i get up this morning and i'm all excited.  for good reason, too.  Super Metroid is, at last, released on virtual console!

of course i bought it.  but my story didn't end there.

i noticed the download was moving slowly.  so i checked rtorrent to see if i had torrents that were interfering.  i had three running, but none of them were running all that quickly.  in fact, they weren't running at all.  my speeds were locked at around 0, with blips up to a max of 15 k/sec.  i remembered reading an article linked to in /g/ about Comcast implementing some very aggressive traffic-shaping measures, which have apparently now found their way to me.

the way it works is comcast has installed a program on their connection servers.  this program actively monitors all connection activity that travels outside of Comcast's network.  when it detects the upstream speed is higher than the downstream speed by a certain margin (which Comcast determines) the program sends a forged TCP packet containing the RST flag, which drops the connection.  so what exactly does that mean?
    1.  i can no longer seed torrents with peers that do not use Comcast.  since i primarily download anime, manga, and Japanese music, the swarms are unlikely to have a multitude of Comcasters.  and even if it did they'd be in the same boat as me.
    2.  i can no longer start torrents.
    3.  uploading files anywhere (LIKE HMM I DON'T KNOW TO 4CHAN OR MY BLOG) is now slowed. for example i was uploading a doujin to Rapidshare and the speed would drop from 22 to 0.8 k/sec until chunk was uploaded and a new connection was established.

i'm at a loss for what to do.  i won't be able to download from a good chunk of the trackers out there now, since i won't be able to seed and therefore won't be able to keep my ratio up.  my ability to share files is now severely compromised.  and i don't know if switching ISPs would be worth it if they all will be jumping on this software to continue to churn huge profits from unwitting customers.

i had planned on coming back in here and crying manly tears into my bowl of frosted flakes while watching the last episode of Hidamari Sketch, but instead i'm going to rant for a bit.  the last batch of entries have been about nothing in general, and i've actually held onto this all summer long.  so now that i'm two days away from restarting classes (;_;) i feel a bit more relaxed about saying this, since i'll have a great deal of distractions coming my way soon enough.

i am scared out of my skull.

i've said this before, but i don't feel at all prepared to enter the working world.  i have confidence in my skills, but that is only one side of the coin.  there are subtle nuances to working in a business that i'm not sure i even know about.  i'm the kind of guy who can come home satisfied after spending 8 full hours moving boxes around, i don't get that much satisfaction in telling others what to do.  if i were to land a career doing what i used to do for minimum wage, i'd wonder why i even went to college.  i don't want to be one of those guys you see on TV who spends eighty hours a week stuck in an office yelling at people on the phone.  the sad thing is, though, is i have no idea if businesses even cater to people with my mindset.  i've heard anecdotally that the CS industry is looking for people like me, people to code their software.  i guess a lot of grads use a software engineer position as a stepping stone to upper management.  i'm not that ambitious.  i don't have an interest in moving up the corporate ladder as fast as i possibly can.  i just don't know.

it's also scary to take a leap like this without any support.  it's been somewhat indirect, but for the past few years i've been getting a lot of pressure from my family.  most of their sentences seem to start or end with "when you get out of college" and contain some lavish thing to buy/do to the house.  i don't plan on anything happening, but i'd at least like to know that if something goes wrong i'd be okay.  the way these two talk, if i don't start earning some real money we will be in bad trouble.  most people have parents to go back to...i'm one of the not-so-lucky ones.  so it's more like a "you have to succeed no matter what" situation which is i believe partly to blame for my rage-filled explosion two years ago.

though considering i've made it this far and am fully signed up for graduation in May, i highly doubt i will have any problems.

and on the bright side, my earliest class this semester is 10:30, so i get to sleep in until 8:00 every day.

whee

happy days, costco gives a warranty on tires that covers everything except accidents, unusual wear-and-tear and vandalism.  so i brought my car in and (after a two-and-a-half hour wait) got my tire repaired good as new.  for free.  still got another three years on that warranty, and after that i'd be considering replacing the tires anyway.

gaming news!

downloaded the demos for BioShock and Beautiful Katamari off Xbox Live.

BioShock...looks awesome.  the graphics are very nice, and despite all the crazy water effects that can be on screen there was no appreciable slowdown.  the demo doesn't give you access to a huge assortment of weapons (one plasmid, a pistol and a machine gun) but it's enough to pique your interest.  the music is there just enough to give a haunting atmosphere, and the use of sound effects is quite nice.  the creators went with the LOL DARKNESS approach to the game, which i'm kind of getting bored with, but i'm still going to give this a rental at the very least.  it is coming out for PC, but i'd rather not drop $50 on a game that may or may not work with Cedega when i could drop an extra $10 and know it will definitely work.  i still have several free rental coupons from when i bought my 360 so i can see what the full title is like.

