Two plus two is ten

I've got just a few days left at work, which is pretty fucking awesome, although I never realized how exhausting it could be to train a replacement. I trained new file clerks at the law firm when I was bumped up to project assistant, but there was something fundamentally different about that whole experience: namely, that I would be around if Newbie had questions or needed help with anything. My current Newbie, on the other hand, will be completely on her own once I leave. I'll probably check my OHSU email once a day to make sure I'm not missing anything related to school, but that will be the extent of it. I'm not going to be an asshole about it -- I'll set up an out-of-office notice to let people know what's going on and I'll manually forward anything that needs forwarding -- but I'm not going to be involved.

So...yeah. Poor Newbie's getting all of six days to feel comfortable on her own in a job I've had for almost three years. I'm so sorry, Newbie. I'm so very sorry.

(Not sorry enough to stay, of course, but still)

I've been playing a lot of L.A. Noire lately and it's incredibly fun, although it hasn't quite captured my VERY SOUL the way Bully, Red Dead Redemption, or the Portal games have. I think it's mostly because I can't connect with Cole Phelps they way I connected with Jimmy Hopkins or John Marston. With those two, I knew what they were about from the get-go; Cole is much harder to read. I started off liking him, sure, and I wanted to know more about his past and why he was so ambitious, but I haven't become invested in him the way I felt invested in the other two. I mean. For fuck's sake, the ending of RDR reduced me to a blotchy, sobbing wreck ( because of spoilers, obviously, )

and I don't care about Cole the same way. He's too closed off. There are things he says and does that I'm at a loss to explain, and it makes it incredibly hard to empathize with him sometimes. This narrative distance is intriguing sometimes -- I'm a fan of the slow reveal and it's making for an interesting gameplay experience, but I'm finding that I care more about the cases than the overarching story or the characters involved. I want to be invested in my protagonist. It's a little frustrating that I'm getting close to the end of the game and yet I still don't have a good feel for why Cole does some of the things he does. The reveal of ( MAJOR STORY SPOILERS! )

The gameplay itself is phenomenal, though, and I'm having so much fun playing through the cases. I've seen a few reviews complain about how linear the game is, but I'm fresh off Portal 2 and so L.A. Noire's forward momentum is both comforting and exhilarating. I usually sink ridiculous amounts of time in sandbox/free roam modes when it comes to games like these, because I like to explore and collect things, but damn if solving cases isn't so enjoyable that I keep putting off my usually obsessive roaming. I love procedurals. LOVE THEM. And I love feeling like a Real Live Detective as I wander around gathering evidence and interviewing people. It's the same general process each time, but there are enough surprises and upsets along the way that solving crimes end up being a rewarding and often tense experience. ( Some story spoilers ahead for the Homicide cases )

Anyway. It's entirely possible I'll beat the main storyline tonight, and then I'll probably shift over to free roam mode so I can get my collecting on. Awwww yeeeeeeee.

I got my tax refund over the weekend, and while I plan to put most of it to practical use (i.e. going halves on a new bed with Nate and getting rid of the remaining tuition on my credit card), I decided I needed to blow some of it on something fun. To that end, I ordered Phoenix Wright, Okamiden, and Pokemon White, which will serve as my introduction to the wide world of pokemon (SO EXCITED!). I would normally just hit up a Gamestop for all this stuff, but PW is old enough that none of the local places carry it and Okamiden doesn't come out until tomorrow. Since I was already ordering PW, I figured I might as well add a few other games to the order so I could get the free shipping.

This means I can't play until next week, of course, but given that my statistics final is this Saturday and the prof assigned us a metric ton of homework to go along with the studying, I think that's probably a good thing. Plus, now I have something to look forward to post-finals! Yay!

It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out which version of Pokemon Black and White I wanted, though. I went with White because it seemed like a better one for beginners and people who want to do a lot of collecting, so...I guess? Also, the electric black dragon guy seems, uh, pretty cool. :I I have no idea what I'm doing. I even googled comparison guides and such, because I had to be sure I was getting the right one. I don't know what it is with me and relatively trivial decisions. I do the same exact thing when it comes to, I don't know, buying eggs or picking a restaurant for dinner. I'm so terrified of making the wrong choice that I end up utterly paralyzed by indecision, and then I can't choose a damn thing.

