Let me bring it back to something serious for a little bit. It's Saturday which means I've been taking catastrophe leave for about six days now. I'm over the initial rest that came from taking some time off of work and well into the "What do I do now?" phase of things. Yesterday in addition to my war on the basement I learned a few things on the sewing machine as an ongoing project. Oh also the fence in our backyard fell down without anyone noticing and so I had to go outside and craft a replacement so the dog didn't escape from the yard. However none of these things have really taken a ton of work. They've instead just been minor diversions.
One of the big things I've been thinking about is when I'm at home and not supposed to see anyone, what's the best way to go about loving others? This is a central point of Christianity (along with public worship which definitely isn't happening at the moment and has instead moved online), and so there is a challenge here about what to do in this situation so that I still answer the call to love others in a way that reflects what God commands.
I don't really have an answer right now. I have a few ideas that I may try today and I will probably take some suggestions from others but I think this will remain a central challenge for myself and many others in this time.
Saturday, April 11, 2020
Thursday, April 9, 2020
Thursday: Optimizing
One of the projects I've undertaken while being at home for at least the next ten days is to reorganize our basement. I would say clean out our basement but with the number of services that are closed and the limited amount of garbage I can dispose of each week, it's not going to be clean at the end of this process. Instead what I hope is that everything down there has a purpose. The purpose of some of those things will be to be thrown away, but at least it will all have its appropriate place instead of right now where all of the things down there live in some kind of limbo where they are neither useful or junk and instead await my judgement on whether they will be useful or not.
I can only put in about an hour or two of basement sorting in per day. We live in an older house and I can only stand up straight in a few parts of the basement so if I'm down there for long enough it starts to strain my neck which isn't really good for me right now. In the rest of the day I fill time with video games, attempts at reading, and bouts of optimization. What do I mean by optimization?
Think about the place where you live. Imagine yourself walking through it. Is there one part of your house that you know is sort of left a certain way because you don't have the time to go back and fix it? Are there a million coats in your front closet? Does your kitchen sink have three dozen cleaners that you'll never use underneath it? Is there a junk drawer somewhere in your house that's been accumulating contents for years? These are parts of your living-space that are sub-optimal. And you know what? 99% of the time that is totally fine. It's really not worth the effort to resolve these issues as these things work fine enough or don't impede our normal progress in life with the way they are.
But here we are in the 1% of time where I happen to have a lot of free time and only so much attention and effort to fill it with. So that means that all of those spaces in my life that have been functioning poorly up until now are suddenly ripe for optimization. Since taking catastrophe leave I have reorganized our living room, sorted out the landscaping in our backyard, and today I reconnected all the cables behind my desk so that I'd stop kicking off the power bar when I stretch out my legs. I didn't really need to do any of these things. On a regular day there would be no point. But in this moment when I can't really leave the house and I don't always have an abundance of attention, optimizing bits of the house that need some work is something that's been happening a lot.
I can only put in about an hour or two of basement sorting in per day. We live in an older house and I can only stand up straight in a few parts of the basement so if I'm down there for long enough it starts to strain my neck which isn't really good for me right now. In the rest of the day I fill time with video games, attempts at reading, and bouts of optimization. What do I mean by optimization?
Think about the place where you live. Imagine yourself walking through it. Is there one part of your house that you know is sort of left a certain way because you don't have the time to go back and fix it? Are there a million coats in your front closet? Does your kitchen sink have three dozen cleaners that you'll never use underneath it? Is there a junk drawer somewhere in your house that's been accumulating contents for years? These are parts of your living-space that are sub-optimal. And you know what? 99% of the time that is totally fine. It's really not worth the effort to resolve these issues as these things work fine enough or don't impede our normal progress in life with the way they are.
But here we are in the 1% of time where I happen to have a lot of free time and only so much attention and effort to fill it with. So that means that all of those spaces in my life that have been functioning poorly up until now are suddenly ripe for optimization. Since taking catastrophe leave I have reorganized our living room, sorted out the landscaping in our backyard, and today I reconnected all the cables behind my desk so that I'd stop kicking off the power bar when I stretch out my legs. I didn't really need to do any of these things. On a regular day there would be no point. But in this moment when I can't really leave the house and I don't always have an abundance of attention, optimizing bits of the house that need some work is something that's been happening a lot.
Wednesday, April 8, 2020
Wednesday: Why I Will Probably Never Finish a Final Fantasy
A Note: I'm going to try to write more over the time of the pandemic. That probably means that I'm going to write about things that I'm watching or reading or playing. I don't know if I will write about Scripture in these but it might come up. We'll see.
