Summa dat update

Let’s recap on what’s happening! HELLO FUTURE ME! THIS IS WHAT IS HAPPENING. Hello everyone else from the present, too.
Well my first quarter as a grad student is winding on down. The catch is I have only really been taking one 3-credit grad class. The other two classes are at North Seattle Community College – Calculus 1 and Programming 2. NSCC’s a bus ride today. I have to ride there at least once every day.
So my time on the bus is spent reading (in the middle of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods), or playing the DS when there’s something to play. (Phoenix Wright 3 is coming to me by way of GameFly, so that’s what I’ll be doing for the next week or so.) Next quarter I’m taking a class at Seattle Central Community College, which is a lot closer to where I live. Much less bussin’.
I might still be bussin’ up to the North Seattle area a bit next quarter, though, since I’ve made a new friend in one of my classes and she and I might be hangin’ out. Who knows. We’ll see!
I don’t know if I told any of you guys about my roommates! They are cool dudes. I’m staying in an apartment with three UW sophomores and we’re getting along great. We play Smash Bros. Melee a ton; I’m getting really good at Fox. (FOX YOU SAY??? HOW GENERIC AND CHEAP!!! Yes well I am also quite good at Captain Falcon and Marth so there we go.) But not really as good as Bill who is a friend of my roommate Zack! He won at the recent 200-person smash tourney as Peach! He is about thrice as good as me with Peach and twice as good with Yoshi! It’s crazy.
What you guys DO know is that I am spending most of my time doing homework, and that sort of stinks. Hopefully next quarter will be a little easier but I can’t really be certain of that. I’m taking Calculus 2 and Data Structures (sort of Programming 3), so they’ll probably just be harder versions of what I’m taking now. We will see! Hopefully I will be able to manage my homework time a bit better and fit in more gym visits.
I am going to the Bay Area for Winter vacation. BE PREPARED! …to drive me around! Because I sold my car. And getting around the Bay Area without a car will be hard.
I think I’m going to spend most of the vacation writing about places I am planning to apply to for summer internships. It’s a requirement of my grad program that I write a bunch of pages about an internship I plan on, or am in the middle of, taking. Hopefully I end up working someplace good! I already applied to Microsoft and I am looking into Amazon and Yahoo! as well. Not sure if I’m setting my sights way too high, but UW does seem to have the best Computational Linguistics department out there so hey if that’s who they’re hiring, I’m their dude.
Well I think that is it for now! Things are okay. My group of friends is slowly but surely growing. Things are great with my roommates. I’m feeling pretty comfortable being on my own. Okay I will stop typing!

17 comments

  1. I used to beat everyone with Yoshi (at this summer camp I went to as a kid). Everyone said I was “cheating” because I used Yoshi, even though when they used Yoshi they couldnt beat me.

  2. Haha. This reminds me of ridiculous what’s going on recap posts that I sometimes do. I must say then, I am a fan! A huge fan!
    I will be home all of Winter break myself before leaving for Paris. I will have one of my parents’ cars and I think we should hang out and do things in the city, maybe catch some improv or museums or do some culturally uplifting things. Been too long. All of your grad school talk makes me jealous and anxious – I am only excited for the road to grad school. Yikes! And excited for you.

    1. I know how to wavedash but I haven’t really used it to my advantage yet. Right now I’m trying to find the best way to escape my roommate’s Jigglypuff’s wall of pain. Pissing him off by staying away from the ledges!

      1. His only really spammable move is his Up+B. Otherwise, Marth’s general speed, strength, and range make it pretty easy to just do normal A attacks and do surprisingly well. Marth isn’t a top tier character for a reason, though; he’s just considered cheap because of his high “stats” and the few spammable moves he does have. It’s really more of a joke among SSBM players than an actual concern.
        Two things you should learn to maximize your wavedashing: short-hop and l-cancel. Short-hopping is just what it sounds like; making your jump as small as possible (air attacks are almost always stronger than ground attacks, and give you greater mobility). It’s easier with some characters than others… I think it’s pretty easy with Fox, but I’m not sure. I only really play Samus.
        L-Cancelling is a lot harder–if you hit the L button (or Z or R, really) after performing an air attack, right before hitting the ground, it “cancels” the recovery. Take Link’s down-A in the air, where he plunges his sword into the ground and takes about 15 minutes pulling it out. If you could cancel that out, the down-A would be a lot more formidable.
        Combine the two moves, you’ve got a SHFFL (pronounced “shuffle”). Short-hop, attack, fast-fall (easy; just hold down while falling), and l-cancel. You can do some amazingly powerful attacks, on the run, with no recovery time. That’s one of the reasons Fox is considered the best characters in the game–he can do some devestating attacks, lightning fast, with SHFFLs!
        Do you ever do that roll move, to dodge an attack or move around a little bit more quickly? The one where you hold the shield button and tap left or right? It’s a great move when you’re first learning the game, but an unfortunate habit you should break, quickly, if you still do it. A skilled player will use that against you, timing his attacks to hit you when you’re vulnerable, coming out of the roll. Instead of the roll, wavedash. You can wavedash back real quick to dodge an attack, wavedash back in, and attack yourself.
        One of my personal favorites moves is to charge up a fully charged Samus Ball. I’ll take the combat to melee range and fight as normal… sometime during the fight I’ll wavedash backwards to avoid one of their attacks and, BAM! Samus Ball to the face.
        I’ve no real experience fighting against Jigglypuff outside of tournaments; and there they just spammed Rest and Rollout. What’s the wall of pain?

        1. I know the majority of that. Bill helps me out as I play. My big problem: I still use the stick to jump. Makes wavedashing and short hopping pretty hard. So I need to take care of that first.
          Jigglypuff’s wall of pain is just a really good edge guard. He punches a character multiple times to the bottom side of the screen; the character can’t get back, Jigglypuff can. Fox and Falco are especially susceptible.

          1. Edge-guarding is always tricky, though I admit I’ve never experienced this particular type before. Aside from the obvious advice (don’t fall off the edge!), all I can really say is: keep him guessing. Lots of opponents, especially when they play the same people over and over again, get used to certain strategies, so just sorta mix it up! Fox has two pretty decent ways of getting back on the level; the Up-B is particularly versatile (as you can change direction). Have you tried doing Over-B directly to the ledge itself?

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