David's Boring Blog

It has been really fun playing through the original 2D Final Fantasy games. I resisted the urge to start blogging about Final Fantasy III for the last two weeks. Geekily enough, as I have played through I have kept a few notes and I have taken some screenshots to talk about my impressions of playing the "original" Final Fantasy III.  Three days before my 10th birthday, April 27th 1990, Final Fantasy III was released. I knew exactly nothing about the game's release and it would be more than a decade later that I would find myself frustrated that I could not truly complete my Final Fantasy collection. I would be 26 years old before actually laying my hands on a Nintendo DS remake of this game that I was fairly confident was not faithful to the original Famicom game.  While the Pixel Remaster edition of the game is not the original "NES" version, I suspect it is much closer than the DS gameplay which was made to capitalize on the 2 screen Nintendo DS. I enjoyed the

 One of the most frustrating days of this year was the day I showed up back in February to take Teagan to Pre-K only to be told by the only TA that the class had gone code red due to active cases of Covid-19. Why wasn't I called? Why had someone not taken responsibility and let us know that we should have been in quarantine? I went from frustrated to mad, but I also knew short of complaining that there was not anything I could do about it.  By the time the Pre-K class was back in session Covid-19 had infected my entire household. Teagan had a slight cough and seemed to want to sleep around the clock. My Dad got a bad cough. Taila seemed to have it the worse with fever, body aches, and extreme lethargy. Ashley was about the same and I wondered if she or Taila were going to end up in the hospital. Whitneigh seemed to have the best time with it though I think we shared a bunch of digestive distress that wasn't common experience for everyone in the family. Still, I cannot speak to

 I woke up Saturday morning in a productive and creative mood. I played through my Magic the Gathering Arena daily quests quickly. Then, I outlined another two chapters of the novel I am developing. I hate to admit this, but rather than put in the two hours I try and dedicate to my writing in the morning as soon as I found myself floundering for how to explain what should happen next I switched gears. That is not good for the work ethic that I need to develop to become a successful writer, but I felt it was more important to lean into a productive mood than it was to hold myself to putting in work on the novel. It was Saturday after all.  Friday night I sat down and balanced my finances for the week. Like mowing the grass this is something that a younger version of me hated doing, but I have come to really enjoy as I have gotten older. Maybe that is because as my Mom once stated," I am old and I have a bigger credit card than you." Not really, but there is something pleasant

 I expected to finish Final Fantasy II either late Friday night or Saturday morning. I actually finished it just a few moments ago. The extra two days saw me having to grind out extra levels and raise skills to the place that I could defeat the Emperor for the last time. The credits are literally running beside this post as I type. I have been looking forward to writing this one.  I am not sure I love the fact that I could get to the last boss of the game at 32 or so hours of gameplay, but my party was not strong enough to win that battle without an additional 20 hours of grinding. I seem to vaguely remember a conspiracy theory that the difficulty of Final Fantasy IV (which was on the SNES as Final Fantasy II and should have been Super Final Fantasy) was set to an impossible level until you had taken a certain number of in game steps and/ or played for 40 hours. I want to say I recall leaving the game playing overnight to run that clock up once upon a time.  I felt that my party should

 I tunnel down some strange internet wormholes. While I detest clickbait articles I love the sense of exploration that comes with access to the modern internet. Sure, I have my common haunts. I spend lots of time on comic book, Magic the Gathering, Board Game, and Dungeons and Dragons related pages. That is to be expected. Occasionally I fall down the well of some random topic of discussion on Reddit or Wikipedia. Those forays often get my head spinning in exactly the way I like to be caught up in my thoughts.  That is how I stumbled upon Shopping Cart Theory as a litmus test for human character. Basically, the theory says that because there is no reward or punishment for returning your shopping cart to the cart corral in a parking lot that observing a person's behavior with their shopping cart can give you strong insight into them being a "good" or "evil" person. The post I read suggested that putting your cart away implies a selfless person who is doing good f

 Is it weird I like my blog better now that most of my posts are about comic books and video games than when it was my attempt at being philosophical?  Anyway, I need to write this morning to vent the emotion of sending my youngest child off to her first day of kindergarten. Do not misinterpret that, I am pleased as punch and a proud papa for my baby to be growing and learning the way a kid should. There is a weird mix of anxiousness and excitement this morning while she is off enjoying her first half day at her new school. Since I do not want to helicopter parent or over analyze my life or hers I thought I might come home and settle into my morning routine.  I ate a bowl of Cheerios. I ran through my daily quests on MtG Arena. My current mono white angel/cleric deck feels pretty stompy. Having missed Kaldheim's launch I am not deeply versed in the cards. Figured out today that Bound in Gold is amazing. Dealing with a pesky planeswalker? Play Bound in Gold. Now Lolth cannot activat