Facebook, or...

As I mentioned a few days ago, I went through the process of deleting my Facebook account, and I'm currently in the 14 day period where if I log in again the request gets cancelled.

I check my email today and what do I find?  An email from Facebook.  Or at least it claims to be from Facebook.  I'm not sure.  Gmail automatically put it in my spam folder and warns me that it's probably a phishing scam of some sort.  The message itself just says that Facebook Support sent me a message on Facebook.  That I'd have to log in to read.  Resetting my account deletion in the process.  Even if it is legit I'm not going to try to log in until the end of the month.

Naturally I'm curious about it though.  Not curious enough to do anything stupid, but...  intelligently curious.  Here are the full headers of the message (with my email address omitted):

Delivered-To: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Received: by 10.224.54.80 with SMTP id p16cs39443qag; Sat, 15 May 2010 07:34:15 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.150.117.42 with SMTP id p42mr3803647ybc.77.1273934054897; Sat, 15 May 2010 07:34:14 -0700 (PDT) Return-Path: <djbishop@swva.net> Received: from www.bagcrafters.com ([74.208.166.151]) by mx.google.com with SMTP id u10si9523406ybe.65.2010.05.15.07.34.14; Sat, 15 May 2010 07:34:14 -0700 (PDT) Received-SPF: softfail (google.com: domain of transitioning djbishop@swva.net does not designate 74.208.166.151 as permitted sender) client-ip=74.208.166.151; Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=softfail (google.com: domain of transitioning djbishop@swva.net does not designate 74.208.166.151 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=djbishop@swva.net Date: Sat, 15 May 2010 10:29:14 -0600 To: <XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX> From: Facebook <notification+hffcgpmhtqnx@facebookmail.com> Reply-to: noreply <noreply@facebookmail.com> Subject: Facebook Support sent you a message on Facebook... Message-ID: <53b594d61a642755ee4688424e06f75d@www.facebook.com> X-Priority: 3 X-Mailer: ZuckMail [version 1.00] X-Facebook-Notify: msg; from=199712451176974; t=107020307133; mailid=e1AF7473b36e5dA64BbA0502eA00cA68 Errors-To: notification+pxgmahbalrev@facebookmail.com X-FACEBOOK-PRIORITY: 0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/html; charset = "UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Nothing in there looks legit to me. Especially not the part saying "djbishop@swva.net doesn't designate 74.208.166.151 as permitted sender". Besides, what the hell is bagcrafters.com?

Also, a minor note: When setting up my Facebook account to begin with I went in and disabled everything it wanted to send me an email for, and just before deleting it I double-checked to make sure everything was unchecked; indeed it all was. So if this is legit then they ignore those settings when you tell them to delete your account.

One last thought: if Gmail hadn't blocked images (I have it set up to do so by default) then me loading the images contained in the email off of their server might in theory have reset my deletion process. I say "in theory" because I used a separate browser to log into Facebook, and I also have BlockSite configured to block anything from Facebook's domain and all subdomains, secure or not secure.

Mille Bornes

Every now and then my parents and some of their friends have a "game night" where they get together and play random games.  These are usually card games.  Most of the time these game nights are on Saturdays, which usually means I'm at the CAINE showing, but since the semester's over, I could play.

We started with Mille Bornes.  It's french, I think it means 1000 miles or something.  Basically everyone's in a car and you're racing to your destination (which is actually only 700 miles away, but when you reach that point you can opt to extend to 1000 for extra points), but you can throw hazards in each others' way to try and stay ahead (or catch up).  The whole thing is played over multiple hands which get scored and the ultimate goal is to get 5000 (or more) points.

I played it a lot as a kid, but I don't remember it being this bad.  Maybe it was just a really bad shuffling job or something.  Since we had so many people we were playing in teams, and my dad and I ended up in a car accident with no repair card available because the other teams had all six of them.  So we were stuck basically.  There's no mechanic for stealing cards from people, every hazard only has one specific type of remedy card, and the rules expressly forbid shuffling the discard pile when the draw stack runs out.  There's actually a point bonus for winning after the draw stack runs out, but I'd rather get all those cards back.

