Monthly Update: July 2019

Happy July everyone!  I am back.  Or I have been since Friday, June 28th, but that was our final travel day due to a snafu a few months back while making the original trip plans.  But Conklederp and I are now back stateside from my Grandmother's cruise of the Baltic and Scandinavian regions.

In June's Monthly Update article, I had mentioned that my posting was going to be sporadic, but it turned out that my postings turned out to be not.  Before heading out for the cruise ship, we were under the impression that I could at least log on to WiFi while on the ship as there was the "Unlimited Internet Access" that was a perk for all aboard, but there was a stipulation that was not initially made clear.  The ship we were on did have some computers with WiFi access, but those were four floors above us in a Library of sorts, but were limited to non-streaming internet browsing since the signal was not very strong.  The other limitation was that we were only allowed one device to connect to the WiFi per room at a time.  This turned out to be a big inconvenience for a people who just came from a hotel where the WiFi connection was great where I could be playing Fortnite on the Switch while Conklederp streamed a show on Netflix without any lag or intense buffering; This of course would have been early in the morning or late at night since most of our daytime activities (8 AM - 11:30 PM) were taken up by exploring Stockholm; this was also the case for our hotel in Copenhagen.  We then also found out that while on the boat, even after Conklederp logged out of the internet, that if I wanted to connect my computer to the WiFi, that we would have been charged a $9.99 fee per day to access a second device. 

So I decided that I would forgo attempting to find ways to log onto the Internet, and instead use most of my in-room time playing Octopath Traveler, and for a few days while we were in St. Petersburg, Russia, playing Papers, Please ; thankfully I was able to open Steam in Offline Mode.  Replaying Papers, Please came about after our first day in Russia because in order to enter the country from the cruise ship, we were required to go through border security showing our passport, our room key card, and in some cases, our buss pass.  The first time through border we were given a printed Migration Card that we had to keep with our passports and later gave back to the border guard officers when we returned upon our return.  It really felt like something out of Papers, Please.  I still have not completed a full run through of the story mode in Papers, Please for one of the various reasons: too many citations and fired, evicted from government building because I could not pay rent and fired, imprisoned for accepting bribes, and probably a couple of other reasons that I cannot think of at the moment.

Conklederp and I also picked up Elder Sign, a card game that takes place in the Arkham Horror universe, the same as Mansions of Madness.  This was because coming off of Himo and Folly's wedding on June 8th, we really wanted to play some kind of Lovecraftian horror game but knew that trying to bring the massive Mansions of Madness box on a cruise (where my luggage already weighed 50.5 lbs).  To date, we have once with Conklederp, The Kid, and myself, then once with Conklederp and myself, then once with The Kid and myself, and lastly I played by myself (since the game can be played with one to eight players) on Saturday and Sunday).  Each time we have played, we have figured out more and more of the rules, and I think after this last time playing by myself, I think we can finally play a single game sessions with all of the rules integrated correctly.  I also brought along Cards Against Humanity but due to other obligations that our cousins had, we only ended up playing twice and never with the cousins.

As for what to look forward to in July, you can probably expect an outdated E3 article from one or both of us, definitely at least me since I only tangentially heard about E3 happenings when I had access to WiFi, like while in Helsinki, Finland which had better city-wide WiFi than our entire boat.  I might even get around to watching some of the presentations too if I can find the time.  I will also be plodding merrily along through Octopath Traveler and possibly beat it by the end of the month?  I currently have all eight characters, am 64 hours in, and everyone has up through the second chapter in their own stories finished.  I am now working on their third chapters and really hoping that there is a fourth since there are still large portions of the map that have yet to be revealed.  The sad part is though that a number of my characters are already maxed out on what abilities they can learn (I think?) so aside from increasing their HP/SP (this game's version of MP), and revealing more of their story, I do not have any other character mechanic development to go which does make me a little sad.

Hokay, let us leave it there for now.  Plenty more of July to hash things out.  We'll see you then.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
On The Hidden Endless Road