cousin, she's my longest lasting best friend.

There were a few minor "best friend" scenarios that happened in between, but those ended really nasty, and would be incredibly long. Another entry for those! :P

My New Years ended okay, though had some bad starts. I pretty much kept waking and sleeping till around 8 or 9pmish. I woke up to find out mom made a mistake when trying to cook the usual party foods because she didn't realize one of the disposable metal trays had a plastic cover stuck on the bottom of it. Ruined the oven for the night, and mom got depressed about that and went to sleep her stress off. My sister stepped up and grabbed more party food that mom ruined so we could have a second chance at them, and dad stepped up even further and found a way to make a fair amount of the food via the grill. Wasn't perfect, but I thought it was cool dad did that, since I know he hates grilling in general.

Things were pretty much uneventful. I played a shitload of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon and watched a streamshow of Family Guy/American Dad/Simpsons as I got drunk. Dunno what time I passed out, but considering what a lightweight I am, I imagine it was shortly after I started drinking. Thinks definitely felt better after I started drinking, haha.

Speaking of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, I wanted to make note of how dark the series is compared to the original pokemon game. In the first versions with Pokemon Red Team and Blue Team, they made the endings completely tragic. I mean of course in the end things go full circle, but the build up had me tearing. This time with Explorers of Time, the dark factor was much more less, but still they had to pull the sad moment. These are rated for everyone, so it makes me wonder how many crying kids were there if they managed to get to the end.

If you can't read center panel: "Today is the first day of our Pokemon adventure!"

Also for any fellow Pokemon Mystery Dungeon fans, I have found a Wonder Mail Generator. Link active as of this post, and no viruses as I scanned (via Virus Total). Wonder Mail Generator only applicable to Explorers of Time and Explorer's of Darkness as far as I can tell.