Aside from some small tumbles, the week is progressing fairly well thus so far. Couple of other anomalies creeped up: another PS4 controller has, in essence, about to give up the ghost again. I really need to find a far more robust controller to go to eventually. Along with that, a flare up has left me in a perpetual state of pain until that subsides (which it better darn soon!)

Trip has been planned and announced to the parties involved, and when, so that’s one more task tackled. Sonic 3 is coming tomorrow as I didn’t realize it came out last week, so there’s the Saturday movie and that should be a lot of fun like the last two.

Small projects for this weekend really – mostly upgrading the PS4 and reinstalling goodies on that, but also might go with Aikirees into S P A C E and check out Celestial Exploration. I’m not in a big hurry, but I would like to get involved a little bit before it’s all over with at the end of Dawntrail. Ishgard was a blast, even for the little I contributed, so this should be just as fun if not more with the improvements I’ve seen.

Best get back to it – a lot of work at the office; y’all have a wonderful Wednesday!

Kind of sort of a half-rest-half-cronch of a weekend. Saw the family for the holiday itself, and did an absurd amount of media server work. Far more than I was expecting to do, even if it’s supposed to be slowing down. A lot of RL events are approaching way faster than I am anticipating, so between now and Memorial Day weekend, I really need to get moving on tasks.

Aside from that, watched Beetlejuice Beetlejuice for the Saturday dinner movie. It’s really fun, but is definitely all over the place. The energy is all still there from the first though, so it was pretty good. Looking forward to watching Sonic the Hedgehog 3 whenever the hard copy is available.

It’s more than likely going to be a more quiet week here, but hopefully I’ll be able to sneak in a few while everything else is happening. Hope everyone had a really nice and wonderful weekend regardless of said holiday, and y’all kick some tails this week!

I will say that unlike last week, this week has been the usual chaotic busy, but not as rough. I did manage to pull a pretty awful blunder the other day… and injure myself again on yet another day, but it’s been flowing at a decent pace.

Normally Easter Weekend is where the end of the season is unofficially made, but I kind of think (less fear, but it is there) that this is just going to be the new normal for our office. We’ve just exploded in growth from the early years to what we are now, which on the one paw is really awesome, but on the other I miss being able to reliably come home like I did. Parts of me keep reminding me as to why I quit the industry the first time, even though I know it’s not exactly the same this time around (2nd time was for a lot of sort of different reasons).

I just hope that it does start to wind down and we can control the flow of projects a lot better, even as we head into the next season as well. It would be nice to get back to a more steady flow like before and not be hitting 9.5-10+ hours every single day.

Hearing Switch 2 preorders might be going live as early as next week was nice to hear. In the interim, went ahead and got hard copies of both Horizon games for PS4, and will plan on swapping out the HDD to a SSD soon too. I’m planning on jumping into Forbidden West pretty shortly after completing Zero Dawn, even if it is a smidgen ways away soon. I keep going back and forth with myself about current Final Fantasy XIV affairs, and they’re not great feelings right now to say the least. I know we’re getting pretty close to 7.21, so hopefully that’ll help things.

Anyway, it’s late, but just wanted to hop in and toss some remarks and thoughts out. Y’all have a wonderful Friday and I hope y’all enjoy Aiki and I’s Fashion Report from last week posting in the morning too!

Last week was, for a lack of better words, miserable and rough. It was both negative in and out of Eorzea, and kind of had me rethinking moving on from my industry for a third time now. Just… everyone was so angry.

I keep thinking as we head into the summer months (our usual ‘slower’ season) that it will be like it’s supposed to be, but I’m not really even certain right now, and that’s not a great feeling. Mind you, this isn’t my first time dealing with this nor moving forward, so as much as it’s rough, it’s something that will be overcome – even if it takes a lot of kicking of tails to do so.

Weekend was pretty relaxing and normal per the course, some extra and dire needing cleaning too (finally!) Kind of holding out for the hard copy of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 to watch, and I think that’s this month sometime last I heard, so hopefully soon. Doctor Who came back over the weekend, but will probably hold off until a few are out and watch those back to back.

I’m not entirely sure they’ll be a full week of adventures for this week. It kind of depends, and it may slow down as the ongoing weeks progress. There’s various reasons, both positive and not-so much, but between continuous and ongoing weekend tasks, and longer work hours crunching down the evenings (albeit, I do have a ‘hard stop’ time for work), I suspect it’ll affect here too.

I’m holding out for Cosmic Exploration/Shades’ Triangle to alleviate the community’s continuous ‘chilling’ atmosphere – at least in roulette content. I’ve stated it a lot in here but that shift from how things were as far back as Patch 5.2 & early 5.3 is really draining comparing it to now. Some of the banter from back then was such a hoot and made running dungeons all the much more fun, especially when things didn’t go perfectly.

