Princess Maker 2

This is one fucking hilarious game. I was looking for a nice simulation game, maybe Harvest Moon or SimCity, but I noticed on Wikipedia this game: Princess Maker 2
The premise is intriguing. You raise your daughter into a princess, a prostitute, or 72 jobs in between. I had to try it!

So first thing I noticed in this old DOS game is the interface. It's pretty primitive, so things don't work as well as you'd hope. Also, it's an unreleased English translation, so there are several mistranslations.

Now for the story. It's really stupid. There's an unnecessarily long prologue describing who you are. Basically you're a knight who saved a corrupt king from the prince of darkness, who was under direct instruction of god, which is really weird. Anyways, you defeated the prince, he retreated, the king thanks you and promises he'll be good. NONE of this plays a role in the ACTUAL story.

So you're chilling one day and there's a shooting star that lands right in front of you or something. Inside is a 10-year old girl. Then some god/goddess comes and explains that you have to raise her. What's interesting is it first asks you what you want her birthday to be, which affects which god/goddess is her guardian (it's based on her horoscope). What's weird is it also asks for your birthday, but nothing ever happens on your birthday. It also asks for her blood type, which is more important in Japan where they consider that also. Anyways, this questionnaire takes place before the long prologue. To continue...

After you get the kid, the game starts. You have this weird demon-creature butler (this whole world is infested with magical demons, but the one working for you has no powers!!). You get a lot of options and it looks like you get a great deal of control over your kid--greater than you actually have. You can change her diet to make her gain, keep, or lose weight. You can take her to the market and buy her a meal, clothes, weapons and armor, or to donate to the church. You can talk to her (ask how she's doing, ask how her studies are, or just small talk). You can send her to the castle to socialize. And you can plan out her schedule for the month, which is the most important one.

I say that you don't get that much control because you do this at the end of every month. You interact with your daughter once a month! Anyways, planning the schedule is important for developing her skills. As Napoleon Dynamite phrased it, "Girls only date guys who have good skills!" Same works for your daughter. Each month is divided three ways and you choose what she does for each third. So she'll be in school for a little over a week if you want her to. She can also work, take an adventure, or relax.

School is the best way to raise her stats. She can take science, poetry, fencing, dance, and some other things, each raising certain stats. Some lower other stats, which is interesting. For example, the more she studies science, the more her intelligence goes up, the lower her faith goes. I actually like this, because it makes it easy for my girl to be an atheist. Unfortunately, tuition is expensive. It's about 40G per DAY. Unfortunately, you can't keep her studying.

Work is a good way to earn money, but you need good stats to get good money. Without good stats, the employer yells at her and docks her pay. Even if she fails, her stats slowly increase through work, and some of them are stats that don't increase through school, like cooking (there's no cooking school for some reason). As she gets older she can get tougher jobs like hunting or lumberjacking or cabaret dancing.

Stress is the big problem in this game. The more she works or studies, the more stressed she gets. And if her stress levels are high enough, she'll stop working and become delinquent. If it keeps getting worse, she gets sick and dies. To reduce her stress you have to let her rest by going out on the town or going on vacation to help her relax.

So I realized something really stupid. Your character is a hero who saved the kingdom, but he's in a fixed income of like 100G a month and an extra 500G a year. This really sucks because everything is fucking expensive. School averages 40G/day. When she goes to town, she'll ask for money, and if you give her, she's taking like 100G. You don't have to give her money, but her stress won't go down as much. If she's delinquent, she'll take money even if you say no. So basically it's impossible. I got so tired of this that I got bored and decided to kill her. It was actually pretty funny, because the butler kept trying to change her diet from the anorexic one I chose to the weight-gain one, and I kept changing it back. Her stress went up so much that she had to lie in bed. And when you ask her how she's feeling she says "This is the end for me... have a long life, dad" Owned. Eventually she died, just barely reaching age 12.
SO I found a cheat to give me more money, which actually allowed me to do something.

There are RPG elements to the game, which make no sense. She can go on an adventure, which means you control her in an RPG minigame, fighting monsters and looking for secrets. It's really pointless unless you can afford tons of weapons and training. In fact strength is only useful for gaining a reputation, which will cause random townsfolk to attack her, and if you win, your reputation goes up even more. It's also useful for the harvest festival, where there's a fighting tournament.

The harvest festival takes the entire month of october. She participates in one of four events: dance, cooking, art, fighting. My girl's cooking skills were maxed out but she still got only 9 points (the winner got 180 points). Apparently you can't cook with a low "sensitivity" stat. They give you useless prizes if you win.
Eventually my girl got a rival. Some girl in her dance class challenged her and my girl won. Owned.

