... in which the Fool is drained from playing VS

I Came from SM City North Edsa today, attended the $10k Championships for VS. Initially, I didn't intend to play because I didn't have a deck ready. But then, Kendrick offered to sponsor me to play another deck that he brought, in exchange for any Extended Art cards I would win. He'd pay for my registration fee, lend me a deck, but I give him the cards that I win. Fair trade I guess, seeing as all I had to do was win all I can...

... And I seriously underestimated the competition. I lost the first match, being extremely stupid and forgetting a lot of the rules, as well as the wording on the cards.. I lost a lot of matches today... Winning only 4 rounds out of 10. Philip, Kelvin, and King all cheered me up, stating that winning 4 matches out of 10 with a deck that I only saw today was quite something (but I just can't bring myself to believe that... I still made a lot of stupid mistakes). Kendrick said at least I gained experience... I guess in the end, that was all: I learned stuff that would help me grow as a player. I was ranked 107th at the end of the day, out of 142. Not very good.

The next time a competition like that comes around in Manila, I intend to join again. Hopefully, that would be in October or December, where the DC format would be implemented. I intend to use either a Green Lantern deck, or a Team Superman deck, trying to dominate the field with huge characters, knocking down the smaller people, and also keeping the opponent's characters off-balance trying to knock out my characters.

I'm very drained now though. I slept at around 3AM today, trying to finish my Solid Geometry homework last night. Everytime I saw dice, formulae for the number of diagonals, the length of the diagonal, the volume of the solid, the number of faces of that particular die, all of them kept running through my mind, including the probability of a specific number coming out after a number of successful tries. Damn, I think I may be taking my review classes a little too seriously now...

And after all the time spent on my homework, (around 3 hours) I'm still not done with it!!! Damn, which means, I'll have to do it again tomorrow after I wake up. At least I'll get a good sleep tonight...

I'm trying to finish Dynasty Warriors 5 at home. I only need to finish around 9 characters and then I can retire that game and start finishing either Digital Devil Saga, or Yuusha Taisen. Alternatively, I could also get the Namco X Capcom game from Dennis and finish that too. Its a strategy game created by both game companies using the characters from most of their games. The map layout is very similar to Super Robot Taisen, with battle being waged ala Tales of Destiny, where you control one character and execute combos by combining directions and the Circle button. Its a pretty nice game, but very text heavy, which means that I'll be getting a headache just trying to understand what in the world is happening with the story. But I think it will be very worth it.

I'm just trying to stay awake now... I'm very tired and I'm just running on excess caffeine. I've had several glasses of mountain dew, plus a bottle of lemon C2. Once all this runs out, I'll be sound asleep.

... in which the Fool decides to pass the time in a net cafe

I don't know about other people, but I feel excited just reviewing for the board. I know others believe that its a chore, or that its boring, and they're only there because they're friends are there, and its an excellent way to pass the time (or at least its a way to pass the time instead of lying around at home).

Damn this keyboard, the keys are TOO soft!!!! And Blogger has actually changed the shortcuts for bold, italics and all those stuff! It used to be that I'd have to write in the html code for "bold" and stuff like that. Interesting. Feels like I'm using Word to make a post.

Well anyway, I'm just griping about having nothing to do before my hands-on classes start. My hands-on classes is sort of like an online exam gauging how much I learned over the course of the review, of course, I get to decide which topics I'm going to take up so its not really a very accurate measure, but it beats having none. I could also take it elsewhere, like say at home, but its been more than a year since I lost my net connection at home, so I can't do it there.

So might as well tell people about Sin City. Its been a pretty interesting movie, except for the fact that some of the fight scenes are just too exaggerated, for a comic that seems to be all about realism. I mean, I can understand that movies can't replicate scenes where people get knocked really far, but what they did was just plain... ugly. But the plot seemed to be a very good rendition of some of the plots from the comic. It was great seeing this tank of a human being called Marv, just knocking people around, taking all that they could give, and still dishing out even more. I just wish the other stories could have been just as long, but then, I guess that's the reason Marv's was called the main story.

