As of midnight last night, we’re only renting one apartment. Yes at long last our endless, very very badly organized move has come to an end. At least the moving part has.
Yesterday we went back to Raleigh, with a truck full of stuff we’d paid to have moved south but now wanted to dispose of (good use of money there, eh?). Our old place has dumpsters everywhere and dedicated recycling dumpsters and to be fair MOST of the trash was cardboard from the packing boxes, but not all. For example I think I tossed 7 or 8 keyboards in the recycling. (Leaving us with, I dunno, 6 spares, still?)
Our new place we have one large trash can that gets emptied once a week, so using the old place’s dumpsters felt like a handy cheat-code since we’d be up there anyway. Now I’ll have to figure out where I can take big loads of cardboard down here. Wherever that is, I’m sure it’ll cost me.
We did a final bittersweet walk-through of the old place. I won’t miss the actual apartment one bit but I will miss the little backyard where I fed the birds, squirrels and even the deer and foxes who wandered by. (The image at the top of the post shows a deer and a squirrel grazing in the back yard.) The new place has a ‘back deck’ which is a small slab of concrete that faces the neighbor’s back deck and is a pretty busy place. No critters out there!
We hugged a couple of neighbors, pet some doggos, said our goodbyes, turned in the keys and were gone. It all took less time than expected. We’d figured on spending the night up there but got done so quickly we drove back down. I’d taken today off thinking we’d be on the road but instead I had a good long sleep-in. Back to work for the day tomorrow and then on Monday we’re back to the old grind, and honestly I’m not too sad about that. Remind me I said that when I get tired of it by mid-February.
The new place is still utter chaos with boxes everywhere. PartPurple has been sick this week so she hasn’t gotten much done and a LOT of the unpacking is down to her since she is, shall we say particular, about where things go. Anything I unpack she comes along behind me and moves stuff so I’ll just let her orchestrate and be the muscle when needed.
The exception is my office which was so packed full of stuff I could barely move. I’m making progress…I can see the floor here and there now. I’ll work on that some more this afternoon.
Everyone has been doing 2025 recaps, as we tend to do at this time of year. 2025 was pretty awful, eh? For us personally, we lost our beloved dog, and we lost all our money. At the start of the year I had about $16,000 in a “Rainy Day Fund”. My goal was $20K at which point I hoped to start shopping for a house. Then Lola got sick, to the tune of $13K in vet bills. I actually took out a personal loan to pay for some of that since I didn’t want to drain the rainy day fund completely. But then this move has wound up costing us almost $10K because we are stupid. (Moving company was $2500 each trip [2 trips which was the REAL dumb part], a junk collector was $500, cleaners were $500, and then there was the old 1st month, last month, and 1 month’s security downpayment on the new place.) Now the rainy day fund has $25 AND I have a credit card balance for the first time in years. Quite a setback. Goal now is to have the credit card balance paid off by June, then we can start building again.
So yeah, if 2026 can just be dull and boring and not cost me a bunch of money, that’d be great. We’re still rocking a semi-busted TV, PartPurple wants a new couch, and I’d LOVE to get a proper corner desk for my office but… all in good time I guess.
So now we start to find the new apartment groove. Now that my gaming PC is back in my office, I’ve been spending more time on PC gaming since PartPurple has been spending a lot of time in the living room watching YouTube on the TV I generally do my console gaming on. I thought about moving the consoles into my office but she says she doesn’t think this new habit of hers will last and that once HER office is set up and not a room full of stacked moving boxes, she’ll be back to working on projects up there. So we’ll see.
I do kind of LOVE having my own office, though. Or I think I will once I have it organized and have purged more stuff. So much junk! For example I have SIX PC towers in the closet (plus two actually running, one work, one gaming) and a stack of 7 or 8 old laptops (aside from the ones we actually use). I have a box of old hard drives I need to wipe before I get rid of them… just so much crap. A few 50′ ethernet cables, tons of coax cables. Switches and hubs that are so old that aren’t gigabit. Stuff like that.
The long term goal is to keep purging stuff and get to where I have room for a project table where I can do thinks other than tap away on a keyboard.
Anyway, we’re so very, VERY happy to be done with this move. I’m hoping this isn’t one of those places that gets you in at a good price then jacks the rent up the first time you need to renew your lease, because I don’t want to move again for at LEAST 5 years!!!
I’m at work right now but things are pretty quiet since I expect many people are either on PTO or are acting as if they are. I know I am!
I’m in my new office in the new apartment and it is basically functional. Still lots of organizing to do, but I have both work and gaming PCs set up. As long as I don’t turn around it feels pretty good. Image at the top of the post is what I see when I DO turn around and…yeah, still much to do.
Same holds true for the whole apartment. Boxes everywhere waiting to be unpacked. The kitchen is our first focus point since we’re going broke living on Doordash and Grubhub deliveries. Tonight we expect to cook for the first time.
The move has been an unmitigated disaster. The plan was that PartPurple (Subaru Cross-Trek) and I (Toyota Tacoma double cab with a 4′ bed) would move all ‘the little stuff’ and we’d hire a moving company to move the big stuff. And that’s how it started. Mistake #1 was SEVERELY underestimating how much time it would take us to just pack “the little stuff” (by which we meant kind of anything that wasn’t furniture). The day before the movers arrived we were SO not ready; we busted our butts from 8am to 11pm and did not get CLOSE to finished. That was on Dec 10th and that was when endless exhaustion began.
The next day was moving day, and the movers (Two Guys & a Truck) did an awesome job. They were friendly, professional and efficient and didn’t break a single thing. No complaints at all.
But after they were gone we looked around and it dawned on us how much stuff we still had to go. From the 11th to the 20th we went back and forth as often as we could (her more than me because I did have to work) but it just didn’t even feel like we were making a dent in the pile, and we were just miserable. It’s 2 hours between places so it was get up, drive 2 hours up to the old place, spend a couple hours packing and loading, drive 2 hours back, spend an hour unloading, then get up the next day and do it again.
Last Saturday I hit 12,000 steps on the old Fitbit (typically I do like 3,000) and I was so tired and out-of-breath that the edges of my vision were going dark, and we STILL had so much more to do, and time was running out.
