I had the "misfortune" to stay up during the time change today. After working on my day off and almost blowing my stack because of a customer that failed to show up when he was supposed to, I was unamused when I was playing my MGS3 in a very relaxed manner only to see the cable box on top of my TV show that I was an hour behind. My Mac showed the same time as the cable box, but my wristwatch was still an hour ahead, as was my tableside clock. Ugh.

I'm dragging now, so it's bedtime for me.

I'm back at work after a week off for "vacation". I didn't go anywhere or do anything special because my car insurance just happened to be due the day before my last day at work. It took all of my extra funds away. Fuckfuckfuck.

Now I'm back at work and am really dragging my tail. Having nine consecutive days off really made the return a bit harsher than usual even though I kept my daytime sleeping/nighttime awake cycle pretty much intact. It will be a few days before I'm back in work shape. So it goes.

Evidently all I had to do was actually complain about not getting all zeroes because no sooner than I write about it, I go and do it the very next day.



This time is four seconds faster than my previous best, though I did a few things different. All that said, I'm glad that I got this, also in the process pushing the single segment record into multiple segment territory.

I'd always considered a time below 1 hour 40 minutes to be the benchmark, and I blew past that one day with a time of 1:37:21. I've cut even that down and am nearing my lower theoretical limit to how low a time I can get. The only stated time I am chasing is a multiple segment time of 1 hour. 35 minutes, and 33 seconds, which is the lowest place time on the acknowledged world record leaderboard. If I can eclipse that, I'll be thrilled because my single segment time will be faster than other people's multple segment times. Tremendous.

Otherwise, I'm fine. I've been bothered by a toothache and a terminal case of the stupids from FedEx who have failed to deliver a package by a certain time this morning. All the day's plans hinge on that delivery and it hasn't happened yet. Frustrating.

So here I am. There's not a whole lot to say right now, but what I can say at the moment is that I work nights as a printer. During the day, I sleep, and when I am awake, I play video games, most specifically Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater for the Playstation 2.

What Snake Eater is is a tactical espionage action game where the goal is to to get through the game without being seen, using camoflauge and sneaking techniques to get through without issue.

I find this game endlessly entertaining and have devoted many hours to playing it. I also run a website for speed running this game, and speed running the game means skipping all of the cinematic scenes and radio dialogue and going through as fast as possible without being seen or killing people. The site can be found here:

http://www.metalgearspeedrunning.net/indexMGS.html

Though the vast majority of players play on the most difficult level, called Extreme, I play on the middle and least difficult levels, entitled Normal and Very Easy, respectively. Over time,I have sharpened my skill sets to playing the game without making any saves and going through in one segment. Most players who play on Normal play with making saves and doing runs in many segments to better their time. I don't and go through in one shot. It can be exciting, but also very nerve-wracking.

For demonstration purposes, this is what the final statistics look like for a multiple segmented run:



and a single segmented run:


There are two ways of doing a speedrun, and that is from scratch or with replay items. From scratch means you turn the PS2 on, select the New Game option, and pick up camoflauge and weapons as necessary as you start with a clean slate. For replay item games, one can collect certain camoflauge uniforms and are given weapons that are earned on a new game playthrough and have the results saved at the very end.

For many gamers, the very best display of skill is being able to go through in one segment with all zeroes in the statistics column, aka a perfect stat run. Of the five kinds of runs I do on a regular basis, I have done four of them with perfect stats. I am currently trying to edge out the fifth kind of run but am having so much trouble. Bleh.

The five kinds of runs I do are as follows:

Very Easy with a special "cheater" gun called the EzGun (which is standard equipment on VE only)
Very Easy from scratch
Very Easy with replay items
Normal from scratch
Normal with replay items.

Of the five runs, the only one missing is Normal with replay items, and I'm steaming about not having that yet.

I'll put more up later since I have to go to work.

*taps microphone*

Is this thing on?

So begins the first post. Yet another voice is added to the cacophony of cyberspace.