Feel cheated by overpriced shipping.

Well, I sold my Mom's old laptop today, and I had to walk to the post office in very cold weather. When I got there, they weighed my package and found it was a pound over what I paid for it, and they asked for another $9 before they would ship it. Between $30 in shipping and $12 in eBay fees, I really made a little less than $60 on this sale. I think that's really unfair. I'm frustrated that the shipping companies take such a big slice of the pie. It seems like they keep raising their rates every time I ship something.

Anyway, I had a call with Infamous earlier today, and he thought he finished gather up all the Korok seeds at Ganon's Castle. Turns out that because he's been using video walkthroughs without verifying the numbers, he's 8 Koroks short. Now he's going to have to go through the map region by region and try to visually see where the missing Koroks are relative to a complete map. It promises to be a tedious process, and he's not looking forward to it.

The Nintendo Lobo thing that just came out really reminds me of my childhood, though. I once built a cardboard robot for fun, and I had a plastic piano much like the one they have you build. Nintendo always makes me think of my childhood.

Pussy Galore, and SN30 arrives.

Well, I woke up to start my day with a fairly normal call in the Voice Chat, and it was nice to see Jolteon and Odin there. I was having a good time, right up until Pussy joined the call. She made the entire atmosphere of the chat more vulgar and crude, like she always does, and made a stupid political joke about the president. I decided to leave the call, and ask Cinderelliot to play Xenoblade 2 with me in a separate call like we usually do instead of joining everyone else.

Cinderelliot had a tough time beating Malos, and died to him a number of times. We eventually had to look up a strategy for beating him that involved using Morag and Victory Smoothies. Cinderelliot tells me that he was still angry about that fight and how cheap it was hours afterwards. It bothers him even more that the difficulty spiked so high, only to come back down in the subsequent fight. Also, he says he doesn't like how much skin Nia shows as a blade and prefers the way she's dressed as a driver. I just wonder about the practicality of it, though. Maybe blades need to expose more skin in order to improve the flow of ether? I don't know. We played the game for about 7 hours, thus more than taking care of my social needs for the day.

My SN30 finally arrived directly from China, thus performing an end-run around Amazon's apparent distribution monopoly in the US. I haven't had a chance to test it yet because I've been in calls all day, and now I'm writing this blog, but the buttons feel solid and I have charged it up.

I did end up joining the Voice Chat again later for a brief time after my call with Cinderelliot ended, and I stayed until Pussy showed up again. Jolteon seemed worried about me, and thought I needed to talk to someone about how Pussy is making me feel. I think I'm being a little unfair to her because of my bad first impression, and because I don't like that Infamous hangs around with her so much. I think she's a bad influence on him.

Weirdly, the Card Cash transaction for the Walmart gift card never went through, so I ended up just using the gift card at Walmart directly. I got a copy of Spirited Away, a Studio Ghibli film I've heard good things about. It was supposed to arrive today, but it seems like it's going to come at least a day later than they estimated.

I think after Cinderelliot starts back to school (I swear God is looking out for him, it seems like he kept getting days off right up until this weekend), I may just need to start focusing more of my energy on something practical. I'm going to be really lonely when everyone gets busy again. So it's either get focused or have different groups of friends in several time zones.

Odin returns.

By far, the most significant event of this day is the return of Odin, one of the most popular members of the chat and the website that spawned it. We really never thought he would come back, but then not many people thought I would return either.

We had a call with a ton of people, including an old friend of mine named Jolteon. She hasn't been around lately, but it was nice to see her for a few minutes. I also got into an argument with Pussy, and made fun of her breasts when they talked about her being flat-chested, implying she wasn't good enough for Infamous. I don't know what it is about her, but she makes me feel a little protective of him. I don't like how mean she is.

We watched Vato do a speedrun through Super Mario Odyssey during the call in less than an hour, and I saw Infamous upgrade a few more pieces of equipment. I think he's very close to having a 100% run of the game.

Insulator and I talked a little about the missed opportunity Nintendo had with bringing back Virtual Boy games to the 3DS, and about whether they'd bring Skyward Sword to the Switch. We also joined a call on Discord that was kind of boring even though Odin was there, because no one wanted to talk about anything but StarCraft and amplifiers.

Breath of the Wild, Infamous upgrades equipment, new year.

