Socializing Spurt

Well, this past week or so has been fun. I've been over the sisters' house about 3 times now. First one, being the first time entering. :P Then another to fix their computer (which is dead), and yesterday once again to set up a new computer so that they can get their internet set up. The new computer is actually Giselle's old one. I had her switch computers, taking my old Dell (which has been replaced with my mega-awesome rig) and giving it to her, so that we could lend that old rig to someone who needs it.

Unfortunately, it appears there were situations this morning with the internet tech guy who went to install, and the computer. See, the graphics card is a little loose in that machine (crappy Dell PCI lever thingy) so...apparently it got loose and everyone was freaking out because the computer "isn't working". The card is simply loose and therefore isn't outputting to the monitor. But...despite personally telling that to the tech dude, and trying to get one of the sisters to do it herself, it seems their internet installation will be delayed yet again. >_>

Anyway, yesterday we went over Javid's house. It was cool, except we had soup for lunch. I was able to drink about half by dipping my small plate of rice in it, but I gave the other half to Palito, since I don't like soup. I'm sorry, but if I'm gonna eat food, I would like to CHEW IT, not drink it. Drinking is more sodas, juices, and water. You can see some more photos here.
I'll probably get a video somewhere soon, of a bunch of Colombians dancing to that Cotton-Eyed Joe song. Man...they repeated it like 5 times...I don't like it anymore. >_>

I'm still waiting more a non-humid/rainy weekend to play American Football with the group. This week is scratched off because we'll be having a little party for "El Dia de Amor y Amistad". It's pretty much the Colombian Valentine's Day. It was actually a week or 2 ago, we are kinda late celebrating it. ;P

Because of this, and a lot of other things (my sig request thread, commission work, etc.) I've gotten extremely behind in my comic duties. Not that it's super important...but I know how it feels when one of your regularly read webcomics isn't updated on time, so I don't want to do that to my few readers as well. :D And I still need to register for University, now that inscriptions are open...

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that this country sucks, as it "lost" my copy of Mario Strikers, that I had patiently awaited 5 weeks to arrive. I had to send an e-mail to Play-asia and it seems they've sent me another one, which should be here in 2 weeks. If this one gets "lost" again, I'm seriously screwed. It's almost like Colombia WANTS me to buy a mod chip, because doubling the prices for the FEW games that arrive here directly, taxing the imports to crap, and making it an insecure nightmare with their unorganized shipping methods, my choices are limited, and the Internet is there with its usual easy methods...:(

Drawing

Boy. I've been nothing but abusing my tablet for the past weeks! Since the beginning of August I've been doing some commission work, drawing animations, comics, and I'm doing sigs again and a few other commissions! I've made about $100 in the past 5 weeks (not including the job from my dad, which I've yet to hear about my payment) which is pretty cool. Especially since I needed it this holiday as a bunch of games I need to buy are coming out. Have I mentioned which? Let's see:

Battalion Wars (in Sept.)
Supreme Commander Expansion? (maybe. Also in Sept.)
Super Mario Galaxy (Nov.)
Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Dec.)
Frontlines: Fules of War (Jan. 08)
Mario Kart Wii (Jan. 08)

That's the list I have in my head, I'm sure there is something coming out on the DS as well. Either way, the holiday is gonna burn holes in my pocket. :D

ABA Games

Just put up some videos of me playing some awesome games from this dude.

Fotos Plz

Ok, so I uploaded a bunch of photos over on Facebook. There are a couple more on my Picasa albums that I shall link to now...

Seminario Pictures:


Youth Group Miscellaneous:



...and my copy of Mario Strikers still isn't here. I doubt I will ever order anything directly to Colombia again.

3 days.

I am gonna have one massive photo dump to put up after Wednesday. Not just from the seminary, where all of my network will be dressed up all fancy-office-like, but from a bunch of photos I got off Giselle's camera that she never shared. Geez, they go back to the first weeks we were in the youth group. I'll probably have to split it into 2 parts, I'll start ASAP.

