One of those personal updates

I realize that sometimes it seems I disappear from the web, but this is actually not the case.

A lot of things in my personal life have changed in the past few months. I’ve decided to move in with my boyfriend, and money has since been very short. My boss recently replaced me at my job with her own (less qualified) daughter, and I’m now struggling to get a call back from my job applications. I also have been suffering from some health issues that have been draining all my emotional energy.

So it’s easy to see, I’m not having such a great time at the moment. But with all these things going on, I’m still working on web design because it’s my passion. The revamp over at Clever Heart was a huge accomplishment for me and I’m glad I got it done. I have also been working on Digital Slate (my writing site) behind the scenes. I hope to get it up by the summer. I have a lot of ideas just waiting for time to be completed, such as getting this blog a more suitable layout and turning into more of a personal website. A lot of ideas! Not enough time!

I’ve also decided to start my own web design business online after having some experience working for a year in the field with Paola. All my free time has been going into designing that website and I’m trying not to let myself get side-tracked by personal projects at the moment.

I’m on Spring Break this week and hope to get a lot done. I’ll be sure to keep this place updated with the progress!

No Comments / Mar 09.10

The RPG Genre

My first time going anywhere near an RPG was probably Chocobo Racing, a Playstation game that required more patience than skill. I played through this game so many times that I’m sure I discovered everything available to be discovered. Was it really an RPG? I guess you could label it a racing RPG, as there were slight elements of this throughout the game. You had to win races to advance the storyline. But really, the chocobo introduced seven year old me to an amazing series — Final Fantasy.

My second was Final Fantasy IX, which I didn’t actually finish playing until many years later when I was old enough to understand the story. When I was barely a teenager I discovered Final Fantasy X, and this is when my obsession with the series began. I replayed the ninth installment and went on to play others. Hunting down every game became a must. I loved the beauty of the series, the in-depth stories, and most of all — the characters. For a long time I was only interested in RPG, and Final Fantasy was the undisputed king of the genre. I had been through quite a few RPGs. Turn based, strategy, action, etc. Even the more recent games like Fable. (Which I am horrible at, for some reason.)

None of them even compared to Final Fantasy. But I finally found one that does, and it’s called Mass Effect.

http://katiedesousa.com/

http://​katiedesousa​.com/

There is something about Mass Effect that really impresses me. It is a true RPG — you make your character, you decide how he or she will look like, and you make all the major plot decisions. In Mass Effect 2 (and in the future games) you import your character and continue their unique story. Romance, action, and your position in the world — the choices are all yours. Final Fantasy never came close to this, and with the newest installments it’s obvious you are playing through a very streamlined movie. A beautiful movie, but still a movie. I do get attached to the characters and thrown into the world, but as far as leaving your own footprint in the game… It never happens.

How amazing would it be if Square Enix did something like this? I would love the have the Final Fantasy hero be completely customizable, and the story in their world be up to me. But it seems too good to be true, especially because of the gaming pattern they’re going into. The games are less and less adaptable. It just doesn’t seem likely that they would go this route.

If you like the RPG genre as much as I do, I highly suggest you try out the Mass Effect series. I think it’s safe to say that I’ll be hooked on this one for quite a while. Is it better than Final Fantasy? I don’t think you can compare the two that way. Final Fantasy is a masterpiece on its own, one that spans generations and will continue to do so. Mass Effect is a refreshing breakthrough in the RPG series that will likely end in the third installment.

But let me tell you, an RPG fan would be missing out by not playing it. I’d like to see you rip me away from the Xbox right now.

7 Comments / Feb 20.10

Lost and Found

This weekend I had another boring sort of adventure. It’s called give a lost cat shelter, and have your dogs go ballistic until you let her go.

Don’t think that I pick up strays because I feel sorry for them! Our apartment complex actually has quite a few strays. I blame the people who leave out cat food by the dumpsters. The way I see it, those cats are just fine. They’re better off on their own, eating left overs, than going to the shelter where they will likely be put down.

So when I saw a cat by our patio on Friday, I was about to scare the little guy away to stop my dogs from whining and ogling at it in the glass door. Once I got a good look at it, I immediately noticed it wasn’t a stray. It was a clean cat with no rough markings, and it looked terrified of absolutely everything outside.

I sent my boyfriend to go get the cat. Actually, he pretty much walked out to get it without me saying anything, so I followed him. The cat hesitated at first, but soon accepted that we weren’t there to do any harm. We identified it as female, no collar, declawed, and definitely domesticated. She was very affectionate! We decided that since she was obviously a house cat that had gotten lost, we could give her a place to spend the weekend just in case her owners call the front office and ask for her.

