Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon: Spoilers ahoy ☀

Nah, I've just been busy with grad school. So, how about that Bank update?

Ah frick did bank update already happen

I don't see myself doing any sort of video game for a while, since classes have started and I'm limping my way through a parallel systems class and I am immensely confused by all the acronyms.

(I don't wanna pay for a wall)

Yep, it just happened Wednesday. Although that reminds me, there's some funkiness with transferring from the Gen I Virtual Console releases. Natures are determined from the Pokémon's current experience, while gender is completely random, and shininess uses the Gen II formula with the roles of Attack and Defense switched. All Pokémon transfer up with their Hidden Abilities. Trying to transfer up Pokémon with moves they could only learn in a different version (e.g. Charizard and Fly in Red or Blue) doesn't work. If you try transferring a box of Pokémon that contains a Missingno, the Missingno won't transfer, but the other Pokémon will get their nicknames shuffled around. And last but definitely not least, don't evolve transferred Pokémon into Gen II+ forms; S&M mistake them for hacked, and you won't be able to trade them or battle with them online.

Interestingly enough, Bank now tracks certain statistics for your actual games as well, such as eggs hatched. It also copies over all of your Pokédex data; sadly, it's a one-way transfer, so you'll have to send over the relevant Pokémon if you want the data in your actual game. Unfortunately, this ended up revealing that S&M don't have Pokédex entries for anything outside the Alola Dex, which strikes me as infuriatingly lazy on GameFreak's part. And in the vein of "why the hell did GameFreak leave this out", there's still no way to get over half of the Mega Stones.

i got into an art school! c:

@iT: hey, nice! Congrats

Regarding bank: I didn't actually play any of the virtual console releases, but jeez does that sound broken. Also, what the heck about the Pokedex?! Why would they just leave more than half of it blank??

Yeah, congrats iT! You'll be sending us all original prints once you're famous, right?

But yeah, GameFreak's made some very strange decisions with Gen VII. The thing about Natures is actually a pretty neat workaround, since Gen II already tied enough into IVs. There's a theory that the reason for the change to shininess is because the person in charge of writing that part of the code forgot about the changes to IVs between Gen II and Gen III. I can even see why they chose to randomize the IVs and discard stat experience, since the systems were so different from modern IVs and EVs; the IVs aren't even that big a deal, since you're guaranteed to get three perfect ones, and Hyper Training can fix the rest. The gender, on the other hand, is just bizarre, since GSC already came up with a way to derive it. And there's really no excuse for those errors in determining legitimacy.

Congrats iT! Yes please do send us prints if you become famous! And maybe how-tos, I like tutorials. But only if they're tasteful, please, I don't think I'm mature enough to want to hang paintings of dancing naked Roman women or satirical Donald trump pinups in my future house.

Which reminds me. The house fell through - the sellers lost the rights to it and had to withdraw from the market. They could very well regain it in a couple of months, but property prices here are soaring far faster than I can save, so I reckon I'm out of luck for at least another two years. Now I have a sad.

Edit: I also spent 85 euros on two pieces of shiny cardboard (Shaymin EX, and I'm not even on the competitive scene) today. I wouldn't have considered it before, but fuck it, it's not like I'm saving for anything anymore... And without ethanol, burning money was the best (read: laziest) method of drowning my sorrows.

Oh no D: I thought your offer had been accepted? Or did the government/bank/thing decide that they didn't have the right to sell the house?

Also holy wow house prices are going up that quickly?! That the span of a few months just makes buying a house infeasible? The real world seems scary...

The offer was accepted, but they hadn't sent out the legal docs yet, so nothing was signed and either party could still pull out. The property was in receivership so normal rules didn't apply, it's part of why it was so cheap. I reckon they were stalling because they knew this was gonna happen. At least it had nothing to do with me!


