Native Jovian

I'm sad that I missed it, but this week kicked my ass and I went to bed at like 9:30 and slept for 13 hours, so I don't think I would've been very capable for TF2ing anyway. Alas.

I'd be down. But it looks like we'll have more players than one campaign can comfortably handle...

Huh, you're right. backpack.tf has strange huntsman at ~20 keys, which is ~$50 instead of the ~$60 that I recall from last time I checked. Woo? In other news, "when I get buy"? Did I seriously type that? Excuse me for a moment, I'll be in the corner being ashamed of myself.

Someone call me when I get buy a strange huntsman for less than the like ~$60 it's currently worth in keys.

So, I just found out that "Girls und Panzer", a title I'd heard of but knew nothing else about, is literally about schoolgirls crewing tanks. What the entire fuck, Japan?

That sig is hypnotizing. And I'll totally have to add a Zircon channel to my Pandora.

Oh, I didn't mind that at all. I'm a huge fan of Gundam in general -- no, where I lost all hope for it was when the antagonists' motivation was revealed to be nonsensical and it became clear that they were going to rely entirely on shallow rehashes of previous Gundam fare, rather than doing anything new or interesting with the standard formula.

That's not even a sentence. I honestly don't know what you're trying to get across, there. In terms of anime, I haven't been watching anything recently except Gundam Age (which ended a while ago, but I've still only watched the first third-ish). It's quite terrible, but I'm watching it anyway because I hate myself, apparently.

Scout: sports teams Medic: diseases Engy: unhinged engineers/inventors (eg, Howard Hughes, Nikola Tesla) Demo: types of alcohol and/or specific cocktails Heavy: Russain weapon designers (eg Kalashnikov, Mosin, Makarov)

Didn't we decide a while ago that having an event server was superfluous because only one or the other (the "event" server or the "normal" server) was ever filled at any given time?

I was at a hobby shop the other day and they had music playing in the background. Mostly "epic" stuff -- lots of John Williams, some Star Trek, that sort of thing. Which made it a bit odd when I noticed a couple tracks from Final Fantasy IX. I recognized and Jesters of the Mooon. I guess the owner (or whoever picks the music) likes piano?

Well, now that the halloween event is over, let the trading frenzy begin! Here's what I'm offering: Medic mask, Soviet Stitch-Up (Heavy costume), Frontier Flyboy (Engineer costume). I also have a Haunted Zipperface (Solider hat) and Haunted Grand Duchess Tiara (Heavy hat) I got from unboxing eerie crates (first time I've actually bought keys for anything!) that I'd trade if anyone was interested. Here's what I need: masks for Scout, Pyro, Demo, Heavy, Engineer, and Spy. Wrap Battler and B-ankh (Scout costume), Idiot Box (Soldier costume), Einstein (Medic costume), all three Pyro costume pieces, Griffin's Gog and Invisible Ascot (Spy costume), Buzz Killer (Engineer costume) Scout soul, Soldier soul, Heavy soul, Pyro soul.

I tried to jump on the server to see if I could get things going, but it apparently hasn't updated. Sadface.

I got an absolutely absurd number of gifts on Eyeaduct tonight. Like, an even dozen over the space of a couple hours. I'm mostly happy that I have all the sniper stuff now (and the holy hunter and voodoo-cursed sniper soul are haunted, too. Bonus! Thanks to Baha for trading his haunted holy hunter for my haunted tail from the crypt.) I ended up with an extra Medic mask and Soviet stitch-up, so if anyone wants to trade those out for other Halloween items, I'm game. For masks, I need scout, pyro, demo, heavy, engy, and spy. Costume items I need anything scout or pyro, plus idiot box (soldier hat), buzzkiller and frontier flyboy (engy hat + misc), Einstein and emerald jarate (medic hat + misc), and griffin's gog and intangible ascot (spy misc). Voodoo-cursed souls I need scout, soldier, heavy, pyro, and engy.

No one was on OCR's server last night when I was checking, which made me sad. It also reminded me why I pretty much only play on the OCR server anymore. The first server I tried, I quit after someone kept bitching endlessly on voice chat about people killing him while he was trying to duel someone. The second, I got kicked after killing people (presumably it was a "only fight the boss" server, but there was no mention of it in the server name or MOTD, and I got no warning before I was kicked). The third, no one was working together to kill the boss, so it took me forever to get the achievement (though I did eventually). Anyone up for setting a time to fill the OCR server tonight? Say, 8:00 PM Eastern?

Awesome! The inconsistencies in remixes of different eras always poked my OCD whenever I noticed it, but not bad enough to actually fix them all myself. Definitely badass too have new official versions that are all standardized. What's official policy on the old torrents? Stop seeding, so people will get the new versions? Or keep seeding, with the idea that any OCR is better than no OCR?

