Final Fantasy 4: Onward to The After Years

FF4 is a surprisingly quick game (completed in under about 17 hours played.) There are a few points of real difficulty, but even those can be breezed through by simply doing fights as they come. I reached the end game on the moon at about level 57 across the party by the time we used the crystal in the last fight. Simply knowing how the Active Time Battle system works this time changed the whole world. I knew what counters were used by what monster; Behemoths were no longer a long, drawn out fight once I realized they countered every hit with a nasty attack. Rubicant was no longer a stopping point once I realized how his cloak works; and the water turtle demon Caganazzo, or whatever, was a push over.

Final Fantasy 3: The Last of the NES Era

After beating the Cloud of Darkness, we say a fond farewell to the NES era Final Fantasy games. Even though I was playing the remake, I still felt the danger of things going wrong in the battles enough, and there was a real hint of danger throughout the game play. Coming off of FF2, the body count among our heroes is much lower, and the tone is lighter. Most of the world is not destroyed, and our friends are reunited in the end. FF3 sets up a nice, hopeful spot between the depressing worlds of FF2 and FF4.

Squirrel!

For all your distraction needs.

Squirrel!

Get It Right -- Even If You Don't Get It Fast

This is a lesson we're supposed to learn every time there is a terrible tragedy. We are always told that we should slow down, wait to have all the information before making ill-formed opinions and statements. I've discussed this before here and here. So, we're back to this pressing question: How can we encourage the media to actually do their job and get breaking stories right before accidentally sending out loads of incorrect information? In what other field, besides blogging, politics and journalism, do we allow this level of incompetence to go unchecked?

So, when you decide to report on a mass shooting, it behooves you to get the right suspect, describe the attack correctly, identify your victims correctly and behave like decent human beings while doing so. Not getting things right also causes people to wonder why journalists might accidentally embarrass themselves in other ways. Journalists: These sorts of stories are easy lay-ups if you would be patient and not be suckers.

Verify your work. It's not that hard, and if you were in any other field and routinely turned in such shoddy, poorly checked work, you would be fired. Sometimes, it is OK to be a little slow if you can get it right without having to embarrassingly backtrack and say "Never mind." Ignore the Second Amendment issues for all purposes on commenting and focus on how we can convince the media that accuracy is more important than showmanship.

The Public Says It Wants Compromise

Namely, they want it on the fiscal cliff. Yet, every action the public has taken gets in the way of compromise (electing a divided government, remaining blissfully ignorant about Simpson-Bowles, kicking the can down the road for decades to reach the fiscal cliff, not punishing politicians who won't even pass a budget, etc.)

Compromise requires both sides to give something up that they want, and it often requires what is given up to be a little painful for both sides. It requires parties to negotiate in good faith, and it requires stakeholders in the negotiations (that is, average Americans) to pay enough attention and hold people accountable.

If you want compromise, then vote for people who are likely to reach compromises as opposed to political ideologues, whether they be Tea Party extremists or Pelosi-wing Democrats. America will not get compromise if we keep rewarding behavior that has never, in the past, brought about compromise. Now, doing something is not always better than doing nothing, and if the something being offered by both sides is unacceptable, then the only something that will happen is sequestration.

Now, here's the interesting thing about sequestration: Like any bargaining position, you should not agree to it or make a threat unless you are willing to pull the trigger on it. You don't kick in the door to your bank and yell at them about bad service unless you are willing to cut a check to yourself for your entire account and walk to the next bank over and open up shop there, for example. So, everyone who agreed to sequestration made a sort of tacit agreement that this was a worst-case acceptable compromise if they couldn't come up with anything better.

So, just remember that if it happens, and act accordingly.

Men, Women, The Wars There Of

So, after I gave such a bang up review of the Demise of Guys, there's a new book that seems to want to talk about the same theory (though I don't yet know what it suggests.) Now, obviously, Men on Strike has not been released, so I can't make any judgment what-so-ever on what it says. This is important for you to remember. I have no intention of reading that book either, it really isn't my cup of tea.

First of all, I don't think there is a War on Men, though I do agree with the author's point that we should not solely be looking at men as the cause of the problem. It's a very feminist and egalitarian opinion I hold, but: I think both genders are contributing to whatever problem (if indeed, there is one) with lower marriage rates.

Extra Credits Video

Video here.

This is something that I try to explain to people, that I think this video does better than I could. One thing I try to explain when playing games is the difference in power in classes, strategies, etc. For example, in most Final Fantasy games, you can pretty much ignore much of the complexity the game offers by simply finding the exploitable bits and exploiting to the hilt.

One Reason I Don't Watch a Lot of TV

... is that I notice things.

For example, I like Frasier. So, to fill in between writing, I am half-watching it. Little things bother me all the time, but sometimes, there's just a big thing. In Episode 4, they set four places at the table; only after Niles arrives does he tell them Maris isn't coming. If that's the case, why do they only set four places?

This is why I can't have nice things.

Tax Law: Eagle Art

Interesting tax question: Should art be valued what it is technically worth (in this case, the appraisers are right in my opinion: It is worth zero dollars since any sale of it is illegal) or what it would be valued at on the open, non-law influenced market? Several important folks came to my same decision: "Since the artwork couldn't be sold, logic dictated that it be listed as having zero value, which is what the Sonnabend family's three appraisers, one of them Christie's auction house, did."

Final Fantasy 2: Complete

I finished Final Fantasy 2 yesterday evening. One of the most interesting things about this is that it was actually, for all its NES-level story-telling capability, a fairly dark game. A lot of heroes end up dead, and our heroes do not reconcile with each other at the end. Leon is sort of a proto-Kain, but he pulls it off better since he doesn't seem to slip in and out of mind control as easily as a cartoon character. As with FF1, the early limitations really showed in the game; grinding by hitting yourself and your friends in the head is... thankfully a system Final Fantasy dropped. The other problem with FF2 is that, much like some of the later Final Fantasies, your characters start to blend together, ability wise, if you're going for max effectiveness. By the end of the game, Firion, Mariah and Gus were only different in that Firion swung two lances, Mariah used two swords and Gus had two axes. All three could heal and buff effectively, and attack magic was of nominal use.

This is another game that is fun in the sense that you get a feeling of overcoming challenges, until you hit the mid-game when some odd combination of equipment and spells lets you sit on easy street until a random encounter in the final dungeon with monsters that do a percentage of your max HP as damage. Then, once you clear the two floors they are on, it is smooth sailing. I expected the boss to actually transform into a super powered. final true evil form. He did not. Oh well, on to Final Fantasy III, which brought us the Job System as we think of it.

Below are some pictures from my failed adventure to the Air and Space museum today, as the lecture I was hoping to attend was canceled.