My alt.save.the.planet neighbors with the gargantuan SUV, the bad air-conditioning habit, and the alter to Greta Thunberg have struck again…
Apparently said neighbor saw a field mouse on their deck and put out a few kinds of poison to fix it. See, we need to protect Mother Nature as long as she keeps her shit out of our yards – or something.
Anyway, the end result of this – according to the flyer from the HOA about not using rodent poisons – has killed two hawks and an owl so far.
The flyer doesn’t name names of course, but the flyer did mention they were contacting animal control to evaluate the situation, and a day prior the city was over in the neighbor’s yard picking up her bait stations. So it’s pretty easy math…
We’ve had centralized OS updates in one form or another for about thirty years now, and they still can’t install them when you’re not using the computer…
This morning my MacPro 5,1 that I’m using at work – which runs logged in, 24/7, for a few cron jobs as well as remote access – decided that being as I’d turned the monitor on and fired up my email that it was time to install 12.7.1 whether or not I wanted to.
It literally had all weekend to install this while I wasn’t using the machine…
I remember actually looking forward to Win95 patches, because they legitimately made the OS better – like adding USB support in OSR 2.5. But these days it’s mostly reactionary bug fixing or exploit patching, which isn’t nearly as fun.
It’s been a bit, so I should probably post something for proof of life.
The roommate’s hospital visit on the 9th turned into a fiasco; I delivered him at noon and was back there again at 4pm because they had to cancel the surgery. Apparently, the day before someone from the hospital had sent instructions for pre-op that stated that he needed to stop taking his potassium for the procedure – and then once they got him wheeled into the OR noticed that his potassium levels had crashed…
1.5 on a 3.5 to 5.0 scale…
Low potassium causes heart malfunctions, so they couldn’t operate, and I got to spend the next four hours in the hospital waiting as they valiantly tried to get him back up to at least 3.0.
Anyway, that ended, and they re-scheduled for the 6th of December.
Other than that, I’ve just been busy with work and when not busy with work have been puttering around with a couple video games…
Baldur’s Gate 3 kinda fell flat for me at the end of the third act and I’ve not finished it. Starfield is, well, bad – it’s all of the grindy mission bits of Fallout 4 without any of the inspired storytelling and I got bored in a hurry. World of Warcraft released a bunch of new content, so I’ve been playing that mostly when I’m not building stuff for folks in SL.
On the home front the neighborhood’s HOA settled with their insurance company and a bunch of the local roofs are being redone due to some hail last year, so there’s a lot of heavy equipment, rollaway containers, and teams of roofers all over the place. My house is one that’s getting the roof replaced apparently, so that will be annoying when the time comes.
Oh, and my plan to take next week off didn’t happen either due to the HVAC company we use at work not being able to get their act together last week. So, I have to be in early tomorrow morning to let them into the building and get them access to the roof.
So, back on the 24th I had a tussle with some food poisoning which landed me on antibiotics for ten days. Antibiotics tend to make me woozy and slightly ill, so I don’t get much sleep.
On the 30th my roommate had a guest show up for a week which precluded me from getting any rest. See, I’m a really light sleeper, and having new people in the house making noise more or less keeps me up all night. I was also at the office every day so that my roommate could entertain his guest.
Then Monday the 6th my roommate had a colonoscopy appointment where they insisted on him having a chaperone who stayed in the building for the duration, so I got to spend half the day wandering around the local hospital.
Tuesday the doctor called my roommate and said he was suddenly scheduled for surgery, and to be at the local hospital by noon tomorrow for what will be a 3-4 day stay. So, I’m taking a half-day tomorrow to deliver my roommate to the hospital.
And I expect to be running back and forth as a courier until Monday when they let him out again, and I don’t expect he’ll be in any condition for work next week.
So, maybe by the 20th of this month I’ll get a chance to unwind a bit… Maybe I’ll take the entire week of the 20th off and just sleep… Well, and eat some turkey and ham too. 🙂
Over the years I’ve played a lot of MMOs, and with a couple of notable exceptions such as World of Warcraft, they’ve all become inoperable relics in my game collection. For example, I was looking for something to write about and decided on a random grab from the dead MMO shelf…
And so I present 2007’s “Tabula Rasa”.
If you’re above a certain age, you probably recognize the name attached to this title; Richard Garriott of Ultima fame… AKA “Lord British” himself.
And here’s the back of the box which talks about some of the game’s features:
Now, while I found Tabula Rasa to be engaging and fun – one might even say I liked it – it was the swirl of events, rumors, and stories surrounding the game, Richard Garriott, and NCSoft that were probably more entertaining.
See, Richard Garriott had teamed up with NCSoft to make the game, and somewhere in the middle of development he fucked off to space for a while which wasn’t super helpful. Then NCSoft concocted some story about him leaving the company to tank the game so they wouldn’t have to pay him, which only partially worked… The game did tank, but Lord British sued the crap out of NCSoft for this and won like $30 million in settlement.
Either way the game only ran for like a year before being boarded up and eventually bulldozed to make way for other NCSoft titles.
I think I got my money’s worth out of it though. The box was like $50, and I paid for 8-9 months of the game before it became a ghost town. But during that time I probably sunk a couple hundred hours into the game.
Speaking of boxes, this was late 2007 – back when we still bought games in boxes off of store shelves… Which is something I really miss.
Game stores were a cool place to get your games, because they tended to be full of other gamers and you could be among your people for a bit. That and the physical boxes usually contained a bunch of goodies that went with the game – like maps, books, pins, etc, etc.
Here’s what came in the basic box for Tabula Rasa – along with the receipt from the now long-gone neighborhood Game Stop just because I left it in the box:
The booklet in the lower right is about a half an inch thick and contains lots of artwork, lore, tricks and tips for game mechanics, and other useful items for the game.
So, that was the rise and fall of Tabula Rasa. It was only around for like a year, but it was fun and turned out to be an interesting footnote in gaming history.
There’s a couple of fairly up-scale apartment complexes right near my office; you know the type – one is “modern” and looks like hundreds of various colored cubes stuck together, and the other has stores on the ground level and three floors of apartments above them.
I drive past one of these two every morning on my way in, depending on which way I go. And for the last couple of weeks, without fail, there has been a repossession truck hauling off someone’s car at 6am as I pass the place.
I’ve been driving past these two apartment complexes nearly every day since they were built, and this is the first time I’ve noticed this sort of activity.
I have to guess it’s economic factors making this so prevalent. The same economy that is apparently “perfectly fine” or “on fire” depending on who you talk to. I’m not an economist and tend to get worn out just balancing my own checkbook, so all I can go on is my own observations – and those observations make me think things are pretty screwed up right now.
For example, I like to occasionally stop at the Carl’s Junior on the way into the office and get one of their breakfast burritos and a large drink. Three years ago this ran me about six bucks – this morning it was a few pennies short of ten bucks – and the burrito itself is about three quarters the size it used to be… I thought I was imagining this, but they recently reduced the size of the paper bag they put the food in as well and it became obvious.
And this is pretty much the way it is with everything… My grocery bill has remained steady at about $100 a week for the last few years, but I’m also living on a lot of cheap TV dinners, canned soup, and Raman. Keeping the tank full on the car costs about $40 a week on average and I don’t really go anywhere but the the office. And all of my monthly bills have gone up 10-20 percent for ‘reasons’.
If I wasn’t making 6-figures and splitting my housing costs with a roommate I’m not sure I could make ends meet in this economy. Though I’m certain a good portion of that is living in Denver… I need to get out of this town.
