My new job as a gardener

The main events of yesterday involved me taking a surprise offer from Bao and deciding to take the bus to his house for the first time. It was super hot while walking around, and I missed his house the first time I walked past it 'cause a bunch of ppl were painting it and I thought it wasn't the right house! Luckily I had a bottle of water with me or I would've died of thirst.

Anyways, when I got there, it seems Duy had just woken up from a nap of some sort, and we began talking about Roy. (as in, the guy that can Blazer) apparently, Duy had been doing some testing, and found that his Blazer can kill a lot of characters easily in one hit, even if they're at 0% damage. This is especially true on stages with low ceilings like Yoshi's Island. So, after seing Bao fool around a bit while playing Burnout, we decided to play SSBM. Then Isaque came over. Eventually, I got to see effects of Blazer on light characters firsthand, as in one game, Bao was Roy, I was Mr. Game and Watch, and Duy and Isaque were playing other chars. We were playing on the aforementioned island, and I had 2 deaths at 0%, from being Blazered while I was standing on the lowest part of the stage. I also got Blazered to death a third time while I jumping near the yellow blocks. Man, that move is so omni there! Unfortunately for Bao though, the law of free-for-alls still held, and Roy didn't win.

After eating a super expensive meal of pizza, I went to watch the episodes of Full Metal Alchemists that came out after I finished school, namely 29-31. All I have to say about those were that they were GOOD. I won't say anything about the plot since it'd be too hard to explain, but basically those episodes exceeded my expectations. I thought that after 20 something episodes, the series mighit start getting boring or going downhill, but I was wrong. The series kept up with its awesome character development events, and the ending of ep. 31 made both me and Bao really want to see the next episode. Due to outsider interference though, that won't be happening until like 2006. =/

Next up was our game of Settlers. Isaque hadn't played before, but it was really easy to teach him the ropes. I was red, like usual, and third in line to place starting settlements, and I chose a spot with good ore. Duy went last, and then I looked and saw another good ore place really close to my first one, so I decided to become the 'ore king' and take that spot as well. As I said, I eventually got lucky and managed to use both an ore harbour and a 3:1 harbour to my advantage to win. Surprisingly, hardly any 8's were rolled in this game, only at most 4 development cards were ever purchased, and 2 ppl happened to roll a 2 on the same round after I had soldiered the robber onto Isaque's sheep hex. It's weird how these probabilities work out sometime. For info, see http://www.baomon.com/catan/set-may13.jpg
or visit Bao's Blog and see his post about yesterday.

Got home at around 11:30 that night, and still had a lot of stuff to do, but was too tired to do any of it. So I went to go sleepy sleepy a bit early than I usually do these days.

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Unfortunately, didn't get to wake up earlier this morning, but it's alright since I still got to do everything that I needed to do before leaving. I had to dress in Gardener's clothes and find a tool to use as a prop, since I was recruited by Theresa to play a suspect in our game of Clue or "Pastor Sharon Murdered." I was scared that I wouldn't be able to find anything, but when I went outside to my backyard (which like hasn't been touched in ages) and looked where the tools are usually kept, I found one single spade, which was good enough after a bit of cleaning. Then had to talk to Andrew to figure how I was going to get to fellowship in the first place, but for some reason the connection was really bad and we couldn't really talk well. Fortunately, we still managed to get to church (almost) on time after making a pit stop at Dixie Park, another place which I haven't been too in a really long time. And for once, I actually ordered something other than a Spaghetti with Meat Sauce. (memories of Timeless, UW ppl?) While on the ride there, I also got try out some really sweet carrot cake (thanks Auntie and Andrew!).

Anyways, the turnout at both WAY and JOY was pretty small, so I was worried that the game wouldn't really go well. When the suspects first lined up in front of everyone, everyone was saying "Alan did it, he's the only one with a weapon!" haha. Actually, the game turned out okay, though everyone cheated by asking each suspect like 10 questions at time, while they were supposed to ask one question, and then go visit someone else before they came back. Andrew pointed out though, that if they did that, then the game would've taken much longer, even for teams of 3 like we had, to finish. I think I might've forgotten something and given one group wrong info by accident too, heh.
So the murdered turned out to be Cecilia, who killed Pastor Sharon with the drumsticks in...some room which I forgot. Everyone got the right answer except for a team of two ppl...hmmm...oh well. After that game, we tried to play this weird game in teams of 8, where each team member has a word of a sentence taped to their back, and teams have to always hold hands and run around outside, trying to read the sentences of the 3 other teams while not letting their sentences be read. That was messed up, didn't really go that well, since it was dark, and many teams just stuck to staying against the walls. Later, Theresa ruled that we couldn't stay against walls, but ppl still did anyways, and no one was able to get anyone else's message. Our team came really close though. We also had used some of the suspect id tags from the previous game and stuck them on to some of word tags, to try and confuse other teams lol.
The duck files at quarter after midnight! :)

