It's Been Awhile....

...since my last post. The blog isn't really a priority in my life, more of a thing to do when I'm bored or putting things off. As of yesterday I am officially done for the summer. I have no job, no major current projects, no school and I may or may not be leaving in a week. So I have one week of BLAH and "I don't know what the monkey to do with myself". I recently bought Overlord 2 for $21 dollars (which pleased me seeing how I have only about $40 dollars of spending money to my name) and it is absolutely fantastic. Of course it has some issues (one being that Gary, my laptop, cannot run it...well at least), and others including minor gameplay and graphics issues. Otherwise I'm enjoying the story, the game, THE HUMOUR, and the general concept behind it. I LOVE playing the antagonist, or the "evil side". Puts a new twist on things. It has one of those "choose good or evil" type set-ups, only you choose between "evil and really evil". There is a kind of neutral area as well, which I seem to be hanging around. It's nice to be able to enslave a town one day and blow it up the next. Blowing up things is fun. Especially in this game. There are a lot of jokes, puns, silly instances and sick humour, which I find hilarious. Too many games are so serious and hard and dark. This is dark with and beautiful wave of hilarity washing though it. I hope to finish the game before leaving (whenever that is), because I can't continue it while I'm gone on my laptop. I also have a time period of about 10pm - whenever I'm too tired to play anymore and pass out to finish it, seeing how that's the only time period the family computer is not being used one way or another. One thing I can't wait for is the plot twist. Apparently there's a rather exciting and surprising plot twist, much like the first Overlord. If it's anything like the first Overlord, I'm all for it, and very much looking forward to it.

So aside from Overlording, I finished my Dungeon Keeper 2 series. Mission 20 was posted about...a week ago ish, and is currently sitting in my channel in 9 parts. YES 9 parts. I promised to post Mission 20 in its entirety, and that recording was over 1 hour and 10 minutes long. I can't remember the full time, but it's all there. I only have the bonus levels to do now, and any other random things I can come up with. I will be beginning my new project soon hopefully. I'll work on it on holidays and start posting on my return. The plan is to do a remake of my "Bercuda's Quest: Avenging Gertrude" a project I started and gave up on last summer. It was a screenshot story making a farce of Dungeon Siege, a game released by Microsoft quite some years ago. It came out sometime in my late elementary - early Jr. High years, so somewhere around 7-8 years ago. I honestly can't remember and don't feel like looking it up at the moment. I have some minor changes to make to my idea however. The main character's name will probably change, I will be posting the video either in Chapters, or just parts as I record it, I'm not sure. I will not be recording town and preparation parts, so I will need map pictures and recaps of missions and quests before each video. The story is, essentially the same: a farce of a journey led by a bald farmer wishing to avenge his cow Gertrude. It is doubling as entertainment and a walkthrough, so this should be interesting. Hopefully it will be received nicely enough. I don't know what the DK2 people will say, but this is all part of a grand experiment...and to relieve my boredom.

Defeat Really is Bitter

And costs me $500 dollars. Seems unfair that a course I believed to be non-mathematical in its approach just so happens to need math in order to solve more than half of the problems. I had to judge a course based on just under less than three hours of instruction, and decide whether to withdraw or not. This first class gave me no clues as to the approaches to the course. The prof said "simple math" was needed. Someone other than a math major PLEASE tell me that calculus is "simple math". I never took calculus in my life. EVER. No where in the course description did it even say that I needed calculus, probability and algebra to complete this course. Sure there were alternatives to using calculus, but that involved more math. I walked into this course, two days a week, three hours each day for six weeks under the impression that it was pure logic, reasoning, graphs, tables and diagrams, NOT equations and numbers. After the "withdraw with no penalties" date, which was a day after the first day of this course, I was supposed to know all this. First class didn't tell me anything. POP THERE GOES $500! Oh no big deal. I'm only an unemployed student with at least a year and a half of university to go. I obviously have $500 dollars lying around to just throw down the drain!

The fact that you don't get your money back is a giant kick in the rear end...a rear end with a broken tail bone. Unfortunately I can't complain about it because it's reasonable. If they gave money back after more than a couple classes, any person could walk in, take up the prof's time, get all the juicy knowledge and then run with it. BUT (and that but is a giant one), University should cost so much in the first place. Education is supposed to be a good thing for a country right? So can someone please tell me WHY they are raising tuition prices again next fall? If you want universities to be selective about how many people they let in, why not just make the standards for getting in higher? Anyone who cannot afford university cannot get in. Oh oops I forgot! Student loans! How silly of me. Those of course take years to pay off, and that only becomes harder when you don't get that lovely high-paying job you always wanted, despite your wonderful degree(s). Of course the money goes to research and upkeep and salary paying etc etc, but the funny thing is, is that the government puts such a small amount of money into schools and universities that they NEED to charge more and more every year. THANK YOU ALBERTA FOR YOUR (lack of) SUPPORT FOR HIGHER EDUCATION.

I'm overly bitter because I was defeated by the course I thought would turn out a lot better than it did. I still think the subject is interesting, and I understand half of what we've learned so far, it's just not good enough. A withdrawal (W) looks better than a fail (F) on a transcript, so that's what I'm doing. And I feel extraordinarily shitty. Nothing like spending sixteen hours over the past two days on a single subject just to condemn it to failure at 3 in the morning the day before an assignment is due. So in the end we have dual blame: false advertising and my inability to comprehend equations I have never seen before in my life. Perhaps if I spent double the time, got some help (though the prof was out of town all weekend and couldn't answer his e-mail), and thought to browse through the textbook BEFORE committing to the class, I would have come out better. I didn't, so I paid the price.

THANK YOU UNIVERSITY AND POOR WORK ETHIC FOR SCREWING ME OUT OF MY TIME AND MONEY.