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Monthly Archives: June 2011

Final Boss Syndrome

Hi, my name is Moose and I have Final Boss Syndrome.

Hi Moose!

Erm, I thought about writing the rest of this post like a stereotypical *anonymous meeting, but I decided against it.

So, what is Final Boss Syndrome?  Is is a syndrome, probably a psychological disorder, in which you play a computer or video game all the way to the final boss and then suddenly lose interest and stop playing.  Symptoms are obviously more apparent with RPGs or games with something definite at the end.  It might also be the reason why I tend to play more puzzle games or open-ended games now.  It seems that I really like to play games, and I apparently don’t like to beat them.

Here is a very incomplete list of games where I’ve played up to the final boss and then stopped:

Anyway, it’s a pretty good list of games that I never end up completing.  It’s not for lack of trying on some of them.  Trying as in effort in psyching
myself up to play the final boss.  I just…lose interest.  Then I don’t like playing for awhile and by the time I manage to get around to it again, I’ve forgotten all the controls or something or my strategy I had built while playing the game originally and so I can’t beat the final boss.  This is  probably the most apparent with The World Ends with You.  That game has such a different battle system, I don’t know if I’ll be able to pick it up again.  I might have to play it through from the beginning again.  Which wouldn’t really be that bad.  Another game that would be really hard to pick up again is Trauma Center.  I really liked that game too, but I don’t think I can remember all that I need to do to heal wounds and whatnot.

In other news, I have beat some games.  Sometimes it’s just a fluke that I beat them, sometimes it’s not.  Here are some games I actually have beat:

So, PvZ is the really different one on the list because not only have I beaten it, I have beaten it several times.  I have beaten it so hard.  So hard to death.  Er…yes.  Anyway, not only have I beaten the game several times, I have also gone back and beaten all the mini-games, and survived over 30 onslaughts of zombies in endless survival mode.  I also have a pretty decent Zen garden.  So you see, this is quite an accomplishment.

But, that’s not all!  What I just described was on LeeEv, my main system.  I recently acquired an auxiliary system, Codename-Roodee, and I decided to install PvZ there as well.  What I hadn’t realized is that PopCap updated the game to include acheivements and the save files of the previous verison are not compatible with the new version.  That means…I get to play it all over again.  And I did.  I beat the game over Memorial weekend and it was completely unintentional, as I was doing a lot of other things that weekend that took precedence over beating a game I had already beaten.  But it was interesting, as I got to re-experience a bunch of things that I had completely forgotten about.  Like that magic taco.  Why did Crazy Dave just give me so much money for a taco the zombies dropped on my lawn?  Because he’s CRRRRAAAAAAAZY!!

So maybe…maybe this means my Final Boss Syndrome is going into remission and that one day, I will be able to beat the games I start playing, especially the games that I like.  Maybe one day I’ll be cured?

 

Hemming jeans while keeping the original seam

There are a lot of reasons as to why you might need to hem your pants.  Perhaps you are really short and can only find pants that are really long.  Perhaps you are rather tall and have an irrational fear of pants that are too short, so you always seek out and buy pants that are entirely too long.  Perhaps you bought your pants from an outlet and it happened to have one pant leg that was longer than the other.  If it’s the latter scenario, I suggest you try shopping someplace else where you can find pants that are clearly not defects and factory rejects.  But anyway, whatever the case, sometimes you just need to hem your pants.  For dressy pants or chinos and such, this normally isn’t much of a problem.  A normal cut, pin, (iron), and sew is good enough.  But what about jeans?  Jeans have an annoying distressed hem and if you use the typical cut and sew method, it’s very obvious that you’ve hemmed your jeans and sometimes…they look really ridiculous, especially if you don’t have the same color accent thread as everything else.  So, here’s a tutorial on how to hem your jeans and still keep the original seam.  Huzzah!

I know this has been done before.  I’m mostly doing this for myself so that the next time I buy jeans that are entirely too long because I have an irrational fear of having pants that are too short, I’ll kind of remember what I did this time so I can do it the next.

Materials:

  • your jeans that are entirely too long
  • appropriate jeans colored thread
  • a sewing machine with the zipper foot
  • straight pins
  • iron and ironing board

 

Procedure:

  1. Determine how much the offending jeans need to be shortened.
  2. Form a cuff with half of the measured distance from the bottom of the cuff to the seam.
    I am a fan of ironing before sewing because it makes everything lie flat.  So, now is also the time to iron.
  3. Attach your zipper foot so that the seam will be on the left side of the foot and adjust the needle to the center position.
  4. Sew away.  If you have a sickly sewing machine or if the inseam is just really thick, stop right before you start sewing into the seam and back stitch.  Raise the presser foot and move the pant leg so that you are sewing after the seam.  Remember to back stitch.  There’s no need to strip the gears in the machine trying to get a needle through the seam.
  5. Iron down the seam and flip it inside.
  6. Iron down.
  7. Move the zipper foot so that the seam will be on the right side of the foot and sew the cuff down.  Same deal with the inseam.
  8. Aaaand…finished!
  9. If you feel that the area around the inseam needs some re-enforcement, a few quick hand stitches will do the trick.  I used a backstitch.  Feel free to use whatever you like.  I also still did not actually go through the seam.  The needle I had available was kind of wimpy and I did not feel like poking the eye of the needle through my thumb that day.  But if you’d like to, go right ahead.  A needle through the thumb kind of loses its appeal after the first few times.  Also, I didn’t bother cutting off the excess material because there wasn’t that much.  If you have a lot of material, you might want to cut it off and then finish with some kind of zig zag stitch or with a serger to keep the cut edge from fraying.