Haircut

First my hair was like this:

Then it got longer like this:

Then I cut it again and I can swoosh it around to look like an emo boy:

Normally it just looks like this:

FFXII

Basch
Spear/shield
Light armor --> Heavy armor

Highest strength. Tanky. Use him for close-up.

Fran
Crossbow
Light armor --> Mystic armor

Black magic caster. Squishy so keep her at range.

Vaan
Dagger/shield
Light armor --> Heavy armor

Fast. Use as thief.

Balthier
Masamune
Genji Gloves (loot from Gilgamesh)
Light armor

High agility and strength. Use for combo damage!

Ashe
Gun
Light armor --> Mystic armor

Best caster. Well-rounded mage. Keep her at distance but swap out w/spears? Guns have slow attack speed but high accuracy and scales off Strength.

Penelo
Heal slave
Mace/Stave (magick power)
Light armor --> Mystic armor

Use as white mage.

Oops, good bye old blog posts!

When Posterous closed down, I uploaded all my old blog posts onto tumblr.

A few months ago I deleted my tumblrs.

I just realized today that I had deleted all my blog posts from the past few years... kind of sad. It's like realizing I just threw out a bunch of old journals. Bummer! It's always nice to read back on old journals/blog entries to see my line of thought and what sorts of things happened. Oh well!

White Noise Mixer

http://www.soundsleeping.com/index.php

Make your own white noise mix here! Click "Pick Sound" in each section. You can adjust the volumes for each sound.

The Dream

Yup been there myself man. Everyone handles it differently. I didn't and still don't feel the least bit bad about it. These guys would have killed me and my brothers and all our families if they would have had the chance.

The only one I felt even a little bit bad about was the young one. I never found out his real age but he couldn't have been more than 18, which was only a year younger than I was at the time. I say only a little bit bad because he had most definitely chosen to be there, and was ready to fight had we/I not put him down, he would have killed someone. When I saw his face after it was over, and how young he was, it bothered me a little bit.

I don't know if you ever had to take anti-Malaria pills when you were deployed but we did. For some reason they make you have really vivid dreams. I had a dream 2 nights after I shot that kid that I had the ability to time travel and I went back in time to visit that kid when he was 12 years old. I explained everything to him (even though I didn't speak his language, he understood me), how his path would eventually lead him to me, and warned him how his life was going to end if he didn't correct it. I told him I didn't want to have to kill him, but that I would if I found him in that same point under the same circumstances. He said he understood. In my dream I sincerely tried to help him and prevent him from dying so young because I really didn't want to kill him. Then the next part of the dream was replaying the moment we made contact with him and his group, and he was there again, even despite my warning. I shot him again in my dream exactly the same way but in the dream we made eye contact, and it was like he communicated to me that even knowing the truth, he still chose this. He was a true believer.

Honestly the dream affected me more than the actual act of killing him did in the weeks after that. I wondered what it meant that in my dream, which was amazingly vivid, I had tried to help him avoid me. Now, several years later I feel like having that dream helped me rationalize it. What happened to him was the end of a long series of bad decisions on his part. Those decisions led him here, and that's where he died. I was simply the last sentence in the book of his life.

Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1ohrap/serious_redditors_who_have_killed_someone_by/

Focus

Sometimes it feels like I'm underwater. Everything is slow. I can think, but then physically moving is hard. I don't care to move very fast. I couldn't care to do anything, nor do I really want to do anything. I could just sit on a couch or lie down on a bed and just sleep or zone out, forever. If I just let it take over then that's it.

Things I find that help me get going:

1) Focusing on small, repetitive or no-thinking-required tasks.

• Doing laundry
• Washing dishes
• Organizing things
• Cleaning

Kind of funny, now that I think about it... maybe I could get more chores done if I were depressed. Ha. But that wouldn't be very good!

2) Do something. Always do something. Never let it take over.

When I'm normal, I never want to lie down in bed after waking up for two or three hours. When I'm in the mood, I don't care. I could wake up if I wanted to, but I just don't care. Nothing matters.

Also whenever I say things like "nothing matters anymore" or "I don't care" that's just how I feel if I don't fight it. I am always trying to fight it, and sometimes it's so hard because I can't bring myself to care. This is the worst, worse than anger or jealousy. I can't control it at all and I can't feel anything or care. It feels like my soul is dying. The only thing worse I can think of is probably the feeling of a loved one dying. Because then they're gone for the next 50-70 or so years I'll be alive, assuming I live the "full lifespan" of a human being. Living life without someone, knowing that they're not just in another town or country doing living-people things, feels like a piece of me got ripped out. Depression is like any sense of my self is fading away. Not even rotting. Its just eroding away and I can't stop it, and if I don't fight back then I'll just fade away.

