I would suggest just playing the SNES version, since it's the fastest in terms of framerate. Well, the Advance port isn't slow, but the translation is meh and soundtrack butchered so, yeah.

Well, my poem was met with universal bad reviews in class today. And they really took the mick out of it. A couple people were even offended by it. C'est la vi.

Not everyone is a poet my friend, but everyone is critic.

I should have a post up in a couple days; been pretty busy lately, which takes a lot out of me, but I should be able to write up a fairly decent post that delves into part of Kryse's past. See you all then.

So, it's been a couple weeks. What's everyone up to? Me, I've been playing a bit of Pokemon Black and a couple of D&D Campaigns.

Been meaning to ask, are we going back to Balamb any time soon? Always found it strange that for such an important area in the canon story we haven't done a single thing in that region. *shrugs*

*shrug* Well, Dalmar told me a few days ago that he'd try to get on this weekend, but he was in pretty bad shape (said he was sick and felt like crap). I hope he's doin alright.

I've been BUSY. Like, literally no life busy for the past few weeks. I was sick, then I had make up work and projects. Normally I don't come straight home and do homework, but I've done that for most days in the past few weeks. -_-"
I've checked in a few times, though. I just hadn't done much cause no one has posted. I thought I'd give Alex a chance to post, since he seems like he's able now... I should poke him via text or somethin.

As for me, my studies have been taking a lot out of me lately. And I will admit, that when not working on school I have been playing FFX. I have it running super smoothly on my new notebook in 1080p... if the original game looks this awesome in HD, I can't even imagine how great the remake is going to look, with upgraded textures and everything. I've been thinking in my head about a post I'm planning to write, detailing a little more of Alexandra's past, specifically the bits concerning Wolf and how their relationship began and ended, since, well, we've explained literally none of that in the story so far. Alex and I just arbitrarily decided one day that it would be a thing, and never talked about it again. Now that I am literally just three months from being a certified psychologist, I feel like I can construct a believable and interesting relationship between them that fits perfectly.

Where was I? Oh yeah. So, the last couple weeks I have been studying for the GRE, or Graduate Record Exam. If you don't know, it's basically the Super Ultimate SAT, the one you take to apply to graduate programs. (Yes, in a couple years you will all have to refer to me as Master. You're supposed to be calling me Father or Reverend right now, but I'm letting it slide.) Last Thursday, after much trepidation, I actually took it. Drove all the way out to San Jose and sat in a 3x3 cubicle for four hours and wrote two essays, and answered forty questions each of verbal reasoning and quantitative reasoning.

Let me give you an example of some of the words I had to study and memorize for the verbal section:

turgid
exscind (this one isn't even in Fire Fox's dictionary, it's underlined in red in this text box)
rubicund
salutary (your first guess is very likely wrong)
harangue
abrogate
obdurate
lachrymose
obfuscate
abstemious
crepescular (again, Fire Fox doesn't know it)
epicure
polemical
obstreperous

You get the idea. Some of the words I encountered on the test, I have never even seen in my seventeen years of education in the English language. Not that I never knew them, I've never seen them. What does that say about those words? To me, that doesn't exactly scream, "These will be useful in your life!" I'm actually legitimately curious about how many of the above words you guys know off the top of your heads.

Oh yeah, and for the math I had to relearn: arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and data analysis. Arithmetic and algebra were pretty easy to get under my belt again, but geometry was a little harder, and data analysis has never been my forte (I cannot remember formulas, which is fine in real life because you don't have to, but useless in school because you do). As you could guess, my forty quantitative reasoning questions were almost solely geometry and data analysis. C'est la vie. Baise mon vie.

Anyway, so, for the verbal and quantitative I scored utterly average. Which, given the insane difficulty, I can't really complain about. I dunno how I did on my essays because the scores are subjective and need to be graded individually.

Umm, yeah, so that's been my last couple weeks.

If you want to pick that fight, I give you the LSAT (Law School Admission Test), MPRE (Multistate Professional Responsibility Examiniation), MBE (Multistate Bar Examination), MPT (Multistate Performance Test), Texas Procedure & Evidence Examination, and Texas Bar Essay Examination.

And my title is Doctor by the same.

Bam.

Hey now, there's no need to fight over who has the bigger, harder test. It's all about how you use it, Dr. Q.

You know, back in the dizzle there were no exams and stuff if you wanted to do something with your life. You did what you were good at, or you got good at something you wanted to do and did it. Nobody would be like, "You gotta prove your knowledge of a thousand useless things before we let you do that!"

I understand that the exams are designed to hold professionals to a higher (and universal) standard, but if it wasn't necessary before, I don't really know why it has become so now. Would the world stop turning if I received an M.S. without knowing the definitions of hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia or honorificabilitudinitatibus? Probably not. I shirked the SAT (and over ten thousand dollars in tuition fees) by attending community college, and I've done quite well at university. The SAT might have told the university that I wouldn't do well, and therefore barred me from acceptance. I feel the GRE does precisely the same thing, except there's no way around it. I might not get accepted to a graduate program because I've never used tesseradecade in a sentence before. Just doesn't seem fair.

And Dr. Q, would you be considerably worse at your job if you hadn't taken those tests? I'd wager that no, you wouldn't. If you care enough about your profession, you shouldn't need some test to prove it.

People who don't care, and who aren't good, will lose their jobs. Why does it need to be more complicated than that? The fact that we still exist as a civilisation today proves that our methods in the past were conducive to survival.