We gave up. We knew it would be expensive but we called the moving company AGAIN to ask them to come back and help us pack up the rest of the stuff and cart it to the new apartment. I didn’t care what it cost (thankfully, since it cost a lot) but I just knew that we were pushing our luck and one of us was either going to get hurt carrying stuff, or fall asleep on the drive there or back and have an accident.
The good news is they’re coming again on the 26th of December and then we’ll have EVERYTHING out. Then we have about 2 weeks to get it clean and ready to turn in the keys. The estimate for this second trip is a whopping $2,500 (which was the same as the first trip) which is a HUGE expensive, but just to show you how defeated and demoralized I was, I’m HAPPY to pay that money. I was in such a dark place I started fantasizing about just driving off into the sunset and never looking back.
Also, I am fully aware that all this pain is self-inflicted. I severely underestimated how much time it takes to pack, and how old and out of shape I am in. Five or six trips up and down the stairs carrying boxes is about my comfort limit and every trip past that is misery. And the amount we were spending on gas was stupid, too. About $40 for my truck and maybe $30 for her car.
I did consider renting a big truck but I just didn’t have the physical bandwidth to load one. Every trip, by the time my truck and her car were both loaded, I was DONE and the idea of single-handedly loading a moving truck was just not feasible. With planning we maybe could’ve done it with one of those PODS moving systems but we’re up against a time limit now.
Money is going to be tight for a while, that’s for sure. I’d hoped to buy a nice new computer desk, our TV needs replacing (the display got damaged, not during the move), and we wanted to get a new couch but that’s all on hold for a while.
But all is not doom and gloom. The new apartment is WONDERFUL compared to our old place. I have my own office and Purple has her own as well. The area we’re in reminds both of us of where we grew up (I grew up in NY, she in Mississippi, but despite that we grew up in very similar areas). There are TONS of houses lit up with Christmas decorations and such. A mix of nice and not-as-nice houses that feel, I dunno, organic? And the not-so-nice places remind me of, frankly, the houses my extended family lived in back home. Old cars being worked on in the yard, out-buildings with junk. Maybe an old boat. Sounds weird but this all feels very comfortable to me.
In one direction things feel very small-townish, and a little distance in the other direction are strip-malls filled with big name chains and stuff. And then not much farther is Wilmington, NC. Not that I’ve explored much, but I’m looking forward to doing so.
Anyway, moving lessons learned (we’d been in the old place for 13 years so were definitely out of moving practice) and a huge wad of cash gone, but I’ve been feeling SO much better now that I know the professionals are going to have our backs.
Purple is going back up on Christmas to have dinner with some friends so I’ll be alone for Christmas, but that also means she’ll be there for the movers when they arrive Friday morning (I have to work Friday so had to skip the Christmas gathering). We didn’t bother with presents or anything; the move is our present to each other. And I guess I’ll spend Christmas Day playing video games and eating a TV dinner or something.
Hope your holidays are more festive than mine, but it’ll all be worth it once we’re past this process.
Since we have such a long overlap on our two leases, we decided to move as much of our stuff as possible ourselves rather than paying the moving guys. (Even with that, the moving estimate is $2500). Might have been a mistake. 🙂
We took a load of ‘stuff’ down Monday morning to the new place; it’s almost exactly 2 hours one way. We picked up the keys (key codes actually, there aren’t any physical keys). Did a walk-through. Made note of stuff that needs to be addressed (nothing too major). Meaning SHE did the walk-through while I unloaded the truck and her car. Mostly we brought down boxes of books and movies just to get them out of the way, but they were also heavy as heck. We brought almost no furniture.
We wildly underestimated how bad the lack of seating was going to impact us. We had a camp chair and a stool. We took turns with the chair trying to get rested. The floors are vinyl with no carpet so just crashing on the floor was out of the question.
Mattress was supposed to be delivered Monday afternoon but didn’t show so we had to sleep on an inflatable mattress which was NOT designed for two people as round as we are. It was just laying on the floor (no frame) and you should’ve seen us trying to get up between it being so low and so ‘squishy’ and us both being super-stiff from hauling stuff. And my gout was flaring up big time to make matters worse.
We had no internet and the wireless signal was terrible so I had to… *gasp* read something. She forgot her purse at home so had no driver’s license with her, no credit cards. And we brought no food so I had to go do some shopping, which was the first time I’ve been in a grocery store in years. Had Jersey Mike’s Philly Cheesesteaks for dinner.
But yeah, not a great night’s sleep. My gout was screaming at me and every time one of us moved we basically bounced the other off the mattress.
I unpacked books so we could bring the empty boxes back and re-fill them, but had nowhere to put them so they’re just stacked up everywhere, no doubt in the way of later trips.
Today was better. Internet guy came and we discovered that the place is wired for ethernet but he could only enable 2 ports since the modem he installed only had 2 jacks. I’ll have to do some research on how to set these up since it’d be easy enough to add a switch and wire up more rooms if we need them, but at least both our offices have a wired Ethernet connection. Otherwise he have a couple of “Plume” WiFi hubs, one on each floor.
While that was happening the mattress showed up. Dude basically dropped it in the street and left and I had to hump it up the stairs which just about ended me. All over the box were warnings of it being heavy and a 2-person item for moving. Reminder that I am 1) in terrible shape and 2) a senior citizen. I am not made for carrying mattresses alone. I ended up standing it on one end (it was one of these foam mattresses that comes tightly rolled up) and just lifting it up the stairs, one by one, like it was a telephone pole or something. Caber tossing? Then I slid it along the floor once it was on the 2nd story.
We didn’t bring anything to sit on but we did bring the fake Christmas tree which she set up while we were waiting for the Internet guy. It looks tiny (see image at the top of the post). In our current place the star almost brushes the ceiling.
In spite of all this bitching, the place should be pretty nice once we’re settled in. Or at least compared to our current “built in the 1980s and never really upgraded” place. We have high ceilings, ceiling fans, 2 zones for A/C, as mentioned the place is wired for internet. There’s a hose and electric hookup outside in both the front and back. The kitchen is pretty nice with an induction stovetop, a built in microwave, a fridge with an ice maker, and a nice sized island with power outlets and what SEEMS to be actual granite. The toilets are modern and don’t use 5 gallons per flush and when you flush them they work. Our current place the toilets are generally 2-flush systems or they get clogged. Hoping this means our water bill will be lower.