So I got to thinking how I'd fix and modify this flawed french card game.  This is what I've come up with:

• Combination remedy cards: These will fix either of the listed hazards, but not both.
• Full Service - fixes Car Accident or Out of Gas
• Full Repair - fixes Car Accident or Flat Tire
• SUV Driver - fixes Car Accident or Speed Limit
• Roadside Assistance - fixes Out of Gas or Flat Tire
• Gas 'N Go - fixes Out of Gas or Speed Limit
• Burn Rubber - fixes Flat Tire or Speed Limit
• Hazard delay cards: These let you continue for a short distance with a hazard and are discarded once that short distance has been travelled.  The purpose is to give you more chances to draw the hazard's remedy while letting you get a bit more distance on the board.
• Gas Can - can go 25 miles before refueling (let's be realistic about gas mileage here, given that gas cans typically only hold one gallon)
• Compact Spare - can go 50 miles before changing tires
• Bribe - can go 50 miles before having to obey the speed limit
• Colorblind - can go 50 miles before having to stop
• Demolition Derby - can go 50 miles before having to repair your car
• Instant Remedies: These can be played as shit happens to you to prevent it (they cannot be pre-played), are discarded after use (unlike safeties), and have downsides.
• Close Call - prevents a car accident, but you become stopped
• Use Caution - prevents a flat tire, but places a speed limit on you
• 5 Bucks' Worth - prevents running out of gas, but you become stopped
• Above The Law - prevents speed limit, but you become stopped
• Illegal Light Control Device - prevents stop, but places a speed limit on you

On second thought it would be really tough to work a usable card-stealing ability in. The combination remedies would put enough extra cards in the deck that it probably wouldn't be needed. The downside to all these new cards: the deck would be even bigger, and the hand size would have to increase (probably by two, to eight cards).

I had an idea for another hazard, but when trying to implement its remedy found that it's not viable.  There was going to be a Bridge Out card that would make the affected player lose their next turn, but the remedy would have to be played on the lost turn (defeating the point) and if immediately followed up with a Go card would have the same effect as just losing the turn.

I briefly considered making it "lose two turns" but it would be even more pointless since you really couldn't play a remedy.  Remedyless hazards don't exist in this game and I think it might be bad to institute one.  Even though there would be a fifth safety card to prevent it from ever happening.

There are other good names for "lose a turn" hazards though, such as Fruit Stand, Rest Stop, Hotel Stay, Restaurant Stop, Amusement Park, Traffic Jam, etc.  Maybe instead of having generic "Stop" cards, these could be substituted and just have that effect instead.

Chrono Trigger Developer's Ending

I don't know what level should be the minimum for attempting this, but anything where you have max HP/MP without the use of items and all required weapons/armor/accessories ought to do it.  You'll only have Crono and Marle for the fastest route to it, so you only have to worry about them.  Also, you need some MP-restoring items (HyperEthers make it easy).

The setup for Crono is as such:

Weapon: Rainbow
Helm: Haste Helm
Armor: Nova Armor
Accessory: PrismSpecs

The setup for Marle is as such:

Weapon: doesn't matter, she never attacks
Helm: Safe Helm
Armor: PrismDress
Accessory: up to you, I used the Speed Belt since I didn't have her speed maxed out

Start up New Game +.  Head to the Millenial Fair, bump into Marle, get pendant, Marle joins party.  Now set up equipment, and set the menu and battle cursor position remembering on.  Talk to the guys at the entrance to where Lucca and Taban are preparing their teleportation machine, then head south one screen and talk to the woman sitting on the fountain.  She'll talk about Lucca and Taban's show and then say they should be ready by now.  Go back up there, wait for Marle to choose what she wants, and then hit the sparkle on the right pod.

Lavos will appear right away, and Crono will be ready.  Cast Luminaire until the first form dies.  If you're lower level (or rather, Crono's magic stat is lower), this may take a while, but at 65 magic (where he was when I did it), two Luminaires will seal the deal.

Run through the passage to the second form of Lavos.  Continue your Luminaire spam.  Keep Marle ready, and have her refill Crono's MP as needed.  Eventually the second form will die, and it's on to the third and final form.  It's important to finish this fight with Crono having more than 12 MP.

