I was playing InFamous this morning and had an odd moment. I had taken a side mission involving a poison vat atop a water tower, defended by bad guys. I defeated the mooks, then approached the tower, which was on top of an apartment building. As per the game's morality system, I was given a choice: use lightning to overload the tower from a distance, thus sparing myself from the poison, and causing the poison to flood the water tower (that's bad); or using a shockwave to explode the tank close-up, which aerates the poison, saves the water, but doses me fairly severely (that's good, I guess).

So I chose the second option. I got close, let off a shockwave & destroyed the tank. I was dosed with the poison, but in an unforseen consequence, the canister exploded, knocking me off the tower and the building. Mid-plummet-to-my-death, a legend appeared on the screen: 

"Congratulations! Your actions have made you slightly more Good."

Legend disappears. I continue falling. 

Splat.

I feel gooder already.

I seem to have shifted in my medical habits. Well, less of a shift, more of a move in a straight line: from doctors to physiotherapists.

Now, I hadn't been to a physio before I got whiplash and needed a few visits. Since then I've been back 8 or so times for things such as headaches, back spasms, sore heel/achilles tendon, and more headaches. I usually go to the University Sports clinic, but I've been to one in Newtown as well.

Recently, I've been getting soreness in both my elbows after doing things like playing drums, shaking martinis, and when I curl my arm under my pillow. It happened off and on for about for months until last Wednesday, when I woke up in the middle of the night and had had enough.

I went to the doctor at Broadway Clinic. Called ahead. Booked an appointment for 9:45 (I started work at 10:30). Sat in the waiting room until 10:55. I get into the room and the doc (who is not one of the usual people I see) immediately (and I mean before I even say what's wrong) starts lecturing me that I need immunization for Whooping Cough (after a serious of relationship questions that I answered with no idea as to what they were for). He then moves on to what I was prescribed last time I was there 9-10 months ago: Cafergot, which is a migraine medication. This was prescribed after 39-straight-day headache (the doctor then had said it probably wouldn't work, or stop the pain in any way, but I should take two, and then two more each half hour it didn't work). I told him I took one dose, and the 60 Mg of caffeine (that's a 6-pack of coca-cola) in each pill had me bouncing off the walls, so I stopped. He then typed "Allergic to cafergot" into my file *facepalm*. He then prints out 3 pages of migraine advice sheets and a migraine diary for me. He then turns to me and asks why I'm there.

"It's my arms, actually." I almost felt bad to see his face drop. Oh, and the migraine? Cured by one physio appointment.

Anyway, I explained I first started noticing after mixing drinks on Fridays (which got a glary look) and after playing drums (which got a confused look). He feels my arms, notes a "tightness" in my biceps, then asks if I "lift weights". I explain that yes, I go to the gym, but it doesn't bother me at or after the gym. He then says "Well, it's probably a contrasting muscle cramp. Your triceps are too weak compared to your bicep." I look at my two-pipe-cleaner arms. "Really? I do roughly the same amount of weight with biceps and triceps."

"Oh yes, you should be doing two to three times the weight with your triceps than with your biceps."

Ummm, okay. Never heard THAT before.

He also cheerfully informs me that it's not arthritis, so he won't send me for bloodwork. He also says a bunch of others things it's not, confusing the issue. He writes a recommendation for a physio (which is A) sealed in an envelop, so I can't see who or where the physio is located and B) the outside of the envelope is a RANDWICK address. No thank you) but then adds that I shouldn't get a physio unless I get an x-ray.

Anywho, he sends me out to pay with an armload of paper and no real explanation for the arm-thing. Bothered, I then go right across the street to the University Sports Physio clinic.

I book in for 12:30, show up at 12:30 on the dot, and am not sitting for more than 30 seconds before they're ready. Meet Chris, the physio, and describe what happened. He starts check out my arms while I'm talking, getting his own idea of how far I can turn, where it hurts, etc. I explain the doc's idea, which he describes as "Fair enough, I mean, you shouldn't be doing too much more with your bicep, but yeah. Clearly it's your nerves."He explains that it's the nerves in my shoulder- and elbow-sides of my tricep that are being stretched in a wrong way and are causing me pain in complaint. He gives me a list of gliding stretches to do (and demonstrates them) and suggests I improve my posture at work to relieve some of the pressure. Then comes the shoulder and tricep massage that was agony, and left me bruised but pain-free afterward.

