practicality

Being in both a tabletop game and an online game at the moment has been making me think about what I like and don't like about each medium a lot recently. Online is more characterization driven, which I like, because I love playing with characterization, but the tabletop stuff has thus far been more pure fun, because the 'RP IS SERIOUS BUSSINESS!!!1!' element is totally gone. Maybe this because LJ isn't involved - I have a theory that the LJ servers are not actually powered by electricity, but by drama.

I've also been itching to play Eva again lately, or Ally. I damn the lack of Sparda RPers XD; I may end up re-writing Mira for a Shadowrun game that's starting up (as I think my Sprawl-verse game is probably a pipe dream) - maybe that will fulfil my 'kickass girl' desires.

I may strangle the next person who tells me what a totally awesome, cool lab position they've scored. This will likely be Yana. No, I don't have anything yet myself. Yes, I still have e-mails to write. Yes, I probably will end up working at White Spot or somewhere equally sad this summer.

...This will probably seem a lot better in the morning, but right now, I'm just utterly frustrated and on the verge of tears.

Oh, Vergil. I forgot how totally fucking awesome you were. Don't listen to those people who say Dante's cooler, it's totally you.

And oh, DMC3 soundtrack, I forgot how much you sucked.

I had some Deep ThoughtsTM, but I am dead-tired at the moment, so they will have to wait until tomorrow.

Yeah, I just bought $90 worth of stuff, including shipping and handling. Which I will not feel guilty about, damnit, because it was some of my Christmas gift certificates. What I got
-Mona Lisa Overdrive
-Dreaming Through the Noise
-Persona 2
-Leon pants (in the right size, this time!)

I've got about $40 left on the Amazon gift certificate - I may buy some books later. I'm also going to shamelessly spend whatever tax refund I get on cosplay stuff.

Oh, and I dyed my hair blue again. It came out more of a midnight blue this time, because I didn't bleach my hair out first, but it's still pretty neat. I'll post photos later.

Things I'm downloading right now:
-Boku no Sexual Harassment (so I can scare other people with it)
-Enzai (I'm a masochist. And too curious for my own good)
-Gankutsuou (because I need to see the rest of it)
-Kizuna (because someone mentioned it to me when I asked for yaoi recs way back when, and I just found the third part, finally)

*sings* The internet is for porn, the internet is for porn, why you think the net was born? Porn, porn, porn~! (Yeah, I know Gankutsuou isn't porn. The rest is)

Many things have happened in the last two days, which I should probably at least catalog for posterity. Tuesday night was the first night of the 50 Fathoms, and it rocked. My wussy little dolphin-boy managed to (somewhat unexpectedly) kill a monkape, which is like a 20-foot baboon. It was epic. Last night was the Meet the Profs networking event, which was a little disorganized (first year they've done it), but a good time anyway. Two of my current profs were there, as well as a few I sort of knew from other events. I kind of fangirled one of the Microbi researchers, who is totally awesome (and I'm not even that interested in her research, either! Neat stuff, but not my sort of neat stuff), and there was a lot of discussion about bioinformatics spawned by Yana's desire to minor in Math - apparently Perl is a great language for that stuff, as it handles strings really well.

I was supposed to work last night, but my walking partner never showed, so I got to go home and get paid for it anyway. So Yana and I decided to go wander around, as it was a beautiful night - we snuck into the Japanese garden, which is beautiful at night, then headed down to Wreck Beach and watched the lights of the city and ships and talked, before ending up in my room, where we watched some more Mushishi before calling it a night.

And I am made of win, because I have all my homework through Monday done! Yay!

Because when I want to avoid homework, I research cosplay stuff! Pants are easy now that I've got a brand, care of the too-big pair (Propper International, and they're BDUs for those interested). The thigh holster is pretty easy, too, because it's nylon and an incredibly common style, so some ebay hunting should turn up a good deal.

