2024 in gaming

2025-Jan-02, Thursday 13:18
dorchadas: (FFX Yuna Dancing)
Back at the beginning of 2024, after 2023 and where I only beat three games each year, I decided to take on a challenge--I would play one game each month and write about. I figured that was greater than in previous years, but not high enough that it would cause me a lot of trouble. Well, half of that was true--it was rough some months, and greatly constrained the sort of games I could play, but I did it:

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It was fun--the time constraints meant I played games I've been wanting to play for a while like Robin Hood or Cadence of Hyrule instead of getting bogged down for months by a game like Final Fantasy VIII. That's for this year, where I plan to play Final Fantasy III and maybe V. Right now I've gotten lost in Vintage Story so that will probably be my next review.

Short games were fun but it's time for some longer ones.
dorchadas: (Kirby Celebrating with food)
New Year's meme time.

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Happy New Year to everyone!
dorchadas: (Maedhros A King Is He (No Text))
No New Year's Eve parties for us this year. [instagram.com profile] sashagee had her wisdom teeth out last Friday, and while they said she might be mostly recovered after a few days, it's taking her quite a while, and I don't want to leave her alone. But the more proximate reason is that the weekend before last, I came down with what I thought was food poisoning that completely knocked me out on Sunday. A couple days later I was feeling better and thought everything had passed...and then Laila had a fever and some stomach troubles. And now [instagram.com profile] sashagee has the same thing plus most of what she can eat is dairy (because it's soft), so she's having a very rough time. Today is the first day she really left better since Friday, but it's obvious that we had the norovirus that's going around. We don't want to spread that to anyone else at any party we go to, so a quiet celebration at home it is.

I appreciate how that article calls it "wretched." Stick it to the norovirus!

I did beat Citizen Sleeper, though, the final game in my twelve games in twelve months goal. Review tomorrow or the day after. Now next year, to relax and play some longer games I've been holding off on.

Because of that, I’m behind on my 年賀状 (nengajō, "new year's cards"). I normally at least have a bunch of them addressed by now but it's going to have to wait until tomorrow. I can spend a chunk of the day doing that and then take them out and put them in the mailbox to be picked up the next day. It's later than I like, but not too late--in Japan, 年賀状 are all held by the mail and then delivered on New Year's Day. We have no such custom here, so I'll send them out and they'll be delivered when they make it, with another load to take to work and pass out there. It's fortunate that I’m always the last to leave. And the last to come in, don't get the wrong idea.

Have a Happy New Year everyone!

2023 in gaming

2024-Jan-04, Thursday 12:35
dorchadas: (Cowboy Bebop Spike Gun Bang)
Here are all the games I beat in 2023, in chronological order:

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dorchadas: (Kirby Celebrating with food)
As is tradition, here is the New Year's meme I've posted every year for...a decade now? Quite a long time, anyway.

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Happy New Year to everyone!
dorchadas: (Chicago)
In a striking change to most years, the weather has not plunged like 30 degrees after the new year and the weather report even shows that it's above freezing for the next week! On the one hand it's nice to be walking to work and not have to button my coat--the universal sign that winter has arrived--but on the other hand a warm Chicago winter is not exactly an encouraging sign for the global temperature mean. Nonetheless, it's supposed to be 5°C today so maybe I'll take a walk along the river at lunch.

We finished all of our 年賀状 (nengajō, "New Year's Cards") this week--we were waiting on a few addresses. In Japan, 年賀状 are strictly formal without much personalization at all. They have a few set phrases offering good wishes for the new year, you stamp your personal seal on them by the dozen, and drop them in the mail. The mail carriers pick them up and hold them during the month of December and then deliver them in a blizzard--something like two billion 年賀状--on New Year's Day. They're premade and all you need to do was address them, and in past years that's mostly what I did, though I did translate the Japanese on them for the benefit of the mostly non-Japanese-speaking recipients. This year, [instagram.com profile] sashagee wanted the absolutely cutest 年賀状 out there, so I presented her with a few candidates and she went with this one:

Nengajou 2023

The year of the rabbit! It doesn't include the rest of the standard text, usually something like 旧年中は大変お世話になりました。今年も宜しくお願い致します。 ("You have been of great assistance to me in the last year and I look forward to our continued good relations in the new year"), but I suggested that we modify the tradition a bit and put photos on our family on it. I'm certainly never going to send anyone a Christmas card but there is social value in updating your friends on how your family looks, so I put a photo on there from our trip to the arboretum and [instagram.com profile] sashagee wrote a simple good wishes standard message (shades of the standard 年賀状). I ordered fifty of them and that's usually more than enough for my purposes but this year we ran out! Next year we'll have to order a hundred since we're sending 年賀状 to [instagram.com profile] sashagee's family and friends now which expands the circle of recipients by a lot. Next year, I'll be writing 年賀状 for a while at the end of December. At least two people working on them makes it faster.

