Goals 4 and 15: Traveling After Grad School and before Apple

This post is going up many hours after the previous post. Some might call that a gap in time. Well, I have some more goals completed. Yes it's true that some of these were completed past the deadline, but I'm going to be embarking on a whole new list of goals, and I can't just put these on since they're already done.

Goal 4: Go to Hawaii

Right after I graduated from Stanford I went to Maui, Hawaii for a week. Oddly enough there is no "welcome to Hawaii" sign, so you'll just have to believe me. We went for a sail.

Blue ocean and mountain islands.

We went for a snorkel and walked around the island towns. Chilled on beaches, some nude.

We went for a climb and a drive.

Climbing the middle mountains.

 And ended up doing a full island-round. Seeing the whole island included dessert, forest, mountains, islands, neighborhoods, small cities, sugar cane, and lots of ocean. It was a great trip.

Pools of Hana were probably my favorite with waterfall jumping and a beautiful drive.

Goal 15: Go to Alaska

It was getting to be my final weeks before starting my job at Apple. I had lots of different plans after graduating (such as the above trip to Hawaii), and I wanted to do a road trip up north to see my family in Oregon and see the places I hadn't been to in a while.

I started by hauling it through Oregon all the way to Seattle, where I would meet up with my old best friend Eric. We went crabbing, collected hay, and rented a boat to see seals and cause trouble with.

Eric under the Tacoma Narrows Bridge

Gathering hay for the farm.

After deciding I wasn't going to be able to drive all the way to Alaska, I decided to purchase a plane ticket to Alaska for 2 days at the airport. And so I went. To Alaska

Make that 49 states checked off my list.

I rented a car (Subaru), which was basically the only decision, and commenced driving across the state starting in Anchorage. I headed towards Denali.

I came across a birch tree syrup farm. Bought some syrup. Who knew?

I found some canoes that weren't locked up, so I took a lovely little boat ride around a lake. 

I drove out west through mountains to a more isolated town that had a cruise I could take to go see some glaciers.

Because the cruise was more out of the way, we got to see some remote glaciers, and even found ourselves in a sperm whale feeding frenzy.

I continued to drive around and see endless beauty. 

Skybridge Anchorage

Status: Wishing I had more energy to write this entry about a very awesome few weeks.

Goal 61: Vegging Out for Winter Break

To begin, I'll explain that DayZero.com is experiencing technical difficulties due to traffic overloads. Luckily for them, I don't have a copy of my list, so I will have to check back over and over again until it's back up. This also means that I don't know what numbers are associated with the goals I have memorized. So anyway...

Goal 61: Open and Play Final Fantasy XII

This semester involved a few classes that required an average of about 4 hours almost every night for homework, a 40-hour workweek consisting of three different jobs, grad school applications, and plenty of projects. After four months of ease, I thought I should challenge myself with the twelfth challenge that does not involve reality, for the last time.

At a PreX-Mas party, a long-time gaming associate and soon to be world famous chef, David Stockavas, suggested that we get together over a weekend and game until it was time to go back to work. We decided we should kick it old school: 2 TVs, 2 PlayStations, 2 single player games, no distractions.

Final Fantasy XII was actually a gift from David many years back. I decided that I wasn't going to open it until I could commit to it.


...but we don't have two TVs or 2 PlayStations...

...well, I guess we should go get em then.



After refreshing myself on the rules and restrictions on Wal*Mart return policies, we headed on over there to pick up a nice TV and PlayStation to play my fresh videogame on. It was about 10:30 PM, but what's the difference at a 24-hour market? There were some guys waiting behind us who apparently recently bought the exact same TV. Giving it positive reviews, they were just waiting to get a game for a little while.

The staff probably got a bit suspicious when my card was denied twice. Good thing I had two cards!

We hadn't thought of it not fitting in my car, and it took a few tries.

Electronics set up, the game that would consume my life for weeks to come began playing on the screen.


Unfortunately, David was moving out of his apartment days later, so I had to move the TV into my room. I don't have the capabilities to handle such an expansive viewing device, so I had to just set it up in the middle of the floor while I played from my LuvSac during every waking moment.


TWO WEEKS, CHRISTMAS, and MANY HOURS OF BEING AWAKE LATER.......

...the final boss explodes into painful flames.


If I could tag this photo, or if I wanted to put 5 minutes more effort into this post, I would point out the screaming head two thirds to the right.

Taken at 6 AM in the morning with flash, I beat Final Fantasy XII (adding it to my repertoire of beating FF4,7,8,9, and 10).

As you can see, I beat the game in a very cooooool 85 hours.

I had to return the merch before I beat the game unfortunately. I packed it up and sent it back. Since Christmas had passed, it was easy to say that I didn't want it.

Goodbye sweet babies, you treated me so well. Here they are safely pushed up against the wall at Wal*Mart after I got my money back.

It had been a long time since I was able to dedicate so much time to a video game...years. It felt really good to veg out a bit before getting back to work and school.

Now, although I did get plenty of enjoyment out of the game, I must say that it had a very poor story for a Final Fantasy.

Here is my review of Final Fantasy XII, spoiler free.

The story begins at the finale of a conflict between the "Empire" and the country of Dalmasca. You play through a small sequence, and quickly find yourself as an orphan, Vaan, the brother of the soldier you play as in the conflict, years later. You meet key players involved with the international politics between Dalmasca and the Empire, and they join your party.

This is where the story goes wrong.

The rest of the game follows the story of the Princess of Dalmasca, rather than Vaan, the character that is supposedly the main character. In fact, Vaan plays almost no role in the events of the game, and is basically just along for the ride. In addition to this, the characters are developed, but are static. They don't seem to grow, or learn, or overcome challenges during the game. They simply have their objective and their personalities, and they set out to complete them. The game ensues, and eventually ends.

That's right. No huge twists. No blitzball or a cards to add interesting side games, there is little escape from the gameplay of battles. Just standard gameplay.

While I am in full support of the new battle system, the lack of interesting character development, story twists, or side-games detracted much more than the new system adds. While I found it interested and fun to play, I have much higher expectations out of the story for Final Fantasy games, and I hope they don't ever make something this poor again.

Oh yeah, and I totally spaced that I was doing this.

Status: Moved.