My health is much better now and while I've been working on a post, my time has mostly been spent in research. Over the past eight moths I've been tracking the Solar Cycle, which will reach it's peak later this year and it's been quite a show. Sunspot activity is quite high right now and the solar storms have been spectacular, however, this may be leading to a massive solar storm. There have been reports of a roaring or rumbling sound in the sky coming in from all over the world. Some of the videos on youtube are an obvious hoax that has gone viral, but there are a good bit that are real. During my research I ran across some old articles from the 1850s that mentioned this phenomenon. The date was what peaked my interest.

In 1859 the Earth was blasted by a massive solar storm known as The Carrington Event. During this event telegraph wires actually caught fire and operators received severe and sometimes fatal shocks. The air was so electric that lines were still running even after being disconnected. The Auroras during this time could be seen all over the world, including the Caribbean. A spectacular event to be certain. Further research revealed that something like The Carrington Event happens every 500 years or so we shouldn't be seeing anything like it till around 2300, however no other type of Solar Storm has given such a clear warring. Are we about to experience such an event? NASA believes it is quite possible.

On one hand I'm looking forward to witnessing it; on the other...the aftermath would be catastrophic. The modern world is so infused with and dependent upon electrical technology that an event on this scale would be a death sentence for millions of people. On the plus side there would be no threat of world wars because nothing would work. There is a way for us to get through this however. According to record a storm like this can reach the Earth within 18 hours (they normally take 3 days) which gives us an albeit, small window to shut down the world's power grid and simply ride out the storm (and enjoy the light show) then restore power over the next week. Best case: We end up powerless for a week and without wireless communication for a great deal longer possibly a year or two. (satellites probably wont survive the storm) Worst case: Welcome to the 1800s.

Now there is no guarantee this will happen during the peak of this solar cycle, but it is a very real possibility.

Now during this research the Fringe Science part of my brain started turning it's gears. We all know about the hole in the ozone layer right? I personally believe it's always been there, but that's another argument. Ice core samples have shown us that our poles used to be reversed and this is most likely part of the Earth's natural cycle. What if the widening hole is is actually the weakening of our Magnetosphere in preparation for a possible Polar Shift brought on by a massive Solar Storm? If this is the case, then we have a very interesting future to look forward to. I can't even begin to fathom what will come of it.

So yeah, that's what I've been up to in between video games and reading lol.

Dude, you are awesome. I learned more in that there post than I did in high school. So, this research that you do, is that your job? Or is it just recreational? Either way, you are awesome.

It's just a hobby of mine. The cycles of the Earth, the Ancient World, Fringe Theories and Astronomy fascinate me. I'm always amazed by this planet and it's surroundings, but am often dumbfounded by scientists who fail to take the past into account when coming up with theories.

What DO you do, anyway? Like, career-wise. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I don't really know anything about you other than your name.

Unfortunately, my health keeps from having a stable job. I've had many jobs throughout my life though; from Election Official to Photographer and enjoyed all of them.

O.o ...
*suddenly feels ridiculously unqualified be a part of this group*
I... Uh... I'm graduating from high school in June...

Oh hush, you're a talented writer and you know it. I published my first novel in high school, so there's nothing wrong with that.

This is completely unrelated to anything, but I've just recently seen the trailer for the new Tomb Raider reboot, by Square Enix (okay, that makes it marginally related I guess), and done some reading into it. It looks fuzzing epic. Like, buy it and beat it the night it comes out, epic. Now, I liked Underworld whereas most people did not. So I have no worries about finding this one ridiculously awesome. If they could introduce a control scheme somewhat akin to Assassin's Creed (at least for the platforming) that would be great.

I've been following the new Tomb Raider for a while now. The "theatrical" trailer for the game is one of those videos that sends chills down my spine and reminds me of how excited I used to get for video games. The gameplay videos I've seen have dampened my excitement somewhat, but it still looks to be an exciting game that will attempt to bring the franchise up to a few modern standards.

The minute I read "Tomb Raider" and "Square-Enix" in the same sentence I literally made the same "Uh??" grunt at the end of the Home Improvement intro. I dunno, maybe I'm just too old-fashioned to think that Lara Croft and Square being under the same roof isn't totally bizarre?

I think it's healthy for Square-Enix to continue to broaden its horizons and dive balls-deep into genres other than Final Fantasy.

In terms of gameplay, it looks like they're going for a very cinematic approach, the likes of which the Uncharted series (which was, in the first place, a nod to Tomb Raider if ever there was one) used to amazing effect. From what I saw, this boiled down to solving puzzles and completing relatively easy QTEs (I've come to realize that the game world will never ever ever fully get rid of these, so I'm happy with half a loaf these days). The developers say the combat will be quite awesome, though, and I am inclined to believe them.

Even if it's not, I figure staring at 21-year old Lara's bum in glorious 1080p for a few hours will be worth the asking price of the game. Yeah, I'm a perv. Big whoop, wanna fight about it?

Lara is STILL only 21? Damn it, that means I'm OLDER than her at this point. God, I'm getting old. She reminds me of Ash Ketchum and how he's managed to stay roughly 10 years old for the last 10 years since the Anime debuted.

This is a complete reboot of the series, going back and telling the story of how a rich and spoiled girl by the name of Lara Croft became what she is. So it's going back and telling a new story. She was around thirty in the later games of the original canon.