I'm still working on my psychic powers mod for Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead and last night I spent two hours trying to solve a problem. I decided to make the starting Teleporter profession an "Imperial Terran Navy Liaison," a psychic from an alternate dimension where Earth has an interstellar empire who got dumped on post-apocalyptic Cataclysm Earth after a jump drive accident, so I thought I would give them a hypertech gun that was standard issue in their home reality, balanced by virtue of never being able to reload it. Easy, I thought. Cue hours of "invalid ammo type" errors and me frantically scrolling through documentation, loading up a Teleporter and finding the ammo type was "0 Null", reading existing documentation and examples of guns and trying to figure out what was wrong, searching through the Discord and Reddit, the classic woes of computer programming. And sure, JSON doesn't involve math or formal logic, but it does involve proper semantics being extremely important, and something was missing.

In the end, I solved it by writing these four lines:
{
"type": "ammunition_type",
"id": "mom_fusion_ammo",
"name": "B47 fusion shot",
"default": "mom_fusion_ammo"
}

The problem was while I had defined the ITN B47 Fusion Pistol, and the magazine that goes in that pistol, and the physical ammo that's placed in that magazine, I hadn't made the definition of that physical ammo as an ammunition type--it was just an item with type AMMO, not an ammunition_type. Emoji Byoo dood As soon as I put in that extra definition, all the errors went away. At least for the other error I got (teleporter's "attune to location" ability not working) it was because I had assigned the same id to two different things. That ammo problem...ugh.

As my father often says, the more you know about computers, the more surprised you are they ever work.

2022 in Gaming

2023-Jan-09, Monday 09:14
dorchadas: (Maedhros A King Is He (No Text))
Here are all the games I beat in 2022, in chronological order:

Read more... )
dorchadas: (Mario SMB3 Boss Bass Eating Mario)
I am 300 entries behind on my reading page. I really need to get on that.

In the meantime, here is the traditional New Year's retrospective meme, one day later than I originally planned because yesterday was Asarah b'Tevet and I didn't have much concentration to hand.

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Happy New Year to everyone!
dorchadas: (Judaism Magen David)
I'm writing this from my parents' house, where we're spending the night in preparation to go apple picking tomorrow! This is the third year I'll be going with [instagram.com profile] sashagee and the second year with Laila. It's a regular tradition at this point!

Monday and Tuesday were Rosh Hashanah, and we went as a family to services. The real draw for Laila was going to be the petting zoo featuring a goat that Mishkan's director of programs said was going to be there, so I was surprised when we arrived to find that there were no animals! Without that, the street fair had a lot of activities that would have been great if Laila were a couple years older--making paper crafts, drawing scenes from Torah, that kind of thing--but aren't so useful to someone Laila's age, so we walked around a bit, went to a nearby combo bike repair shop + cafe called Heritage Bikes and Coffee where I got some delicious avocado toast and saw a few other people who were obviously on their way to services stop in, and then went to services ourselves. Laila loved the singing but by this point she was very tired, so we stayed for about half of the Torah service and then went home to get a sleepy baby to bed.

After she woke up from her nap, I took her to the lake to do tashliḥ, the ritual casting away of our sins, as referenced in Micah:
Who is a G-d like You,
Forgiving iniquity
And remitting transgression;
Who has not maintained His wrath forever
Against the remnant of His own people,
Because He loves graciousness!
He will take us back in love;
He will cover up our iniquities,
You will hurl all our sins
Into the depths of the sea.
-Micah 17:18-19
she was so fascinated by the waves against the walkway that she didn't even try to eat the bread when I put some in her hands! Only a tiny bit, though--babies don't have any sins they need to cast away.

