It has been A Week, that’s for sure. Just a lot going on at work (the norm, but it hit especially hard this week), and Thursday was an especially rough day at work for various reasons. I had some phone calls that went south and left me very frazzled and burnt out. Trying not to linger or dwell upon it, since it’s over and I’m OK and life goes on, but sometimes these things stick with you.

I just realized today is Groundhog Day, that time-honored celebration of a diminutive animal weather prognosticator, celebrated at least in the US and Canada. I never really understood all the fuss about it. If he sees his shadow, more winter; if not, early spring. Please, no early spring, I want more cold. See the shadow. But according to a random search I did, “Punxsutawney Phil” didn’t see his shadow in 2024, so an early spring it is.

(Updated 04 Dec 2023 with some more info about connections between both games) So I’ve spent some time away from Sea of Stars, and been playing a lot of The Messenger lately. I basically started and finished the latter over the course of last week’s long weekend, and now I’m working on the DLC, Picnic Panic. If you haven’t played it before, The Messenger came out in 2018 and is a really fun “Metroidvania” platformer with tons to do and find, and ridiculously difficult platforming, requiring near-perfect timing in some areas.

So a friend on Mastodon was posting here and there about a game called Sea of Stars, and of course I was immediately hooked by the title alone. What a lovely image! Sounds like something pulled right out of classical antiquity (hence mare stellarum, Latin for “sea of stars”). I eventually looked it up and found that it’s an RPG available on Steam, and, without knowing much about it at all, I bought it and fired it up.

In the course of having a website, and running my own server, I’ve largely eschewed Google. In fact, aside from my Pixel 5a (love it) and running Android variants, I’d rather not have anything to do with Google, so I try to limit my usage of anything Google as much as possible. I had a Gmail account for years, from roughly 2005-2019, in fact, IIRC. A friend gave me a Gmail invite back in the day and it was useful for quite a while, for personal as well as professional pursuits.

I finally finished (the main story of) Death Stranding a couple of days ago. I’ll really try not to be spoilery within, more to give my impressions of the game and such, in a bit of a sketch. Not spoiling anything, but the epilogue of the game is wide-open and indefinite, allowing you to tie up loose ends and seek out things you may have missed in the (c)rush of the rest of the game, which is totally cool with me.

Now if you’ve spent any time on my site, or you know me at all, you know I like playing around with computers, installing stuff, whatever the case may be. I’ve particularly enjoyed running a server the past nearly 3 (!) years, since I can install things that I, and in turn others (friends, loved ones, the world at large), will find useful. I am happy to run this server on my own dime and pay for the VPS and hosting, because it is not only a private but a public good, and that is how it should be.

I was talking with a friend back and forth recently about gaming and accessibility in gaming, and it inspired me to write my thoughts on gaming in general. My thoughts, my relationship with it, praise as well as criticism (to the extent I can do it justice). Accessibility is not my strong suit and I’m trying to learn more about it all the time, and of course I’d like to make anything I produce as accessible as possible.

I’ve been reading as others discuss their grad school experiences, struggles as well as successes, and thought I’d write some about my own experience in higher ed. Although I’m no longer in the field or really in academia at all, I did enjoy my time there for the most part, although it was exhausting and draining and stressful. And it doesn’t have to be, in an ideal world. Anyone should be able to pursue a post-graduate degree if they desire, for whatever reason, and not have it adversely affect their life, finances, whatever.

So I’ve had my theme set to Ananke so far and it’s been nice, but I think I’d like to check out some other themes and try them on. So if the site looks a little weird lately, I’m trying out new themes. We’ll see how it goes. Hope y’all are well, friends.