Someday we'll all look back and laugh.

So the ECE board exams are now over. Six months (okay three) of hard work and preparation (well alright, occasionally glancing at my books) and what do we get? A bunch of questions chosen seemingly at random. The Math and Electronics parts were good enough actually, and I felt pretty confident there. The second day was bad. The Communications exam might as well have been a random set of questions about cookie dough and displacer beasts. Me, Marc and Dennis went through at least a hundred questions in various topics an hour and a half before the exam but not one of the stuff we reviewed came out. Instead we're bombarded with questions about obscure standards and various laws. *Sigh*

Or maybe I'm just sour-graping because I didn't make the top ten [link broken]. Then again I was expecting at least Dennis to make it in, but no such luck. Are there any other UP studes in the top ten? I don't know, and I'm not sure I care anymore. Oh well, that's the breaks.

I finished Tales of Phantasia yesterday, finally. I must've been playing it for about half a year before I managed to finish it. Emulators are really bad for your attention span -- I've got a Seiken Densetsu game near the end but I haven't touched it for maybe a year now. Anyway, I went and kicked Dhaos butt, even though I wasn't able to complete the better subquests, complete Arche's spells or even get Gremlin and Shadow. Maybe another time. Or if Namco decides to be nice and release it for the PSX. Oh yeah, I put up the ending save state here [link broken]. Hopefully one of these days I can finish the Ranma RPG, SD3 and DQ5, not necessarily in that order.

So I've been playing Hoshigami lately. When I first bought it and tried it out I thought it was a horrible game. It's quite hard, and you will easily die if you don't know what you're doing. Now I realize the reason I was having such a hard time was because I was trying to play it like FF Tactics or Tactics Ogre. Instead, the RAP gauge encourages an entirely different way of thinking. You have to learn how to conserve your RAP, to know how to use the turn sequence properly, when to shoot and when not to shoot, and when to attempt a session. Granted, knowing all this stuff doesn't make the game that much easier -- but I find myself enjoying it once I familiarized myself with the different tactics. Sadly, very few people will be able to appreciate this game. I'm in Chapter 2 and I've already burned 20 hours of game time and probably a lot more in real-time -- I tend to lose battles often. =P

The following web sites are graciously hosting some of my fiction, so be nice and visit them: Icy Brian's RPG Page and Laura's Sailor Moon Shrine [link broken] (although why a SM shrine would have FF fanfiction is beyond me. =)

Last week we saw The Count of Monte Cristo. Two more weeks before Spiderman, and a full month before the next Star Wars movie.

Lastly, and have you ever wondered where you could get RPG Books online [link broken]?