Ryan
Chasing greatness

So I’ve been having problems sleeping lately. That is fine, except I’m tired and cranky during the day. Oddly enough, that is about the right demeanor for used car shopping, which is what is occupying my time.

By the by, the movie, “The Code” isn’t so great. It has got some A-List actors, but it tried way to hard and failed.

So my ideas. First, I thought about creating a website. I’m sure it exists already, and I don’t think I have the energy to do it, but what it would be is a central resource for gamers.

Wow, breakthrough stuff. I know.

What I really want it to function as, is a social networking site for gamers to find other people, their million different names, stats, and games that they have, so they can have a better time playing games with people they like.

So your profile would have bare bones information about you, and then all of the various games you had on various platforms and poll whatever statistic collecting sites there are, for live updates of those players’ informations. That way, everything is in one place and people can check up on friends, rivals, and clans.

The other idea is for a game that I should have made by now, but I didn’t have the angles worked out. Of course it is a zombie game.

Now, there are humans and zombies in a procedurally generated town/city. There is a certain number of humans that can exist based on map size. They are naked and helpless. They have to forage for food, water, and supplies, while being attacked by zombies. Their scores will be based on survival and zombie kills.

The Zombies are endless, but there will really only be a certain amount roaming at a time. The zombies can be either human controlled, or player controlled. The beauty of this is that the zombies serve as a lobby while you wait for your turn to be a human.

Those who wait can see a top down map of everything except where humans are, and jump into a zombie that isn’t in use and run around doing their best to find and kill a human. If they die, the kick out to the map, and another zombie starts.

I have lots of other ideas to make the game interesting by restricting player-to-player communication, and various other sensory issues.

If I were a better man, I would create a team and make this game.

I haven’t written in a while.  Mostly because there hasn’t really been a whole lot to say.

Actually that is only half true.

Greg left MES and us on Thursday, April  30th.  If anyone who reads this has ever known someone that has been so amazingly brilliant, not only at their job, but also in life, then you know how hard it is to say, “Good bye.”  I’ll be the first to admit that I never anticipated being a teacher.  I knew teaching English in Japan was my best ticket to live in Japan and see down the side streets and darker ally’s that tourists’ gazes cannot reach.  I became a teacher to live that dream, and I have  succeeded.

I never would have expected to find a role-model here.  He was Greg.

You could get into the entire destiny debate.  Argue if people are born for a task or not.  Greg is an artist an born teacher.  Anyone who meets him would unhesitatingly say so.  However, he returned to Vietnam to be with his family and new daughter.  I can only wish him the best.

I can only look back on the lessons I have learned and the great memories I have had.

All of that being said, it is, “Golden Week.”  This is the public holiday that all of Japan has.  Of course travel is marked up outrageously because of that very reason.  We have opted to stay in and pack.  We have learned the lesson of our predecessors, which is, “Don’t wait until the last minute to pack up.”

I have already prepared a box to send home with clothes, a sleeping bag, and a Nintendo 64 with 8 games an 4 controllers.  Yes, the nerd exists, and anyone who visits our life-changing place in the states can sample video games they remember, in Japanese.

Megan is taking on this task of cleaning and packing with absolute dedication.  As long as a new episode of Desperate Housewives isn’t buffering.  I, myself, have other goals.  First, to finish my stupid Zombie video game.  As it stands, I have a city generator.  My second goal is to finish, “The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass.”  If I don’t finish it, I’ll forget it.  Anyone who plays RPGs will know how much of a pain in the ass that is.

Anyway, I haven’t written because I didn’t know what to write about Greg leaving.  I also didn’t know what to write about our leaving.  I still don’t.  

All I can say is that he will be missed.  Forever.  Really.

I couldn’t remember what I wanted to blog about the past few days.  I knew I wanted too, but I couldn’t remember what about.  I do remember now, and wish I hadn’t written these three sentences in buildup.

So on Wednesday I was having of laughter because all of my attention was drawn away from the children learning, and instead drawn to how much they erase.  Sure they’re writing in a foreign language, sure they can’t spell, blah blah blah.

I timed them.  In a class of 9, the stopwatch never made it past 10 seconds before an eraser was grabbed and a hushed whisper of, “Machigaita,” was heard (“Oops”).  I was tickled by this and also tore the Japanese Teacher away from teaching as well to be mystified by the children’s erasing regularities.

See, that barely registers on the scale of interesting.

Lets lower the expectations further.

Today I was on a weird coffee high.  For those of you who don’t know, I generally avoid caffeine.  I do this because I suck at sleeping.  Unfortunately avoiding caffeine makes me more prone to it when I do take it in.

When you have to teach 7 classes that are 15 minutes a piece and involve dancing and singing, you need caffeine.  Trust me.

So anyway, I was a bit retarded on the juice and did ridiculous stuff all day.

I told the children to translate sentences like, “I must eat Mt. Fuji,” or, “I must lick a wall,” or, “I must drink a jacket.”  I did this because I couldn’t be normal.  The children were either completely freaked out in a good way, or freaked out in a bad way.  Whichever the case was, I don’t think they’ll forget the grammar.

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I had my private lesson today for the first time in almost a month.  I teach one of Megan’s student’s fathers.  He is a really cool guy.  Hard to believe he is Japanese actually.

He has his own company that specializes in custom motorcycle seats.  That is a pretty awesome job.  They do a lot of work to get their name out there by doing things like contributing to extreme around the world races and such as well.

Today we talked about love hotels.  He gave me some great information about how things can be there.  Things like there will always be a minibar with drinks and sometimes with sex toys.  During holidays when women tend to dress up in Kimonos they have “Kimono service.”  Essentially a special staff member will come up and help they young lady get tied up into her Kimono again because it is a 2 person job.

Crazy.

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Today I have finished my first releasable version of my Login Tracker application for Mac OSX users.

It still needs more work, but it is reasonably secure and is a good start on a tool that I think a lot of people can benefit from. If you don’t remember what this is about. This is a tool that will keep track of your user names and passwords for you.

If you are like me, you are drowning in them. Now you don’t have to.