I think I’m in one of those gaming funks that most of us fall into now and then. Most of this week I’ve spent doing daily crafting writs in The Elder Scrolls Online (I got my new XB1 character to 15 and we’re supposed to do a dungeon run on Monday and I didn’t want to get too far ahead of everyone else so haven’t been adventuring) and…that’s about it. I’ve popped into The Division and even Forza 6 a couple of times but neither is holding me.

Mostly this week I’ve been watching TV (the excellent PBS series Wolf Hall) or fiddling with a new laptop that my job sent me. I work from home and generally use my own gear, but a few idiots have been working from their virus-ridden home machines and uploading contaminated files to work data repositories, causing major headaches for IT. So new policy means I have to stop using my machine and use the machine they gave me. “Moving in” to that machine took a couple of days. Too much stuff!

I got to pick the machine I wanted, within reason, and decided on a 15″ HP Spectre x360. Since my co-workers use stupidly expensive Macs I was able to upgrade the x360 a bit, and got 16 GB of RAM and a dual core i7 processor. The IT Director threw in a stylus to use with it, too. Even with the upgrades, my machine was still cheaper than the Macs she usually has to buy. It doesn’t have discrete graphics so it is definitely not a gaming machine, but it doesn’t have to be for this purpose. The screen is really nice (though I didn’t ask for the 4K upgrade) and both touch and the trackpad work really well. I actually prefer it to my Surface 3, to be honest.

I’ve also been watching some videos from Microsoft’s Build conference, which has me kind of itching to build something.

I used to semi-panic when games started to hold no interest for me. They’ve been my primary hobby for so much of my life. But I’ve gone through this phase enough times now that I know that’s just what it is: a phase. In a few days or a few weeks I’ll be enjoying the heck out of games again.

But until then, the blog will probably be a bit quiet.