Right away in the final form, have Crono use Confuse on the left bit.  If his attack power is high enough it'll die instantly, if not, repeat until it does.  Marle should continue to keep Crono's MP full.  Once the left bit is dead, wait for the Lavos core to shut its defense off and then resume Luminaire spam.  Eventually the left bit will come back, so kill it again.  Shortly after this you should win.

Then it's on to the ending.  You have to talk to everybody.  There's a battle in the prison, have Marle use Ice 2 and if her magic is high enough it'll end the fight immediately.  Once you've talked to everyone, return to Gaspar and he'll open the door to the Dream Team.  Once you've talked to all of them, the credits will roll.

The equipment setup does have one caveat: Marle doesn't have status protection.  At one point during the fight with Lavos' second form I had to have Crono use a Heal on her.  Whether or not status effects get inflicted is purely luck.  If you're having a hard time with it, swap her helm for a Vigil Hat.

Enjoy.

Quitting Caffeine Again

I already quit it once.  From about 8th grade on to my first year of college (and a few years after that, don't remember exactly when I quit the first time) I was pretty much absorbed in the stuff.  Quit by substitution, every time I had the urge for caffeine I'd consume something non-caffeinated instead.

That worked out beautifully.  I still had caffeinated drinks when I went to restaurants with friends/family, but my consumption was drastically lower.

Then I discovered Coke Zero, and back on the caffeine machine I went.

This time, quitting is part of a larger project of drastically cutting back on my soda consumption as a whole.  I've procured some Fanta Zero (which is pretty good) and I'll be gradually substituting it in for the Coke Zero.  Then I just have to reduce the amount I consume and we'll be good.

Lavos Dies!

Finally got off my ass and beat Chrono Trigger.  Farmed power tabs off of the battle with the lone Tubster in Black Omen and uselessly maxed Marle and Lucca's power.  Charmed a ton of speed tabs and got several more people to max speed.  The only stat that's difficult to max is magic since there are comparitively few magic tabs in the game.

The PlayStation version saves an extra save it calls a System File when you beat the game.  This unlocks things in the Extras mode, and getting the other endings will fill in the remaining stuff.

Now, about the battle with Lavos.  It was a pushover basically, given that my characters were all max level.  I used Crono, Ayla, and Frog.  Crono spammed Luminaire with the help of the Gold Stud accessory that cuts MP use by 75%, Ayla used items (and TripleKick on occasion, it pwns the left bit in Lavos' final form) and Frog cast *Heal as needed (mainly on the fights vs. Queen Zeal and the Mammon Machine, I fucking hate Hallation) and restored Ayla's status after Lavos' second form disabled her status protection.  There were no deaths at all, no panic moments, nothing.

Now I get to go through in New Game +, get more magic and speed tabs, and get the other endings.  I'm tempted to go do the developer's ending right now, but I think I'll wait.

Thanks to Square and Enix (they were separate companies back then) for making an awesome game and then porting it to the PlayStation.

Edit: well, I lied.  I went and got the developer's ending.  Which entails beating Lavos with just Crono and Marle.  It was easy.

Hard Mode speedbooking is Really Easy

In Guild Wars, speedbooking is the process of doing three of the Eye of the North missions in Hard Mode in order to get a Hard Mode Hero's Handbook to the minimum number of filled in pages required to turn it in for reputation.  There are four reputation titles and they all have various useful PvE-only skills linked to them, so naturally having a higher rank means these skills will last longer, deal more damage, and in general have greater effects.

Speedbooking is accomplished with a specific build for each mission.  You have three heroes (and for two of the missions, a henchman) that do all the work for you.  You, the runner, actually kill yourself off intentionally so you can switch to their points of view and flag them around the map more easily.

The two missions that use a henchman also use the same build.  I could go to great lengths describing this set of hero builds, but that's already been done on PvXwiki.  So here I'll just summarize, and then if you want the nitty-gritty you can read the build's wiki article.

The three missions you're doing are Against the Charr, Curse of the Nornbear, and A Time For Heroes.  The most difficult part of Against the Charr is actually starting the mission, since you have to run to the Vanguard Helmet in Grothmar Wardowns and confirm that you want to enter the mission.  Oh and it's surrounded by enemies.  Once you're actually in the mission, the only enemies that have to die are the bosses at the very end.  You flag your heroes to the south and run into a nearby group of Charr to get them to kill you at the beginning.  There's a completely enemyless route you can flag the heroes along.  Once there you space your heroes out a bit and use the henchman to lure the bosses, then sit back and watch 'em die.

