Scooter

Last night, Scooter thought a bottle of Nair looked appetizing and tried to eat it. Poison control suggested I take him to an emergency vet, but he seemed fine, and didn’t seem to ingest much (if any) at all before I got it and snatched the bottle from him.

I decided, for financial reasons, to watch him and wait until morning, then take him to his usual vet instead. (And as great as they were, I don’t think I could bear to go back to the same emergency vet where Maggie was put to sleep unless it was absolutely horrific.)

Scooter was fine this morning when I got up as well. But my vet wanted to keep him. I handed the poison control case # and everything to them, and they told me that I’d hear back on his treatment before lunch, so that I could try and take him home and then work late to make up coming in to the office late. (I can’t leave him after 5:30 at the vet.)

I guess that meant hearing about him by 12:00 on the dot.

Because things are completely quiet, and now I’m starting get really worried. Is everything really ‘just ok?’ Did I do something wrong by waiting overnight?

The fact that I’m /dead tired/ doesn’t help much at the moment, it’s making me more agitated and anxious… but while I was pretty calm about it this morning, I feel like that calm is starting to quickly fade.

Update!
Scooter is okay. He is on medication at the vet’s clinic and will be ready to be picked up when I’m off work. Thank goodness.

More Piano Babbling

So I finally got my piano working with the player parts. So for now, I’m making a note of my meager collection of piano rolls. I will probably edit this post as I collect new rolls.

QRS
2591 – The Glow Worm
3034 – Blue Danube Waltz
4916 – When It’s Springtime in the Rockies
5383 – Home on the Range
5688 – Don’t Blame Me
7258 – You Are My Sunshine
9276 – It’s Only A Paper Moon
9817 – Du, Du Liegst Mir Im Herzen
20689 – Die Walkure
10-076 – Make the World Go Away
263-B – Phantom of the Opera Medley (Part 2)
CEL-142 – I’m in the Moon For Love / Should I?
Q-214 – Stumbling (Needs a box!)
XP-107 – Popular Songs of Other Days, No 1
XP-129 – The Sound of Music

Melodee
1051 – These Foolish Things Remind Me of You

SOPA – Stop Online Piracy Act

Just so you guys know- there’s an LJ post that’s being spread around about this. And it’s not just… a little spread. It’s like… an entire single page of my friends list was seeing it and only it. Now… there’s something wrong with it. It’s old. Not like, super old. It was from last week. They had the congressional hearing on SOPA to vote on it yesterday.

They did not finish the vote, and the act is going to be amended to try to make it work. There’s already been a decision for it.

Now- I might say something that would rile people up, but… You know what? If they make it so that it doesn’t take down innocent people on multiple websites? Good. Because a lot of stuff that this act is meant to target is things like online pharmacies that are illegal. Or the spam that you’re getting for specific other things… or people who do stupid crap like leak a movie or game onto the internet weeks before its release.

Then there’s a loophole that it’s written for American IP’s (intellectual properly) on American IP (internet protocol) addresses and sites. It’s not built for international situations, which is also a problem.

But as a photographer, I’ve seen things such as people’s photography being used by major news outlets from stock photography sites. Without paying for them. What the hell, guys? This is meant to protect stuff like that, as well.

The only problem is, the text of the act proves that they do not have someone technically inclined working on it. This is a huge problem in our government nowadays anyway. There needs to be someone who can understand what these geezers don’t.

You know a quote from Wired?

“I’m not a technical expert on this,” the chairman of the committee said, adding moments later: “I’m trying to ferret this out.” When he introduced the package last month, however, he pronounced that the bill was needed because “Rogue websites that steal and sell American innovations have operated with impunity.”

I bolded the important part.

I’M NOT A TECHNICAL EXPERT

Yesterday, when debating the act, they never thought to call in an IT specialist. They wanted more lawyers. In the case of this bill, they need someone with expertise to know exactly how Google functions, to know how DNS servers function. They think that it might be easy to tell Google to stop indexing websites, when the whole search engine is primarily automated at this point. I don’t know how Google is setup on the backend, specifically, but I don’t think making it stop indexing sites here and there is going to be as easy as ‘flipping a switch’ or changing a setting on that particular site.

Nevertheless, now that this is out of my system… Please take note of things, when an article says something like ‘five days from now’ instead of giving an exact date, and people wait until the day of the event to start sharing it? It begins spreading misinformation (something that demandprogress is VERY good at, by the way). It’s important to read and research a post instead of just reading one post and spreading it all over the place. The EFF is a great site- better than the aforementioned website, in fact… and the information is good. It’s just outdated now.

I’ll hop off of my soapbox now and get to work. :>

Extra Life, Multiplayer Edition!

Since I will be spending the next 24 hours in gaming jail for Extra Life, I figured I would make a list of multiplayer games I will actively play. If you play any of them, feel free to hit me up and let me know!

PS3
Marvel vs Capcom 3
BlazBlue Continuum Shift
Soul Calibur 4
Call of Duty Black Ops
Portal 2 (I can play this on Steam, also)
Uncharted 2
Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood
Time Crisis Razing Storm
Little Big Planet
Fat Princess
Spelunker HD
Uno
Wipeout HD

Wii
If there’s an interest for multiplayer on the Wii, let me know, I’ll nab my friend code.
Tatsunoko vs Capcom
Mario Kart Wii
Mario Strikers Charged
Super Smash Bros Melee

PSP
I have Adhoc party on my PS3. I can meet you in a room for that with any of my multiplayer capable PSP games.
Tales of VS
Wipeout Pure
Ys vs Sora no Kiseki Alternative Saga

PC – Steam
Borderlands
Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light
Left 4 Dead
Left 4 Dead 2
Magicka
Sanctum
Civilization IV
Team Fortress 2

My steam username is ‘omgfloofy’ and you can catch me on Facebook or twitter. (either through @omgfloofy or @endlesshistory)

AnimeFest 2011 Classic Games Tournament

I’ve been working on the list of games for the possible Classic Games Tournament that I hope to run at AnimeFest this year. It will be a charity tournament, with a cash entry- the cash will all be going to the Sanctuary Crew’s fundraising for ExtraLife this year.

