it has been a while.

i was going to talk about things, like anime and birthday parties, but tonight came to an abrupt and somber end and i'm not feeling in the mood now.

sleep.

I can't believe how quickly the day has gone. It seems like I just sat down at my desk, and it's already lunchtime. I do have a fair amount of work ahead of me, so the rest of the day should sail by just as quick.

Been playing fallout 3 like mad. I'm still impressed by how much I am enjoying the game. I've also gotten back into garry's mod, after downloading a few model packs and playing around with gm_botmap. Been building trains and cars, one of which I have aptly named the Super Wooden Death Car. I will post a pic when I get home.

My seriously caesar salad is seriously beckoning me.

i was going to watch some Clannad After Story before heading off to work, but instead i want to crank out some thoughts i had in the shower before they fall out of my tired brain.

i think the reason why i'm reacting so strongly to Heavens Feel isn't because it means the end of Fate for me.  i can go back and relive the memories whenever i want, and Hollow Ataraxia hasn't been translated either.  no, i think the reason is how strongly i can relate to Sakura.  obviously, i haven't had a life as rough as hers.  but for a regular human being living in the real world, i've been through a lot in 23 years.

when i moved up here nine years ago, i very quickly built a mask and put it on.  i pretended to be happy in front of everyone, while systematically isolating myself from everything i couldn't filter through a TV or a computer.  and while i pretended, i simultaneously hated them and cursed the world for allowing all of this to happen to me.  i held a grudge for the longest time against the people i believed caused this, despite how much they had helped me.  i hated them because they couldn't see what was really going on.  i placed lofty expectations on everyone i met, expecting them to see through the mask, realize how much i was hurting, and try to help me.  instead i ended up getting hurt, either through their own actions or through them failing to live up to my expectations.  it was a very troubling time for me.

i also selfishly believed i was the only one hurting, and anyone else who said they hurt were lying to me.  it only made me angrier and gave me more excuses to isolate myself.

but it turns out those reactions were the inevitable result of my own inaction.  i hated people for not being able to understand me...which is a matter of course, since i never told anyone what i'd been through.  most people are programmed to assume a smiling face is a happy person, and younger people especially don't have enough experience to figure out what a "forced smile" looks like.  my lofty expectations were a way to justify not telling anyone anything...when in truth, i was scared.  i was deathly afraid that uncorking that bottle would turn everyone away from me.  so i kept it hidden, never told a soul, and buried it under those excuses.

fast forward to my senior year in high school.  i'm not quite so isolated, but i still feel alone, and it's coming to a point where i didn't know if i would ever recover.  i was beginning to resign myself to a life of utter solitude.  i'm laying on a bed in my friend's house, with my laptop.  i have to write my senior speech for english class, and i'm stumped.  i sit for maybe an hour, then i just start typing something.  i don't know where i'm going, but i don't stop my hands.  it turns out i'm writing my own story.  i get a chill, and a slight burst of nausea.  i imagine everyone being disgusted with me and leaving me forever.

but still, i print it out.

and i tell my story, to thirty people in a classroom.

and not only did they not run away, they cried for me.  and right then and there i felt my mask shatter and crumble to the ground.

over the next two years i slowly stopped expecting everyone to know everything about me at a glance, and i finally realized the people around me hadn't been staring at my mask.  they had been looking at me, mask and all.  and when the mask fell, they stayed beside me.  i was too busy looking down to notice all the people standing next to me as i walked down the long, winding road of life.  i didn't change much, as my masked self was simply repressing the irrational feelings i wasn't outwardly expressing.  i still hold on to a small part of my mask, as i didn't come through those experiences unscathed, and a dark twist to my personality exists to this day.  sometimes i have to put the mask back on to hold it at bay.

i could go into a comparison of how this relates back to Sakura, but if you've played through heavens feel you'll know what i'm talking about and if you haven't it would be major spoilers.  and even if you don't intend to play through heavens feel, just reading what i wrote above would be enough to understand where i'm coming from.

and cranking that out cleared my head a bit.  i guess it's time to go to work now.

and like most things i have encountered in my life, i have reached a complete end.

about ten minutes ago, i read through the Normal ending for Heavens Feel, marking the final ending to the game and finalizing my 100% completion of Fate/Stay Night.  it's been a crazy ride with this game.  it was something i longed for, and yet something i never dreamed i would ever complete.  after spending those long four weeks with tsukihime, my yearning only got stronger.  and here i stand, at the tip of the mountain, having completely conquered it.

i don't really know what i feel right now.  Heavens Feel was a rollercoaster, a much more shocking one than i imagined.  at the same time i am happy for the outcome of the True ending, i am saddened by the Normal ending, and i feel a wave of regret at plowing through the game in ten days.  it's like losing a treasured possession, or finding a toy you played with when you were a child.  you strain to remember what it was like when you first got it, that joy and happiness.  you strive to reclaim that feeling and might enjoy yourself, but in the back of your mind you know you won't ever be able to reclaim that inital feeling ever again.  i could read through fate dozens of times, and each time i might see something i missed last time, or something i forgot.  but i know that no read through will be as powerful or as immersive as that first time.

i look back on the ED list, and i remember what it was like when i reached each of those ends.  fond memories all.

well, i have once again stayed up far too late.  it's time for me to take this swirl of emotions and go to bed.

So the winter went by, and spring came along. 
Nature is in its full bloom, and there is nothing left that reminds you of the cold hard days.
Stash away both what you lost and gained, for life continues on.

Now then...
The story that unraveled in this town has reached its conclusion.
New stages and people are waiting for us...