On the way back, I passed by a bench with two old women sitting on it and an old man standing behind them, speaking some Eastern European language. They waved at Laila and I had Laila wave back, and in English they asked me a few questions about her. When they asked if she could walk, I said "almost" and held one of Laila's hands as she walked over to the women and immediately tried to get a hug. The woman Laila was hugging asked, "She is not afraid?" and I answered "No, she loves hugs," and then the man, who had leaned over to get a closer look at the baby, noticed my ✡️ necklace and said "Happy New Year"--it turned out that they were Russian Jews! Emoji Jewish with Torah

I've lived in Chicago for over a decade, but on the way back home, I experienced my first "Excuse me sir, are you Jewish?" Two young Chadadniks were hanging out on the corner, maybe trying to get people going too and from tashliḥ, and they asked me if I had had a chance to hear the shofar in shul that morning. As it turned out, I had not--we had to leave before it was blown--so they took me a bit away from the main street, we said the blessings, and the older one blew the shofar. A blessing indeed that on the day we couldn't say in services, Laila and I still got to hear the shofar.

Tuesday we mostly relaxed at home. Laila slept in until almost 8 a.m. after the disrupted sleep of the previous day, so we gave her a normal day.

Wednesday was Tzom Gedaliah, the fast in honor of the assassination of the last Jewish governor of Judea before the Babylonian Exile, which normally wouldn't be worth much comment since I just get up before dawn to eat and otherwise it's a normal day. It was not a normal day this time, however, since this Wednesday was Employee Appreciation Day and the AMA had rented out a local restaurant/entertainment center called Pinstripes. That meant there was fancy buffet food and drinks, none of which I could eat, and which I couldn't even take home because there's a health code rule that prevents takeout boxes from buffets. Emoji dejected I did get to talk to one of my new coworkers who started a couple weeks ago when all the tables were full and she sat next to me in the stuffed chairs on the side of the room. We mostly talked about Laila and about my coworker's plan to go to Japan with her partner.

Apple picking tomorrow! 🍎🍏 I'll write about that after it happens.
dorchadas: (Judaism Magen David)
Rosh Hashanah 5784


Happy 5783! 🍎🍯

Took Laila to the park and met the husband of the director of programs who told me there's going to be a petting zoo at the Rosh Hashanah street fest tomorrow. I knew they were trying to get a goat (re: Leviticus 16:21-22) but a zoo implies more than one animal! That makes me really curious what else is going to be there.

Laila loved her first taste of apples and honey. Emoji Kirby cheering

2021 in Gaming

2022-Jan-05, Wednesday 09:38
dorchadas: (FFXIV Warrior of Light)
Here are all the games I beat in 2021, in chronological order:

Read more... )
dorchadas: (Dreams are older)
Backdating this a bit because time got away from me, but here's, the traditional new year's meme:

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Happy New Year to everyone!

Happy New Year!

2021-Sep-08, Wednesday 08:43
dorchadas: (Judaism Magen David)
Happy 5782!

I followed my tradition of previous years this slightly more normal year after last year's interruptions--I'm going to (outdoor) in-person Yom Kippur services but I elected to stay home on Rosh Hashanah. Erev Rosh Hashanah, though, [instagram.com profile] britshlez invited [instagram.com profile] sashagee and I to dinner, so at 6:30 we went over to her place. She immediately asked to hold Laila and proceeded to carry her around for half an hour while the chicken refused to cook. Except it actually was cooking the whole time and not showing it, so by the time it came out of the oven I am told it was dry as dust. I say "I am told" because I had the fish, which I brought and [instagram.com profile] britshlez cooked as is tradition for any of our dinners. We had to leave early because Laila refused to sleep in [instagram.com profile] britshlez's room, but I'm glad we got to see people.

Everyone there was totally enchanted by Laila. She really is the cutest baby ever. Emoji Kawaii heart

2020 in Gaming

2021-Jan-04, Monday 17:42
dorchadas: (FFI Light Warriors Confront Garland)
Here are all the games I beat in 2020, in chronological order:

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dorchadas: (Maedhros A King Is He (No Text))
I don't think I need to talk about how this year has been. I haven't had that bad a year, fortunately--I've been lucky enough to not get sick during this the Plague Year, I've been able to work from home so I've been safe and warm the whole time, and I met a wonderful woman and we're having a daughter together. I've avoided a lot of the flashpoints and problems that occurred and I'm hopeful looking into the new year. Considering everything that's happened, that's a real blessing.