The area seems pretty nice, too. People seemed friendly enough although when I was in Jersey Mike’s, out of about 7 people waiting in line 2 (neither of them obvious officals or police or anything) were wearing sidearms which was a little alarming for me, but no one else gave them a second glance.
The only real downside to the apartment itself is the complex is pretty compact. We have a tiny patio outide in the back but it’s maybe…75 feet to the patio behind the next row of buildings. And in the front the windows are RIGHT on the sidewalk and then there’s a narrow street and then the front windows of the next row over. But we don’t spend much time outside anyway.
But crikey am I beat. I am TOO OLD for this stuff! Plan is to go down again Friday with another load, and come back Saturday, giving us Sunday as a recuperation day before going back to work. Pro movers come on Dec 11th so once that happens we’ll for real move down there. Hopefully the next trip will be better. We’ll have Internet, we’ll bring some furniture to sit on, we’ll have a bed.
And most importantly there is now beer waiting in the fridge…
I mentioned the other day that we’re moving. We’ve lived in our apartment for a stupidly long time (12 or 13 years). PartPurple says it’s the longest she’s ever lived in the same place, and it nearly is for me as well. Certainly the longest since I’ve been living on my own.
As we are old and out of shape we’re taking it slow. Also it was challenging to get things to line up. We have to give our present landlord 60 days notice of termination and if we leave before the lease is up they charge us a full month’s rent as a penalty. Trying to find a new place to rent more than 60 days ahead of it being available is tough and we’re not daredevilish enough to just put in our notice and assume we’ll find a place in time. In the end we decided to just double rent for a while. It turned out to be about 6 weeks. This worked out OK since we’re just letting this lease run out, so we don’t have to pay that 1 month penalty, meaning we’re effectively (sortof) only paying double rent for 2 weeks, and we have the security of knowing our new place is locked in.
We pick up the keys to the new place the Monday before Thanksgiving, but we don’t have the movers coming until mid-December (and our old lease doesn’t end until 1st week of January). We’re going to make a few trips back and forth in during that gap, taking little stuff with us just to try to cut down the moving cost (though I wonder if we’ll end up spending more on gas than we’re saving on moving). We’re doing it this way partly beause we don’t want to be mid-move for Thanksgiving (we’ll celebrate that in the old apartment) and partly because we feel like spending some time in the new place will give us a better idea of what needs to go where. Purple has an app that maps the whole place out but once you are THERE in the location things can feel different.
We’ve started packing and purging and man, nothing is easy. We had a bunch of physical media we wanted to get rid of and NO ONE wants this stuff. We put boxes and boxes of DVDs out with signs inviting folks to help themselves and eventually that got rid of the DVDs but we started that back in September and we JUST got rid of the last one. But books? You literally can’t give away books without it becoming a huge production where I’d have to take a day off work and make an appointment somewhere for them to see what they wanted and what they didn’t.
In the old days you could find donation bins everywhere but not anymore. Libraries will potentially take some of them if you make an appointment and if they happen to be in one of their ‘we accept donations’ phases. Even then they apparently don’t add them to the stacks; they just wholesale them to someplace. It’s not worth their effort to process the books, I guess. In the end I found a single donation box about half an hour a way. We took a load of books over and I saw that it was a school of some kind, so I think they want kids books but we left what we had.
Then a lot more purging happened and I had the back of my pickup full of bins of books (5 big plastic bins that I could barely lift). I was desperate to get rid of these things so, after hours, we went back to that donation bin and filled it up with books they probably don’t want. I was kidding about us being arrested for reverse burglary or something. Illegal dumping? But we’re finally almost through the book cases. One to go and it has mostly trade paperbacks that, if we don’t want them, I’m just going to chuck into the recycling bin. Which feels awful but… I gotta get rid of these things.
But man, it makes me sad that giving away books is so hard. In the past people have generally been eager to get free books to sell or distribute!
Mind you we still have boxes and boxes of books packed up that we’re not ready to get rid of. Twelve currently and probably 3 or so more by the time we’re done. We have too many books considering we both prefer reading on Kindle due to eyesight issues. (Long day? Set the font to ‘HUGE’ and enjoy your book.)
Meanwhile the movers are scheduled, to the tune of $2,500, and we’ve paid the security and other stuff on the new place (another $4000) so now we’re even more poor than we used to be. In theory we should get our security deposit back from the current place but we’ll see. Honestly the current place in fairly bad shape, not really due to us but just due to them being old apartments that were never meant to be lived in for this long. Utilities are scheduled to switch over ($150 deposit for water) and happily there’s a place that offers fiber Internet in the new place. I’ll be sad to leave Google Fiber behind but they don’t service the new area.
Speaking of the new area, we’re moving a couple hours south (after talking for years about wanting to go back north) but also we’ll be MUCH closer to the coast and I’m really looking forward to going to the beach semi-regularly. It’s a 30-45 minute drive to the ocean from our new place, so it won’t be something we do every day but we could go once a week if we wanted to. And the nearest city is Wilmington, NC which is a seaside town with a lot of history, as well as board walks and such. I think we’re going to enjoy just going into town to wander around and get an ice cream or something.
We’re really excited because for all the time we’ve living in Raleigh we’ve never really made much use of the city. I just don’t find it very interesting. If I were younger and into going out to clubs and bars and for dinner frequently I’d probably feel differently but as an old penny-pincher there’s just not much of interest there. I’m hoping being near Wilmington and the water will get me out of the house a lot more. Since we lost Lola I can go weeks without leaving the apartment complex, and days without leaving the apartment. My body is starting to pay the price for all this…sitting.
I’m filing this post under Pointless Rambling because wow, if ever a post was pointless, it’s this one. I think I only wrote it to give myself a break from packing. Now to go fill another cardboard box with books I’ll probably never read!
Man, I miss the old days of Twitter. Before it became a hell hole, and even before it became a giant advertising venue. When it was just a bunch of nerds talking about random stuff all day, every day. It was like a community snowball. You’d have a few people you followed and then you’d follow some of the people they followed and pretty soon you had this nice community of folks to talk with.
Then Ashton Kutcher discovered Twitter and that was the start of the end. Soon the rest of hollywood was there, then the politicians, then every brand had a twitter handle and the noise level grew and grew. And then, y’know, Musk.
I’ve tried other services and the only one that really stuck was Google Plus, but then Google shut that down. The rest all seemed transitory or made finding a community so hard it wasn’t worth the effort.