And here's my point (he said, two pages in): I prefer physios to doctors because they actually DO something. They'll hear you out, have a look, give their opinion, then in a hands-on-way, sort you out. It'll hurt, sure, but you'll be better for it. That's more than I can say for just about any doctor I've been to with the exception of one, who was an acupressurist/acupuncturist, who was a great doctor because he ALSO actually did actual things.

This is being exacerbated by Tanja and my watching the first 8 episodes of the first season of House. I like it, but it points out how doctors (even highly trained good-looking specialist doctors) are just best-guessing. House is constantly kvetching about how an ER Doctor or a GP would prescribe or diagnose the wrong (and usually the worst thing) they could. I believe it. I actually had a normally good doctor attempt to diagnose me with asthma because my breathing was raspy while I had a cold. Admittedly, I had taken a Codril earlier and was feeling better, so made my breathing sound worse than it was, but still. The guy spent 10 minutes trying to convince me to get checked for asthma.

Example:

Zoidberg: “What is it this time?”
Fry: “Well, my pipe hurts a little.”
Zoidberg: “That’s normal. NEXT!”

So yeah. It’s physio for me. Unless I have a cold/asthma.

So I got the Guitar Hero World Tour bundle with guitar, drums, and microphone yesterday (which is a major feat: ordered Thursday morning, shipping Thursday evening, arrived Friday morning). The idea, as I originally planned it, was to use it as a surrogate drum kit for when I can’t get to Ted’s. I also wanted to us the GHTunes recording suite to lay down some tracks, and learn new songs. Once I got it set up and gave it a shot on Drums on Easy mode, I fell into what I’m told is a common musician’s trap: I tried to play what I was hearing, instead of the extremely limited notes they were giving me. I also lost points for hitting the bass drum for each cymbal hit. Once I upped the difficulty, it got better. What I didn’t expect was how much I enjoy the guitar part of the game. Especially with songs you know, you feel like a freakin’ rock god when you finish one. It’s a lot of fun, and I finally figured out why. The Guitar Hero version of playing guitar is essentially a non-musical kid’s view of playing guitar: one button per chord, then move to the left or right. Making that motion taps into something childlike and imaginative (if you’ll forgive me for a moment) that allows you to create music by pushing buttons.

Well, it makes more sense in my head.

So I left training today with a splitting headache (my third in three days), and stopped at Broadway for lunch before going home. Ate my food, then wandered into Kmart, thinking I'd see if they had any Nerf guns. They did not, and I walked past the DVD cabinet on the way out. I noticed thaey had the new-packaged Star Trek Voyager complete box set (I missed out on the limited-edition EzyDVD Borg Cube box). I couldn't see a price tag, so I went over to the counter. The girl there was busy attempting to sell a mobile phone package to someone, so I waited a bit, then decided, with head still ringing, to go home and check into it later.

So, later. I'm home, and I give Kmart a call. Here is that conversation:

"Hello, Kmart Broadway."
"Hi, could you put me through to DVDs, please?"
*hold music*
"Hello, Audio-Visual."
"Yes, hi. I was wondering the price on your Star Trek Voyager Complete Box se-"
"We don't have that."
"....yes, I think you do. I was in there earlier and saw it. It's in the cabinet."
"Oh, you mean the white one?" (note: the DVD box is greyish. Even if she meant the cabinet, the cabinet is black.)
"Ummm, what?"
"I'll just go see, please hold."
*hold music. Ohhhhh, hold me now... hold my heart.... stay with meeeee*
*phone starts ringing. Ringing. Ringing.*
"Just a minute, we're trying to force the cabinet open, won't be a sec."
*hold music. Ohhhhh, hold me now... hold my heart.... stay with meeeee*
"Okay. Got it. It's $250."
"Thank you."
*I hang up.*

If I'm making it sound quick or easy, I'm telling it wrong.

Geez, and people bite on Telstra for bad service.

Downloaded Space Invaders: Infinity Gene for my iPod after a glowing review from Co-op. Really really addictive. It starts in the basic format and then evolves from there new weapons are gained (including lock-on missiles, a homing laser, and a wave-motion gun that fires horizontal lines in a spread), you're rewarded for chaining enemies or destroying while invading, you gain the ability to move all over the screen, not just left-to-right, and as a result, the enemies get different, tougher, & quicker. This alone woulod be worth the $5.99 pricetag. But then, of course, it gets better with the "Music"mode.

