After nearly 200 hours, I'm finally at the point in Vintage Story where I'm in a position to to the (vintage) story. I have some teleportation stones (from the Ruststones mod) charged up so I can make the dozens-of-miles-long trek north to the Resonance Archive to figure out what's going on with it. I'm glad I discovered there's an overland route, so I don't have to make a canal to the northern ocean. In a couple weeks, I should have a review and I can move on to Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia.

But that's not why I'm writing this post. The real reason is that I'm hitting the same wall I usually hit in these long games. It happened when I played my heavily modded games of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas (each of which took about 200 hours), it happened in Stardew Valley, it happened in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and it's when I start off very excited, and I make big plans, and I stretch out the gameplay as long as I can, and then there comes a time when my motivation just...peters out, and I start rushing headlong toward the end so I can finish. There's no specific point where the switch is thrown, and I can predict when it will happen. In Vintage Story, I had a bunch of plans for what I was going to do when spring finally came again, all the crops I would plant and the upgrades I did to my greenhouse to prepare for it, and now it's looking like it'll be pointless because I'll beat the game before it's warm enough to put any seeds in the ground.

Some of this is just that I'm doing too much of the same thing and want a change. For example, it didn't happen in Baldur's Gate II. Maybe because I played it in bits in between the other things I'm doing. On the other hand, even though there's a whole route and revamped content in Night in the Woods that I haven't done yet, I haven't gone back to it yet after eight years. And this is in contrast with literature--there I often don't want a book to end, and I know some of that is because I write reviews of all the books I read so finishing a book means I have homework, but I also write reviews of all the games I play so there's no difference there. And of course, books obviously don't take 200 hours to read unless you're reading the Talmud or something, and Daf Yomi means you stretch that out like I stretched out my Baldur's Gate II playthrough. So what is it?

Okay, between this paragraph and the previous one I stared out the window for a while and you know, I actually thought of a possible explanation--action. Video games are an active medium, they require you to do things to complete them. Even the most text-heavy visual novel requires you to make a plot-relevant choice occasionally. Books (and TV shows etc) don't require any action, they just require absorption of information. So maybe what I'm actually getting sick of is the repetitive actions, and what's more, the constrained possible range of actions. In Vintage Story I can move blocks around, explore, craft, fight monsters, farm crops, and so on...but there are very few NPCs to talk to, no character sheet to level, no job classes to pick, etc. The mechanics have been basically the same for those entire 200 hours and what I really want is a set of new mechanics. Order of Ecclesia has platforming challenges, gimmick boss fights, and killing monsters for their glyphs. Vintage Story has...well, I've heard it does have a gimmick boss fight but it doesn't have any of the rest of those. It'll be a big change.

You know, I didn't actually expect to come up with a real answer when I sat down to write this, but it also explains why I tend to pick very different games. Just look at the list of games I played in 2024 and you'll notice I never played the same type of game twice in a row. The closest were River City Girls and Kirby and the Amazing Mirror, but the former was a co-op beat-'em-up and the latter was almost a metroidvania, so they were still very different. What I'm looking for is mechanical variety.

Canadian wildfires once again:



If you can't read Japanese, that's 154 on the AQI scale, which is moderate pollution (中程度の汚染), which is not good. I haven't been outside since Wednesday and don't plan to go out unless I have, though Laila is getting pretty annoyed about not being able to go outside.

It's supposed to last for the next couple days. Hopefully that's all--two years ago we lost most of the summer to Canadian wildfires. Hopefully our neighbors to the north can get the fires contained soon and not too much damage is done.

Bandai-Namco: "What are your qualifications?"
Trailer Person: "I spent 2001-2010 making a ton of AMVs."
Bandai-Namco: "Say no more."

Watch on YouTube

Watch in 240p for the best experience.

From mid 00s Animemusicvideos.org removing all Evanescence AMVs due to a Cease & Desist order to this. I wonder if someone carried a grudge all this time?

Twenty years of ACEN! Not all of them, of course--I didn't go from 2009-2011 because I was living in Japan, I didn't go in 2013 because I had a bit of a sour experience in 2012 and that was the point where schoolpsychnerd was deep in the throes of grad school and we had very little money, I didn't go in 2020-2021 because thanks to the Plague Years it didn't happen, and I didn't go in 2022-2023 because 2022 required full masks at all times (which I have no moral objection to, it just didn't sound very fun) and because sashagee was too sick to go and I didn't want to go by myself. But last year I went, and now here we are again.

