How often does this happen to you?

Now you know why a cruddy computer was able to put my ambitions from 2008 in the back of the freezer. It's that cruddy.

MGS ROM Hacking Support

I edited this comic fragment to represent the snobbishness that experienced ROM hackers show towards new people like me.

The original comic, an outrageously hilarious synopsis of the first Metal Gear Solid, can be found at the author's site. A fair warning, however: there is occasional material in the range of crass to somewhat obscene, and if I were you, I wouldn't read the comments. That said, feel free to give youself a laughter headache.

Number Scales

Whenever I go to the doctor for anything involving pain, they require a statement of how bad the pain is "on a scale of one to ten." This drives my brain up the wall every time for the five seconds before I answer.

I have to calculate two things: 1) how much pain I'm in, and 2) what to translate that to for the sake of the doctor.

If you just think about that for a minute, the problem should be obvious. The metric system exists so that, albeit with some conversions, any general physical measurement can be expressed in universally recognizable terms. Doctors do the same with understanding their patients' subjective conditions via the pain scale. However, the key word here is "subjective."

For starters, it's a principle of philosophy that every individual's "feelings" are unique, and nobody knows exactly how another feels any sense or emotion. Therefore it is impossible to convey pain felt with complete accuracy (by corollary, the number scale may be the best we can get, but that doesn't lessen its flaws). Then to ensure adequate communication the patient would ideally have to know their doctor on a personal level, to be familiar with how they would interpret the information. Likewise the doctor should know their patient and how they would rationalize the formulation of their rating, taking into account their pain tolerance, if they're the type who never give the highest rating out of acknowledgement that it could be higher, etc.

Unfortunately these tend to be mere guesswork (if given any thought at all), and the combined displacement from both parties carries the potential for misunderstanding. It's not likely to cause improper treatment; but it always occurs to me that I may be giving rather groundless information because I have no idea what others typically feel in such a condition, don't know what "the most pain I could endure" is, and so on.

Computers are even less predictable than my life.

So, I haven't been able to do ANYTHING blog-wise because the computer inexplicably ceased to connect to any secure sites. Now, all of a sudden, I can access any https AND the parental controls seem to have ceased restricting my browsing (if altogether I dare not explore, but I can get to some sites that aren't really bad but have been blocked for one reason or another -- like brawlsnapshots.com, for one).

Given that my life is too hectic to do any more than write up this little complaint and disprove rumors of my death, I am actually annoyed that it's now even possible to get on with organizing my list of "to-blogs." It's just another distraction at the moment!

I don't need coffee. I need an elixir.

Most people can jump-start their day with a hot cup of bad-tasting caffeine. If drowsiness were my only problem, I might too.

I only got half a night's sleep in all because of my diabetes. First, my blood sugar was low, then it shot high for no reason, and then it was a bit low and wouldn't come up. On top of that, my continuous glucose monitor started acting up, waking me up every hour for, if not my low sugar, a sensor error.

This morning I got up (late) and was 72. I had some carbs and took a shower. When I got out, I was 201.

So here I am, with a big day of homework ahead of me, tired and with high blood sugar. The most annoying thing right now is that I'm hungry. With high sugar, there is little I can eat without making it worse; I really have to wait for it to come down first.

Coffee? Heck, if being alert would solve everything else, I'd go for it. I don't know how many carbs coffee has, but I doubt it would help my 201. This kind of situation reveals how overrated that black stuff is. I'll drink coffee regularly when someone invents a panacea creamer.

Life Update

I really don't know how to go about this, so I'll just list two major points:

• School
• Main computer is busted

That pretty much sums up why I haven't been able to do a lot lately, which is a leading factor in my lack of blogging. No e-mail, no ROM hacking, no access to my idea files, etc. I'll try to suppress the idealist in me and just start posting as if I didn't have some dozens of things I would like to remember and organize first.

So without further ado....

