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.

Gingerbread, Infamous, Christmas.

My Mom made a gingerbread house yesterday. She had a lot of trouble getting it to hold together, and eventually we tried eating it... the gingerbread was kind of hard, but we did eat all the candy off it. The Tootsie Rolls were probably the best part.

I had a few good calls with Infamous throughout the day, but I had a little outburst during one of them because someone commented that my microphone was echoing. I got upset and hung up after screaming that I had a crappy microphone. Infamous ended up calling me later again and explaining that he knew how I was, that I wasn't really mad at anyone, but that other people don't understand because they think I went crazy and decided I hate everyone. It was a little embarrassing because it's so much like what my Mom has to constantly tell me. There are times when it really hits home to me how much of a burden I am to the people that really understand and care about me... but I'm still glad they're there for me.

Insulator went out of his way to wish me well this Christmas, and I was glad he was thinking of me.

We opened a lot of presents this morning with Grandma. I wish I had more time to hang out with her, but I'm so tired and don't really feel like socializing. I should probably do something after the holidays when I'm less distracted and tired.

Infamous returns, Chase account closed.

Yesterday, I finally got around to closing my Chase account. The man at the bank didn't ask any questions other than whether to destroy the debit card right away, or let me keep it for a while to use as a second form of ID. My Mom was really anxious the whole time because she wanted to go home to check on her roast.

The roast itself was really good, but I had to consume it during an evening call because it took so long to cook. Vato and Infamous were in the call, and we talked about my old tech admin, Fox. It seems that Fox started to turn into a troll right after he stopped asking Infamous about how I'm doing after I left a few years ago. I feel bad about leaving him there all alone. I didn't realize how much he cared, but it seems it may have been more than I realized. Vato and I also talked a lot about randomizers and how they extend the replay value of our favorite video games.

Cinderelliot asked me to redeem a gift card for an Amazon Cash Card for him. I got $18.87 out of it, and decided to send him a gift card of $25 rather than the original value. It's a Christmas present, granted it's only $6.13, but it's the thought that counts, right? In hindsight, I probably should have just kept the original code and used it at Walmart, since I don't want to shop at Amazon anyway, but it's not a big deal.

I've been eating more of that longan fruit, and I have to admit, it makes me feel kind of strange. Like I have more energy, and I feel more like a teenager. It seems like it's very healthy.

New Bank Card

I got my new Capital One bank card in the mail the other day. Weirdly, it says I've been a "saver" since August of 2010, even though I just joined. I wonder if they carried something over from back when I had my ING Direct account? I wish I could remember the exact date.

I've been continuing to improve the story I wrote, but I still haven't finalized it. I really want to make sure it's perfect before I show it to people more broadly.

I had a debate about Skype vs. Discord the other day, and it got very intense. It feels as though myself and large corporations are the only ones that appreciate the additional value added features that Skype still offers over Discord, and most of them are content to ditch everything and jump to this new platform just because Skype doesn't run well on Android phones.

Infamous has been a bit cold to me lately, ever since he insisted on an awkward conversation about how he used to think I was female because I have a "feminine" way of expressing myself. He hasn't spoken to me much since he made me a mod in the chat or had that conversation. I wonder if taking the mod position was a mistake now. I really think I need to reach out and find out what's going on, but my schedule is so uncertain right now that I don't want to get myself into a call that I might have to leave immediately.

My Mom's co-worker also got us some longan fruit to try. It apparently means "dragon's eye" in another language, and it tastes like a cross between an orange and a grape.

SN30 Pro, InboxDollars, and Mod status.

Last night, I was listening to Infamous play League of Legends between collecting Korok seeds, so he's finally mixing things up a bit. I think he's getting sick of how repetitive the game is. He isn't having a better time with League of Legends though, because he complained about getting a bad team and not wanting to play soon after he started.

My Mom decided to get me the SN30 Pro for Christmas, and we had a long argument about where to purchase it, because we didn't want to go through Amazon and it's not available in a lot of stores. It's available at Wal-Mart in Canada, but not in our country. It's not at GameStop, either. We found it at AliExpress, but my Mom didn't want to trust a Chinese website. Ultimately, we settled on buying it directly from 8bitdo on eBay, but she insisted on using PayPal because the company is based in China.