Eventually I settled on Mastodon, and that was good for a while until my interests diverged from that of ‘the gang’ I was following. It was the sin of finding AI fun and interesting that did it. No longer did I feel comfortable talking about things I was interested in. I’m adding AI to religion and politics as the topics you should never discuss in public!
So I moved to Bluesky and using that has been pretty much like shouting into the void. Very few people respond in any way. There are maybe 3 or 4 people I interact with their every so often. Maybe its me? Maybe I’m not putting sufficient effort into making connections?
Oddly the one place I now use more than anything else is Facebook. I wound up there through a round-about path. One of the generative AI services I use gives your free credits if you post your creation on Instagram, so I started doing that even though I don’t actually use Instagram. But I didn’t realize posting to Instagram also posts to Facebook. I’d forgotten I even HAD the Facebook account (created when I got Quest VR and it required a Facebook account). But folks I’ve known for decades started reacting to my posts so I went over there to respond and find I actually have more interactions there than anywhere else (tho still not much).
Still, it’s nothing like the old Twitter. I remember joining others in live tweeting events like gaming dog and pony shows or infamously bad movies like Sharknado. It was like watching something in an auditorium with a bunch of friends shouting comments to each other while somehow not distracting from the main stage.
Anyway, I guess we’ve moved on from those times. And maybe it’s OK. I probably spend my time more productively now than when I was heavily into social media. I watch a lot of informational YouTube, or do online classes and things like that. Or I code on hobbiest projects. None of these are earth shattering changes but I guess they feel slightly more productive (though not as fun) as talking with friends.
Anyway, on the off chance anyone has noticed that I don’t post often on ‘the socials’ these days, now you know why. But I am good, things are good. We’re excited about the upcoming move. We still miss our Lola but other than that, knock on wood, we are doing pretty well all in all. And PartPurple is still on Mastodon so if anything dramatic happens to us she’ll probably share it.
In the meantime I’ve moved my AI and tech discussions over to my other blog, Smith Talks Tech. Since I know AI upsets a lot of people I figured it made sense to separate it from my gaming talk here at Dragonchasers.
I’ll resist the urge to add an AI generated image to the top of this post out of respect for anyone on Mastodon who happens to follow the link here, since I do think I’ll share this post over there as a kind of official “So long, thanks for all the good times, see you again when the wheel turns.”
If you were to play Compulsion’s South of Midnight in a wireframe mode, devoid or art or sound, it would feel pretty ordinary. At its core it’s a fairly standard third person platformer. As the camera floats behind your character, you traverse along mostly linear levels, earning new movement skills as the game progresses. In fixed areas there is combat; you have to beat these fights to move forward. And that’s pretty much it.
Honestly this is not my preferred genre any more. I crave, at minimum, a semi-open world where I at least have the illusion that my choices matter. In fact as I was realizing this I wondered how present-day me would respond to a game like the Uncharted series; I LOVED those games back when I played them but I wonder if I still would today.
When the waters rise, the cows start to climb, I guess!
Anyway, back to South of Midnight. I loved this game, mostly because of its art style, music and story. It’s the story of Hazel, a young girl living on the outskirts of the Louisiana bayou with her mother. She and her mom get into an argument as they’re getting ready to evacuate from the path of incoming hurricane. The mother sends Hazel to check on some neighbors. While she is gone, their entire house is swept away by the rising flood waters. Hazel, who is a successful runner in school, chases after the house but can’t catch it. Driven by loss and guilt (due to the fight) she plunges into the swamp and into a mystical, creepy and eerily beautiful world that she’d been unaware of.
Dear Fiber Arts friends: Don’t get too hung up on the fact that they call her a weaver when really she is mostly a spinner
It turns out Hazel is a Weaver, a kind of magic user. Her gear, as she finds it, is related to fiber arts: over-sized crochet hooks, spindles and distaffs. Each comes with a new skill. By the end of the game Hazel will be double jumping, wall-running, grapple hooking and gliding to get from one spot to the next.
This gear is all one and done; you don’t ever replace it or anything. Hazel has some skills that can be leveled up via a currency called “Floofs” which she earns via combat or some light exploring. You can spend these floofs to level up skills. In my playthrough I unlocked all but one skill so floofs are fairly plentiful. Aside from the skills and the equipment (all of which is found very early) the only other character progression is increasing the size of your health bar via collectibles. There are no levels or exp or anything of that nature.
Combat is against “haints” — spectral creatures in various shapes and sizes. For the most part it is melee-based combat, and when an enemy’s health bar hits zero Hazel can “unravel” them and get a burst of health from doing so. There’s a lock-on camera that I found hampered me more than free aiming. Once the enemies in an area are conquered Hazel can untie a knot which dissolves walls of “stigma” — a mass of boils and thorns that tend to block Hazel’s path.
Here’s a random 60 seconds of combat to give you an idea of what it is like:
In between all this are some boss fights and some chase sequences. Each boss fight has some kind of mechanic you have to figure out but the game is pretty liberal with hints.
I had some technical issues with the game; there are some invisible walls here and there that will prevent you from making a jump that otherwise seem manageable, and there were a lot of times when I felt I was getting some input lag or just missed button presses. I feel like maybe they tried to put too many actions on too few buttons. None of this was game breaking or anything, but it made the combat, in particular, feel a bit frustrating. I eventually turned down the difficulty so I could focus on the story.
Itchy has lived in the swamp all his life, and the man has seen some things…
And the story is really good. Along her way Hazel encounters various creatures from the tall tales of the bayou. I’m honestly not sure how many of these are real stories and how many are made up, but my Mississippi-raised partner recognized at least some of them. There’s a boy who has turned into a tree, and a grieving mother who has turned into a kind of sea monster. Hazel is “helped” on her journey by a catfish the size of a school bus. Most of the stories are sad and the best Hazel can do is to try to give these spirits and creatures some kind of peace. Oh and her rather horrific-looking home-made childhood doll, Crouton, can now come alive and travel into tiny burrows inhabited by rabbits having tea and other such Wonderland-ian scenes, to get to areas Hazel can’t get to on her own.
The sound design is really good too. There’s a wide variety of folksy, bluesy swampy music and the voice acting is top notch and authentic. Heck there’s even a dance number. I thought about posting a video of that in this post but I think it is better appreciated if you experience it in context.
