a trendy name

The World Ends With You (Me)!0
chris lin posted in Personal, Reviews on May 12th, 2008

Recently, I have been playing the game The World Ends With You on the DS. Here's a synopsis since I am horrible with explaining.

From the creators of the award-winning Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts franchises comes a revolutionary, modern action-RPG title for a new generation of gamers. Square Enix and Jupiter team up once again to showcase The World Ends With You, a trendy and vibrant gaming experience developed exclusively for the Nintendo DS. Featuring an intuitive combat system and exciting multiplayer mode, The World Ends With You is set to immerse gamers into the modern-day culture of Japan.

Story
The story begins as Neku Sakuraba, an unsociable 15-year-old boy, unexpectedly wakes up in the Shibuya shopping district of Tokyo, Japan. While trying to piece together his rude awakening, he receives a strange text message warning him that he will cease to exist unless he accomplishes a certain mission. Although he barely has time to grasp what is happening to him, he commences his assigned task in the mysterious streets of Shibuya.

The game itself is so big, after you beat the storyline it unlocks more content and one of the optional quests would be to collect all your pins (which are the tools you use to fight your enemies) which reminds me of Pokemon. Each pin itself would activate a certain ability (or psych) for Neku to use to battle the noise (Neku's enemies). If I remember correctly, one of the first pins received was a pin that made flames according to where you touched with the stylus which leads me to my next point…

The battle system is unique as well although frustrating at points (I'm talking to you Neku, move when I tell you). The player ends up controlling two characters at once, one on the top screen (controlled by control pad) and the other on the bottle screen (controlled by the stylus). If you'd been watching me play you'll see me slashing, tapping, pointing on the bottom screen while mashing the control pad in efforts to beat all the noise out there. I haven't been addicted to getting 100% content since pokemon, let's just hope they have some sort of award for obtaining it.

Last day to file taxes0
chris lin posted in Finance, Personal on April 15th, 2008

I never understood why people always wait til today to file their taxes. I mean, from what the news indicates it seems to be a majority of people always waits until the last week to file their taxes. Once I recieve my forms from my employers, I like to file for taxes right away. There is less stress on me, I get my refund within 2 weeks and I do not need to worry about April 15th. I also understand those who do not receive their forms due to their incompetent employers but it still seems like a lot of people just like to wait until the last few days to do their taxes.

I procrastinate on anything except when it affects me financially. Maybe my prospective will change once I have a family to take care of.

My god, our bodies are amazing0
chris lin posted in Personal, School on April 14th, 2008

I was heading to class (the class I am in now, so much for paying attention), I read the paper and noticed that junior Laef Barnes broke the 4 minute mark for running a mile. Think about that for a second, if you ever ran around a lap, you'll know that doing it under one minute is pretty insane. That's every 15 seconds, he runs a quarter of the lap. I can't get over mymind how fast that is which is probably why only 307 Americans have broken that mark.

Citi’s Driver Edge Credit Card is Awesome0
chris lin posted in Finance, Personal on April 11th, 2008

So I was going through my finances like I do every few days, since I don't really keep an actual written budget (more like its in my head, I am pretty good with that sort of stuff) and I noticed I got a DE SERVICE CREDIT on my credit card in in the amount of 50.xx. After thinking about it, I remember it was probably due to the service rebate form I sent in two weeks back.

First of all, how it works is basically any kind of car service you perform on your registered vehicle on the card, as long as you fill out a form and send in your receipts (which you'll never get back), they will credit you for the full amount sans tax. Basically, free car service. In my case, I got an oil change and it came out to be 53.xx with tax included. For some reason, i thought they would only refund a certain percentage but apparently they refund you the whole amount and I cannot find any sort of maximum cap anywhere.

Next time I go get my 15k or 30k service, I am definitely charging it onto this card. Plus, the 6% gas rebates for the first year isn't as bad since I use gas so much.

Ipods, even retards can use it0
chris lin posted in Personal on April 7th, 2008

Bush: Put it in my pocket, got the ear things on.

This is President Bush, talking about ipod, explaining how he puts his ear things on. What the christ.

Follow the rules of the road!0
chris lin posted in Personal on April 4th, 2008

I hate it when people lack the common sense which usually ends up screwing others (ex: me). This morning when I was heading towards the bus from home, I was standing at a major intersection (Wilshire blvd/Westwood blvd) when I see this Ford F150 take a left turn lane from Wilshire onto Westwood. Problem with that was there was no space so it was in the middle of the intersection blocking two lanes on Wilshire. That usually wouldn't be a problem but the left turn light just turned red and now the lights on Wilshire turned green allowing people to move through the intersection. But wait, two lanes can't!

Now we have this F150 blocking two lanes of traffic, essentially preventing around 20 or so cars in both lanes from being able to cross before the truck itself was able to get out of the intersection since the street it was going to be on moved on. Now I see this often and I just realize by having that happen to that intersection every once in a while, it can cause cars to pile up when they could've freely moved through.

God, I hate LA traffic.

This is my retirement plan0
chris lin posted in Personal on March 5th, 2008

When I retire, this is what I am going to do. Cash out my money, sell everything I own, buy the book 1000 Places To See Before You Die and visit as many as I can, before I die. Here's an example of some of the spots they listed.

Yay, tax rebates!1
chris lin posted in Finance, Personal on February 11th, 2008

Congress approved the 168 billion last week, so I can get extra money this year :D.

I also just found out that I will be getting 600 dollars back from the government this year. That in addition to the 600 dollar rebate will net me around 1200 dollars in returns this year. Rather than go on a spending spree, that money is going straight into savings until I need to start paying off my college loan. Oh god, the day that happens.