The day has been mostly uneventful except for an argument about whether hypothetical immortal dogs would be fertile or not in the Text Chat, and I've been so bored that I've actually been doing my InboxDollars surveys again. I really need to get back on that. I also still need to revise the story I'm working on.

I happened to sign up for a Kobo account and got my first eBook on there, because it was an offer on InboxDollars. It's a service I may need as an Amazon alternative, since I don't intend to shop there anymore. I got a $5 credit just for buying some random book about the Russo-Japanese war. I have a feeling InboxDollars may not give me the $4 credit they promised me, but I knew that was a possibility. The offer was good and covered a service I wanted to use anyway, so I took it.

Finally, Insulator's plan to have me made a moderator in a Skype chat we're both in has finally paid off. I was added to the Mod chat today. Sadly, Insulator is telling me that he might after a year or so. It's a pity, because he is one of the few reasons I even wanted to stay around. He says he's grooming me to be his replacement. I hope I don't let him down.

Endless Korok Seeds and Cinderelliot's tech problems.

Last night, Infamous had me watch him play-through another area with a weird Korok Seed puzzle again, and he keeps finding these weird puzzles that require him to play golf badly over and over to get a rock up a slope.

There was also a long, awkward moment where Cinderelliot was focused on importing models into this weird program that a lot of anime girls use for avatars, and it only lets him use 20,000 polygons.

I mostly finished my story and got some feedback on it. It seems like I allowed the characters to have too many monologues and didn't describe the environments well enough. I was fairly concerned about that myself, but it's good to have someone else confirm that's where I need to put my work.

Today, Cinderelliot called me again, and we had an incredibly weird call that was mostly silence as he was running around getting tools to repair his new used PS3. He thought he could use his system's disc drive, but the slim's drive was incompatible with the fat PS3 he has now anyway.

New Bank Account

The service fees at Chase are getting to be too high, and they've taken away the deal I used to have with them where I only pay $6 a month for both checking and savings if I owe the service fee. Now they want me to pay an additional $5 a month for a savings account, which is almost as bad as paying the full $12 for a standalone checking account. I've decided to go with Capital One 360 instead, because they don't have the fees. I hope I don't regret the decision.

It looks like Net Neutrality has finally been repealed. Infamous wasn't happy about it, but Insulator seems to be coming around to my way of thinking on the issue.

On a related note, it looks my GTC order for Frontier stock went through at $8 a share today. So now I own 10 shares of Frontier.

Kvinne taught me how to pronounce the word I'm using as her name in this blog. I still seem to be getting the "e" sound wrong.

My Mom had a birthday today, but I just couldn't think of anything to get her. I'm a little bit short of cash because I put a lot of what I had in investments.

We had a Skype call going for six hours that was a lot of fun, typical antics and Infamous disagreeing with all us conservatives. I tried to be a bit compromising and conciliatory towards his views, but I don't really like them. They're a bit too philosophical and abstract for me, too impractical. I used to be that impractical myself, but I've started to learn better.

I've mostly finished working on my story, I'm debating whether to add one more chapter or not. I'll just see if I'm up to it.

My beard is really itchy. I really need to take a shower and shave, but I'm so tired.

Almost finished with story. Annoyed about politics.

I've been focusing most of my writing energy on a story that I'll post here on this blog once I finish it.

Cinderelliot has been randomly talking to me about his Horatio assignment, dogs he's taking care of, and a girl his Dad is trying to fix him up with that he isn't interested in dating.

Insulator and I are frustrated that Doug Jones won the election, but honestly the only reason I'm upset is because the Democrats won. I don't believe the allegations against Moore, but I still think Mo Brooks would have been a better candidate. I mean, you only have to listen to Roy Moore speak to see why he lost... he doesn't sound intelligent at all, and he only won the seat he was holding by 52% of the vote. Trump probably made the right move backing Luther Strange, although I don't like how moderate he is. I was angry last night, but at this point... I don't much care anymore. It could be the best thing that he lost, so that Al Franken will be under pressure to resign. I was so angry that I wasn't in the mood to join a voice call last night.

There's good and bad to this, in the end. Let's call it a learning experience, and hopefully we'll come up with some counter tactics to these random lying women Democrats keep throwing out there to trip our candidates up. They did it to Herman Cain, and I'm sure they did it to Roy Moore.

Infamous finishes DLC, two chapters written.

