Despite the fact that this past Christmas was one of forty-degree weather, no sun, and a presence of heavy fog, I believe it was one of the most enjoyable Christmas’ that I’ve ever had. The family was in high spirits, the dogs were having fun, and little Hobbesy cat was sitting up in my room where he is, unfortunately, confined playing with present wrapping that I brought up as well as a stuffed hedgehog that I got him a few days prior. Not to mention the fact that Santa had left a certain Santa-colored Nintendo DS under the tree complete (bundled with Mario Kart DS) along with a great number of other goodies.

Currently, Hobbes is residing inside a cage at our local vet building recovering from his joint surgery — front claw removal and manhood removal — waiting to be picked up by me at roughly 9am this morning. It has been incredibly odd not having him around, as this would be the first time in more than a month and a half that he’s been gone. I think I actually had a slightly harder time falling asleep last night without him running around the room like a crazed feline menace. It seemed fairly odd that he was required to stay at the vet’s for two nights though, as his surgery should have taken place early on Wednesday morning. The doctor is also sending him home with little kitty pain medication, confirming the fact that he is, indeed, my cat.

My vacation effectively ends on Wednesday, January 4th. This fact alone isn’t that big of a deal, but keep in mind this just means that I’m traveling back down to Ann Arbor on that day. Classes start back up on Thursday. And — this is the part that annoys me — this means that we’re ending our Christmas vacation, one that is quite short by most Universities’ standards, so that we can come back for a mere two days of classes. I’m curious as to who decided that the students of the big, bad University of Michigan should only have a two week vacation (week and a half, if you were an unlucky student who had exams until the last day of exams on Friday, December 23rd) just to come back for classes on Thursday and Friday. Seems a bit moronic. And, while I’m at it, I’m curious as to why the English 323 (Creative Writing for fiction or poetry, my particular classes being fiction) professors want to wait until January 2nd before letting any of the students know whether or not they passed the application process into the class. Why not decide this kind of thing before break so people can reschedule if need be? Argh.

My break has primarily consisted of three things: family, TV shows and movies, and games. It’s been a time of almost pure relaxation for two straight weeks. I get to eat some good food — including my beloved frozen pizzas which I can never seem to cook (at all) down at school — watch a number of movies/TV shows throughout the course of each day, and enjoy some incredibly video games. Over the course of this break I believe I watched, Alien, Aliens, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Die Hard 2, Die Hard 3, Serenity, Moonlighting (Season 1), rewatching some episodes of the first season of Lost, some Related, some House, and some Firefly. I’m sure there is more I can add to this list, but my memory is starting to fail me.

As for the agmes, well, they’re all just so awesome. For Christmas, I got Dragon Quest VIII (PS2), and then for the DS I got: Mario Kart DS, Nintendogs, and Viewtiful Joe: Double Trouble; I later picked up Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. Nintendogs pisses me off because I hate the little talking-to-the-fake-dog gimmick, even though the rest of the game is enjoyable. Viewtiful Joe: DT is … interesting. I mildly enjoy it whenever I throw it in, but the thought of throwing it in is just unappetizing for whatever reason. And this leaves Mario Kart DS, Castlevania, and Dragon Warrior. All I can say about this trio is that they’re some of the most enjoyable games I have ever played. Mario Kart DS is the best offering of the franchise — period. Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow is one of the only Castlevania games outside of Symphony of the Night (I’ll also be picking up Harmony of Dissonance and Aria of Sorrow for the GBA soon, as I hear both of these are fantastic as well). And then there’s Dragon Quest 8… Which is simply the best RPG I’ve played since Final Fantasy VII. I’m about ten hours into the game, and it’s simply an incredibly well-done classic RPG; it has more Final Fantasy to it than the FF franchise has had in years. I can only hope that the rest of the game is as good as the first bit of it has been.

In closing, here’s the greatest picture ever:

As of this moment, there are only about forty-five hours left before it is officially Christmas day. I am both ecstatic and depressed with this observation. I love Christmas, the atmosphere, the family gatherings, and the presents. I’m still just about as excited waking up Christmas morning with the knowledge that there are numerous boxes that need to have their outer-layers torn about as I was when I was seven years old… Well, I would be, anyway, if we hadn’t switched the “opening presents” start time to late Christmas Eve about four years ago. Though even with this change I still manage to maintain a pretty hyper state of mind throughout Christmas Eve day as well as the days leading up to it.

I’m also immensely enjoying being home. My Christmas break (December 19 - January 4) is, by far, the longest vacation that I’ve had, sans summer, since I’ve been going to school. And even though the first few days home are plagued by some unique brand of bug that makes me feel fairly ill all evening, this break has already been incredibly enjoyable and relaxing. As for the bug, I’m not even sure how I could classify it. I’m fine all day, except for the evening (roughly 6:00pm - 12:00am), at which point I’ll feel pretty good again. It’s been fairly annoying to say the least, but it hasn’t really prevented me from doing a whole lot. It’s just enabled me to sleep a bit more than I’m used to. Oh, and it makes rooms spin on occasion.

An eruption of hype and general praise of EVE Online has been given within the last month. It seems odd that a game released almost two years ago would receive a sudden surge of attention after all this time, but that’s what’s happening. Penny-Arcade has a link to a 14-day trial (no credit card required to take advantage of) of the game, and Tim Buckley has been spreading the EVE love as well. PC Gamer also has a three-page story of an in-game corporation (think guild) being taken down for over $20,000 worth of in-game assets and cash by a select number of in-game individuals. EVE seems to embrace the fact that players can really run an entire economy as well as social events given time and a fairly flexible game design — something that Star Wars Galaxies‘ new NGE has completely obliterated for an otherwise complicated player-run universe.

