LadyCrimson

Our neighbors made fireworks noise every night, for over a week, and last night it was so loud sitting outside was impossible. It wasn't the modest pops and nice lightshow of last year (the guy who did that moved), mostly eardrum bursting loud explosives. Now that the actual day has come and gone maybe it'll be quiet again. I wonder how much they all spend on fireworks. It must be quite a lot.

I remember this: But now apparently it's this: ...I was never a fan, but I guess he's a popular Vegas concert now. Or at least was, a few/several years ago.

7 Days to Die A21 went "stable" so I had to wipe maps/saves, leading to more map making, because that's about half of what I ever do anymore. With the better world generator I'm going to try super-mini towns again. Each one can only be 1-2 tiles (a tile houses 6-8 POI's each I think). I want a map filled with like 150 of those, spread out all over. It's gonna be awesome. Above Snakes Adventure Mode has also been awesome. Extra world tiles useful and great, ability to do things out of order/whenever great. These two games are currently the only games in existence. I play one of them each day for 2-3 hours, alternating each day. Works for me.

Ooooodles of noodles! Thanks KQED for uploading many of Yan's episodes. I used to love the way he chopped things and his humor. He's still alive and doing stuff, too. I wonder if this episode is when I started using "oodles". I mean, I'm sure the word usage existed for ages before this show but I refer to me personally. It was either this, a book I read, or my mother. I know not which.

Co workers bringing hubby an inversion table they're not using, so I spent the weekend moving stuff/clearing space in one room for it. Also, ate too many (slightly sweetened) cashew nut clusters.

Got around to watching that Tom Hanks movie (via Netflix) A Man Called Otto. I liked it more than I thought I would since it wasn't quite the direction I expected from the trailer. Tom Hanks makes a good grumpy old man, the pacing between heartwarming (wasn't overwhelming/overdone) and codger humor was a good mix. Just a light and decent feel good.

My reaction to that is sorta "what gameplay?" If one is the type that likes games to be almost literal movies 80% of the playtime, it could be the game for you. Seriously ... watching Asmongold (and some others) it's like NPC's - gotta fight tyranny, lets go beat them up - Asmongold - "Let's go, I'm ready!" ---melts into another cutscene NPC's - "blahblah, over there." - Asmongold - "Let's go, I'm ready." **repeat two more times* --fight lasts 50 seconds. ---tons more cutscenes. And on and on. edit: yes I'm aware jrpg's can like this kind of storytelling, but 16 is extreme. That reviewer in the video is not wrong on the ratio. In depth cutscene story telling/watching may appeal to some ... but it's not my style. But! you can jump-stomp-attack enemies with your chocobo while mounted! That's almost better than petting the dog!

Tried to sleep. Didn't succeed. Above Snakes new mode isn't out yet (is it the 29th yet?). So I made several new "best" 7 Days to Die random maps. Now it is daylight and I'm going to check on the small sunflowers growing the backyard that we let/did grow on a whim. Hubby finally got a video-face call with a doc, which led to an xray and a physical therapy consult. We shall see. And they gave him one of those big plastic bouncy exercise ball thingies to lie on re: spine decompression moments. Every time I look at it I want to put a handle on it and use it as a hoppity hop.

To be fair, it does look like a good game overall for the kind of game it's trying to be. I'm not trying to bash it or anything. Just doesn't really look that interesting for my gameplay wants these days. And maybe I'm finding the actual player-character (Clive?) rather annoying - well-voiced, but annoying chr - at least in the early-ish sections, which doesn't help.

^ I think the folks who think FF16 is the bees knees are more likely action/combat fans vs lengthy rpg fans. By that I mean, the Devil May Cry side, so to speak. You're a solo, move-busting badarse. Main story/cutscenes are "great" (and probably much better than XV's piecemeal story, haha!) but sidequests are mostly stupid (MMO sort). They were clear they were making an action game and that's what they delivered. eg, if you want more depth to your mainline FF and were hoping 16 might at least bring at little of that back in some way, I don't think so. Fully modern era. But remember - you can pet the dog! That makes it 10/10 right there. ...honestly, the more I see/watch of it (asmongold has been running thru it), the less I want to play it myself. The combat may be fun and sure the story bits are visually astounding, but the rest seems kinda boring.

YouTube's "Uncle Roger" introduced me to a movie called God of Cookery. Weirdest movie I've seen in ages and not 100% my "thing," but admittedly it's pretty funny. I've heard of Kung Fu Hustle before but never watched, I might try it later.

