Below are the 13 most recent journal entries recorded in seasidehermit's LiveJournal:

Wednesday, September 26th, 2007
9:46 pm	Instead of Leisure Suit Larry, I am playing Dragon's Lair on the Commodore 64. I wanted something quick and silly as my last post said. The C64's Dragon's Lair, however, though silly, is not quick; it is whimsical and undemanding, though, which is more or less what I wanted, but it is very difficult. You have to beat many slow scenes every game before you reach the ones giving you problems, and every scene at some point in time does give you trouble; there are quite a few scenes, and playing through even half of them, which is how far I have come, occupies a bit of time. However, you only have five lives, you cannot earn more, and a single wrong move will kill you off. It is like the arcade original, except the obvious--no coins and poor graphics relatively. There are free-roaming action scenes, too, which the arcade game did not incidentally have. But I will save the rest for when I review it! I will still play through the Sierra games soon. For now, however, they are slightly too complex for me. Regardless of how much I work, a pile of overdue homework and upcoming quizzes and exams always seems to be looming over me and preventing me from attaching myself to anything demanding. I am drinking some baking cocoa in hot water now, which tastes all right believe it or not. It is not as good as when I put baking cocoa in milk, but that is because water has no sugar inside of it. But it is hot, and chocolate milk is not, which bestows this makeshift hot chocolate with different merits. Did I mention that it is dirt cheap? And it does not taste like dirt, either, at least once you are accustomed to it. I am accustomed to it, by the way, especially when I have something sweet with it. In the past few months my local grocery store began carrying Polaner's All Fruit Spread, a jelly that I can spread on toast and that is one of a few jellies tolerable to me that are not thickened with sugar or high corn syrup. It has no sugar; fruit juice is all that sweetens it, except of course for the natural Fructose of the fruit--I bought blackberry and raspberry this time, though the grocery store also sells strawberry. I might have bought that, too, but they had real strawberries on sale, and I bought some 1% cottage cheese that I will dump them in. Jelly, I did not think, would taste very good in cottage cheese, though perhaps I was wrong. If it does not involve pitching out Fat Free cottage cheese, which on the other hand I could not tolerate, even with fruit inside, there is always a next time for going to the store and trying cheap, new things. EDIT: Here is a link to a video of someone playing Dragon's Lair on the C64. There are other so-called C64 'longplays' on the site, Youtube, too. Being fair and just, of course, I have not watched the entire video yet; I have only watched the half that I beat. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXWsyXRMCQI (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 25th, 2007
12:16 am	Starship Log: September 25, 2007. Two rather sad movies: Somewhere in Time and The Wizard made me cry a little bit lately. Somewhere in Time, apparently, is supposed to do that; The Wizard, on the other hand, had a protagonist that I pitied. The movie never says, but he seems autistic; or he was traumatized by a shock that I will not reveal. People ostracize him, and he is not understood. When he finally succeeds at something, the human kindness showed by everyone who formerly alienated him is touching. I related in some way, or at least, I meet the same situation in my life--'adults' (regardless of whether they are younger or older than I,)who are both secure and confident socially. I may not admire or envy them, but when I see the strong lion sit down and comfort the little mouse it is nevertheless touching. Now I must take stock of my tissues ( toilet paper.) I had a cold for the last week and used a lot; if I keep weeping over movies I will deplete my stock. The video card on my computer is also depleted. Unfortunately, I cannot restock that; rather, I must replace it. That is about ~$100, and there is a mail-in rebate but my credit card is lost somewhere around my apartment or buried underneath trash. I have to call my father tommorow and borrow his credit card because I simply cannot find mine anywhere. In the meantime I am going to play a Sierra game, probably Leisure Suit Larry 2; I do not know at the moment if I have the mental capabilities for a King's or Space Quest. And till I replace my video card I cannot play any graphically intensive games. Something quick and silly will do, though if I remember correctly, Leisure Suit Larry 2 is pretty irritating and unfair at parts. And running it may even be difficult; it has actual sound, which always causes problems when running old games. Ones that use the PC speaker are far simpler. I cannot decide what I will do, but I do want to fool with some game and at the same time avoid the usual days of procrastination and listlessness that buffer my deciding that I will make a lifestyle change and the time at which I finally do it. Yes, the decision of playing a new game is a major lifestyle change for me, and worse, enacting it always takes a lot of wasted time. Some homework is also due Wednesday, 8am, for my earliest class. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, September 1st, 2007
