Maple Story - Lv 35

Managed to hit Lv35 in Maple Story recently. Here I am, posing with Evil Eyes. I told myself that I would start hunting them beginning from Lv35, but alas, they still aren't worth the trouble. I'll just stick to Wild Boars.

The picture shows with some of my new gear. The nice Cross Chainmail is just for show; it is so weak, I prefer to just continue using my Lv30 armor. I love the Axe & Shield, though.

J2EE Countdown: 3 Days

A few days more and it will be the end of my misery. The J2EE project isn't going too well. Everyone is still slacking as for normal. It doesn't matter matter that this is the last week cos' it feels just like the first week.

Aside from worrying about meetings, my Acer laptop is suffering from some unknown problem that appears to be the result of the virus I got rid of.

Once everything is over, I will do a clean reformat to also symbolize a clean start after the end of my nightmarish semester.

Virus Attack; Thank You Norton

I got hit by some idiotic virus again in the evening. It got me depressed. The same old symptons resurfaced (on me, not the computer): splitting headache, loss of appetite, nausea.

I thought of reformatting again, but I decided to run all the anti-virus progams on my PC first. Norton managed to detect the malicious trojan and deleted it. My PC has survived another ordeal. Yippee.

J2EE Countdown: 6 Days

And so, here I am on the very last week of my course. After next Monday, there will be no more boring groupmates-bashing and complaints in my blog. I look forward to that a lot.

For now, just bear with it...

As usual, Monday blues for everyone. That XJ overslept again (probably had a foursome the night before). KH pulled off an amazing stunt; one that I never saw coming. He did the "I am mentally unstable; gimme VIP treatment" routine by declaring that he is suffering from depression ("I feel like committing suicide"). This automatically relieves him from all his project commitments for the last week. I don't buy his lame excuse. This guy should win an oscar. What a fooktard.

Today, we went to meet Jie Min. At first, I didn't like her cos' her expression is a tell-tale sign that we are extra burden for her. But today, I saw how she actually squeezed 3 different group consultations together (my group included), and was running to & fro, helping anyone who called for her. I take back my words now. If only she was our tutor right from the start, perhaps things would have turned out differently.

Weekends are here!

Went to AL's home today for project meeting from 11 am to 7 pm. It was tiring as hell, and sad to say, we aren't making any progress. I told everyone to mentally prepare themselves for the worst as the deadline draws closer & closer. I can tell that most of them are losing their temper, and they even openly admitted that they dislike XJ (who was not here today). At this rate, I foresee a lot of drama next week. Probably people breaking down, crying, shouting, quarrelling, etc.

They are having a meeting again on Saturday, but good thing I am excused. Saved by my dental appointment again. It's another tooth extraction; a painful price to pay in order to obtain one day of freedom.

Aaah! More project $hit.

Yay. It is Thursday! My hellish daily meetings routine for the week is almost over (then I'll worry about it again next week). Today was no better; only AL and I were the only souls who turned up. The rest went to screw themselves somewhere.

Sometimes, I feel like just saying to them: "Look, guys. We are all gonna fail. Let's not care about this $hit any more. That way, I can get on with my life. AL can stop stressing himself out. XJ can go on sleeping till he graduates. JN can stop coming up with excuses not to turn up. KH can stop deliberately falling sick. And SL can find other things not to care about."

I must endure. 10 more days and counting. Then I will be as free as a penguin, soaring through the skies.

Wait, that didn't sound right.

My Week...

Haven't blogged for the past few days because of my daily project meetings.

Yesterday, we went to consult Danny, who then redirected us to Jie Min, one of the other tutors. We could tell that she was not happy to see us. As a tutor, she already has like 10+ other project groups under her; Danny only has 5 and he keeps pushing us to her. At the end of the day, our codes will were not fixed. We were stuck once more.

I can feel tension building up, especially in AL. His face turned black yesterday when XJ said that he did not bring his own codes. I expected that from XJ, but this was the first time AL reacted that way. I could tell that, out of the 6 of us, AL was the only one who was truly concerned at this point in time. The others are simply bo chup. As for me, I have cared & worried enough for the project during the first four weeks of this semester, so I am now just numb and waiting for this nightmare to end.

Nowadays, every time I come home from school, I would play Maple Story. It is my only source of entertainment now, given my crazy project meetings every week day. Good thing I have a dental appointment this Saturday so that gives me reason to skip (but I have to extract my tooth again... so sad).

I also managed to finish the HK detective series "To Catch the Uncatchable" that my mum borrowed. The ending was totally unexpected; a tragic ending to a comedy series that had me laughing all the way. It left a sort of bitter feeling in me.

*Spoiler:* The main character, Detective Mok contracted a medical condition from his injury after solving the last case. The doctor told him that he would drop dead any moment without any warning. Mok does not tell anyone about it, and indeed, he dies on the way to get his wedding photographs taken with his fiance.*/Spoiler*

I surfed around and realized that millions of fans were so put off by this ending that they wrote in tons of complaints to the show's development crew. In the end, they broadcasted an alternate 'happy ending', but it was lame and anti-climatic. The things people do to appease their fans...

