Cross-listed as "The End" Vol. 1 Pt. 4 Prologue and Chapter 1

High School - Senior Year

Prologue
Senior year was a long year. It was a year full of learning, experience, friendship, growth, and a bit of love. It's hard to write about senior year as fact since it's been long enough that some of the memories I associate with senior year might actually be from other times. This is more of a recollection of how I remember it, not necessarily how things happened.

The number one thing I learned that year is that there are so many different things to learn. One of my early lessons was about burn-out. I was an eager student. I loved to learn academically. I had a nearly-full schedule to finish off my tenure at Millard West. One block of one semester was designed as my reward for 12 years well done. Most of my classes were Advanced Placement classes or college prep classes.

This is stupid. No one cares about my classes. The moral of the story is that by the end of the year I had dropped two or three classes halfway through (at the end of the first semester). I did enough to get my 4.0 GPA, but that was it.

The more I write -- and the more frustrated I get at how lame this story is -- the more I am realizing that I'm stalling. There was a lot of shit that went down in senior year. There are some things that make me feel nostalgic, some things make me feel foolish, and something else that makes me feel ashamed.

So here goes the real story. I thought about changing the names to protect... myself, but I decided not to.

Chapter 1: Intro to Relationships

Throughout my time at West, I had been building a friendship with a mysterious girl I met my sophomore year. I was in a German class filled with freshmen, and when she walked in the room, everyone seemed to know her. I was instantly intimidated. She looked scary and mean. That perception was quickly lost. A friend I had made in middle school in a random set of events, Pat, was also in the class. Unbeknownst to any of us, this combination would lead to my first relationship.

The girl was Sarah Jane. A series of religious debates in class with Pat led us to realize we attended the same church and we even shared similar interests.

Fast forward through a couple awkward conversations and emails (and a "I like you but not that way" email) to senior year. It might have started the summer before senior year... I honestly don't remember. After "the email," I spent a while figuring out whether that email was warranted and if it was how to reconcile a friendship out of the deal. By the time these events had started, I had set myself up to be blindsided.

We started going to movies, most of which were last minute attempts to relieve boredom. Some nights ended in her driveway looking at stars through her amazing telescope. That was the best time I had in high school. The world seemed to make a bit more sense. School was handling itself, I had managed to dig myself out of social drama and found a situation that made me enjoy life.

As our time together continued, I started to realize how much I was enjoying spending time with her. I was inexperienced in the ways of romance and relationships (when the interest is reciprocated) and didn't know what was happening or what it meant. All I knew was I wanted to spend more and more time with her, and that was what was happening. We had long, late-night phone calls, frequent and lengthy instant message chats, I think we even went to a few (small) concerts.

I was starting to get the picture, and the homecoming dance was just around the corner.

To be continued...

I've decided to continue on to Volume 2 of "The End"

I was bored the other day and remembered that I had written my autobiography up to about junior or senior year of high school and figured it was probably time to bring it up to date with the end of high school and college.

Hopefully this time it won't be so angsty and intentionally cryptic. It'll just be unintentionally cryptic and not very well written.

As a sort of teaser:

The End - Volume 2 Prologue
Senior year of high school finished off angsty, wannabe emo Steve for good. The transition to college was a very good change that I had been needing for a while. It was hard to leave friends behind, but it's been a good experience to learn how to hold onto good friendships at long distances and know that no matter how much time we spend apart, we'll always be friends.

With a quick look back through the last 4+ years, I can see a lot of chaos that will be fun to write about. It's (mostly) good chaos, though...

I intend to make each year it's own chapter or "part." I will start with "Part 0" which will be Senior year of high school. It's been a LONG time since then, so it will be interesting to see what parts of it I remember and if I can even keep the order and timing of things straight. I can't decide if I will do mini-parts to talk about the summer in between the main parts. Summers in college have been very different from the school year since the friends I make/spend time with during the summers are quite different from the friends I spend time with at school.

I hope you enjoy it. I also hope I actually make good on this tease and that I'll actually write the thing...

Last night I played Metal Gear Online for the first time in probably over a month. This is for multiple reasons. I was already not very happy with the game, but when they released patch 1.1, it took so long to download that I canceled it and didn't try downloading it again until last night.

So, naturally I was rusty. This amplified the faults with the game and I didn't have much fun. I started out having a great time. I wasn't getting many kills, but I was helping a lot.

With no further ado, here is the list of the top 6 reasons Metal Gear Online sucks.

6) If you crouch, consider yourself dead. Exactly. Dead. I love Metal Gear Solid. I love running around crouched over to minimize my noise from my movements and to sneak behind low walls. That is one of my favorite things to do in MGS -- sneak around and kill/stun people stealthily. MGO throws the core of MGS out the window. If you try to sneak around you had better be darned good at it. If someone sees you when you're crouched over, consider yourself dead.