Never heard of it. *looks it up* ...definitely cute looking. Especially the hats. Cats definitely need hats.

More 7 Days to Die - well, all right, I'm pretty impressed with some of the new POI's. Just pure design, not whether they're fair or too hard or sleeper AI is borked. Just the design. And the RWG maps turn out a lot better road/terrain wise, I haven't noticed any terribad quirks. Add on my personal tweaks and it's shaping up to be pretty nice to casually roam/explore in. That said, I still think the magazine for crafting/item skills went a bit overboard. I get that it helps slow down early progression/lengthens "early game", but the main annoyance I have with it is reading magazines (almost every category is 100 to max it out, which is a lot of RNG looting) gives you skills in a specific order. Example: read 10+ handgun magazines and first it's craft lvl 1 pipe pistol, all the way to lvl 5 pipe pistol, and only after that will reading magazines have learn how to craft a regular lvl1 pistol. You can't pick and choose what to learn to craft/not to craft, you have to learn it all, in order. Magazines in loot isn't rare by any means, but it's still a choice-annoyance. You're more likely to find lvl 6 (not craftable) gear before maxing out most such skills. In other news, the dev's of Above Snakes announced their new game mode - they call it exploration, but I'd call it true sandbox, with some new features and highly requested QoL. I am more excited by this upcoming mode for this tiny indie game than any of these other giant games the 'net is a hubub about. I may end up liking this mode more - especially for replayability/sandbox - than the original quest-progression version. https://steamcommunity.com/games/1589120/announcements/detail/3653030337001095558

7 Days to Die A21 - "I'll just fiddle with the rwgmixer.xml numbers and try to make the perfect map for a bit." **10 minutes later** "Well apparently I made the perfect map (for me) already, I can quit now." ...more than one trader can now spawn within a modified humongous town now, so within the large lump are 4 (different) Traders, thus making single-city make more sense in that regard. ...they seem to have done better re: POI placement and repetition if you do this sort of altering, too. Buildings still repeat but better spaced out (like no more of the same gas station on all four corners) so it doesn't look as stupid, plus with better layout arrangement for the different types of City sections.

Rented that Adam Driver 65 movie. I know it was panned critically but I was still curious re: if my guesses after seeing the trailer were correct or not. And then the movie basically tells you what I was thinking re: trailer in the first few minutes or so, so any minor intrigue in that regard disappeared. All right then. It's definitely not a good movie, and it's not so bad it's good, either, even if I did LOL several times. I felt like Adam Driver and the youthful female lead were directed poorly and thus got subpar performances from them and to me any chemistry together was non-existent. Tension/suspense building and interest in characters was low. Still, something like Battlefield Earth would beat it in the "bad movie" category by miles and miles. But I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

I watched the Aaron Paul episode of the new season of Black Mirror. Conceptually I liked it but it was very deliberately paced (eg, slow) and way too long. The acting was fine. The one thing I did like was I guessed at three different ending scenarios and I was wrong on all three counts. It wasn't a big shocker or anything, just the one angle my brain hadn't considered.

I so far have zero interest in Starfield. After Morrowind (and even Morrowind I wasn't into the story aspect at all), nothing else I've tried has connected at all (well, except that FO:4 doggo) and I pretty much gave up that any Bethesda developed game will ever truly be my thing. ...but if it ever goes on deep sale, and by then very patched up plus lots of mods, maybe I'll take a look one day.

7 Days to Die A21 - still haven't played it much but so far it feels like once again they have ramped up the starting/initial "survival" difficulty in some ways. A little more like very old Alpha's in a sense. On the flip side (for me) they keep making Trader's more vital which is annoying if you're someone who'd like to use them as minimally as possible, or never. Of course, whether that sticks or they just change half of it back again in a few weeks, as players whinge about change is bad, who knows. Not that it matters. Once A21 goes "stable" I'll be .xml editing the heck out of it as usual and playing my own way, again. Oh - the graphic stuff like textures, models and details have much improved this round, although the overall impression as you wander is about the same (and that janky grass....). In the meantime, I still keep going back to Above Snakes. Finished the short story four times simply to try different map arrangements/goals and despite the performance hit to too many world tiles, keep fiddling around in that regard with one save, anyway. It's just so chill and mindless and easy to grind it for an hour and stop. The dev's are working on some new (optional) play mode. No clue what it will entail but curious what it'll be. Maybe it'll give another reason to keep fiddling with it.

