MILES to GO || before I sleep

Like when I was in Japan, now that the semester and a full workload has started, I'm back to cherishing my weekends the way a man parched of thirst cherishes the single droplet of water he can get on his tongue. Nonetheless, I get to the weekends hoping to relax, and I only find myself bombarded with more things to do. I keep telling myself "I need to help out" (in the case of Baba and Grandpa) or "I can't quit" (in the case of school), but sometimes I just feel like staying in bed ALL DAY LONG. (And then of course, I feel miserable after the fact, for all the things I missed).

Anyway, starting yesterday my computer started acting strangely because of my "overload" of fonts. Well, I only had something like 700 fonts on the system (when the OSX documentation says it can handle up to 7000!), but Photoshop just wasn't reading them. So I decided to go through Font Book and weed out the invalid fonts (those missing Font Name Tables), of which I found 67. The important ones (esp. the ones I've hunted for or paid for) were intact though, but then Firefox (which was already acting weird, smashing words together and causing them to overlap sometimes) and Firefox (which had previously been acting weird but apparently stopped when I switched the default fonts) suddenly had NO text anywhere.

So I had to take all the fonts I'd put in the trash can and go through them one by one, to make sure none of them were fonts used by the system or the applications. Then I weeded out the duplicate installations, disabled and removed them, closed font book, emptied the trash, and was able to reopen both Thunderbird and Firefox without any problems.

But encoding is still apparently an issue with Firefox; in Safari, Japanese characters show up just fine in the default Western (ISO-Latin-1) encoding, but with that same/equivalent encoding in Firefox (ISO-8859-1), I get random characters. I'm worried that it's because I deleted some Japanese font on my computer, but I doubt it-- I doubly made sure that all the fonts that I deleted were trouble fonts, not system fonts. What's even more irritating is the lack of a singular encoding for Japanese/other Asian languages and accented characters, like é and ó and such. So I could see José Cuarón, but not ラブとエロス. And I know I didn't (and COULDN'T) have deleted those fonts, I just 'accidentally' disabled them. A Spotlight search revealed their location and I re-added them to Font Book, but before I would drag them over or double-click on the files and nothing would happen or change. Now that I have installed them again (and can see them in Font Book and noticed the change in Cocoa applications like this one), I hope my font woes will be over with.

There's nothing worse than stressing about the things you normally love. I love fonts. I love video games. But my computer was driving me batty, and I still haven't found my PS2 Memory Card! I've almost completely cleaned my room, too. It wasn't just hidden amongst the piles of things I had unpacked from Japan or from my mom's boxes; unless it somehow got mixed up in things that I put away, or is still lost under something in the rec room, I don't know what to do.

Sure, it might be fun to just buy a new memory card and start everything fresh again... but honestly, I had made SO much progress with the games I had on there. To name a few that I can remember:

Final Fantasy X - I finally was inside Sin! But I hadn't beaten the game yet, because I wanted to try getting the Ultimate Weapons. I remember getting past Seymour Flux and finding out Auron's secret, but that was as far as I remember getting.

Final Fantasy X-2 - I'd already beaten this game once with a 98% completion (I didn't beat the Den of Woe or the Via Infinitio on my first run-through), and I wanted my second game to either be the 100% completion or the "get tons of accessories" game, with a possible third play-through being the 100% Perfect Game. This is the one I'm most sore about possibly losing, because I had John (back in Japan) help me shove Tobli into the elevator during that one Chapter where you can get the Enterprise accessory... and that's SO damn hard! Yes, I know the greatest feeling of accomplishment is for something you've done yourself, but I tried SO HARD to do that, and I couldn't. John said he could, so I let him-- and he did! I treated him to dinner for that, and to throw all that all away would make me so sad.

I was also playing this game on International + Last Mission, because I'd never want to get to the final dungeon in LM without having accessories like the Iron Duke.

Katamari Damacy - In the original, I think I'd gotten up to Make A Star 7 or something, but I had something like 68 total constellations. Then I moved on to Katamari Damacy 2 (aka We ♥ Katamari) and managed to find a lot of "lost cousins" and reveal much of the King's sordid history, but there were various levels I hadn't beaten completely (like the Origami one).

Yu-Gi-Oh Duelists of the Roses - I'm actually not too bummed about this one. Over a year ago I'd accidentally overwritten my winning game file when trying to play "the next side" so I could eventually unlock the special Duel Masters and Deck Creation modes. Whenever I tried to play again, I always lost miserably to someone in the beginning. So I wouldn't mind a fresh start with this game.