And now, the traditional new year's meme:

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dorchadas: (Judaism Magen David)
I didn't go to the farmer's market this week, because I decided to take a break for the High Holy Days.

Speaking of, last weekend was Rosh Hashanah and things were much different than in previous years. Mishkan's services were all online, so on Friday night [instagram.com profile] sashagee and I went over to [instagram.com profile] britshlez's place for Rosh Hashanah dinner, and while we ate the chicken and vegetables and challah and hummus and beets, we watched the mostly pre-recorded service. It just wasn't the same--the real joy of High Holy Days services is being there, in hearing the singing all around you, in feeling the connection with everyone as you sing the Unetaneh Tokef. You can't get that when it's all on the screen. There's no joy in the Torah being brought out of the ark when it's not physically present, regardless of the rabbi's call to reach out and touch the screen. It's not the same, and while I watched the morning service the next day, I didn't watch it on Sunday. It was better with a small group, but even there, we didn't sing along.

I had a pomegranate as my new fruit, along with the apples and honey from our apple-picking excursion. [instagram.com profile] sashagee made apple bread and some apple tarts, and while the latter was delicious, I didn't get to try the former since it had dairy in it. We forgot to pick up any of it before we left, and I'm not sure anyone else had any, so I don't know how it tasted.

No fish heads. Maybe next year. Emoji goldfish

What was really nice was on saturday when [twitter.com profile] arsduo and I went to Horner Park to hear the shofar being blown. Unfortunately, I underestimated how long it would take me to walk there, and while I met [twitter.com profile] arsduo and his friend in time, we walked up to the park right in time for me to catch the last תקיעה גדולה tekiah gedolah and when we arrived on the hill where people were gathered, they were already dispersing. There was some talk of a second shofar blowing for the benefit of people who arrived late, but it didn't materialize, and after waiting around for ten minutes or so we walked down to the river to do תשליך tashlich.

2020-09-19 - Chicago River Horner Park

We spent an hour there, watching the ducks eat the bread and swim up and down the river, before the setting sun started to make it pretty chilly, and then [twitter.com profile] arsduo and I took the bus back and his friend rode her bike back home. It was a great way to celebrate the holiday in a year not full of much celebration.

2019 in Gaming

2020-Jan-03, Friday 12:19
dorchadas: (FFX Lulu Fire in your Heart)
Here are all the games I beat in 2019, in chronological order:

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dorchadas: (Kirby Celebrating with food)
Happy New Year! I drank too much last night and I haven't felt 100% today, but it was nice and relaxing. [instagram.com profile] thosesocks invited me and some other people over for a quiet day listening to folk music and eating cheese. I made zenzai, traditional Japanese red bean New Year's soup, and [instagram.com profile] thosesocks made tea for us all, and now I'm at home with a wood-wick candle burning and watching Reverse Angle's take on the 1998 Godzilla.

It's been a good year. On Facebook, I wrote:
I went into 2019, teeth barred and a knife behind my back, ready to immediately start stabbing the moment it looked like anything was threatening.

Three, maybe four months in, I put the knife down and kept walking, and I haven't felt the lack.

People repeatedly tell me how different I am. How I seem like an almost completely different person than I used to. They tell me that I'm more social than they could have imagined even for themselves, and ask me how I have the energy to do it. My *sister* told me that she was jealous of my social life and asked me for my secret, and let me tell you, that was the day that Hell froze over.

At my last party, people kept asking me "How do you know all these people!?"

The story of the last decade was, I suppose, of being a plant in a glass bottle. I had plenty of light and water, but when I hit the edge of the bottle I just stopped growing and I figured that was the limit of the world. When in 2018 the glass shattered, I thought that it was a world-ending disaster...but it actually let me grow in ways I hadn't thought were previously possible.

In 2019 I made a bunch of new friends. I started dating again. I put down the video games that have defined my life for thirty years because I *don't have time to play* because I'm too busy seeing people, going to theatre shows, watching movies at friends' houses, and going to museums. I am, in other words, a new man.

So, bring on the roaring 2020s. Give me neon noir, synthwave jazz, electric-blue cocktails in dingy speakeasies, black trenchcoats with collars turned up against climate-change-induced polar vortices, and, hopefully, a story I can start with "And then she walked in." I am more than ready
So there's a good summary of my year! It was a great year overall.