Partial burnout is another concern that’s been creeping for a very long while now too. Staving it off hasn’t been -too- difficult, but is a variable I need to keep in check. I really do enjoy being in Eorzea with everyone, but there’s other (mostly RL) things that I’m starting to get into and enjoy as well. I realize taking breaks is good too, so not being around every day like the old days has helped.

That’s probably a bit rambly, and I’m fine, but just throwing it out there. I think that’s all for this weekend recap; another big week ahead as we head into the middle of April now. Really need to remember to do the Hatching-Tide event as well!

Y’all have a wonderful week ahead! As always, we got this and kick so much tails!

I was expecting a harder couple of weeks until we found a new person to come aboard, but I did not expect what this week throw at us. I can sum it up as ‘damage control’ became my title to just keep everything moving. It was exhausting to say the least. Thankfully the new feller comes aboard today, so I’m hoping things start to downturn back to somewhat normalcy as we head into the summer season. That’s when we get a smidgen slower.

Usual weekend adventures, kind of stayed the course. Watched Pom Poko which was a hoot and incredibly fun! Bit more cleaning I suppose. Going to begin a sub-project soon, that is kind of sort of a prologue to 2026’s big project – kind of a huge reorganization project that… well probably should have been done about 6 years ago. It’ll be nice once it’s done though for certain, but it’s going to look rather comical in said office while it’s being done.

Trainscape hit a lot of problems like near simultaneously, one was my own clumsy mistake, which ultimately left me down to only one operation train from three. I’m leaning towards just shelving it for now as it’s gone from being fun, to just a chore to maintain. I love watching them run though, and the weekly cleaning isn’t too rough, but all the little issues that keep adding up have given me pause to continue it right now.

The Media Server is coming to a conclusion, and it’s been great. Aside from some personal ‘oopsies’, my experience with Linux Mint has been pretty positive, and I can certainly recommend it for anyone wanting to dabble into Linux to get away from Windows – just, be prepared to go into it understanding it’s not Windows, and it should be pretty smooth of a process. Brush up on how permissions work too as that can become confusing pretty quick (I still have a bit to learn there as well!)

Switch 2 & The Non-USA World Tour

So. Real quick in regards to this, and I do hope this ages like sour milk in the future. “President” Trump has been on a ridiculous Tariff spree, which has caused so much unnecessary headaches for just about everyone/thing in the global market. For literally no reason aside from his own ego. I mean, he’s done a lot of other terrible things to the country, but let’s stick with this for the moment. The Switch 2 release date was announced (June 5th) and aside from an exhaustive amount of complaining about the cost of games (I still assume this is only 1st party related), preorders were to go-live for the entire world on April 9th.

…Except the Moldy Cheese-ball of a president decided to go ballistic again with more Tariffs, which now has caused Nintendo to delay the preorders starting here until a later date to more than likely up the cost to counter these new Tariffs assuming the idiot goes through with them. Yes, this does irk me a bit; the whole thing irks me. It reminds me of the incidents during his first tenure in office where folks (especially in the FFXIV community) we’re trying to write off the notion with ‘keep your politics out of my Fantasy.’ So. Fun Fact about most if not all Final Fantasies, they’re all political in some way! Quite honestly, most games that have some sort of story are political in some way, so this notion is just absurd in it’s own right.

So, why bring that up now? Well because it is, in essence, repeating history with politics not only part of gaming, but literally affecting it in RL as well now. What frustrates me more though is that while this could have all been avoided if he didn’t get into office, and the cost for certain aspects of it is a bit steeper than most folks expected, I am just so gosh darn excited to see and eventually get one! The console looks so fun and I (even if I feel as I’m in the minority) and looking forward to it – politics/costs/tariffs be darned!

While I do hope the delay is temporary here state-side, and the cost doesn’t shoot through the roof, I just… want to enjoy seeing what I can and continue to be fascinated at how much more potent this critter is compared to the first Switch without seeing a sea of anger about it everywhere I look. The console itself is just bonkers to me and I’m already planning on which games I’d upgrade for it – Mario Kart World Tour looks so fun as well!

Anyway, enough of that, there’s enough politics and anger out there, just… try and see some light in the darkness, it’s there and it’s going to grow rapidly especially with the fire that was started over the weekend.

