Today was the first day of work.

At my new job.

It ownz your lesser, mortal, not as cool as mine, job.

Well, no, but I like to pretend. I'm happy here; I was happier at EA than at Sony, but this place has something that EA and Sony lacked. Career potential. Real career potential. And if that fails, so be it. I can go back to school.

I'm kind of relaxed with regards to the future at this point, though. Things could go wrong, of course, things could still go horribly wrong.

But I'm relaxed, calm.... I think this is more of what contentment is.

So, to go to work, I have to walk, essentially, four blocks. I walk across the parking lot of my apartment complex to the train-overpass, which happens to be conveniently located. I walk across the parking lot for a Home Depot on the other side of the tracks (I come from the wrong-side of the tracks, baby). I walk one block to an intersection. Cross two streets. Walk to an expressway (I take the pedestrian underpass), cross the two onramps, then cut through a parking lot about another block down the road and I'm there.

Total walking time is about twenty five minutes, but I don't mind. After I've managed to square away some of my debt (which is, honestly, minimal; I'm really trying to save up enough money to get people presents for Christmas this year, since I've blown it for the last three-four years due to being terminally poor) I plan on getting myself a bicycle, then my commute time will be cut in half. Fifteen minutes to and from work.

The morning commute will be especially nice, as it's going to be completed at about 5:30 AM. The home commute will be at a much sunnier 3:00 PM, but that's fine by me. That gives me two banker's hours to go to places that keep ... well ... bankers hours.

Though, I'm noticing more and more places seem to be gearing themselves towards being open during odder hours. Not that I'm complaining. Used to keeping somewhat strange hours myself, it actually suits me quite well.

I wonder if the government will pose that x percentage of people in major metropolitan areas should do their work on an inverted schedule to try and alleviate the traffic and overcrowding issues some places are experiencing.

Nah. It's novel, but really, poorly thought out, ultimately.

Anyway, sleep and SSX 3 are vying for my attention. Shiny....

So, I went shopping today.

Misnomer.

Wallace helped me go shopping, as I have no car of my own. Ironically, we ended up going somewhere that was walking difference from my home.

Anyway, payment issues aside, I ended up buying basicaly a new wardrobe, for the first time since ... high school, I suppose.

I'm amazed at how in touch I am with my feminine side; I really had fun shopping. I got plenty of nice clothes for my new job. Nice looking business casual-style clothing. Slacks, great shirts with dragons and dragon-based patterns on them.

Also, a few nice stark colors to bring respectability and officiality into the image. With the lost weight, and new clothes, I am that much closer to being 'no longer an eyesore'. Aces me!

I had to ask my mom for permission to hold up on handing over the wisdom tooth extraction money I owed her for the month and instead diverted to: the wardrobe.

But, hey I can feel good about myself wearing these clothes now. And the new job that I'm wearing them too.

Oh, yeah.

Also, I bought a rain-charm to prevent it from raining. It's called an 'umbrella', but I've found if you spend 20 on one, and carry it around, it will never rain when you're outside. Quite handy.

Brian vs. Final Fantasy XI

I've always had a fear, looking into an MMORPG, that it'd consume my life and distract me from everything else outside of it if I were to get into it. I was lulled by certain people into believing that this game was worth the risk, though. That it was a fantastic online experience that could not be passed up and had to be enjoyed. Others suggested that it might have been different.

I caved. I decided to find out for myself.

The reality surprised me.

The installation of this program is daunting, to say the least.

You start out with five CDs. Not being interested in Tetra Master online, I skipped it, and tried to run the installer off of disc one.

Surprisingly enough, it won't install unless you've already got Play Online installed. Well, okay, then. So I install that. After that's done, disc one, disc two, disc three, disc one. Then you have to manually install disc four.

Five CDs for this game?

Crazy.

So we finish that, and then it turns out that to play FFXI you need to go through the Play Online interface, which is basically a stream-lined Square oriented AOL. It does http-access (for data on the game) e-mail access (for the e-mail address they give you with the game) and it gets you into the game, as well as hosting its own chat services and buddy list.

All of which are features that don't do a whole lot for me. But you can't proceed without registering the Play Online client. I don't know why, since it's not like you could do anything with it you couldn't do without an internet connection anyway, but they require it. So we finish this up, and have a Play Online ID.

Great.

But you can't do anything with a Play Online ID except register a 'handle'. Which is linked with your ID, and your e-mail address.

Okay, fine. So I do this, then I poke at their system a while. Dunno if I'm ready to play online, so I toy with the chat feature. You can't chat without creating a 'nick' and linking it to your handle. Er.... Okay. I'm guessing that the handle is the one that would be on the buddy list.

