Zelda things I want to know and share

First of all, if you are here because you Googled a question, this is a long rambling blog. Use the "find" feature and paste your question there. Your browser will ferret out the answer from this mass of information. I use Chrome, and "Find" is under the wrench-shaped icon. If you don't use Chrome, you can probably find "Find" under "Tools"

Now then, for you long way around readers, and in no particular order:

Miyamoto said he chose the name Zelda for the wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, but coincidentally it is the nick name or diminutive of the old German name Griselda which means "Dark (or Grey) Battle" Some also say it means heroine of that battle. Zelda is Yiddish (a variation on German, basically) for blessed. He may say he chose it because Zelda F. was glamorous, but he struck upon a very appropriate name, don't you think?

Insect Locations:

***"Hey guys, anyone know a good place to get a Skyloft Mantis? Thanks.

They sometimes pop out of the pots outside the knights academy

On the right side of the Goddess statue are a couple of trees and a few bushes. One of the bushes has the Mantis." (http://www.gamespot.com/the-legend-of-zelda-skyward-sword/forum/messages/platform/wii?topic_id=m-1-61142966&pid=960633)***

This is true. Check all the bushes near those trees, as there are sometimes more than one. Also, if you don't know where to look for the pots, they are under and to the left of the two balconies that are to the left of the main outside entrance. You may remember you had to use those balconies to get to the roof to rescue the cat-lemur pet that pays you back by attacking you every night.

I also found SL Mantis in the Waterfall Cave. One sometimes spawns near the pond where the Firefly spawns, one spawns at the top of the vines. There are 3 pots on your right at the top and the SL Mantis will be under the third pot in. No need to break pot, just lift. I have seen him on top of another platform in that cave, but I can't remember where. (reference: me!)

"The eastern Lanayru desert has a switch that will open a shortcut back to the starting area in the south. Before heading in the door by the Bird Statue, look for the Sand Cicada on the rear side of the structure." (http://www.ign.com/wikis/the-legend-of-zelda-skyward-sword/The_Generator)

The bird statue is just out side the door to the Stone Cache. At the other end of this building, the end without an entrance, I found two Sand Cicadas on the wall. Also, I saw one on the wall just to the left of the entrance to the temple of time. When I went back it wasn't there, so I tried re-entering the mining facility sentry just inside the temple to the right. When I came out, there were two SC on the wall out side the Temple of Time. The very first time I head and saw a SC was at the very first bird statue of Lanayru. I just went back there and heard it again, but the electric chu chu attacked and the commotion must have scared it off.

Inside the temple under the dust I found Lanayru Ants. I found them under the dust in the northeast corner, but this may change. Within the first mine, LA were in a small room through a crawl space behind a bombketball door, just at your first encounter with sink sank, under the pots there are LA as well.

Gerudo Dragon fly can be found in the Lanayru mines, between the time stone you had to bowl a bomb across sink sand to uncover and to activate, and a chest that was inaccessible from the last room because it is up on a plateau. They are also in the same valley as the Temple of Time. Some are very close to the bird statue of that area, and there are a couple near the valley wall at the end of the area completely opposite the Temple of Time. You have to use mine carts and take the whole trip around, so you have to really need or want them.

To find Eldin Roller, fly to Volcano East in Eldin. As you are facing the bird statue, to your left is the path to the drop down into the depths, where you had to fly to the tops of pillars to reach treasures and a Goddess Cube. Half way down this path on your left is a little hole to crawl through. The bugs are in there. Eldin Roller are also in a Bokoblin camp, but not the one near the temple entrance, the one half way up (or down!) the mountain. There is dig space in the center of one of the huts. Dig and get you net out.

I didn't follow a walkthrough for Skyward Sword. I did check a couple for boss help, though. When I got to the final boss, ZD recommended using my shield, but even though I had the top upgraded shield, it quickly broke. Then I realized that they had told me earlier in the walkthrough how to get the Hylian shield, which is unbreakable. So if you have won the Hylian Shield from the Desert Dragon by defeating 8 bosses in a row, then, yes, using your shield is a good strategy. For some reason, it didn't occur to me to use a Guardian Plus potion when I fought the final bosses. But what the heck, why not? I did use a Stamina Plus and the Potion Medal to fight the hordes of Ghirahim, though. Also for the 2nd and 3rd Imprisoned battles.