One thing that really really bothered me is the physical growth. She starts out like 4'8" with no tits or ass, weighing like 70 pounds. Well she's 10 years old, right? Her breasts were slowly growing, so I decided to speed up the growth for when she becomes a prostitute. There are pills that increase her size 3/4 an inch. I gave her a lot so by age 12 she was size 36. I didn't realize she hadn't finished puberty, so by the time she was 18 her size was 42, which is bigger than even most porn stars. Her hip size was like 32 and her waist was 20. She weighed under 110 pounds. But she was sooo short. At age 18 she was 5 feet tall. WTF!! I guess I set her up for back problems...
Oh and I bought this really really slutty dress for her, but she couldn't fit in it because you have to weigh like 90 pounds to get in it. As soon as she could fit, she started starving.

So there's a social factor in this. The better your stats are, the easier it is to socialize with people in the castle. You have to work your way up, talking to the lowly castle guard until you're popular enough to talk to someone more important. What's funny is the first time I tried, the guard told me to find someone more important, meaning I had enough popularity points, but I still got rejected from everyone else. Anyways, it actually helps because the merchants sell you stuff for cheaper if you're popular and the judges at the harvest festival inflate your score a lot.

So I trained my daughter to win all the harvest festival competitions and I gave her huge tits and I got her to age 16. That's when I started making her work at the sleazy bar, where she flirted with drunk people. One day, some old guy is all "Would you like to be my mistress? I'll pay you 165G a month." She's all "Haha, okay, sure, nice to meet you!" Owned. What's funnier is the demon guy is all "uh oh that can't be good. Would you like to scold her?" and I'm all "Fuck you, if that's what she wants to do, who am I to say no!" Owned.

Unfortunately, I failed. She didn't become a prostitute like I hoped. Instead she ended up some sort of bandit.

Such a funny game...

Reflections on the end of high school

June 2008 was an interesting way to end my high school experience. After researching the issue for months, I finally experimented with ganja. I performed publicly on the blues harp. I was punished unjustly by an authority I lost respect for weeks prior. I helped create an interesting film project. I came, I saw, I brawled.

Four years gone by... How many highlights were there?

1. Freshman year
1. MJ's trumpet section
2. Exposure to jazz
   
3. Antenore's world studies
4. Philosophizing of reality
   
5. Smirl's stories
   
6. Jeremy, John, and Dave visiting
   
7. Keith Dunton coaching
   
8. San Francisco trip
   
9. First Scioly regionals
10. Morgan Jones at Reno
11. Making Wind Ensemble
    
12. Barry Perkins clinic
    
2. Sophomore year
1. Jacob's guitar/bass videos
   
2. Jacobs' jokes and trumpet playing
   
3. Freed's eccentricities
   
4. Peck's cynicism
   
5. Sadnik's trumpet section
6. Keith Dunton coaching and lessons
   
7. Jeremy, John, Dave visiting
   
8. Best Jazz II ever
   
3. Junior year
1. Struggling through AP Physics
   
2. Sewell's detailed lectures
   
3. My trumpet section and fuckups
   
4. Keith Dunton, Trumpet Corner coaching
5. Washington Middle School at Reno
   
6. Jeremy, Jesse, Dave visiting
   
4. Senior year
1. COSMOS
   
2. Funny Spanish class
   
3. Poker in stats class
   
4. Getting shafted in Jazz I
   
5. Jayne's trumpet section...
6. Garfield HS at Reno
7. Eisloffel's videos
8. Everything mentioned at the beginning

That's what I'll remember of high school. I'll also remember my friends and classmates of many years, people like Adrian, Andrew, Yassi, Jenny, Janine, Ryan, Kevin, Tarun, Alex, Alec, Neeraj. I'll remember people I haven't known very long, people like Andrea, Keith, Deep, Katie, MJ, Russell, Haran.
Staying in touch will be much easier now that we have internet networking like facebook. Still, it's going to be really weird not being in the same class as Jenny or Adrian, or the same band as Ryan and Alex.

