Shakespeare and other musty old books

It's three in the afternoon, and I just spent most of the morning in Monterey going to used bookstores with my girlfriend. She's got about twelve books to find just for one class. And not just any books, specific editions. She googled, halfed, and ebayed yesterday just to price them all. That's right, she needs around $50 worth of used books.

The hunt began yesterday in Marina, but she only found one. So today we hit just about every used bookstore in Monterey. I did find a few things myself. I picked up four of Isaac Asimov's Robot City series, Robots and Empire, and a completely Robot-Empire-Foundation-free novel, Nightfall.

That about does it so far. I'm still reading C.S. Lewis' Out of The Silent Planet. It's probably the fifth time I've read it, but the Space Trilogy is classic, and I never read That Hideous Strength.

It's all classic. After I finish the trilogy, I'll hopefully start the Robot City series.

Rachel's out at some special Salvation Army thing with mom. Wonder if she'll find another book or something.

I'm off to look up a Japanese grammar book by Vaccari. It was $30 at the book store, but I don't think I'd want to pay that much for it.

Boy, I'm link-happy today...

Oh, I forgot to mention that Rachel picked up a Shakespeare Anthology. All of his plays. All of his poems. Everything. Fifty cents. And it was from 1911! The thing has a leather binding, just like a Bible. She's got quite a collection of old books going and wants to get them appraised this summer...

...Man, I'm gonna have to invest in a few book shelves in the future, probably.

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising
Haply I think on these, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day rising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;

For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Shakespeare, Sonnet XXIX

Guild Wars Review

Guild War's E3 for everyone is over now.

But I did get enough game time out of it. I played mostly as a Monk-Warrior.

Now, for those of you who don't know, the stats on my box are:
Athlon T-Bird 1.4Ghz
Soyo Dragon K7V Plus (VIA)
512MB PC1600 DDR RAM
128MB MSI nVidia GeForce4 Ti 4600 8x (Recognized by Windows XP as a Ti 4800, DX 8.1)
Directx 9.0b
2x Maxtor 40GB 7200RPM Hard Drives
[20Gb WinXP, 20Gb FAT32 Data, 20GB Gentoo Linux, 20GB FAT32 Data]
Unbranded 16X DVD Drive
12x4x8 LG CD-RW Drive (Previously external)
Creative Labs SoundBlaster 16-bit (ES1370, because I fried the onboard C-Media 5.1)
VIA Rhine II onboard Ethernet connected to SBC global's DSL service (around 160Kbps)


I had to drop to the second lowest graphical settings to keep the FPS in the range of 20-50, anything higher and the rate was under 20. Graphically, my machine did keep up.

The main problem I had was connectivity. I never dropped out of the game, but there were significant lags. PCs would load without their armor, or without the appropriate textures. You'd see all black characters for a few moments, then pow they'd be there fully. But overall, the game is visually aesthetic. It really is a beautiful thing if you can run with high graphic quality. Objects in the distance load and render slightly blurred, it's an amazing illusion of distance.

As for gameplay, I really enjoyed the game. For those of you who played Diablo, Diablo II, Darkstone, or Dungeon Siege, you'll feel right at home.

Really, that's about it for interface and the general tenure of gameplay, but let me break down their whole multiplayer concept.

First there are towns. Towns are really where MP comes into play. You can trade with NPCs and other characters in town, and be a part of all the chatting. You can learn new skills from trainers and skill gems. Each town is divided into districts, which pretty much is like different servers. So if your district is empty, you can just jump to a more crowded server.

Then there's the Arena. This is a pretty cool concept. Four on Four team RPG deathmatch. It's pretty difficult to get a good group though, people just don't now how to play yet.

Then there's a group mission area, where you get in a group and go out on a mission.

Plus, the tournament area, which I never tried, but I suppose it's like the Arena.

And then the lonely solo mission area. This is where you really get the goods and level up, but it's just like playing offline. No chat, and everyone plays this area on their own local copy pretty much. However, it still has to sync to the server for some reason.

Plus there's that pricing thing. They will charge you for the game, but you'll never pay monthly fees. Nice, eh? I'm sold on the idea. The Beta itself was about 96K, and all of the content was about 25Mb that was downloaded from the ArenaNet servers.