Now that I am done with Skyward Sword, I am playing Twilight Princess at last. To get the 3rd bottle you have to find the fishing hole in Upper Zora's River. Go in the door. You don't go to the Lure fishing yet. You walk long the west side of the pond until you see a sign near a bridge. It tells you not to litter, throw BOTTLES into the pond. Zelda Dungeon says merely to fish there to get the bottle, but eHow says to fish off the WEST SIDE of the bridge. That is what worked for me. Bobber fishing only.

I was having trouble finding a poe soul that I missed on Snow Peak, the very first one. Turns out I had it already, but because of this I discovered there is no good description of where to find it. Once you are past the ice floe blocks and climbing the mountain proper, the reekfish scent will take you through a VERY NARROW pass. The right side of this tight squeeze is a boulder. Just after that boulder on the right is the 1st poe of the area. Thank you to this guy for the video her posted that set me straight. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkyYsizZFYA

Oh, the little things that walk throughers don't think to mention. I could not claw shot Argorok's tail. I stood there for five minutes shooting, z-targeting, attempting to hit while hanging from the posts. I Googled "Help! I can't hit Argorok's tail!" and " Can't z-target Argorok's tail" Nothing. When I reread the ZD walkthrough, it said, "Use the iron boots to keep from being swept away by his wing gusts." But he was just hovering there and I was having no trouble keeping my footing. Then it said, "Once you catch his tail, if you haven't already, equip the boots to tug him down." So I thought, stand in the same place, use the same shooting, just put the iron boots on first. And that is what did the trick. No matter where I was, no matter z-target or aim and shoot, without the iron boots equipped, I could not catch his tail to start the battle.

Spirit Tracks is so vast and complicated, I could not manage it without a walkthrough, especially since, because I am a mom, I have to take long breaks, sometimes months long. I was stumped how to get the chests on the roof of castle town because, since I had taken such a long break, I FORGOT I had a song that could summon birds. Duh. Once you have a cucco, it is easy to jump to TWO of the chests, but the northwestern most one was a stumper. I found this advice:

"Take your Cucco up the ramparts one final time and go to the top right corner. Jump onto the building there, then to the one to the left of you. Now for the really tricky part. You should be near one of the Lion Statues that adorn the main path to Hyrule Castle. What you're going to do...is jump off the building you're on and land on that statue. After which you will leap over to the second statue and finally, onto the roof of the building with the final chest. This one has a super-rare treasure in it, which makes it worth the effort. Still, this will most likely take you a few tries. The best tip that I can give you is to make the statue jumps in one motion. If you overthink it, you'll fall off and have to try again."

One: I DID NOT get a super rare treasure. I got Goron Amber. I have freaking 5 now. I think I have a glitch because it seems whenever I find a treasure in a chest it is a freaking Goron Amber. Grr! (What kind of treasure did YOU get? You can answer in the comments section.) Two: His advice for lion jumping didn't work for me. I went slow and once on the first one, lined my self up directly to the left before jumping again. Was it my imagination, or did tapping on the lion's head while I was in the air help direct my landing? It felt that way. If I wasn't told landing on the lions was possible, I never would have gotten this. I am a lousy platform gamer, which means I miss a lot, AND I will only try and fail at something so many times before I assume I am missing because it is programmed that way.

Except one time in Twilight Princess. Early in the game I saw a rupee on a hillside in Ordon near where you can call a hawk that will fetch for you. One such bird fetched a whole cradle, so I thought it a fair assumption that it would fetch the rupee. I needed that rupee to get the sling shot so the game would progress, so I tried 50 times to get that rupee, assuming the problem was me. At the beginning of Skyward Sword it took me 27 times to land with the sailcloth in the circle at the bottom of the Goddess statue because I didn't under stand the controls. To be fair, the icon that guides you at the bottom of the screen shows a remote being tipped side to side, not being pointed downward and upward, which is what you NEED to do. So once I was in Ordon, I figured that I must be controlling the hawk wrong. FINALLY I checked a walkthrough and read "Catch a cucco with the Hawk. Then glide over to the hill with the cucco." From real life I know this is an awful idea because a hawk would severely WOUND any chicken you send it after, rendering it useless for any type of flying or floating, but this is what my kids like to call "Zelda Logic"

So rule one of Zelda Logic, if there is something out of your reach, and their are cuccos around, odds are the cucco is the answer, try the cucco first.