Once the games were done, it was basicallly a free time of fellowship, which was good, since we spent a lot of time talking and getting to know ppl more. Me and Andrew and Di got to meet this guy named Alex who was on our team for the second game, and we talked for a fair bit. Eventually, some ppl from WAY joined us too, and I found out that the cop who was supposed to speak to them sprained his ankle and couldn't come, so according to Huston "me and Hubert did a song and dance." haha. During the day, we also tried to figure out why Di gets called "diane" so much instead of "diana". My theory was that ppl are lazy and don't want to pronounce the extra syllable, so that's the first version of the name that comes to mind...

I had wanted to go back to Chat and Tea House tonight to play so more SSBM or Soul Calibur 2, but unfortunately not many ppl were at church and so no one wanted to do anything. Alex and the three of us ended up being some of the last ppl to leave,and so we ended up going into the sanctuary so that Alex could play on the grand piano. He's pretty good, gr. 10 piano while in gr. 9 high school. I got back home, and managed to catch about the last 15 mins of another episdoe of CSI:LV that Bao told me about on the Spike Channel. It was good, now I feel even more sorry for stupid kids who end up getting hurt 'cause they were playing Russian Roulette. (though it is pretty fun with a Roy and 2 Marios ;) )
And now I'm here, typing up these two posts and not really feeling that tired.
The only bad thing about today was that I had a really good oppourtunity this afternoon, but I ended up not taking 'cause I was feeling really hot and not that in the mood for it. But there'll be plenty of other chances, and it's not that bad anymore.

And that's the start of my weekend. Later on though, I feel like writing more posts with a point or interesting topic in them, not just "this is my day and what I did in it." That's getting kinda...really routine sometimes...heh.

Tomorrow: Ultimate 6 player Settlers showdown!

I am the ore king! hehe...I just got lucky. Next time, it'll be someone else's turn to win. But hopefully, next time we'll be playing in a 6 player game. ;)
Was going to post more tonight, but feeling really tired at the moment, so I guess I'll sleep early for a change and do two posts tomolo..heh. For now, see here for more details. http://www.baomon.com/catan/set-may13.jpg

Another day goes by...

Well, was planning to go to look for job oppourtunities today, but woke up late, really late...at about 1 pm, and so that didn't happen. Guess I'll try again tomolo. Spent most of my day doing miscellaneous chores around the house and more reading. I'm like 3/4's of the way done all the dnd modules that are on the wizard's site now, they're still pretty interesting, though some of them are done stupidly and thus beastly long when they don't need to be. Bao, if you're ever stuck on ideas for your campaign, I could probably easily suggest to you some modules that would be easily adaptable into d20 modern. Though from the looks of what you sent me, you have enough ideas to last you a LONG time...hehe.

At one point during the day, I was just browsing around, and I found something that reminded me of Yugioh. Now, back when all the little kids were into it, I used to play it with Jon and his bros and Trevor, using their decks. It's got nothing on Magic, but I wasn't paying any money for it, and it still was fun, so I learned how to play and got to know the game somewhat. Now that I'm back at home and have a TV again, I started watching the show 'cause I usually have nothing else to do at that time, and after my trip to Untouchables on the weekend with the Tings, I kinda got interested in the game again. So I eventually went over to pojo and started browsing through the spoliers of all the sets that came out after I stopped "playing" Yugioh. (basically the beginning of second year) Some of the new cards are crazy...the power level is going up waay too fast...too many monsters now have 1900 attack for four stars, whereas before there was only one. (basically, in Magic terms, that would be equivalent to each colour getting their own versions of Savannah Lions, a 2/1 creature for W) I predict that eventually, beatdown decks will become omni powerful and own everything else in that game, unless they start making overpowered control cards too.

