Family's house in VA sold.

woohoo! sold the house for $299,500!

Busy summer '05

Oi, so busy. Working full time, keeping the house in tip top condition so that the realtors can show it to people, taking care of the dog who just got surgery...

::dies::

Work vs. school

Ah, working is so much better than school. Even though I come home tired, at least I get to relax without having to worry about a project or homework.

Semester's end spring '05

Alright, now that I'm home, I can write a bit more. Yeah, I spent two days cleaning my apartment. Half of Wednesday and about 12 straight hours on Thursday. I did some dishes, washed the counters and sink, cleaned the nasty microwave, emptied the fridge and freezer, cleaned the kitchen table, swept, vacuumed the floors (including the kitchen and bathroom floors and the edges of the walls), vacuumed under the couch cusions, picked up the living room, dusted the living room table, made the couches look all pretty again, removed the mildew stains from the shower curtain, unclogged the bathroom sink (ew!), cleaned the bathroom sink, cleaned the toilet, cleaned the shower, cleaned the bathroom floor, picked up my room... Am I forgetting anything? Well, it took a long time and the apartment is sparkly clean now. I'm happy with myself.

I just hope that I didn't forget anything there. >.<

So what are my plans for the weekend? Go deposit a check or something in the Bank of America account, organize my clothes and belongings into my room. Eventually I've got to install Suse onto this computer. Maybe when I'm back here I can buy new case fans, a new hard drive, and replace those damaged CD's of mine. I've also got to try to set up my school schedule once I find out my grades. And I've gotta finish up the DarkFang website since I'm no longer a part of that linkshell.

I start work on Monday back at MCS Computers! I actually like that job. Maybe I will only work 5 days a week this summer instead of 6 like last summer. That exhausted me.

Now, I've gotta try to become a level 37 Thief... Excuse me while I go poke at Crawler caterpillars with my daggers.

Whew!  After two long days of cleaning, I'm finally finished.  The apartment looks like it did when I just moved in!  =D  It looks really good, and it's a relief that I'll be able to come to a clean apartment at the end of the summer.  I'm leaving to go home this morning.  Right now, though, I am going to bed.  I'll post more later.  I'm too tired to write.  (._. )

MMORPG RMT

Alright! I just met with my professor. There were a few mistakes in my actual work leading up to the equations, but that wasn't anything that couldn't be debugged if I could have gotten my simulation working, and they were just oversights. The good news is that he showed me what was wrong with my Logic Works circuits. Evidently, when I move a wire from one pin to another, this crappy software keeps the name of the wire on both pins. When I hook another wire up to the old pin, the wire then acquires the name of the previous wire, creating duplicates of many inputs and outputs that I had in the circuit, which screwed things aaaaallllllll up. Now I know what to look for, though, and I don't think I'll have trouble with building the circuits any more.

In other news, SOE has created something called the Station Exchange. Here's what Allakhazam posted:

I received a phone call from SOE tonight to give me some pretty amazing -- and unsettling -- news. SOE’s Station Exchange is now live. Station Exchange you ask? Oh no, is that what I think it is? Yes, Sony is now going to start allowing players to officially auction items and cash for real live money. Initially, it will be limited to two new servers they are creating for Everquest 2, with existing players being given the right to transfer to those servers where they can buy and sell with officially sanctioned impunity. However, this is just the experimental stage. It is clear from the FAQ that if this proves to be financially successful, there is no reason not to think that this experiment will eventually be expanded to all of EQ2 as well as SOE’s other games, which include Everquest, Star Wars Galaxies and even possibly, given their large ownership share of Square-Enix, Final Fantasy XI. IGE, meet SOE.

Is this the end of online gaming as we know it? Or is it just a natural and inevitable development? I know I personally feel a need for a strong adult beverage right about now. Feel free to post your feedback and opinions.

Update. After I posted this, SOE posted a letter from John Smedley about it on their site. Here's the letter.

There was quite a debate going on about this at Allakhazam. The majority of the posters on Allakhazam are against RMT (real-money trading), but I know for a fact that there is a large population of players that actually like to buy in-game currency or are not opposed to RMT in any way. It seems that different people have different predictions about whether this new Server Exchange. Some think it will encourage RMT and act as a catalyst, letting it infect every server of the game to the point of unplayability to the honest gamer. Others think it will help solve the current RMT issue.

My personal opinion? I have mixed feelings. On one hand, this is a step toward an economy like Diablo II, where everything has to be bought with real-life money in order for your character to be competent. The economy on that game was absolutely hell, which is the whole reason I quit that game and started playing an MMORPG in the first place. Implementing something like this adds real-life stress to a video game, which should never be the case. The people that buy Gil or currency in any game frustrate me. I despise this crowd. They are the people who grind their way to the maximum level for no reason other than to increase their "e-peen", show off, and otherwise be the completely egotistical arses that they truly are. I completely disagree with the MMORPGer whose idea of "fun" is to obtain as many experience points and as much money as possible regardless of the means.

