Linkstew

The most notable thing I can say about Final Fantasy Tactics Advance so far is that it's put me to sleep about 7 times so far.

The intro to the game goes for at least 30 minutes before you can save the game, and closer to an hour if you're a slower reader. The first time I played the game, I fell asleep before I could save it. The second time, I got to save the game, but when I started the third time, I couldn't remember anything so had to go through the intro a third time before anything stuck. Variants on the same thing happened several times after that, where I'd fall asleep in the middle of a mission or forget what I was supposed to be doing, and just had to restart from the last saved game.

In addition to the slow pace of the game, there are a few other issues with the game. You're rather suddenly dropped into things with a fairly steep learning curve, and this isn't helped by the fact that equipment interfaces leave a lot to be desired. When shopping for equipment, you're only told what jobs can use that equipment, meaning you have to remember what jobs all of your characters have. Worse, when you're shopping, you can't tell if any given piece of equipment will improve your character's stats. And when you're actually equipping items, you also can't tell if the stats are improved -- the only way to tell is to note your original stats, swap items, and then see if they improved.

But, this isn't nearly as damning as it might sound. All those times I fell asleep, I was admittedly pretty tired, and playing right before bed. And the interface problems -- while annoying -- can be worked around without too much effort. Regardless, that doesn't change the fact that this game is not for the casual gamer -- anyone interested in this game is going to need to invest a lot of time reading things and learning the intricacies of the gameplay. If you're a fan of Final Fantasy and strategy games, check this out. Otherwise, I'd steer clear.

I like sleeping. Like, a lot. And once I'm asleep, I'll do anything to stay there. What usually ultimately gets me out of bed is the urgent need to do something: Having to go to the bathroom or to a meeting at work have been the primary things waking me up these days. And when neither of those come up, I just been sleep in absurdly late.

Nothing I've tried has worked to wake me up, because my cunning sleeping mind always works out some way to shut up the irritation. And even if the noise does wake me up, my half-awake mind is usually on my subconsciousness' side, and would far rather stay in the happy fuzzy glow of being half awake than actually get up.

So I've decided that what I want/need is a Simon Alarm Clock. Have the first several beeps start quiet, to gradually wake you up, and then have it get more insistent if you don't start playing. Make it configurable, so you can set how high you have to score to turn off the alarm clock. You'd probably want a way to detect if the player is trying and getting close, just in case the player sucks at Simon. The battery cover would have to be optionally screwable, to protect the batteries from your devious unconscious mind. And there are more details I could ramble on about, but it's a fairly straightforward idea that doesn't need that much explanation.

It would totally work! I'd buy one.

4.0 at 10:47 am? How much more of a backup alarm clock could I possibly ask for?

Seriously, parties shake the building more. The garbage truck shakes the building more. This was just one little jolt, and for some reason, it woke me up. I didn't even think it was an earthquake until I went back and checked the site.

And I didn't even feel the 3.5 aftershock.

I like sleeping in the office, because there someone can wake me up before I really start hibernating. Once I'm asleep, I really like to stay that way. But sometimes, sleeping in the office isn't such a good idea:

And worse, that picture was posted to our internal website for all of my coworkers to see before I even woke up. Oops. I'm actually rather amused by it, though, so no worries.

After the yummy sandwich that this weekend was, I got iPod iCe Cream on Monday.

My weekend was a GameCube sandwich with "all-nighter" bread.

In about 28 hours, I'll be (hopefully be unconscious and not feeling any pain) having my wisdom teeth out. All four of them, as I've previously mentioned. Apparently my insurance is all kosher, and I'm good to go, et cetera.

But before any of that can happen, I have to get to Bakersfield. My train leaves at 10:20 in the morning, and it's currently 5:00am, and I'm awake. Why? Because I haven't slept yet. There's been a ton I've been trying to get done before I'm gone for a long tall weekend filled with pain reliever fun (though hopefully I'll be better enough by Sunday to perhaps play with the Jet Skis again). So updates have been scarce because of work, and they're going to be scarce because I'll hopefully be in one form of unconsciousness or another for awhile.

I know noramlly I'd write a lot on the train, but this perfectly good train ride will be wasted because I've got to make up the sleep I'm missing right now. But think, if I were asleep right now, you wouldn't be reading this completely useless, waste of space post! Imagine what you'd be missing out on!