Anyway, as for EVE so far, I’m actually quite enjoying the game. It’s a fairly slow-paced and very deep MMO that seems to be as much as the players put into it. All the downtime in the game is perfect for how I like to play games, in that I can play for a while, and then set up a destination to auto-pilot to while I talk to people or work on a site update. Plus, the fact that I have a ship named Serenity just makes me all sorts of happy. The biggest trick to getting into the game that I can tell thus far is just making it over the tutorial. It’s a nice three-four hour trek through a mildly boring series of learning tasks. Though once I finished that thing, and got into a situation to talk to some good friends (including Akamu, the main guy who was able to finally talk me into playing), and doing some missions the game got quite entertaining.

I have a number of other things that I’d like to talk about, but I think I’ll save them for an entry to be written in the not-so-distant future. This one seems to be too focused on Christmas and EVE to really warrant a complete subject change at this point. Screenshots of EVE and new pictures of Hobbesy-Kitty should both be up tomorrow.

Figured it was about time to write an update devoted entirely to everyone’s favorite cat.

Kitten Solo Pictures:
Poised and Ready — It’s hunting time, and he’s ready.
Run! Run Now! — He’s ready to strike. The camera.
The Keyboard Roll — This is his “don’t write that report” pose.
Your Mousepad is His Pillow — The Shack put him to sleep.
“I so sneaky!” — This may, in fact, be the greatest picture ever.
“I see you.” — *purr*

Kitten vs. Bichon Frise:
The Staredown — This staredown ensued for about fifteen minutes.
Lucky Gets Scared — The dog’s morale was quickly crushed beneath Hobbes’ oppressive paw.
Lucky = Sad Panda — Hobbes: 1, Lucky: 0.

http://cuteoverload.com/

Just go now.

You know what’s really nice about finals? It’s that loving, carefree feeling that just floats through campus like an unburdened swallow. And, in some universe, I’m sure this is all true. Just, you know, not this one. It’s not even finals I have a problem with, to be honest; it’s the godforsaken projects (this hate primarily applies to programming projects. I generally enjoy essays/research) and the early-as-hell exam times. I mean, seriously, I have Spanish every day from 2:00pm - 3:00pm. Why the hell would I want to take the Spanish exam at 8:00am? It really kind of defeats the idea of a late class for purposes of sleeping in. Not to mention that it totally screws up everything. Just like Orlando Bloom — yeah, that’s right pretty boy, I mean you. Someone on the Internet thinks you’re gay — not me, definitely, but I’m sure someone does. Good luck sleeping tonight… Orlando.

So, I “finished” my final programming project today at 11:00pm. I of course didn’t finish it in the literal sense, I just got it to the point where I said “Hey, that works, I’ll call it a day” after I got two thirds of it done — majority is the new completion. I just have a relatively hard time trying to focus and apply myself to a class for a major I decided I have no interest in pursuing. I mean, sure, I want to do well in the class, but I don’t really want to devote my entire finals week to trying to finish one out of five projects that will, in total, amount to 30% of my grade. That’s five two-three day long projects that won’t even amount to the chunk of my grade that a single exam will have. Seems kind of off if you ask me.

Speaking of off, one of the things that really drove me away from pursuing Computer Science — aside from the fact that I have no desire to spend 100+ hour weeks slaving away at something I only marginally enjoy spending ten hours per week on — is the way this school treats programming. There’s this “honor code,” see? And this “honor code” means that you can’t even mention a word you may have thrown into one of your code’s comments. That’s an “honor code” violation right there — have fun in the land of expulsion. You totally just cheated. Game over, mang.

Even though I took the previous example to a certain boundary past “exaggeration,” it’s not all that far from the truth. The “honor code” at this school is a code which your forced to read and sign before you take any exam, just to drive home the point that, yes, cheating off someone else’s exam is a bad thing. Somehow this “honor code” extends to the realm of not talking about any aspect of a programming assignment with any of your peers. Whatsoever. Wondering if you formatted your output correctly? Oh, well, too bad. You’ll find out when the soulless auto grader whacks off points for that space you put at the end of that one line. Is this some kind of elaborate scheme to inspire competition with people enrolled in the same class? Competition is great, I love it. In sports. In job position interviews. In a class designed to help students learn and cooperate? Yeah, sure, thanks for making that guy next to me shield his paper whenever I cough. Really — in this day and age a cough is just the new “Holy crap I can’t believe I wrote this function in a completely different, though equally correct and efficient way! Let me steal your brainwork.”

This is perhaps the most wound up I’ve gotten on this site within the last few months, and for that I apologize. My annoyance with the whole idea of this “honor code” hit a peak when some guys were too afraid to tell a guy “Hey, yeah, your output seems to be right” since they were more concerned with an honor code violation. Cool, now that guy won’t break the curve that doesn’t exist in this class! Diabolical.

Not that this really applies to me anymore. We English Majors are a superior breed of man who believes in some sort of class community. Yeah, we don’t just embrace our fellow man; we embrace his ability to proofread as well.

The game of the week this week is Dark Cloud 2, a game that I bought almost exactly two years ago and have just now decided to play through. It’s… Pretty fantastic. Maybe I’ll get bored of it for a few hours so I can beat God of War this week too.

I have some nice stories to tell, but the lack of sleep I’ve been getting due to these last couple of projects for my whole two classes has ruined my ability to be clever — an ability that some may doubt has ever existed in the first place, but I digress — so, here’s to a nice little story-related post in the nearish future.