This also leads to the online items and currency obtaining a real-life money value. If this happens, the idea that everything on the server belongs to the company begins to fade, and bannings might then lead to lawsuits.

We all know what the implications of RMT are: unnecessary competition for NM's, mobs, crafting items, etc., contribution to artificial inflation, and lazy, good-for-nothing players getting high levels and good gear without earning it. It's already bad enough as it is. Ultimately, if this were implemented on all servers of FFXI, I would quit. The game would lose its fun-factor and yet again a game would become a real-life burden. If any game were to implement this on all servers, I would not play it.

However, there is a flip-side to this. If this actually works, and the players that participate in RMT or have an interest in doing so migrate to the RMT-enabled servers, then those of us who do not RMT are left in a world that is much "cleaner". Why would gil-sellers farm in a server that has no gil-buyers? Why would gil-buyers be in a server where it's illegal, when there is one where it is legitimate? IGE and all the other RMT companies will lose their business and their influence in the economy of the games. Prices would be under the control of SE (SoE in EQ's case), so the economy would probably not be inadvertently be screwed by third parties. The RMT players are happy, and the non-RMT players are happy.

As long as the RMT is, in fact, restricted to certain servers, and the RMT players actually stay on only those servers, I'm all for this change migrating to FFXI. To me, RMT is not a huge deal right now (third-party cheat programs are more important, but neither of these are making me consider quitting), but I can't deny that it's an annoyance that I'd like to be rid of.

Disclaimer: What I have just written may not be readable by those of you whodo not play Final Fantasy XI. I'm sorry.

Well, that's all for now. Gotta get to work! (`·ω·´)

Not doing so great in Digital Design

Alright, I just wrote an E-mail to my professor asking for some help in his class. I think that the E-mail is the best thing to sum up what I've been going through for the past week (and sort of the whole semester), so I'll just paste parts the E-mail here...

For every single project that I have done in this class, I end up spending huge amounts of time staring at my circuit simulation, trying to debug it. For this most recent project, I finished my paperwork on Sunday night. All of my equations were derived, my init logic was ready, I had determined what chips I was going to use, and I had even created a C++ program to make sure that my equations were correct. On Tuesday, I start working on my Logic Works simulation. Tuesday night, I completed the diagram...or so I thought.

It just won't work! Here's my init logic... When yp is a preset state of y, and yn is the next, yn = init' * yp. This equates to yn = init NOR yp', which is what I implimented in my circuit. My equations should be stable at state 000/00... You would think that when init = 1, yn would be set to 0 because 0*x=0, but it doesn't! For some off-the-wall reason, my variables jump straight to 1 right after the initialization. I checked and double checked my diagram, and nothing appeared to be wrong... everything is two-level, I've checked for hazards in my equations, I've checked to make sure the right wires are connected to the right equations, I've double checked to make sure that I didn't somehow make my equation 3 levels instead of 2 (not counting init)... I've tried EVERYTHING!

Alright, so this at about midnight this morning I decide to start from scratch. I create a whole new logic works diagram, and this time I use normal logic gates instead of the 7400 Actual library. I set the delays of the gates to 22, and no dice. I set it to 1, no dice. I set it to 0 just to make sure that it's not a hazard that's screwing me up, and no dice! At this point, shouldn't my circuit replicate the C++ program that I made? Well, it doesn't.

All the while that I'm staring at these Logic Works diagrams, I am tempted to just wire it and see what happens, but I'm afraid that it will just end up being a waste of 4 hours or so, so I don't do it.

Professor Thweatt, the problem is that it's not just this project that I have had trouble with. Every single project that I have done, the same thing happens. The past two projects that I have not turned in, I have "complete" Logic Works diagrams for, but I did not finish the project. The point is that I need your help. I need to meet with you, I need to show you exactly what I've done on my project, and I need you to show me exactly what the heck I did wrong. I cannot figure it out by myself, and none of the graded reports that I have been handed back help me figure it out, either. I hope that you can help me.

Would you please be willing to take a little extra time to help me with my problem? I am afraid that this will take a little longer than a normal office-hours visit, so I do not want to interfere if other people want to see you as well. Can we set up an appointment? I would so greatly appreciate it! I look forward to hearing your reply. Thanks in advance.


Sincerely,
Adam Russell

PS. I forgot to mention...I've already turned the project in. It is not validated, it is not wired, and the simulation is incorrect. However, a bad grade is better than none, and I know that I will not be able to fix it on my own. I'm not looking for an "easy" (haha) A on the project. I just want to know what I did wrong.