This was an eerily quiet day. But I got two chapters of a story I'm writing completed. It's about my real life experiences, and I have three or four more chapters to go.

Last night, Infamous called me up, and I watched him play through the final shrine that Cinderelliot did earlier. During the play-through, we came to a puzzle that looked superficially similar to the one we saw last night, but this time there were actually interlocking pieces. The layout of the room was totally different though. We now think Fabian probably misremembered solving the puzzle in this room instead of the one in the last room.

Infamous had an easy time with the monk boss, and made short work of him. He did better on the combat side of things and had more food prepared, etc. At the end of the DLC, he showed me a short but special scene. At the end of the DLC, you see that Link takes a photo with Zelda and the champions. If you go back to Link's house after that, you see that he hangs a framed version of that very photo up on his wall. I thought that told us a lot about Link's character, or at least that he missed them.

I really appreciated playing through this game with Infamous. He's always there for me when I feel weirdly alone. It's like he can sense it.

Infamous plays DLC, and others join.

We had a really good call last night. Infamous played through most of the DLC, and he's nearly finished with it. He's taking a lot longer than Cinderelliot did, but he's going faster than a lot of people I know. The first several hours of the call where focused on this play-through, which was a lot like Cinderelliot's play-through with a bigger audience.

Anyway, the really interesting thing about the call is that Kvinne, Vato, and Fabian all joined. I learned for the first time that Fabian was black. I was really surprised. He told us that he gets yelled at by other black people all the time for having a "white voice," and that he thinks the left is basically anti-white and cancerous at this point. Kvinne of course agreed, because she hates those kind of people as well. Fabian is worried this could lead to a civil war. Vato and Infamous really didn't say quite as much, which makes me think he was more sympathetic to the other side, though he did seem bothered by some of the more egregious examples of left-wing behavior.

We eventually got onto the subject of Obama not really deserving the Nobel Peace Prize, and talking about how they clearly gave it to him because he was black. There was also a brief conversation about whether it made sense for people to identify as a gender they weren't born as, how feminine wasn't the same thing as female, etc. Shortly after that, Infamous came back, and Kvinne put out this random and awkward joke about him identifying as a female. We all scratched our heads, but then the conversation went back to the game, and Infamous soon reached the final shrine in the game.

He had a lot of trouble with this one puzzle where he was trying to slide one locking mechanism into another because Fabian told him to. The whole ordeal sounded very Freudian because they were talking about shoving things into other things. And then in the end, it turned out Fabian remembered wrong and the two things were only supposed to touch from the side, not actually be inside each other. I couldn't resist joking that perhaps he had remembered something other than the puzzle from the game.

I hope we have more good calls like that soon.

Rest of the DLC and long technical conversation.

My Mom got me some Christmas lights to decorate my computer. They take up a USB port, unfortunately. She thought for some reason that the lights could be charged up and left running, but they're just the kind that turn on when plugged in, and turn off when unplugged. I could tell just by looking that there was no battery pack and no on/off switch, but she was still disappointed when it didn't charge up.

So Cinderelliot finished up the rest of the DLC in the Voice Chat the other day. It really didn't add much to the story, but the final divine beast was interesting, and I think the fight against the monk may have been tougher than the fight against Ganon himself. In general, I like the fact that the four rebalanced boss battles are set up to keep you from being overpowered. Amusingly, Cinderelliot's cat unplugged his Wii U at one point, and when he plugged it back in, he didn't lose progress because of autosave. Thank goodness for autosave, right?

Anyway, during the final battle, Vato joined the call. I haven't seen Vato since I started this blog, so I haven't mentioned him before. He started talking to us, which was easier since we weren't playing the game music. Soon after Cinderelliot beat the boss, he had to go to bed. His evil stepmom makes him to bed at 10:00pm every night.

So Vato and I started talking, and we kept the conversation going for a surprisingly long time. We talked about speed running games like Ocarina of Time and Super Mario 64, and how broken the early 3D games were, etc. Also how newer Nintendo games are tougher to break with glitches like wrong warp or things like that. We also talked about using AI to master various games. He wanted to have an AI learn to play Connect Four, and we started talking about checkers being a weakly-solved game, so that in theory if both players play perfectly, it will always be a draw. Just like Tic-Tac-Toe. We stayed up fairly late because he's a night owl and we were hoping Infamous would join us because he said he might, but then he never got around to it.

Breath of the Wild DLC 2.