In Curse of the Nornbear, the only enemy that's required to kill is the Nornbear at the very end.  Sometimes there will be a group of Mandragor in your way at the beginning, so you'll have to kill them off.  Since their spawn isn't guaranteed you have to abuse skill mechanics to kill yourself.  Equip a low health armor set (loaded with superior runes, I use the set I crafted for use with the build for A Time For Heroes which puts my health at 105), change to a Mesmer secondary, and put enough points into Illusion Magic so that Illusion of Weakness will deduct more health than you have available.  Then flag the heroes/henchman out of range and use Illusion of Weakness to kill yourself.

Curse of the Nornbear is what I consider to be the most difficult of the three missions.  The Nornbear is fairly strong and can easily kill your heroes/henchman if they aren't fighting back, and you have to spawn it without fighting it twice before getting to the place where the battle is actually supposed to take place.  Once you get to the end it dies pretty quickly, as when it spawns there it's friendly for a short period of time, during which it gives a short speech.  You can use this short time to place the flags for your heroes/henchman and precast all the things that need precasting.

Then it's on to the easiest of the three, A Time For Heroes.  Here, the only goal is to kill The Great Destroyer.  Normally it's very difficult to kill, but this build turns it into The Great Pushover.  Here you have three monk heroes stand in a fairly specific spot and bond the everlasting fuck out of you.  To assist in this you wear the set of armor I mentioned earlier with five superior runes to lower your health as far as it goes.  The heroes are maintaining Protective Bond and a load of other enchantments (13 in all, though some are duplicates) on you, which results in the damage you take being completely negligible.  Then you run through a ton of lava and spam some Assassin attacks on The Great Destroyer until it dies.  You have to interrupt one specific skill (Lava Wave) an average of two times every time you do the mission, but it's not that hard and it doesn't interrupt your attack skill spam since you use a shout to interrupt it.  The exact build you use can be used by any primary profession (I'm using it on my Ranger), and changes slightly according to each primary.

The thing about A Time For Heroes you might not understand is a very strange quirk with the way Protective Bond works.  When multiple people maintain it on the same target, the energy penalty for reducing damage is split between them.  Having three heroes maintain it on you means that each of them only loses one energy per instance of damage reduction instead of two.  Since they're all maintaining Essence Bond on you, they get one energy when you're hit.  Therefore...

Another quirk for A Time For Heroes is the maintained enchantments themselves.  To have your heroes actually maintain them, you have to shift-click each to disable it first, then tell the heroes to cast them.  Then the damage you take will be negligible (in fact, I'm usually paying so much attention to The Great Destroyer's skill usage and my own skill bar that I don't look at the damage I'm taking).

Speedbooking essentially entails doing those three missions over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.  Or if you can't set up the build yourself, paying someone else who has it set up to do it for you while you just stand there.

Normally I have screenshots but I turned in all five Hero's Handbooks I did this with already.  I almost feel like making a video of this build, since at the time of this writing the PvXwiki article links to a video of a different build doing this same thing.  I'll see if I can't get some screenshots up within the next couple of days or so.

caine stuff

No, you're not getting your hidden board just for oldfags so you can be xenophobic and exclude all the newer members.  Stop asking me.  The more you ask the less I feel like doing it and the more I want to ask in return "What's wrong with posting on the regular boards?"

You forget that if it weren't for these newer members, CAINE would still be ten people meeting in front of Newcomb (or in the lobby, weather-dependent) for ten minutes, going to dinner, and then going back home.  That's not my idea of a fun night with an anime club.  There is no clear oldfag/newfag divide in CAINE.  No matter how you try to draw the line someone gets left out and it's extremely hypocritical to make an exception for just that one person.  That and "oldfag" and "newfag" are relative terms.  Each year's worth of members are oldfags in comparison to the next year's worth of members.