Looking back, middle school was a complete waste of time. It somewhat influenced my freshman year, but I went in a completely different direction. My personality in high school was very much influenced by my freshman year. With inspirational leaders like MJ and Sarah, friendly upperclassmen like Sophia and Carly, and amazing talents like Keith and Johnny, band had the biggest role in shaping me. Overall, it was a total blast; I did so much more than I ever had before! Field tournaments, San Francisco trip, Reno trip, Scioly regionals, Barry Perkins. These were trips I am glad I took. And world studies with Antenore was awesome, especially since we had the best class ever--Kelly, Kevin, Brian, John, Ryan, Adrian, Tarun, Christine, Ashley, Yassi, Lynne, Vincent. That was the year I found my first epiphany, regarding perception and reality, although now it seems that this truth I realized was available and known by everybody... Still, freshman year was when life became interesting for me.

Sophomore year, in hindsight, wasn't bad at all. Sure, I found Peck a dull teacher who tested us before giving lectures. Sure, Jacobs didn't teach, just showed us notes to copy. Sure, Freed graded really strictly and gave tons of homework that didn't help our grades. But each of these was in itself fun. Peck's class was great because I was there with friends: Marc, Alex, Brian, Ranjan, Marc, and we got to watch weird movies like Gallipoli. Jacobs was hilarious, always making fun of Steven Wang with Sameer and Brian Beard. Freed had her funny moments, and it was fun being in that class with Ryan, Christine, Jennifer, Melody, Brian. Plus there was Spanish with Wexler and Rundle and math with Jacob, which were loads of fun. Unlike freshman year, most of my experiences were not derived from band, but from academics. Band was still pretty fun, but I had to deal with bob-o in wind ensemble. Our jazz band was great, though, I'd say the best Jazz II I've ever seen come out of Irvine. Good times, eh?

Junior year was alright. Harwood was the nicest teacher ever, and Sewell was the smartest teacher ever. Sacks was an interesting teacher, and although I despised that physics class, I'm glad I took it. Langevin was pretty annoying though; only Raam and Neeraj made calc a fun class. Spanish with Schram had its moments. Helping Russell with his algebra kids wasn't that bad, and Sheila and Melissa were pretty nice. Band was getting boring, espeically with bob-o leading jazz I. But wind ensemble was really fun with V and Justin and Keith.

I consider COSMOS as the beginning of senior year. It wasn't worth $2K but it was still loads of fun. I got to meet awesome people like Andrew, Brandon, Desiree, Wade, Ish, Hugo, Surya, Chris, Beau, and Griffin. I worked with Mike and Carol, who were really cool people. Band was a bust, with jayne getting all this favoritism. Bad enough that she took my section leader spot, she also took a spot in wind ensemble and won the stupid medallion, the most undeserving winner ever, worse than chrissy. The only positives from band were the newbies: Andrea, Dustin, Roy, Julian, Francisco, Katie, Rithwik. They're the only reason I'll ever return to see the band perform. Regarding classes, all my teachers were even better than last year, except maybe Sewell, who I still favor over Gray and Eisloffel. Still, it was a blast. Coupled with brawl, weed, and harmonica, it was a great year.


High school was great, and college can only get better. As long as I stay in touch with everyone I've met, and as long as we have internet networking, saying goodbye will be easier. Nevertheless, it's quite daunting that in about three years, I will never hear from most of these people again.

" This is our moment
Here at the crossroads of time
We hope our children carry our dreams down the line
They are the vintage
What kind of life will they live?
Is this a curse or a blessing that we give?

There will be miracles
After the last war is won
Science and poetry rule in the new world to come
Prophets and angels
Gave us the power to see
What an amazing future there will be"

"And so it goes, and so it goes
And you're the only one who knows"

"This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end"

Goodbye, my friends, and good luck.

Evil and Ignorance!!

I can post this with confidence that very few people will read this. Unless I ask them, unless they're a good friend of mine, and unless they're a troll, nobody will read it. That's how I justify my candor.

I HATE THAT WHINY BITCH SO MUCH
I want to smack jayne with a hammer, and not the cartoonish kind, but the real kind you get in a hardware store

My reason for hating her so much: she is CORRUPTING andrea into her OWN image
Andrea used to be my favorite freshman and I wanted her to become my protege. I wanted to train her and mold her into my image, except I wanted her to be better than me at everything she does.
TOO LATE
jayne beat me to it. Andrea is becoming a jayne clone. She was always better than jayne. But at this rate she's going to decline.

Reasons jayne is a terrible influence:

• She whines more than anyone over the age 9. I seriously haven't seen anyone whine so much since 4th grade. Whenever I tell her to shut up, she cries to V, "MR V PRIYAM IS BEING MEAN TO ME" Fuck, bitch, shut up! Stop being immature.
  
• She's judgmental. She will groan the most at others' errors.
• She's a hypocrite. She groans at others' errors but she makes more errors than anyone. She yells at people who complain about rehearsal, when she doesn't like jazz any more than they do, she just wants to show off her leadership position.
  