If you read His Dark Materials, if you know what happens to people after the specters eat their daemons, that's sort of similar.

I'll probably delete this later when I get self-conscious, but otherwise, this is a good reminder to myself.

Yoko Kanno - Dear John

(This song doesn't sound sappy at all! It moves along pretty well, like rock-ish)

Days of night slip through my mind

In a silent moonless sky

Paralyzed and motionless

All things falter

Somewhere back I lost myself 

So far deep inside of you

Everything's become too much

So deep

So weak

Where did I go?

Images of falling light move across the hollow sky

I see movement after all

Calling

Falling

Remember you're not the only one to feel this way

'Cause I'm one who has also had enough

So long 

Dear John

I'm gonna go

Bonk

This is possibly my most favorite photo so far.

Also, new champion Jinx! So excited! :)

Apple Bread vs. Banana Bread

Me and bro were happily eating the apple bread my mom made and making happy eating noises.

Mom: Which one do you like better, the apple bread or the banana bread?

Me: Apple

Bro: Apple

Mom: Oh..................... (snicker)

Me: What's so funny?

Mom: I'm glad you enjoy the apple bread... because I think it's disgusting AHHAHA it's funny seeing you and Chris enjoy it so much because I was gonna throw it out. Good thing you don't like the banana bread because now I can eat it all by myself!

I love you too mom!

The Places in my Dreams

I have a separate blog for some of my memorable dreams. I haven't updated it in a while because I forgot... what a bummer! I'm sure I've had some pretty cool dreams recently that I just forgot after a few days or something. Here it is: http://dreamblogvirus.blogspot.com/

There are some places in my dreams that are the same thing every time. Maybe it's not the same exact thing, some of the rooms might have switched, but it's pretty much the same.

There's a mall with the same department store downstairs. I've gotten chocolate there many, many times. There's a stationery/jewelry store that I always find cute notebooks that are too expensive for me. Cute earrings. There's always a boba store downstairs. There's a section for a movie theater. In one of my dreams there was a huge chasm that just opened up in that area and it was pitch black at the bottom where lots of bloody corpses were, from all the people that fell down.

The school, a mix of my middle and high school. Always the lockers, always the same nurse/guidance counselor section in the middle. Always the really creepy locker room where the lights are off and can turn off at any time. Bathroom stalls, often with multiple toilets in each one. Always period blood in at least one of them. The doors either have huge gaps or aren't big enough so you can just peer over them and watch other people pee or poop.

Airport/business/hotel building. Etc. etc.

So many. Sometimes I have to remind myself that those places are all inside my mind, and they don't exist. It's like, there's a whole world inside my head that I can only access when I'm unconscious and it is really weird. Some dreams I've had are so vivid.

Speaking of vivid dreams, I still get some pretty crazy disturbing ones that I will not put down in Dream Bubble. I don't know why my mind gives me these dreams but it'd be nice if they stop! :(

Sunrise in Sydney

Retreat

The ride up to retreat was relaxing. Stopped by Wild Willies for food. The sweet potato fries there are. Super. Good.

When we arrived at Deer Run, one of the things P. Enoch said was, "There are no counselors, because you are the counselors."

It was meant to be funny, which it was, but to me it also suddenly took me back about seven or eight years, to my first Winter Teen Conference. I was a 7th or 8th grader back then. And then boom, now. P. Enoch also commented, "Hey, it's like WTC but without all the kids." I looked around the room and yeah, it looked exactly like a WTC but without all the kids. Lots of people in the Crossroads and families fellowships are or have been counselors. Weird. I thought, wow, I'm old now. But I'm not that old. Some people will always think I'm old, and other people will always think I'm very young.

I definitely came with the intention to plug myself in by meeting lots of new people. I did try to do that, but I also realized that there were a lot of people that I knew but didn't really know. Lots of old faces that I haven't caught up with in a long time. It's not even anyone's fault, it's just that sometime lives don't cross very often, and maybe both of us are just too lazy to reach out. Just hung around some familiar faces that I don't really get to see outside of church.

My biggest takeaway is to trust God. If God is eternal, then he has long-term plans. Recently, I've been really anxious about my own decisions. I worry if I've made the wrong choices. I worry about all the "what if's" in my life. What if I hadn't done this? What if that didn't have to happen? Where would I be? Through P. Toliver's sermons, small group discussions and talking to people, I realized that worrying so much about "what if" just isn't that practical. It sounds like common sense but sometimes it just happens and I don't realize it doesn't make sense until I stop and think. I'm here now, I'm who I am now, because of everything that's happened. Wondering is okay, it's a mental exercise, but to be so worried as I had been was foolish. There are no alternate universes where my life is perfect. Well maybe there is because you never know, but as far as I know, I'm the only me there is, and I'm here because God planned it.