I wanted to collect as many heart containers before looking for the Demon Train, so I fought the guards at the castle at last. The trick for me was NOT what Zelda Dungeon suggested, "Stay to the right and if you see a guard attempt to hit you, quickly turn and hit him first." I am not fast enough apparently. Big failure. But, if I just hit until I saw a guard preparing to strike, then ran away, then came back and hit a few more times, then dodge, hit dodge hit dodge, nothing bad ass, strike and flee like a coward, with THAT strategy, I won on my first try.

"How do you solve the block puzzles at Ends of the Earth Station?"

Then I went to the Ends of the Earth Station. In the western cavern there are 3 block puzzles. Zelda Dungeon was great with the first puzzle, but offered nothing about the 2nd. Obviously soooooo easy for this master gamer, not even worth mentioning, but for me still tricky. I found a video that shows that the answer to the 2nd puzzle is:

Bottom block: up right down left up left

Top block: down right down left up right. I also found that the completed bottom block (ends on the right) sort of got in the way of moving the top block. I moved the bottom (right finishing) block up one until the top (left finishing) block was complete.

Geez, they don't tell you how to do the 3rd one, either. I worked this out from watching that same video:

Left block: (move bottom block right first) down right up (move bottom block left and right block down) left up left (Move bottom block left and left block up to return them to starting point)

Right block: (move bottom block up) down (bottom block left) left up (bottom block down) right up right

Bottom block: (from where you left it working left block) up right down right up left down down

Here is the video I worked this out from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZWRZOk1igc

WTF!?! I just went to do the easy puzzles, in the middle cavern, which even *I* didn't need help with, to collect some (allegedly) random treasure and I got ANOTHER FRIGGIN' GORON AMBER! That makes six in a row, now.

My Response to Ms. Malkin's response to Occupy Oakland

http://www.facebook.com/notes/michelle-malkin/more-ugly-occupy-oakland-pictures-that-wont-make-msm-front-pages/10150341843655677

(Tip: Look at the photos, read her captions, then read my responses.)

“We are better than this: Not really. Anarchy speaks louder than whitewash words" Better than the "whitewash words" "war on terror" that gets painted over the deaths of 100,000+ Iraqi civilians, when there was in fact no WoMD, no connection to 9/11? Sure Saddam was a "bad man" (more whitewash) but 100,000+ people just to get rid of him? NVM our soldiers lives and limbs.

“Fuck the police: Nope, didn’t see anyone of those signs at Tea Party protests" No, but you did see protesters with assault rifles. EVERYWHERE. No such thing at OWS. Even the vandals were not armed. TEA party signs threatened "2nd Amendment solutions" to big government, and what do you know? A Congresswoman was shot in the head, and a Judge murdered.

"From the Port of Oakland blockade scene late tonight…nope, this looks nothing like a Tea Party either" What? Their faces are covered? Again ASSAULT RIFLES AND PISTOLS at Tea Party rallies. VERY INTIMIDATING, and in case of misfire, potentionally dangerous.

You object to signs that say "death to capitalism?" when at the Tea Party the signs said "Death to Obama", our SITTING President? "If Brown can't solve the problem, a browning can?" How menacing is that?

You called one teacher a "union hack" Is that anything like a "hack journalist?"

"Kiddie human shields" There were kids at the Tea Party rallies, too. They carried *toy* guns. GUNS mind you, not signs.

"And as I noted in my column yesterday, one of the leaders of the parade of destruction, rapper Boots Riley, is author/”songwriter” of “5 million ways to kill a CEO,” among other hateful ditties" Through his blatant mismanagement in pursiut of unGodly profits, the CEO of BP killed 11 men. With families. Then publicly wished for *his* life back.