For background, there's been a MASSIVE property bubble building up over the last >3 years, initially in Dublin then in the rest of the country. During the bust/recession, Ireland's problems were mostly caused by people taking loans for building houses they couldn't actually afford and the banks being okay with that because they were corrupt as fuck. So when the bust happened, the construction industry got burned and crashed HARD, meaning no houses were built in the interim. (And that was 8 years ago.) The recession has ended, people are now clamouring for property, (that in many cases they still can't afford because they're paying absurdly high rent for the same reason, keeping in mind Dublin is like the 7th or 8th most expensive place to live in the world and it's not because we're naturally fancy like London or Dubai, but that doesn't affect me so much) and next to nobody is building. Demand grows higher and higher with every passing month, for YEARS, and nothing the government can do or does causes an increase in supply.


So this time a year ago, a 3 bedroom terraced house in the area I'm looking in (residential) was going for ~100, 110k. (But I had no savings them and wasn't at the job for even a year.) I started looking 6 months ago, the last property had sold for 140 and I ended up "buying" at 155, which by that point was severely undervalued at market prices. A neighbouring house, otherwise identical, sold for 175k two months ago. There are now no houses in that estate for sale anymore, and the next estate starts at 200k as of this month. That's about 100k in a little over a year. Now, assume I move jobs or get a sweet raise: am I really liable to be able to keep up with the speed it's going up at? Answer: fuck no. And it's STILL NOT STOPPING.

Plus it costs 220k on average for a developer to build a new house, so even if they were at my price range I'd only be affected by the small drop in demand, and not the availability of new property. I'm sorely fucked, unless I job hop repeatedly over the next 3 years before settling down in one non-Dublin area again, which I definitely don't want to do because I love where I am, AND get married to someone in the meantime so we can get a joint mortgage. And I'm not looking for that, either. I'm rather sorely fucked, short of a market miracle.

Man, that sucks. I'm sorry the deal fell through.

And in the vein of "why the hell did GameFreak leave this out", there's still no way to get over half of the Mega Stones.

There is! ...kinda.


They'll be apparently distributed with participation in online competitions, meaning you have to sign up and battle three times to get them. Sounds fine and dandy since those battles can even be forfeits... but not so much when, apparently, there's a sign-up limit. Not everyone can get into the competition, which means not everyone can get the mega stones!


...so, yeah. That's dumb.


In other news - I am now living in my new apartment! First REAL college class is starting in a few hours, so... that'll be a Fun Time.

How was College, Spark? Have you graduated yet? Sheesh what's keeping you?

I kid, I kid. Wow. It seems so *weird* that yourself and iT are in college now. Seems like only yesterday we were all like "wth how are you guys 14 and also able to hold up the other end of an adult conversation" (well, not really, but there are a LOT of dumb 14 year olds.) But it DOES seem like only yesterday that we started the forum. Crazy!

I kinda want to do a full-on Weaverdice session over IRC but I can't worldbuild to any decent standard and all the dice rolls confuse me :< Also because nobody really shares a timezone. But between other idle thoughts and our (still existing) beta spreadsheet, (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1C5eHioVFmRzXIqucyAd6i-j-kuG0T0APIU19781c79U/edit?usp=sharing) I've got access to 26 unique powersets that are just begging to get into a real rough-and-tumble. Alas

Spoiler:

Don't oversell me D, im not in college yet :0
i've been accepted but i won't actually be headed (up/down) until late august
high school isnt over until early june

Dammit son if I say you're already in college then you'll damn well be in college and you'll be happy about it, y'hear?

My point, flimsy as it is, stands!

Yeah, you've already been accepted, which is the hard part. Just remember to show up to classes, keep on top of your work, and reach out to your professors if you need help, and you'll be fine.

cephalopodAscendant wrote:Just remember to show up to classes

It's actually rather shocking how difficult some people find this. I panicked every single time I couldn't make a lecture because of lateness or something (sickness or having something on was different, those are out of my control) but all in all rarely if ever missed a 9:00 am lecture - when I did, it's normally because my transport was so late that I'd show up 10 minutes into a 50 minute class, at which point I'd be to embarrassed to go in, so I'd wait and get the notes right afterwards.

Then there's my sister, a year behind, who last year told me she was in trouble because she couldn't keep up with her workload. Turns out she'd missed basically every 9:00am lecture she'd ever had and most of her 10:00 am lectures, because she was too busy staying in bed and telling herself it was fine. I was shocked. She'd been telling us she simply didn't have lectures then, and the idea that someone - well, someone I was related to - could just *decide* not to go up because they didn't *want* to, repeatedly, was something I couldn't grasp.