The problem is the stance of your character when you're crouched. He leads with his head. The biggest target your opponent has is the top of your skull. They don't even have to try and aim, as long as they're aimed in the general direction of your body, they will have a head shot in only a few bullets. One bullet thorugh the top of your skull and you're dead.

5) Lag Lag LAG. Yes, I'm going to whine about lag. The lag I'm talking about, though isn't from the network. Most of the time, the network runs quite smoothly and you don't notice people jumping around from place to place. The lag I'm talking about is from plugging your beautiful PS3 into your beautiful HDTV. It is no secret that HDTV introduce lag between the time the PS3 sends the signal and the time it displays it on your screen.

Now, being the videophile that I am, I bought the best 40" HDTV money could buy less than a year after I got my PS3. Until Gran Turismo 5 Prologue came out, I was kind of dissapointed because most games were only coming out in 720p and that just wasn't good enough. Finally, GT5P and MGS4 came out with their beautiful 1080p graphics and I was in love.

Unfortunately, people playing MGO on their SDTVs have a leg up on the competition. The beautiful 1080p graphics don't give you any advantage when playing online, but they actually handicap you. People playing through VGA cables on an SDTV get to see things on their screens a fraction of a second faster than those playing through any type of connection on an HDTV. This means that someone (you or your opponent) pops from around a corner, the person with the faster TV is going to get the first shot off.

Last night I found myself yelling at the game wondering how it was possible that I died less than a second after I saw my opponent. The answer: HDTV lag + crouching. I didn't have a chance. One of use would pop out of a corner and I would have a bullet through the top of my crouched, laggy little head.

4. No recognition for assists. I'm not a good attack player. I'm a supporter. I was trained at Halo by the best support player I know. When I play any type of shooter, my goal is to help my teammates kill the other team. I like doing that because it helps our team get more kills, and not many people are willing to take the roll of the guy who doesn't get many kills. Without support players, though, you can kiss your beautiful kill count goodbye.

The problem with being a support player in MGO is going to be drawn out even more in some of the following ways MGO sucks. But, as for this point, I'd like to see some recognition for assists in the post-match stats.

3. Drebin points make the good players better and the crappy players pissed off. Don't get me wrong, I love the Drebin points idea! The problem is that the good players keep racking up the Drebin points and getting better and better weapons so the worse players who can't seem to catch a break always end up with the worst guns and gear and always end up dying very soon after they spawn (and giving the good player with the best gun in the game even more Drebin points to trick out his already godly gun).

As a support player, I frequently find myself dying when my teammates aren't fast enough to get an angle on my enemy, and I rarely get kills. This means I never get Drebin points. It also means that I'll be halfway through a match and be playing with the crappiest gun in the game when both my teammates and the other team have the best guns.

I realize it's kind of hard to quantify how much a support player is helping, but I can tell you, I've saved many teammates from death in a firefight, and actually oppened up a firefight with the opposing team in order to allow a teammate to get a good angle and rack up the kills. I'd like some reward for that, thank you very much.

2. No communication. Don't even try to tell me that select menu is communication. It's stupid. And seriously, who's going to hook up a keyboard to their PS3? GO BUY A GODDAMNED HEADSET! If there's one thing Xbox got right, it was forcing every player to have a communicator. It makes online play so much more fun.

I rely heavily on communicating to my teammates. It is impossible to relay enemy location information and set up angles without being able to communicate in real time. Seriously people, go buy Warhawk or pick up a headset for $30 at Best Buy (or from Amazon... that's where I got mine)

1. Crappy Aiming. Yes, the aiming mechanics in MGO is horrible. I don't know how to explain it, but I can keep my reticle on some guys head and unload an entire clip without him even turning around to see where the fire is coming from. BECAUSE NOT A SINGLE BULLET HITS HIM. I don't know why in MGS4 the aiming works pretty much flawlessly, but in MGO I can't seem to get the bullets to go where my reticle is. Oh, and on a somewhat related note: The number of body shots you can take is rediculous. It only takes one headshot to kill someone, but it takes a clip and a half of M4 fire to kill someone when shooting them in the body. What gives?

So there you have it. The top 6 reasons why Metal Gear Online sucks. Keep in mind this is just the top 6. While writing this more and more kept coming to mind, but I had to cut it off somewhere. I guess I touched on another one in the crappy aiming section, but yeah...

Now I'm going to go play Rock Band. A game that has flaws, but Harmonix has acknowledged every flaw I could find and is fixing it for Rock Band 2.

I'm trying to get a new layout set up, but Xanga's "theme editor" thing sucks balls. Looks like it's time to dig in with the HTML :)

That I'm writing this post so that I can get a trout bot to talk to me?