General

I didn’t plan on being absent without any posts for this long; didn’t even realize it had been this long already. Time, to me, really is an odd flux where I think it’s only been a short time but in reality far longer time has passed.

Last week was the big family trip, and it was very delightful! It’s been six years since I’ve seen that side of the family, so paying them a visit was well overdue. We did a bit of running around, seeing the entire family that lived locally in the area, and caught up with what’s been happening in the time since.

I honestly can say I have no eaten that much in such a long time either! It was all very good food – some old haunts from way back when, and some new ones added into the mix as well. One thing I need to make sure for next time is to pack an over shirt, I was freezing practically everywhere we went in the middle of June.

Traveling went well and safely – I left insanely early in the morning, but got back in the evening. Usual airport expectancies one would have these days, long(ish) lines at the checkpoints marred with it being bustling with folks from all over. I kept to myself as much as possible, mostly to reduce any chances of getting sick (a lot of hand washing!)

At one point I was planning on a more grandeur trip seeing people I haven’t seen since I left ten years back, but decided against it as it would have overly exhausted me and just about everyone I’ve lost contact with in all of that time. I just hope they’re all doing well and are fine especially after the COVID Pandemic.

They do want me to try and return annually, which on paper will work, but there’s a few variables that come up annually that might inhibit that from being a realty. We’ll see however once we hit early January of 2026 and what the rest of the office has in mind.

I would like to go back more often, so it might end up being my typical summer trip assuming all other responsibilities are addressed and taken care of to allow for such. The extra rest was very lovely to get as well, as getting back into the usual daily routine will return me back to the old resting schedule for a time I’m afraid – this is still something that needs to be addressed.

Returning home and having the extra couple of days off to get back into the swing of things and take care of some home tasks was a good choice too. There is now a pretty concerning issue to deal with at the house, but at least I was home to see it happen. On that note, the trip was very wonderful but it is very much good to be back home as well, as I tend to be much more of a home body these days – the year of traveling kind of took any and all of my feelings for travel in general with it.

I do mean that in the both RL status as well as seeing and being able to rest in HQ once again. Hopefully more posts this week and continuing forward, but there are some projects fast approaching the horizon that I really need to work on now.

Y’all have a wonderful Monday ahead! Kick some tails!

Overall, this weekend was exactly what I was planning, a pretty relaxed and restful weekend with minimal projects or tasks to deal with. That’s not to say it was void of anything: as the usual weekend tasks were completed per the course, and only one provoked project, the rest was taking it pretty easy. The one project that was tackled either completely fixed some additional audio issues, or introduced another one. Not exactly sure yet…

Aside from that, finished this season of Doctor Who, and I very much enjoyed the ending to this season. The delay between now and the next season is probably going to be a bit of a long stretch, but it will be worth the wait once it arrives. Have been perpetually making progress on Horizon Forbidden West from the jump to PS5, and even at 20 or so hours into it, I cannot see nor fathom the end of this game yet. It’s just so freaken’ HUGE.

The last week really affected progress in Final Fantasy XIV, as I was hitting 11+ hours later in the week – not necessarily because of work related things, but I did stay late a couple of days to do both 1) finish up some work items and 2) work on a fun project that came to me – it’s kind of an annual tradition to keep setting the bar higher and challenge myself and my stills when I can. Even with that though, we doubled-down over the weekend and finished up all of the usual weekly tasks that we keep up with.

The catch is now we’re kind of falling behind in progress towards 7.3, and with my trip in two weeks, we may have to do a bit more catch up that I’d like to once everyone knows when the next patch is supposed to come out. Still trying to dance around burnout, and being away has really helped, but… still not feeling all that great about everything though. Time is definitely helping regardless.

Hopefully the work/life balance will start to revert this week with the owners back from holiday, but will probably continue to go in early at least for a bit more to help keep from leaving later, but we’ll see how that works: it may or may not help. Just thankful I like what I do, but I don’t want to hit the bigger reasons why I left the industry the first time.

Think that covers the weekend for the most part. Not really sure how busy it will be here, but this spell should end soon and more things hopefully will come back aside from daily Blog Stuffs.

Happy Monday y’all! Kick a lot of tails and have a really wonderful one!

Halfway through the 2nd very long week. 10-11 Days on 5-6 hours of sleep is really catching up. I used to do this like no tomorrow, but boy howdy the age vs mind are fighting right now for certain!

So far the weekend looks to be (mostly) void of arbitrary projects, which is good. The one train I still need to order the repair part – I’m pretty sure that drop damaged the motor… again. I may have to tinker with a technical setting if it becomes far more apparent, but might be able to relax a lot more on Saturday with some minor tasks to address.