I hear it all the time, God planned it, God is good, God guided me here, but I often don't know what stuff like that means until it happens. Then I understand a little better. God has the big picture, and I don't. He has this crazy "master plan" (I hear that word all the time too, and it sounds cliche... but not now, when I've experienced part of that) with all these twists and turns. One little twist and I think he's doing something to inconvenience me, to make me struggle. But months later, years later, then I see what he was up to. He was making me stronger. He was teaching me a lesson. Maybe some things I'll never know in my entire life.

God is good... I'm just very small and get full of myself when I can do things by myself. Man, I hear these things all the time, I even get frustrated sometimes hearing it, but when it happens to me, there really are no better words.

Sketchydaily

I just found this subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/SketchDaily

I'm so happy I found it, because it takes away some of the laziness. I had thought about sketching daily before just to practice, but I never knew what to draw and I just stopped after a while because I didn't have inspiration. Now, every day there's something new to draw, so it's good practice! :)

Wonder how long I can keep this up.

Also, I have a habit of buying pretty notebooks especially if they're cheap. I don't even need them. I have so many. I just love the feeling of opening them, smelling the virgin pages. They're blank and waiting to be filled. To become something, a journal, a story, a rage-dumpster, whatever. I had this big sketchbook thing for a while. I thought I would write in it, but recently I'd been writing a lot of things on the computer.

And now, perfect! I have a reason to use it. YAY!

Whimsy

Primate r funy

Some beautiful cinemagraphs!

Someone explains why they have no friends.

Here's the thing. I looked at this and immediately saw myself 20-30 years ago. I just didn't get it. I was a nice guy, never did anyone any wrong and saw jerkoffs getting all the attention, girls, friends and kudos.  

What was wrong with the world? 

I'd had plenty of heart-2-hearts with people along the way and none appeared to answer the question of why I had no/few friends. 

Then, one day, like being slapped in the face with a wet kipper someone I knew pointed out a simple fact to me and there it was. 

I was a bit older and a bit drunk at a with a friend, who was incredibly popular. He was going away on a golf weekend and wanted to know why I wasn't going. I said that I didn't feel like I was part of the 'clique' and felt I was only ever really invited to play as an afterthought to make up a foursome. It really pissed me off that geeks like xxxxx and yyyyy would be invited regularly but not me. 

He said, "---, when have you ever invited me to play golf? I get invites from xxxxx and yyyyy and zzzzz and all of the others and they all make a point of arranging a game and inviting people to play. From there we end up arranging more games and the invited become circular. You're a great guy, and a lovely fella but you have never once arranged a game of golf and invited anyone to play." 

What a cock I had been. How many years of my life had I wasted waiting for some party invite or phone call that would never come because I'd been sitting like a beggar in a street waiting for handouts. People didn't invite me because they had no reason to believe I liked them or wanted to be in their company. All people have their own insecurities and very few are going to make an effort to include someone if they feel it won't be received or reciprocated. 

We all want to feel liked. That means the people you want to like you, want to know you to like them first. (Sorry for the tongue twister there). 

TL;DR If you want others to be your friend, act like a friend to them.

Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/offmychest/comments/1cbepj/i_have_practically_zero_friends/c9ew3ef

Whimsyshire Ingredients (that I've found)

BLACK MUSHROOM
ACT I - The Legacy of Cain (Explore Cellar)
Go to the Waypoint: The Old Ruins. The first time you do it, clear the cellar, then continue to the Cathedral, where you will jump to Level 1. Run through the Cathedral. Look for this room, in this location. If the Black Mushroom (glowing) is not there, reset the game. If the room in Figure 1.2 is just a giant cave-in, reset the game.

Figure 1.1

Figure 1.2

Figure 1.3

Gibbering Gemstone

ACT III - Machines of War

Go to Waypoint: The Bridge of Korsikk. Run around the map looking for the Caverns of Frost. If you find the Icefall Caves, reset the game; this map will spawn either the Icefall Caves or Caverns of Frost, never both. 

Once you get into the Caverns of Frost, proceed to Level 2. Chiltara is the Yellow Mob you're looking for and is usually burrowed, so you'll have to walk over as much ground as possible to trigger Chiltara. She's a rare spawn but if she spawns you will always get the Gibbering Gemstone.

