the P.Pole

Update: Herman’s comment about the Sp. Attack EVs and nature was spot on. I completely forgot that I used to use the same Crobat as a Confuse Ray + Hypnosis + Air Slash (flinch) lead. Silly me.

Motivation: I don’t fancy myself a pro (so you pros out there, don’t come a-flamin’ please) but I did get pretty annoyed at a Pokémon column I saw in the Math Faculty newsletter at UW the other day. This guy’s idea of an informative Pokémon article was writing about starting a new game in Gold and remarking “I caught the Pidgey because I like Pidgeys–they are so average!”. I don’t know that article’s usual audience, but it probably isn’t a particularly hardcore or large audience. Anyway, I felt like writing some Pokémon so here we go.

Sometimes, people you respect say things and it affects the way you do things for a long, maybe permanent, time.

Case in point, my cousin Herman once remarked that my Crobat and Metagross complement each others’ weaknesses very well. Since then, I’ve tended to keep both in my party for Battle Tower rounds, singles or doubles. Not only is it absolutely true, it’s also something I probably wouldn’t have noticed without the tip off before (here is where I would take credit and pretend like I’d planned the pairing all along).

Anyway, here’s my party as of right now, for singles in the Battle Tower in Pokémon Pearl: Continue reading

I’ve very little to report on today. Well let’s see:

5 things that happened today:

• John and Linda came over to help me review for my first LLQP exam tomorrow
• many Team Fortress 2 Achievements for Sniper, Spy, Heavy, and Pyro (some through farming, some through sheer awesoming)
• Team Fortress 2 Weapons, including two Huntsman Bows, a second Force-A-Nature Shotgun, and a second Natascha (from Heavy Milestone 2)
• Schneider’s Beef Pies, I had two for lunch, delicious little things
• LeBron James just saved the Cavaliers with two foul shots to tie at 100-100 with 0.5 seconds left, good golly

5 things we did at Adwin’s place:

• Left 4 Dead LAN party, versus rapage, survival exploit-fails
• Rock Band 2, starting The Navel Poonapples and getting owned by “The Perfect Drug” (NIN)
• Breakfast at… some breakfast place, it was damn good
• Guava juice + Fresca, enough said
• 3 on 3 Bobble Head Hockey + Ragdoll Kung Fu

Twas a fun time. Adwin and his parents are always wonderful hosts. I thank him for the invites and wish Raf could have been there to join us. I also lament my sucky RB drum skills. O. M. G. The Perfect Drug.

From Kotaku, there’s a site that lets you make your own Left 4 Dead achievement things.

Yes, this is what it’s come to. For the record, this was Sam and I (with one or two songs from Taylor, intermittently) playing through Rock Band as “Kurwa”, featuring Crisy Poonapple as the guitarist/bassist and Zantrex on the drums. It started out with me playing guitar and Sam on the drums, but soon it changed to pretty much Sam always on guitar and me always on drums.

As for the 666 thing, we… I have no good excuse really, it just looks kinda funny. I have a fourth photo that I didn’t bother posting, and that’s of a run of “Enter Sandman” by Metallica that we did on Expert with Golden Stars. It was totally unexpected, but I did have a feeling the score would be insane. Woohoos.

So I’ve been more or less completely gone for almost all of the past five days. I’ve not forgotten about the Internets, and no I’ve not given up writing. My friends, I have been a victim of Power-Adapter-Failitis. It’s a common condition that befalls the best and worst of us.

My power block died sometime last week, on Wednesday if I remember correctly. Now, this would have been not so bad had the UW Tech Shop had a replacement or lender part on hand, which they did not. I brought my computer and dead power adapter in on Thursday morning, hoping to get it tested and replaced ASAP, but Dale, the kind service center guy had nothing to lend me. He ordered the part for me then and there and offered to charge my Book for me in the meantime, which I thought was a good if not the best solution.

I was hoping I could just buy one of the adapters off the shelf (there were at least two just sitting there in the case) and getting it refunded. As it turns out, the part I must take has to be filed as a replacement from Apple. So then the waiting began, with me checking maybe twice a day for my power adapter (I sort of need it for my computer to run and stuff) to no avail. I got Dale to charge my batteries up once or twice so I could check mail and keep sort of on top of school things, but it was inconvenient.

In any case, I’m writing you now with a brand new adapter (which isn’t actually the replacement). There was a spare one from one of the demo models of the new MBP’s. The one on display was juicing up through the cinema display it was tethered to, so it had no need for its own power adapter. Dale, feeling sympathy for me, decided to break the rules today and gave me the spare in lieu of mine (which actually got caught and is still stuck in Toronto, something about a screw up on the customs forms). So now I’ve got a new adapter and am happily charging my computer. All is well and the world can go on again, thanks to Dale and no thanks to Apple’s crappy power adapters and customs officers everywhere.

Also, I bought “Devil May Cry 3″ and “Soul Calibur 2″ both for PS2 yesterday for a combined $30 in total, which is not bad at all, I think. Herman and Sherman, this is us moving forward into the new century of calibrating!

I’ve been playing lots of Rock Band (well, not lots, but whenever it’s convenient and Sam’s up for it) and I’ve gotten quite a taste for it. I don’t play too many music or rhythm inspired games (DJ Max Portable and Lumines, if that counts, along with now Rock Band). If anyone hasn’t played it before, and thinks they probably won’t like it, I’d suggest you give it a whirl (or at least a twirl) before you say no to it. I personally never understood what the big commotion was before I had ever played it, but now I’m smacking things happily and failing nailing all those guitar solos like the rest of us happy Band players.

In mostly unrelated news, I do believe with the end of October, my annual season of feeling more than a little depressed has, since starting, come into full bloom, with leaves falling and everything. I really can’t say (or maybe I don’t like saying) why I always feel so bad this time of year, but I do know that Halloween (yes, that’s last night, considering when I’m writing this) is pretty much my least favourite day of whatever. It’s right up there beside Valentine’s Day and those rainy spring mornings where you wake up and the sky is still dark and it’s cold and wet outside and you’ve got school or work and it’s too cold to not wear a coat and you just know it’s gonna be a miserable day and you want to lash out at something or go into the corner and cry, or like that one morning I had way back when when I woke up with “…big, big girl, in a big big world…” in my head and I cried myself back to sleep. I hate these days.

I don’t know, folks. I’m a complicated man with complicated problems and complicated thoughts, but I’d like something simple, something sweet. Will the Internets deliver?