All in all, Guild Wars is amazing. But they need to develop some sort of filter for the chats because it gets really confusing trying to find who said what, and if they're even close to you. The maps are huge! Also, single player could just as well be played offline, so why not make that portion offline? Then you have gamers playing on their high-end laptops while their on the go then updating to the servers when they go to MP areas. However you'd have hackers messing with their characters. Solo is just too quite for a MMORPG. Arena mode is a great idea though.

Kudos Guild Wars.

Japan Town

Alright! We made it to Japan Town up in San Francisco. I haven't been up there since I was in high school.

Oh, but we were in San Fancisco in order to send of Grandma and company. They made it home, but not until late, because they had be be bussed from Chicago to Milwaukee, then drive home. Weather cancelled pretty much all flights.

Back to J-Town, it took a while to find it, but I totally remember all of the shops. I even found the place that Mark and I ate in high school. Unfortunately, everything is much more expensive than Little Tokyo in L.A. I found the CD I wanted by Ayumi but it was $33+, but I could've bought it in Japan for 1400 Yen. I should've gotten it then.

The drive home was nice too, we got In-n-Out again, which is always a plus. But now that we're back, I haven't done much but play Guild Wars and let Rachel skunk me at Cribbage.

It's late and I'm tired. I'm off to the camper for bed.

Tripod

Alright, this is frustrating. I got Cobind Desktop up and running, but Yellow Dog Updater, Modified isn't installed properly. I also had to get binutils in order to install the nVidia kernel module.

If I could get it all working that'd be great. I'd go install the latest stable kernel and add in the applications I like, but I just went here and noticed that Tripod seems to be blocking my image, even when loading from itself. Maybe it's just Firefox on Linux.

I really ought to get that domain I wanted. It's only about $60.

Sure, then I'll get that iBook I want too.

Cobind Desktop

I'm about to log off and replace my harddrive in order to install Cobind Desktop on something a little less mission-critical, since I haven't backed up my senior year's work and play.

We're off to San Francisco this afternoon to send off my family back to Wisconson. We'll stay up there a night, then drive back. Dad's renting a Suburban for the day. I hate those things. Hopefully I'll be able to get some pictures up, or something. I have a nice one from when we went to the mission that I want to put up too.

"Tippers Make Better Lovers"

Today was a day in Santa Cruz and we went to Pizza My Heart for lunch. I highly recommend it.

We also hit the boardwalk and I was able to get Rachel to go on the Giant Dipper. It's a classic, but about half way through she yelled, "I don't like this anymore." I don't blame her, it's not really my thing either, but if you're at the Boardwalk, you've gotta go on it.

The new profile picture is from a picture booth we found there.

Oh, and we had company tonight and I won the seventh hand of Continental Gin, but they kinda set me up to win because it was taking so long.

On the gaming front, check out Guild Wars "E3 For Everyone" open beta. Get in quick, because you only have yesterday, today, and tomorrow for it! It's pretty good. I enjoy it a little better than The Saga of Ryzom, but Ryzom is much more in depth, like your Final Fanasy XI, which my roommate always played.

Today is the first day...

Here I am. Home after three years of college. And it's all over now. I never really thought that I'd be at this point someday. I remember thinking that I'd graduate from high school at seventeen. That's already came and went. Now I'm twenty and out of college. I mean, what's next?

Sure, there's always graduate school, but is another degree in a field that constantly changes really worth it? What if I end up studying Linux at the graduate level too, and it ends up being a flop in a couple years? That's why I'm trying to get a steady job and work off those loans, then maybe I can start looking at a Masters program (not to be confused with my college, The Master's College).

Where do I go from here? I don't know, but I can tell you where I've been.

I'm home now. After an excuciatingly long drive from L.A., we made it up here at midnight the day of graduation. We took a van full of relatives, my girlfriend, and all our luggage (mainly my room from college) all the way up here in Monterey. We've already done a tour de force of the local area and sent one aunt and one uncle home to Wisconson, but there's still Grandma and a few others hanging around for a more extended trip.

Rachel and I are doing alright, but we haven't had much time to do what we'd like to do, aside from finally making it to the bank for a little spending money then over to Borders to get a book she wanted.

Tomorrow we're going up to Santa Cruz to hit the boardwalk. They keep thinking up everything that Rachel and I were going to do, but now we're going as a huge tour group... kinda takes the fun out of it really.

But that's yesterday, today, and tomorrow, but what about the day after?

God is sovereign.