• She's pretentious. She acts like since she's studying music, she has a better ear than anyone and she has more expertise than anyone. She acts like she's superior when in fact she sucks.
• She's too fucking loud
• She thinks she's the funniest person ever. She makes vulgar references to almost everything and often spits out interjections like "PISS!" and "BALLS!" She thinks she's funnier than Eddie Izzard.
• She sucks at trumpet. She's terrible, absolutely terrible. Tim Song fucking owns her.
• She kisses ass so much she rivals chrissy petty.
• She's an attention whore and can't stand when someone isn't looking at or listening to her.

That's all I have for now because, thank god, she's only in wind ensemble with me. I feel terrible for Alex for having to deal with that nonsense every day.
So here are examples of Andrea being corrupted:

• She tags along with jayne
• Katy C tags along with Andrea and by transitive property tags along with jayne
• this is bad because Katy C is another of my favorite freshmen and she shows more potential than even Andrea, and if she gets corrupted, it'll be a TRAGEDY
• She thinks jayne is funny
• Anyone who thinks she's funny can't be in the right mind
• She's groaning as much as jayne
• Annoying and wrong
• She doesn't give the music the respect it deserves
• She was snickering with jayne through the Roy Haynes concert, which is just terrible.
  
• She doesn't like Alex for trying to convince her that jayne is a bad influence
• This REALLY pisses me off. My former favorite freshman dislikes one of my best friends just because he was trying to show her the truth. UNACCEPTABLE.

This must be stopped. Justin is leaving and we're graduating. Adam is the only competent one left, and as soon as he's gone, a clone of jayne will be in charge of the trumpet section. The glory that we saw as freshmen will be no more. The section will have nothing to aspire to. Their best musician and section leader will be an obnoxious douche. This cannot continue.

Some ways to maybe whittle at her influence:

• Convince Andrea that jayne is evil
• Didn't work when Alex tried it, and that's the easiest way. If I can just get some other people to agree, like Ryan and Mark...
  
• Train Francisco so he's better than andrea by junior year
• This will be fucking hard and damn near impossible.
• Get other trumpet players to challenge her.
• Unfortunately, the one who's in the best position to challenge jayne is andrea, which will not happen. Maybe Dustin?

That's all I have so far.
God help us.

Typecasting

As of April 6, I started a boycott of the music industry.

I don't think I will boycott, but I will definitely be skeptical towards another industry I despise: Hollywood.

I saw The Forbidden Kingdom last weekend, an action film starring Jackie Chan and Jet Li. I expected them to be the protagonists, but instead it was some dumb white kid. He ruined the movie for me! The action sequences were great, because he got owned and the Chinese people owned, but the story revolved around him. This was a problem since he's a dick. Another movie that I haven't seen because I'm boycotting is 21. It's the story of Chinese American MIT student Jeff Ma, but they hired a white British guy. The story of a mostly-Asian blackjack team became the story of a white-dominated team. "There are Asians in the movie," people tell me. Fair enough, there are two Asians, even though neither has a serious role in the movie.

That's the problem, apparently. American people don't want to see minorities taking on serious roles. Another, less reasonable, argument is that there aren't enough minorities in Hollywood to cast serious roles. That's total bullshit, and it's a terrible way to justify racist casting.

Look at it this way. 30 Rock is a great show, and in it, Tina Fey satirizes show business. One recurring issue is that, as a brunette, she can't be an actress. Only blondes can.

The problem is you need serious actors in order to establish a precedent. You need a precedent in order to disrupt racist casting. But you need to disrupt racist casting in order to hire serious actors. What Hollywood is doing right now is refusing to give the minority actors their opportunity. They subsequently get roles that hardly anyone can take seriously, thus perpetuating the cycle.

I don't know what can be done. But I do know that I would love to see some casting with a hero that's NOT white, or a black guy that does NOT die or go to jail.