Anyway, Duel Monsters GX episode 3 is out. Looks like I'll have more things to watch today. wee.

Monday Blues? More like Long-Term PMS.

This is going to be the beginning of a very looooooong week. The deadline for the project is 13 days away and our progress is still as pathetic as ever. I glanced at the little timetable my group has worked out; from now on, we are going to meet on every weekday from 10 am to 6 pm, with Saturday being a half day. (Holy, f**kin' s**t).

In such a dire situation, one would expect everyone to be in 'high alert' mode, right? No way; not with my screwed up groupmates. Everyone must be suffering from Monday blues or something.

XJ overslept (again... like what, for the 1 millionth time? Does he xxx every night or something?), JN pulled the old "last minute SMS: I got something on" routine, whereas SY just didn't care. The only ones who turned up were those who had lessons today (AL and KH), and one stupid guy who still cares (i.e. me).

We didn't do much cos' our sudden 'breakthrough' turned out to be merely a temporary moment of joy. Yes, we are stuck again. And AL says: "I think we need to meet more this week."

Holy f**k, 'meet more'??? How many days are there in a week? I feel like slapping someone. There is no way to express my feelings now, but with a most apt emoticon: -.-

Impressions: Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters GX

Kyo gave me the links to download the first two episodes of Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters GX on Bit Torrent. I must say I really enjoyed them very much; perhaps even more so than the original Yu-Gi-Oh series.

The opening song was unusual but lighthearted & upbeat. The intro featured the various characters and their cards. The 'baddies' (or perhaps I should call them 'rivals'?) are cool; I especially like the evil-looking Jun (the "Hell" deck duelist in Ep.2) and Ryo (with the Ultimate-Dragon-like "Cyber Dragon" in the opening). The French professor, Cronous is a Pegasus-wannabe but he looks very queer and speaks with an exaggerated accent.

There I go again, talking about the 'baddies'. I always forget about the good guys, but so far, they seem to be a weird bunch. Juudai is pretty neat, though. He plays an "Elemental Hero" deck, filled with anime-style super hero theme cards. Pretty original.

I also like the premise of the show in that everything (thus far) centers around the the Duel Academy. There may be a lack of any plot for the moment, but who cares; I like things to be straightforward this time round. The various 'houses' the characters belong to give the show a Harry Potter feel. haha.

I am hooked on the show. Guess I will download more as it gets released. Can't wait till Juudai actually duels Ryo.

I don't like this feeling!

I suddenly realized that this week was unlike anything I have experienced this semester.

For this week alone, I spent 4 days (inclusive of Saturday! *gasp*) going for project meetings, each lasting nearly 5 hours long (would've been longer if I didn't cook up an excuse to leave). I don't like this one bit. Whatever happened to my ultra slack group members? All of a sudden, half of them seem like they are on crack, especially AL who became super siao on. (He suggests meeting till 6pm every day beginning next week until the project deadline, that crazy #$%^!!!)

My life is beginning to feel very routine, mechanical and utterly dry. I guess this is what it is like to work in future. I also never realized how much I missed going out when I finally had free time today to go to AMK!

Coincidentally, I noticed that Kraazg is also having problems with J2EE according to his MSN nick. It seems that he is learning it to implement a project for his job. His deadline is 15 days, which is probably the same as mine. Looks like I am not the only one suffering from J2EE. Gyahahaha.

Maple Story (nothing to do with syrup)

Yay, I've managed to reach Lv 25 in Maple Story. It's not much of an accomplishment, but it's worth a mention since I got to switch from tacky-looking armor into something more nicer and presentable.

Anyway, Maple Story is this new 2D action/platformer MMORPG (probably the first of its kind) that I've recently started playing. It's not bad, but it took quite a while to grow on me because of its cutesy theme and the fact that it is not in 3D like all the other games I've played. Quite a number of my friends are playing it, too.

So what happened to Cronous, the game that I was hopelessly addicted to? It went commercial and all my friends who agreed to pay-to-play simply couldn't be bothered to keep their promise, leaving me as the only 'idiot' who bought the payment card. Even my guild leader put aeroplane, choosing to abandon the game for another that is free. Freakin' cheapskates.

Back to Work

My project-mates suddenly had a breakthrough. Thanks to Giant Hamster's sample J2EE codes and a semi-enlightening consultation with Danny, we managed to figure out things a bit. Our progress is no longer 0%; I'd say maybe 2% (which is still miserable...).

Normally, I would be happy when such things happen, but when it happens with only 2 weeks left to the deadline, it is not at all good. I had already planned to grant myself a quick and painless death by idling my time away, failing the module, and then starting afresh next semester. But with everyone else becoming slightly more serious about their work (I say slightly, cos' the talking cock and slackiness still goes on during meetings), I am driven by my conscience to push myself to work hard, too.

Oh, well. On Wednesday, we met up at Sylvia's to work on the project. I realized that she has a large VCD collection (pirated, of course). She had a lot of new & old movie titles; everyone grabbed a couple to go home and watch. I, myself, took AvP, Catwoman, and Starsky & Hutch. They should come in handy during my sleepless nights.