Survivor 45 - 4512 - "The Ex-Girlfriend at the Wedding"

Oh, man. Why oh why didn't Austin give his idol to Drew?? I blame Dee for not spilling the beans to Austin, like Austin spilled the beans to Dee. 

Not super-thrilled Jake has an idol either. He's not unlikeable, but I just like everyone else more!... except maybe Julie.

As I'm typing this I see the season finale will air on 12/20. Looks like I could've eased my binge-watching just a little bit. But I don't regret bingeing! I think bingeing two episodes a day for at least three days straight is the way to go because I'll have a hard time remembering peoples' names and caring about them otherwise. 

Survivor 45 - 4511 - "This Game Rips Your Heart Out?"

I was right to ship Austin and Dee! But maybe Austin wasn't, since he told Dee. But maybe he had to, in order to keep up trust with Dee and flush out the idol he gave Julie. I forget if people other than Drew know Austin has an idol for himself. 

So Emily goes. Sigh... I was rooting for her too.  Not sure who I want to throw my support to now, but it sure isn't Julie!

Survivor 45 - 4510 - "How Am I the Mobster?"

Saw some raw emotion here. Emily upon winning the reward challenge. Katurah's surprise at being picked. Katurah again after panicking from the water, and everyone helping her get over that. Jake hitting the Survivor Wall and Bruce helping him get over that. 

GJ Bruce. For everything. 

Survivor 45 - 4509 - "Sword of Damocles"

Bruce won again, huh? Huh.

Austin's cool factor is back up, is all I have to say. He even recognized that he had to be quick writing the name at Tribal Council. Smart, smart, smart.  

Jake survives yet again, but we're running out of fat to trim here. 

By the way, I ship Austin + Dee as Kendra suggested. 

Survivor 45 - 4508 - "Following a Dead Horse to Water"

Has it really been that many years since Survivor auction? Wonder why they took it out.

I like Jake, I guess, so I'm glad he's sticking around. Didn't really care one way or the other for Kellie or however you spell it. I did like that surprise look on her face. And wait, didn't she have an idol? 

Survivor 45 - 4507 - "The Thorn in My Thumb"

Well that sucked. Definitely hate Austin a little more now, and of course Katurah. I'm just glad the Survivor producers immortalized her stupidity by making that dumb, incorrect saying the title of the episode. Haven't been this mad since Russell.

But Sifu, meh... should've been Bruce.

Survivor 45 - 4506 - "I'm Not Batman, I'm the Canadian"

Wowowow, that was one for the books. Every bit as awesome as, say, that one tribal where they blindsided Randy with the first fake idol.

Sucks for you Jay... and maybe Kaleb too, since it's another target on his back, since everyone knows he's strong, social, and lucky AF! Actually, sucks for me too since I thought Jay was also the hottest girl this season, but what're ya gonna do.

Survivor 45 - 4505 - "I Don't Want to Be the Worm"

Shoulda kept Brando. What, we can't have two nerds in the game? I'm not a Pokemon player myself, but I appreciated that there were two of them on one season. 

Survivor 45 - 4504 - "Music to My Ears"

You shouldn't have gone out like that, Sean. After your speech I was still hoping you'd be safe. But boy did I love that Tribal. Haha!

Survivor 45 - 4503 - "No Man Left Behind"

Sabiyah, you were a good player. Bringing that wax-encased idol to Tribal Council was pretty smooth, and when you made your choice, I probably would've done exactly the same thing.. 

Survivor 45 - 4502 - "Brought a Bazooka to a Tea Party"

Sorry Brandon, looks like Survivor isn't your thing. But you can be proud of four things: 

1. You didn't get eliminated on the first episode.
2. You didn't seriously injure yourself on the first episode.
3. You didn't completely suck at the physical part of your second challenge.
4. You didn't ask to be voted out (= quit) on the first day like Hannah, the quitting-est quitter in all of Survivor quitter-dom. So respect to you for that. 