I also want to talk about Options. There are SO many. There are 5 difficulty levels (I played on #2 because of my combat issues) but additionally there are options to just skip the boss fights, or to skip the running sequences. You can even skip combat completely if you want. There are just a ton of options so you can tweak the game to be comfortable no matter what kind of gamer you are.
It’s not a very long game; my playthrough (and you know I am Mr. Slow Gamer) was under 14 hours. There are no real gameplay reasons for a second playthrough unless you just want to experience the story again. So keep that in mind. But damn, is it ever good. One of the better games I’ve played this year.
Sad stories are everywhere. Who lost these beloved toys?
In last month’s recap I was bummed because I hadn’t finished any games in spite of my best efforts. Better news this month as I finished a few! Huzzah! With the deck cleared I was ready to decide what came next, and decided to try to do better about making use of Playstation Plus Extra, and to a lesser extent, Game Pass (I already play a fair number of Game Pass titles, actually). Also, I need to get more selective about what I get hooked on. There are SO many really really good games out there; arguably more than I have time to play. Mixing in “OK” games that I stick with out of stubbornness is starting to seem silly. It wasn’t too many years ago that I never finished ANY games and I made a concentrated effort to get better about that, and I think maybe I’ve swung too far the other way. Time to work on a happy medium and if I get to 15 or 20 hours in a game and I know I have a LONG way to go and the game is just “OK” it’s time to cut my losses and move on to something I enjoy more.
Final note: I was extra special bad about remembering to take screenshots this month. Sorry for the wall of text!
Playing
Finished Horizon Forbidden West, including the DLC, but didn’t go for the Platinum trophy or anything like that. There were even still areas of the map that I’d never visited, but by the time the DLC was over, I had had more than my fill of the world. Mind you I’ll definitely play Horizon #3, whenever it comes, but I do think Forbidden West was a bit too much of a good thing.
Finished Atlas Fallen and even wrote about it. This is a great example of what I was talking about in the intro. It was an OK game but I was pretty sick of it by the end and it’s not like I walked away bursting with fond memories of playing it or anything like that. I should have walked away earlier. The feather in my cap of saying “I finished” isn’t so fancy as to be worth the time I spent playing.
Finished The Gunk. I remember when The Gunk came out it was kind of a poster child for Xbox Game Pass, because it was a smaller game that, MS argued, might not do so well selling as a stand alone title but people would play it on Game Pass. Or something? Does anyone else remember that or am I inventing it? Anyway The Gunk has you exploring an alien world, using your vacuum cleaner arm to hoover up this gloppy substance called The Gunk. Early on it has the same satisfying feeling as playing Power Wash Simulator, only as you explore there are environmental puzzles to solve, most of them based on sucking things up and then throwing them. I didn’t track my time but How Long to Beat says 4-6 hours, and yet I still felt like it overstayed its welcome. The game got buggier the farther in I got, and they introduce some combat which always felt awkward as heck. The puzzles themselves were near perfect for me though. I never had to look anything up, but I was stumped for a bit a few times. So for me, perfect level of difficulty. But it just started feeling repetitive towards the end. Maybe if I’d spent a long Saturday session playing through I’d feel differently. I started this one in 2022 or something and finished earlier this week. 🙂
Just doing a bit of cleaning in The Gunk
Finished Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition and that was a surprise. It’s the first time I’ve ever finished a Borderlands game. It was only 1 class and once the story was done, so was I, but still…this was the month I finally ‘got’ Borderlands. So much so that…
Started playing Borderlands 2 and I’m so far enjoying it quite a bit. I played almost all the classes until level 10 or so and then decided on the Technomancer (??). The little girl with the robot buddy. She does feel like Easy Mode but she makes me chuckle and isn’t as annoying as some of the player characters are. It’s been fun meeting characters I know of from a general awareness of Borderlands and overall, it’s just a fun game to churn through.
Warhammer Chaosbane was the first game I applied my new philosophy too. I have it via PS Plus and have had it installed forever. Figured I’d better play it in case it leaves (I can never remember which games are in the rotating collection and which are “permanent as long as you have PS+” collection). I did so, and spent about 14-15 hours and got to level 35 and the 3rd major area and it was… fine. But it really felt like going through the motions. It’s an ARPG so it’s probably more fun with friends, but in some ways it felt half finished, too. For instance you pick up gold from enemies and are awarded gold for quest completions but I never found a single thing to SPEND gold on. When you enter a new area you’ll be told “We have merchants and shrines if you need them” but neither is anywhere to be found. Anyway, point is I thought “This just feels like killing time.” so I stopped playing and deleted it to free up some space.
Death Stranding is another game I really want to finish, and I want to do so before Death Stranding 2 comes out later this year. This is my 3rd attempt to finish this game. What’s strange is that I REALLY like it but it takes a certain amount of inertia to get me to boot it up. It always feels like a game that is going to be kind of exhausting to play, though it really isn’t so I’m not sure why I feel that way towards it. Anyway if you aren’t familiar, Death Stranding has a strong asymmetrical multiplayer aspect where you can build things in the game world that other players can take advantage of, and vice versa. This far after launch the world isn’t quite as busy as it was when I first played when the game initially released, so when DS2 comes out I want to be ready to jump right in and run with the invisible-but-definitely-there crowd.
(The header image of this post is from Death Stranding, with Sam checking out a giant hologram/chirogram of a Tallneck from Horizon Zero Dawn/Forbidden West.)
Watching
Arcane (Netflix) I’d watched the first season of this when it came out, but now I’ve got PartPurple hooked too. We’re watching the whole series and damn is it ever well done!!
Mythic Quest (Apple TV+) I’ve loved this show since episode 1 and so far my opinion hasn’t changed. I’d love to know what non-gamers think about it.
Reading
Finished Angel Fire East, book 3 in Terry Brook’s “Word & Void” series. I liked it better than book #2. Each of the 3 books in this series takes part over a holiday weekend and about ten years apart. Book 1 was 4th of July and the events took place in a large park in a small town, where the townsfolk played softball, picnicked and watched fireworks, all of which was quite relatable to me. Book 2 took place around Halloween in Seattle and the holiday didn’t really factor into it much, nor did Seattle feel as fully formed as the park in book #1. In book 3 we’re back to the park and small town only now it is Christmas and a snow storm and while there was a bit too many words spent on how many clothes our characters needed to put on before they went outside, it once again felt like a place I could see in my mind’s eye. As far as these being “Pre-Shannara” there was really nothing here to link the two worlds as far as I’m aware. Still, overall as a series I’d give these a thumbs up, but just a basic thumbs up, not a super enthusiastic thumbs up. They were enjoyable but ultimately kind of forgettable.