So I do that, see that it's basically a dumbed down IRC ... that's fine. Time to play the game.

But you have to update, first. I'll be honest; you expect this from an online game. They've got tons and tons of patches. So I figure, DSL, 20 minutes of patching at most, since the game has only been out for a week, we should be set.

Two hours later....

Yes. Two hours later I actually get into the game.

Whoo. Character creating was kind of amusing. You get different theme music for each race/gender you can pick, and the honky-tonk human female's music was second only to the cheezy disco lounge/80's porno music of the frolicking catgirl. So I pick my character (a white mage) and get into the game.

First off, I don't know what's going on with the interface. I've played a small handful of online games -- Everquest, Asheron's Call, Ragnarock Online, and Earth and Beyond. All of them have what ultimately amounts to a clean, managable, and usable UI.

The UI, for me, really makes or breaks a game. That's what determines if you can even play it. There was an amazing lack of explanation for how to handle even simple movement controls, the mouse-directions for moving your character and the camera were unintuitive, and (as far as I could tell) unconfigurable. I eventually managed to get the keyboard into a more comfortable configuration for me, but the way that the game dealt with focus (like Windows programs can) was just insane. You click, a menu pops up. But nowhere near the cursor, and now when you click, that tiny window is just shifting from preset a to b, while you're trying to figure out how to chat with another player.

This one could be my fault for having the resolution set really high. It's possible that with a lower resolution, that pop-up menu would be more obvious. Regardless, the control scheme does have the appearance of something that's really powerful if you take the time to learn it. I'll give it that much.

However, the game was unable to convince me to invest that time.

I played for about four hours, which, by my reckoning, means that I spent about as much time installing the game as playing it. Unfortunately, despite all the hype, the game comes across like most other MMORPGs. It's IRC with a really shiny interface, and a lot more numbers.

It couldn't distract me by being cool enough to get around that. The character models were limited, there just seemed to be a general lack of effort to the whole thing, and there was pretty much no one online on the server I got stuck on (you can't choose which one you go on, you know) that spoke English.

Poor luck of the draw, maybe, but color me unimpressed. Here's to hoping that Square-Enix issues refunds, though I doubt that this is the case.

Oh well.

I might go shopping for new clothes today. I could use them, given that I start a new job tomorrow.

Hmm.

Brian vs. the Interview.

Round: #5

I lost the last round (#4), so I didn't have high expectations when the splashscreen showing Brian Man vs. Interview_005 came up, though I thought it was odd that the actual 'vs.' logo was silver instead of blue.

I shouldn't have been surprised; it was a scripted battle.

So, I go in, and all the buttons I press don't do anything, my character (Brian Man) jumps into the center of the platform (Phone Interview Arena), then immediately busts out the Power of the Stars on Interviewer_005.

Interviewer_005 looks like a pallet-swap of 2-4, so I was shocked when he was hit and transformed into Interviewer_001, and said, "You're hired. You start on Monday."

Then the results were tabulated, and my pay ratio increased by a good 26%, and it said to enter my name for the top 10 high scores.

Third place. Not too shabby, though I think my round 5 results put me in danger of not beating my life with an S rating.

I really want to beat my life with an S rating, so I can unlock newgame+ and the cheats. From what I hear, beating it with a B or higher is enough for the newgame+, but those cheats make all the difference to me. The A level cheats are like, money and social status editor, I want the venue cheats from rank S. Psychic powers, debugging mode....

It's hard work, I tell you.

Ugh.

You know, the main problem with writing a journal that's visible to the public is that you have to be careful to censor yourself. I can't really afford to talk about work-related stuff too much, because (really) someone from work might find out and get offended.

There's a precedence, you realize, and that means I have to be careful.

Anyway, there's good things about it too.

Number one, judging by the comments I get, people only read this site when I tell them to, so it's essentially private.

But it's public enough that I remember to keep up my obligation to actually read it.

The main point of that being that, well, I want to be able to look back on this some day and remember what I did, say, a year ago. To remember where I was, what I was doing, and what I was thinking.

As for why you are reading this site, well, I guess you're just a snoopy and invasive person who wants to know all about me.

Or, you know, I pointed you to the site because I thought there was something worthwhile, like the FrankenMP3 player tidbit.

And those are good, too, because they encourage my creative drive, which has been on the decline (as mentioned) since the HD crash.

Which was less of a crash and more 'rampant stupidity'.

But enough of that.

My profound noise for the day: You find depth where you look for it.

Good enough for now, I suppose.