Super

What the heck. My copy of Mario Strikers STILL hasn't arrived. My mom fears it has been sent to Bogotá (capital of Colombia) to go through its usual inspection. This country seriously sucks when it comes to shipment. I wanted to send my busted RAM to the US remember? $60 to send something incredibly light inside one of those bubble envelopes. Not only that, but they would tax the receiver. Incredibly stupid. With shipments heading INTO the country, this seems to be the same problem. In fact, there are few cities that you can even visit, without first taking a frickin' detour to Bogotá first. Geez this place sucks. Anyway, I'm estimating another week for the game to arrive, and if it doesn't, I'm gonna have to contact the companies or something. >_>

Anyway, on a happier note I beat that Excite Truck game on my Wii. I hadn't played it in a while, but I beat the 2 last tracks I had to unlock the final 2 trucks. Monster Truck and Super Monster Truck. They're pretty much your prize for winning the game perfectly, since the Super Monster Truck has the best stats in everything (minus the grip :P) and has the Power mod on all the time. That means I can run through trees and instantly smash cars by touching them. It's quite fun.

My monitor is still awesome.

And I was voted best potential Father by 2 people on Facebook it seems. Yay? o_O

22

Check the album for more. :)

So

All right, so here's another little update.

I've gotten a couple other suits in Megaman. One is some sort of phantom suit which I assume has some sort of special power, but I haven't figured it out yet. Even the radar on the lower screen doesn't seem to work. I also got a fire suit, which is pretty much two huge guns on both arms, that with some upgrades can be given some specific path (like, I can make it go forward one space, up one, and then turn again). I also figured out some special abilities with my previous suits. The flying suit has a special air-dash. The ice suit is great underwater, as he can float however he likes (instead of sinking, like the other suits). His spear also seems deadlier underwater, as he does a full circle instead of a slash.

Anyway, the story continues as I defeat a couple more bosses, and eventually have 2 guys board the Guardians (the group that is trying to stop the evil Slither Inc.) HQ airship. These 2 intruders were with the Slither Inc. boss, Serpent, earlier when Giro died. Anyway, I had to fight one of them (learning a few tricks, and noticing that I have to learn to use multiple Megaman suits while fighting) and got them off the ship. Eventually we find out that he was involved with something that Prairie's Sister (former leader of the Guardians) had made (the biometals, i.e. the Megaman suits). Also, turns out Prairie is actually a robot, who has been fighting for hundreds of years against the mavericks, ever since robots decided to fight with humans back in the day. So my quest continues as I look for more biometals to stop Serpent from activating some Model W, which apparently will give him some mega powers. These bosses get harder and harder I tell ya...

Anyway, my monitor should arrive Monday, as should my copy of Mario Strikers Charged (a.k.a Mario Soccer). This will be sweet! I just hope they actually deliver Monday, since it's technically a Colombian holiday type of day. But shipping companies don't pay attention to that...right? :P

Mind Dump

Boy...what is on my agenda? Let's see...

• Work
• Commission sigs
  
• #500 coming soon to my comics
• Website which probably won't be ready for #500
• Getting ahead in strips
• Seminary coming at the end of the month
• Sig requests thread
• Campaign starting
• Megaman ZX

And probably a bunch of crap I can't remember right now. Hmmm.

Anyway, my monitor finally shipped, and so has my order for Mario Strikers Charged (for my Wii) so next week will be awesome.

Choked

Here's a funny story:
Last night I had a dream. I can't remember the whole thing, but the important part was I walked up to a table that had some Hawaiian Bread. This bread doesn't exist in Colombia, and I miss it sooo much. The "butter breads" here are nice, but these are even sweeter. Anyway, I think in the dream, when I grabbed one I found a bunch of ants on it. Probably because this has happened multiple times in the old house, where the ants would find the breads and cereals in the kitchen, which was extremely annoying. Anyway, right after that, I shot up out of my bed, waking up because I began to choke. It was really weird because while coughing, I didn't feel any itches (like when you have a cold or something), so I got a glass of water, and went back to sleep. I woke up choking again a little after, but I can't remember what that dream was about, though it was probably related to the first incident...