They've also continued the trend of having really stupid/bad names on their cards. Although it may just be due to bad translation, I don't see why it would be so hard just to proofread their card names in each set. Now, I don't know about you, but I don't feel very powerful when I control a monster named "People Running About" or "Outstanding Dog Marron" or "The Thing in the Crater". Nor do I feel really cool when I get to play cards called "Really Eternal Rest" or "Trap of Board Eraser" or "Thunder of Ruler" or "Autonomous Action Unit". I think you get the point...there are other better examples, but I've forgotten them for now. Some of the cards also have pretty humourous flavour text that I'm pretty sure wasn't intentional. For example, the flavour text of the card "Mad Dog of Darkness" reads: He used to be a normal dog who played around in a park, but was corrupted by the powers of darkness. I thought that a really cheesy way to describe this card, though it was a really good card game-wise. (Dark Beast, 4 stars, 1900 attack, 1400 defense) I had that quote on my MSN name for a while, and then at one point Howard asks me, "Are you talking about Bobo?" (David Chiou's Dog)That was really funny, 'cause first I thought he said, "Are you talking about Bobobo bobobobo...?" (The name of a really weird and comical Anime that Bao really likes) and I was thinking "whoa, he's heard of Bobobo too!?" And then I just imagined Bobo, that small little guy, as a 'Mad Dog of Darkness' and I laughed even more. :)
David, just thought you might like to know, I was going to tell you about this directly, but figured I'd just post it here. There's a card called Silpheed.

IOC-022
Silpheed
Wind
Fairy/4/1700/700
This card can only be Special Summoned by removing 1 WIND monster in your Graveyard from play. When this card is destroyed and sent to the Graveyard as a result of battle, your opponent discards 1 card randomly from his/her hand.

and here's a link to a pic of it:
http://www.pojo.com/yu-gi-oh/cotd/2004May/06S.shtml

Later on at night, watched this AE documentary called Troy: Behind the Blockbuster, or something like that. It retold this historical account of the Battle of Troy, and had the actors from the movie commenting on the reenactments; it also had amazing CG effects. :) The focus throughout the whole thing was on Helen of Troy, whether she really existed or not, and whether or not she was to blame for the whole Trojan War and the start of the decline of the Greeks. It was pretty interesting...anyone wanna see the movie later? heh, love 'war' movies

So yeah...didn't really accomplish much today, nor this week for that matter. But today was cool, got to talk a bit with my parents, without getting into any real arguments or fights about anything. And it might not be true, but I feel like I've changed a bit after 2B...I dunno, but things suddenly started seeming a bit different this week, today espeically. It's a good change, too.

whoops, double post...

Continuing from yesterday...

Since nothing really interesting happened today, (besides getting hooked on reading DND modules and reading like 5 in one day), I figure I'd write about the two things I said I'd talk about yesterday, and also mention a couple of other things as well. I said I'd start writing again when I woke up, but oversleeping for a long time (past noon) doesn't really make you feel good, right?

Anyways, Gunslinger Girl 12 and 13 - what a beautiful way to end the series. Episode 12 was a thrilling climax of massive action, involving heavily armed terrorists and a risky plan to use one of the gitais as decoy to foil their kidnapping attempt. There is also a strange kinda plot twist near the middle of the episode, involving the 'bad' guys. And Angelica was kinda stupid during the mission...she was the one that asked to get put on the mission in the first place too...

Anyone know where this quote comes from? Claes says it during the episode.
"Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it produces much grain."
At first, I thought it might be a Bible quote, but I searched online for it, and nothing came up, so now I'm stuck. =/

In episdoe 13, no real action happened, but there were a lot of dramatic and emotional moments. All/most of the girls were together during most of the episode, which was cool 'cause that hardly ever happens. There also is a great deal of character development, not just with Henrietta, but also the other girls and their trainers as well. And we get to see a cool astronomical event. :) Lastly, there's a really sad ending to the episode...can't really say too much or I'd be spoiling it, but I should've seen it coming, given the aura of sadness that was prevalent throughout most of the series. At least they left lots of possible room for a sequel, though.