Returning pics lost (from blog transfer?)

I just spent the last hour and a half digging through my files for all of the pictures that go in my posts from September 2008, then placing them in the posts all over again. When I transferred my blog, everything was fine -- until I removed the other user, I guess. I looked at the posts to make sure their pictures were still in place, and they were. As a matter of fact, I think they were there after I deleted my other account. So, what happened? I just found that all of my previous posts had pics that wouldn't display, so now I have to go reinsert them. September took long enough; I don't feel like doing any more tonight (of course, after September and October, I had a considerable slump in posting frequency).

I have a question: do pictures get lost like this at the turn of the year? They really shouldn't, but I suppose that's a possibility. If that's the case, well... I don't know, that's just dumb. It would surprise me if they don't tick off a whole lot of users every time.

There's So Much Going On!

I was recently thinking about getting a job, but do I really have time for anything more?

This week I had my first two golf lessons. I will be having them every Tuesday and Thursday for a few more weeks. Why am I taking golf? I don't really know. My mom signed me up for it along with my siblings. I'll admit I need more physical activity, and maybe golf would be ideal for me since I'm not generally an active, hyperventilative sports person. Still, I'm not really interested in golf, although everyone says I'll grow to love it... Do some addictions begin with reluctance?

Philosophy and chemistry are going well, and I'm managing to keep up with math and Spanish. Not much to say here.

The computer's internet safety system decided to start blocking blogger because an offensive blog had been updated recently and was thus being linked to from the sign-in page. This prevented me from blogging for a few days, and it was quite frustrating because I couldn't figure out what it was blocking until I had my dad look at it a little while ago.

Last but not least, Mega Man 9 has finally been released! The Blue Bomber's first game since the Playstation is a downloadable title for the Wii (and other internet systems, I believe, such as the Xbox 360) and is designed to be like an NES Mega Man. I got around to downloading it today, and my first impression is: WOW, COOL, GREAT, YES! (retarded, I know.) The graphics are pretty much identical to an NES title; the music and sound have the same, awesome "low" quality of the originals (complete with sound cancellation); and the gameplay is just like it always was! You cannot slide or charge your weapon, but for the really old-school MM fans like me, that's no problem. The only bit I've seen yet that was never present in any form in the NES games (although I haven't seen much yet -- my mom kicked me off after forty minutes) is the lab; you can take screws to Roll and Auto in exchange for items, like in MM7, although there are especially cool, useful, and fun ones this time around. In addition to the regular game, there are some extras and mini-games to unlock, a whole bunch of challenges to fulfill, and a downloader for any add-ons that may be released in the future. Creating Mega Man 9 in the first-generation style is definitely the smartest move Capcom has ever made, and MM9 itself may become the greatest in the series.

So, with all that on my plate, I'll be pretty busy for a while! MM9 is going to steal as much of my free time as my mom allows, although I need to finish Wily's Fortress in a Rockman 2 hack so that I can write a post on it and another like it. That said, I'll probably finish the hack and review the two hacks first, enabling undivided interest in the new title. Between that and my mom, I'm likely to be the last person to beat MM9, but when I do I'll still review it, 'cuz I love the classics, and this is a brand-new classic.

Oh yeah -- the "Something Man" boss names tradition has finally been broken. There are 8 Robot Masters, but one of them is notably different from any other -- it's a she. Yup. Splash Woman. = ) She's a hostile mermaid. Reminds me a bit too much of Leviathan from Mega Man Zero, actually, but I'll let that slide. Besides, she was built by Dr. Light, not Dr. Wily (Ooooohhh.....!? I won't mention the storyline yet because I only know the beginning).

Problems Already!?

As soon as I get my blog up and running, I start having problems. Oh, everything's all right, but it is incredibly frustrating to try to transfer a newly created blog to my other account address, only to find that something is just not working. So either my other address will get the invite eventually, or I will just have an inactive second author on my settings list for eternity.