Good Times
Mon, Nov 3, 2008 - 5:20pm EST

It seems like a whole lot has happened since I last updated. I wonder how much I actually want to write about now...

Hooray! Daylight Saving Time is over! Arizona is once again united! ...until next spring...

My occupation change. As of the end of August / beginning of September, I'm now a student of ministry in a men's training program (via 2Tim 2:2), which serves also as my job. Personally, I prefer the behind-the-scenes stuff--producing videos, keeping tech stuff running smoothly, visiting people here and there, partnering in Bible studies, etc. etc.--but wow if I'm not like every single week right now making/giving lessons in my local town or the next city over. In-the-forefront is nerve-racking! ...At any rate, this Life-Changing Event modifies my Calendar quite a bit, but because of last month's two-week gospel tent meeting and other stuff, I still don't know exactly what my schedule is. The teachers are dealing with interesting issues, which are causing our class times to fluxuate. I promise that in my November update, (this one's the October, and a little late,) I'll update my Standard Weekly Schedule. And perhaps by year's end, I'll redo my Q'n'A. $8^ |

My complicated friendship I've mentioned at times. It's good. Friendship intact. Little bit less complicated, but complication probably won't totally drop for a long time--if ever. "Oh well." Nevertheless, overall, things are good.

How unexpected! I found out at the last minute that I'd have Halloween night off! Wowee. First time in years, I actually dressed up and "went out." I was Jeff Andonuts from EarthBound--complete with Bazooka, Slime Generator, Bad Key Machine, Ruler, Protractor, and a nice standard Zapper Light Gun--I really wanted to make a Big Bottle Rocket, but I knew it'd take some time, on which I was short. I looked great, but sadly looked better without all the extra Goods (better with Zapper Light Gun only). Also, I toured Hollywood's Scaremare; it actually rocked pretty well! And long story short, I was given a bunch of candy--waaaay too much candy--and I also bought candy for trick-or-treaters, who apparently never visited my area; kids have all but stopped trick-or-treating door-to-door--they go business-to-business more nowadays; this saddens me; I normally don't care much one way or another about traditions; for the most part: I like 'em, but if they change, whatever; but this is a tradition I'm really sad to see disappear! We're getting so much less and less community-oriented. So anyway, now I have too much candy and desire to give bunches of it away.

Boom boom boom-boom-boom boom-boom-boom-boom, boom-boom. Finally. After thirteen years of waiting. I'm playing it. I bought (imported) the Game Boy Advance Game Pak last year from Play-Asia.com for a superb price. I haven't even opened the box; I'm simply using my legally owned copy of the Japanese game to give me the Fair Use right to have a backup copy of the ROM, and then apply their patch to said ROM; I'm only playing one game of it, and I'm certainly not distributing; so, all that legal mumbo jumbo out of the way. It rocks. Imagine if Lemony Snicket created a sequel to EarthBound. I'm convinced its title would be Mother 3. Or perhaps Mother the Third, as one friend said, ha ha. But anyway, I've been playing like a couple hours daily just to get through little by little--I don't want to like obsessively knock it all out in a week or anything! $8^ , My only two real complaints are that 1.because of the nature of emulation, the sound has a split-second latency, which completely throws off my timing in the Super Ultra Mambo Tango Foxtrot combo system, where you tap the dialog button in rhythm with the current battle's music (truly awesome), like the first sentence of this paragraph $:^ ] (whereas I wouldn't have this issue if I bought a Flash Cart and transferred my translated ROM to it and played it on actual GBA or GB Player or Nintendo DS hardware, none of which I own, thus any of which I'd have to borrow or something) and 2.the translators did everything as professionally and congruently with N as possible, except they used their own judgment and broke away from the rest of the Mother/EarthBound series and left in profanity; bah! I've heard their arguments, and I argued against, but they didn't care; it's the one thing that really really really makes it feel like it's just some fan game that you play online or something; it's inconsistent with the officially translated games; and, it's just plain irritating to be playing this lovely title with its awesomely funny dialog and puns and timing and one-liners and visuals and utterly engrossing plot, and then hear a girl say, "I got my leg caught in this [beep] trap!" Really. Completely unnecessary. If "I got my leg caught in this stupid trap!" isn't edgy enough, then how about "I got my leg caught in this blasted trap!" They could even use a euphamism (which I'd prefer not personally) seeing as how that's completely inline with the official translations, and even various lines the fans translated in M3. And realize, that's not the only time this issue comes up; it's not superfrequent, but it comes up a lot more often than was implied to me when I argued against it. Anyway. I have a kinda sorta complaint number 3, but it's just due to a bad ROM dump--meaning if I obtained a clean ROM dump, the problem would be solved; I can't save, so I'm going through with emulator save states, and not using the proper save mechanism, which I'm sure would let me do other cool things that I would like to do, plus would make it feel that much less like a fan-computer-online-game kind of thing; but oh well; I've waited quite literally half my life to play this, and if I have to do it with a proverbial clear plastic bag over my head then so be it; and if nothing else, I'm only using the emulator's save states at the points the game would naturally let me save, so I'm still playing by the rules heehee! At least I don't have to listen to the sound on computer speakers: I'm using some pretty nice headphones I was given to better enjoy the sound. $:^ ]

So back to the topic of work. The tent went very well. Three people obeyed the gospel! And, we're starting to help the city-we-were-in to get to know who we are; this is the "City of Churches" and desperately need to learn that we're not "just another church" but rather the church you read about in the New Testament--and all the others are man-made. And we know how God feels about man-made religion (Lev 10:1ff). The response has been pretty great so far; I figure we'll keep working this area for a good chunk of time to come. We had to end a couple days early for weather, but overall, a tangible success!

I've got not much else to say. I need to get to some research. And a little personal stuff today. Oh! And the bank! heheheh And then it's back to my regularish schedule tomorrow. Busy busy busy! Until next time, have fun.

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theUndiscovered
Brandon W. Horton
ParodyKnaveBob $:^ J