The song that defined my 2018 was "Dynasty," by Miia:


The scar I can't reverse
When the more it heals the worse it hurts
Gave you every piece of me, no wonder it's missing
Don't know how to be so close to someone so distant

And all I gave you is gone
Tumbled like it was stone
Thought we built a dynasty that heaven couldn't shake
Thought we built a dynasty like nothing ever made
Thought we built a dynasty forever couldn't break
Up


But the song that defined 2019 was "Gorgeous" by Illenium:


Sometimes I gotta pinch myself
Oh, gorgeous
Hello today
Well let me introduce myself
Oh, gorgeous

All those days that passed me by
I can’t believe I’m still alive
They say you need the dark to shine
It’s like I can see for the first time
And it’s gorgeous
It was a good year.

Here's my answers for the traditional New Year's forty questions meme:

Forty questions )
dorchadas: (Maedhros A King Is He)
Today is the last grasp of summer's fiery claws before it is finally dragged down and buried beneath the falling leaves. It's 24°C now, with a high of 29°C later today, but on Thursday the high is 21°C, and Saturday the high is 17°C. By next Tuesday, it'll be 11°C when I leave in the morning, which is my perfect morning weather. Rice, miso soup, and tea as part of my breakfast is way better in cold weather than in warm. I ordered some sealing wedges for my balcony door frame, since there's obvious light coming through at the bottom and I'll want to fix that before temperatures drop into the single digits.

This place is mine, now, so I have to fix these problems. Emoji kamina

Had my housewarming on Saturday! I spent a big chunk of Friday and Saturday cooking various Rosh Hashanah-themed foods, so my housewarming had an apple crumble, apples and honey, braised leeks, roasted beets, tahini carrots, and challah that I bought from Whole Foods. I was really worried that I wouldn't have enough food, but there was plenty! And I have roughly twice as much booze as I started with. I mentioned that I was having dinner of leftovers and a friend said, "And washed down with twenty bottles of wine," which, you know...

My condo is open-plan, so I was a bit worried about how the party flow would shake out, but even though there were forty people who came (only about thirty at a time), there was plenty of room for separate conversations. Some people in the sunroom, some people around the dinner table, some people out on the balcony, some people around the kitchen island, some people by the sink, some people over by the stairs... It showed me that my place is good for hosting large groups and ther's plenty of spaces for people to congregate. And I don't even have all the chairs by the stairs, outside, or in the office yet!

Feeling pretty good about where I live now. Emoji ~ Cat smile

The title of this post isn't just due to the weather. On Sunday night I went over to [facebook.com profile] cjkarr's first horror movie night and we watched The Wicker Man (1973), which I knew almost everything about but had never actually seen. I can see why it's so well-regarded now--the almost everything I knew did not include the plot twist at the end, and the film had a dream-like quality to some of the scenes that enhanced the feeling of being out-of-place that Sergeant Howie is experiencing, as did the constant refrain of Corn Rigs throughout the film.

That's the mood I like in horror. I really don't like gore and I'm not a fan of jump-scares, but the feeling of something being off, of there being a secret that everyone else knows with terrible consequences, and of slowly-approaching, inescapable doom--those are my favorite kind of horror, and The Wicker Man has all of them.

There's an Apple Fest in Lincoln Square this weekend and I'm probably going to go, but it seems a bit more ominous now than I did last week.

The second film was Wattmarck, a short movie about an employee of a German synthesizer company who is obsessed with finding a tone that can affect the mind the same way other music affects the senses. Nothing seems to work and the company's fortunes decline as her quest becomes all-consuming until one day she finds the long-thought-lost music of Erich Zann and gets the band back together for one final concert. This was also all about mood and dread--I kept expecting the band members and small audience to go insane, like in Event Horizon, but it's not actually clear what effects the concert has. There's an online narrative experiencing coming next Thursday, though, so perhaps the story continues.

I was exhausted yesterday, but last night I went to bed an hour early and got a good night's sleep so I'm in a much better mood today. I'm going to take that lesson forward and try to go to bed early every night this week! ...except Friday, where I'm going to see another silent film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, in a late-night showing. Otherwise, this week is quiet and I'm really looking forward to that.
dorchadas: (Warcraft Night Elf Free)
I meant to write this a week ago, but you know, things happen.

