Seems like a lot of stores are converting over to be some kind of walk-in vending machine. You go to the grocery store, you stand in line for a while behind one person, wondering what's taking so long, and then you get up to the counter and there's no one there. It's the self check-out line, and chances are pretty good that the reason that person was taking so long as that they're too stupid to operate it. It's a case where they really are replacing people with machines, but only in part, because the other part of the cashier's job was to process everything, and at most places they even bag your items for you. Not anymore. That's your job now.

The worst case of this I've seen so far has been at my local Home Depot. I've only ever been there twice, but the first time there was only one line that a human was working it, and it had about 5 people waiting in it. There were 4 self check-out lines, 2 of which were in use. That should say something about the self check-out lines. Oh, and the management apparently took note that the self check-out lines weren't being used that much, because the second time I went, there were no manned lines. You were forced to use the self check-out. Another thing that makes the Home Depot SCO (I'm abbreviating it now) great is that they have alarm tags on many of their products, with no way to deactivate them at the SCO counter. So, every time you walk out, you set the alarm off. Of course, you receive no warning that this will happen, so you're not sure what to do the first time. What I did was stop, turn around, see that nobody cared, and went on with life. The second time, I went through, stopped, waited for the alarm to stop, then went back through one more time before I left, just to be a dick about it.

The advantage of these stores over an actual vending machine, however, is that they still cost less. I'll never understand why vending machines cost so damn much.

Why is it that 24x7 grocery stores are closed on Saturday night. They're closed from midnight until 6:00am. It's probably different in more urban settings, but out here in the suburbs, this is the case. If you want to be technical, they're closed for the first 6 hours of Sunday, the first of which is often affectionately referred to as late Saturday night, because chances are whatever parties started on Saturday night are still going on, and it messes with your head when the day changes while you're awake, so you still refer to whatever time it is now as the same day it was when you woke up (hooray for run-on sentences). Yeah, so, Saturday night. Wouldn't you think that would be the busiest night of all nights of the week? Maybe Friday night would be a competitor, but I would think Saturday would normally dominate it seeing as people work on Fridays and wouldn't be as willing to stay up so late, whereas on Saturday you've slept in and have many more waking hours to work with (again, hooray). Yet, this is the overnight they choose to be closed. Maybe that's why so many grocery stores that were 24x7 reverted to closing nights. They said "There's not a single night we're really making any money by being open." Well, maybe if you were open Saturday night instead of, I don't know, Tuesday night, well, maybe then you'd get some overnight business.

In case you're wondering, right now, it's 3:19am on a "Saturday night".

I've come to the conclusion that gravity is merely an illusion used to orient which way is up. That is the only explanation I can come up with for Advent Children. There's just something about East-Asian cinema that makes you question the current laws of physics.

I was holding out for a proper DVD release, but since that release date has changed to "Sometime this year, probably," I decided that to just go ahead and watch the fansub. The video quality was pretty good, actually. It was kind of like watching a digital movie (which it is) on a film projector. Any parts that were exceptionally fast, which there's a lot of, were somewhat blurry.

Despite what people say, you don't have to have played the game to understand what's going on. There's an adequate explanation in the movie itself. Sure, you don't know the background of all these characters that show up, and maybe you don't know the significance of certain details. I doubt that having played the game all the way through would help any understanding at all of the lack of gravity during the fights, since the characters were very well grounded in the game. Anything they don't explain is pretty easy to put together, at least for relevance to the plot of the movie. It's true, though, that the movie is a lot better with full knowledge of the events and characters of the game, as it has those moments where you're supposed to cheer "It's that guy!" Still, for those who never have and never will play the game in part or completely, you can still watch the movie and understand enough of what's going on to follow along and enjoy.

One change from the game is that all the guys have become J-rockers. I think only two of the regular male characters have masculine faces. Cloud's face is masculine from the front, but quite feminine from the side. You usually see his face from the front, but there's one part they show a close-up of his profile and you really notice it.

Still, the movie is very pretty. There's something there for everyone. Guys will appreciate the vast, industrial, high-tech, practically post-apocalyptic cityscapes. Women will appreciate the feminine male faces, also known as "pretty boys" (women have to admit that they tend to prefer men who look like women). Now, if they can just make another movie that features the cast of Final Fantasy X-2. Ah, Yuna, how well those Daisy Dukes fit you (Yuna's my favorite FF character... I know I haven't played X-2, but damn). They can leave out Tidus, though. Dude's a panzy.

Yeah, I meant to post this about 7 days ago, when I first wrote it. Somehow that didn't happen.

There are two times in the year that you are reminded that time is going by. One of them usually involves heavy drinking, so you may not really think about it then. That time is the turn of the year, often referred to simply as New Year's, since it's both New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. It's a cross-day celebration you see. That means party. So that's what I did. What's unusual for me is I hosted the party. As far as my memory will take me, I have never hosted a party before in my life. Perhaps I did vicariously through my parents when I was a kid, but this was the first time actually hosting it myself.

The usual parties I go to proceed as follows: People show up, some with food and/or drink, and then stuff happens. There's no actual plan to it, that's just how it is. So, I figured that should be good enough. It was my first time hosting a party, and I'm not the kind of guy to start a revolution his first time in new territory. I got some chips, some peanuts, some drinks, and some stuff to make pizzas with. In the invitation, I asked people to bring something to help offset my meager offerings. I cleaned my house, made a little extra room here and there, and basically got things ready for occupancy. I even got the party music ready.

The first detail of the night I'd like to poing out is that the party music never got started. I forgot to hit play when I started playing my new game Panzer Dragoon Orta, and didn't think about it when people started showing up. It's just as well as I would've soon had to turn it off when Point Blank got started. After Point Blank, it was DDR, which is very musically dependant. DDR caused two people injury that night, but not at the same time. No, I wasn't one of the two.

While writing the invitations, I decided to send emails to some old friends I haven't seen in a long time. I wasn't sure if the email addresses I had in a text file were still valid, but I tried anyway. Most of the bounced back. However, someone I hadn't seen in years actually showed up at the party. He had to leave early to go to his girlfriend's party, but he stopped by my party for the same reason that I invited him. It was really cool. If you want to find old friends, I recommend throwing a party and sending an invite to whatever email addresses you may have for them. It worked for me.

All in all, about 10 people showed up. I think that's pretty good for a New Year's Eve party organized just 4 days before New Year's Eve.