In the meantime, just trying to get through the week. The cousins’ start to the week last night was one of the worse evenings this entire expansion cycle, which doesn’t help alleviate the current feelings towards the game in general.

I don’t know if it’s just the content isn’t interesting and/or the difficulty spike that came with post 7.0 (albeit not too much), 7.1 (there was a little) & 7.2 is just catching up to folks, but… it’s really just not that fun anymore. It’s come down to just checking off boxes at this point and that’s not a good sign.

I feel bad feeling this way for various reasons, and I have appreciated the reach outs in regards to all of this. I know there’s also a lot of lingering little things to do too but just… don’t feel up to it right now. There’s really nothing anyone can do about it though, it’s a time thing, and with RL-creep getting worse I don’t know what to do until I get a moment to pause, plan, and figure it all out again like I did right before Endwalker.

It’ll happen, but right now just have to keep kicking tails like always. Y’all do so too, and have a wonderful Wednesday!

I did get rest, but… kind of reversed it while either playing games, addressing issues, or fixing audio files. It was fine, but really could have used actual rest away from all of this.

The good of it all is that the audio problems I was having have been squashed (at the very least to my knowledge right now), and we did do some nice catching up running around Eorzea. What I mostly wanted to do was more Forbidden Westing, but that was thwarted with the above and more train complications.

The train that I unintentionally dropped and repaired, seems to have had another anomaly appear. My guess is between the drop and getting it running again the motor’s damage became apparent. So, probably will have to get a new motor to get that poor thing back up into optimal running again.

Aside from that, watched more Doctor Who – down to what I believe is the last two episodes of this new season – so should be finishing that up this coming weekend.

Hopefully this upcoming one, I’ll be able to lay low with minimal interruptions caused by anything of concern unless I provoke it myself. Once I get one good restful weekend in, I’ll be good to continue pushing forward with all of these planned projects. Running out of time as Hurricane Season is approaching quickly.

Kick tails on this Monday y’all! Have a wonderful one!

It has certainly been a rather long week thus so far. Right now it’s tilted with a lot of work hours with a little amount of sleep. I believe this should start to lighten up next week as one of the deadlines for a project concludes tomorrow. Some minor items are starting to pop up for dealings with on the weekend, but honestly I think aside from the usual tasks that are to be dealt with, just going to lay low.

One of the concerns creeping up is addressing some corrupted songs on the server; more than likely this was caused during the initial copying process all the way back before/after Hurricane Milton last fall. It’s either one of two things: the discs have gone bad, or the copy process was too fast for said discs and just needs to redone at a slower speed. Judging by the sound issues being so similar across two albums, I gather it’s just the speed it was copied at.

Worse case I’ll go invest into the soft copy versions of them and place those on the server as replacements. It’s not something I’d prefer to do, but at least it’s pretty straightforward and doesn’t require much attention aside from when it needs to change discs. I’m really hoping this is a small/isolated problem, but will keep investigating over time and correct as needed.

Y’all keep having a wonderful Friday Eve!

Hope everyone had a nice long holiday weekend. Mine was pretty good – got a bit done in terms of the impromptu projects as well as being pretty prepared for how this week was going to start off. The end of last week ended fairly disastrously – in terms of work-related dilemmas. We did put together a recovery plan that will take hold this week, but wasn’t the best way to end a week heading into a holiday one.

I did sacrifice my Switch 2 preorder in favor of the PS5, which I think just after messing around with it this weekend was the better choice. Setting everything up again and transferring to the PS5 from the 4 was rather painless as well – now just to tinker with remote access eventually. Ended up watching more Doctor Who and finally got around to seeing ‘Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,’ which was really good and wholesome. The art styled used I liked a lot as well with it.

Last week ended with us being down two days in Eorzea, so we had to scramble to get that all done on Sunday. It mostly worked out, but will have to adjust some things elsewhere to fully make it up – we’re still good and kind of on track for 7.3. With 7.25 just coming out, we’re about 2 months away from that happening.

Aside from that, just whenever I had downtime played a lot of Horizon: Forbidden West – that in itself has been an absolute joy. There’s some quirks and roadblocks the story puts on the player (way more than in the first one), but it’s just so big of a world that it doesn’t really hurt it so much overall. I left off on a big plot evolving part, so once I can get back to it, going to try and see where that all goes… well eventually knowing how I’ve been progressing through the world so far.

I think that’s all to start off with. Might be just a bunch of little blog posts this week as I haven’t had much time to plan out anything, not sure when I will again with how crazy it’s been.

Y’all have a wonderful Tuesday, and kick lots of tails!