2:24 pm	School started again last week. I am cleaning my apartment this weekend, which is sadly a huge task. There are lots of papers on the floor, and spills and so forth like styrofoam packing peanuts happen and are not picked up. I need to wash the dishes too. I will finish it eventually, and in the meantime I am motivating myself so that I can do some things for GameFAqs. Also listening to some cool music, including this 80s group called OMD (orchestal maneuvres in the dark,) who was more successful in Britain than in the USA. Their music is instrumental--they are 'synth pop'--with vocals, rather than the opposite, music that is built around vocals. But they also sing a lot and at any rate ought to be recommended to anyone who likes 80s music. I was hooked when I first heard 'Enola Gay,' which sounded like video game music. I suppose it makes sense. The 80s were the video game era. The 90s seemed less tolerant, and the 2000s changed them. Video games influenced all of the media of the 80's. Having said that I think I will go play an 80's video game. I was disappointed that I did not give Might & Magic more effort when I first played it. Perhaps I will try that again. I will also finish the many reviews that I am working on or have almost finished. Possibly I will play Breath of Fire IV and finish that. I have beaten the other three games sequentially over the past few months. They will all get reviews too. But I must balance that with cleaning the apartment and doing some homework. I am taking French and Latin this semester, which are both very difficult. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, March 26th, 2007
5:19 pm	A quick entry, since a comment reminded me It is ridiculous how hot the weather is in South Carolina. Every day this week the temperature will be nearly or above 80 degrees in the afternoon. To add to the general distress I have not slept some nights, worried about some tangible or intangible facet of school. But since I talked about school in my last entry I will mention that I played King's Quest #1 again, and rewrote my review for it on GameFAQs. I still need to submit it, but that may take a while. Amusingly, and hopefully not egotistically, this review, which I wasn't pleased with, won Review of the Month at GameFAQs a long time ago; whereas I would normally remove a review that I was not happy with, GameFAQs will not let someone remove a Review of the Month. I took up the old, friendly adventure game, and played it at my grandmother's on the laptop over Spring Break--outside, when the weather was not hot. I also did a lot of yardwork, etc, so that I never beat it--but, hey, I had beat it two or three times before. I just needed to refresh my memory on some of its specifics so that I could write the review. Also, I don't know if I have mentioned it, but I bought a Retropad, a.k.a. an NES controller with a USB connector. With some ex tempore arrangement I can even play SNES games on my Retropad--and it all feels authentic, except for genuine cartridge-cleaning, control failures, and more stuff to carry when I move out of my apartment. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, February 15th, 2007
10:09 am	Posting on a day in close proximity of Valentine's Day School, which is the main reason that I haven't posted much, is rougher with 17 hours this semester than last semester when I had fewer hours. I took a day off today, and I will exercise, clean up my place, and even make a Livejournal post. I hadn't found a way to justify this last before. Most of my five professors are good, except one that for the last three semesters I avoided (apparently no one else teaches biology--I won't discuss why particularly I avoided him). My Chinese professor is the same one that I had last semester, and my art and British Literature teachers are knowledgeable of their subjects. The black anthropology teacher that I have discusses modern race issues and religion, which isn't appropriate for a Primates and Prehistory class, but as teachers go he isn't terrible. This semester I discovered my school's athletic center, which, though, well, I always knew of, I was intimidated by the walk and the means of entry among other things. And I didn't have a reason to go till I found exercising my legs harder without those fancy machines, which are quite nice in the variety of discreet muscles that can be strengthened on them. I use some of them and don't use others. It was embarassing when I tried to do a chin-up and could only complete one. I remember being good at those in gym class. Money has been tight lately, and for an indefinite number of weeks I have been and am buying only bread & cheese for making grilled cheese sandwiches. Since I don't serve others I can escape inspections by the board of health or whoever and reuse the same cutting board (for the cheese) and skillet (for the cooking). That I don't spread butter on the sandwiches as my father, who