Talia per clipeum Volcani, dona parentis,
miratur rerumque ignarus imagine gaudet
attollens umero famamque et fata nepotum.
Vergil, Aeneid 8.729-31

“[Aeneas] marvelled at such things throughout Vulcan’s shield,
And his mother’s gifts, ignorant of these matters, and rejoiced in the image,
Raising up on his shoulders the reputation and fates of his descendants.”

The phrase dona parentis (“gifts of his parent”), in this case, Venus, popped into my head, so I titled the entry after that, but modified the genitive to a plural, parentum, hence “gifts of the parents.” My parents were visiting here for a few days last week. I hadn’t seen both of them together in a long time (July 2022), so it was really nice to have them both visit us. They flew in fairly early and my spouse and I picked them up at the Denver airport, then headed home after that. Neither my spouse nor I had planned much to do with them, but mostly just wanted to hang out, show them around town, and catch up. We planned out a couple of excursions, mostly checking out downtown in our city and the city up the road. I was also excited to have my parents meet Lyra, our new kitty, since neither of them had met her before. We got her in May last year, after my dad visited in April last year.

I’m making my way through the week as well as I can. I have Friday off and my parents are coming into town for a few days, which will be busyish, but it’ll be really nice to see them. My mom visited last when we moved into the house, in Oct 2022 (can’t believe it’s been almost 2 years we’ve been here!), and then my dad came out here last April to visit. They last both visited in July 2022, so it’ll be good to have them both here. I’ve had an incredibly busy week thus far, even though “it’s Tuesday, Cap,” but the next couple of days should be pretty chill. I have some loose ends to tie up at work, and hope not to have too many on Thursday, but it’s all good. The weekend, while really nice, was too short as usual, and we had a really nice time (see here for more on the weekend.

So all week, we were told that we’d be getting quite a bit of snow here, and there were a lot of winter storm advisories &c. We had plans to see a movie Friday night, which I’d gotten tickets to a week or two ago, but by the time we got to Friday, we were both too tired to go out again, and ended up staying home. The tickets weren’t too expensive (it was going to be a nice cheap date), and the venue is owned by the city, so I figure it’s keeping that space running. Snow was supposed to pick up overnight and into Saturday, so we thought we’d probably be staying home Saturday as well, rather than going to the festival put on by the city downtown.

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’m writing this after playing some Final Fantasy V; I’ve maxed out my characters’ jobs and might have to level up some more, I dunno. FFV seems especially inscrutable for one of the older RPGs I’ve played, and I honestly think this will be my last playthrough in a long time. It’s very fun and has been enjoyable, but grinding towards the end of the game has been an absolute slog, more so than for any other game I’ve played. Who knows, though, I might put FFV aside for a bit and return to Stardew Valley vel sim. I am still waiting for the Final Fantasy VII (“Reunion”) retranslation to be completed, though; the retranslation for PC is nearly complete and needs to be ported to the PSX original. I can’t wait. All the buzz around the “Rebirth” (part 2 of the Remake) has got me excited about the original!

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. ὡς φάτο; sic effatus.

(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. Many compare it to Celeste, which is another stellar platformer requiring precise timing and control. Both have fabulous soundtracks and are generally very well-regarded, as far as I know.

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. Supports gamepads (check!), supposedly supports vibration (but I haven’t gotten it to work), very cool. I’m in. Just so y’all know, I’d like to keep this a mostly spoiler-free post, so I’m doing my best on that and just giving mostly basic info about the game.

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. But I eventually started paying for a FastMail subscription (maybe ~2015? can’t remember) and it’s been much better overall. Now this is not an ad for FastMail, just giving my personal thoughts on it, and what I’m about to go through with you, you should be able to do on a number of other non-Gmail email providers. To what extent, I don’t know, however, as it depends on the provider.

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. I don’t think I’ll do any of that right away, which is fine. It’ll be there, waiting for me, like Amelie for Sam on the Beach.

(Updated 11 Jun 2024 with corrections on calling LibreTranslate)

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 have not only myself but family and friends set up on Vaultwarden and NextCloud, and it’s just really nice.