Well, it's certainly been an eventful week. So eventful that I haven't been able to post. Good lord. Hopefully I'll get to recuperate this weekend, but with work, I really, really doubt it.
First of all, most of the past two days has revolved around Final Fantasy XI. I finally have it! But, good god was it a pain in the ass to get. First of all, the release date was the 28th. So, I venture into Westroads on Tuesday, but nooooo, they don't get it until the 29th. It shipped on the 28th. Grrrrrrr . . .
So, I decide that since the game is advertised on wal-mart.com that I can go to wal-mart at midnight and get the game. But, I'd be damned if I go there and they don't have it. So, Bobby and I called Wal-mart numerous times asking if it was in. Finally, after having Katrina make a call (I woud've felt real dumb if they had recognized my voice) they told her that they would get it in at 7:00 in the morning. So, I went to bed and set my alarm for 6:30 so I could be at Wal-mart at 7:00.
Well, my fucking alarm didn't go off AGAIN. But I was so excited for the game that I ended up waking up around 7:12 anyway. So, after a slight delay, I was on my way to Wal-mart. I got there and went to the electronics section and . . . it wasn't there. So, I wandered around a bit, thinking they were about to bring it out. Nothing. And I was too much of a wuss to ask them, so I left and ventured over to the Super Wal-mart clear across town. Nothing there either. But there was a guy that was stocking a bunch of boxes. And I wandered around, and looked at him, and looked at the boxes, and he looked back at me, but never offered to help me or ask what I was looking for. Jack ass. He should be fired. Sure, I could've asked him, but, yeah, I'm a wuss. That's why they're supposed to ask; incase there are timid customers that need something. He pissed me off . . .
So, I left Wal-mart and decided that since it was 8:50, I'd go see if Toys R Us or Best Buy would be open. TRUs, opened at 9:30, and Best Buy didn't open till 10. So, I decided to drive over to Mega Mart. They didn't open till 10 either. But by now it was 9:10, so I drove across the street to the other TRUs and waited till 9:30. There was a small line outside waiting for it to open, so I figuered I was good, and they'd have it. They didn't. Stupd other people were there for stupid other reasons. So, I decided that since the mall opened in half an hour anyway, I'd go over there and wait.
Now, I've been told this before, but until you actually go to the mall before the stores open, you can not completely grasp the sheer magnitude of the number of old people flooding the halls. It's like they let a nursing home loose in the mall. Good lord. Ok, the people are in considerably better shape than old people in homes, but yeah, it was insane to see that many old people in one place. Oh, I don't have anything against old people at all. Or nursing home old people for that matter. I just feel . . . uncomfortable being the only person under 60 in a huge crowd.
But yeah, so I stood outside Gamestop for 15 minutes and watched the little game preview tv to bide my time. Finally, the lady opened the door! And promptly told me she didn't have anything yet . . . She was still waiting for the shipment to come in. Thankfully, the shipping guy was making his way towards the store as we spoke. As we waited for him to drop off stuff at Hot Topic, the phone was ringing constantly from people wanting to know if it was in yet. Linda (the manager) finally just carried the cordless phone around with her and sighed that this was going to be the day from hell.
Finally, the guy came to the store and started unloading the boxes. Linda went in the back and brought out the first FF XI case she could find. Then she proceeded to help the 5 of us who had gathered there early. I was the only person under 40 . . . I kid you not. The other four were, well, you're stereotypical balding geeks in their 40's. I'd feel bad about saying it if it wasn't so funny how stereotypical they were.
But, yeah, I was the only one there that didn't have it reserved, so when I got to the counter, she had to go in the back, find the other FF XI boxes, and count all of the individual games to see if she had any left over after the pre-ordered ones were set aside. They had one! Yay! So, I bought it and drove back to Dana at 90 mph to start installing.
Now, things became difficult. You see, first you have to install PlayOnline and register. That's Square Enix's net server for all their online games. And, well, after installing that, I found out that Icouldn't connect to it to register because of Dana's Fucking Firewall . . . I was about to break and smash things . . . ohhhhhhhhhhhh god . . . I just bought a $50 game that I had been waiting for for forever and I can't play it b/c Dana has a firewall . . . a firewall that doesn't keep out viruses, just prevents students from using the internet, if that makes any sense. GOD!!
It pissed me off.