Hubby's back no better. He's been trying to get into Kaiser for a check - to make sure it's not something unexpected (organ disease, spine bone spurs that need surgery, whatever), and/or just to get confirmation that it's simply a matter of hoping re: physical therapy routines etc - but since he's not actually dying or even urgent-care they keep telling him they have "nothing (appointment times) available, we'll get back to you." And so far they have not gotten back to him. He's put his sit-stand-motored KB/mouse table to standing height and we raisedf his big TV/100lb stand to max, so he works most of the time standing. Does an hour of yoga stretches and other exercises in the morning, and shorter bursts off and on the rest of the day. I am now the strong one in our 2-person family. Don't you dare touch that box/bag/chair, I will move/lift everything! And wrench all the low lying thingies that need wrenching! Easier for me anyway, I am closer to the ground to begin with. *flexes a bicep*

7 Days to Die: the never ending version series, Alpha 21, first build release Install went fine. Map generator went fine, at least for 6k and 8k maps. 10k maps on my rig took 12 minutes because it likes to hang at this one generation point (it's not just me) for ages. Probably an optimization oversight/bug re: not ultrauberCPU +128RAM rigs. Lucky for me I rarely want to play anything but 6k maps anyway. Hopped into a random map new game. Nice new surface paint or redesigns to POI's. The road system, towns/POI/trader placement, and chr. spawn-in placement - no more always spawning right next to a trader/city - is much improved. Water physics much better, I like. Not being able to scoop dirty water from a pond or lake, I think I don't like. Not because it's really hard to get water/drinks (it's not). It just feels weird, in a survival game, to be unable to get water .... from bodies of water if such bodies of water exist in the game. I can go with it, but it feels overly gamey. I personally like the magazines for some skills/abilities vs. everything being skill tree/skill point based. That all said, after a bit I thought, "not in the mood"...and turned it off. There was nothing that made me really want to dig in/test deep. Maybe next weekend.

--FF16 full demo gameplay played by MKIceAndFire, watched: Combat looks...ok, for what it is I mean, a little too busy, a little too much constant camera pov rotation (worse than ff15 even, perhaps) (maybe you can alter a setting). The doggo is adorable. Anyway, still hard to say. Part of me says yes, part of me says no. I'm more interested in it than I was in FF7-RM tho. --Star Wars Outlaws. It looks potentially interesting, but I still don't want an Ubisoft account. Still...if anything might make me do that, it might be this one. They didn't show much combat however. --Avowed...hm. Well I usually love companions, don't mind that. But it's sounding like something I'd be less interested in or committed to purchasing than I was hoping for. But once again, can't really tell from the trailer or brief feature mentions. Yet more info or gameplay vids needed. At least we know it hasn't been cancelled, haha!

I think hubby's been looking at the psoas, which is a bit more descriptive of his symptoms. At any rate, he's always been quite out-toed in stride (but not at all bow-legged) and it's probably been getting more pronounced over the years, especially left foot (left upper inner/butt thigh is one affected along with lower back). Habitually sits on one hip a lot probably, that sort of thing. At this point he probably could use something like a year with Forest Gump's leg braces or similar haha. He also has a reverse neck curve since probably birth (headaches) which likely affects posture/flexibility stuff. On the outside he looks/seem average/"normal" but structurally he's always been a little whack.

Hubby's lower back has gone rogue again the past month. Chiropractor, stretches - no improvement yet. Although at least it hasn't worsened the past couple weeks. He can desk-work/get around etc, just has to change position frequently, sit/stand very straight, and ofc the mental tension of wondering if it'll improve or not. He says it feels like it goes down more into one leg (muscle pain, not nerve/tingly) this time so he keeps trying alignment type exercises. My poor sweetie. Other than that, life scoots along and is pretty fair.

Tried to watch FUBAR. If you like Arnold's old school classic cheesy one-liner mode (which I do/did), there's plenty of those, at least initially, but it's overdone/too many, so a lot fall flat. Otherwise it's a typical spy/crime/comedy (shades of True Lies scenarios here and there perhaps) show, with a cadre of typical "team" members, a father/daughter conflict and Arnold pining for an ex-wife - sometimes a little serious, usually mined for comedy. I found it not terrible, but too dull for the most part, with lackluster writing, and occasionally obvious stuntmen (Arnold's old after all - they don't have his chr. do a lot but when he does...) - not even my fondness for Arnold's on-screen presence could get me past Episode 3. YMMV. Other stuff: I'm looking forward to the next season of Black Mirror - usually there's at least a couple episodes I like from it.