You know very well Ms. Malkin that Tea Party rallies had no arrests because there were no orders from above to clear them off the street. NOT because they were better behaved or in any way less annoying. The elite organized the TP rallies because they hate government regulation and want the People to hate it to, because it interferes with robbing us blind, polluting and poisoning us, basically making them even more insanely wealthy at the expense of all the rest of us. They hate social programs because they make people less desperate to work slave wages and off the clock. They hate unions because their work gave us socialist constructs like "weekends", "sick days" and "overtime". Time is money, and as far as the elite are concerned, our time is their money.

(Lulu's note: This was originally a comment I posted on MM's "photo essay", so I am addressing her fans here.)

You People reading this: You are 99%ers. Your taxes are being frittered on wasteful spending, but not on teachers and food stamps. On subsidies for oil companies, when they already make more money than any other companies on earth, in history. For bankers who got bailout money over bad loans, but also got to keep those loans, so they got paid twice. For war contractors who use the MSM to lie about the threat level from over seas to scare you into sacrificing your health and retirement. And again for oil companies who tell you the billions for war we spend is for spreading democracy, when it is about keeping oil prices low for BP and ExxonMobil, but they DON'T even have the decency to pass the savings on to us, even though our tax dollars and our dead and wounded soldiers paid for that discounted price.

So if you are really feel Taxed Enough Already, you too should be out in the street protesting the fascist coup of "our" elected officials by the richest of the rich. Because they are the ones sucking up all the welfare that is bleeding the working people of this country to death.

Join us.

What is OWS about, anyway?

Matt Taibbi to Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of NYC: People are not protesting for their own entertainment, you asshole. They’re protesting because millions of people were robbed, by your best friends incidentally, and they want their money back.

All of a sudden tonight, my Facebook page had outraged comments, and wall posts, all emanating from the same source: My dear old friend of 20 years, a Republican. He objected to my support of OWS. I began to argue with him. When he posted a USA today article as a rebuttal, I said it was a corporate rag. He said I was a conspiracy freak. We progressed through various points from the news this week, before we cooled off. Then he asked: "So what *is* OWS about, then?" He is the type of guy who really wants to know answers to the questions he asks, and if he wasn't smart and open minded, I wouldn't be his friend. So here on my blog I am going to craft a list of links to stories that explain the outrage. If you would like to help, you can comment below and add links to stories that you recommend. If you are reading this now, know that this entry will update as I come back and add new links to stories I've tracked down.

Let's start with the fact that the 30 biggest, most insanely profitable corporations pay no income tax at all:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/03/us-usa-tax-corporate-idUSTRE7A261C20111103

(And Obama just named the head of GE to his economic advisory panel.)

Oh, and since you are so fond of "Can't have your cake and eat it, too" Let me explain something about the bad mortgage bail out. I will focus on Bank of America, but there were other big bank players with similar stories. First the big banks lobbied to have the long standing federal lending guidelines eliminated, so that they could make high risk loans. Why would they do this? First of all, the market was saturated with loans to decent borrowers, and profits must rise, so business must expand to new customers. Also, high risk borrowers generate late fees, which are much more profitable than interest. So the loans were made. When they started going bad, they dragged the whole housing market down, which caused a domino effect that put decent borrowers under water or worse. When it got really bad, the big banks petitioned for a bail out and got it, but with NO CONDITIONS. If the problem was bad mortgages, the governement could have saved the banks by paying off the bad mortgages. But here is the eat the cake bit: They got to keep all the debt from the bad mortages. The people they liked, they gave them lower payements, but they were still on the hook to pay as agreed. The people who they didn't like, they took their homes. So they got the bailout money for having so many bad loans, but they also got to either make all their borrowers keep paying or got their homes. So for making high risk loans, which you and I would be laughed out of town for doing ("Why did you loan that deadbeat $150,000??") They got paid TWICE. Once with the loans they still have, and the property that they repossessed, and again when the government handed over 100s of billions of dollars. See what OWS is about now? If not, keep reading:

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/10/26/glenn_greenwald_on_two_tiered_us

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-american-bubble-machine-20100405

"It was not Barney Frank who made it possible for Goldman, Sachs to sell the home loan of an occasionally-employed janitor in Oakland or Detroit as something just as safe as, and more profitable than, a United States Treasury Bill. This was something they cooked up entirely by themselves and developed solely with the aim of making more money."