With 7.2 for the most part behind us, it’s back to the normal weekly routines until 8.0, and that’s fine. RL being so brutal last week made our routine a lot harder to get done. We did, but it wasn’t easy. There’s little things around HQ that we’d like to get done, and we’ll probably spend an afternoon down the road looking into that – maybe Memorial Day weekend would be good. I really don’t know if I’ll post long-remarks comments about anything in 7.2, but it did make a good lasting impression. I can also feel the warmth of the community once again, and that’s something I’ve sorely missed. Maybe all that downtime between 7.1 and 7.2 did the community good being able to socialize a lot more.

Today is also ‘Churning Mists Day’ – the day Aikirees made it to Churning Mists for the first time six years ago, so Aiki and I will (hopefully) have a little tale for that up today later on! The rest of the week will probably be filled with more of the Leporine stories as their adventures slowly approach Heavensward.

I’ve made this long enough! Kick tails and Happy Monday y’all!

This will be a quiet week as we really just focused on Patch 7.2 content this weekend, so nothing was able to be scheduled out. Next week will return to normal though!

Completed most of 7.2 content, with the only thing remaining being the new Cornservant quests. Arcadion 5-8 was very fun, but a lot more challenging than the first 4. M5 being probably my favorite 8-player raid as of right now primarily for the aesthetics & music of it if not anything else. It in itself is a pretty potent challenge, but it’s just so gosh darn fun! Player-wise, it has been overall pretty warm, which that has been a really nice change of pace. The only major incidentals were my first attempt on the Trial, and M8 was very cold. Aiki’s M8 went just disastrously, but once the remaining party regrouped, it went alright.

Audio project hit the ‘S’ lettering now, and that does include Square Enix Music. This will be a monumental hurdle to get over as over the years I have collected a lot of SE soundtracks. The good is it’s just mostly checking the tags and adding artwork before sending it off to the Media Server. Probably a next weekend project amongst catching up on a few neglected tasks that I pushed off this weekend.

I did watch another Studio Ghibli, this one being The Wind Rises. It was good, a bit slow in parts, but overall had a saddening tone to it. Still would certainly recommend it, but just be ready for some feels. Not much else aside from that happening. RL is still chaotic, but we did hire a new person, so once they get on board and up to speed hopefully things will level back out – it is winding down our busy season, so that will help tremendously.

Happy Monday y’all! Kick tails, and have a wonderful week leading into April!

Less-paced weekend this time around, which was a nice change. Mostly worked on getting more music onto the media server now that it’s up to full steam. Being able to access it from work is a really nice boon as well, not a planned perk but a very nice one to say the least. It took a smidgen to get it up and running the way I wanted it to (Linux Permissions are still a bit nebulous to me), but once it was there, it went smoothly. Kind of broke another part of it as well, but that was quickly rectified once I figured out how to circumvent the issue that I created.

Not much else on that front, but just on the Studio Ghibli kick; might just go ahead and watch the remaining ones I haven’t seen. Porco Rosso was the weekend’s movie and that was such a fun adventure! Think that’s all there as well, RL has kicked back up, but as for personal projects, kind of winding them down for the year: I have a trip to plan and I want to be fully prepared for hurricane season this year. Being blindsided by Milton last year took a toll and in the event of another mult-day power loss, I want to be sure to be able to alleviate that far better.

With the RL kick-up, it kind of concerns me with Patch 7.2 and beyond. It worked out really well in Endwalker, but… with the shifting of (some) power of authority over to me at work, it also means more responsibility/hours. Don’t get me wrong, I love what I do and if I didn’t, I’d have left the industry… again. However, it is a bit frustrating from time to time since I miss my old daily schedule.

As for Patch 7.2 itself, Aiki and I are pretty much ready to go. We have a long-term plan still in place all the way to 8.0, and it’s going pretty well overall. Cosmic Exploration and other things like that could add a bump or so, but I don’t foresee anything out of the ordinary (RL willing of course) causing issues. Outside of that, I think for a bit y’all will probably see less of our adventures here, and more of the Leporine’s. Not that we’re disappearing or anything, but our adventures have taken us to the normal ‘main schedule sequence’ and that will not end until 7.5 when all of our equipment is augmented sans probably the relic this time.

Aiki and I will pop up (cousins too) on the semi-regular regardless, including Fashion Reports when we do those, but I think their story is more steady at the moment. Speaking of Fashion Reports, there should be one this week as this current week’s was a hoot! Also, no, have not forgotten about concluding Aiki’s journey, but that’s going to require a smidgen more time (and Data Center traveling) to complete.

That’s all I can think of right now, happy Monday and Patch 7.2 eve y’all! Have fun in the new content, but please do pace oneself and remember to eat/drink/take breaks if anyone out there is hitting the ground running right after maintenance. As always for new patches, please don’t spoil it for anyone, and have a great adventure!