What's even more ridiculous is that I don't usually get this way over BIG things. Like, stuff involving lots of money or my career or people's lives or whatever? I weigh the choices, I make a decision, and 99/100 times I'm confident that my decision is the correct and/or most reasonable one for the situation. But GOD FORBID I pick the wrong restaurant for dinner! My brain can't even handle how horrible that would be. I mean, someone might be slightly unhappy with their meal choices. MY GOD. Just get in the car, everyone, we're going home.

In other words, I can drop $600 on my half of a fancy TV and be perfectly confident in the awesomeness of our choice, and yet I spent my entire lunch hour researching a $34 Pokemon game and I'm still worried I chose wrong. I just.

Neurotic: It's How I Roll.

One of the things that cracks me up about Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare is how nonchalant everyone is about the Four Horses of the Apocalypse. It makes sense, kinda -- as Nate pointed out, when the undead are roaming the land in great numbers and things like zombie bears exist, people aren't going to get too het up about a creepy horse that weeps blood. But I still think it's hilarious that no one says stuff like, "So...I noticed your horse was on fire," or, "Not to be rude, but are you aware that your horse is swarming with locusts?" Hee.

Anyway, I finally took my math placement test the other night so that I could get into statistics, nutrition, and/or chemistry. I've been putting this off for two years, because I haven't taken math in, like, A DECADE and lord knows I'm not all that confident in my math abilities at the best of times. Perhaps this is why I waited until the last possible minute to get this shit figured out. Luckily, my week and a half of frantic cramming paid off and I qualified for statistics, and I'm feeling much better about the whole thing now that I'm finally registered for a class.

The guy at the testing center was hilarious, though. There are three or four different math tests you can take depending on what you're trying to get into, and for stats I had to take the test with advanced and college-level algebra with some trig thrown in there for...I don't know, variety, I guess. So I take my test and there are things on there that I totally didn't study, like factorials and imaginary numbers and bullshit like that, and afterwards the guy prints out my results and is like, "Yay, you qualify for statistics!"

I go, "SWEET!" and do a fist-pump, because I am a noble and dignified flower that way.

Then! THEN! Testing guy gets all sadface, and he says, "But you didn't qualify for calculus or trigonometry, though. You'd have to go through college algebra before you could take those."

Me: ...AHAHAHAHA, OH MY GOD.
Testing guy: What?
Me: Dude, all I care about is stats. I haven't done trigonometry since I was sixteen. Sixteen.
Testing guy: How old are you now?
Me: TWENTY-SEVEN.
Testing guy: OH. So...I guess that's okay, then?
Me: Yes, quite.

It was just...I don't know, it's like he was trying so hard to make me feel better about the fact that I didn't qualify for things that are ridiculously over my head anyway, and it was amusing. I'm still kind of a amazed I qualified for statistics in the first place, given that I outright guessed on three of the four factorial questions before I remembered what the fuck factorials were. I mean. Factorials?! What the fuck.

/cool story

Since my LJ's been kind of a giant downer-fest lately (reasonably so, I think, but still), I'm going to talk about stuff that's not even remotely connected to Ivan's cancer or my job or my stupid class that just ended, because all of those things make me sad and/or cranky, and I'm tired of feeling sad and cranky all the time.

There's some good stuff on the horizon, at least? Nate's potentially closing on the house this Friday, which is something we're both kind of desperate for at this point. We've got our fingers crossed that everything will finally work out, and then we can paint and re-floor and ~*move*~ and everything will be SUNSHINE AND RAINBOWS AND AWESOMENESS THE END.

Also, ferrets. And possibly chickens. We're pretty keen on the idea of keeping chickens.

I've spent the last week playing the hell out of Red Dead Redemption, and sweet tapdancing christ, that there is an amazing game. AMAZING. It feels more like an interactive movie than a game to me, and it didn't take very long at all for me to get deeply invested in John Marston and his story. As with most Rockstar productions, you can make him a complete and utter bastard in the sandbox portions of the game, but I preferred to play him as a good guy and to my pleasant surprise the game allowed me to do so just about every step of the way. ( WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS BEHIND THE CUT, ESPECIALLY FOR THE END OF THE GAME. )

I actually have a lot more I want to say about the ending, but I think I'll save it for a different post. This one got way bigger than I intended, and I feel a pressing need to watch Deadwood for a bit.