Thus far, I have:
Combat (Atari 2600)
Pole Position (Atari 2600) (maybe?)
Tecmo Bowl (NES)
Excitebike (NES) (if I don’t do pole position, this will go in)
Mortal Kombat (Sega Genesis)
Super Mario Kart (SNES)

I can’t say for sure on all of these. I’m still working on the list. I’m also working on prizes. They won’t be anything elaborate. Just silly things that may go with the theme of classic games. The big part will be raising the money for the Children’s Miracle Network.

Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

As A Reminder to People Following Operation Rainfall

This is going to be a short post utilizing mostly comments.

Do you remember this piece of news?

If you’re waiting for Atlus and Team Persona’s bizarre erotic horror-arcade puzzler Catherine to be localised, you may have to wait a little longer: Atlus’ US PR has told BeefJack, very apologetically, there are currently no plans for a North American release.

“Catherine is a Japan-only game and there are no plans for a NA release at this time. Sorry about that!” reads the statement.

That was on 2/24/2011 this year.

On 3/1/2011, Atlus had to backpedal and make their announcement. Now, I know a lot of people are likely to jump to conclusions and say ‘this is a result of fan backlash, though!’

…no. No, it wasn’t. The kind of legal wrangling to bring something over to NA can take weeks, or even months. Atlus was already in the process of bringing it here. I just think they were forced to play their hand early and announce it sooner than they intended because of that reaction.

Michael Cunningham, with RPGamer had a great editorial on the subject of the PR meaning behind the infamous ‘no plans for’ statement that you hear a lot from marketing and public relations teams all over the United States.

The first response most people are giving is that Atlus lied. I’m not going to say they didn’t, because that’s exactly what it is. It is also the same PR lie we hear in the industry daily. So why did they reply with the comment? Until a publisher is ready to announce a game on their own terms, they don’t confirm anything. So when asked about a game in this situation, most will reply like Atlus did and say they have “no plans at this time” or offer a “no comment.” PR replies that state a company has “no plans” are often taken to mean a game is not coming, while those “no comment” statements are even taken to mean a game is coming, but the publisher just cannot talk about it. Here’s a quick lesson to anyone who doesn’t know. Anytime a company states that it “has no plans at this time,” they are not really telling you anything. Whether they have plans or not, this allows them to swing either way and be safe. I’m not going to defend Atlus’s comment, but it is something we see all the time. I wouldn’t doubt the company taking a policy where the PR team will no longer reply to any questions like this ever again.

Now, why is this important? Because look at Nintendo’s official statement to Operation Rainfall:

Thank you for your enthusiasm. We promised an update, so here it is. We never say “never,” but we can confirm that there are no plans to bring these three games to the Americas at this time. Thanks so much for your passion, and for being such great fans!

From one person who works close to a corporate level marketing team to a bunch of fans… take this to heart. This is exactly what Michael was saying above on such a topic. I think someone close to Nintendo, or Nintendo themselves, will release one of these games sooner or later. Why?

Because of this.

Nintendo filed to trademark The Last Story on 1/13/2011. The Federal Trademark Registration changed this over to “Notice of Allowance Issued” today. 7/15/2011.

It took the US government seven months to grant Nintendo the rights to use the trademark they registered. And it’s very un-kosher to make an announcement before you have the rights to use the name. (EDIT: I mis-read the date when skimming the page and failed to notice it was 2010… but see my comment on such below.)

Like I said above:

The kind of legal wrangling to bring something over to NA can take weeks, or even months.

Post in Moonspeak?! It’s Really For My Own Notation

These are things that showed up on 2ch about the Falcom Magazine. I’m making a note because I don’t want to lose them. I do have hi-res scans of the interview. I’ll eventually post it.

Read more »

This Is My Theory of the Kiseki Games

Well, mine and Space Drake’s, at least. It started with me hammering in a bunch of things, but while I was in the messy brainstorming method of working this theory into words, Space Drake was fabulous in helping me finally solidify these thoughts into a single, coherent thought.

I will go ahead and block everything behind a cut. I’m turning off all of my crossposting on this as well, as I don’t want people who are not wanting spoilers to run across this information. This is pretty crazy and involved and I can’t exactly convey it in a handful of tweets or DM’s on twitter because of the 140 character limit.

I will be giving kudos to both Yui and Bubble for they have also helped me come up with parts of this theory. So this, in no way, is just a single person’s effort.

Also, I’ve learned that this theory opens way more cans of worms that I can’t fully answer.

Read more »

New Project Name – Job Craziness

We’ve got a new website project to create a ‘global shopping experience’ for our customers. Apparently, we’re going to be changing a lot of stuff over and all. And there’s all sorts of little things to go with it. They want us to create a new project name.

Well, there were little things like ‘Epiphany,’ ‘Project One World,’ ‘Foresight,’ ‘Morph,’… all of these names.

Well, someone dropped ‘Cloverfield’ into the list. I lost it. My coworkers love it. I voted on it.

It’s the winning the vote from all my coworkers at work. Another coworker put it best- she asked her boss ‘Why Cloverfield?’ He sent her the promo. She already knew the movie, so she was unsurprised with it… but after seeing the destruction caused to New York in the promo, she knew it was the right name for our new website project.

I love my job.

Adventures on a Dead MUSH

I’ll leave the picture to tell the whole story…