I picked FTL up on a whim when it first became available. No regrets. It's relatively quick to play (you can finish a complete run in a few hours), but there's so much replay value that you won't mind -- and the fact that you didn't just lose 12 hours of progress when you (inevitably) die keeps it from being too frustrating. But yeah, it's a ton of fun. Let me put it this way: I bought it on a Friday after work, and by the time I went to bed Sunday, I'd logged 14 hours of playtime. (That you, Steam, for revealing the uncomfortable truths of our play times.) In that time, I only got to the final sector once (where I promptly died), but I never got frustrated or annoyed. The game is difficult, but it's fair. Definitely worth $10. Edit -- not yet mentioned (which is odd, considering) is the soundtrack, which is excellent. Very reminiscent of old school gaming without actually being chiptune-y. Lots of reoccurring themes running through most of the tracks, which makes it feel very cohesive while still allowing each song to be distinct, as well. You can listen on Bandcamp here, and buy a digital copy for just $5. That's definitely worth it, too.

I've officially subscribed again, just to be contrary. I haven't read it in ten years, but I'm gonna enjoy the hell out of the last four months, even if they suck. Yay nostalgia!

So, I finally got around to watching the first season. I've been avoiding spoilers and whatnot on the internet, so I don't really know what the general opinion of it is, so I have to ask: am I the only one who thought the show starting coming apart around episode 7? My only real complaint up until that point was a) they completely ignored the whole "learning airbending" thing after about the second episode, and they'd never actually let the heroes win a significant victory against the villains, but I figured that there was plenty of time before the end of the season to address both of those. WARNING: SPOILERS. Except not. They just kept pulling things out of their ass. Apparently Amon can do whatever the hell he wants as long as it happens offscreen. Raising an army large enough to take over Republic City, including airships that apparently sprung up fully formed? Sure! Using bloodbending to do something that it makes no damn sense for bloodybending to be able to do? Absolutely! Capturing the airbenders after we're shown them successfully escaping? It happened off-screen, so fair game! Of course, the heroes start fighting fire with fire. Korra's bending is gone? Not her airbending for some reason! Which she can suddenly use now without explanation! And then she's suddenly able to fight through bloodbending when she wasn't before (though Mako does it first). And then Amon's final defeat conveniently happens without any actual input from our heroes, meaning that the closest they ever came to actually beating him was forcing him to retreat, which is pretty lame. And then they spend five minutes making a point of the fact that no, they definitely can't restore her bending (despite having established this earlier in the series more than once), suggesting that she's going to have to spend the rest of the series only using airbending (which actually might've been interesting) only to suddenly change their minds and deliver plothax that not only restores her bending, but allows her to restore everyone else's, too, through absolutely no effort of her own. Anyway. Rant over.

Oh god, I remember those tapes. I might still have one around, but if I do, it's buried somewhere in a closet in my mom's house.

RIP, Nintendo Power. No definite date for the last issue yet, but it's definitely coming to an end. I remember getting Nintendo Power through most of the 90s. I moved in 2001 and never picked my subscription back up; this news makes me want to resubscribe just to get the last few issues. Back in the days before the internet, Nintendo Power was an awesome way to get tips and hear about secrets that you hadn't figured out on your own. It hasn't been nearly as relevant in recent years, but anyone who was a Nintendo fan in the 90s had a subscription. We'll miss you, Nintendo Power! Even the people who thought you'd been canned years back.

I managed to play a round of MvM yesterday. Good times, though hopefully it stabilizes soon. (It took me about a half-hour to get into a game, and after the first one it wouldn't let me re-queue.) My normal class (sniper) isn't ideal for MvM -- something with rapid fire and/or splash damage is definitely preferable -- but a huntsman with extra ammo and fast reload is hilarious. I'll have to try out a heavy and BWAHAHA CRY SOME MORE all dem robots to death. It'll be good times.

I demand a poster of this header image: http://www.teamfortress.com/mvm/mercs/

Cowboy Bebop is odd for an anime in that it's character-driven rather than plot-driven. Most anime boils down to "here are some stock characters, watch them do interesting things". This isn't a bad thing -- I certainly enjoy a lot of anime that fit that description -- but that's how it is. Cowboy Bebop doesn't do that, at all. It's about the characters, and how the things that happen(ed) to them affect them, rather than about the things they do. I think that's a large part of why it was so popular on this side of the Pacific (from what I recall, it did well-but-not-great in Japan), but it turns some people off. Of the other shows that were mentioned, I never got past the premise of any of them except One Piece (whose art style I cannot stand, even before it begins to suffer horrifically from Endless Shonen Syndrome), and Eureka 7 (which I watched a few episodes of and found it to basically be Evangelion with coral instead of angels).

This is why TF2 is awesome. Every time our server starts to die, another event comes along to revive it!