Beautiful Katamari looks fantastic. despite having the huge performance boost from the PS2 to the 360, the game still has that same look and feel the first two Katamari games had.  the graphics are more or less exactly the same, it just runs super smooth.  there was absolutely no slowdown anywhere, and i'm guessing with the 360's power those annoying loading screens will be no more.  i'm really looking forward to this, it seemed that with the limits of the PS2 the creators couldn't make the games as expansive as they wanted to.  i can't wait to see how epic the scale of this one will be.

don't know if this is a bad omen or what, but last night as i got out of my car i noticed one of my tires was almost flat.  i made a stop at a gas station and filled up (it only had about 5 psi, it needs 29) and i noticed the funny noise my car was making went away.  but i was kinda afraid that i had a slow leak and that when i woke up this morning i would find my tired flat once again.  i checked about an hour ago and the tire was fine, but i didn't check the pressure.  i may still have a slow leak and it just hasn't let enough air out for me to see a visible difference.  after i eat something i'm going to go back out there and measure the pressure.  hopefully it's not a leak, i really can't afford to repair a tire right now.  can't really think of something that would cause a tire to nearly completely deflate that isn't a leak though :

Response to Comment: yes i am incredibly arachnophobic.  been that way pretty much my entire life.

god what a night.  i was hoping for something a little less stressful.

so around 10 i start reading through Kagetsu Tohya.  i finish off the last Summer Festival, read Drinking, Dreaming Moon (sacchin ;_; ) and read all the easter egg scenes.  afterwards i load up Tsukihime and transfer all of my save data from the windows version.  everything transferred except one of my saves, and since it was for Kohaku's ending it was the most important one.  so i work through the game again very quickly and get a save where i need it.  while i'm playing i remember something that happened during my initial run through Kagetsu Tohya.

i had clicked on the Help icon to get some hints.  afterwards i read one of the Ten Nights and clicked help again.  realizing what i had done i simply held Control to skip over it and skipped arc-sensei's lesson as well.  in doing so, the music never loaded, so the screen faded to black and then faded back into the Twilight Grass Moon menu with the ambience of that schoolbell chime. 

at the time i thought that was kinda cool, so i recreated it.  it was still kinda interesting, so i did it a few more times.  then i stopped and watched a little House.  around midnight, i started to feel a little weird.  like, kinda freaked out.  as the night wore on, it started to get worse.  that chime kept ringing in my head despite watching the most hilarious Lucky Star parody video ever, some weird Metal Gear Solid song, and tsurupettan.  i tried to shake it off, but my freaked-out-ness kept getting stronger.  so i figured enough was enough and went to go get water for my pills and brush my teeth.  everything is going swimmingly until i reach to put my toothbrush away and i see a motherfucking spider right next to my toothbrush holder.

i turn off the water and jump back.  i could feel the adrenaline rushing into my body.  i very slowly start making my way backwards, towards the shower.  the idea of killing it crossed my mind many thousands of times in those few seconds, but i had nothing handy so i had to make a retreat.  after a second or two of slowly backing up it starts to move.  if anything it scared me more, because that fucker was fast.  if we had been playing Gears, i would have sworn it was lagskipping.  it runs all over the counter for a while, gets confused on a bottle of mousse, then heads for the coil of cables.  i am hoping it just finds somewhere to hide so i can rinse my mouth out and leave, because every second i spent in there made by blood pressure rise and my respiratory rate increase.

instead of being nice it starts crawling up the wall.  i should have grabbed whatever i could and crushed it, but i was too frozen in terror.  i was already on edge tonight from whatever Kagetsu Tohya did to me, this was the last thing i needed.  it took a break near the top of the door jamb, so i start to make my way back to the toothbrush holder.  by the time i get there it's at the corner of the ceiling.  after a brief standoff it makes its way onto the ceiling.  i manage to get my toothbrush into the holder and then i see a sight that sent a chill up my spine: its butt started moving around.  that only means one thing: it's going to spin a web.  every cell in my body told me to leave now, because spiders tend to do one thing while spinning a web, especially upside-down: fall off of whatever they are holding onto.  and sure enough, it fell off the ceiling and swong around for a bit.  i cried out when it did that, and all it did was scurry up its web to do it all over again.  after the second time i manage to convince my muscles to open the door a smidge.  i stare the thing down, time it right, and get the hell out of that bathroom.  i rinse my mouth out in the kitchen and come in here.