My entire day since yesterday has revolved around the second DLC released for Breath of the Wild. I've been so caught up in it I haven't even had time to write blog entries.

First, my Mom found the download code I need to get my own version of the DLC expansion, which we apparently got with the game on purchase but didn't know it. I haven't played it myself yet, but I think I will get around to it.

Infamous thought it was coming out earlier last night than it was, and he gave up waiting for it thinking it wouldn't be out until midnight Pacific Time, because that's Nintendo's standard time they use due to having headquarters in Redmond. This time, though, they decided to release it at Midnight Eastern Time, which got Fabian really excited to the point that he started randomly messaging me about his geography theories and how A Link to the Past's map was closest to the "real" one.

Infamous ended up waking me up at 4:00am with a Skype call to play Breath of the Wild because he just found out it had been released. He really struggled with the challenges, had to do something called "save scumming" in order to beat groups of enemies, use stealth armor at night, etc. He took a break at some point, and then I got some additional sleep. By the time I woke up again, Infamous had called me again. He was really excited to share this entire experience with me. That made me happy.

Cinderelliot joined the call as well, and after Infamous had to leave, I saw him play though the same DLC. He was determined not to do it in a "cheap" fashion, and I was surprised to see how quickly he made progress and how much better he was at the game. Not that I'm selling Infamous short... I would probably do worse than him, but this guy is better than both of us. I'm a bit impressed.

Insulator tried having a conversation with me about Mario Odyssey, but he noticed too quickly that I wasn't replying fast enough and decided to end it because I was busy. It's a little unnerving when someone is that perceptive, with a delay of less than a minute between replies.

Unbelievably boring day.

Cinderelliot showed me a completed flash video that he's been working on with Spider-Man taking out two thugs. It was based on a game he played with me a while back for the Sony PlayStation, while we were waiting on Persona 4. I really wish he'd get back to Persona 4, but he doesn't seem interested.

I had corn dogs for dinner, again. A couple hours ago I randomly talked to someone in the text chat about how late it was after making a comment on Breath of the Wild's world, and we compared time zones before having the conversation fade again.

Yes, my day was really this boring.

Xenoblade and Breath of the Wild.

I played Xenoblade with Cinderelliot again, and we finally started making a little bit of progress. His party nearly died several times. We also started having calls in the Voice Chat again, in case Infamous or someone else wants to join.

Infamous also had a call with me, and added a British guy named Drake who typed to us the whole time. He said he was from the UK, and I asked if that meant University of Kentucky or the United Kingdom. Infamous thought that was funny. Anyway, we talked about how Cinderelliot doesn't like puns because they're unsophisticated. Infamous seems to disagree and thinks they show a strong understanding of language. We ended up watching him collect Korok seeds in the Eldin region, and he got stuck on one particular seed where he had to carry a boulder to a particular location by walking through water. He eventually got frustrated and ended the call.

Weird evening.

Cinderelliot wasn't having a good day yesterday. He played Xenoblade with me for 40 minutes, but then didn't feel like continuing to play.

Later on, he started talking about how frustrated he is that his PlayStation 3 doesn't work, and how he wants to replace the motherboard in it. Unfortunately, he has a slim model, and the motherboards for those are often broken and rarely cheap.

I received a mysterious friend request on Facebook, from a British guy who seems to be involved with an independent media website. Also, I was having issues with Facebook messenger not working earlier today, but it seems to have resolved itself.

A weird test I took from something called Project Evo declared that I was an "Oracle," and they want me to buy an overpriced day planner from them. I'm not really interested, I just wanted to see my results.

Blurry day with toasted ravioli.

The only thing I remember clearly about the day is having conversation with Cinderelliot about his favorite Zelda game being Majora's Mask, watching a Spider-Man animation he created, and seeing him talk about wanting a Majora's Mask amiibo. He also hacked his own save file to add Fierce Deity gear into Breath of the Wild.

The other thing I remember is what I ate. For breakfast, I had a breakfast burrito from Taco Bell, which tasted like sour cream and potatoes mostly, and that drowned out the salsa. Not as good as Sonic. The two other meals of the day were toasted ravioli with pasta, reheated from the previous day. I went ahead and finished that off.

The Witcher 3, continued.