Music mode lets you choose one song from your library, then designs a stage around it. BPM, melody, the spikes in the soundwave, all these effect terrain, background, enemy frequecy, level speed, rate of enemy fire, the works. I gave it an experiment with the following songs:

- Acetone by The Crystal Method: fast, zig-zagging terrain with enemies that dodged in and out of the screen, firing occasionally.

- Winnepeg is a Boiling Pot Of Cranberries by Venetian Snares: Fairly wide-spaced terrain features, but with enemies that can appear randomly throughout the stage, all set over a running laser background.

- Adelaide by Ben Folds: No terrain, enemies coming in waves during the piano crescendos. (the only one of these levels I finished)

- Ace Of Spades by Motorhead: surprisingly slow level, wide-spaced terrain, slow enemies that suddenly spew clouds of bullets at you.

-Air Near My Fingers by The White Stripes: Slowish level, moderately fast enemies that just keep coming, firing in evenly-spaced geometrical patterns.

-Radio Song by the Cat Empire: Pretty red-to-blue gradient background, no terrain, but once the bassline kicks in, it's a solid wall of enemies you need to shoot your way through.

But the killer, the one that I tried twice, the one that absolutely destroyed me was Take On Me. I last 30 seconds. Extremely fast level & enemies, narrow tunnels of zigzagging terrain, enemies sweeping in in wings, spraying shots in a spiral. See? No good comes of A-Ha.

Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

So I get another call today, from the shirt people (you know, the ones I feel like I do nothing but complain about lately?) this morning, confirming that yes, I will be making the shirts for them by Saturday, and that I can bring in the shirts on Friday and Tim will give me the money. So later on, I'm at home, with chilli con carne simmering, and I'm looking up the design (as yes, I had deleted MY designs in a fit of pique) that they want when I discover something. My google-search leads me to the musician's MySpace page, which leads me to two realisations:

1) MySpace is awful Even loading up someone's page makes my Firefox crash and makes me want to run back to my Facebook.

B) When these people were originally calling me 5 or 6 times a day to quibble over what I was going to theoretically do, one of them mentioned casually that Tim had said I was good with Photoshop, and could I put the logo onto one of the promo pics and that they'd give me credit for the design, as well as for the t-shirts. I said okay, and sent them a basic logo spot, then 3 or 4 half-assed attempts of mine to make the photo cooler, saying that they weren't finals, but just me messing around with ideas, and to tell me what they thought. This email was responded to with the 7 weeks of silence, so I figured they didn't think much. Well, what I found on the MySpace page was one of my designs which they'd clearly liked, as it's the Australian street poster for the tour. It's on the MySpace as such, with no credit to me listed.

Now, I get not giving me the shirt credit, because I didn't do them (except the two prototypes), but that? Come on! It's my work! Tanja pointed out that she didn't see much of a change, so I'll let you judge:
Here's the original picture.
Then the logo they sent me.
And this is what I made in 10 minutes.

So the question is: Did I change it enough to make the new work my intellectual property? Not that I want to kick up a big stink, but it just mad me angry(er).

To top it all off, I got ANOTHER call this evening from them, wanting to meet me tomorrow, even saying they'd drag Tim along. They then asked about the shirts again, and I confirmed they'd be ready tomorrow. They sounded presently surprised. So why did they want to meet with me if not to pick up the shirts?

So I probably won't give them a serve when I see them tomorrow, as I'm nonconfrontational and polite (read: gutless) so I'll probably express my concerns as a "goshdarnit, haven't I been worried" joke and I won't be heard.

But hey. For all I know they want to apologise. And if you belive that, I have a use Death Star to sell you.

(ironic, because I'm writing this before I write the actual script.)

I always feel wierd seeing people I like hanging out with people I violently dislike. I know, I know, people have the right to be with who they want to, but it always bugs me. If it were a court case, I would say it speaks to their credibility and judgement. That sounds a bit harsh, but, in an admittedly childish and immature way, I think "Hmm, is that the kind of person they actually like? Does that mean a) that they don't like me or b) that my judgement of the person I dislike is not correct ie that everyone likes them but me?" I don't know, I guess my insecurities are showing, but anyway.