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Portal. Red Dead Redemption. Journey. Fallout 3. The Last of Us. Street Fighter 4. World of Warcraft. Spelunky. Dark Souls. Super Mario Galaxy. These are the games featured in Eurogamer's Games of the Generation series, the last article of which was posted today.

How many of these ten games did I play? Zero.

Portal? FPS, pass. RDR? Eh, I've played GTA4 and 5 plenty, and nothing about the theme compelled me to care. Journey? I get the impression that watching a movie of the game being played is as engaging as playing the game, and that I would only need to do either one time regardless. Fallout 3? Never cared about the series, wasn't about to start now. The Last of Us? If there is not a single additional [zombie / vampire / undead / supernatural] [book / TV series / movie / game] created for the rest of my life, it will be too soon. Street Fighter 4? My fighting game days are long gone, and I don't need to play against random assholes online to verify that. World Of Warcraft? This game still holds my mother-in-law's brain hostage and after 1000 hours of Diablo 3, I think I have enough of a qualifying first hand experience to know that it's something that I'm glad I avoided and will continue to avoid. Spelunky or Super Mario Galaxy? I care less about platfomers now than I do fighting games; Move Guy From Point A to B doesn't qualify as time well spent to me anymore. Dark Souls? Sure, I think I might like it enough but I'm not - or at least, no longer - at a point where I would feel comfortable in spending the kind of time necessary to play it to some kind of completion. So that's the ten games, and I haven't played any of them; some out of an aloof lack of interest, others out of a perceptible lack of interest, and a common trend of me being apathetic to the type of game or its theme, or my lack of will to put the time into playing it. Despite this, I don't feel like I'm moving away from video games or that I'm being bypassed by games or anything of that sort. I play IIDX every day, as seen here. I play something else every day during my exercise routines. The point of me saying all of this is that I could respond to a specific game in the list and say I haven't played it, or do the same for the list at large, but doing that doesn't really convey why I have done so, nor why I don't think that necessarily means that I'm trying to decry nor glorify a distance between myself and those games. Those games exist, I could see myself liking some more than others, but I haven't played any of them, and I don't particularly feel bothered or elitist in that I haven't played any of them. I guess it's a good thing that gaming is this diverse at this age, isn't it?

And now that I've posted all that rambling here, I don't have to do so anywhere else.

Meanwhile, there was a major power outage at 1AM today, which caused me to move to the basement futon so that I could get proper rest, as I didn't have my fan and its white noise to help me to sleep.

Draft.

19580218 10:00:00

HSF #101.0246

Doctor O12 reporting on initial completion of Consumer Project "EZ Cart".

Project completion has occurred three days before estimated time of completion and using five hundred bucks less than budgeted allocation. Special thanks is hereby made to Doctor W7 for his assistance in implementation of the signal detection of metal presence.

Dimension: The EZ Cart system is to be designed on a per model basis and is will not have an overall universal size; this is mostly due to the variance in trunk sizes among the various car models. Custom construction is also required for the retractable wheel legs, in order to ensure that the cart is at the proper height from the ground so that loading and removing the cart container requires no additional lifting by the user. Footprint for EZ Cart requires two boxed bases at the horizontal sides of the cart which may be up to four inches wide, but can be less. Additional space of three inches on the side of the cart compartment which is opposite of the lifting units is required for the retractable wheels.

Functionality: EZ Cart's supporting structure operates on a two button panel which is contained in a separately wired switch box and kept within the trunk. In the "off" state, the EZ Cart support arms are contained within the vehicle trunk and hold the cart in place. Switching to or from the "off" state will respectively contract or extend the EZ Cart arms. In removing the cart from the trunk, the EZ Cart arms will follow a predetermined path to first elevate the entire cart body to a certain height out of the trunk area (Z axis movement), then move the arms horizontally to position it out of the vehicle area (X axis movement). The arms will remain in this position until the switch is activated to return the EZ cart arms to the original "off" position, using a process which is the reverse of the procedure undertaken when the switch is activated "on". Folding latches on each arm will hold the cart in place as well as serve as one means with which the system will be able to detect that system operation is being conducted normally; in the "on" state, "off" cannot be activated until the latches are opened, and in the "off" state, "on" cannot be activated unless the latches are secured onto the cart.

Possibility for future improvements include ways for the arms to move other than one singular Z axis direction followed by one singular X axis direction. Telescoping retractable legs would also reduce effort required for use as well as ease construction costs for the necessity of making separate measurements on the basis of car model. An additional current limitation which either improvement could address is the present necessity for the vehicle to be on a level surface for ideal functionality.

Suggested marketing angles: Less wasted time compared to the manual unloading of items from a shopping cart to the trunk. Having a cart in hand ensured upon approach to the store. Having a cart which does not possibly have the contamination of other shoppers. Having a cart which the user can individually customize. Considering the potential limited market on the basis of required construction costs, these last two points may prove to be the most effective.