Anyway, in the morning I told my mom about what happened, and then she said something that completely made sense:

I choked on my own spit. :D You know how that sometimes happens just randomly while you talk or something? Well, after thinking about it, here is my conclusion...

When I saw the bread in my dream, after missing it for so much my mouth automatically started salivating. The thing though, is that my actual body was apparently in that stage of sleep where they can communicate with each other, so I was actually drooling for real, while I was sleeping. Now, as everyone knows you don't swallow while you sleep. So, what most likely occurred was some excess saliva trickled down my throat and into my windpipe, where my body woke me up, gagged, and tried to cough up the offending object (my own drool) from entering my lungs. :P What I assume happened the second time was yet again, some left over saliva.

So yea. Great way to wake up.

Nourishment

After weeks, maybe months...after eating a small piece of some type of bread and a glass of Orange juice or water, for breakfast and dinner, since we've moved here and even earlier...I finally had some eggs. Yes!

They seemed to finally have finished the kitchen. At least, they have the essentials (stove and sink) installed, so my mom can start feeding me properly again. :P

Also, I forgot to mention that 2 weeks ago I had my first fast. It was extremely painful, and I'm not sure if anything resulted from it, but I hope God appreciated the effort. :P My network leader, Hugo, thought I was gonna pass out as he noticed I was going in and out (I think more from sleepiness, and the added hunger while we're praying made me nap while I was sitting), but overall I made it. However, the following days of that week were an extreme pain as I apparently caught some stomach virus (perhaps from a glass of water he offered me, could of been tap or something ;P). But...I think I'm better now, and this Saturday is the next fasting (I had to skip last week's since I knew my stomach wasn't up for it after all that). Wish me luck. :D

Also, I have work again. Supposedly. Ok bye.

Megaman ZX

So. After my DS failure, I was able to start over and clean out my DS from games I never play. The list was narrowed down to:

Advance Wars - Dual Strike (I didn't finish this game. Will have to start over -_-)
Mario Kart DS (Finished, but have to enable Cheat mode to access all my tracks and characters again)
Metroid Prime Hunters (Was half-way done, but got stuck. At least I can try and kill that guy with the red gun again, as I think I screwed something up anyway)
Clubhouse Games (Cheats enabled to unlock the games I already earned)
Planet Puzzle League (Simple game, one of those for when I'm bored)
Brothers in Arms (Will probably delete soon, but it was new)

Anyway, in addition to these games, I got a new one (which is in fact, an old game from '06 I believe) which is Megaman ZX.

Now, I never played one of the old Megaman games as a kid. I did watch the show though,(which looked cartoonier than this Youtube video from what I remember. Oh well) and have check some of the old games through emulators (mainly the SNES ones). So, why not try the DS game?

So I'll probably use that and some other games as an excuse to update my blog, as I post my progress. Anyway, here's what I've gone through in Megaman:

Vent, a transporter meets up with his boss Giro with a package. They are attacked by Mavericks, some evil robots who are apparently attacking the city and are responsible for the death of Vent's parents. They attack Giro and Vent, with Vent's motorcycle blowing up and Vent being thrown off a ledge with the package. The package opened up, and inside was this "Biometal" which possessed the power of the old Blue Megaman (Model X). Combined with the biometal, Vent is transformed into the main dude, Megaman.

Anyway, he eventually is able to deliver the biometal to this group who is trying to figure out what's happening with all the Maverick outbreaks in the City. He had apparently saved the leader of the group when he had fallen off the ledge, a girl named Prairie. After discussing things on the HQ airship, I believe another attacked occurred in the hometown of Vent, so he decides to take action, since he doesn't want more people to die. Giro goes off with him, as they are allowed to use the Biometal. Giro dies, and leaves behind the other biometal that he was using, Model Z. With Vent near death, the Model Z combines with the model X to unsurprisingly form, Megaman ZX :P

So that's the main story. I've completed about 3 missions already. The different stages are labeled via letters. A-1, A-2, B-1, B-2, etc. I'm currently on I-7 or something, and am stuck against this really hard boss. I've already defeated 2, and got the Model L and Model...something. An Ice and Air suit, that along with the ZX. So...there you go.