i'd almost want to take care of this ridiculous phobia if it didn't mean reconditioning exercises.  after it was all over i realized i was scared to death of something that would barely fit in the palm of my hand and not only did that compound my stress it added some shame into the mix.  thankfully i was alone.  this is the one thing i get embarrassed about.  i'll run around naked, i'll sit on guy's faces, i'll talk to perfect strangers about the things that come out of the human body with no shame at all.  but stick me in a room and show people my phobia and i get embarrassed right quick.

video game update time!

can't believe i didn't mention this one earlier.

i took those games down to Game Crazy a week or so ago to sell them.  i figured i'd get about $30 for all of them, so i decided i'd buy G.U. Volume 2.  with $30 in credit i'd get it for cheap.  the guy scans all my games, and i end up getting $65 in credit.  which is enough to get a brand new 360 game or at least two PS2 games.  i think for a bit and start looking around, but then it hits me.  Guitar Hero.  i ask the guy if they have any copies of Guitar Hero 2 with the guitar.

i end up walking away with a brand new copy of Guitar Hero 2 and the guitar for about $20.  needless to say i was pretty excited.

and in other news, i finished off FFXII two nights ago.  have to say...pretty weak storyline in that game.  the graphics were pretty, the battle system was interesting, the music was nice, the voice acting was meh, but the plot of the game was very confusing and it didn't seem to me like i was "saving the whole world from destruction" like what usually happens in Final Fantasy games.  they could have spent a lot more time fleshing out the story behind the Venat and the other fantasy elements.  instead they spent most of the time talking about nethicite, deifacted nethicite, manufacted nethicite...it got really old really fast.  none of the characters seemed to have a "tragedy" either, at least nothing on the scale of anyone from FFX.  there wasn't any huge, enormous plot point to be revealed in the final moments of the game, it was just everyone returning to normal.  i guess after how depressing FFX was they wanted to give the players a little hope, but there was a whole lot more that could have been done.  it just wasn't epic, though FFX is a hard act to follow.  and with Square-Enix so completely absorbed by FFXI, FFXIII may not be up to snuff either.  we'll see.

i am now focusing my attention on Disgaea 2.  having an incomplete Nippon Ichi game has been burning a hole in my soul.  after that i'll burn through the rest of Atelier Iris 2, and from there Okami and Odin Sphere.  after those are finished i'll probably get back to Rhapsody and Valkyrie Profile.  with the PS3 out i don't see that many interesting games coming out for the PS2 besides more Atelier Iris games and G.U., so i can focus on my old stuff for a while.  though Metroid Prime 3 comes out at the end of the month (YES), Phantom Hourglass in October, Mario Galaxy in November and Smash Brothers Brawl in December.  so i may not get around to Rhapsody and Valkyrie Profile for a long time. 

in any case i'm down to four games currently in progress, so i'm better than i was before.

so, it's august

classes start in less than a month

;_;

best youtube vid.  ever.

tomorrow i have some running around to do, but part of me wants to stay at home and watch this clip over and over:

FALCON PUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNCH

so i sat down and went through my game collection, looking for what to get rid of.  it was actually a much smaller list than i thought.

on the PS2, i currently have in progress:
God Hand
GTA: SA
Atelier Iris 2
Disgaea 2
FFXII
Odin Sphere
Okami
MGS3
Xenosaga 2
a couple fightan games
Rhapsody
and Valkyrie Profile

Rhapsody and Valkyrie Profile will never be sold, nor will i sell my fightan games. so getting rid of games was actually a lot easier than i thought it would be.

God Hand.  it's a whole boatload of fun and quite hilarious, but it's way too frustrating.  each time i play i either end up having some fun or getting pissed as hell because three or four hits from the enemy = death.  so it's out.
GTA:SA i somewhat enjoyed when i bought it, but i haven't touched it in over a year.  so it's gone.
MGS3 has been in my house before (i actually bought the original at launch, sold it, then bought subsistence about a year later) and i'm not going to be lured in again.  i just can't get into this one.
Xenosaga 2 i haven't even started.  i played it for about five minutes a summer ago and i wasn't all that thrilled with it.  it's tempting to keep just to see how the characters changed, but if i haven't played it for a year chances are i won't want to start now.  hell i've forgotten most of the characters.  bye-bee!

i started out with 9 and ended up with 5, two of which i am very very close to finishing (atelier iris 2 and FFXII).  Odin Sphere, Okami, and Disgaea 2 are too awesome to sell back.  so, all in all, i think i did well.  plus i might get enough in credit to get .hack//G.U. volume 2 for cheap.

i'm also selling Bust-A-Move Bash! and Elebits.  rather meh games, plus i still have a good deal of VC games to churn through.