I’m so close to the end of Final Fantasy X that I can taste it. I’m kindly waiting until my sister finishes her homework and leaves the basement before I watch the beginning of the end, though, so she isn’t spoiled about how it all goes down.

Hence this blog update.

This all, of course, assumes that I win whatever battles await me. Knowing me, there’s a good chance that won’t happen. (I do have to admit, though, my characters are pretty buff these days. That has something to do with getting confused, and thus being trapped, in an area full of powerful enemies.)

Saw a professor friend at Subway while buying lunch today, and had an enjoyable mini-conversation with him. (Seems his son has picked up an interest in programming, and now has a stint at HP because of it—not bad for a high-school kid.) Worked six nondescript hours. Visited the local Borders, and poked at books with sticks.

Jumped in fright when a Borders employee barked at me to stop that.

I’m thinking that a good beginning Flash book might really help me learn to use Flash. Here’s a small example of how different approaches yield different outcomes for me:

Scenario 1: Brent buys a book on HTML and CSS. He then successfully hand-crafts a resplendent blog.

Scenario 2: Brent installs XCode tools and tries to pick up AppleScript by halfheartedly reading various websites. He gains a broken shell of a program, and loses 900 MB of disk space.

As you can see, a good book makes all the difference.