taught me how to make them, did, is a practicality (I don't have to wash the skillet, and I save money on butter too.) Because mine never sticks I suppose that you may need the proper pan for this. It sounds unhealthy or lazy, but mostly I don't have the time to be fastidious about everything; and I do eat at the school's cafeteria, which is rather cheap for a good meal ($4-5 for normal or $6 for abnormal portions). Baking cocoa ($1.95 for a small drum of it) and water, heated in the microwave, is my new fascination. It is cheaper than tea but still as efficient on days when the heat is off. I still think of going back to GameFAQs, writing something up here or there for a favorite game or two. I notice, however, and not surprisingly, that with less available time my interests become monetary instead of nostalgic. I could write for a favorite game, but for a $25 gift certificate on Amazon I would write for a platformer on the Genesis that I don't enjoy. This must be that prioritizing stuff that 9-5 working people talk about, and I can meekly say that I might now be understanding it and working towards adjustment (less time on various internet forums for instance.) But I wonder sometimes if at college I don't work more than 9-5, especially including the 15-30 minute walks between my apartment and the campus--and obviously the abnormal amount of studying that I do would be included, and classes like Chinese just aren't 3 hour courses as an Art History or Anthropology would be. Weekends are relaxed a bit more, but studying on them is still important. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, December 15th, 2006
12:01 am	Wasting a little time After finishing my second final of the week today, I realized that I had time, and I typed 'social anxiety disorder' into Google, and began a characteristic spree of time-wasting. The results on the first page were an about.com/social phobia, a few medical sites with criteria that I had seen before, and a forum post. Yet I don't much consider medical disorders or psychological conditions. The usual nervousness of a college day and interacting with students whom I wasn't comfortable with made me seek an antecdote on a website. The antecdote was elusive, but I had more things to seek after I read the forum post, which in summary, asked if the poster, who felt nervous speaking in public, had Social Phobia. If I had had an account on the forums, imitating a seedy physician occurred to me, and duplicating the speeches on different sites for social anxiety. For example, "Social Anxiety is nothing to fear. Three out of every one hundred males and four out of every one hundred females suffer from it. With positive therapy and medication it can be treated," and saying so would be honest. However, I have to disagree being a coward myself; social anxiety and disorders like it are advertised as diseases though they follow the earlier psychological categorizations like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator , which were for personalities. The depersonalization of that tired word 'introversion,' making it into an illness, is also contemporary with the growth of prescription drugs, which is another reason to roll your eyes and to not waste the time. That is all a magnification of the guy who posted on the forums; I don't think that he is sick because he is shy on a podium. But if I were a physician and met someone that was really nervous, and beyond being falsely modest about it, I would consider an alternative to therapy or medicine. The standard procedure seems to be, first, the therapy, which is the usual motivational stuff, and which any person with the internet, the only place you hear about social anxiety, could have discovered individually if he were determined, and then, if the person actually is troubled, give him the medicine, which adds 'neurotransmitters' to the brain, to convert the introversion to extraversion. Though it isn't entirely the doctor's fault he may never think of informing that patient that introversion is a personality and not a disease. I don't mean much by this post, but as you can see the issue is bothersome. I see using medicine as overcompensation for social anxiety. When introverts take pills, it discreetly upsets the balance between extroverts and them. Then, the remaining introverts, even more alone than usual, also seek pills as a way of adapting, creating a chain reaction. Me? I avoid doctors, and as a rule especially shrinks. Due to truancy or some stupid thing I did in high-school I visited a psychologist once, and swore that he wanted to be there even less than I, which was an accomplishment because I drove 45 minutes to reach his office. Of course, he found relief when he learned that my parents had divorced. But the medical overanalysis of the last 5-10 years can be two-sided! Back at the police station, the normally bossy parole-officer-woman nodded sagely on hearing that my parents had divorced, and excused me from community service and other things that could have happened. Despite the internet's being less popular at the time, Reader's Digest, publishing stories about the trauma of a child whose parents just divorced, probably wasn't, and it used the same tactics as the drug industry back then to convince people that they needed to take medicine when they didn't: i.e., children need sympathy when they don't. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 12th, 2006