It's been a while since I stayed at a hotel other than the Hyatt. This year, however, my luck finally ran out--when the hotel lottery happened I failed to get a room at the Hyatt, and then I failed to get rooms at the other hotels I tried. Fortunately, Anime Chicago as a community prepares for this. Several people grabbed extra rooms in the knowledge that there would definitely be people who missed out, and I was able to get one at the Embassy Suites. I've never stayed here before--I've stayed at the Doubletree, and at the Hilton, but this was a first...and honestly I'd go back. The rooms are huge and, more importantly for a couple with a four-year-old, they're suites. There's a front room with a couch, an armchair, a table with more chairs, and a little bar area, then a door between the two connecting rooms, so we don't need to turn all the lights out and immediately go to bed when it's time for Laila to go to sleep. I would say "You can't buy that kind of peace for money" but we obviously did.

And now, the daily accounting.

( Thursday )

( Friday )

( Saturday )

( Sunday )

And now we're home. We're tired. We're sore. sashagee took a five-hour nap just after lunch. But, she's already decided that Uzaki Hana is going to be the cosplay she sticks with--she's going to work on it a bit, get screen-accurate brown boots, get a tighter shirt (she has lost weight since I got the original for her), and maybe get a wig. She expected to wear it a bit and have some fun and was very surprised when multiple people came up to ask her for her picture.

She did say she was a bit suspicious, though. Uzaki-chan is a romantic comedy, but the shirt specifically says "Super huge!" (sugoi dekai), so whenever someone asked for her picture she was like "Hmm..."

The only downside were all the things we couldn't get to. We didn't get to see the Conbini panel and couldn't get into the Oregon Trail panel. We didn't go to the dance on Friday, which it sounds like might have had more music to sashagee's taste. We didn't get to go back to see lightninglychee and stephen_poon again. We didn't try any of the board games at all. We didn't get to see the AMV contest, which as I've repeatedly mentioned, used to be a central event that I always went to. There's always soon much to do and not enough time to do it.

Laila is going to come back with infinite energy and run both of us over. But we had a lovely time with all our friends. Looking forward to ACEN next year!

Yesterday, we went over to a friend's house and her almost four-year-old was using short but full sentences and interacting with her mother in a conversational fashion. All this morning, Laila was barely saying anything. She was throwing tantrums at the drop of a hat, and when we asked her questions she just didn't answer. She would wordlessly whine if anything went wrong and would refuse to do anything by herself, just crying or at most saying "need help! " if anything offered any resistance at all. It was so bad that sashagee called in to the pediatrician and asked them if we could have another speech evaluation. I'm convinced that there's something the first speech evaluator missed and she should have had speech therapy this entire time.

However, this post is much more hopeful than it could have been. Just before lunch, Laila had an accident and we had to spend a bunch of time cleaning her up...but once that was done, it was like the floodgates had opened. At lunch she wanted to spoon miso soup into her cup "all by self!" and she was chatty the entire rest of the day. On the walk to swim class she talked to me the entire time. She went back to using sentences and telling me about things. It was like night and day. She had apparently been using like 80% of her brainpower on holding everything in.

We're still going to get her evaluated because I think it would be good to have confirmation (or not), but we're not nearly as worried as we were. She's just extremely stressed from potty training, the poor girl.

Yet again I am writing about lunch at work. And so it has come to this.

Today the popup restaurant was a barbecue place (too much pig) and tomorrow is a soulfood place (too much pig and shrimp and butter in everything), so I looked at the everyday menu and decided to get a falafel wrap with fries. It was $13 total ($10 for falafel, add fries for $2.25, plus tax), and I thought that wasn't too bad compared to how much a lot of food costs. Well, I'm writing this so you can already tell how it ended.

First of all, I'll say that the fries were good! Crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside, no complaints there other than that I got an enormous amount of them, which I guess is fine because I got my money's worth. The wrap...existed. It was half full of tasteless lettuce to bulk it up, with some small fragments of pickle and tomato. The falafel (and thin bits of hummus) were good, admittedly, but there was no tahini, no pickled beets, no harissa, none of the stuff I'm used to in a falafel wrap. The falafel had no crunch. The menu said it had yogurt in it but I sure didn't taste any.

Next time I'll get the caprese sandwich instead. Will report back when I do.

