September 16: Return to Work
Since I haven't blogged in a few days, I guess I'll start off by recapping.
On Tuesday, nothing really of note happened at all (hence no blog). I wrote a chunk of my paper and got tests ready to run over the weekend. I think I had hiyashi wakame ramen, so not too much to report on the food front. I played some Touhou UFO in the evening, as I kind of wanted to beat it before I bought the next game, Ten Desires, which became available in Akiba during the past week. As it turned out, I stayed up relatively late, and so I woke up on Wednesday at around 12:30. I somehow managed to take an inordinately long time to get ready to leave; it was 2pm before I was ready to go. I decided to go to Akiba on Thursday instead, to get a fuller day. For the rest of the day I played StarCraft with Kevin (since I wouldn't be playing on Thursday) and by myself, in addition to trying again and actually succeeding in beating UFO (haha perfect timing). I didn't go out for dinner, as I thought my budget was tight and had LAWSON STATION katsu-don instead. I'm not sure why I waited until AFTER eating to catch up on my budget tallying, because I was surprised to found out when I did, that I was actually in relatively good shape. Oh well. I enjoyed my katsu-don, as I haven't actually had it in like 3 weeks. I got all my chores done on Wednesday, so I was free to stay out late on Thursday. I called Dad at about 12:05am on Thursday morning, to wish him the earliest Happy-Birthday-in-which-it's-his-actual-birthday-for-at-least-one-of-the-parties-involved ever. I then proceeded to stay up too late doing nothing particularly useful (and that I can't even remember now, which means it was REALLY not particularly useful).
On Thursday I voice chatted with Mom and Jiuna from 11 until maybe 12:30 before leaving for Akiba. I basically walked to the bus stop and straight onto a bus, which was really nice, as it was quite sunny, and the sun is so strong here it sometimes makes me dizzy (even in mid-September). Unfortunately, I would have been able to get off the bus and walk onto a train (well, walk to the station and run once I was in sight of the signboards telling me when the upcoming departure times were), but a cluster of incredibly relaxed women blocked the whole sidewalk for half the way to the station, and I missed the limited express by a hair (I heard the doors close as I ran up the stairs). D:< If someone ever notices and points out to me that I am engaging in such gainlessly disruptive behaviour, I think I will have a major personal crisis.
Once the train came, an old lady toootally budged in front of me and then went for the completely empty courtesy seats which are reserved for her anyways... Old habits die hard I guess...? I rode to Shinagawa, and then to Akiba without event.
Once in Akiba, I went to Tenya and ordered my usual all-star set before noticing that they've got a new fall menu. Oh well, there will be other opportunities, and their fall menu looked quite a lot like their summer one, to be honest. After eating I tried (again in vain) to find the doujinshi (a homebrewed comic) Jiuna wants, but that thing is impossible to find. I literally looked at every cover in the "New Arrivals" on the floor it should have been on, but to no avail. There was one open slot that was sold out that I noticed, but Jiuna hates things that are popular with untold fury, so I guessed that it wasn't what I was looking for haha. I actually managed to buy something for myself though, as browsing through all the new arrivals led me to a book with some rather beautiful random pieces of art in it. It was also cheaper than the price tag suggested. Yay~! Toranoana was actually sold of out Ten Desires, which was not terribly shocking to me. I had hoped they wouldn't be, but I realize that it's a new Touhou game during the week of its release, so I was fully prepared for that possibility. And by fully prepared, I mean that I knew that Gamers was also getting it in stock, and so I went there, where they had a gajillion copies left. >_> They put theirs on the 6th floor, those jerks. Oh well, it worked out for me hahahah. I unfortunately ended up buying two more Touhou games that I won't be playing for a while yet, but whatever. What is life, other than a series of loosely connected impulse-buys? ;D
After my unintentionally selfish shopping trip, I went to CLUB SEGA 2 to play ESP Galuda. I ended up playing reaaaally well by my standards, getting a score that was more than 1.5x my previous personal best, and clearing an entire stage that I think I may not have ever seen before, before dying on the boss of the next one. O_O I have no idea where this stroke of danmaku genius came from, but I was quite excited to see how it translated into Mushihime, and as I found out quite quickly after moving to HEY!, it didn't. I got to the 4th stage relatively frequently again, which is no longer a new development, but is still nicer than dying on stage 3 all the time. I have the most frustrating affliction of having wild performance shifts within a single play. D:< The times when I play the best are when I've royally screwed up the early levels and have few lives, if any, and few bombs if multiple bombs are possible, and when I do well in the earlier levels, and get to, for example, the middle of the third stage in Mushihime without bombing or dying, I will not even make it to the boss. This occurs in ESP Galuda, Mushihime and Touhou all with alarming reliability, which inevitably leads to copious swearing in the case of Touhou, where I'm in the privacy of my own room. >_<
I ate buta-kim don at Meryl Streep for supper at about 8:30 and left Akiba shortly after. The day basically ends when I get on the Yamanote to go back home, as the trip takes roughly 2 hours. One thing I noticed on my way home is that Kirin is now advertising a new line of Milk Tea they've put out called "Pungency". >_< Despite the poor name choice, I tried it, and it's actually pretty good, though that's probably just because I like Milk Tea.