Busy Woodchuck

Ugh. My DS memory failed today. On that memory were 25+ game saves, all of which are lost. CRAP. On the bright side, most of the games were simple Pick-up and Play, OR a game I already beat. Some others though, like Big Brain Academy and Metroid Prime Hunters did have some important save info, so I'll have to start over. :( Oh well. I'll be making a script for the new memory so every time it's plugged in, it will automatically back itself somewhere. The old memory is completely screwed as Windows (and Linux) have too many problems detecting it, and I can't reformat the card at all. :\

Anyway, I've been fairly busy this week. Worked on 2 animations for a publicity announcement of a seminar that our Network will be presenting in a few weeks. I got 2 more to finish, and probably will help out with anything else.

Over in my tournament, we just finished Campaign 6. That means in a few weeks I'll start that sig request thread, the one where I draw some 30 images for some dudes to put in the forums. Looks like I'll also be Captain of my company (highest rank in company level) so that's pretty cool.

Uh...what else. I already posted about my LCD. Mmmm...today after church I hung out with some people from my Network, we ate lunch together, hung out at the mall, and then they dropped by my house to look at some photos (and drain our water supply ;P). Overall, very fun. :)

Oh yea, pics of the new house are on my Zooomr page. SO click on that icon over on the right sidebar, with the camera. :D

LCD

I just bought this. Pray that it will arrive safely and undefective. :P

Moved Again

All right, so I haven't posted in quite a bit, but let me try to recap what's happened in...apparently the last 21 days since my last post. :P

So, first off, I couldn't get into the college I was planning to go to, because they didn't accept the SATs. However, next semester I will be signing up for another (I think better) university that should accept it, although it's a little more expensive (though they seem to be more technologically advanced than the other colleges). Looks like I'll be going for Graphic Design right off the bat, instead of my original plan of studying a small technical career for a few years. If I'm gonna spend some years, it might as well be on a complete career and with something I really wanted to try, not just a course that I think I'd be good at. ;)

What else...I probably have a bunch of stuff on Facebook (where, I was recently able to find a lot of my old schoolmates from Elementary School! :D) that would talk about anything that's happened lately...except:

I saw Transformers Sunday. It was awesome. Robot action is awesome. Optimus Prime is awesome.

Lastly, we just moved in to the new apartment (a few blocks from the old townhouse) and so far we've only encountered these major problems:
AC Pains - The way AC works here, is you have the small AC box in a hole in a wall in each room. Unfortunately, the socket for my AC in my room blew up, my sister's wall opening for the AC was too small for her old AC, and my dad's NEW AC blew up too.
Entertainment Center - It didn't fit. We are on the 4th floor, and the elevator here is tiny, just enough to fit about 5 adults. The only other option is a small staircase that is about 2.5 feet wide, so to twist a 5 foot wide center up is impossible. For now, it sits in one of our 4 parking spaces. ;)
Internet - It seems our DSL is not set up yet, HOWEVER we are taking another Wimax trial (search my blog for Wimax for an explanation and story on what happened last time) but to summarize (and conclude, so I can get to bed), this is awesome. The speed is exactly what is advertised, I miss this type of speed.

Anyway, I'll get photos of the new place soon. Good night.

Red

Whoa. Haven't posted in almost a month. Oh well, I come back with PLENTY of photos to make up for it. Have a look HERE and HERE! :D

Let me sum up a little:

So we've been going to a youth group for almost 2 months now. It is a BIG youth group, I'm guessing around...100 or more. Anyway, it's big enough that there seems to be little "networks" over here, or what we attempted at one point with the "accountability groups" in REEL, except these groups (at least mine) has around 25 or more people. :P

Anyway, the first week we went to the youth group, we were greeted by some of the group members, some of which have become our closer friends. So, here we goes...