Staved away and made it a far quieter evening last night, as I needed to be up a lot earlier today. It, kind of worked out, but since it’s a holiday weekend with the owners away on holiday, it just compounded how much needs to be done right now (and how much I need to be on top of it all). I think it was also part because I just really didn’t want to be online at all again.

While this is usually when we start to wind down, it’s been surprisingly consistently busy. There’s concerns forming as to what this holds for the future, but for now, just staying the course and kicking tails where needed. I’m just glad I like what I do, but would like the work/life balance to revert just a bit back to how it was.

Weekend has an impromptu project now, which it will be fun, but then definitely have to start the ones I planned shortly thereafter; it being a 3-dayer will certainly help as well. Hope everyone has a wonderful Friday and weekend ahead as well!

After last weekend’s Mother’s Day/Birthday extravaganza, this weekend was far more lowkey with more Forbidden West, media server work (408 albums!), and future project research. I did finally fix my broken locomotive as well, which I was dreading but it turned out to be a really easy process! It was about as happy to be moving around the track again as I was to see it going. Started the new season of Doctor Who for the Saturday evening dinner/show, and only being two episodes in I like it quite a bit so far. Next weekend will have a bit more Final Fantasy XIV lowkey planned (ideally) but with a healthy dosage of Forbidden West along with it.

I kind of want to give up my preorder for Switch 2 – assuming I get one – in favor of a PS5 mainly because of the amount of hours I just know Forbidden West is going to give me and I think Dawn Remastered is on it as well. There’s other projects I need to plan (and a vision examination) too, so this will be a strategically planned item if/when I go ahead with it.

This last week in regards to weekly reset was pretty pleasant, thankfully. Still kind of skirting trying to avoid full burnout, but with 7.25 around the corner, I hope it will rebound the empathy that I am starving to see return. Only time will tell and if the new instance area helps it. Aside from that, just trying to lay low and tackle weekly things really, but there will be a time when I’ll head back and simply rest on my poor neglected rocking chair – miss that poor thing.

That might be another reason for a PS5, but that’s a rather big investment and I’m not project clear until late 2026 – so we shall see. More stories this week and a few posts, possibly a full week’s worth again.

Y’all have a wonderful Monday, kick tails this week!

I did kind of have some impromptu posts for the rest of the week, but due to an oopsie in cloud saving, I… had to pause it until I get that all sorted out. Technical difficulties aside, week has been long and busy, but so far weekly tasks have been pretty decent overall within and around Eorzea. Got some plans for the weekend, including for here, so looking forward to all that before the final stretch leading into Memorial Day weekend.

Happy Thursday y’all! Kick some tails and have a wonderful one!

Mother’s Day weekend went very well: both celebrating Mama K’s birthday on Saturday evening and seeing her yesterday for an early lunch on the water was all very fun and lovely. Aside from the festivities, really just caught up on missing two days of not playing Final Fantasy XIV last week, which ended up working out well and being a rather pleasant experience.

Friday evening, I did hit the threshold of completing Horizon Zero Dawn after 85 hours spanning 13 months, it was over. I have not enjoyed a game like that in quite some time and did start Horizon II: Forbidden West, so we’ll see what the journey will entail this time around. It’ll probably end up taking me another year unless I get a lot more aggressive playing it on the downtime periods in a patch cycles; next one being about a month or so before 7.4.

Some small work was done on the server Friday as well, and my Super Mario RPG sound box arrived then also, which includes both the Switch version along with a remastered version of the original soundtrack spanning four CD’s. Playing those back to back once I got them on the server too was a really fun and enjoyable time.

Not much else really, and unless I can think of a few pop-up posts, it will probably be quiet here for the week again. I do have a bit of backlog to still get posted, and I kind of want to sit down and finish out the rest of Star Bunny, but that will take a good chunk of an afternoon, which right now all the time that is not allocated to RL/work is pretty precious. We are hiring new folks to help so really hoping this insanity starts to curve back to where it was before the new year.

Y’all have a wonderful Monday and week ahead! Kick lots of tails!!

So, starting off, the last couple of days, I decided to just.. well… disconnect from practically all online places. Along with that, after yet another 10 hour day, I came home and decided to just not play Final Fantasy XIV and as soon as I made that decision, a huge wave of relief came over me. It was late enough, and I just didn’t have it in me to deal with it. Instead I just plopped down, played more Horizon Zero Dawn, and enjoyed a ton of plot development from a story that has had me engaged for so long now.

The very blunt/near brash answer is just the overall negativity was starting to wear my outer patience down and once that happens, I know/knew it was time for a break from it all. Knowing that engaging in it and realizing it wasn’t going to 1) solve anything and 2) just add to it was enough – just not worth it as I have way way too much going on. It takes a lot for this to happen though, and the last time was around the time I left social media – so nearly 1.5 years now(?)