The weekend turned out to be only one night. While the cat was very well behaved and we could supply her with a litter box and food (we have ferrets!), our dogs were not so well behaved and the tiny apartment soon felt like an overcrowded zoo. This place just couldn’t handle that precious cat. After the night was over, we called the SPCA the next morning and told them we had a lost cat. Just like that, she was gone! I hope her owners find her soon, or that she at least finds a loving new home. A perfect cat like her shouldn’t be put down!

In cases like this, I can’t stress enough how important it is to microchip your pets. Max is microchipped and I hope we can get Ein microchipped too. It’s just a tiny microchip implanted into the dog or cat’s back with a shot needle. After that’s done, your pet can be scanned with a special remote. Every vet and shelter has this remote. If someone happens to find your lost pet and turns them in, they’ll be scanned and your information will pop up. It makes the chances of a lost pet finding its way home so much more likely!

4 Comments / Jan 31.10

A Busy January: New Year Cleaning

This week is my last week off before Spring 2010 semester. It is also the beginning of the new year, January 2010. Usually during this time, I clean my life up a bit by establishing new habits and cleaning my room. Well, things worked differently this year. I already picked up the habits I needed at the start of December. I was an avid runner a year ago and a gym enthusiast before that, but I let things slip away and decided to pick it all up again. This is good, I’m glad I did it before the new year.

The other difference is that this year I don’t have a room to clean,  I have an apartment to clean. Half of which (or should I say, a good chunk of) is filled with things that are my dear boyfriend’s. I’ve been preparing for him to realize yes, I will go through his things and get rid of them. (In all honesty, he had so many things that my things just wouldn’t fit. Unacceptable!) But the forewarning was unnecessary, because he knows me by now and probably saw this coming months ago.

Together we went through his DVDs and games. Just these two things, and I was left with about 234234 orders to put up on Amazon​.com, and within half an hour 15 items to package and ship out next day. Notice Ein’s glare in this photo. Yes Ein, I do realize how crazy I must have looked frantically packaging these before the post office closed.

And to the right you will see how my desk currently looks like. As someone who likes a clean, empty desk, squeezing my head between stacks of items for sale to use my laptop at my desk is claustrophobic. I’ve since decided to clutter up my beloved bookcase instead.

As you can imagine, the post office guy isn’t too thrilled about my January clean up either. You should have seen his face as I once again went in today with a bag full of items to individually scan and ship. I have since decided to spare him the agony, and hog the self-shipping machine in front of the building.

The funny thing is, we’re not getting a bunch of money out of this. Sure, we are getting a pocketful. But a lot of these movies and games are so old, they only go for a few bucks. Subtract packaging expenses, shipping costs, and Amazon commission and we get…about $2 for some of these. But I figure it’ll add up and maybe we can buy one or two things we’ve been needing to save up for. The true goal here is to de-clutter the apartment. We are slowly succeeding!

I have yet to sell any of the million Rock Band guitars up for sale, nor the drumset. I am not looking forward to fitting those in a box and shipping them, but I also can’t stand the heap of them next to my bookcase.

To close this unnecessarily long entry, I will say this. Orlando is not meant to have 20 to 30 degree weather on a daily basis. Not in November, not in December, and certainly not in January. I don’t see many good things about freezing weather, other than I can finally wear that cute scarf I throw in the back of the closet and the gloves I put god knows where.

But when our entire back door fogs up, I get to draw all over it and have my boyfriend wake up to exclaim, “Marjorie… What the hell did you do to the window?” I guess that’s winter bliss.

2 Comments / Jan 07.10

Happy New Year!

We are now unbelievably in the year 2010. I noticed that I’m not the only one that had a hard time with 2009. While the year brought about a few wonderful things and some life-changing events, it was also one of the toughest years I’ve experienced. I’m looking forward to 2010 being a good year to appreciate relationships and better myself!

Has anyone made new year resolutions? I haven’t, aside from the point I made above. When I went to my morning gym workout today I noticed quite a few people had made resolutions…  I’m usually the only one in the gym at the time I go in, and this time it was pretty full. Funny thing is, I bet I will never see them there again after a few weeks. It’s hard to declare a bunch of goals in January and continue them until December. This is really because people forget, lose track, or lose interest in what they pledged those early morning hours of January 1st.

I realized this years ago and decided to make general goals rather than specific ones. Here are a few great articles that may help you, if you have goals for 2010 or (like me) consider January a month for revamp:

What does January hold for me? Lots of cleaning. (If you know me, this is one of my hobbies…) I’ll be going through all of my stuff and donating a good chunk of it to charity (or throwing it out if it’s useless), completely moving into the apartment, cleaning places that really need it, refreshing a few old layout designs, making appointments I’ve been putting off, fixing or replacing things that I’ve been meaning to fix or replace, and giving my dog a good scrub down.

2 Comments / Jan 02.10