Below are the 11 most recent journal entries recorded in Yamakage's LiveJournal:

Saturday, May 23rd, 2009
10:39 am	:D (Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 17th, 2009
3:32 am	Circuit City is dead, and with it my job! And it happened a week ago, but only now am I done dealing with the backlog of crap that built up while I was working. I'm not too freaked out though. I have a chunk of experience in an area I didn't have before, and a better sense of what I can and want to do. I'm also no longer in as tight a situation as I was when I took the job, so that's great. I've got a good amount of savings now, 30% of the goal I set myself. I still have the rest of the year to reach it, and I don't expect home prices to bottom out until the middle of next year, so very realistic I'll be able to put together a 20% down payment. I still need to get the rest of the cash together however, so it's likely I'll be trying to get another job. FFXI: No progress, but now that I have free time, expect this to change. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009
5:11 am	Work Sucks Yes, I missed a post last week. But a resolution is less a "slip then give up", but more a "see how close you can hit", so the writing shall continue! Progress in things FFXI related have really taken a nosedive, as real life continues to eat much of my time, see the post title. Here's a post from my OKC, because I need something to add some length to this post. *** On Religion The closest thing I can find to call myself would be a soft agnostic. I think we can't currently prove or disprove any religion, therefore they are all equally valid and invalid. Personally I don't follow any faith, so you could call me an atheist, just, one who admits he may be wrong in the end. The reason for this is while you can't objectively prove any religion true from outside it, you can frequently undermine and tear them apart by their own internal stances and logic. Christianity for example, (and this is a quick end of argument thing, I'm too busy at the moment to write the full thing beginning to end) an omniscient, omnipotent, all-loving god, who never does anything to help in this world (omnis/p?); and if you deviate from a rather large list of things you are supposed and not supposed to do while here, will send you to a very unpleasant place, forever (love?). Doesn't sound that great to me. I'm generally not opposed to anyone else's beliefs, as long as they don't bug me about it or it doesn't affect me. Current Mood: tired (Comment on this)
Monday, January 26th, 2009
5:19 pm	Yes, it's late. Due to the jump in hours from working the liquidation, and having to prepare for a house guest this week, I have had NO free time until just now. As such, there wasn't any progress with FFXI either. That is all, because I have just run out of the free time I have. (Comment on this)
Monday, January 19th, 2009
7:47 am	Last minute as always Real Life: Well, that fourth resolution just got a bit more difficult. The company I was hired on to, has gone into liquidation, so only a month or two left on that. My lot in life isn't as tenuous as when I was job hunting back last year, so I'll likely look into trade schools now, and start asap once the wage hours stop. Not really sure what I should go into, though =\ Also, I'm actually making some progress inside OKC. Dunno how it will pan out, but hey, it's a start. FFXI: On Wednesday, I got my White Mage to twenty finally, then got started on the last bit of this leg, taking Scholar to twenty. After that, it's just seventeen levels on the three other jobs and I can just focus on SCH from twenty to seventy five. As of the end of today I got my Scholar to fourteen. With a bit of luck, I should get all my subjobs finished this month, and I can spend February on maxing out Scholar. Two months is pretty good for finishing a resolution. I guess for filler over the next bunch of posts, I'll go in depth about what FFXI is like. Starting from where a new player would, I'll give you a tour of the game, maybe you'll be able to glean some of what drives an MMO player. (Comment on this)
Monday, January 12th, 2009
7:27 am	Oh Crap: Sunday is nearly over. Real life: Been a rather busy week. Work, re-arranged televisions in my house to ready for the DTV switchover, and devoted a large amount of brainpower to re-writing something. The job's going well, looks like I'll go beyond holiday hire. It's a serious relief to have one nowadays. Get along great with most of my co-workers. One even is on the path to seriously getting into the video game industry, and talking to them really makes me feel confident I'll manage it too eventually. So, some more resolutions. Three, drop twenty pounds. Not particularly difficult, since I've done 220 -> 200 before. Four, seriously save money. Between me and my mother (mostly me, since I'm making the spare income), I'm hoping to get close to a five figure savings by the end of the year. Hopefully, with the way the market is going, it will be enough for a home down payment next year. Or maybe combined with saving through 2010, a good chunk of a down payment for 2011. Getting out of the money trap that is rising rent prices, will be the second sweetest thing in the world. FFXI: I got my Red