I gave the game to my brother to see if he could get it to work on his wired connection. Nope.
So, thankfully, my parents have not yet cancelled their AOL subscription even though they aren't using it and are paying for cox high speed internet. So, we connected my brother's computer to AOL, and were able to connect from there.
And it wasn't over yet.
You see, once we connected, it had to download and install updates to PlayOnline. So, we waited for all 300 files to be downloaded by dial-up before we could proceed. This only took about a half an hour. Then we installed FF XI, which, due to the massive 6 gigs it takes up, took around 15 minutes. And then, we still weren't done. You see, FF XI also had to download and install updates. ON A BRAND NEW GAME!!!!!!! And, well, first it had to sort through the 7025 files that already made up the game to see which ones it needed. This took another 15 minutes just to look at the alreaady installed files. Then, it started downloading 1300+ new files. On dial-up . . . . . . About an hour later, my brother's room-mate stepped on the phone cord, ripping it out of the computer, stopping the download. After it was reconnected, it had to start all over again . . .
This was at 3:00. We decided to leave and le it download. It didn't finish downloading until 11:45 at night.
Behold, the power of dial-up. Thank you, fucking Dana internet network!
While we were waiting for the shit to download, I was in contact with Bobby, who was frantically trying to scrap together enough money to get a world pass so we could play together. He ended up going to bed before the updates were even finished, so I decided to make a test character and explore for a little bit. I made a Mithra Monk. It sounded kinda cool, and I was a girl b/c only Female Mithra are playable in the game.
Wow, the controls took quite a bit of getting used to. I wandered around like I was drunk for a half an hour. And I was almost immediately invited into a party. And, all of them thought I was actually a girl. Hehe, silly boys. OF course I played along, and even flirted with one. Yay for anonymous identities! Anyway, we were slaughtering little plant thingies left and right, so I saw another plant thingy that looked the same, and started attacking it . . . and, well, it attacked me back and really, really hurt. So, my party came to help me out, but the plant thingy was too strong and killed us off . . . Whoops. My bad. But by this time my brother was kicking me out of his room anyway. Thus was my first experience in Final Fantasy XI.
You see, it's on my brother's computer right now because A) It's twce as good as mine and can run it decently, and B) he can use the phone cord to connect to AOL. In my room, Joe is hogging the phone cord to connect his computer to the internet incase Dana's network is down. Thanks Joe . . . Plus, we figure that if Kelly controls it, I won't be able to play it too much or too late into the night, and if I skip class, he can deny me access to it. Finally! A way to make me go to class!!! Plus, I'm giving him the game when I get the PS2 version, so it might as well start on his computer if it's going to end up there.
Today, I played quite a bit more. I finally got the hang of the controls and even completed some missions and quests. I got Katina (my mithra monk) up to level 5. She might have made it up to 6 or 7 if the damn Goblin Thugs didn't keep attacking me and chasing me down till I died . . . bastards . . .
Finally, Bobby got enough for a world pass, so I said goodbye to Katina (who I really started to like. I think I'll keep her and play as her when Bobby isn't playing. The character idea is just too much fun to pass up) and made a new character on Bobby's server. This is my original character idea: Elvaan Red Mage / Dark Knight. The combined strengths of this combination make it very well-rounded. Excellent at Melee fighting and status enhancing and negating magic, in addition to being ridiculously resistant to black magic, making it a terror to any enemy mages. They can't scratch him, and he can crush them. It's the perfect Mage Killer. Anyway, I couldn't think of a good name, so I got some really long, really confusing random name. When I started, Bobby had left, and Kelly was kicking me out, so I didn't get to play much. Oh well, there's always tomorrow afternoon.
Wow, I went on about that forever. There's hardly any time for me to talk about the rest of my week. So, I'll have to make it short.
Bethany finally updated her Xanga site. I LOVE YOU, BETHANY~!!!!!!!!
And I forgot what else I was going to say. But, before I go, I must say that I am an ass. A huge ass. I'm such a huge ass that I can't even post why I'm such an ass. I've said before how I post here for me and only me and fuck what everyone else thinks . . . but I think I've found something I can't post because it'll piss too many people off . . . It's not like I did it on purpose . . . it just kind of happened. And, well, I'm fucked. I guess I'll just wait till my next therapy session to figure it out.