Armageddon’s Children is the next book in the Shannara series. We’re still in our world, though it is on its last legs. The year is around 2100 and the Earth has been ravaged by war, polution and disease. I was about a third of the way through it when I read a scene that I’m almost CERTAIN I have read before, so I’m thinking maybe I read this series back in the day. On the other hand it isn’t THAT old (published in 2006) and I’d like to think I can remember back that far. So we’ll see. Maybe I read an excerpt or something.
One of the only good things about getting old is that you can re-read or re-watch things from like 40 years ago and it’s like you’re experiencing them for the first time all over again!! LOL
So yup, that’s February. The world is a dumpster fire, but at least I had a pretty good month of gaming. Hey I take the wins where I can get them!!
So I’ve been playing a good bit of Guild Wars lately. My new character has about 24 hours under their belt and is level 60-ish. For most of that time I’ve been doing what I normally do: treating a MP game as if it were single player, albeit with more interesting NPC AI. (In other words, I treat other players as NPCs basically.)
I have pretty severe social anxiety which gets worse and worse the older I get. I’ve worked from home for 12 or 13 years now and since I work full time and my partner doesn’t, she is who runs the errands and goes shopping and stuff. I can go weeks without leaving the apartment complex and days without talking to anyone other than her and people at work. And the thing is, I’m pretty happy like this. Most people tend to bother me (or at least that’s what I tell myself) so I’m pretty happy being left alone, as a general rule.
I actually enjoy playing games with others as long as I don’t have to talk. That’s part of why I stuck with Fallout 76 so long. LOTS of public events but hardly anyone uses voice chat and there is no text chat. So virtually all communication is done via emotes.
So anyway Guild Wars 2, being a PC game, of course has text chat though maybe because I’m in the beginner areas, I don’t really see it used much. Once in a while someone shouts out some coded message about a train that I assume is telling everyone to come join a group to steamroll world bosses and such, but I don’t understand the lingo and anyway I’ve been too focused on the story for now to pay much attention.
Thursday night I found myself waiting for a mob to spawn with another character and we started to chat a bit while we waited. This was a MUCH higher level character and when they learned I was newly returned to Guild Wars 2 they started showing me their mounts and stuff, then asked me if I’d done any of the puzzles. While I’ve heard of the puzzles I didn’t know much about them and said as much. This person then took me under their wing and for the next hour, at least, they showed me a couple of puzzles, gave me a ton of tips on how movement and jumping works in GW2, rezzed me when I fell and teleported me along when I started getting frustrated. It was a lovely time and at some point they followed me and said they’d say “Hi” the next time they saw me. I followed them back, making us “Friends.”
I was so happy when I logged off. I’d actually had a conversation with someone I didn’t know, and had really enjoyed it.
Friday was the first day in a week I didn’t log into Guild Wars 2. Just didn’t feel like it, I told myself. But I knew the truth. I was really anxious that my new ‘friend’ would be online and would say “Hi” and possibly even want to show me more puzzles. Or just to talk, who knows? The possibility just caused my anxiety to go through the roof. As much as I’d enjoyed the hour I spent with them, I was anxious to get on with the story. But I also didn’t want to say “No thanks” to someone offering to teach me things. It seemed rude. So my solution was “Just don’t log in.”
Ridiculous, right? First of all I’m sure this person has much better things to do than drop everything and teach me how to jump around in the game. Second, I’m sure anyone would understand if I said “Thank you so much, but I’d really like to focus on the story tonight.” I feel like I should be more worried about “Will this person actually ever say hello” rather than “Oh, too much human contact… do not want.”
And this isn’t a one-time thing for me. Often when I get excited about an online game I decide “I need to find a guild to join.” Once I do, I stop playing because I don’t want to have to say “Hello” or “Goodbye” or in general talk to anyone. Heck I do the same thing on consoles, often toggling my account to show as offline so no one asks me to do anything. Even though on the rare instances where I DO join someone else in a game, I generally have a great time.
Anyway, back to the current situation and Guild Wars 2…
Eventually, quite late, I did finally log in and this person wasn’t even online, so how I would’ve handled it remains a mystery. But I’m really disappointed with myself for taking such a positive interaction and managing to turn it into a source of stress and worry. Not really sure how to “fix” this but my gut says “Just get out there and force yourself to talk to people more.” would be a good place to start. When I was younger I was VERY social and was out at clubs and bars all the time. Knew folk every where I went. Spent a few years as a bartender, spending hours chatting with the regulars while serving drinks. Then I was a magazine writer who was constantly going places and interviewing people, or spending all day on the phone chatting. And I LOVED that job.
So I know this isn’t, y’know, genetic. This is learned behavior. Or un-learned behavior, as the case may be. Maybe by kind of putting this out on the Internet it’ll give me an incentive to put my money where my mouth is and actually force myself to interact with people.
Preface: The following post is a personal diary/timeline of dealing with a leak in our apartment. I’m just posting it to remind myself why we need to move. Probably not of much interest to most!
Tuesday, January 30th 2024 — I notice the carpet in front of the utility room floor is damp. The utility room floor seems basically dry though. This happened a few days after a freak warm, very wet spell caused us to fire up the air conditioning in January and I came to the conclusion that that A/C condensation drain had backed up and spilled over, which has happened in the past. We used a carpet cleaner and some towels to pull up as much of the water as we could and directed a large fan at the wet spot. Figured that was the end of it.
