Friday, December 30, 2016

Late to the Party - Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls - Ultimate Evil Edition

I love video games, but it's rare for me to play them right when they are first released. Normally it takes me a somewhere from a few months to a few years to get around to playing to a game. I've got a considerable backlog of games that I've been meaning to play and it hasn't been until earlier this year that I've been able to start chipping away at the list. With that in mind, I've created a series of posts called Late to the Party, wherein I discuss the games that came out in the preceding years that I'm finally getting around to experiencing. Today's entry in the series is Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls - Ultimate Evil Edition, which I will refer to as just Diablo 3 from hereon for obvious reasons. Today is also the final edition of Season 1 of Late to the Party, and with a game like Diablo 3 on the docket, you know we’re going out with a bang.

Thursday, December 29, 2016

Another trinket gone

It’s generally not my style to bring back souvenirs from my extended travel sessions, but invariably I oftentimes come back with a few things I didn’t start the journey with. For example, in 2012 I came back with three pairs of socks that I had bought in Spain to replace some of the ones I had brought with me that had become worn out. From my 2015 journey across Europe, one of the things that got brought back stateside was some sore throat medication I had acquired in Croatia during the time I was temporarily sick. This past weekend I wasn’t feeling so great and needed some sore throat relief, and wouldn’t you know it, while checking my medicine cabinet I came across those Croatian meds. The sight of them triggered a rush of memories from that part of the journey (mostly of feeling miserable but not letting illness stop me from sightseeing) and I got a small kick out of using up the last of the supply. Another trinket from overseas finally got to be seen again, though in this case being discovered meant being consumed and the end of its useful lifetime. It’s somewhat sad that those meds are now gone, as they were something of a mental link back to the 2015 journey, but at the same time they were just meds, and nothing more. I don’t regret using them up and am fine with them now gone. For me, the real mementos of any journey are the photos and memories I collect while I’m there. Those sorts of things I will not so easily part with.

Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Mandatory Classes

I must be getting old, because I’ve been thinking about what sorts of classes should be mandatory for high schoolers to pass before they can graduate. Lots of people have opinions on this sort of thing, and my suggestions probably aren’t the best, but here are four classes I think every high schooler ought to complete.

Personal Finance
Debt remains one of the great scourges of my generation, the Millenials, and I think part of the problem, in addition to things like skyrocketing college tuitions, is that many of us never got instruction on managing money wisely. I was fortunate to grow up in a household that taught me how to handle money well, but not everyone is that lucky. A class that taught high schoolers about income, bank accounts, credit cards, debt, savings, and other topics related to personal finance would help a lot of teens better prepare for transitioning to adulthood and avoiding financial pitfalls.

World Geography
It’s no secret that Americans are notoriously ignorant of world geography. How many of us could find Afghanistan on a map back when America first started attacking the Taliban? I don’t expect everyone to find every single country, but it would be an improvement if we could at least find the ones that are commonly making headlines, if nothing else to give us a perspective on world affairs. While we’re at it, maybe the world geography class should also require students to learn three to five bullet points of basic information on various countries.

Logic, Rationality, and Critical Thinking
If there is one criticism of my generation that I believe is spot on, it is that we have overemphasized feelings to the detriment of critical thinking. A class on basic logic and rationality would help us better reason through the various issues that come before us, and be less easily bought by appeals to emotion. I’m not saying feelings are bad, but we need to use both our brains and our hearts.

Health and Nutrition
America appears to be slowly beginning to taper off its bad eating and health habits, but we still have a long way to go. What a person eats and does is their choice, but it never hurts to be better informed on what our bodies need to be at their best and how to live healthier lifestyles. Then maybe we can stop being the most obese country in the world and reduce the amount of money spent each year on healthcare to counteract suboptimal dietary and fitness decisions.

Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Another Photo Printed

The only up side to my current employment is that it is supplying me with an income, which is allowing me to spend money on things I would abstain from if I were still unemployed. You might remember that earlier this year I got one of my better photos printed as a gift to a friend. This month I had another one printed, and it became a Christmas gift for another friend of mine. Below is an image of the print sitting in the living room of the house I’m currently living in.


This particular print is of a photo I took in June 2015 at Lake Tonglen in Alaska, which is near Denali. At that time of year there is 24-hour sunlight up in Alaska, but around the end of the day they get what can be thought of as an extended sunset, where the sun gets low in the sky, but never fully goes down. Normally you only get a few minutes of a sunset’s most brilliant colors, but in Alaska around the time of the summer solstice the pinks, purples, and reds last a lot longer. This was one of the best photos I took on that trip, and I’m pleased to see it turned out so well. One of these days I ought to see about getting some of my work featured somewhere.