The shoulder harness is harder - the closest I've find in new manufacture is Galco, which is 1) really expensive new 2) not totally accurate (much as we'd all like to believe that all of this is actually military-issue, there's bits here and there where I think the designers made shit up) - I may hunt ebay for that, or possibly do horribly indecent things to some cheap leather belts. He's got a double mag pouch on the right side which looks pretty much exactly like Galco's - the left is harder to tell, it looks like it may be a single horizontal mag pouch, but it's really unclear (I can pretty much only see it on the menu screen, with the Red 9 or semi-auto rifle equipped). I also have no idea where that cross-chest strap is coming from - I've never seen it anywhere else on shoulder holsters. It's also worth noting that the knife sheath isn't part of rig - it's held on with some heavy-duty black tape XD;

Gloves and belt and accesory bags I'm still investigating (watch, I'll make another post in half an hour with those, too), although I realized the other day I can totally re-use the gloves for Rufus (hooray one official art image). Gun-wise, if I opt to buy something new instead of using my cheap-ass dollar store one (it's as nice as some airsoft ones I've seen for three or four times the price), I'm going to go with the Blacktail, which the RE fanboys with too much free time inform me is a Springfield Armory XD-9, because I can use it for Ada, too.

I also need to cave and buy an actual binder - not just for Leon, but I've reached the point where I just can't do the ace bandage thing any more (there's a reason I did Virgil and mafia!Leon all Yaoicon), and Leon's the first new one I'm doing that needs binding. Underworks is looking like the best, but I'm going to investigate further. I may also cave and buy blue colored contacts, for Leon, Rufus, kind of Sephiroth (his are green, I know - I just need something lighter than brown).

Oh, any budding Leon cosplayers on the flist looking for a pair of pant? I'm trying to figure out what to do with the too-big pair - they're medium-short, so 31-35 waist and 26 1/2 - 29 1/2 inseam (which means if you're taller than 5'8", they'll be too short), and despite being used (as I got them at a thrift store) in great shape. Dark navy, poly/cotton ripstop. Too poor to give them away, sadly, but $15 plus shipping is a lot cheaper than anywhere else online.

I just missed my first English class of the week! Despite being fifteen minutes early - it's in a different building on Mondays. And I think the whole point of physics is to make me cry in as many ways as possible - I just shelled out $200 for the goddamn textbook, which I can't avoid buying because pretty much all the exam material is in it, rather than the lectures, and it comes with the online code to do the homework. With my $50 English textbook (a steal, comparatively), I am now much poorer. I really need a better job.

Guess who just figured out how to 1) install Japanese fonts and 2) force Photoshop into accepting foreign characters? Oh yeah. Three months too late for what I originally wanted it for, but handy none the less!

I'm fairly certain there are more useful things I could be spending my evening on, but eh. And if Yana decides to finally show up at like quarter 'til midnight, I'm going to kill her, because I've been waiting around for her for the last hour and a half, and plan on actually going to bed at a reasonable time tonight.

And I'm going to kill Guy Upstairs (whichever one it is, may as well kill all of them for good measure), because I've been back a week and the noise is already getting to me. Three more months.

I've had lot of things on my mind lately - some good, some bad, and some that's not really either. Still, largely not really the type of stuff for this blog, because it's all hideously long-winded and introspective, and it won't help me to post any of it, and some of it is best kept to myself, I think. But it's a strange state to find myself in - good for me, though. There may be bits and pieces here, probably mostly science-related - I've found myself contemplating that a lot recently, and I find myself somewhat without an outlet among my friends - almost all of you guys are Arts-kids, and while I love you for that, sometimes I need someone who knows what the hell I'm talking about when I go off on tangential rants about the possibility of Yersinia pestis as a bioterrorism agent and the like. Yana does, although she gives me the 'silly Microbi geek...' eyeroll a lot (big words from a girl with the Krebs cycle on her wall), but that's it, really.

Speaking of science, I've added another resolution for myself this year - read one new scientific paper a week. Because I realised that while yeah, I don't understand a lot of the terminology or concepts, I have two options - I can sit on my ass until third and fourth year, when they start teaching some of these concepts, or with the amazing power of the internet, I can sit down and do the little bit extra I need to learn something new. We'll see how it works out.