I’m going to be watching the skies nervously over the next few days. If I’m to believe my local news (and the National Weather Service) reports, it looks like the Mid-Atlantic is about to get a visit from one Hurricane Irene.

Perhaps as a warning shot, the Philly area got an unhealthy helping of rain and thunderstorms dumped on it this morning…just as I was helping my sister move her stuff back into her dorm for college. We had to wait for about 20 minutes after we arrived for the rain to let up enough for us to get her stuff inside, for lightning, water and electronic equipment make for an especially dangerous cocktail. I’m sure she’s all settled in by now, as she’s got a whole day to herself until the other students arrive.

Meanwhile, I’ve made it my week’s mission to finish off Catherine. After having completed the seventh stage (the Spiral Corridor), I can only state that I’ve ascended the tower of some sort of bizarre puzzle-platform hell. Traps appearing every which-way, me jamming the “Reset” and “Undo” buttons repeatedly when I’ve painted myself into a corner… and that’s just on Easy mode. Playing the game on Normal or Hard doesn’t afford one such luxuries. I was surprised that grabbing the pillows on this level granted you three retry chances and not just one. If not, my game would have been “over” over a loooong time ago. Poor Vincent’s gotten himself into a pickle that not even years of psychotherapy could cure. Note to Vince (and to guys in meatspace in general): if you’re involved with someone, and you wake up next to a strange woman who you know definitely isn’t your girlfriend, KICK HER OUT. (Seriously, how did Catherine manage to get inside of his apartment without keys?)

And because I was looking to re-acquire RPG Maker VX for my new computer, I decided to pay a return visit to RPGMaker.net and download some of the better games used for it and the older engines. Of course, in order to actually play the games I wanted, I had to search the net for the different run-time packages (which contain the basic graphics, music and other required goodies). Most of the editors work fine on my machine, but require administrative access in order to save new projects. The only one that doesn’t is RPG Maker 2000, which doesn’t surprise me all that much. If I ever wanted to use it, I could just go on my laptop, which has WinXP and no such compatibility problems.

For the longest time, I’ve never actually released anything worthwhile with the Makers, and I don’t know whether that’ll change today, but I sure to love playing around with them.