Mage to twenty on Monday, then started working on my White Mage. Took White Mage to twelve, where it gets a set of gear that I need for my level seventeen Black Mage. Solo leveling on White Mage is very slow going, so I'll need to level in a party. At the time, I didn't have time to search for a party, then stay in it a decent length of time, so I soloed my Black Mage from seventeen to twenty. Today I had the day off work, so before I had to go do groceries, I got a party in the hellish low level nub zone and furthered my White Mage to seventeen. Three more levels and I'm free from that shithole forever more. With Final Fantasy 11 you aren't locked to a single job. You can change between any of the twenty in the game at no cost, no need for alts. But you do need equipment for those jobs, and inventory space is limited. So what I'm doing is, leveling each job to a point where they get new gear, then reusing or selling as appropriate the gear already on hand. Once all the jobs are on the same new gear set, I go and get it, then repeat the process until the next gear set or level 37. Why 37? In addition to being able to change your job, you can also set a subjob from any of the nineteen that aren't set as your main job. Your subjob has all the abilities of that job, but it's level is restricted to half your main jobs level, and the maximum level in FFXI is 75. Current Mood: hopeful (Comment on this)
Monday, January 5th, 2009
5:46 am	HOLY SHIT, UPDATE! Two of my resolutions this year One, take another job in FFXI to level 75; and two, use my damned LJ. So every Sunday, I will at the very least post up my progress on taking Scholar to 75. I don't really want to post random crap before finishing the Bio. But I also don't feel like writing 3 full posts to finish it. So here's some quick & dirty. We left of at the end of elementary school. Now I'm eleven. Jr. High wasn't as bad, though it still sucked. Thanks to the higher population and a number of those from other elementary schools, I actually made a few friends and life became bearable. The Jr. High also had a games club, which finally gave me opponents for Magic: the Gathering and directed me to the FLGS. This led to me finding the Shadowrun TCG, then it's novels, then it's P&P RPG. That eventually led to a little bit of AD&D 2nd edition. I'll be honest, I've never really played very much, I just really like reading splatbooks. It was also during this period I started watching anime. First one I saw, thanks to my local Blockbuster, was Genesis Surviver Gaiarth. And finally, thank's to some time spent at my friend maniakal's birthday party, I discovered the joy that was Final Fantasy VII. I've been playing JRPGs since, and I'm completely Square-Enix's whore. Fast forward, it's High School. Now I'm fourteen. Less suck, more friends. Still not great though. At times the only thing keeping me there was being able to see my friends each day. No games club here, but I have a FLGS for that. The school did however have an anime club, and they had fansubs! This was also how I found the joy that is Anime Expo & geek conventions. I went to AX every year from 2000 to 2006, the first of the ill fated Gen Con SoCals, and the first FFXI FanFest. Funds have prevented me from going to any the past couple years, but one day I shall return. Also, around this time, maniakal introduced me to http://www.play.net/gs4/ (though it was GS3 at the time). It was fun back then, likely still is now, and at it's peak was as busy as a FFXI server, probably the best pay-for-play text MMO still running. And what's happened since that first post back in 2004? I started going to a junior college to get prerequisite/transfer classes out of the way on the cheap. I got a job and held it for a year through four managers then lost it. Went to Vegas for my 21st birthday (which was retarded because my birthday is in the SUMMER), and lost no money. Was unemployed nearly two years, then got a new job just a month ago. So Job & College, check. Vehicle & Moving Out, not so much. And with the current economy, it's not looking like the last two will happen any time soon. The smartest thing to do it seems, would be to pool my mother & mines resources to save up and try to buy a home. The rental market has turned to shit in Los Angeles, prices just keep going up and up. FFXI: What have I done so far? Well, to start with, I need to level up three other jobs to 37 for use as SCH subjobs. I'll begin with leveling Red Mage, which I have at level one at the moment. Thursday I set up a mule character to store various items that were eating up inventory space. I'll need plenty of that to hold gear for the new job. Then I went and grabbed all the level one gear I need for RDM. I proceeded to solo my way to level ten over the course of a couple hours. Then I went and upgraded my gear, got spell scrolls for the next ten levels, and I've grabbed another five levels in between Linkshell (what FFXI calls guilds) events and helping some LS (LinkShell) mates with other things. So as of Sunday, 15 RDM levels of progress Also, just today, I finally finished the storyline for the third expansion. Current Mood: accomplished (Comment on this)
Thursday, March 23rd, 2006