Here are a couple of the members. The 3 girls sitting down are sisters. From left to right are Adrianna, Lisette, and Karolina. Karolina and Adrianna were some of the first people I met at the group. The first 2 weeks, me and Giselle left pretty quickly after the youth service ended, but on the third one, Adrianna and Karolina caught us, and were able to talk to both of us (mainly Adrianna with Giselle, Karolina interrogating me). Anyway, these sisters have become some of our closer friends here.





As for my fellow males, I've also met 2 funny gringo-wannabes. Here, on the most right, is Cristian. He is a master butcher of the English language, and now greets us (and purposely annoys Giselle) with a loud "HALLO!" all the time. X-)

Another dude who was within the first group I met is Alex, a.k.a Palito (meaning "small stick"). Palito is even skinner than me, and also seems to like and dabble in some English. He likes to sing and dance, and he is very quick with making jokes out of the conversation. He also seems to be quite the ladies' man, but he probably has nothing on Michael. ;P You can see him above, the first one to the left of me.



Last but not least, the leader of our little network group, Hugo! Small in stature, but big in heart (kinda like Jose! :D), Hugo is a really cool dude, with a mysteriously unknown age, and a lot of youthful energy. Anyway, we've been hanging out more and more over the past weeks, and just last Sunday they all invaded my house, so you can go check out the small albums on my Facebook.

Hair-be-gone-salon-athon Store.

An hour ago:


Now ago:

Supcom Battle - 5/22/07

So, I'm gonna layout my battle this morning with some dude in Supreme Commander. Here is an overview of the map we played, Emerald Craters. I'm the red team on the North, and he's the Green on the South. A basic thing you should know about the game is that there are 2 resources. Energy, and Mass. Energy, is easy to get. You just build different generators. You have different levels of technology (3 of them) so you start out building level 1 generators. Eventually you upgrade one of your factories to build a level 2 engineer, which in turn can build a level 2 generator. Then again for level 3. There is also a special type of way to get energy, and that's through that yellow lightning bolt you see on the map, which you build a Hydrocarbon Plant on.

Mass, on the other hand, is a lot harder to get. All those green patches across the map are your mass deposits. You have to build a Mass Extractor on them to get any mass. Thing is, being a large map, my engineers can't get to all of them quick enough, so I mainly grab all the ones near my base, and upgrade those. An alternate method to receive mass, is through a fabricator. The fabricators (only level 1 and 3) use up a LOT of energy to make some extra mass. For every Lvl 1 Fabricator you should have 2 Lvl 1 Generators. Hopefully, you caught all that.



Here's my base a few minutes into the game. Already got a land and air factory up. I wish there was some indicator that let me knew when a factory finished, many times I losing valuables seconds/minutes because I didn't realize one was done. I could of started building something earlier...-_-



Here's an overview of my scouts (those 3 diamonds across the center) doing their recon work. Just to make sure they (the enemy's armies) aren't there. I should of built a small base on that eastern (right-side) mound, but didn't, and eventually lost it to my opponent. :P



Here's his base after 5-10 minutes in the game.



And here's my base. Not bad either, but maybe a little less organized.



Here is his little army, he set them up in a line in front of the base he started constructing near the center.



At his main, he built a LOT of fighter jets. :P Later to destroy all of mine, protecting his gunships.



Dundundun! I send my first wave to his little, yet quickly growing base down near the center.



Here is the closest I got to winning. Our first armies meet, but interestingly enough his Commander was out there in the open, ready to build something. however, he quickly retreated as my first wave gave attack. They were all destroyed as his little defense line was bigger than my attack was.



Here you can see our respective bases so far...