Figure 2.1

Figure 2.2

Figure 2.3

Wirt's Cowbell

Buy it from Squirt in Act II. She's the little girl vendor.

Source: http://www.virvelvind.net/2012/05/a-guide-to-whimsyshire-secret-level-in-diablo-3/

What's it like?

OK Tornado 2013

I just watched some Youtube video that a man from Oklahoma took of the tornado. The sheer power... the wind is blasting on that video and I cannot even imagine how that would sound in real life. You can see those huge chunks of debris being thrown up in the air and spinning around in a slow circle.

It reminded me of a video I saw of the tsunami in 2011. Unstoppable, millions of tons of water pouring over land. Nature is so scary. There is nothing we can do (yet) as mankind to stop the raw power of natural disasters.

As a teeny tiny human being, I look at tsunamis and tornadoes and feel afraid. What are they in the grand picture, of the universe? Microscopic swirls of dust and an extra big wave. Think about a supernova... an entire sun exploding and sending its celestial guts flying out into space. What would that even look like up close?

Man... nature is scary... so much power, and it's not even sentient.

I wonder if one day human kind will figure out a way to harness power or control natural disasters?

Meee?

There is this girl who approaches me and wants to talk to me. Pleasant surprise! I remember seeing a blog post similar to this, when I was a freshman or sophomore.

This gif is unrelated to this post. I just thought it was pretty!

Someone that I see as an older sister wrote a blog post about how someone was approaching them to talk to them. Maybe it was me, maybe it wasn't, but now that I'm writing this and remember it... wow, time flies! I'm just happy someone wants to talk to me and is also not being very demanding of me.

Flowers in the Morning

This morning, I saw my brother kneeling in the driveway looking at flowers.

I can't describe the feeling I got when I that. It's the same as when I saw him playing some beautiful sounding song on the piano, by himself. Maybe it's because he's enjoying something and he doesn't care if people are watching or not.

Uncle Ruslan

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2013/04/19/uncle-ruslans-inspiring-words-a-moment-we-needed/

Interview with "Uncle Ruslan" uncle of Suspect #1 and Dzhokhar.

"... since these people have association with me, through blood... what can I say for people who perished, who were murdered: sympathy. ... and if some one of them... [mumble] their curses on me, I'm ready to accept it. 'cause I'm associated with these bastards. ... what else can I say? What else normal person can say?"

For future reference.

Also... https://twitter.com/J_tsar

I hope this doesn't put me on a list lol I just thought it was interesting. He tweeted just like a normal person. So strange.

Things I Wish I've Never Done

So many regrets... if I die tomorrow then I would have lived a life with many regrets.

Mostly mistakes I've made, regarding friendships. There are a lot of people who are acquaintances that I used to be good friends with. Having to admit that I had to do with a lot of those ended relationships hurts like hell, but I made mistakes and I'll have to live with them.

Good friends who've put their trust in me, and I betrayed them, and I don't even have an excuse. Those were the worst, because each time I thought I'd learned from the previous one, but I didn't. Each time I feel like I've killed a puppy with my own negligence.

There are good memories, when I look back at pictures and think about the things we've done and talked about. So many good memories.

I have to learn from mistakes so they don't just stay regrets. It's just sad that some things can never be fixed. It's like if you stupidly play with heavy machinery and get your arm chopped off and it can't be reattached, that's it. You can get a prosthetic, but you'll never get your own arm back again. It's just not the same.

Dream Posts

Posterous is closing soon, so I'm going to go back and save all my dream recollections. Because they're interesting and I don't want to forget them.

http://dreamblogvirus.blogspot.com/

The Honesty Sledgehammer

This was originally part of a bigger blog post but I deleted the first part. This is about the whole "I'm bluntly honest" thing. It's good to be honest with friends, but it's also good to be considerate. Telling a sensitive, soft friend who is in an emotional funk to snap the hell out of it will probably not help them very much, especially if you know they internalize all their emotions. That's like punching a snail in the face. If you have a friend that you know will appreciate your honesty and just can't get out of their emotional funk, then you probably could just straight up say, "hey hey, snap out of it" and they could totally just do that.

Pretty much... there is no one-size-fits-all approach (is that the phrase?) to being honest. That's like using the same hammer for every job. Or, in this case, sledgehammer. You'd probably wreck some delicate things by hammering in a point with a sledgehammer if it's not meant to be hammered in with a sledgehammer.