11:15 pm	Check back again on March 24, 2008 I guess. XD;; I know, I said I didn't want to leave my LJ sitting empty. Yet here it is, two years later and it's pretty damn spacious. I'm just not much of a writer, it's something I'm a bit known for. Originally I had planed on breaking the bio into 3 pieces based on age, but I'm tossing that out. Not quite sure how I'm going to do it now. So here we go. Last we left off I was a happy five year old minding my own business. One day, I find out I need to go to school. I have no problems with this and proceed to go. (Proof I'm not always smart) So, I go to school. I'm not nervous about it, the first day goes well enough, everything is fine. People say firsts are important, first days, fist impressions, first dates, etc., and this is true. What they don't say, (or if they do, nobody ever fucking told me) is to pay attention to seconds. The seconds will usually give you an idea how the thirds, fourths, fifths, and all the rest are gonna go. My second day was shit, I became the target. I don't how, or why*, but that's what happened. I became the one to be picked on and ostracized. So the rest of elementary school, 6 loooong years, was spent keeping to myself trying to avoid the pain. The faculty was useless, I had no allies there. My grades never became much more than average, despite my ability. I always aced tests, but never did homework. I guess I hated school so much, I just didn't want that shit coming home with me, where I was safe. I still can't figure out what the hell happened, I had friends outside of school. Even when we moved from the apartment in Torrance to renting a house in San Pedro, I was able to make plenty of friends on my block. It got to it's worst the last couple years of elementary school. We moved from San Pedro to a house in Lomita, and I wasn't able to make friends anymore, whatever social skills I had were blown away by then. It was two things that saved me then. One was the switch to middle school, but we'll get to that later. (I know that sounds a bit hinky. So you know, despite everything I go through and the few problems I have, I'm an incredibly well adjusted and stable person. I've never suffered from depression, and it's ultimate side effect... doesn't interest me.) When I was 10, a few months before my last year of elementary school started, thanks to a magazine article (Disney Adventures, no less) I was introduced to Magic: the Gathering. This has been a big influence on who I am today. Before that, I wasn't a nerd. I had done a few nerd related things, but it wasn't a part of me, it was just a succession of things. After, however, it's what I was, I had an identity. Magic is a gateway game, over time, it went from Magic cards, to Magic novels**, to Shadowrun novels, to the Shadowrun RPG, to D&D, to ::gasp:: general fantasy literature. (Shadowrun got me reading more SF also, I'm still sticking to normal and post-cyberpunk, but I'll expand eventually.) I'd like to note here, the sight of a ten year old intently reading a full length novel messes with the heads of most people***. Also, Magic led to Magic strategy articles on the Wizards site, where a writer gave theferrett an article slot for one day. It was so damn funny, I followed him back to SSG, which took me to his website, which took me to his LJ, which brings me here, now. That's all I can think of for that time period, so that's it. Next up, 11-13: Middle School *Guesses, yes. Facts, no. **Even though I don't play anymore, I stll read the novels. (::Cough:: Ravinca = Eberron: the CCG ::Cough::) ***Especially teachers, when the school counselor had told them the student had ADD. (Comment on this)
Monday, May 31st, 2004
12:49 pm	This is, though. (And just in time, to boot) So, who am I? My name is Jon. Well really, it's Jonathan, but I go by Jon. Now, I'm not completely sure how this should go. Generally, I see that LJ's go off at a running start. The're made, and just go from that point. Now, I'm a bit of a stickler about beginnings, so thats where I'll start. (You'll find the reasons for this later.) None of you know me, (and the few that do, only know so much), so I'll begin with a quick auto-bio. Sure I could tell you what kind of person I am, but I'll probably end up doing that anyway. Besides, telling you about myself this way may tell you things that telling you about myself the other way could never tell you. So you know, until I reach about three years of age I can't really remember anything that happened. I'm working off what I've been told. I was born in mid July, 1985, somewhere between Benicia and Vallejo. (That's north of San Francisco, right across the bay, for those who don't know) At this point I might as well tell you that I'm a bastard, and I'm not talking about being an asshole, my parents never wed. I also never had a father, he died several months before I was born. Now, before you think to say that's terrible, don't. The man was a real bastard, and I am talking about assholes this time. The world, and my life, is a better place without him. About half a year later, my mother moved to Baltimore, Maryland because at the time that was were most of the family was. I did all my non-conscious growing up there. There are some stories, but they are my mothers, not mine. After a while we moved back to