---

Songs. After the bad dips I had yesterday and the opening two songs today, I was a bit concerned that I would be in for another rough day; playing Black by X Crossfade quickly got my senses in order and set the course for smoother sailing. None of the increases were very spectacular, save for Planet Pulsation being predictably corrected, but that always beats the alternative to not having increases in the first place. At the end of the session, I recalled that I had some BGM error songs come up, so I tried using notepad++ to help find some directories to move to the reject pile, and the search took entirely too long just to find one word. I grant that there are many thousands of files within each given collection of songs, but the extension exclusion should help expedite that somewhat, shouldn't it? What I think I'll do instead is have it essentially generate a list of songs per major directory and work by hand from there. I should be able to do that on the side pretty easily.

Lunar Beat. Extra Mode. Double play. "@" denotes Random chart modifier. All songs are of highest difficulty type unless specified.
First line, by column; song title, EX score percentage and letter grade rank, EX score value and pass/fail, judgment readout (just great, great, good, bad poor), highest combo reached, note count of chart under Extra Mode, original note count of chart, percentage increase of Extra Mode notes over original note count, timestamp.
Second line, by column; pass count / play count, EX score percentage difference from record, EX score value difference from record, judgment readout difference from record (if current play is new record), highest combo reached difference from record (if current play is new record), timestamp of old record (if current play is new record).

Code:

			EX% & Rank	EX.p/f	pg.gr.gd.bd.pr		combo	nc	onc	%+nc 	date
absurd gaff @		34.06 D		1545.F	515.515.661.205.802	0091	2268			2013-11-02T00:06:47:117Z
0/5			07.25-		0329-

in the blackest den @	43.50 D		1587.F	539.509.476.102.443	0126	1824			2013-11-02T00:09:46:324Z
0/6			08.68-		0317-

black by x crossfade @	34.63 D		1814.F	605.604.460.282.1352	0075	2619	1761	048.72	2013-11-02T00:12:39:141Z
0/6			00.54+		0028+	9-46+33-21+59+		0033+				2012-10-18T23:30:54:276Z

september wind @	46.58 C		1581.F	552.477.437.93.354	0045	1697	1078	057.42	2013-11-02T00:17:29:086Z
0/7			00.80+		0027+	9-45+63+27-72-		0057-				2013-04-21T03:09:04:982Z

一途な恋 @		72.93 A		1202.P	468.266.70.7.36		0256	0824			2013-11-02T00:21:19:053Z
5/5			01.33-		0022-

happy angel @		61.38 B		1520.F	576.368.184.41.175	0107	1238			2013-11-02T00:25:22:597Z
0/8			00.68-		0017-

scar in the earth @	64.97 B		1623.F	606.411.156.26.127	0116	1249	0831	050.30	2013-11-02T00:29:59:389Z
0/8			00.96+		0024+	13+2-18-1+7+		0068-				2013-07-05T03:30:14:729Z

planet pulsation @	43.23 D		1789.F	621.547.546.146.581	0103	2069	1272	062.65	2013-11-02T00:33:47:453Z
0/2			04.47+		0185+	58+69+44-45-55-		0035-				2013-10-25T02:57:30:613Z

wilis @			37.69 D		1578.F	547.484.520.231.781	0124	2093	1181	077.22	2013-11-02T00:37:32:134Z
0/8			02.63+		0110+	39+32+9-18-14-		0038+				2012-06-01T02:01:16:379Z

under the sky @		58.39 B		1614.F	594.426.201.67.260	0104	1382			2013-11-02T00:41:05:893Z
0/14			03.47-		0096-

泰東ノ翠霞 @		57.48 B		1582.F	594.394.243.25.207	0120	1376	1256	009.55	2013-11-02T00:45:55:060Z
0/9			00.91+		0025+	20+15-2-7-45-		0011+				2013-05-21T01:58:52:165Z

the dirty of loudness @	39.66 D		1500.F	510.480.465.174.682	0060	1891	1189	059.04	2013-11-02T00:51:51:109Z
0/9			00.82+		0031+	19+7-5-3-21-		0016-				2013-08-29T01:03:47:705Z

naughty girl queens B @	60.42 B		1751.F	663.425.196.35.265	0337	1449	1276	013.55	2013-11-02T00:56:33:853Z
0/10			00.42+		0011+	11+11-10+18-8-		0152+				2013-09-14T23:56:45:261Z

reminiscence 003 @	53.41 C		1738.F	623.492.319.71.303	0246	1627	1183	037.53	2013-11-02T01:02:38:965Z
0/5			01.20+		0039+	15+9+29-14+12-		0131+				2013-06-27T00:22:58:038Z

contract @		28.42 E		1238.F	400.438.635.311.996	0057	2178			2013-11-02T01:08:46:061Z
0/6			01.42-		0062-