7:39 pm	Jokes 'You Might Need To Clean Your Room if you wake up and find a dictionary on a plate'.  That's a personal one, based on the other day--but I always thought that jokes like that were good (You might be a redneck if... being the original.) And they had a formula where without much thought even regular people could make good jokes. They applied to anything, too, but may have failed when they were vulgar and obvious, like the person that wrote them would be the one to snicker in a group if someone said 'Uranus'. And here is the link for the bad jokes that I meant to include Tuesday: http://www.youmightbe.com/ (the You Might Be An Accountant ones were funny). (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, December 8th, 2006
11:46 am	好上午 Got a letter from Micheal Hise this morning, and I still don't know if that is a boy or girl's name. Obviously, Mike is short for Michael, but I always assumed that Micheal, switched around, was a no-no, and that would sound like Michelle, calling a boy by a girl's name. This may be the first time that I have been pressed with the choice. At any rate, Micheal is the new person from GameFAQs that e-mails you if you fill a FAQ bounty, win a contest, etc. I said in my last post that I was worried that I wouldn't get my gift certificates, $25 x 2, for 2 reviews of the month, but now they're on the way. And to the spite the cold cream of wheat in front of me it was a nice surprise. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 5th, 2006
2:49 pm	Exercising in the cold My cold passed today, eight days after it had started. The weather on my way to school was frosty and windy enough that I feared that I would have a relapse. I had on two layers of pants, three layers of sleeves (an undershirt, dress shirt, and a parka), and I needed to switch my grip on The Penguin Atlas of Ancient History several times before it became numb. The transition from being inside to going outside was harder than I expected, because I assume that my apartment, which has no heat and does not receive much sunlight (my cat gets most of it in the spare room), is colder than the weather outside; and it usually is. The chill inside was still bad, enough that I didn't consider removing any layers till I saw the sink full of dishes. Weather like this often makes me ignore my exercise, which I didn't do any of last week either because of my cold. Being sick at least was a good excuse for being lazy, even if I could have got up and exercised without worsening it. One way that the break was worth while is that my knees have hurt recently. With the time off I could rest them, although they do still hurt. To fix that I may toss out my 'lunge' exercise, which is a stance where you take a large step back and bring your rear knee close to the ground, supporting your upper body with your other knee and the ball of your rear foot, and which I substituted for 'squats', another exercise, at the insistence of the little exercising book that I have. The whole point of exercise after all--besides some self-confidence and occasional utility--is the improving of your health. I think about people like my aunt's mother, who had knee-replacement surgery and uses a cane, with trouble rising from chairs, and know that that is not exactly an improvement in my long-term health. At any rate, I try to look at stuff like that beyond the short-term when I make choices, which I suppose that most people do--well, except the ones always running in and out of that tanning salon below me (be afraid, for I may make a sympathetic post about this sometime, trying not to be critical but examining the facts).  I will return to squats once my knees aren't bothering me anymore; that way I can tell if squats are as much of a problem as lunges. I suppose that I won't be devastated if they are. Doing the exercises themselves can be annoying because they take a while, although I know that strength in the lower body is helpful as a brace for the upper body. If you carry much muscle in the upper body a weak lower body will have trouble supporting it, or so they say. (Comment on this)
Sunday, December 3rd, 2006
1:35 am	Loud music For the past week I have had a problem with loud music issuing from my neighbor's apartment at 5 or 5:30pm every day. Although I knew that he kept a dog, I didn't know him to be loud, and in fact, although I forget other things concerning him, like his name, I remember his saying when I first met him that he was a quiet guy. The music lasted till 6:30 to 7:30pm every day, which was ridiculous, even moreso considering that I was sick at the time. I didn't know whether my headache was from the cold or the bass. It was rap or R&B or something. I fretted too long before confronting him, and it wound up being a silly thing. The music was his alarm clock that he set earlier for whatever reason, and because he works during the day he didn't know that it went off. I like when I prove something intimidating