What I don't understand however is why Bruce Willis' name is the first that appears on the posters, despite the movie being mostly 2/3 about Marv. I mean, does he get first dibs because he's such a hot actor? What the heck? The movie was nearly 2 hours, but I saw Bruce for less than half of that. I mean, what's wrong, dammit?

I thought I'd be running out of things to write about, but when I look back, I see that there's a lot of stuff to talk about.

For example, I guess for lack of a better word, I'm starting to become a nerd in my review classes. I feel like I'm no longer slacking off in my studies as I used to. Its like I'm always too serious when it comes to review classes that I bring the lectures with me almost everywhere I go. I mean, I used to just shrug off lessons when I was still studying in college, but right now, when I get to school, the first thing I look for are the answers to the questions that I didn't get while studying at home (studying at home? now who would have thought of that happening to me????). Its refreshing yet at the same time, scary... Even I can't imagine myself studying for any amount of time for no particular reason.

I mean, I'm actually spending time to calculate permutations, combinations, probabilities, in addition to simple algebra, and most recently, areas and volumes. Now in this last lecture, I suck. I mean, areas, volumes and stuff like that is probably the simplest math around, its just simple substitution of values into their corresponding formulae. But for some strange reason, I just can't envision which part is the radius, the relationships between legs and hypotenuse, and diagonals, and all those stuff. Funny for someone who took my course, it should be easy to do it...

Anyway, I know that I'm going to do that stuff either tonight or two nights after. I hope that I find a tactic that works for me.

In other news, I'm still a gamer guy, and I'm still playing a lot of games, except for that stupid Chaos Legions which I never got around to finish. I just couldn't find a way to kill off all those hordes of enemies effectively. But then again, I lent the game to Domondon, so I really can't finish it, seeing as how I haven't gotten it back yet.

Speaking of which, I should remind myself that Terence's Final Fantasy X and Metal Gear Solid 2 are still with me. I should return them. Sometime. Hehehe...

In addition to playing PS2 games, I've gone back to playing card games, foremost of which is the new VS system which pits comic book guys against one another. Its a lot like Magic: the Gathering where you can "recruit" characters to do something for you, and you use "plot twists" to perform stuff. In a sense, you're the writer, and for some reason, you're fighting against another writer to make sure you emerge victorious. Why some people don't write stories about the emergent stories in they're games, well, I'm not really sure. Probably because I haven't found them yet.

Maybe I ought to write about some of my games, but next time.

In the wake of my being a card player though, I've lost the opportunities to play pen&paper RPG's. That's because my usual group no longer has a place to hang out, plus our GM is busy with studying and judging as well. I guess I could run my own games, but I suck. And I haven't planned one out, since that weird stuff that I've thought about in my last planned MARVEL game. I would still want to run that game, but then... I have no players, but mostly because I don't want to look for them. I guess I could run it as a pbem, but I don't want to announce it.

Maybe next time.

Well, I still want to run a high school/college type game, where the players are all students of the school, and have something that sets them apart from the usual populace. I'd like to run it ala the movie coming out this July entitled "Sky High", but then I'd also like for them to have a secret identity of some sort. But perhaps later, when I have more time. As I've said, I'm suddenly studying. (STUDY!!!! Of all things...)

That's it for the meantime. I still need to think of strategies for VS, as well as look at other sites.

... in which the Fool checks on his blog for a few minutes

Well, I'm planning on reviving this thing after over a year of inactivity. After all, I have free time again, and I might as well practice my writing skills. I understand that my command of the language is slipping, and there's no better solution for it than to practice again. For all those who've been looking into this site, well, rest assured that I'll try to update at least once a week for the next few months. That should keep my head out of those silly equations that I have to memorize day-in and day-out, and strangely enough, it should keep them in my long term memory. I'll explain some day else.

In the meantime, let me say welcome back to myself, and I hope I'll be able to entertain people. Again. If I did before.

Oh, and before I go, the wonderful idea of reviving this site came from my friend, Sweet, and all the other people who reminded me of this as well: Jobert, Charles, Jamie, Dennis... etc.

I'll be back soon.