It's that time of year, folks! Spring means spring cleaning, and besides tidying up the homestead, I've decided to do a little bit of console gaming cleaning; brought on by the fact that I picked up Resident Evil 4 for the Wii again for the first time in years, played it for a few seconds, died, and decided I'll never be good enough to beat it! 
 
I'm thinking of selling a boatload of games. I could definitely use the money and the shelf space, and it isn't like these will ever truly be collectors items (and with the absolute shelf life of disc-based media, none of it will even be playable in the far-flung future). Here's the list of crap I've compiled thus far.

	1. Resident Evil 4 The Wii and Gamecube versions.
	2. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess The Wii version. I just never got around to finishing it, and don't feel the inclination to do so.
	3. Animal Crossing: City Folk The... Wii version. Mayhaps I should sell my Gamecube version too? I still own and want to keep the DS version, which is arguably still the best in the series.
	4. Sonic Mega Collection The Gamecube compilation that I don't really need since I own a Genesis and the original games.
	5. BioShock The 360 version. I still own the superior PC version.
	6. Prototype The 360 version. Never finished it, don't want to.
	7. Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts Still contemplating this one. It's a great game; it just never hooked me.
	8. Grand Theft Auto IV The 360 version. Making my paid DLC useless, but I never intend to play the game again.
	9. Need for Speed: Most Wanted The 360 version. Got it for free from a friend, never felt like playing it.
	10. Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter The 360 version. Good game, but old by today's standards. Very dated.
	11. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion The 360 version. I own the PC version with all of the DLC. Not much of a point in keeping this edition around.
	12. Tales of Vesperia The 360 version. Never got around to finishing it; definitely inferior to Symphonia, in my opinion.
	13. Fable II Sorry, Molyneux, but it was an amazing one-time ride. Not interested in playing it again, nor finishing that first DLC I bought (*sigh*).
	14. Mirror's Edge 360 version. I played the first two level and never picked it up again.
	15. Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams The Xbox version of Silent Hill 2. Probably a great game, but I can't play it.
	16. Eternal Sonata The 360 Version. Awesome, awesome game, but I've got no intention of playing it again.
	17. Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions It's my favorite Final Fantasy game, but I don't see myself sinking any more time into it.
	18. Lumines: Puzzle Fusion
	19. WipEout Pure
	20. Worms: Open Warfare The PSP version.
	21. Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories GTA done wrong on the PSP.
	22. Darkstalkers Chronicle: The Chaos Tower I can't play fighting games.
	23. Twisted Metal: Head-On
	24. Hotel Dusk: Room 215 Not the kind of game I like to play on the DS.
	25. Metroid Prime: Hunters Good concept, not incredible execution. I never finished it.
	26. Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords The DS version. Good game; again, I don't see myself playing it again.
	27. Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time The worst Mario and Luigi game.
	28. Super Princess Peach Mreh.
	29. Sonic Rush I want to forget the last decade or so of Sonic.
	30. Advance Wars: Dual Strike I love tactical games, but this is one tactical game I suck at.
	31. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 The GBA version. It's a surprisingly great version of the game. No complaints.
	32. Mario Kart: Super Circuit
	33. Army Men: Turf Wars What? I got this for free and obviously never played it.
	34. Namco Museum The GBA version.
	35. Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure Another freebie.
	36. Pac-Man Collection
	37. Dark Arena

The Logitech MX Laser 1000. Released in 2004, the MX Laser was the first ever consumer laser tracking mouse to be released by Logitech.  
 

So what is the incentive to find a job in the gaming industry?
 
From the gaming press side of things,  real job positions are scarce and most of them pay very little.
 
From the development side of things, you work your ass off and spend years upon years of your life training, only to end up getting paid less than most other types of software programmers, and eventually getting the boot when your company invariably lays off leagues of people. One "bad" game and you can pretty much hang in the towel.
 
It seems the only good positions are in the periphery jobs market. Marketing manager, PR shill, etc.

I've totally hit a block.
 
Being unemployed is one thing. Right now, I'm willingly unemployed because I'm trying to figure out exactly where to go in life. I'm trying my best to avoid picking up another shit job that I don't like just to make enough money to scrape by. The problem is that my wholly messed up teenage years left me without an actual goal in life, and now that I'm seeking one, I'm finding it impossible to figure out something that I have an inherent passion for and that I can realistically accomplish.
 
I started with the concept that I've got a lofty vision for what the internet could accomplish. The internet is one of the most powerful tools of our generation. It can connect people all over the world. Anything you want to learn is almost literally a search away. It gives a voice to the smallest of people. It allows artists to express themselves. It was specifically the idea of Google's Wave, and the power of HTML 5, that drummed up my interest almost immediately. The thought of a more real-time, collaborative internet.
 
I knew from the onset that harnessing those powers, and getting up to the level of your average Google coder, would take time and a lot of effort, so my first goal was to get my feet wet in the realm of web design. Through various sources, mainly W3schools' plethora of tutorials and reference libraries, I did a little self-teaching on the subjects of XHTML and CSS. Learning the basics couldn't have been simpler, and I can easily put together rudimentary web pages. It would probably take a lot of practice and tutoring for me to actually get down to creating designs on the level of your typical Web Design professional, but I was still happy to know I had completed the first step towards my goal.
 