About CSI:M. Bao already has posted a lot of stuff about it, and for the most part, I agree with his opinions. The second episode of yesterday was better than the first. The second two cases had a lot of twists and turns, while the first one was just kinda odd...with Federal Marshalls getting involved and whatnot. And I never even knew that those baby microphone things that the bad guy who killed Gina used even existed. All in all, I'd say I like CSI:LV more, though mainly 'cause of the characters. As I keep watching more of Miami, however, I think I might actually get to know its characters better and like them more, even though there are less of them. Horatio does seem to be pretty smart and cool, and the Caucasian female investigator seems to have an interesting past. Miami is a differnet kinda show, there's more character development in the episodes, whereas Las Vegas is almost totally centred around solving the cases. (at least in the eps I've seen.) And once CSI:New York comes out, I'll have 3 CSI shows to watch. Looking forward to it. :)

And now, for two things involving Bao, haha. So I just read recently that he got the 5-6 player expansion for Settlers. Way to go! Now we can try it next week for sure...hehe...as long as this d20 game finishes a bit earlier this time. Speaking of the d20 games, I guess I'm now officially dropping out as a player and joining Bao as assitant GM since he sent me his story outline for the next few missions. It sounds really...interesting lol. Many many different plot threads...and some cool references for those that know Bao really well. Okay, I'll stop saying stuff in case I give too much away. The thing is though, for the last campaign, when I was gming that one time, I actually had more fun than when I was playing...hmmm...

BOOO!!! to Funanimation, they just licensed Full Metal Alchemist...so now we'll have to wait "2 years" until we can see the rest of it. (past ep. 31)

I told Cecilia that I'd help her plan games for the JOY Fellowship, but I thought that they games would be taking place next next Friday, after the grocery run, and not this Friday. So now I might not be able to help them as much...Baptism is this Sunday too...though I don't really know any of the ppl who are getting dunked really well, I'll still be going.

Well...if anyone can help me think of some interesting ice breaker games, that can be played within a group of about 30 ppl with little or no props, then please tell me! And thanks!

Power Node Linking Complete

The inspiration for the title of this entry comes from the fact that I just found the blog of an old friend - Sina. I found it through a link on some stranger's blog, which I decided to randomly browse from a link on Lowry's blog, which I found from a link on Ambrose's blog, which I found from...wait, never mind. Wow, never knew so many ppl had one of these things.

Anyways, I was going to blog about two significant things that happened to me today, and maybe more too. The two things were watching two episodes of CSI:Miami and polishing off the last two episodes of Gunslinger girls. (Both things were amazing) But, just as I sat down to blog, my stomach decided to ninja and started causing me great pain, so I had to run to the washroom. Dunno what happened, but I feel a bit better now. But now it's really late, and I really need to sleep so posting now wouldn't be giving those two topics justice. Post to be continued tomolo, when I wake up.

Until then, since I don't think anyone else is going to try the challenges, (Duy doesn't read blogs, and I know Jon doesn't anymore either, and Jeff is probably busy) I'm going to just put up the answers :P

1) Dun Dun Dun, Dah Dah Dun Dun Dun Dun! actually is my attempt to type out what the first few beats of the Melee menu theme would sound like. (The main one.) For some reason, I really started liking that track a while ago, and I got Duy to send it to me, and I still listen to it from time to time. Eventually, it got to a point that I would just refer to game by humming those first few beats whenever talking to ppl; it started with Jeff,and then I started using it with Duy and the rest of the Waterloo ppl too. The funny thing is that one day, I was at Jeff's house, and we were both talking to Vicky on MSN. Later on, we wanted to play some Melee, so I said to her, "Well, me and Jeff are going to play some Dun Dun Dun, Dah Dah Dun Dun Dun Dun! now, ttyl!" (or something like that)...and she actually understood us! hahaha...that was really unexpected. Her explanation for it was, "Well, yeah, what other games do you guys play!?" I guess she does have a point there though...

2) "A good thing to do is to use the forward B, to make them flinch, and then you do the up B and 'hiya!' and they get blasted to another dimension!!"

-Stephen Ting, said in the back of the car on the way to the mall, while talking about SSBM, obviously. More specifically, though no one really guessed this, what he was describing was one of his favourite strategies with Link. He described a bunch of battles that took place when one of his mom's friends stayed over at his house for a few days, and she brought her kids too. He was playing Melee against one of them, and was owning Kirby with Link. So, his plan was to forward B and hit them with the boomerang, when they get in a bit close, to stun them. Then, doing the up and B for spinstrike (Shyat!! or as he calls it "hiya!") would send them off "to another dimension" if they were at high enough damage. (In the words of Duy, they'd be "Spinning Door'd!"...knocked diagonally downwards.)