Wednesday, Jan. 31st — In the morning the carpet had gotten more wet. So much for the A/C hypothesis. We contacted building maintenance. They came over quite promptly, looked around and decided they needed to call a plumber. The plumbers also arrived pretty quickly. They disconnected the hot water heater so they could move it and get behind it. After an hour or so they told us the leak was “in the slab” and they’d have to come back to fix it. The utility room floor is concrete and the water line runs up through the concrete, and the leak, they said, was below the surface of the concrete. This means they have to break up the concrete to get to the pipe to fix the leak. This is not good news. They leave. Then a water extraction team arrives, uses a super powerful vacuum to suck up the water, they pull up the edge of the carpet and stick the outflow of a large fan under it. These things are LOUD and basically the whole carpet starts billowing up which puzzles the heck out of Lola. They leave. We wait. Near the end of the day we contact maintenance who tells us they “have to get approval from corporate” to fix the leak due to the cost. What the hell? It isn’t an optional repair unless you’re going to condemn the apartment! Then they tell us the plumbers and someone called “Leak Finders” will be arriving the next day. So now we’re living with 2 fans running and basically have to shout to hear each other speak.
Carpet drying fan similar to the one our guys used. They lift an edge of the carpet and stick the outflow under it.
Thursday, Feb. 1st — Nothing happens except the carpet water extraction team comes back. This time they take the door of the utility room off its hinges, pull up more of the carpet and tack it down around the fan, creating a really efficient ‘tunnel’ to fight the flood. We tell the maintenance guys no one has come and they assure us the experts have been called and we should sit tight. Another night of extremely loud fans.
Friday, Feb 2nd — Carpet water extraction team comes yet again, expresses disbelief that the leak is still active. They’re like family by this point. “See ya guys, have a great weekend.” AGAIN we tell maintenance that nothing has happened and they express surprise that no one has been out, even though we’d told them, several times, that no one had. At almost 5 pm some dude rolls up to check out the leak. He wrecks the set up the water extraction team had made (not really his fault, he had to get in and out of the utility room) and tells us the leak is in the slab. Exactly the same thing we’d been told on Wednesday. He leaves. Nothing from maintenance, until I see the head guy walking towards his car to leave for the weekend so I collar him. He tells me they have had a meeting “with corporate” to advise them of the situation and are waiting to hear back. He assures me that he’s going to be in on Saturday and so is the person in the leasing office we’ve been working with, and we’ll get an update then. He also says that we will probably have to relocate while the work gets done. For how long? No idea? 2 days? 2 weeks? 2 months? Not a clue. Another night of loud fans.
Saturday, Feb 3rd — Nothing happens. We finally call the leasing office (the maintenance guy never showed, or if he did he got in and out without talking to us) and they ask if our carpet is wet. What the F? Our carpet is soaked and it has been wet since Tuesday. They act like this is a surprise. We say yes and they say they’ll get the water extraction emergency team out. At about 5 pm some dude shows up with a giant dehumidifier. This thing is big enough that it is on wheels and it has an outflow pipe that has to drain somewhere, so he sets it up outside the bathroom that is off the kitchen. It too is loud. The guy leaves. The water continues to spread. I think about what our electric bill is going to be this month. We’re trying to hold it back with towels and the carpet cleaner (which sucks up some of the water but not much). We start searching for a new apartment and find something that sounds good to both of us. We send off an email to learn more.
Sunday, Feb 4th — The water has spread to where you can no longer skirt around it. As you walk across our living room the carpet is wet enough that water squishes up between your toes, like some kind of urban swamp. I start packing our stuff up. We do our best to hold back the advance using the carpet cleaner but it’s like bailing out a boat with a teacup, while the boat is still leaking.
Monday, Feb 5th — Carpet team came. Different team from last week. Last week’s team was excellent. Today’s was useless. All they did was turn up the dehumidifier. At this point the water is about 50% across the living room floor. We’ve moved everything we can but we’re out of room (we have a lot of stuff). Then maintenance shows up with someone “to get a 2nd opinion” even though 2 different plumbing teams visited last week. They decide to go check the next door apartment (since sometimes their leaks seep under the walls into our apartment) and then melt away without offering any further insight. Next, two trucks from a place called Leak Locators roll up. They go in to the utility closet. One of them is a real leak whisperer. He turns off all the fans and listens. “I don’t hear anything”. Then THEY go next door. Everyone is stumped until they hook up an air tank to the water line and pressurize it, and I clearly hear gurgling coming from the utility closet. The culprit is a single 1/2″ cold water line that runs to the downstairs bathroom. Of course these guys aren’t here to actually FIX it, they just find it. So now we wait, again, for the plumbers to come and fix it. Everyone seems to think they can “Just cap that line off and run it above ground” meaning they won’t have to break up the concrete slab. Once again, the waiting begins… we still are flooded, though.
Monday afternoon, everything shifted. First a team came to cut a hole in the sheetrock so they could dry out inside the walls, and to replace the carpet. Which seemed odd considering the leak was still leaking but whatevs. They needed me to move the entertainment center which was still all wired up, so I frantically started tearing out plugs and cables and moving stuff into the kitchen or far corners of the living room. I just about got that done when yet another plumbing team arrived, this one was here to actually fix the problem. But no one had told them exactly what the issue was. Fortunately I am nosy and had asked the earlier team what was going to have to happen, and I conveyed this info, best I could since I speak English and he spoke Spanish, to the head plumber dude. I tried to get the maintenance staff to come over and talk to these guys but they were AWOL. It took a few hours and a LOT of removed sheetrock but eventually, the leak was fixed! But this was not the end of the adventure. Now we need sheetrock replaced, carpets replaced and basically the apartment put to rights. But at least at this point things were no longer getting WORSE. The plumbers left but the carpet/sheetrock crew did not return, though to be fair it was pretty late in the day by that point. Monday night I spent both purging junk and trying to figure out how/where to move stuff to let them get at as much of the damaged carpet as they need to. Not sure if it’ll be possible.
Tuesday, Feb 6th — As we start the day, no leak, the carpet is semi-dry but disgusting. Inside the utility closet lots of sheetrock has been removed. Bright and early a team arrives to rectify the latter issue. Right behind them comes the plumber. But a different plumber. They are surprised to learn the leak is now fixed. Long story short, the plumbing team who’d showed up Monday is NOT the plumbing team maintenance had expected and now frankly I don’t know who they were! But the fix was inspected and deemed to be solid work so I don’t really care at this point. (I THINK they were affiliated with the sheetrock guys since they all seemed to know each other.)
Next step is the carpet. Management would like to replace the entire carpet but we have so much stuff and no room to put it that it isn’t really viable, so with our OK they’ve decided to patch it. The new carpet will not match the old but we’ll just live with that for now. We still expect to move soon and after we’re out they’ll no doubt replace the whole thing. Bad news is we’re not sure when the carpet repairs will happen and until they do we can’t really put things back to normal. In fact it looks like we’re going to have to move even more stuff for the patching and I’m not sure WHERE we’ll put stuff. We have TOO MUCH JUNK!
