The Michael Swayne Story V: King of his Castle

I woke up at 9:20am this morning. It's a good thing too, because I went to check on any updates for the Osu! Challengers Tournament and found out that I read the time wrong for my match. I thought it said 3pm my time, especially since the tournament organizer is in the same timezone as I am. But it was 3pm UTC, which is 10am Eastern Standard Time. So I didn't get to practice at all for the tournament, because I had to report in the tournament room. It was then that I was told that my training partner had pulled out of the competition, thus giving me a 25% chance of winning. As the time kept ticking, only one other player in my level arrived. The two Argentinian players that had also signed up never showed up. So, now I had a 50% chance to win.

But I lost. I only scored 42 of the 49 points maximum for the maps. The other player was just better than I was. I didn't practice nearly enough. My problem was that I had trouble transition from the spins to the lines. I couldn't find where the cursor was located after the spin, and then I would miss a note and thus break the combo. I came close to winning a couple of the maps, but I couldn't pull through.

Oh well. I am not an osu!standard player anyway. I entered just to see how well I could do. I came in second place in an originally 6-player tournament. One player switched to a different level, and three didn't show up. So, though I don't have any tangible proof of my 2nd place finish, I know that I was able to come in 2nd Place in a tournament.

With the free time from 10:45am to 4:00pm that I had because of the tournament time mix-up, I worked on an article I'm posting on Monday. I really like writing for a gaming site. It's way more fun than writing for the newspaper (which I stopped doing because of how I didn't get paid for my work until I reminded them about it). Another thing different writing for EnixOrigin and the newspaper is that whatever I write gets published as I want it. The paper totally screwed up the layout of my articles. It's like they didn't even read them, and instead just copied and pasted it into the layout, then as the weeks went by they deleted the first part to make room for the other bits. The only downside to writing for the site is that I am not getting paid for it. But still, it's stuff I want to write about and find fun and interesting.

Allow me to give you a few examples of the articles I have done. I wrote about a song from Lightning Returns that had been released to the public as a sort of teaser for the western audiences, one on Square Enix's online shop having that giant Thanksgiving sale (where I bought four games for $40). Then there was one announcing the iOS game Bloodmasque was being given out for free because Square Enix had reached its five hundred thousandth download of the game, and one on the details of the Lightning Returns Collector's Edition (which I also ended up buying- because of the neat watch). Along with news items, I have done pieces to help encourage people to join EO, as well as participated in the article series on the site staff's favorite Square character. So far, I have been the only staff member to choose someone that wasn't first from a Kingdom Hearts game. Mine was on Vivi, who only had an appearance in Kingdom Hearts II.

I hope to start publishing game reviews after New Year's. It may become the new focus of my gaming writing, rather than another gaming blog. The only thing is we already have someone whose focus is on game reviews. I feel it would be like stepping on his territory. I have only been on the staff a few weeks, I wouldn't want to cause a rift this early.

Anyway...

My knees and lower legs have not been faring well with all these changes in weather recently. They are dry and hurt, and the lotion I have doesn't work long. At peak times, I reapply every ten minutes or so. Sitting on the floor a lot and moving across the floor on my knees doesn't help the situation much either, but my desk chair is so uncomfortable. I need a new one. And I keep forgetting to ask the office for one of their extras they have on the back porch.

Well, that's all for now. I hope to see you around the forums, and until then...

Later! And keep sending in those Awards ballots!

Michael