Here's about the best I was able to get my base to. Right now you see a Level 2 Shield being built in the top-right. I was able to get about 4 all around my base at the end. However, that whole section in the top-left was taken out by a surprise ground+air attack. He had sent about 20 gunships across the left of the map, and then attacked from the North, but even worse was the fact that he had loaded half of those Gunships with a tank underneath! So I had about 10 tanks eating away as a bunch of Gunships attacked from above. I lost a lot of my power plants and fabricators (they turn energy into mass) which I had to rebuild later on.



My problem: I did not have any of this at my main. After that attack I was left rebuilding what I already had, which was older level 2 technology. He already has level 3 shields, power generators, and fabricators running his main base.



Here is a final overview of the map. As you can see, I did a fair job on expanding, however, the key is inside the enemy's main base, down in the south. That's where all his power was coming from, and from there he was able to amass an army near the center.



Here is his final wave, the army that eventually destroyed me. Noticed how he strategically position a bunch of shield tanks throughout the formation, as to give maximum coverage to all his bots and tanks.



Here you can see his huge army eating away at the south of my base. I'm in trouble...



See that floating ship near the top? That was a transport. I tried to build it as fast as possible to fly my Commander out of my base, but they shot it down quick, so you can see my Commander (the robot on fire :P) running away...



but they caught him so...I died. :P

Blurbizitation

No, that word does not exist. Oh well. Here goes my random thoughts for the day (and throughout the past weeks :P)...

I really suck at the large maps on Supreme Commander. I've been playing this one, called Emerald Crater. A huge green map, with one big circle in the middle, and 4 smaller circles on each cardinal direction. Then there's also a nice chunk of land with some resources on each corner on the map. Anyway, I can't seem to expand fast enough, which leaves me with low resources, and with my enemy able to build his army ALL around me. I just finished a game, this time I did a lot better at expanding, but I hit another problem I have which is advancing my technology (level 1, 2, 3). So he had these HUGE power plants (Level 3) before I did (though I had quite a bit of Level 2), so he was able to build larger armies than I was able to counter with. I saved the replay to check out how he worked his stuff. I'll make a separate post showing our battle, since describing it is a lot harder, than staring at some of the beautiful screenshots I could be taking instead. :P

I've been finalizing some stuff with my website, and thanks to Justin's help, I've been able to get my layout completed! I'm testing out some stuff with the scripts and junk for my comic system, so that's what I'll be working on for a bit. I set up a test page here. here you can see my original mock-up for it, I got it pretty close eh? :D



School. It rears its' ugly head once again. I have a week to decide whether I'm gonna sign up for Graphics Design at "La Universidad del Norte" and start in June (or July) the classes. Ugh...I'm gonna have to pray hard for this one, because if I miss it, I'll be schooless for another year, which isn't necessarily bad but...you know. It would be better to get in school again...I guess. I wish God could send me an e-mail, to let me know what he wants...

We'll be visiting a youth group on Saturday, checking it out to see if we like it. We finally were able to check out the small youth service they had on Sunday, not a lot of people, maybe about the size of REEL, but with a couple more little kids. :P

I'm hungry.

If I didn't mention this already, we bought an apartment. After we move out (I think next month, or July) we will be staying at an apartment for a while (few years or so, unless we find a nice house or something :P).

Pixtures

Here you can see some of my huge base. There's my commander there with the name tag "mastastealth" on it.



Here is on of MY races' experimental units, the Fatboy. It's pretty much a mobile factory (which I used to build all those anti-air tanks next to it). You can see the wreckage of one of the enemies' experimental units, the Monkeylord, A huge spider bot, in the background.



One of my little Anti-air points. You can see the guns firing at some of those enemy green planes on the right.



Here comes one of the biggest, baddest experimental units in the game. I believe it's called the "Czar" and it's pretty much a UFO with super laser beam underneath.



And here you can see that UFO blown up. I had to send every fighter I had to take that punk out.



So that's Supreme Commander. Here's a picture I drew for a contest on Deviantart:



I'll get screenshots of my Linux desktop later.