Good luck in whatever it is that you do. Definitely rooting for Emily now. 

Updating Vita from 3.65 Enso to 3.74 with Henkaku

I'm a year behind on Vita stuff! The latest firmware for the Vita is 3.74. 

I decided to update my Japanese Vita 2000 because NoNpDrm wasn't as easy to use as I thought and I wanted to use that official alarm clock app again. I was aware I wouldn't be able to use Adrenaline anymore, but actual PSPs are better for everything a PSP can do (save for the smaller screen size and save states for PS1 games), and actual PSPs don't have the extra lag Adrenaline does.

My 32 GB Vita memory card should be good enough for all the officially purchased Japanese Vita and PSP games I want to play.

There are a lot of required updates to get everything running on 3.74, so I'm just going to document the order in which I do things:

1. UPDATING TO THE LATEST OFFICIAL FIRMWARE: I couldn't simply update from 3.65 to 3.74 through Wi-Fi even if I disabled spoofing, and eventually I had to reboot in Safe Mode and start from scratch. I think I selected Restore System here. Signing in again, I used the 2FA secondary password I had made for my Vita a while back.
2. GETTING HENLO: https://deploy.psp2.dev/
3. UPDATING VITASHELL: My VitaShell was on 2.02, but the latest is a 2.04 unofficial fork which is what you want for 3.74. I can't use VitaShell to update VitaShell, and installing henkaku doesn't restore Molecular shell. Using the Vita's browser you can go to https://deploy.psp2.dev/ for the HENlo app, install henkaku and VitaDeploy,  and delete your existing VitaShell icon if you haven't already. Go to Vita Settings and enable Unsafe Homebrew, use VitaDeploy's file browser to open the old 2.02 VitaShell (which isn't truly VitaShell I guess), then install the 2.04 vpk and launch that on the Vita home screen. 
4. USING SD2VITA: VitaDeploy has a tool for this built in.

Edit: Trying again with my 1000:

1. On Enso bubble, hit Triangle to uninstall hack. Restarts. 
2. Vita prompts to update system software, but upon getting from Wi-Fi it says already it's already on the latest (C3-12049-6). Memory card updates database. Stuck... Trying Settings > Restore Settings. That did the trick! New system software is downloading and installing. 
3. Bubbles will return (if blank) by going to VitaShell > Refresh LiveArea... but will take a LONG time (several minutes for 1%), and will stop around 20-30% because you'll run out of actual space on the LiveArea (max is 10 pages)... so collect your bubbles in folders and try again, maybe multiple times. 
4. For white/invisible bubbles, tap on them to get to the splash screen (no need to actually start it), and at this point the bubble icon will reappear but still remain invisible on the main LiveArea through the folder preview. To get them visible there, get all the icons in a folder visible, then move an icon out of the folder and then move it back in. Don't just move the icon; you have to actually set it down it outside a bubble, then enable moving and move it back inside a bubble again. 
5. Even after all this, games that were NOT Vita games remained invisible on the LiveArea screen, but were able to be transferred from the Vita to a PC in Content Manager. 

Survivor 45 - 4501 - "We Can Do Hard Things"

I'm like 12 episodes late, and I'm only halfway into this first episode, but:

I'm very happy Bruce is back. He's the dude who got seriously injured in the very first challenge from last season. Back then I don't even think he settled into camp yet. Good luck to him. 

Dang, Brandon... how hard is it to climb up a ladder? Was it just that slippery or was the water just that cold? You couldn't have been that out of shape.

Emily... I instantly hated her the second she started giving Bruce a hard time at the very beginning of the episode. And then I really, really hated her as the episode went on. That is, until halfway into the episode when the rest of her bonehead tribe started talking about how aliens built the pyramids. The second you give aliens credit for anything, you're the enemy of humanity. What, are human beings only capable of building the same crappy huts you build? Or even worse, that particular race of people couldn't have possibly built anything as grand as the pyramids? Crush them underfoot, Emily.