I originally didn't have any plans on New Year's Eve, but I mentioned that on Facebook and almost immediately [livejournal.com profile] smtemp told me about a party at [facebook.com profile] emojimjitsu's house out in the suburbs. I hesitated over it for a bit before realizing that if I had bought tickets to any event in the city, it'd cost the same or less than a Lyft out there and back, so I got dolled up (it's me, so read "gothed up") for the party I headed out.

I was congratulated on my Metal Gear Solid aesthetic as soon as I stepped into the house, so Emoji cardboard box

It was great! Lacking a car, the suburbs seem almost like an entire world away sometimes, so I don't often get the chance to hang out with my friends who live outside the city. I'm definitely glad I took [livejournal.com profile] smtemp up on her invitation rather than spending NYE alone. And the annual Space Dragon dinner that [livejournal.com profile] ping816 throws is next Friday, so I'll get to see people again. Emoji La Just need to figure out how to get out there...

I read the first volume of Death Note in Japanese and understood (almost) everything! [twitter.com profile] worldbshiny recommended it to me back when when all went to see [twitter.com profile] lisekatevans's show (the one I wrote about here, though this time with [twitter.com profile] worldbshiny and [twitter.com profile] meowtima rather than by myself). I found a website called Ebook Japan that sells digital manga and light novels and doesn't care if you live overseas, and while they have some weird DRM scheme because it's Japan, I'm willing to suffer through that for ¥450 manga. I didn't realize how much of the story was a cat-and-mouse criminal and detective game between Light and L. I figured it was just about a snotty teenager being a jerk. And there was definitely some of that--I liked how Light assumed he was qualified for supreme moral judgement over humanity due to being an honors student--but it was mostly about mysteries. As a man in his thirties, that's a lot more interesting to read.

Last weekend I mostly did nothing, though [twitter.com profile] worldbshiny invited a bunch of people out to brunch and it turned out I was the only one who could go. And then when we arrived, it turned out that the charity donations were only going to the organization based on drinks purchased, not food. We got just food and she kindly drove me home.

Yesterday was the beginning of [livejournal.com profile] mutantur's next Call of Cthulhu game, so we got together (with two new players!) and played Pulp Cthulhu. No longer merely ordinary men and women called together to fight monsters from beyond the stars, now we are heroes. ...or will be, once the plot gets rolling. We got started late and didn't make it to the main part of the scenario, so that comes in two weeks. Emoji octopus glasses

Today I'm doing chores and relaxing, and next week is pretty light. And after I typed that, I realized that for me of a year ago, saying that having events on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday was "pretty light" would be unthinkable. How quickly the tide turns.

2018 in Gaming

2019-Jan-02, Wednesday 09:05
dorchadas: (FFX Tidus and Yuna)
Continuing my tradition from last year, here's a list of all the games I played and beat in 2018, in chronological order.

Read more... )

2018 New Year Meme

2019-Jan-01, Tuesday 21:03
dorchadas: (Not he who tells it)
Here's 2018's year-end survey meme:

Read more... )

皆様、明けましておめでとうございます。ご健康とご多幸をお祈り申し上げます。新年も宜しくお願い致します

Happy New Year!

2017 in Gaming

2018-Jan-07, Sunday 13:04
dorchadas: (Legend of Zelda Link to the Past Comic M)
I feel like I should have done one of these in previous years, but I didn't. Well, it's not too late to start. Here's a list of all the games I played and beat in 2017, in chronological order.

Read more... )
dorchadas: (Broken Dream)
Well, that was a year!

Last year, [personal profile] schoolpsychnerd and I went to [twitter.com profile] resaamnesia's New Year's Eve party, along with a giant bottle of お屠蘇 (otoso), like we did the year before. It was good! At least, I thought so. I don't think many other people drank much of it, other than when [tumblr.com profile] chronicluscious mixed it with rose water and made a mixed drink that even [tumblr.com profile] oddsboy wouldn't drink, which is an accomplishment in itself. I'm told it smelled really good but tasted like soap. I'm glad I missed it. I stuck with plain お屠蘇 like I did last year. It was delicious.

Looking at last year's retrospective, I did accomplish some of my goals. I was a bit more social, and I was much more serious about Japanese. Playing all those video games in Japanese and reading 世界の中心で愛を叫ぶ with my Japanese tutor meant that I'm reading substantial lengths of Japanese every week, if not necessarily every day, and still getting plenty of speaking practice. I did play Android this year with [personal profile] drydem and [tumblr.com profile] damaskrosechicago, and won again even though I was Floyd the bioroid this time instead of Raymond the P.I. I still haven't played Kingdom Death, and have all the minis unassembled in boxes around our apartment.