After the frozen winds of this weekend, today is sunny and 21°C. Yesterday it was 26°C! That's Chicago spring weather for you. I took a walk out on the riverwalk and noticed that the $9 gelato place isn't open yet, which is sad because I would have loved to eat it while sitting out on the giant stairs near the water. That time will come soon enough. The restaurants were open and people were sitting on the tables.

We had a surprise meeting this morning, by which I mean I was caught by surprise by it even though it was in my calendar and had been for months. It was just a standard division meeting that's both not exciting and filled with quote CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY information, but there was a section about AI. The thing that got me was that they mentioned they named an in-house AI assistant after one of the people who works here and even came up with a backronym for it. I looked around to see if anyone else was as uncomfortable with this as I was, and no one seemed to be. Then again, I went on a Butlerian Jihad rant to Laila after she somehow used a hotkey to open up Microsoft CoPilot on my computer-

Me: "[blah blah]...okay Laila? No soulless machines."
Laila: "Okay abba."

and I imagine that makes me a bit of an outlier.

I've restarted my full exercise program after a long time of slacking. I used to do dozens of pushups a week but when I had my appendix out a while back I obviously had to give that up. I got back to walking a bunch almost immediately but by the time I could do pushups again I could only do a fraction of the amount I could do before and of course it was discouraging. Well, discouragement can only go so far, so I put all my exercises into my phone reminders because that's proven to be something that actually motivates me. Now I have exercises six days a week, plus all my walking, so hopefully it'll make a difference. It's definitely a bit of a drag--I am not one of those gym-motivated people, and other than walking I do not ever look forward to exercising. But since I'm middle-aged now, I need to make sure I keep doing it if I want to stay healthy.

Alright, work's over, time to go home.

Today we had a bit of a war.

We do time outs for Laila, and she'll usually take them seriously but sometimes she won't. But today, Laila--in a fit of overflowing emotions, we think--kicked sashagee when she was trying to tell Laila not to wear her new princess shoes on the hardwood floor, and then when sashagee asked for an apology, Laila hit her. So she went to the corner and I went over to sit with her and make sure she would properly apologize. Meaning, that she says what she's apologizing for, because while we understand her and we know she didn't mean it, other people, especially other kids, don't understand her and are not going to understand that.

And we were there for four hours.

We think the big problem is that she didn't want to admit that she hurt mama. She would easily say "I'm sorry mama!" and then when we asked "for what?" she would say "for... for... for..." and get increasingly more panicked and emotional each iteration until she started crying. When we first went into the corner, she was like "Oh I'll just say I'm sorry and get out" and was laughing and trying to stand up and she got quieter and quieter as she realized that I was treating this very seriously and she would not be allowed to stand up (except for potty trips) and would have to sit here until she apologized properly. And after she first time she stalled out when going over to apologize to sashagee, I told her that she would have to tell me what her apology was going to be first before she went over to mama and she wasn't happy about that at all.

In the end, we got there. She never did say "I'm sorry for kicking you" but she did say "I'm sorry I won't hurt mama I promise," which helps confirm our opinion that she was hesitating because she felt so guilty. And while I wasn't there in the evening because I had another event, sashagee told me that Laila spent the rest of the evening giving her hugs and kisses.

Is this going to be a magical breakthrough? Of course not, Laila is three. But teaching her that hitting and kicking is not a valid way to express frustration is very, very important, especially since she's starting preschool in the fall. If that means I have to sit with her for hours and hours, I will.

Last night, sashagee and I went to a Sailor Moon musical.

I know very little about Sailor Moon and have no emotional attachment to it--I haven't seen a single episode of the original series, though I have seen Crystal, and I was not one of the people who grew up watching and bonded with it as a young child. sashagee is, though, so as soon as she heard that there was going to be a musical performance she asked if I wanted to go with her, and I said yes.