I was watching Infamous play Breath of the Wild again, and this time he's having the Great Fairy upgrade all the equipment he got from the Amiibo he's been scanning into the game, since he's finished with that part. I happened to casually mention Blenheim Ginger Ale to him, since I found out he lives in the same area as the place where it's produced. He said he likes ginger, so he might check it out.

Insulator, Vato, and Cinderelliot were all in a voice call with me during New Years, and I wished several people a happy new year as their time zones came up throughout the day. The first person to wish me a happy new year was actually in the Philippines, and it took all day for the rest of the world to catch up. I held money like usual during the ball drop, but I think I may have been a couple seconds too late to hold it during our midnight. I held it before I saw the ball drop in Dallas on TV, but I saw my computer's clock change to midnight while I was distracted and heard the announcement.

I've also finally started playing Breath of the Wild on my own again, and I just finished collecting all the Korok Seeds in the Great Plateau region. It was very frustrating to get the Korok Seed near the broken bridge because the metal platform I was trying to use kept sinking, or was positioned just too far from the Korok under the bridge. I lost my temper and made a fool of myself again, screaming and cursing at the game. I sometimes wonder why I play video games at all, as angry as they make me.

Xenoblade 2, Amiibo, Saturn theory.

I've been playing Xenoblade 2 with Cinderelliot a lot recently. It has a very good story and we've been playing for several hours a day.

Infamous has been doing something even more boring than collecting Korok seeds and has started scanning in Amiibo. Told me his mother pronounces it amoeba.

I had a debate with Insulator in the text chat about why Sony is successful, and I happened to venture the theory that the Nintendo 64 was primarily designed to compete with the Sega Saturn rather than the PlayStation. It's interesting to imagine the 1990s without Sony entering the arena.

Xenoblade 2, Infamous has infamous friends, and Korok seeds

Well, I've been eating a lot of Grandma's homemade Chex mix lately, and the occasional slice of fruitcake.

Cinderelliot has been playing Xenoblade 2 with me on his new Switch a lot lately, he got it as a digital download. It has a really good story, and I'm enjoying every moment of it. I almost regret that I'm not experiencing the game for the first time on my own Switch, but at least I get to share the experience with him rather than just playing alone like I usually would.

Infamous pushed me to a join a call with some of his left-wing friends, and I was only able to stomach them for a few minutes. One of them was a drunk girl that was illegal subletting her apartment, and I honestly think most of them are scum that probably belong in jail anyway. Starting to wonder if maybe Infamous is infamous for a reason... he keeps the worst company.

However, I've definitely been enjoying late-night calls with Infamous himself, especially when we talk one-on-one. We talk about gaming and art so much that the political stuff just really doesn't come up. We even talk about philosophy sometimes, and that tends to be pretty apolitical.

Cinderelliot gets Switch, 7 hour call with Infamous.

I got a lot of food for Christmas, a lot of Chex Mix, a lot of nuts, and a lot of chocolate. Some brain teasers, and some cartoon DVDs.

Anyway, Cinderelliot got a Switch, but he doesn't have any real games for it, so he ended up downloading Minecraft and Rocket League from the eShop. I think that was a real waste of money because he owns those games on other platforms. I get that the Switch is more portable, but spending that kind of money on games you already own is just less money you have to put towards new games you've never tried before. It seems like a bad deal.

Most importantly though, was a 7 hour call with Infamous that just ended. It started off with me watching him collect Korok seeds again, but then he started on a new area where he was doing a lot of shrines. I think it was the Woodland area. Anyway, the last three shrines were part of a series of trials, and it was interesting dealing with the Koroks in order to get access to them. Infamous had a lot of trouble with the one where he had to avoid detection from a Korok child he had to follow around.

After getting all the shrines in the area, though, he tried to do the quests. We climbed to the top of the Deku Tree, and he had pretty much all the items the guy asking us to solve riddles wanted us to present. Except for one, the Voltfin Trout. Finding that thing was a pain, and given the inconsistency in answers online, I suspect the game uses a random generator of some kind to determine whether or not it will appear in a given area. It took us forever to find one. After that, though, the quest was easy. The last quest in the area that we did involved photographing three sets of Leviathan bones. Infamous knew where all of those were, though, so it went much faster.

Now I am going to go to sleep. If I can manage to get any kind of peace and quiet.