Monday, November 30, 2020

Monthly Update: December, 2020

 

I am posting my update for December on this, the last day of November because I kept thinking that the Monday after Thanksgiving was December 1st and because I had it all set up in my head, I am making the executive decision

As of this sentence, it is not even the end of November yet and I already feel exhausted thinking about what happened this month.  It is even kind of strange to think that the US Presidential Election happened only a few weeks ago as it felt/feels like it has been something constantly happening for just over a month now.  There were the weeks leading up to it with multiple states participating in early voting, either in-person or by mail, then there was election day (not capitalized until it is recognized as a national holiday) and then the weeks and weeks of the president and his lawyers demanding multiple recounts, that specific ballots be thrown out (but only the part that dealt with voting for President and Congress), and Four Seasons Total Landscaping was, in fact, their intended destination.  And then on top of all of that, here in the United States we have had surges in COVID-19 cases in 49 of 50 states (keep at it Hawai'i!) with some states, including the state I am living in, declaring 2-4 week lockdown/freezes on schools, restaurants, bars, et cetera, essentially recreating the circumstances that we experienced back in March. Then there are the newly reported and presumptive cases which have risen from 21,469 at the end of March to 198,633 on November 20th, to say nothing about the Thanksgiving holiday happening in two days.  And if you take the current mortality rate of (roughly) 2.069%, which could mean that 4,109 people that were infected four days ago will be dead before the end of the year.

I realize this is a bleak way to start out the monthly article, but it is what is on my mind a lot these days.

I had been talking with one of my friends about his 3DS a while back as mine has been out of commission, apparently since January 2018 according to the Activity Center app.  My plan was to buy it from him as he said that he has not touched it since he purchased a Switch with the only stipulation to the agreement was that I actually play the 3DS and, presumably, not sell it.  Then a month or so back, we came to an agreement that I would barter for his 3DS and we would make an exchange the next time we all saw each other (as he lives just under 90 miles away.  Well, color me surprised when I came home from work last Monday to find that he had mailed the system to me along with four games: Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest, Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS, Pokemon Sun, and The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time 3DI mean holy damn that was beyond generous and I have obviously acknowledged everything.  So all last week I spent transferring my data from my old 3DS to the new one picking up where I left off in Mega Man V, restarted Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate, but I am not sure if I will restart Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation a third time as I last restarted it after my DS died, but maybe I will try to continue as I was 35 hours in on that second run.  I will definitely need to follow a guide for a bit though just to catch up.  Plus I feel I should give Super Smash Bros. an honest go to honor this amazing gift since I know that this series is one of, let's call him "Beep Beep," his favorite games to play and has asked me if I have had the game from the Game Cube up through the Switch, to which I have always responded that I did not.  Hopefully, there will be a tutorial because I have no idea what I am doing and only vaguely aware of what all the percentages mean.

I  ran through Amazon's new cloud-based streaming video game service Luna and there will 100% be an article about that experience, going into the default selection of games, how it ran on my computer, and how well our internet service held up to streaming games like Control, GRID, and Metro Exodus among others.  I had put my name in the hat to participate in a free weeklong trial and I felt pretty early on that I had made up my mind about if I was going to renew after the week had elapsed.

One main takeaway from the Luna trial was that it reignited my interest in  Metro 2033, which I have had on Steam for a couple of years but never started (either from a Humble Bundle or their Monthly subscription).  I then decided to give the first game in this series a try, but discovered that the game either could not recognize that the PhysxLoader was already loaded, that it was in fact not loaded, or that there was some other major issue with the game, so I popped on over to GOG and picked up Metro 2033 Redux at 80% off which I thought came packaged with Metro Last Light Redux, but it looks like that is its own separate entry and I must have been thinking about the Metro Redux collection that was released on consoles (oh dang, it's only $19.99 on the Switch...that's a pretty good price...maybe if it's still on sale on Wednesday...).

This seems like a good time to wrap things up for the month that begins tomorrow.  Please stay safe out there people.  Wear a mask when indoors and when you can't be socially distant, wash those hands, use 60%+ sanitizer as needed, because the last thing we need is another 1,138,770 people newly infected and 10,086 people dying from COVID-19 this week or any week hereafter.



~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

No comments:

Post a Comment