otherwise. Pity me moping over confronting an alarm clock! I just recall the scourge at my last apartment, where for hours I would lie awake some nights with bass above me. Then, the matter was less excuses and more dressing for going out and upstairs (they lived above me). I would say that we lacked mutual respect, but I don't know whether they respected me. I realize that thinking less or the forgetting of a third-party is easier when you live with a second-party, and they were a couple; but I didn't and still don't understand the insensitivity in that situation. I had reported the problem before, and I even humored them when they had a birthday party--I sacked out in the living room, which wasn't my normal bed incidentally, with a book. I heard the noise a few nights later, went up, and they were sleeping. Incensed, I pounded on the door and roused the wrong neighbor (four apartments--one house), who was a lawyer, a neighbor of whom would hit my car and write me a check a few weeks later. It was the wrong sort of situation to be in. When I at last gave my notice, the noise wasn't all that had driven me out. A hole had appeared in the ceiling whose plaster had fallen all over my floor and weight bench. I joked that the hole was under my upstair's neighbors shower, who was a college-aged girl (yeah, the same one that played the music), but all I could see was wood. Peeking up while she showered wasn't safe at any rate, because that was when the water poured down. I must have escaped the place just before the floor caved in. I like my new place much better. For one, the rent is cheaper. I pay $375 each month for rent and water, and it is still a bigger place than I need (my last place was huge, and the price reflected it: $475 without water). I originally paid the same for this one, but it, ahem, has roof leaks everywhere, and I talked the landlady down to $375. I don't mind them except when they ruin electronics, but I mostly remedied that. Calling in work orders every month isn't necessary, either, which is great. I must have called in six at my last place. They only responded to two, one of which fixed my refrigerator, which didn't work when I moved in, and the other my toilet, an equally catastrophic affair. (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 30th, 2006
1:58 am	A little sick Remember all of that Thanksgiving gluttony? I think I got my just desserts Monday. A headcold--and it's still going strong today. I wouldn't complain much, except my Chinese teacher tested us two days earlier than the syllabus said, and studying was no fun with a headache that the bass music outside made worse. I'm taking time off now. A cool e-mail prompted my updating my Romancing SaGa guide on GameFAQS, which is going really well. The guide could have been better, which I knew when I submitted it and claimed the FAQ bounty; the problem is that the game is in Japanese, and it's a non-linear RPG without an available ROM translation patch. I will improve the guide hopefully, but the process is a lot different than an English game. I also have other guides that I am working on, including reliving my Commodore 64 gaming (and isn't GameFAQs missing a lot of FAQs for that platform?) and writing up some guides. The FAQ bounty stuff has been lucrative; despite losing to one or two people that wrote guides quicker than me I have piled up some Amazon money that I can spend on a variety of things, probably books. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, November 26th, 2006
7:10 pm	Thanksgiving vacation and what I read over it I returned to the apartment 6 hours ago from Thanksgiving vacation. I was at my grandmother's where my uncle, his wife, her mother, my dad, and my grandmother celebrated Thanksgiving. I celebrated (ate) other places too: my other grandmother's and my sister's, and it's amazing how much I could eat when I got right down to it. Food like squash casserole, green bean casserole, and stuffing, goes down very smoothly and quickly. I only overate when I had my second slice of pumpkin pie at my third dinner of the night, which went away after lying for a bit. I finished Carry On, Jeeves, which was a compilation of P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves/Wooster stories. It entirely contained stories that I hadn't read thus far and even one from the perspective of Jeeves, who is the butler in the story that knows everything and helps Bertie Wooster, the normal narrator. I think that I have read every Wooster/Jeeves short story now (not only in this book, because I have read others) or at least every one that I would read. The formula of the short stories can only do so much in 20 pages. I'll work on the mini-novels, one of which I have read, eventually, but I picked up a Shakespeare play that I will work through, probably slowly as those things usually go. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, November 16th, 2006
11:05 pm	Hello! I thought that I wanted to delete it, but I don't. I don't know what to say, although I suppose hello is a good start. I see that I am off of many people's friends lists, which I hope will change when my name isn't slashed-out anymore. (5 Comments |Comment on this)