FIGHT TYPECASTING AND RACISM

More fair comparison

I can't go to HMC prefrosh because it's the first two days back from school, and that'd suck. I wish they planned it better...
Still, I feel compelled to, in light of more information, reconsider yet again.
Pros of Caltech:

• The name--I'll get better jobs and grad school opportunities
• The location--Pasadena has lots of character, very unique
• The housing--Houses instead of dorms, lots and lots of character, strong unity
• The research--research programs encouraged for literally all students
• The size--small so I'll know almost everyone
• The pranks--fun stuff
• The building--even more fun stuff

Pros of HMC:

• The location--Claremont is gorgeous and HMC is adjacent to other schools
• The consortium--great classes in pure sciences and liberal arts at other schools
• The profs--Mudd profs are education-driven
  
• The housing--guaranteed, with some of culture in each
• The music--CS prof Keller owns at trumpet
• The research--research programs encouraged for upperclassmen
• The name--HMC is recognized as a serious undergrad school
• The bread--College would be $40K cheaper

Cons of Caltech:

• The chicks--they really weren't exaggerating
• The difficulty--I can't get below a 3.0!!!!
• The music--the director is better than A but still...
• The profs--except for FEYNMAN, they're mostly research-oriented and not really that helpful
  

Cons of HMC:

• The name--nobody knows it outside of jobs and stuff
  
• The peers--half of them have the merit scholarship, but nearly all Techers qualified
  
• The pranks--not as many
  

That's all for now... Goddamn I hate being indecisive

Unfair Comparison

To be fair, I won't decide between HMC and Caltech for a little while longer; maybe I'll do an overnight at HMC.
But since prefrosh weekend was an intense orientation, I feel compelled to write a comparison.
Pros of Caltech:

• The name--I'll get better jobs and grad school opportunities
• The location--Pasadena has lots of character, very unique
• The housing--Houses instead of dorms, lots and lots of character, strong unity
• The profs--more research-driven profs can be helpful
• The research--research programs encouraged for literally all students
• The size--small so I'll know almost everyone
• The pranks--fun stuff
• The building--even more fun stuff
• FEYNMAN IS GOD!!
  

Pros of HMC:

• The location--Claremont is gorgeous and HMC is adjacent to other schools
• The consortium--great classes in pure sciences and liberal arts at other schools
  
• The housing--guaranteed, with a bit of culture to each
• The music--CS prof Keller owns at trumpet
• The research--research programs encouraged for upperclassmen
• The name--HMC is recognized as a serious undergrad school
• The bread--College would be $40K cheaper

Cons of Caltech:

• The chicks--they really weren't exaggerating
• The difficulty--I can't get below a 3.0!!!!
• Music program is sort of weak
  

Cons of HMC:

• No respect
• Peers not as crazy geniuses
• Not as much pranks or fun stuff

That's all for now... I should do an overnight at HMC but after Caltech's prefrosh, I don't think it could change my mind...

Ignorance!!

Goddamn ign'ance! I hate how when we're getting our decisions in and now we have to decide where to go, people are trying to draw me away from my dream school.
Misconceptions about my dream school:

• Caltech students are nerdier than MIT students
• Wrong! Techers party more than MIT kids. It's a fact!
• Caltech is unknown outside science and technology
• True, but so is every school. People who don't know Caltech won't know the Indian Institutes of Technology or Carnegie Mellon or places like those.
• Caltech girls are the ugly
• Fair enough, they're not the most beautiful. But you can't say Stanford or Cal girls are any better.
• The guy:girl ratio is 4:1
• It's 2:1, but half the guys are antisocial anyways, so I don't have to worry.
• Caltech parties suck
• Techers have a reputation for going all out on parties, building elaborate sets like a Russian nuclear sub or a pirate ship to make each party unforgettable.
• Caltech education undermines humanities
• Of course it does, seeing as it's an institute of TECHNOLOGY. But I actually downloaded the free textbook of an Econ prof there, and I love it. I look forward to enrolling in his class.
• Pasadena is a boring town.
• Anyone who says this has never been there.
• Everyone at Caltech is exactly like me
• Anyone who says this is clearly an idiot! How can that be possible?

And if people still don't believe me, I found some quotes!

"People think that we're all nerds who sit and our computers all day or run around in lab coats. Some people might fit this description, but, other than the level of intensity we face in our coursework, we're just like any other school. Whatever our extracurricular activities, Techers are very intense. We're athletes, artists, musicians, poker players, party animals, and everything else in between."

"There's also a really great movie theater called Reel Pizza that serves really good pizza and tons of food beyond your typical candy and popcorn. The theater has couches, and it's also much cheaper than multiplexes. Sometimes, they show Hollywood blockbusters, but mostly it's offbeat and interesting films."

"Ditch Day is the best event of the year. It's a day when the senior class originally used to cut class and go to the beach. Now, underclassmen attempt to break into seniors' rooms and seniors endeavor to keep them out though various constructions, scavenger hunts, projects, and other challenges. It's a lot of fun!"

There you have it, and if you still don't believe me:
http://www.hackcollege.com/2007/01/15/interhouse-at-caltech/
Check it out!