Today was a regular day back at work. I worked on my paper all day, as my tests haven't finished yet. I loaded them on pretty thick, as I have until October 5th to submit my paper, and I want to know definitively if I'm totally screwed or not-- no more of this "I'm not sure if the results are conclusive or not" crap! Today was a bit frustrating, as I spent a good deal of time trying to find out how to do better formatting while restricted to using LaTeX's eqnarray. The sample document says to use eqnarray for multi-line equations (which is exactly what I'm working with), so I figured, since they have a 9-page document on how exactly to write your paper before you submit it to them, that it would be a good idea to stick to their outlined (and coloured and filled and embellished and varnished) procedures. Finding out how to do better formatting with eqnarray proved quite difficult, as everyone on the Internet who had asked the same questions as I was had been told in no uncertain terms that eqnarray sucks and they should use something else, which will instantly fix all of their problems. D: Lucky for me, Kabutoya-san came by after several hours of experimenting with new attempts at tricking eqnarray into behaving itself (interspersed with giving up and writing more stuff once in a while) and asked me how I was doing. I explained my problem, to which he (of course you all saw this coming a mile away) told me that I can totally just ditch eqnarray because it sucks and everyone uses amsmath's align instead because it instantly solves all your problems. D:< Why exactly didn't I actually ask whether it was OK to use other packages before giving myself ulcers? Well this is my blog, so you don't get to know until I do. D: Writing went a little more smoothly after that.
I left at around 6:15, as I wanted to get a wash going before eating supper, which didn't end up happening, as I remembered while walking by the Matsumoto Kiyoshi that I had run out of handsoap. I also bought some floss in case I run out, and I'm glad I looked into it then, because there was one on sale for about 200円, while all the others were more like 600. D: I'm a little worried about how much cheaper my floss was than the others... I hope it doesn't have like, fibreglass in it or something. D:
Dorm dinner was decent, it was pork mixtures and oden with miso soup and rice, but the real star of the show was FROZEN GRAPEFRUIT LIKE ALWAYS! HELLZ YEAH! *<:B I got my laundry going right away, but I still had to stay up to wait for it. I hope it's ready now, because I am done blogging and want to go to bed. At least I got to try out Ten Desires. It has yet to grow on me, and I have only played it past stage 2 (I tend to be a little suicidal in these games when they're free) about 3 times, so I am not yet passing judgement.
I have been feeling like I'm getting a lot better a danmaku with all the practice I've been getting, so I made the mistake of "empirically" testing this by firing up Touhou Perfect Cherry Blossom and seeing how I did on hard mode (my most played configuration and game before I stopped playing for a while). It was really easy keeping track of all the patterns, which I don't recall being true before, but that just meant I ran into bullets that I KNEW were there, which is kind of worse than before in a way... I still can't make it to the stage 4 boss on one continue, though I suppose more than 2 tries is necessary to see what's really what.
Anyways, I can't hear the dryer anymore, so I'm going to post and leave you for tonight.
Night!
No comments:
Post a Comment