I’m saying this as kind of a reminder to the world that it is okay to disconnect or do something else and alright to not always be engaged or ‘in the know’ for a spell if it becomes costly to one’s health – it doesn’t help things and just makes matters worse. I fear a lot of the current internet/community (so many backhanded/negative articles go along with this) has forgotten this and it just keeps building up. If we lose all the good that I keep saying still exists to all of this negativity, then the evil has already won – keep kicking the good tails!

There is good and positivity out there; I will continue to say this even if I feel my words only go within earshot, and we just need to stop letting ‘the bad’ continue to be louder, it’s really tiring.

Having said that… leaving some reset items unchecked within XIV will require having to return sometime over the weekend to wrap it up, even if I don’t necessarily want to. During Endwalker there was a plan put in place for this sort of ‘just in case’ scenario, so it’s fine – might take a little bit to adjust. Even if I’m rather fed up with how things are feeling, I’d like to be ready for 7.3 as much as possible.

The weekend will be fun though, celebrating both Mama K’s birthday along with Mother’s Day throughout both Saturday and Sunday. Planning on getting some media server work done this evening, along with finishing up preparations for both events. Hopefully a smidgen of rest and downtime for a cup of coffee here and there too.

Tell some fun tales today, kick lots of good tails, spread happiness, and y’all have a wonderful Friday/Mother’s Day Weekend ahead!

Another kind of ‘on par’ weekend. Lots more media server work, rested a bit, and had the usual Saturday evening dinner with a movie. It was nice, and the last one for a couple of weeks as Mother’s Day weekend is fast approaching.

Movie-wise, sat down to finally watch Moana 2, and it was just a great if not more than the first one. Rather surprised to realize that it’s been a whopping eight years since the first one came out! I’m pretty certain I was still traveling the nation when it came out and watched it when I was home between travels.

Approached 400 albums on the server now, and while it is kind of slowing down, it’s still moving quite a bit. I do, however, need to really take care of other tasks on Saturdays soon – ideally before my trip in June. Else-wise, come the fall and Hurricane season, I’m probably going to end up in a crunch while beginning to phase in my 2026 project.

Should be a bit more activity here this week, and with that, y’all have a very wonderful week ahead! Happy Monday and kick some tails!

Kind of wanted to do a mid-week update, but was barely sitting down for the most part. It’s been just another chaotic week, and not sure it’s getting thinner for certain. Got some more audio work pre-planned for the weekend, but a bit of just downtime too. I think the weekend afterwards or the following is when the family is getting back together again for Mother’s Day festivities, so that’ll be fun.

Probably a bit more Horizon Zero Dawn over the weekend as well, if I can ever figure out how to seemlessly get those snapshots off the PS4, then I’ll share those too – the photo mode in that game is really robust!

Aside from all the usual, just tired mostly, and the inflammation/swelling is nearly gone too finally. One of these weekends I’ll get back to planning the big 2026 project that I still need to start on like really soon since it’s in phases.

Back to it then, y’all have a wonderful Friday and weekend ahead!

What I was hoping would be a relaxing weekend to mend the inflammation far better, and dabble around in the new Celestial Exploration turned into a run to get everything necessary to be done per usual.

I had to bring work home with me, the first time since I quit the industry the first time and just an ominous feeling with it, due to how last week ended. It wasn’t a lot and I knew I could get it done far quicker on my system at home than my work PC – which I cannot stand at all. The inflammation & swelling is starting to finally lessen; the pain is a lot more manageable with the swelling slowly following suit. It’ll probably be another few days until fully recovered but at least something is happening.

The PS4 upgrade went off without any major issues, and it got all up and running again with everything reinstalled where it was. There’s a noticeable difference, but I think it comes down to the speed of the rest of the hardware holding it back. It’s fine as it’s a bigger drive with the additional speed increase that has made traveling around Horizon a bit snappier.

Still kind of not feeling all that great about Final Fantasy XIV, sans space things, but just haven’t been able to get up there – I suspect it might be the next holiday weekend even before I make it up there just looking at how May is going to play out right now. In the meantime, just muscling through the weekly tasks hoping for something to turn the feelings about it all around still.

I may or may not get into the reasoning as to why, but it is kind of pushing me from wanting to be on as much right now. The longer breathers between reset are helping a bit.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 was an absolute blast of a movie, by far the best of the three out now, so certainly gets my watch recommendation. Not sure what’s next to go and watch/catch up on, but got some time to ponder it until next weekend.

Going to be lighter on posts again this week as I had absolutely no time to figure it out again, and little to no time during the week to fill it out that I can tell right now. Y’all kick some tail, and have a wonderful last week/beginning of May ahead!

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!