I figured out that the reason opera mini was displaying xanga wrong was due to opera being configured to shrink images, which was throwing off all the positional code. Looks great now.

I'm starting to branch out in my duties at stratify, and it means asking more questions and perhaps making some silly mistakes. I take them in my stride because a) everyone makes mistakes and b) it's arrogant to think I won't. The problem comes in my inability to stop playing Fate at night, which leads to me staying up late which leads to a lack of sleep. We all know where a lack of sleep leads.

I'm going to have to go cold turkey tonight and possibly tomorrow to break this. I need sleep more than I need fate.

And as if my nerves weren't jangled enough, on my way over to lunch a big rig blasted its horn about twenty feet away from me because a van wasn't going fast enough and they were going to crash.

Maybe I will get to head home early today...

well here's the other thing i was going to talk about last night, before i ran out of time.

during my plethora of errands yesterday, i stopped at Fry's and bought a fancy new UPS.  it has quite a bit more power than what i need right now (i have my widescreen monitor and computer plugged into it, and when i am playing Fallout 3 the power draw on the UPS is about 299 watts, out of a maximum output of 540.  when idle, they draw about 190 watts) which means i have a lot of room to grow and the potential to back up quite a bit more than what i already am.  what prompted this was a recent series of power outages, including an outage that was preceded by a brownout that damaged my linux and windows installs beyond any repair.  windows was unrecoverable, linux booted but after a day or two it went towards what is technically known as Shit Just Fucking Breaks.  i'd go into it in greater detail but i need to get ready for work soon.

anyway, even with the load put on the UPS by a very graphically-intense game like Fallout 3, this UPS gives me more than ten minutes of runtime, and the idle draw gives me more than twenty minutes.  considering it would take maybe two or three minutes tops to shut down windows even in the midst of a game, that is plenty.  but perhaps my favorite feature is the auto-shutdown: if the power cuts out, and the UPS has less than five minutes of battery power left, it will force my computer to shut down.  so even if i'm not around, i can rest easy knowing the UPS will handle it.  i see this as an investment.  i spend about a hundred bucks now, and save myself from spending a couple hundred or even more than a thousand to rebuild my computer after it gets fried by transient currents or high surges, along with not having to worry about losing all of my precious data to a power loss.

anyway, time to get dressed.  also, sorry for the not-so-great picture, the underside of my desk isn't exactly the most well-lit place in the house.

now that i am rested and have some free time, i should talk about those things i listed, along with some brand new ones.  i'll start with what i don't need to talk about anymore.  also there will be several pictures.

The conversation I had this morning and The way I'm feeling right now: neither of those turned out to be anything major.  no point in continuing to bring it up.

Fallout 3:  is awesome.  i've never touched a fallout game before now, but i'm highly impressed.  i haven't played it too much, for reasons that will become clear in a bit, but what little of it i have played i like.  as soon as my gaming platter empties out a bit i will probably pick this up bigtime.

Heavens Feel: is pretty much why i haven't played anything else except gears 2 for the past week or so.  mirror moon released the HF translation last weekend and it has occupied all of my free time since.  i play in the mornings before i go to work, i play as soon as i get home.  the writing in this route has kicked up a notch (except for nasu's flimsy excuses for ero scenes, although the mirror moon proofing crew did a pretty good job in that regard.  it doesn't read like fanfiction anymore) and like kohaku's and hisui's routes, the end of the game serves as a swift kick to the ribs.  fate is the arc/ciel routes in that it's relatively happy with some minor sadness thrown in at the end.  UBW starts to clamp down on you the way akiha's route did, and HF knocks you flat the same way kohaku and hisui did.  and i haven't even gotten to the real meat of this route - i just started day 12.  i'm sensing that i'm about to enter the bulk of what HF has to offer, as the big ol' huge plot twist must be right around the corner.

also Tiger Dojo 32 wins the award for Tiger Dojo that is Freakier than the Dead End it Precedes:

and i have to say...the shadow is far, far scarier with the realta nua voice patch.

Blackberries: and then there were two.

Radar Minorin:

i seriously cannot stop staring at this.

My job: not sure why i brought this up, things are going great.

WoW: will probably be on hold for a while.  i haven't touched it in a week, and with HF, Fallout 3 and Gears 2 on my plate, along with all the other games i have in progress, i don't really have room for it.  too bad, too...i just joined an awesome guild.

Gears of War 2: is basically gears of war 1 with less BROWN and more lights on the armor.  but that is by no means a bad thing...GoW is an awesome game.  what few changes they did make are all positive, and i couldn't be happier at this point.  i haven't played much, but we'll see.

Braid: is an excellent indie game that makes me want to smash my controller.  but it's a puzzle game, so that's pretty much par for the course.  i'm loving every second of the scenery and music.  i'm sure my weathered brain will eventually perk up and i'll start solving puzzles like a maniac.

anywho, time for bed.  i have something else but it will have to wait.

I am so effing tired.

There's a good number of things I want to talk about. Fallout 3. Heaven's Feel. Blackberries. Radar Minorin. My job. The conversation I had this morning. WoW. Gears of War 2. The way I'm feeling right now. Braid. And other things I am probably forgetting. But this keyboard is tiny and I only have half an hour until lunch is over. It will have to wait until I get home, and even then I will probably eat dinner and go straight to bed. We shall see. Obviously, the more tired I am the less productive I am at work so I need to shake this off first. I just hope it's not a bug, getting sick is the last thing I need right now.

I made it through half the day, it's downhill from here. See you on the other side.