Sunday Down South, Again

Yesterday I went to the crossroads gathering, again, and after playing a few games of magic with Blake, I headed with a couple other people to watch 'The Day After Tomorrow', which was very very COLD. I think the movie people might have turned up the air conditioner to help set the atmosphere for the movie, which is about a sudden ice age brought on by -150F supercooled air brought down from the troposphere by land-based hurricanes. Or, rather, it's about people dying because of this.

I think everyone pretty much liked it -- I thought it was decent. The main plot-holes pointed out were that the air in the troposphere would actually be 600F by the time it reached the ground, since the individual molecules are high-energy, and compressing a gas make it heat up, and that there's no way gray wolves (that live in temperate forests) who'd lived their whole life in a zoo would be able to run at full speed down an icy stairwell. I don't know about the first, but having seen dogs negotiate stairs, the second seems pretty true.

After the movie, I met up with the people who hadn't wandered away from the meet yet -- the movie happened really early, so it let out by 4:30pm. Zir and Teeka and company were there, as well as Lex etc. I went with Lex, because he wanted to play more magic, and I wanted to play more magic, and the other place people were going was a birthday party for someone I don't know.

Lots of magic was played, and I did some trading (I traded away a pair of rares I was using, but wasn't *that* attacked to, for a bunch of uncommons I thought would be useful), and people played through the entirety of Starfox Adventures in one sitting, and of course it was eventually 3am... but Skye -- who'd borrowed $20 from me that he promised to pay back that night after getting the money from Cal over at Legends, where they were watching the Lord of the Rings extended version trilogy -- wasn't back yet. At 4am, I was still kind of awake, but everyone else was basically sleeping, and they *still* weren't back, and when Lex called to check they said they were just leaving. Oof.

So I guess I'll get paid back some other time. Maybe. Lex said he'd get the money from Skye and give it to me eventually. Or maybe spend it on food.

I had to drive people home, again... this time to somewhere 'just north of the U-District', which turned out to be outside of Seattle entirely, although it wasn't nearly as much of a detour as Auburn was, and had better signage (and a navigator going to Northgate) to get me back to the freeway without getting lost.

Got home around five thirty, and went to bed at six. But I'm okay now.

Nintendo has lost its touch.

I got a game cube a while back, and lately I've been *trying* to play Zelda Wind Waker. But the game is just so incompetently put together, that it's painful.

First of all, it has the same problem that most recent Zeldas have, in that you spend five hours doing boring fetch quests for every hour in an actual dungeon, only it's worse, because there aren't even any enemies on the overland to pretend to keep you interested. Here, it adds the frustration of not knowing what in god's name you're supposed to do next -- which of these people is an actual clue to advance the plot, and which is a red herring/side quest? Will something magically happen if I talk to someone now, or am I supposed to do something bizarre, or go in a place the camera didn't let me see an opening?

It's worse in that already in at least two places it's had a spot where it doesn't tell you what to do AND actively discourages you from retrying the thing you're supposed to do until you're standing in the magical spot that will actually make it work.

The first place was using bombs to blow up the fountain to get to the first dungeon -- you can't carry the bombs close, and throwing them makes them fizzle or bounce off the rock. Of COURSE the secret wasn't to get discouraged and look for someone else to help you, of COURSE you were supposed to keep trying until you got lucky and it blew up just as it bounced.

The second is the fricking deku tree, now, where chuchus appear on its face. Okay, I'm supposed to knock them off, right? The hook shot doesn't seem to work, but it's such a crappy weapon that it's hard to be sure. Maybe I can roll into the tree and knock them off? No, when I step off the leaf my little crystal rings and tells me I'm doing the wrong thing, and that I'm supposed to knock them off.

And of course, the secret is to run up a little root that doesn't look like it's somewhere you can run (similarly textured and shaped places just slid you off to the side, earlier) and hit him in EXACTLY the right place with a rolling attack, as opposed to one milimeter to the side, which won't work, or as opposed to rolling right at the base of the tree like you'd expect to work without running up the hidden passage first.

A walkthtough helped as far as knowing what to keep retrying with slight variations until it finally happens to hit the magic pixel that makes the pathetic game engine recognize a hit -- in the first case it said 'use bombs to blow up the fountain' and in the second 'roll into the tree to knock off the chu chus'. Yeah, thanks for the help, buttmunch.

I hate this game.