Then came Javascript. One of the most basic of scripting languages, and the foundation of doing anything useful on the internet. Going through some early tutorials, it was simple enough for me to feel I confidently understood what the heck was going on. I felt I had a grasp on things, which was starting to give me confidence that learning something more complex, an actual programming language, might be possible.
  
It was a short lived confidence. There was a point where I just hit a wall. For awhile, even though things were getting more and more complicated, I was able to keep up. I could dissect what a script was trying to accomplish, and understand how it achieved that goal. I had no clue how I was going to remember the complex and sometimes frustratingly stupid syntax for each little thing, but I would worry about that later. Except, as I kept pushing forward, I got more and more lost. They were referencing calls I'd never even heard of, and throwing out examples where I understood the concept, but had no clue as to a practical application for it. And then I got woefully lost in the concepts of cookie creation and usage and form validation. I had no idea what was going on, and I decided to give it a break.
 
Now, I'm sitting here kind of doubting that coding is for me. I could probably drill it into my head with time and teaching, but were I to head back to college on the idea of becoming a web programmer, I fear I'd just get lost again, and then I'd have a lot more on the line than just my own free time. On top of that, if I'm more frustrated than happy with it now, who's to say I'd be happy with it later? 
 
I'm not sure I'm cut out to be a programmer, and I'm not sure I'm cut out to be a designer. Despite an artist background, I've got very little creativity left in me, these days. I haven't picked up a sketchpad in years. I can't doodle, let alone draw. Every time I try to think about making the perfect website layout, my mind becomes blank and I just fiddle around with stuff aimlessly.  At this point, I willingly renounce my artist status.
 
So where does that leave me? What passion do I have left in me? A passion for Video Games. A passion for technology. A passion for writing. But none of those have ever gotten me anywhere, either.
 
Alright, these last few paragraphs have been less and less complete thoughts, as I'm getting tired. I just needed to blow off a little steam, even if it's only me talking to myself. My confidence is shot, my life aimless.

To every video game news site, video game blog, and forum member who has knowingly spoiled a bit of Mass Effect 2 just for the site hits/attention, I say: fuck you.
 
To the people claiming you shouldn't be reading video game news if you want to avoid spoilers: I get my news through an RSS feed, and I never expected to have to add specific filter rules to them. Since I scroll though hundreds of articles a day, avoiding one specific game's news isn't easy, and there are too many other things I'm interested in to just stop reading news sites. Besides, I always figured that gamers would extend other gamers some common decency.
 
That said, to everyone saying there's no way to avoid such spoilers for such a high-profile game unless you've been living in a bubble, I've managed to keep that bubble mostly secure, and learned only minimal details about the characters and plot of Mass Effect 2.
 
Of course, all the work I've spent on doing that will have all been for naught, because I still haven't pre-ordered the game, and I have no idea when I'll be getting it. I'm sure I won't be able to keep this up post-launch.

A few words of wisdom: never wear a T-shirt that says "Anime: My Anti-Drug" in public if you don't want creepy anime nerds to ask you awkward questions about your favorite anime series in the vicinity of a pretty girl. I should really throw away that shirt.

I went through all the grueling, grueling trouble of carrying that damn gnome in Half-Life 2 : Episode 2 all the way across the game, and it didn't even give me the achievement for it. Did I put it in the rocket wrong or something?
 
Also, I was 2 antlion grubs away from that 333 kill achievement. 2...
 
Those are now the only achievements I'm missing from that game.

Continuing my incessant fascination with Dragon Age, I am now on my second playthrough. I just wanted to post some random observations.

• It's pretty awesome how differently the game plays out when you're using a different character. I'm a female, offensive-oriented, human mage (as opposed to my first playthrough male/elf/rogue). Besides a whole different "origin story" (and one particularly awesome one, considering it sheds a lot of light on other events that occur later on in the game, from a different perspective), your choice of what character you play has some nice little differences in the way people speak to you, and how you influence people.
  
  SPOILER WARNING: Click here to reveal hidden content.

  I imagine that the Circle of Magi quest will play out a little differently, as well.
  Still, I'd intended to go into my second playthrough as a bitch of a character, choosing the more "evil" dialogue options. Unfortunately, I just can't play evil, and I wouldn't want to anyway, since that would mean half of the party members I care about/need would be too pissed at me to stay.

• 

• I'm finding the game a *lot* easier early on. This could be because having area effect spells is a huge boon at lower levels, or it could simply be because I now know the system, and what spells/abilities give you the best results. That said, I'm not in any rush to turn up the difficulty, as I'm finding it refreshing barreling through fights that I struggled with the first time, and I'm sure that the boss fights will be as frustrating as ever.
• I'm having a tough time deciding who to romance. I haven't read enough about the game to know, but I believe Allistair is an option, and I'd really like to go that route since Allistair is one of my favorite characters in the game. Lelianna would be my next choice, because I really regret missing out on her the first time (things went horribly wrong when, even though I insisted to Lelianna that she and I remain friends, she became jealous over my choice for Morrigan. I ended up not speaking to her again, just to avoid losing her or making her any more pissed off).
• I'm already plotting out what I'll do on my third run through the game, and that's scary. Even though I'm plowing through the game much more quickly, it's still going to be a long, long game, and I haven't let any game consume me like this since... well, actually, since Fallout 3, which I suppose wasn't too long ago.
  
  SPOILER WARNING: Click here to reveal hidden content.

  I'd like to recruit Loghain, but that wouldn't work out if I went down the Allistair path.