David's Boring Blog

 I am on my third day of active downsizing. I know I am not doing this correctly, but my wrong way approach is intentional. I have attempted minimalism before. I had moderate initial success followed by a rebound hard the other direction that I did not even realize I was doing. I have said this before. I grew up in a time and culture where collecting and possessions were valued. I was in my thirties and drowning in stuff ( a state I haven't ever fully escaped from) before I realized that the things I was surrounding myself with were having a negative effect on my life and mental health.  Comic books, if you keep them around after reading them, take up space. Roleplaying games need bookshelves. Both the shelves and the books take up tons of space. Card and board games take up an impressive amount of space. The temptation with board games is to keep adding shelves which also take up space. Video games, systems, and controllers take up a surprising amount of space.  Books take up spac

 I have been doing more reading in the past few weeks than normal. I typically polish off about a book per week as I casual consume content while going to sleep. Two things contribute to the increase in my intake. First, I have been reading more upon waking and avoiding my phone.  Reading time is still screen time since I am on my Kindle, but I enjoy it more than doom scrolling through social media and the news. They are much the same thing these days. Maybe they always were.  Second, I have been disinterested in my typical diversions. I have cut down my comic book intake significantly. It isn't zero yet, but I am only reading about a dozen books by issue with half than many picked in in trade paperback. I am still enjoying video gaming, but I try and limit my engagement there to when I have time to focus on the game since I grind away at Final Fantasy most of the time. Taila and I counted it up today. I am on my 10th game with at least 12 more to go in the series.  For short break

 Curiosity gets the better of me sometimes. This whole line of thought came as a result of a post I made about my Christmas list this year. A few days after I put that up, Ashley found a Wii U in great condition on sale at a fantastic price. I bought it. She picked up a couple of games for me which were on the list. A couple of weeks later, Whitneigh gifted me another game from the list and my favorite game for the Wii.  Adding a gaming system to my house at this point involves a level of organization and strategy. I miscalculated with the Wii U figuring it would play more like the Switch. I added it to my bedroom game shelf along with my Steam Deck and Switch. Bad move. Playing Epic Mickey  or Link's Crossbow Training  is completely awkward in the current configuration. The system has to make the move to the living room with my Playstation systems.  I got myself in gear to dust and move things around, but I like have the Wii U in the bedroom for Teagan. She often comes home and pl

 I have mentioned here before that I am in the ramp up stages of figuring out my resolutions for 2023. I have been thinking back over the year to the things that work well and the things that did not. Writing helps me to think. I also like putting out decent things to read so here goes.  Do More of This Steam Deck For hobbies, the grand slam home run of my year has to be the investment in my Steam Deck. It has already surpassed my value calculation (Hours used in enjoyment vs. dollars spent) by far. I am still discovering more things I love about it. I could likely not buy another video game in 2023 and never run out of things to play. I love that the stockpile of games that I have already built up are finding new life on this amazing handheld. Even discovering quirks, such as I can play FFXII Zodiac Age with the Steam Deck docked but I have to plug in the dock after the game is at the main menu, is a delight.  Switch Sports/ Wii / Wii U Teagan is my gamer kid. She isn't obsessed w

 We recently had our cats fixed. The timing worked out pretty well to coincide with cold weather arriving. Having kept them in the house for the past ten days has had a few challenges. Mostly these cats are restless. Keeping them from licking at their healing wounds has been interesting, but no moment more so that last night.  Gremlin was mad at us for a few days and avoided being pet. About a week ago he got back to his normal sweet disposition. It started with a bit of him wanting to sit in my lap and be pet. He normally does this two or three times a day. He normally signals his interest by talking to me in his distinct deep meow. I will grab him up and pet him until he is purring and content. He sticks around until he is done with my attention and then goes off for more kitty adventures.  I was happy to have our routine resume post his operation. Princess Peach has been more aloof since. Floof is ever the Floof and was at her usual personality in a day or two. I like my cat a great

 I finally gave up on Final Fantasy X. It is Tidus. It is the convoluted story. I admit the game is beautiful, but I cannot get into it. I dislike it so much that I found myself avoiding gaming rather than grind through. It doesn't help that I have never played X-2. My intentions were to finish X, run a palette cleanser game, and then rock out X-2 before moving on to XII Zodiac Age.  I don't give up easily. Realizing I finished Final Fantasy IX in August put a bit of pressure on me to get back in the game. I didn't promise myself that I would finish all the Final Fantasy games in any specific period of time. I just want to get through a series play through. I finally snapped myself out of the funk. I gave myself permission to pause my progress on X. I booted up XII Zodiac Age with excitement. It is one of my favorites.  Imagine my frustration when I could not get the Steam Deck to play the game. It is verified. Yet, each time I booted into FFXII Zodiac Age the game would st

 Back in the early 2000s I had a Palm Pilot. I didn't have meetings, many appointments, or too much of a social life. I did a surprisingly robust amount of things on my Palm Pilot. I took a lot of notes. I did a fair amount of writing. Pecking out things with a stylus was fun if not efficient. I was still a bit into programming and my Palm Pilot had tons of code hidden away in its memory. It gave me a device to play around with while I was out and about and still get a lot of things accomplished.  The Palm Pilot eventually gave way to a Blackberry Phone. Now my cellular connection gave me access to always on email and web browsing. Oddly enough, the writing and journaling I did on the Palm Pilot stopped. It was probably because I had that fantastic QWERTY keyboard. This caused me to be a less focused and organized person.  One day during my lunch break I was walking through Barnes and Noble. I still didn't have any real need for a calendar. My address book (or little black book

I have found a work around for my Amazon problem. I have talked about this before, but the fact that it is working for me feels good. I have placed 309 Amazon orders so far in 2022. Continuing on that pace I was going to pass the average of an order a day. My work around came by removing the impulse purchases.  I set myself a simple rule. I can only place an order on payday. I figured that I would break the rule quickly. I oddly haven't had the slightest impulse to do so except ordering a book for work. I am a sucker for learning new stuff. I had to wait a bit after deciding on this path for payday to roll around. I had built about $250 worth of stuff in my Amazon cart in the first few days.  A funny thing happened. By the time payday got here there was only one thing I really wanted which was an important accessory for my new carry pistol. I spent my $26.99 and sat back to wait for Amazon day. I had a little remorse because I had forgot I needed to order a stock of AA batteries. I

Finding something to write about twice a week can be challenging. I have long avoided divisive topics. The reason for this is not because I do not have opinions. I do not want to deal with the conversations that result from writing about religion, politics, sports, or family. I have to admit that at times it makes it difficult for me to feel any sort of passion for this project.  I shared some thoughts I had about politics. I was called a conspiracy theorist. Another friend said that my position was dangerously ignorant and could be conceived as antisemitic. I was so dumbfounded by this that I didn't bother to figure out how my "the government doesn't care about you and falsely supports causes to continue to fracture our society and maintain their own power," was an assault on the Jewish people. I am 100% certain there is a link, but I genuinely didn't care to understand it. I deleted the post. I wrote something else to replace it and vowed not to get political ag