And now for the weekly Ibby update! Since the last journal, the issue with Square Enix got fixed. I got a reply to my trouble ticket saying that they couldn't resolve my issue via trouble tickets, that I needed to open a trouble ticket. The resulting headdesk made dead skin flakes snow down from my face and after I wiped 'em off, I went to use the Chat Support feature to tell 'em in person how retarded they were. Surprisingly, I actually stumbled across an actual human and not only did she know how to read and write, she was pretty knowledgeable! Ends up even though my address on my profile was right, the database had never updated it since the time I created my account so that caused a fuckton of issues and explains why anything to do with credit cards only worked once in a blue moon. Heck, it even explains why I never managed to make Final Fantasy XI work years ago. So they fixed it and basically, that means their expert coders can't do basic networking and database programming; I could do better when I learned Excel in highschool.

Oh well, set up my Final Fantasy XIV subscription and resumed playing. After reaching the point in the game where my bank was full, I figured I'd start cooking up all this fish I caught and hot dang Culinarian is surprisingly fun and entertaining. It was pretty expensive for a bit, though, but that was a necessary investment since I'm starting to make profit now. But I haven't been playing a lot since I bought a few games during the Steam Autumn and Cyber Monday sales.

Amongst them was Dead Island Riptides, and I completed it yesterday after 20 hours of gameplay. It's pretty good and a big step up from the first game, even though many consider it an expansion of it instead of a legit sequel because it has the same graphics and engine, but it has many, many, many more weapons, zombie types and each class is actually useful now and has neat mods and unique skills. I mean in the first game, the throwing expert and firearm expert were useless because you could only hold a few weapons to throw and guns and ammo were only moderately accessible late in the game, but in Riptides you get guns and ammo from the get-go and there are actually throwing knives and other throwing weapons that actually make the throwing expert playable. So yeah, the game lasts just as long as the first game and doesn't have as many secrets, but it's still way more awesome. If I have a complaint though, it's that the difficulty curve is completely broken. See, since it's a direct sequel, you start off at a high level (or you can import your character from the first game) and zombies can easily kill you in one or two hits. If they throw a weapon at you, however, it's a certain one hit. Meanwhile, unless you imported a character from the first game and know exactly how to play, it'll take you forever to kill a single zombie but as you get stronger, you become a powerhouse that hack-n'-slashes zombies left and right... but you still get killed in one hit. Ironically, I guess that makes the game more realistic than most zombie games out there.

After that, I started playing Lord of the Rings: War of the North. I was expecting a bit and so far I have mixed opinions. I mean, it's technically pretty good and the graphics are nice and the story is good so far and everything but I dunno, I just can't get immersed. Maybe it's because the volume is really low, for some reason. I had that issue in Dragon Age 2 when it first came out and the quickfix was to force stereo sound and use loudness equalization, but the downside to that is that every sound on your computer becomes really loud... though now that I think of it, that'd probably be a good thing since Windows 8.1 made everything much lower for some reason. Hmm... I'll try that tomorrow and see if that makes things better.

Once I got bored, I browsed the Internet for a while, expecting to see something pop up and overall being bored, so after way too long I figured I might as well find something to read so I started reading that Korean manga called Tower of God. It's pretty interesting and dark so far, though I'm only six chapters in. The Koreans have a pretty different way to make manga than the Japanese. For starters, there are only six pages per chapter but they're not your average pages. No, they're quite literally a tower that you just scroll down from top to bottom. Also something I really like is that the manga is fully colored instead of being in black & white like every other manga and since the Koreans are a pretty colorful people, it makes for some very interesting graphics and unique characters; reminds me a bit of the first Dragon Ball cartoon from the 80s where Goku was a kid, except mature.

Anyway, now for the juicy part of this journal! I was supposed to go to many places Monday but my uncle's car was broken so it was reported to Tuesday... but the repairs were taking longer than expected so it was reported to today. After getting my last rent money, I went to the college since the financial aid responsible wasn't replying to my emails and saw her in person; that way she couldn't ignore me. Ends up she's had an extremely busy week and every time she was trying to reply to my emails, someone needed help somewhere so she didn't catch a moment's breath, which must have been pretty tiring since she's in her 60s and close to retirement (she was already working there when my mom studied there decades ago!). She's a really nice lady and very willing to do everything she can to help students, even if that requires micromanagement and jumping through legal loops to get them as much money as they can get. We talked for a while and I described my situation and everything and ends up I was right when I said I was 100% sure I didn't have a debt limit since I have severe constraints and a major functional dysfunction (yay assburger) and all my loans become grants; I could study all my life and never owe a thing, which I admit would be a pretty awesome option if this working thing didn't work out. So I filed the forms and everything to get the grants in February and everything's automatic so I won't have any call to make to get into Programme Réussir, except the one I have to give the guy after I get the confirmation I've passed the entrance exams and am accepted in the program.

Plus she said that since the rules changed not too long ago, I might be able to get another free laptop from the government. See, when I was in primary school over a decade ago, I made business with the special aids people for the first time not only because of assburger, but also because my handwriting is unreadable (an annoying side-effect of being a mega-genius, says science). The people there said that the government gives free laptops for people like me who "can't write correctly", so they gave me 2000$ to buy one. Now remember, this was in the Windows 98 era where 2000$ for a laptop was normal. And since I was a kid and always brought the laptop with me everywhere I went in school, it was broken by the time I finished primary school so when came highschool, my mom filed another form to ask for a new laptop but dem special aids people told her that there was a limit of one laptop... per life. Pretty stupid life since human lives tend to be longer than a laptop's, but there's not much we could do to change it so from that point on, my laptops weren't paid by the government.

But now that the rules changed, I might be able to get another laptop and the best part is that the 2000$ part didn't change. Can you imagine what kind of beast I could get with that crazy amount? And it's the store of your choice too, so I'm pretty sure I'd end up getting a free gaming Alienware even though I'll only use it for schoolwork; though with video game development, I'll need a high-end gaming computer anyway if I wanna handle the software and testing and stuff.

So yeah, it's been a pretty interesting and surprisingly eventful week and I liked it. Been meaning to write a journal in the past few days but when I didn't forget, I was too sick for it. Yeah, this week was also plentiful with headaches and migraines and other baddies, so I guess it balances out the good stuff that happened. Now if all goes well, the next time something interesting happens will be on the 10th when I go get my wisdom teeth taken out and go get boxes to start packing up my stuff but for now, I smell sleep.

Also yay, 1567 words. I wasn't expecting this journal to be this long, I guess more happened than I thought. On the downside, it also took way longer to type than I thought it would, what's with the 40 mins that just flew by >.>