You also forget that I am one of the people you are mis-using the term "oldfag" to describe.  You have no unanimous consensus among your group because I disagree.  Also, I'm in control of what happens to the forums and it's a really horrible idea that would get shot down if you had the balls to bring it up publically.  Also, while I personally am against having an entire "introduce yourself" board, if the general club consensus is that one should be made, it shall be done.  Personally I think a stickied thread is enough, but I'm a rare responsible person in a position of power and thus I won't devalue the opinions of my constituents in favor of my own.  General club consensus is more than just Dave saying "make us an introduction board".

While I agree on some counts that this year's Jeopardy sucked, I don't agree on all of them.  There was way too much extremely niche stuff like seiyuu in there (that one seiyuu oricon chart bullshit clue comes to mind where L cheated and still got it wrong), and I half-agree about the CAINE History category not actually containing any CAINE History.  Your view of CAINE History is "before and including the time during which we had no meeting room".  This is completely inaccessible to most of our current members.  At the same time, it would have been nice to see some stuff in there that had happened previous to this year in CAINE, but wanting the info that current CAINE only knows as anecdotes from the club's darker days is extremely exclusionary.  Maybe one thing as the highest-point-reward double jeopardy clue, but nowhere else.

Also, it was my personal feeling that the western categories were way too difficult given that we only started re-integrating the western side of comics and animation this semester, and they will continue to be a minority demographic in the club for a while.  I'm not saying there can't be western stuff in there, but make the easy ones stuff that people with a base understanding can get and don't have a steep difficulty curve until the western demographic in the club is substantially larger.  There are those of us who really don't care, but as we step up our efforts to re-integrate that material into the club, the percentage of people who will actually know the extreme trivia questions will rise on its own and with the team format we use the problem is solved.

Re-integrating the western side back into the club will be really difficult.  It's not just as simple as telling people about it at the activities fair, having meetings discussing it, and showing a western series in showings.  There is a very large barrier to western stuff in CAINE currently that will never go away, even with our efforts to bring it back in.  I mentioned this previously, but CAINE still has a vast majority of anime/manga fans, most of which aren't terribly interested in western stuff.  Re-integration will have to go as slowly as we pick up new members who are primarily fans of the western stuff.  It will take a while.  It's not an instant thing, and it really can't go any faster than the increase in member interest.

Also, I hope to push into policy after the forum migration a rule that disallows scheduling non-club-sponsored events (such as parties at Tom's house, trips to King's Dominion, etc.) that conflict with meetings, showings, and official club events.  Forcing people to choose between going to a meeting/showing or some completely unrelated event isn't fair at all to the club.  When showings, which I will remind you are an official club event, get cancelled because Tom's having a party, something's wrong.  Not saying that Tom shouldn't have parties or that we shouldn't go to them, but they should be scheduled properly so that members will have a fair choice of what they want to do.  News flash: people who regularly attend showings will be unlikely to want to miss a single showing due to an unofficial event in another city taking precendence.  Especially when that showing happens to contain the final episodes of everything we're watching.

I know that this has been disastrous in the past, but I do think non-officers should have more of a say in what we watch in showings.  It's not much of an issue in practice since we're always open to suggestions (most of which happen informally), but having it codified into policy and made common knowledge would help tremendously.

Also regarding the forums, since they're largely my responsibility, it would be nice if the forums could have a dedicated section when we have policy meetings/votes.  The forums are basically integral to the club now, so my position as their most active administrator is similar to that of a club officer, and my area affects all club members (that use the forums) and thus deserves as much attention as showings, events, the collection, and the treasury.  Plus, if there's considerable desire within the club for a change or addition to the forums, I'd like to know about it so I can get it done, and having those desires presented formally while I take notes is the best way to do this.  I have a bad short term memory, so informal suggestions made at or after meetings/showings may not be remembered.

Once the migration is complete, deciding forum issues could in theory be done through polls on the forums, but not enough of the club uses the forums to generate relevant results.  While they're technically relevant to the subsection of the club that uses the forums, I'd prefer that all members know about potential changes to forum issues and know that as with everything else it's open to suggestion.  We should be pushing the forums upon everyone anyway since they're every member's way of staying in touch with every other member (and thus the club as a whole).  Perhaps remind people that if they don't have an internet name or one they want to associate with us, they can use their UVa email IDs as usernames and then just change their display name when they come up with something better.  Display names will still be supported after the migration, so it Just Works™.