We saved an enormous amount of money coupled with a stock market completely detatched from how the economy is performing for anyone of median income, so on paper we made a bunch of money but our lifestyle hasn't changed at all, and seems to have hit a nice equilibrium where we can put money into both short-term and long-term savings sufficient to have enough to cover emergencies and to save for trips or anything we'd like to buy. We did switch to the new data management system at work and it's Emoji Psyduck boom, but we're probably switching to another system pretty soon. At the moment, I have to deal with the enormous amount of data that the system can't handle, but that's actually job security for me--my entire job is based around computers not being good enough to handle everything themselves yet, so more incompetent computers means more work for me, which means more reason for me to work. I will not complain.

My Warlords of the Mushroom Kingdom game is still going strong, to my happiness. It's not the longest-running game I've ever been in, but it's almost at two years now (it'll hit two years the second week of March). That's really good, since the average game lasts less than a year (around one academic year, in fact).

There's a traditional new year's meme that's going around Dreamwidth and, before it, went around LJ. I've never answered it before, but it provides a nice structure to my retrospective. Here:
Forty questions )

皆様、明けましておめでとうございます。ご健康とご多幸をお祈り申し上げます。新年も宜しくお願い致します。

Happy New Year!
dorchadas: (FFX Yuna Dancing)
I would have had this up earlier today, but first there was a power outage that took up forty minutes of our time and then I went out to a three-hour-long dinner. Add in some other things I was doing, and there was a short delay. But it's still the first, so it's still a retrospective on the New Year!

I don't bother with New Year's resolutions. But I did find this tweet that I like:

The biggest change I made this year is that I got serious about Japanese. Technically I've been taking lessons since August of last year, but this is the year where Aya-sensei suggested that we read 世界の中心で愛を叫ぶ and where I've worked my way through a fifth of a Japanese novel. I also played multiple games in Japanese and read a manga volume in Japanese as well! I never really sought out opportunities to use and practice my Japanese other than through flash cards and listening to podcasts occasionally, and that's why I was stagnant for so long. Now I'm getting better because I'm making a space for myself to do so and moving into that space. Emoji Weeee smiling happy face

This is also the year that we went back to Japan! And with friends! It was a whirlwind tour, and there were several places I wish we could have spent more time at, but it was a fantastic experience. And I wrote something about it every day for a total of over 50,000 words under the Japan (日本) tag, so I'll say no more about that.

I was not more social than last year, and if anything, I was even more of a hermit. A regular game night on Mondays, Japanese lessons on Tuesdays, and book group on Wednesdays along with [personal profile] schoolpsychnerd having a standing commitment on Wednesdays meant that time for the two of us was in shorter supply than previous, so I valued it more highly and make extra time for it, pushing other things to the side. This isn't actually something I mean to change either way. It's not something that bothers me. But I would like to play more board games in 2017, like Kingdom Death and Android and Chaos in the Old World and our old copy of HeroQuest with the cannibalized DragonStrike parts, and that means I need to reach out and not just retreat into single-player video games. We'll see.

Also, maybe I should have a minis assembling session for Kingdom Death. Still in the box. Chryssalid walking

I managed to keep saving money even with going to Japan and the bulk of replacing my wardrobe! Discovering Orimono and Guylook and similar sites, to say nothing of the designers I already knew of, gave me a pretty wide selection of clothes I loved, but fortunately my closet is only so big and is basically full now. There's a few more pieces I want to acquire, but my wardrobe is basically complete for now. And I put a good chunk of our salary into savings every month, aided by our lack of student loans. It'll be worthless after the Last War when the only currencies will be bullets and the heaped skulls of the dead, but maybe I'll be able to trade with some feral hedge fund managers for toilet paper and beef jerky.

We were supposed to switch to the new data management system at work, but the project is behind schedule, so no news on that front. Emoji Question block

I usually post pretty hopeful quotes at the end of the year, but I'm not feeling that hopeful now. The quote I think is the most apt is a bit more pessimistic:
"There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."
-Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Hopefully 2017 will not be as bad as we fear, for me, or for any of you.


明けましておめでとう。皆様のご健康をお祈り申し上げます!

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