Overall, I'd say I wouldn't be horribly upset if it were gone-- I mean, I could have a lot of fun replaying some the games over again. It's great when a game has "replay value," but I don't think my situation is what game designers and publishers have in mind when they say a game has "great replay value." So if it really did get down to it, I might buy a USB adapter for my memory card so I could just download some saves for FFX and FFX-2 (maybe not ILM, even though I think that was the one I got Enterprise in), and hopefully backup my saves, too. I don't know, does anyone know of a place where I can get:
* a new memory card (preferably a larger one, like a multi-card-in-one, or a pair of Memory Cards at once)
* a USB-to-Memory Card adapter
* free savefiles for FFX and FFX-2?

Last night Elliott came over and we ended up spending most of the night watching Food Network or the Tyra Banks show (it was the episode I'd wanted to watch, even though I stumbled on it totally by accident-- the episode about her supposed horrendous weight-gain. For the record, I thought that particular picture was just a bad angle, the same way plenty of people get their pictures taken where their face looks bleached out, their hair looks mussed up, their teeth have something in it, red eye, etc).

And hey, here's something you may not have known about me! My BMI is 19.5, which is just one point above the bottom line for the healthy weight for adults of my height. If I were 18.4 or under, I would be considered underweight, but I don't know how many pounds would calculate my BMI that far down. And frankly, I don't care. I happen to like my figure very much, even though occasionally I think my butt's just a bit TOO curvy or my thighs look a bit like bowling pins.

( On weight, body image, and stupid models )

Okay, I'm not sure who to blame for this one-- Vince for bringing me to Bob's party, Marc for playing against me first, Jimbo, or Christal. Regardless, I bought Katamari Damacy the day before I left for San Diego-- with my GameStop bucks, it was just a little over $12-- quite a sweet deal, if you ask me! But of course, I'm addicted.

And I'm still stuck on Make A Star 4, which is the same level I played to and got stuck on before. I've ranged from the low 50s to 99.8cm-- so blasted close! But alas, I just can't make it up to that 1m mark! ;_; How irritating! I did manage to work up a sort of stratagem: get the caramels, dice, and pins first, then the mah-johng tiles. Follow up with the batteries and then the erasers, and roll off the table to get the parsley, Lego blocks, round batteries, and mice. Get big enough to pick up Mandarin peels, shogi tiles, and the mini-Pylons. When all the small stuff from the living area is stuck, grab the books separating the main room from the porch, and grab the watermelons, the soda cans, and the flowers. Head around the side of the house underground; grab a few spiders, some rats and mice, and the little Jumbomen. Head up into the kitchen/bathroom area, and try to roll up to the counter to get the present. Move onto the boy's room and grab some toys, and then drop out the balcony to the garden. Grab the microphones and fireworks, and see if you can grab some potted plants and buckets. Try and roll up to street-level, and start grabbing balls, cats, briefcases... and then I always run out of time. Sometimes if I can manage, I wander around in the garden to grab cucumbers, rulers, birds, and more cats...

My policy at the moment is to spend 10 minutes (the time you're given to make the 1m Katamari) reviewing fourhouseunion applications, WDKY22, and then go back to Katamari. o_o

Beat it! And I made Cygnus too, although I had too many ducks.

( Something that's been on my mind about Scott. )

It has occurred to me that anyone that could possibly tell Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa about their mother (Padmé Amidala) is dead. The list:
* The Jedi (massacred by the clones & Anakin)
* Obi-Wan ("died" at Darth Vader's hand)
* Yoda (died before he really told anything to Luke outside of his Jedi training)
* Bail Organa (died in the explosion of Alderaan)
* Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader (duh.)
* The Emperor/Chancellor Palpatine (duh 2.0)

Who else was there that DIDN'T get killed in RotS? I would cite Jar-Jar, but who the heck knows where in the galaxy he might be? And even if there was someone else --such as the new Queen, or another Senator from Naboo-- how would said person know/seek out Luke and Leia, and why would the two of them believe whatever s/he/it had to say? How would the connection to Naboo even be made?

Fact is, I just started thinking of this out of the blue, because I think a "Luke and Leia find out about their mother" fic would be rockin'. But I'm terrified of looking into the Star Wars fandom for a fic that fits this profile, and I sure as hell won't start another fic. But hey, if there are fans out there, I'm open to recs.

Oh, and Blue Eyes and Apricots is up. I mentioned that in my mailing list, but I thought I'd give it a shout out here, too. All new content, new layout, new affiliates, and more. I'm still waiting on Garfour's response for the art, TAFL's response for the fanlisting's "official" status, and any new affiliates.

Finally, KYSRA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The scanner shipped today. :)