Anyway by about 3:00 pm the utility closet was patched and repainted & the door re-hung. Crew did a good job. Bad news was that the carpet guys wouldn’t be out until Thursday. I was hoping for Wednesday but we’ll manage another day of chaos. With no more work until Thursday I put the TV back and hook up the PS5 and put Lola’s bed back to its customary place in front of the TV (which she definitely appreciates) and we have a relatively normal evening.
Wednesday, Feb 7th — Things are feeling semi-normal. With the utility closet completed and the door back on the place was feeling a little less industrial. The only plan for the day was that a crew was going to come and take away the dehumidifier and I’ll be glad to see the end of that monstrosity. My plan for the day was to shuffle around more stuff to make it easier for the crew to patch the carpet, and once again disconnect the PS5 and the TV so we can move the entertainment center out of the way.
Lola included for scale…and because I didn’t want to bother her 🙂
Thursday, Feb 8th — We’d been assured this was the day that the carpet would be patched and we could start returning to normal. I woke up early and moved furniture, jamming everything into one big block on the side of the room and… waited. No one showed. After arguing with @partpurple [she is very much about trusting the process and assuming people will do what they said they would do, I am very much about checking in and nudging things along] about it, we finally contacted the leasing office to find out what was going on at about 11:30. They told us they’d call the company and let us know what was happening and then… more of nothing happening.
After lunch @partpurple went over and wouldn’t leave until she got an update. She was told the carpet team would definitely be there by 3 or to let them know. 3 came around, no team. She called them and was told “they’re just finishing up and they’ll be right over.” They never arrived, of course. We called, we went over. We were told over and over that they’ll be there soon, right up until 6 PM. Maintenance told me “We’re doing everything we can, we have one company we’re approved to use and we’re at their mercy.” I have no idea if this was true or not. End result though, no one showed and another day was lost.
Friday, Feb 9th — Today the story changes once again. Now we’re told the carpet company needs some kind of release form before they can do work in an occupied apartment. This is the first we’ve heard about this. The property manager has to sign it, but our property manager is out of work with a broken ankle so… once again we are screwed. Now this property is trying to get a sister property’s property manager to sign (they say — at this point I don’t believe a word coming out of their mouths because their story changes like the weather).
A few hours later we get notified that the mystery form is signed and in the hands of the carpet company so they’re willing to do the work. Now they were going to try to get the crew out and we should stand by for an update.
A few hours after that, no update so we nagged them again. And were told the Supervisor (of the carpet company I guess?) ‘admitted they dropped the ball’ and were trying to expedite a crew to come out.
And FINALLY at about 1 pm, a truck rolls up and a couple guys come in to patch the carpet. They were done and gone well before 2 PM, so we spent like 3 days arguing to get guys to come do less than an hour’s worth of work.
What a debacle. But finally we were dealing with stuff we could control. We’d decided to get a new table for the entertainment center. It arrives near 5 pm and @partpurple spends the evening putting it together, finishing near midnight.
Saturday, Feb 10th — I get up early and start setting up the entertainment center again, a bit more thoughtfully than the hodgepodge we use to have. I did some basic cable management and opted to remove devices we hardly use. By about noon I’m done and from there things are more or less back to normal.
Sunday, Feb 11th — We rest, and on Monday things are basically back to normal.
My birthday is next month and apparently I’m celebrating it early because I have been spending SO much money on myself and VR recently. And so far, no regrets.
I’m still doing my VR workouts 4 times a week, hitting all the goals I’ve set for myself and really working up a sweat and getting the heart rate up every time, so in some sense if I squint my eyes and tilt my head just right, this spending is going towards my health and personal well-being. Oh, the lengths we go to justify indulging ourselves!
Of course even that doesn’t justify the really big purchase. In a moment of will-power break down, I ordered the Playstation VR2. I knew after I ordered the prescription lens inserts for it, it was only a matter of time but I didn’t think I’d break down and go for it this soon. But a brief exchange with Bhagpuss got me thinking about how much more time I have when I’ll be fit and able enough to play games so… why keep putting it off? So I ordered it direct from Sony. A few hours later I had second thoughts and logged in to cancel the order but it has already shipped! It arrived next day and I made my peace with the purchase.
I don’t have a lot to say about it as my prescription lenses aren’t here yet (I assumed it’d take like a week for the thing to get here…the overnight delivery was quite a surprise). I had @partpurple 3D print me some lens protectors so I could wear my glasses without any danger of scratching the lenses, but the design isn’t great and they rubbed on my nose enough that it hurt. After one brief session, I decided to try to wait for the prescription lens inserts to arrive.
But new gear means new accessories, so I bought a hard case for it and ordered a ‘comfort strap‘ that a bunch of YouTubers recommended.
None of that means I’m done with the Quest 2 though. As my workouts got more enthusiastic I started having more issues with the visor sliding around and my view of the world going fuzzy as a result. I was using a 3rd party strap (the one that comes with the Quest is kind of crap, but on the plus side Meta designed the Quest 2 to accomodate 3rd party straps) but wanted something better. Today the “BOBOVR M2 Pro Battery Pack Head Strap” arrived and it is really nice. Very comfortable, doesn’t slide around and has an extra battery for if/when my sessions get longer than the Quest 2’s internal battery can handle. [I’ve kind of killed my battery’s health by leaving the Q2 plugged in on standby for like a year straight, so it only holds about an hour’s charge now.] Picture, courtesy of Amazon, at the top of the post.
And then there’s a lighting issue. Even with all our living room lights on, the Quest reports that it’s too dark for good tracking when I use it after dark. Usually I do my workouts early enough that it is still light out but if I want to start doing other VR stuff later in the evening I needed to solve that. So I ordered a couple of IR lights for the living room. The idea being the infrared light won’t bother my eyes but will make tracking better for the headsets. They haven’t arrived yet so how well they work remains to be seen.
So yeah, it has been an EXPENSIVE week thanks to VR. Fortunately my ‘play money’ fund was sufficient to accommodate all this as I’ve been pretty careful about spending for the last few years. Here’s hoping I stick with it after spending all this cash!