Then you have the guys that give up on classes after lunch, or tell themselves "oh, well, this lecturer is kinda shitty" or "it's a revision class." Only in the shittiest circumstances should it ever be okay to miss a lecture when you had the opportunity not to. (I have had some really shitty lecturers so I forgive myself for a couple of those.)

tl;dr don't miss your lectures

It's even dumber here in the US than it would be in other countries, since you're paying for the privilege to take the class in the first place. If you don't bother showing up, you're just throwing money away.

And speaking of showing up late to class, there are a surprising number of people in my classes this semester that think it's okay to show up consistently late. On Monday, there was a significantly-large group that didn't show up until 15 minutes in. Come on guys, you can easily double-check when the official start of class is.

Oh boy, the showing up to class thing. I also pretty much can't imagine not going to class since it's been drilled into me since I was a little kid, but my roommate in freshman year screwed up her sleep schedule so badly that she was sleeping at 5am, missing all of her classes, and then getting up at 6pm.

She also missed a final by sleeping through it, then lied about being sick to make it up without penalty, but that's a whole 'nother story.

Everyone is going to college

meanwhile i'm sitting around at work while my girlfriend and I make a sequel

a sequel to what, you ask?

To ourselves.

Are you saying what I think you're saying? Because if so, I think that may be my new favorite euphemism for it.

i probably am saying what you think i'm saying. do you think i'm saying that HP is going to be a dad?

tinning's gonna have company now huh

also: art college is fucking wild

i've been able to talk about cartoons and games and youtube and shit with people, Legitimately

one of my teachers worked on that Boy And The World movie, and she's apparently caught up on SU and Gumball thru kisscartoon

we're also planning to have movie evenings every monday? our three first watches are probs gonna be lilo and stitch, the incredibles and OTGW so that's gonna be Fun

tl;dr: Art College Is An Experience

Why yes, that is what I think you're saying. Congrats dude! Make sure to turn your kid into a giant Pokémon nerd like all of us!

And Spark, it's always awesome when you get a professor like that. For example, my professor for Databases last semester canceled class one day because he was going to DragonCon. And then when he got back, he showed us pictures of him and his family dressed up as Pokémon professors (he was Elm).

Wow. Everyone seems to be doing interesting things (or in hanky's case, his girlfriend, who is probably interesting but I'm uncomfortable referring to people as things) and I'm just sitting around thinking "hey, everyone, check it out, it's the house I couldn't buy and don't live in! Wooh!" Anyway, congrats Hanky, best of luck! Are you hoping for a Terminator 2 kinda sequel, where the sequel sets a global standard, or a Jaws 2 kinda sequel, where the original is the only one worth talking about? Hanky 2: Electric Boogaloo?

@shpark, I don't know how but two weeks ago I came across some Gumball clips on YouTube, and watched some random episodes on Dailymotion. Holy shit, that show is awesome, for a kids show. That episode where they aped the Chinese bootleg... Wow. If I ever have kids, my inner-helicopter-parent is totally adding it to the playlist-of-tv-shows-that-I'm-comfortable-having-my-children-exposed-to on Netflix. (But seriously, most children's TV shows are either commercials, or super trashy and/or have cheap production values, and kids are *annoyingly* subseptible to influence. Given half a chance, I'd much rather have stuff like Little Einsteins, Gumball, Steven Universe or the Magic School Bus on at all hours than Peppa Pig (goddamn accent), Spongebob (personal choice: he's so bloody irritating) and whatever latest craze is fueling toy store profits.)

Gumball sounds interesting, might have to check that out. Other than that, I can be safely lumped into the group who doesn't have an interesting life; I'm currently just drowning in schoolwork while taking Poorly-Managed-Class-with-Flaky-TAs, Good-Class-I'm-Completely-Lost-In, Class-Where-Prof-Doesn't-Understand-We-Have-Other-Homework, and intro-level Geology ("Rocks for Jocks," my friend calls it).

As a side note, I keep seeing D on Reddit. *whispers creepily* I like your commentsssss