T w e n t y S i d e d

For the first time in a month, maybe six weeks; I feel healthy. No cold, no sinus infection, nothing else out-of-the-usual. It’s a real shame the *rest* of the family is sick now. The only thing I’m pretty sure I contributed is the cold that almost everyone got over pretty quick. I’ll be mostly out-of-town the later part of this upcoming week to help my parents deal with my father’s surgery. He’ll be in the hospital for at least a couple of days. He has normal hydrocephalus; this is more-or-less what used to be called “water on the brain,” although it is understood better now. “Water on the brain” may be a decent enough description of what’s happening, but only recently have doctors been able to start more precisely identifying symptoms, damage, and methods to remedy the problems. Even then, being able to drain the fluid away in a controlled, automated way only improves *certain* things, and it certainly can’t reverse some of the damage.

I started building a new computer, but it likely won’t be done soon. I found a QHD monitor on sale, which was one of the goals for the next round of upgrades (before the computer went out.) So I picked that up. QHD isn’t supported by the Dell laptop I’m using, at least not nominally, so that pushes toward a PC solution. I had struggled for months trying to decide what level of rebuild I needed to pursue on the PC. While it was running, I always had some concern about the system considering I got it because it had been hit by a sudden power loss or lightning strike. When it happened again last summer I couldn’t really know whether the video card, motherboard, CPU, and memory might be damaged as well. (And if it wasn’t, my attempt to connect an older power supply and the subsequent *pop* that happened could have been anything. Probably bad.) Despite the fact that the one thing that went out the first time that system had a problem was the nVidia video card, I am at the moment choosing to believe the Radeon I bought last year is still OK. I’ll only replace it if I have to. But it’s probably smart to get a new power supply and motherboard. The power supply is the least problematic; I’m planning on getting one sometime this week. A 1000 Watt modular Corsair. I would like the motherboard to be up-to-date, but I also don’t want to spend an absolute ton of money…which I could easily do. While I would like a top-of-the-line ROG Strix or TUF Gaming motherboard, I’m planning on picking up an Asus Prime X-870P WiFi. If I find I have to replace the CPU, I’ll likely go with a Ryzen 7 9700X. That leaves the memory, which I don’t WANT to buy because it’s so overvalued. Memory, more than any other component, is being affected by the AI datacenter bubble. I would love to be able to wait until the impending collapse and buy thousands of gigabytes for pennies, but that doesn’t solve today’s problems. I’ve already talked about the video card. If mine is broke, I’ll need a new one.

Two “complaints” about the new Fallout season were revealed to me tangentially. The first being that Deathclaws are shown being present in the Alaskan War…which, really? People are upset at that? Prior to this depiction, the origins of Deathclaws encompass the possibility that this could have happened; but it’s never been shown in a game. The Alaskan War is *mostly* but not entirely background lore. Showing Deathclaws being used in Alaska is on par with showing an Alien UFO over Anchorage. It fits within the lore, doesn’t even contradict anything, and supports the style notes. Some people don’t like aliens being a part of Fallout. AND THAT’S FINE. Just…don’t worry about it. Do your own thing. And if your personal head-canon says Deathclaws absolutely could not be used in Alaska in ANY WAY; fine. Just remember the series is telling “a” Fallout story. Doesn’t have to be yours. #2 is something that doesn’t surprise me, but it also involves some value judgments. Because the other major complaint I heard about was people upset at how the remnants of Caesar’s Legion were depicted in the new season. But I haven’t watched that yet and don’t want to go too heavy based on other peoples’ opinions. The *only* things I will address are A) The Legion *weren’t the good guys* in the game. I kind of suspect anyone pushing a narrative even close to that either wasn’t paying attention or possibly never actually played New Vegas. Some may want to debate a sort of “…of the choices you’re given…” point of view, which is a lot closer to at least the gaming experience. I can see a pure gaming argument for weighing benefits of outcomes. That is, again, FINE. But the Legion aren’t *good*; they’re a bunch of shitheads. Almost NO-ONE in New Vegas (the game) is *good*, that IS actually part of the story.

HERE: I spent an hour-and-a-half rewriting a paragraph about my problems with New Vegas‘ moral choices and how they related to the stories in the game. That paragraph is gone because it’s too big of an issue for what I’m writing now. Instead, I will point out that, overall, I have two “bigger” problems with New Vegas. One is technical, not the creators’ fault, and is caused by running out of time to finish all the stories properly. The other problem is that not all of the story contexts are supported by the writing. Some of this could be simply explained by the first problem. I try to think of that first. But some of those stories have some incredible depth and breadth in the extant game, but not much progress gets said or accomplished. The second Occam’s Razor explanation is that they thought bigger than they could write and just spun their word processors until they ran out of time. And, clearly, there’s a lot of “in my opinion” being used, here. The other option is that they just couldn’t write some stories appropriately, which is a shame in such a story-heavy game. What they wrote well is some of the best stuff in Fallout. But I think we should be clear in understanding not everything in New Vegas is well-written.

{time passes}

OK, so I just installed about half of some floating cat shelves and cat trees. I am tired, but the only thing that’s hurting is my left forearm. Because several items were screwed right up against a wall to the right, so I ended up pressing against the end of the screwdriver with my right hand while rotating the screwdriver with my left hand. Do that a few dozen times and you start cramping up. I guess it can’t be too bad because I’m able to type with only minor mistakes. Probably good to keep my forearm from seizing up completely.

The Life Day/Winter event in Star Wars: The Old Republic ends in a day or two, so once I reached one thousand Snow-covered Packages I traded them all in for seasonal rewards. In fact, I had forgotten that I *did* get all the speeder mount rewards last year, so I re-purchased three that I already had. And they can’t be refunded or sold on. Oops. But, the events are also a great time to spot new and interesting things. Here are a few of the people I met this year:

All show real dedication to the theme, but Spaceballs: The Jedi gets special kudos for pushing the idea to every corner. It’s just a shame there is no way to put the “TM” after every section. (Hey, you get it or you don’t)

And here’s my main Rix’larril’an showing off her favorite new seasonal emotes:

I also tried the new Ultimate Steakhouse Whopper at Burger King. This, once again, is sort of a variation on the Rodeo Burger. This time they actually put onion rings on it, but also bacon, mushroom slices, swiss cheese, and peppercorn aioli sauce. How can something like that be SO BLAND? I’ll probably try it one more time if I make it back to BK before it’s pulled, because any given visit can be bad. But this was a truly tasteless burger. How can mushrooms and swiss be TASTELESS?

That’s it for this week. I started to write up an evolution of franchise superheroes post (in my head) the other day; but I think I’ll finish up with the franchise serial killers first. Have a good week everyone!

Paige Francis He/him