Our original plan was for me to come home, us to eat dinner, and then head down there and get to the doors around 7 p.m. I heard from multiple people that the merch line was insane and sold out extremely quickly, though, so mid-afternoon we changed our plans. She came down and met me after work, in her cutest red dress with her hair in odangos, and we went to Brightwok Kitchen, which was dairy-free, gluten-free, mostly egg-free, and thus while not technically heḥshered I at least felt comfortable eating there during Pesaḥ (my original thought was some other Asian restaurant but soy sauce has wheat in it so that was a no-go). We got some delicious rice bowls, checked to see if the tea store was still there (it was not), and then walked to the Chicago Theatre to stand in line. The line wasn't too long and we lucked out by all the existing VIP people moving through their line, so the back part of the main line where we were was routed through the VIP line instead. We immediately went through the merch line, got through in only a few minutes, and sashagee bought a branded lightstick (lit up in multiple colors and said セーラームーン on it) and a poster, and since we still had almost an hour and a half before the musical began, we bought popcorn and sat up on a bench on the balcony hallway and waited. We saw MomoManLove very briefly, talked with pearl.nongluk and bradford.bensontaylor about their struggles with the merch line, and saw gracielizabeth and pezroan waiting in the merch line which now extended all way down the downstairs hall and up seven(!) flights of stairs. They eventually got down to the front and came back, only to inform us that we were extremely lucky because the branded lightsticks had sold out and only generic Kpop-style ones were left. gracielizabeth had gotten VIP tickets so she was seated in the front with the bigwigs, whereas we were up on the balcony, and as the timer ticked down we took our seats.

The musical was fun! Which is to say, I had a nice time, but I was not one of the people screaming when Usagi did her first costume change and said the famous 月に代わって、お仕置きよ！ (tsuki ni kawatte, oshioki yo, "In the name of the moon, I will punish you!") The first half was a condensed version of the Dark Kingdom arc, which I've heard all of these musicals do, but it makes sense--being the first arc, there's no backstory you have to assume the audience knows, and it's the most theatrically-dramatic part with the love across lifetimes and the forces of the Dark Kingdom, here depicted as pre-War-style with neon and big band music. The sailor senshi fought song guys, Tuxedo Mask threw roses--all special effects were done on a giant screen behind the stage, where the supertitles were also displayed---they went up and down platforms and had fight scenes, and saved the world. If you're familiar all with Sailor Moon you know what happens. If you're not familiar with Sailor Moon, you would probably be in for a rough time because a bunch of stuff was cut out and I would have had very little idea what was happening if I hadn't already seen Sailor Moon Crystal. As it was, I kept thinking, "Wait, doesn't the villain have shitennō? Where are they?" (they were entirely cut)

The second half was a series of idol concert-style musical numbers. Most of them were reprises from the show, and the whole time I kept thinking, what about the theme song? There was a brief wordless version at near the beginning but everyone knows it and they haven't done it yet.

( Well, of course they were saving it for the finale )

We left and met up with people out in the lobby, but everyone decided not to go out to anywhere afterwards. Instead, we all just went home. On the way back, sashagee kept saying how amazing it was and how much she loved it and how glad she was she managed to get one of the coveted branded lightsticks. She gave it 10/10. I wouldn't go that far for the aforementioned reasons that I have no deep connection with Sailor Moon, but it was still a bunch of fun. Be prepared for the idol show, though, and make sure you know the plot. Otherwise you'll be lost.

No, not, Pesaḥ, that's on Saturday.

So a few years ago, I went on to the website of my internet provider (RCN) and noticed that the plan I had at the time, 150 mbps, did not show up anywhere as an available plan. So I called in, and they confirmed that it was not an available plan and that I could upgrade to 400 mbps and pay $40 per month less than I was paying at the time, so I told them that I wanted to do that. Well, over time the price started creeping up slowly more and more until it was more than I was paying before, and I went online and checked the prices and, lo and behold, the 400 mbps plan that I upgrades to no longer exists. So I picked up the phone and I called in to RCN and we went through the same speech again. I upgraded to 600 mbps for $30 less than I'm paying now, and I'm sure in the future I'm sure I'll have to upgrade once again to 800/900/1gb for $25-40 less than I'm paying now.

This feels like a valid use case for AI, honestly. Check the website of $SERVICE_NAME every month, see if there's a better plan than the one you're signed up for now, sign up for it. Have the AI talk to the company chatbot so I don't have to speak to a soulless machine.

Well, that would work if I hadn't had to talk to a real person to make the switch. She said her name was Mary (based on her accent, it was not) but uniquely, and the reason I write about it, is that she asked me about my day while she was looking something up. That doesn't happen often anymore and now that there are so many soulless machines you have to talk to on the phone, it was nice to have a moment of human interaction. I told her that Laila was playing in the room nearby and I felt lucky that I was able to work from home and see my daughter, and I hoped that she hadn't had to deal with too many angry customers over the course of the day so far. She said she hadn't. Hopefully that's still true.