Earlier this year I made a commitment to play through some of the games that I had started but never completed. I like many PC gamers have collected a lot of video games at low cost through Steam sales. I have also collected many games in other formats through gifts from others and through impulse purchase. Offhand I can think of about twelve games that I have started and gotten some distance through before putting them aside to return to something else (usually Destiny). My commitment was to try and finish some of the "low hanging fruit" in my library.
I started off really strong. I finished Rise of the Tomb Raider and Resident Evil 2 Remake within the first two months of this year. It was a strong start. Then I decided to tackle Final Fantasy VI which is sitting on my SNES Classic. It's been a game that I've heard good things about, but I hadn't gotten deep into yet. I started off strong and really enjoyed the first chunk of it. But then something bad happened. I got stuck.
The Final Fantasy games have this unique characteristic in which many of the battles are based around making use of certain skills or abilities that your characters have. You need to use certain skills in the right combination in order to successfully dispatch your opponents. This is kind of interesting and leads to a lot of experimentation but there's a catch. You can only change your party members and by extension the skills you have access to at certain times. Because of this there are cases in which you can start out with a party that seems capable of taking on things, but then suddenly discover that you are unable to progress past a certain boss with your current party. I have reached this point.
I'm ten hours into the game and at the final boss in the Magitech Factory but my party choice means that I only have two members in my current party and with no hope of actually beating this boss. The way that my saves have been set up means that there's no going back. I'm stuck. The only way to get around this problem is to start the entire game over again. I'm feeling pretty deflated about the whole thing at this point.
This has happened to me before in Final Fantasy VII. I have played FFVII for a total of 45 hours, but I have never progressed past Rocket Town. This is because every time I get past a certain point, the PC port deletes my save files and I have to start the entire game over again. I'm pretty good at the first ten hours now having done them four times but I am almost positive I will never go back and finish the game.
So I think I might just never finish a Final Fantasy game. I still have at least three others that I could play. FFVIII - FFX are just sitting in my Steam library, but I'm not sure I ever will. I'll get back to you if I ever manage it.
Update: Immediately after writing this I completed the fight I thought I was stuck on and am now unstuck. ONWARD!
Earlier this year I made a commitment to play through some of the games that I had started but never completed. I like many PC gamers have collected a lot of video games at low cost through Steam sales. I have also collected many games in other formats through gifts from others and through impulse purchase. Offhand I can think of about twelve games that I have started and gotten some distance through before putting them aside to return to something else (usually Destiny). My commitment was to try and finish some of the "low hanging fruit" in my library.
I started off really strong. I finished Rise of the Tomb Raider and Resident Evil 2 Remake within the first two months of this year. It was a strong start. Then I decided to tackle Final Fantasy VI which is sitting on my SNES Classic. It's been a game that I've heard good things about, but I hadn't gotten deep into yet. I started off strong and really enjoyed the first chunk of it. But then something bad happened. I got stuck.
The Final Fantasy games have this unique characteristic in which many of the battles are based around making use of certain skills or abilities that your characters have. You need to use certain skills in the right combination in order to successfully dispatch your opponents. This is kind of interesting and leads to a lot of experimentation but there's a catch. You can only change your party members and by extension the skills you have access to at certain times. Because of this there are cases in which you can start out with a party that seems capable of taking on things, but then suddenly discover that you are unable to progress past a certain boss with your current party. I have reached this point.
I'm ten hours into the game and at the final boss in the Magitech Factory but my party choice means that I only have two members in my current party and with no hope of actually beating this boss. The way that my saves have been set up means that there's no going back. I'm stuck. The only way to get around this problem is to start the entire game over again. I'm feeling pretty deflated about the whole thing at this point.
This has happened to me before in Final Fantasy VII. I have played FFVII for a total of 45 hours, but I have never progressed past Rocket Town. This is because every time I get past a certain point, the PC port deletes my save files and I have to start the entire game over again. I'm pretty good at the first ten hours now having done them four times but I am almost positive I will never go back and finish the game.
So I think I might just never finish a Final Fantasy game. I still have at least three others that I could play. FFVIII - FFX are just sitting in my Steam library, but I'm not sure I ever will. I'll get back to you if I ever manage it.
Update: Immediately after writing this I completed the fight I thought I was stuck on and am now unstuck. ONWARD!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)