AND

"Fannie and Freddie had nothing to do with Merrill Lynch selling $16.5 billion worth of crap mortgage-backed securities to the Connecticut Carpenters Annuity Fund, the Mississippi Public Employees' Retirement System, the Connecticut Carpenters Pension Fund, and the Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association. Citigroup and Deutsche Bank did not need to be pushed by Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi to sell hundreds of millions of dollars in crappy MBS to Allstate."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/mike-bloombergs-marie-antoinette-moment-20111103#ixzz1coh9PO2Y

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/matt-taibbi-courts-helping-banks-screw-over-homeowners-20101110

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=228308640558283&set=a.228308403891640.64067.124568187598996&type=1&ref=nf

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/miles-mogulescu/ny-times-reporter-confirm_b_500999.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMwLlS3UKHQ&feature=share

http://boingboing.net/2011/10/29/top-us-foreclosure-law-firm-threw-halloween-party-where-staff-dressed-as-homeless-foreclosed-upon-americans.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+boingboing%2FiBag+%28Boing+Boing%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

And the criminal who runs the firm in the above story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/09/business/09foreclose.html?_r=2

Got Power?

Or do mega interstate utilities have it all? Do you *remember* local municipal utilites? They answered to the people locally, and profit was not their primary concern. Keeping utilities *working* was the primary concern. Today we have to deal with large conglomerates who got their monoplies by buying elections.

http://www.grist.org/article/2011-10-12-utility-fights-dirty-in-citys-battle-for-clean-local-energy

You can read here about how Boulder is fighting to take their "power back" to get an idea of what your local politician is up against when you call to complain, "My power is STILL out, and I CAN'T take my business elsewhere!" When we were mistreated by our gas company this summer, a HUGE multistate conglomertion that is based in North Carolina, I called my Congressman. He told me "we're working for consumer choice!" That is was I was told 20 years ago, the last time I called. Silly me. I didn't realize that what I was supporting at the time was the deregulation that would give mega business the power to push local providers out of the market. Now I know better. He's been working on "consumer choice" since before we called, and he is still working on it. But still our only choice is this one mega monopoly that cares more about saving a dollar or two than about us taking icy showers for a whole weekend. And if I leave it to Congress and to the state of Massachusetts, with the way politics works today, that *isn't* going to change.

The power companies would like you to believe these outages are as long as they are because of the mess the storms cause. The answer to their delay is simple: Keep a larger stand by staff. Oh, they will tell you that that will raise everyone's rates! But the truth of it is, when you have as many customers as they do, the amount of money they lose the week or or you and your neighbors have no power costs them far less than the cost of keeping more workers on standby. And besides that, do you really care if your power bill is a dollar less a month, if to save that buck you have to risk the week (or more!) of power loss in the act of God lottery we are all forced to play in now?

We lost power for 30 hours after Tropical Storm Irene, and we didn't get the worst of the power interruptions. Some people, who lost power for a week or more, and are fed up, are exploring what the People of Boulder are now struggling and scrapping to do in the face of the big money and dirty tricks of their current private provider. Ah! Such innocence!

http://articles.boston.com/2011-09-18/yourtown/30172423_1_electric-utilities-national-grid-towns-study

Did you miss this story in the corporate run media? I can't imagine why a media industry that garners so much ad revenue from mega utilities, "America's Coal" and "America's Natural Gas" would so thoroughly ignore stories that if widely reported would quickly see an end to their sponsors strangle hold on our service, and the implementation of sustainable, locally produced power.

When the local community runs the utilities, profit is no longer the primary concern. Servicing the people in the way the People want is. You prefer to not use so much coal? You would have a choice if your local community ran your utlities. And back before deruglation (Thanks again, Ronald Reagan... and Bush I... And Clinton!) people had a lot more say in how things were run, and how power was maintained in the face of natural disasters. The people of Boulder have the right idea, but it is about so much more than implementing renewables. It is about knowing the people who make your energy and your energy policy. It is about getting your power *back on* in a far more reasonable amount of time. This is a 99% issue, too. The people making these desicions that leave *you* in the dark (and cold!) for so long are the people who are given repair priority, *or* have whole house back up generators in their posh abodes, or both!

When you are done moving your money, prepare yourselves to take your power back from the mega energy corps, who not only don't answer to the People, they no longer answer to our legistlators.

Power to the People, literally.