Uhhh...

But I had things to do! Packing, reviewing my new lease, coding, et cetera. And in an hour (6am pst, 9am est) I plan to watch Steve Jobs Keynote speech from Mac World New York, to see what neat new things he Apple announces.

I wish I could just go to sleep, because I'm clearly not being overly productive. And when I stood on my bed earlier this evening to reaffix my falling PowerBook G4 to the wall, the feel of the sheets on my feet left my whole body desiring more. But I can't go to sleep now, because I'll miss the Apple announcements. And more importantly, I'd likely sleep through my train, rather than sleep on the train.

"Knock Knock! Who's there?"
-- me, still asleep, to my roommate who was knocking on my door to wake me up this morning

I woke up at 7 today for the first time in a long time, in order to put up advertising for our newly open job. And this morning as I was doing my task, there were a lot of words of wisdom which occured to me.

• If you have to be at Evans by 7 am, don't go to sleep at 4 am and expect to be up at 6:45 and be happy about it. I got up on time, but I am so not happy about it.
• Taping flyers to the back of chairs is a task which can be broken into several important, time saving steps. Don't try to put tape on each flyer, and then put a flyer on the chair, in one step. There are several good alternatives:
• The best option is to pre-tape all of your flyers with an easilly seperable tape, which we were too stupid to figure out last night, but will most certainly be doing for Thursday. Alternatively, pre-tape before you make a run down the aisles.
• The next best option is to put tape on the target chairs in one pass, and in a second pass put the flyers on the tape.
• If you plan to tape your flyers up, don't put the most important word of your flyer ("money") where it'll be covered up by your tape. Design around your distribution method.
• If you want to put flyers up in Pimentel, you should probably get there before 7:30, lest the booth operator tell you not to put up flyers there, leaving you with no real choice but to comply.
• Don't try to compete with Student Government elections, because there's no way you can out-flyer them.
• And most importantly, Anne's Kitchen at Dwight and Telegraph is a really great place to have breakfast.

I slept an hour last night. I started programming and I was being super productive, and I didn't want to let that productivity go to waste, so I just didn't go to bed. But then I had to wake up and do my homework, and then give a demo for work, and then class, and then more work. But that's left me bleary eyed as I sit here in the office on a Friday night. I'm too lazy to go home, and yet my productivity has failed out of exhaustion.

Oh, and I had a midterm yesterday. It was okay. I thought I did poorly on a test in this class earlier in the semester, but I did really well, so I'm totally unsure how to feel about the midterm yesterday.

On deck this weekend? Lots more programming. The project is due to be completed soon, though. Then I have a term paper and a class programming project due, and then I'm free for spring break. Only two weeks! I can make it! Hooha!

I woke up this morning to a splitting headache. I was exhausted. I rolled over a few times, trying to get comfortable. Then I saw the clock. It was noon!

Normally when I wake up with a splitting headache, it's because I didn't sleep very long. And normally when I'm still tired after waking up, it's because I didn't sleep very long. But I went to sleep before midnight! I was exhausted from oversleep! And the headache was from undercaffeination, not exhaustion.

I grabbed my laptop from my desk and started typing this. I'm awake but still in bed. I need some caffeine, but I don't want to get up to get any.

While I've never claimed to sleep normal hours, I've been getting pretty bad while on vacation. Without anything to force me to bed or to get up, my sleep schedule tends to drift towards somewhere around 36 hour cycles. This works great for me, but the rest of the world doesn't seem to deal with that too well. So I don't remember when I went to sleep last night, but I was awoken at 9 am by something that I've completely forgotten now. I'm pretty sure I went to bed around 4 or 5 in the morning, and I'd been up for a long time before that. I'd been planning on sleeping until 1 or 2 in the afternoon, so 9 am was quite a shock to my system. It really threw my day off. At around noon I looked at a clock and was very disoriented when I realized I shouldn't be awake for 2 more hours. At 2 I looked at a clock and was very irritated to think that I'd already been awake for five hours. It's been a long day, because it's almost 3 now, but I didn't have very much sleep.

Of course, for the Rose Parade, my mom is planning to go to sleep at around 6 pm so we can leave for Pasadena at around 3 am. Whew. That means I get to sleep in the back of her car, right?