Wow, now that I think of it, these challenges were pretty weird...I still feel like doing more of them in the future, though.

Three Tings, Two Challenges, and One Omnifish

Today...after church...had to drive Jon Ting and his two brothers home, since their mom was busy working for this Mother's Day. Anyways, it was pretty cool: went back to that Chinese Restaurant with the AAA Supermarket beside it (Kingsley) to try and yum cha, but discovered that it was too crowded, and decided to go to The Wokker, which was near the church, instead. So we ended up driving in a really big and convoluted loop - the food was good though. Afterwards, parents decided to go to Central Parkway Mall. so of course the Jon jumped at the chance to be able to go Untouchables again, and all the rest of the kids ended up going with him. I looked at Magic stuff with his bros, while he tried to shark little kids who played Yugioh...

a while later, he decided to go down to the tournament room, which was by the Kumon place, so I followed him down since I'd never seen it before. Stephen and Matthew came along too, and always complained of dying of heat; understandable, since the room was pretty poorly ventilated, and they were wearing sweatshirts. I was watching a few of the kids play Yugioh matches against one another, and the tournament seemed to be very loosely organized, and some of the kids didn't really seem to know what they were doing. (Ex: Guy A has 2 monsters in play, Guy B has one. Guy A tries to Snatch Steal B's monster, but gets stopped by a Mystical Space Typhoon. Guy A then thinks things over for a bit, and decides to play Dark Hole, thus losing 3 cards while B only loses one - effectively giving B an Ancestral Recall. Dunno for sure, but something like that is usually a really bad move to do...) Also, Jon was watching ppl's matches, trying to get them to trade, and he was correcting some ppl a lot, especially this table of two white kids near the end of the time while we were there. He also was trying to get one of those kids to trade him his Chaos Emporer Dragon; Jon wanted it badly, and the kid said that he'd think about it after the game or something, but the kid ninjaed him and just said "I'm not trading it," after the game was over.

While we were waiting for Jon to come back up, the rest of us got money from my parents and went to go by drinks...eventually, we settled for getting bottles of pop from Shopper's Drug Mart, but were held up by an old man in front of us who was mad at the clerk 'cause he didn't notice that the man had give him a cupon. "I gave you that cupon!" x ten times. When we got back, my mom was like "you were smart for buying the drinks from there," but I had no idea why.

I would describe the d20n game more in detail, but since most ppl who would really care a lot were there or can easily get that info from other sources, I've decided not to write anything about it yet. I just hope that this week will be more productive than the last, and things will actually get resolved this week. Though, am learning the reasons behind somethings now...

Quote of the Day:
"A good thing to do is to use the forward B, to make them flinch, and then you do the up B and 'hiya!' and they get blasted to another dimension!!"

-Stephen Ting, said in the back of the car on the way to the mall

The challenges:
(3 points to anyone who can figure out what he was talking about then, or the challenge from my Saturday post :P)

Massive Combat Session

What happened today?
1) First d20 game with Bao's campaign, lots of rocket launchering and killing and massive combat, was kinda too easy and unwieldy, the non combat characters didn't really do anything...Jason had to drop out of the whole thing, so only I, Ricky, Ambrose, Raymond, David ,and Wen came, and then David decided that he didn't really like the game :(
More on this later.
2) Afterwards, I played another game of Settlers of Catan with Bao, David, and Brose. Bao went for a wheat harbour and a settlement in the middle of 3 wheat hexes, but everyone else ended up closing him off and ninjaing him. Before I had to go, the rest of us were pretty even - Duy/David had 8 victory points, while me and Brose both had 7. But Brose still had like 3 development cards (he already had largest army and had played 2 other cards) and Duy was in a good position with longest road, and also a lot of resources. I got to go first and had many good brick producing places, 3 cities, and a brick harbour, but at one point late in the game, I got robbered 3 times in a row, and the robber was like always on one of my hexes. =/ Oh wells...I'm pretty sure that etiher Duy or Choy was going to win that game...I'll have to ask them what happened later. Settlers is a really fun game...we gotta get the expansion someday....

This day was filled with massive gameage, which is okay once in a while...heh. This weekend has been going great so far. Hopefully tomorrow won't be awkward.