Random Musings

Snowflakes fall
Each one unique
Each one with its own story
Snowflakes drift
Drift off into eternity beyond time
Drifting off to no one knows where
Snowflakes melt.
Melting down to nothing.
Melting through an act of nature; no fault of their own.
People are born
Each unique
Each with their own story.
People drift.
The people we see on the street; we never see again.
Old friends drop out of touch.
And we seldom question why.
People die.
They go into the void.
Through no fault of their own.
Our lives are but snowflakes, falling, drifting, melting.

A white bird
In the blackberry bush.
A sign of hope?

Birds flying home from the south
Singing their songs of homecoming
A solitary bird flies separately from them.
Are the songs of the birds also songs of victory for me?
Or does the solitary bird tell me I will always be alone?

Snow falling
Like crystals
Onto the ground

The full moon
Shines in the sky
Illuminating the night
It illuminates McShea
It illuminates Dooling
It illuminates the DUC
The whole campus is illuminated.
By nature’s own lantern.
My soul is illuminated, too.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I had a lot of trouble figuring out how to play Ritapon. I finally beat it. I was doing things like putting tiles I needed to complete a combination into the discard pile, because I thought that was me keep pile. The in game explanation is not, in my opinion, that good. Here, I have listed the instructions as well as I could work them out. This is only what you need to understand the basics of the game; it is not a strategy to win.

1. You and Rita have a pile of tiles. Some of the tiles have colors and dots, others have runes on them.
2. You want to get your pile to have either three sets of three tiles that have the same color and either sequential or the same number of dots, alternatively, one of those sets can be any three rune tiles.
3. A “Pon” is when you take one of Rita’s discarded tiles and use it in one of your sets, or vice versa.
4. When you complete your second set of tiles, you will be given the option to "reach". If you do this, you will have to discard any tile that would not complete your third combination.
5. You win if you get the three combinations before Rita does.
6. Manuel Garcia C says Ritapon is like an Argentine card game called Chinchon. I’ve never heard of it, but if you have, the game might be easier.

That’s it. If you want more details on strategy, how scoring works, etc, see Shirofan’s guide to Ritapon at Suikosource at http://www.suikosource.com/games/gs4/guides/ritapon.php.

Thanks to Konami for making Suikoden IV, flawed as it may be, TheEndOfItAll for explaining what Pon is, and Suikosource for writing a *much* more detailed guide.
NO thanks to whoever wrote the in game instructions.

Good luck!

Valentine’s Day
People walk campus with carnations
Valentines on their doors.
I have no carnation.
I have no valentine on my door
Will I ever find someone
To give these things to me?

The half moon is bright and white
The stars shine brightly in the night sky
Bright, also, is my ambition.
The moon and stars are eternal, unblemished
May my ambitions be this way, too.

Grey sky
Rain melting the snow
No leaves on trees
Everything looks dead

So North Korea has nukes. Iran probably has them, or at least can make them quick. And we got involved in...Iraq, a country with no WMDs. I mean, it's great they had elections and all, but Iraqi freedom was not the USA's problem. Our first priority should be to safeguard the rights of the American people, not the the Iraqi people or anyone else.

OK, the maintnence department at my school is only on call MF 9-4:30. It's Saturday, and my toilet is colgged. That's a maintnence emergency. Nobody student on this campus seems to have a plunger. So, the recording on the maintinence line says to call to police! Sounded like overkill for a clogged toilet, but what choice did I have? They said they'd "find" the maintnence people and send them over. That was about an hour ago. No one's come. Now what did I do.
You know, I'd really like to have a talk with the genius who dedided not to have somebody always on call for these things. Isn't that supposed to be one of the advantages of livng in a college dorm as opposed to on campus?