So, my four games from GameStop came recently, and the Paper Mario: Color Splash game from Wal-Mart we thought was coming finally got cancelled. So the only game we're getting is the sealed copy of Hyrule Warriors, which is thankfully likely to increase in value over the years. It's already selling above retail price, and will only get rarer thanks to the poor Wii U sales. Things have ultimately worked out.

This time the call situation started off in reverse of yesterday. I started the call off with Infamous collecting Korok seeds, and then he wanted to invite his friend that I don't like, I'm going to call her Pussy. I don't like her because of her political views, and also sort of see her as a rival because Infamous thinks she's more knowledgeable about English than I am. But I reluctantly agreed that he could add her as long as we stayed off that topic. Cinderelliot tried to call me while I was in this call, so I asked if I could add him. Shortly after I added him, though. Infamous had to leave. I suspect it's because Pussy doesn't like me, or doesn't like Cinderelliot. Unless he's upset that I wanted to hang out with Cinderelliot as well rather than just focusing on him play games. Couldn't be... could it? I'm probably being paranoid. I should try to revive the Voice Chat. That way we won't all be trying to focus on who to include in our calls.

Anyway, I tried to watch Cinderelliot play the Witcher again afterwards, though the call dropped several times. The story was very interesting. It was about this man who wants you to find his wife and kid. It turns out later that his wife ran away with the kid because he was abusive and drunk. And he also caused his wife to miscarry. It turns out that the fetus is key to finding her, but it has transformed into a monster that feeds on the energy of pregnant women. The man says he wants to break the curse on the fetus, and shows us where he buried it. He performs a ritual where he apologizes for not embracing the child and gives it a name, and has to worry about being mauled to death by it the whole time he's holding it. Geralt has to keep casting a calming spell on it while fighting off wraiths. There was a lot of background story to this, but that's the part I remember best.

An old face showed up today, a man I call Christian who hasn't talked much in 3 years. He was a guy I used to argue with occasionally back when I was left-wing. Now I would pretty much agree with him. It's sad, thinking about how I used to have no morals beyond avoiding punishment. I'm surprised he has positive memories of me. I'm glad I was somewhat respectful of him, at least I had some manners if nothing else. He was, predictably, talking about how sick he got of that forum we were all on, and asking about the whereabouts of his old friend, Odin. Odin has been missing for years, but he always used to hang out with Christian in a chat that was made up of mostly the "old guard" even at the time I was active. So they're real veterans. He says he regretted taking advantage of Odin's friendship. Infamous didn't know what to say, and said he could only speak for himself. He asked us to tell Odin if we ever saw him, that he wanted to chat. I went ahead and added Christian to my contact list, and he seemed glad I did. I may not be the friend he wanted, but at least he has a few people from those days that sort of remember the issues of the time. I have a pretty strong bond of what C.S. Lewis would call "Storge" with Christian, I suppose.

Witcher 3 and BoTW

Cinderelliot started off a call playing The Witcher 3, but I really had trouble getting into the game at first because pop-ups kept appearing in-game. Infamous eventually joined the call, and I half-ignored the call as the two of them started talking about Skyrim while I was looking at Facebook.

Eventually, Cinderelliot had to leave, and Infamous and I started playing Breath of the Wild again. He completed all the shrines in the Death Mountain region, and started working on Korok seeds as well. I felt like I was falling asleep and couldn't even hold my head up or my eyes open, but I struggled to stay awake a little longer. I had missed Infamous, and I didn't want to leave the call. That probably sounds a little pathetic. LOL.

Diet Coke and random sidequests.

Not much to report. My Mom purchased Diet Coke instead of Diet Dr. Pepper this week, because it was on sale. Not a big deal, though it's been a while since she did that.

Also, Infamous called me up again and I watched him complete some random sidequests in Breath of the Wild. I remember him running around through a village and getting everything fairly easily. He told me that he's been getting better at collecting Korok Seeds, which is good because he wants to 100% the game.

I had an argument with a friend of mine that used to work in the telecom industry, let's call him Raphael. Raphael told me how complex the situation is... we have privately-owned lines running under public roads that have to be torn up to place or repair cable. And he thinks that we should let one company have a monopoly on the lines and force the government to have that company let other companies use them for a price the government sets, so as to have the roads torn up less often. I get his perspective, but ultimately I just don't like the idea of one company having a monopoly. I'd rather have more cables placed and more competition, than have government force everyone to deal with a single company.