California, the short of it is a blizzard, and the fact that my mother fucking HATES cicadas. Now, while I don't have a place in time for it, I do remember the moment my mind really woke up. I had just woken up and was thirsty. I looked around for my bottle but it wasn't anywhere to be found. So I look over the side of the bed and, lo, there it is lying on the floor. I reach out, grasp it, and there's nothing there! I try again, reach, close hand, again nada. I repeat this multiple times until I'm completely frustrated and thinking what the fucking hell is going on. Then, CLICK, I get it, it's an optical illusion. Even though everything lined up, my arm wasn't long enough to reach it. Understanding dawned in my brain, consciousness had come. Oh, apparently my first word was corgi, as in the dog, go figure. By the time I was three we had moved back to California, now to Los Angeles (Torrance specifically). Nothing much really ever happened, my mother worked as the manager of the apartment we lived in so she was always there. About six months later my uncle Edd came to live with us, he had just divorced and needed a place to stay. Shortly thereafter we all moved to another apartment that had more space (my mother went back to being a hairdresser). It was at this time that my life started getting interesting. First off, my uncle had a computer (an IBM Compatible if I remember), so I began to learn how to use the things an an early age. I'm completely comfortable with computers that don't run a Windows/Mac style OS. Also I became old enough to start going outside on my own. I started to develop friends around the entire block, a few of them even had Nintendo's (And thus began the first obsession of my life). Days went by in the idle fooling around that most children do. Time went by, I turned five, summer ended. Then everything went to fucking hell. Next up, 5-10 : Elementary School (Also maybe I'll customize the LJ a bit. I sooo need an Icon) Current Mood: nostalgic (Comment on this)
Saturday, May 1st, 2004
3:02 am	This is not an update This is an apology. I'm sorry for creating a livejournal and not doing anything with it for a month. When I'm not doing Things That Need To Be Done, I'll be playing Final Fantasy XI. I will work on having the first part of my bio up before the month is out. I'm not yet sure whether or not to split it into two or three parts. In the meantime, an idea occurred to me. (Apologies if anybody came up with it already) Originally there was Monster Garage, now there are loads of car makeover shows. There were lots of home makeover shows, now there is Monster House. Now that I think about it, there are quite a number of plastic surgery makeover shows on the air... (You should see the grin on my face, but I lack a camera) Current Mood: embarrassed (Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 24th, 2004
11:55 am	It has begun Well, I've gotten a LiveJournal. You might ask why, and that's a damn fine question. It's too bad I don't quite know myself. I'm 18, unemployed, and not attending college. (I'm taking a year off, I just got out of high school, the idea of diving right back in confounds me.) I live with my mother, I don't have a vehicle, I don't really do anything. Not much to write about, and even if I did, not much of a read, is it? We've covered the negatives, so let's see why I AM doing this. While my life isn't very interesting from an outside perspective (I happen to like it, but that's me.) I don't intend for this to be a permanent state of affairs. I will get a job and go to college. I will do something with my life. I will move out one day (hopefully.) That tale might just prove to be interesting. I also have a bright mind and suffer from philosophy. While my opinions and beliefs are well thought out, I know better than to function on them without allowing for the fact that I could be from rather to completely wrong. However I can only think on things for so long until I run out of ways to see the matter. I need fresh opinions, opposing lines of thought, people to agree or disagree with me. From reading The Ferrett I've learned that LJ is a good place to get that. Finally we have the silliest reasons. Several of my friends have LJ's and for minor reasons (friend-cuts mainly) I have desired to get my own. Also, The Ferrett (A man I personally admire), has opinions on anonymous commenters and I'd like to be able to comment with a name. (I don't know how to use the right tags yet so I'll need link to him this way. http://www.livejournal.com/users/theferrett/ ) Now, while not much is happening in my life right now, I'd hate to create my journal and leave it sitting empty. So for my next entries I'll be doing a mini-autobiography, unfortunately these might be a bit irregular due to the event that finally pushed me over the edge in deciding to start an LJ. Today, as thanks for my participation in the beta test, my free retail copy of the Playstation 2 Hard Drive Disk with Final Fantasy XI arrived. Excuse me while I go squeal with glee and bounce around. I've saved enough money to keep me playing for several months. It could be awhile before I come up for air. Any reports of my death or disappearance may be premature. Current Mood: ecstatic (5 Comments |Comment on this)