Yeah, basically I just wanted to get the birthday Journal down.

Well, it's been a few months, let's think for a moment...video games I've played since 8/26 include Dissidia Final Fantasy, Mario and Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, Scribblenauts, Chrono Trigger and My Life as a Darklord. The number of books I've read is limited to Dragonsblood, one of the Pern books, and the book I'm currently reading is Dragon's Fire, ANOTHER Pern book and the last one that the library carries that I haven't read. That makes...five video games and one book in two months.

So it's been a slow couple of months for me, gimme a break; I DID have jury duty eating up all my time for half of it.

I don't remember much between 6/23 and 8/26, though...I spent a couple weeks of July playing Animal Crossing City Folk and Shin Megami Tensei 3 Nocturne and I also read a handful of Pern books in that time, I know, but specific details on that stuff is foggy.

I'll start from the beginning, games first. If you don't wanna read what're essentially game reviews, skip to the part where I talk about my life. If you don't want to read about what's happened to me in the last few months, either, then who needs you! Go away, jerk!

Shin Megami Tensei 3 Nocturne is an EXCELLENT game and comes with my full recommendation. A PS2 RPG, it basically strikes me as a mixture of Pokemon and Final Fantasy...you fight alongside a team of three other demons that you recruit from the ones that you fight. These demons even evolve from time to time after levelling up, so...yeah, the similarities are striking. Think Final Fantasy's combat system mixed with Pokemon's team-building system with a rather light but enjoyable story. I had a lot of fun with it all.

Animal Crossing City Folk is...well, it's Animal Crossing. If you like Animal Crossing, it's as fun as ever, but the fun for old players is more in starting over than in new content, so if you look at the prospect of restarting your copy of Wild World or the original GCN game and feel some sense of being overwhelmed, probably not for you. The new content is nice, but it's really not enough. Redd has a solid location for his store but only replenishes his stock once a week. The auction house only works if you have friends with copies of their own that use it. That's...really about it for actually notable new content, which is to say there are a few other things but those are mostly cosmetic. Animal Crossing is a GOOD GAME, though, don't get me wrong; again, I'd recommend it, but for those not already in the know, be aware that you'll either love it or you'll hate it.

Dissidia Final Fantasy...I bought a PSP solely for this game (well, a used one of the original model, at least), and I'm honestly not disapointed in the least. Final Fantasy meets Soul Caliber, wonderfully implemented. The characters that I'm personally familiar with, including my beloved Kefka, are wonderfully done (and, while I've never played X, I find myself wanting to punch Tidus in the face whenever he even shows up on the screen for some reason). The voices aren't perfect; how COULD they be for the characters from games predating voice acting? But they're not bad and the dialogue is excellent and fitting. If you have a PSP, you should get this game. It's worth it.

Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story. Well, it's Mario & Luigi, one of Nintendo's handheld attempts at reaching Mario RPG's glory on their own. It's good, it's fun, it's funny, the touch screen is well-used, etcetera, but they're still not there. If you liked Mario RPG, Paper Mario or one of the other Mario & Luigi games, or if you just want to play a funny RPG for once instead of one where the villain is trying to blow up the planet or something, it's worth the money.

Scribblenauts is also fun, but...short-lived. They screwed up on the controls and, honestly, the puzzles are either pointlessly easy or maddening. This is a time when I honestly hope they make a sequel because I think they could do better calling this a rough draft.

Chrono Trigger...a great old RPG, more along the standard lines. Short, VERY short by Final Fantasy standards, but still a good few days of play, a week if you play through the new bonus content, MORE if you try to get all of the endings. Unless you're my brother, then it takes several months.

My Life as a Darklord...honestly, I hated it. I loved My Life as a King, the spiritual predecessor to this one, but....the problem is, I payed for the downloadable content. Which I found out afterwards doesn't really add anything to the game except to put it into a perpetual "Easy Mode." I dunno...I hesitate to say much on the basis that it feels like, if I'd just NOT bought any of the DLC, I would've loved it. It's tower defense done uniquely, I'll leave it at that, buy it if you're curious. I've heard better things from people who didn't get the DLC, so...yeah.

Onto the books! I remember nothing of what I read in the summer. And I have little to say about Dragonsblood other than that I enjoyed it. Whatever, Pern is a decent series, as long as you can deal with the first few typo-filled books...

Onto my LIFE, then. Got my wisdom teeth removed early August...and I survived jury duty, obviously, celebrated with a game night before starting school, went to Kumoricon, which was pretty badly organized. I mean, I spent four hours in the Brawl tournament before being knocked out and I played a grand total of two rounds. Monday was much better, played in a Mario Kart Wii tournament where they didn't let me use the Wii remote interface I was used to...actually, that was the case in both instances.

Oh! I got a guinea pig! His name is Moose, he's a swirl of brown and white and he's a tiny, adorably little MANIAC. He enjoys chewing on things, running, sitting in his food bowl and climbing on top of his igloo.

School, then. Calculus II, CS 260 and SP 100. Can't believe I have to take a Speech class, but...there it is. Taking SP 111 in Spring, too. Jeez. Anyway, CS is fun, I like it...Trigoboff is a nice teacher. Calculus, though? I like the guy, but he assigns three homework assignments every week and we only have two classes. It just doesn't make sense to me, but it DOES make me feel overloaded with work. I also tanked the first midterm, which will be dropped if I do better next week, thankfully; I just blanked when I looked at the test. It's never happened to me before. I don't like it.

CS and SP are both pretty easy-going in comparison...SP keeps assigning chapter review essays, though, which is annoying, and CS is inherently unpredictable. One moment it's easy, the next it doesn't make sense, etcetera. But I like it...I enjoy programming. Debugging's a pain, but figuring out a problem in your code is another sense of accomplishment alongside figuring out the perfect algorithm.

I also joined the local honor society, Phi Theta Kappa. I figured, why not? Eighty bucks, looks good on my resume, possibly opens a few doors...just a good idea.

Oh, yeah, I also bought a box of the newest Magic set earlier this month..they stuck a few old, OLD, VALUABLE cards into packs, so I just wanted to try my luck. 5% chance I'd get one, didn't pan out. Oh well...I have a lot of current trades now, that's pretty good on its own.

That's...I think that's pretty much it. I have a two-minute-long speech to give tomorrow, so I'm showing up an hour early to actually do the research and generally prepare for it. That being the case, I'm going to bed early tonight...meaning now.

-flees the internet to his bed-