I’m so obsessed…

Party I 1.2.3.4.5.6.

1. Empoleon (nicknamed Napoleon) Type: Water/Steel
2. Staraptor (nicknamed Elvis) Type: Flying
3. Pachirisu Type: Electric
4. Carnivine Type: Grass
5. Whiscash (nicknamed Mudfish) Type: Water/Ground
6. Psyduck Type: Water

Party II

1.2.3.4.5.6.

1. Charizard Type: Fire/Flying
2. Flygon Type: Ground/Dragon
3. Aggron Type: Steel/Rock
4. Poliwrath Type: Water/Fighting
5. Rotom Type: Electric/Ghost
6. Milotic Type: Water

As you can see, I am predisposed to Water Pokemon. I remember when I was a wee lad, and all I had was Pokemon Yellow. I dumped Pikachu in the computer and went with a party consisting of a Blastoise, Psyduck, Starmie, Gyarados, Slowbro, and Poliwrath. Water Pokemon were awesome.

That being said, I have a crippling weakness in the electric type. My second party (which I have been forming with access to most Pokemon) has been designed to have strengths against electric (ground and rock). Hopefully it works out in my favour.

Also, the game designers behind Pokemon are cruel. Milotic took me almost 24 hours to get. To find the pre-evolved form - Feebas (think Magikarp) - you have to check each square of ocean in a 600 square area. Only four of these squares have Feebas. And these squares randomize every day. To check if there was a Feebas in a square, based on the probability of it appearing, I had to fish five times on each square. It took forever.

But that wasn’t the worst part. To evolve Feebas into Milotic, you need to max out the Beauty stat. Yeah. Some completely ridiculous idiotic stat that they’ve added to the newer generation of games. To max out beauty, you have to feed it Poffins. To make Poffins, you need a lot of berries. A lot of a certain kind of berry called a Wiki berry. Of course, I haven’t been using these berries to make Poffins. I’ve been using them to heal Pokemon…since thats what they do. So, I have to go on this obscure agricultural journey to find a single Wiki berry so that I can create a Wiki berry plantation.

But that isn’t all. Certain Pokemon like certain types of food. And the food they like ties into the stat that the food gives. A Pokemon that likes dry food will have an easily increasable beauty stat. I had to catch 33 of those damn Feebas before I found a single one that liked Dry Food.

So, after finding the fish, making the Poffins, and maxing out beauty, I finally got my Level 1 Feebas to evolve into a Lv. 2 Milotic.

And so the leveling begins.

Pokemon is such a time sink…but I’ve gotta catch ‘em all. The sad thing is…there are 493 Pokemon spread across 4 generations of games encompassing more than 14 titles.

Gah…

We’ve got my x‘th cousin Denise over for the weekend. She is a 6 month old baby. Whenever no one is around, I repeat mathematical concepts to her over and over again, and before she went to bed I read her Winnie the Pooh.

Babies are cool. I can only hope that some day, I will find a woman who is both beautiful enough to counteract my sordid genes and crazy enough to want to sire offspring with me.

Passed the term.

The marks weren’t great, and some omnipotent being appears to have torn asunder the laws of mathematics to allow me to pass STAT 230. I am thrilled. Thrilled.

But not too thrilled, because I stand on the doorstep of another term.

Oh. And I never clarified why getting kicked out of the Teaching Option was so bad.

To sum it up briefly,

1. I would graduate with two degrees: BMath from Waterloo and B.Ed from Queen’s University
2. I would have had two full terms (8 months) of teaching experience under my belt, since my co-op terms from here onward are teaching positions
3. I would have had the opportunity to teach in private schools, which may or may not have been useful when looking for a nice place to settle down and teach
4. Completion of the teaching option puts me about three steps ahead of any teacher with an arts major and math minor who goes to teacher’s college as far as pay grade and teaching level is concerned.
5. The Teaching Option is full of smokin’ hot babes.

That is all.

Can you tell the difference?

Kotaku posted a nice comparison video of both versions of GTA IV running side by side (or overlapping, I guess). That way, you can see the same scene but from both games. Honestly, I cannot really tell the difference. Apparently there are some anti-aliasing things that the PS3 does better, and Xbox 360 does colour better. So…yeah. Not a huge difference between the two.

Of course, this is not surprising. The game was likely developed for the XBox 360 architecture rather than the PS3, so it probably doesn’t use the PS3’s processor to its fullest.

Which begs the question: why get the PS3 version? The 360 version has downloadable content that will not be available to PS3 owners…and PS3 owners will have paid an extra hundred bucks or so for their system. This game (coupled with my yearning to play Bioshock and Assassin’s Creed) have driven me to start pricing out an XBox 360. I think I may actually purchase one at the start of my next work term, provided the finances work out and all the games I have on backlog are completed.

Tut tut. I can sense Andreas’ wrath thundering up from Texas already.

Source

Normally it seems IGN undersells good games.

If it rated GTA IV is a 10.0, that must mean that to an average person, it excels beyond human experience and understanding.

I wish I had a goddamn XBox 360.

Also, Rockstar, since GTA IV is alive and thriving, think we might see some glorious Max Payne 3 action in the near future?

Source

So, after a bit of worry regarding where I am going to live next term, I finally found a place to stay.

It is a decent place, and the price is right, so I am satisfied. :)

Hurray!

Now all I have to do is worry about applying for teaching positions during the Spring.