Little Bits of Sunshine

Sometimes I get bogged down thinking about how cruel, cold, sadistic, horrible and scary people can be. Then when I'm on the train I see people offer their seats up to old people, big scary looking dudes grinning and making silly faces and playing with other people's kids... reminds me not everyone is all that bad.

Also, this is beautiful.

Parallel Universe

I came across this idea on the internet: what if, when we die in this universe, we just instantaneously take over the consciousness of myself of another universe? Like... if there are infinite parallel universes, if we die in one, then our consciousness ceases to exist here and we just become aware of our consciousness in another. Because I am alive in every parallel universe. If I die in this one, then I will still be alive in the next, but I can only be in one consciousness at the same time.

Then inevitably would I be immortal, because at least one of these parallel universes would have found a way  to achieve immortality? Or, homo sapiens somehow evolved immortality?


Immortality would mean I would witness the death of the universe, when all the stars burn out and everything flatlines into absolute zero.

And I still wouldn't be able to die.

What happens after?

That's if there are infinite parallel universes. If not, then after moving through all the mes that could exist, then I would finally die.

What if's.

Bokeh: The World Without Glasses

One night, while walking through Boston with a friend, we took off our glasses and then noticed that the world is in bokeh!

This is what it's like to be near-sighted.

Imagine, all this time I've been looking up out-of-focus pictures on the internet so I can look at pretty warm lights and all I had to do was take off my glasses.

These are all pictures from the internet, by the way. Isn't it nice?

I have Christmas lights in my room. It's so nice and cozy.

Anyway... it was just a new way of looking at things.

OHOHO DID YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE

Ranked Games

I played my first two solo-queue ranked games today and both of them had at least one classic rager. Like, people who blame everyone for everything except themselves. I've heard that ranked games are higher pressure so people get mad easier, but part of me didn't believe that. SURPRISE! But due to my awesome skills of course we won both. Just kidding. But there are some basic rules I follow that I've noticed greatly increase my chances of winning.

1 - Take at least 1-2 wards with you on every back (especially past laning phase), if you have room in your inventory. If your entire team does this, you'll have lots of vision! Don't rely on just the support to ward everything.

2 - If you face check unwarded territory, prepare to die. If you don't, you're lucky, but don't count on it. When in doubt, ward it.

3 - THIS ONE IS IMPORTANT: if you're behind, do NOT play like you're on par or ahead. I used to make this mistake, hoping I can kill my opponent before they kill me just by sheer outplay. At 1-3-1 vs. 3-0-0. Yeah right. Be smart about it. If you're going in for the kill, make sure you can get it, and don't chase further than you need to. Especially if you don't have vision. Otherwise, just farm safe, stay alive, and hope your team mates come to help you out. If they don't, then just try not to die until laning phase, then you can try to catch up then.

4 - During laning phase, wounding your opponent and forcing them to go back is just as good as killing them, as that prevents them from gaining CS which puts them behind. Don't tower dive without proper vision and preparation. 3v1 tower dives can turn into a triple kill if you get too greedy.

5 - STOP CHASING THE ENEMIES AROUND THE ENTIRE MAP. It doesn't matter if they're hobbling away with only 10 HP. If they're not a threat and you could easily kill him if he sticks around, then go grab a tower, grab their buffs, dragon or baron before their team mates come to back them up.

6 - If you ace the enemy team, DO SOMETHING, don't just go farm wolves and wraiths if you can take a tower.

7 - Check enemy respawn timers after you ace them. If you're taking down their base towers and you notice they're all back out after you've aced them, get the hell out. Your team is still wounded with low mana from the previous team fight and the enemy is all charging out of their base with full HP and brand new items. Many times my team has been aced this way because we stick around for way too long.

8 - If you're running through the enemy jungle, drop some wards in the bushes. That way you can keep an eye on where they are. That means you know where they aren't, so can grab dragon/baron/more towers/buffs/farm, or SURPRISE GANK!

9 - Know whether or not the game is hopelessly lost. Sometimes the game is still fairly equal, but morale is so low that the team surrenders. I've had games where we've come back by acing the enemy and just smashing through mid lane all the way to nexus even though we were behind in everything. But not behind enough not to be able to destroy their towers in a short amount of time!

10 - WHEN IN DOUBT, WARD. ALWAYS WARD BARON AND DRAGON.

11 - If bot lane just got 4-man ganked and you had just killed top lane, GET THE TOWER. Don't try to save your doomed team mates if it's not worth it. Don't worry, they're respawn.

12 - Know when to push lane and when to have the enemy come to you.

... can't think of anything else right now, but those things have really helped me win games even if the team is behind. Can't wait til I get my rank!

Okay, sleepy time!