MAY 13

2024

Monday: seems like I'm a slow player of games, seeing as I bought Tears of the Kingdom a year ago, haven't played it in more than six months, and yet I still think of it as the main console game I'm looking forward to working on, once I'm finished developing my portion of Moondrop Isle.

Like most Mondays, I spent the entire workday on the phone, primarily with guests, and the one thing I can say for it is that at least the day went by quickly. We officially announced that we're going to be updating our pricing in July to always quote the gross total cost including taxes, fees, and port expenses. This isn't much of a change for me, since i'd already been doing so, but the fact that all of our online ads will match by default save me some headaches, I suspect.

I had a long call at the end of my day, so we were a little late to leave for trivia. The pleasant weather combined with the lack of a sporting event featuring the 76ers meant that Stogie Joe's was packed. It wasn't much of a wait to be seated in the back corner by the server station across from the restrooms, but we were positioned right next to another team (Steve Buscemi's Eyes, a trio of guys who've occasionally been strong competition at this and other trivia events). While I felt like we were struggling in every round, we kept up with other teams, and we wound up coming in 4th overall. I could have pushed back more on the question about igneous rocks, but it was a two-point difference with third place, so it didn't matter too much. We keep telling each other that we need to review South American geography and the works of Shakespeare, but I doubt whether we'll get around to that before next week.

After trivia, we had to go once more to Acme for these disposable treat spoons that the cats have been obsessed with. We came home with an entire box of 12 4-packs. I am skeptical whether these will last until next Monday. After a short nap in the bedroom, I played a couple of games of Hearthstone in the egg chair in the living room. (The "Whizbang's Workshop" miniset should be released tomorrow, but I wanted to get a head start on some of the weekly quests, and the bots swarming the wild ladder have been easy prey for my Combo Priest and Baku/CNE DK decks.) Once there weren't any cats lying on me, I came back into the office to post this update, and now I want to try to finish Moondrop Isle. I need to get it feature-complete in the next three days, since I want to play the Mists of Pandaria Remix event in World of Warcraft which launches on Thursday. Time to get to work!

2023

Saturday: we went to GameStop and picked up my preordered copy of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom before going shopping. My list included ingredients for that macaroni goulash recipe I found a couple months back. We did another basement walkthrough to ensure there weren't any odors being generated before clearing some additional junk for removal, then pinned the door close after I finished my laundry. I spent a big chunk of the evening with the new game, ending my session with the acquisition of the in-game tablet's photography function.