All Kinds of Things

The big news is that we’re engaged! I’ve been working toward this for a long time and I finally set things up so I could ask the way I wanted. And she said yes! It was a great day!

Friday was a not so great day, we got rear ended on the freeway. Luckily everyone is ok, but the back of our van is smashed in. So we’re car-less until the insurance companies sort stuff out. I’m really hoping that the van can be fixed and there isn’t any frame damage. I really love this van. We only got to go camping in it once so far! Luckily I take the bus to work. So I won’t be too disrupted while we wait.

Site Updates

When I publish this, the site is also going to get a big links page update! I’ve added links to some people I follow, gaming stuff, software I use, and webcomics I read.

This is a big change from the old Masonry layout I had, where I was trying to get an image for everything. I was also only linking to my own profiles on other sites. Eventually I want to get back to a cooler layout on this page with images and stuff. However I felt that, with the rapid decay of Google, providing links for 90’s style web surfing should take priority over making it pretty.

In order to better include the images I did keep here, I updated my Wiki Links in Hugo customization and the article I wrote explaining it. It’s still a ton of regex nonsense, but I’m hoping it eases my way to using Hugo Page Bundles for images more quickly.

Project Dumb Phone

I finished up a 2 week experiment of switching to a dumb phone. I got the Nokia 2780 used off eBay for $60. I don’t recommend this particular model.

I wanted to go a full month but the sim card would not stay connected. I don’t know if the sim holder was loose because it was used, but it seemed like a flaw in the design for anyone switching phones regularly. You also have to take the battery out to remove the sim (or put it back in my case).

In addition to that, the phone both lacks functionality I need and has functionality I didn’t want. It’s basically a low power android device with a very limited app store. Being stuck with keypad input definitely helped me use it less, but it still has a browser. It does have threaded text messages, which is nice, but it doesn’t have gps navigation (just old direction based maps) or a decent camera.

The worst things are it just seems kind of broken. It only charges if the usb-c cable is connected in one of the two orientations (other 2780 owners have noted this problem as well). I was completely without a phone one day because I plugged it in backwards two nights in a row. If someone sent me an image via text message the whole phone locks up for 1-2 minutes.

I watched quite a few videos about people ditching their smart phones as I built up to giving it a go myself. The best one was Eddy Burback’s video where he went completely without a phone. He specifically had a problem that I also encountered - difficulty paying for the bus.

I took a trip downtown to the only place you can get a tap card in the entire city. When I got there I was waiting in line behind someone who’s card had been connected to a misspelled email address so she couldn’t put more money on it. This was foreshadowing. Despite me writing the address out on a piece of paper, they still misspelled it and I too could not add more money when the time came. I called in and spent a couple of hours working it out with their support people. In the end I was lucky and I was able to register the bad email address.

We went to Origins Game Fair during the experiment. Everything was great! Origins prints paper tickets for all the events you register for. The only problem came when I encountered a vendor that was only taking paypal and venmo. They were willing to make an exception and run my card, but it was really weird.

Not having access to email on the go may have ended the experiment in the end even if the phone hadn’t broken. I had to find a way to continue checking my email. That meant I was getting on my PC more, mostly right after work. And that was a gateway to doomscrolling on desktop - the very thing I was trying to get away from.

I don’t know if I will return to this experiment or not. I already had my phone pretty locked down and wasn’t using the browser much. The disruption to my habits seemed to create a lot more problems than it solved. I do want to find a way to get an ai-free phone experience, without giving up the things I need - like a digital bus pass, maps, text messaging, and access to increasingly digital-only payments in real life.

Reading

It’s been a while since my last post and I’ve done a lot of reading in that time!

I picked up Emergent Properties by Aimee Ogden from the library. It’s an excellent novella about artificial general intelligence and being human. I found the pronoun choice for the main character a bit difficult. This might be more because the whole thing is 3rd person limited. It seemed like it would make more sense in first person? But I think exploring that pronoun set was part of the goal of the work, and I was completely used to reading ze/zim by the end.

I also started and finished Murder Under A Red Moon by Harini Nagendra. It’s a great second Bangalore Detectives Club book, the first of which I read back in May. It looks like a third book just released! So I’ll be keeping an eye out for that one. This series is great if you love cozy mysteries.

Games

I’ve been playing a ton of video games.

After I wrote about it back in early June I’ve surprisingly stuck with Star Wars Battlefront 2. I’ve mostly been playing Blast - the team death match equivalent. The playerbase has remained large enough that I’ve been able to stay in the middle of the scoreboard most of the time and not spend all of my time getting stomped.

I also returned to Quake Live and managed to find some people playing Instagib FFA, the only gametype I really care about. I miss Diabotical Instagib, with its wild grenade jumps and different maps, but Quake Live is a decent replacement.

I tried two different vending machine game demos! Vending Dokan!: Kozy Kiosk and Tiny Vending Machines. Both of these are trying to do the same thing - a second screen vending machine management idler. I think I liked Vending Dokan better, but I haven’t committed to buying either one yet.

My friends and I returned to Space Marine 2 for a bit last night. They’ve added a lot to the game since we last played and they’ve promised to add even more! I don’t think I will ever play this solo, but it’s a lot of fun with friends.

Finally, and most importantly, I picked up Heroes of Might and Magic III on gog.com! I played this at a friend’s house back in the early 2000s. Now I can finally play it for real! I’ve had it for less than 3 days and I’ve already played for almost 8 hours.

Miniatures

At Origins I did learn to play sessions for 40k Kill Team and Battletech Alpha Strike. I like the 40k setting more, but the Alpha Strike ruleset was definitely more fun! I also bought some minis from smaller vendors including Marcher: Empires at War, which I’m really excited to paint.

The event renewed my interest and I’ve been making some terrain for the tabletop out of trash. I also painted a couple of minis I’ve had waiting for paint for a while.

I’m considering moving to 3D printing, but I need to build some fume extraction before I buy a resin printer. That’s going to be a big upfront expense.

The Journey Continues

And that wraps up another irregularly scheduled update. I’m completely out of time to proofread this. So I hope it is good! I have lots of exciting and complicated times coming up! Until next time! Stay chill and enjoy