Monday, December 26, 2016

Sprinting to the Finish

It is done. The final game of Season 1 of Late to the Party has been finished. Now I just need to write up my thoughts in time for publishing on Friday. With all the stress and time constraints I’m currently experiencing I doubt I’ll be able to produce something that satisfies me, but I’m committed to getting this done by Friday, so regardless of that writing piece’s condition I will be publishing it. Time to sprint to the finish line and hurl myself across to close out 2016.

Friday, December 23, 2016

Merry Christmas 2016

Christmas falls on a Sunday this year, and I decided to publish a Christmas greeting today rather than Monday. I’d like to wish you, the reader, a merry Christmas. If you have the privilege of spending Christmas with friends and/or family be sure to make the most of it. I personally am not able to travel home this year, but on the other hand that means I can spend the Christmas weekend making a big push to finish the final game of Late to the Party, Season 1. Regardless of your circumstances, I hope this is a special time for you and everyone around you. May it be filled with warmth, laughter, joy, and love.

Thursday, December 22, 2016

Boulder is Changing

My employer has several offices within the city of Boulder, and at the moment I’m temporarily stationed at the office not far from the central part of the city. The other day I found an excuse to take break from the flagellating my soul goes through on a daily basis there and stepped out onto the balcony area that faces westwards. Surveying the scene before me, I was once again captivated by the sheer beauty of Boulder’s geography, with the majestic mountains forming the background for the fair city. At the same time, it was impossible to ignore the construction area directly in front of me. Below is a photo I took to give you an idea of what I was seeing that day.


Scanning the scene and thinking about what I was looking at, I came to the realization that in my mind I have a romanticized version of Boulder that doesn’t exist in reality. I like to think of Boulder as this idealistic town at the foot of the mountains—insulated from many of America’s woes. The truth is not so dreamy. Boulder is growing, as evidenced by all the construction around town, and due to the restrictive nature of new development it is experiencing some of the problems experienced in places like the California Bay Area. Rents and home prices are steadily rising and pricing people out of the city, and traffic congestion seems to get a little worse each year. In spite of these and other issues, there’s still a ton of things I like about Boulder, and I’d go so far as to say it’s one of America’s best cities, but there’s no denying that Boulder is changing. This fantasy version of Boulder in my head hasn’t existed for a least a decade, if at all. It’s time to embrace reality and exist in the real Boulder, taking the city as it is.

Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Why PlayStation?

I like to think of myself as console agnostic, but the fact of the matter is that I do the vast majority of my gaming on PlayStation platforms. One of the reasons for this goes back to the circumstances I found myself in during my college days. In my first year of college, one of my roommates had a PlayStation 2, which was my introduction to the PlayStation ecosystem. He also had a Nintendo 64, but the PlayStation 2 was the console I gravitated towards, and after that I stuck with the PlayStation family of consoles. Perhaps if my roommate had owned an Xbox instead of a PlayStation, I would have turned out to be primarily an Xbox gamer.

Since that time I’ve only owned one non-PlayStation console, the Nintendo Wii, but that’s primarily been due to convenience and my gaming interests. Whenever there was a game I wanted to play that was exclusive to the Xbox ecosystem I was able to make use of a friend’s Xbox, so I never had a need to purchase an Xbox of my own. Next year I might finally purchase an Xbox One, but for now I’m content to wait and see how Microsoft’s Project Scorpio pans out. For Nintendo’s part, their first-party lineup of games hasn’t appealed to me as strongly as the first-party games of PlayStation and Xbox, so I haven’t had much of a desire to buy their consoles. The Nintendo Wii was an interesting exception to this, as I, like many other people, got caught up in the novelty of its motion controls, and to the Wii’s credit it did have some good games during its early years. We’ll see whether or not the Nintendo Switch can do something similar. For the near future, however, I’m fine with just owning my PlayStation 4.

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

The year it stopped

You know, there’s one more item related to Friday’s Pockets Full of Soup post that I decided yesterday I wanted to share. It’s an interesting addition to one part of the story. You might remember that I mentioned how I was verbally bullied by my classmates from 1st Grade through 8th Grade, and you might have been wondering what happened after that, when I got to 9th Grade. I can’t really explain the why, but let me tell you the what.

First, a little more about 8th Grade. That school year was a particularly tough time for me. In addition to all the issues associated with a young man undergoing puberty, I was not doing well in two of my classes, which for a kid who normally excelled academically and had the legacy of two high-achieving older siblings to live up to, was particularly crushing. The mockery by those around me was also at its peak. 8th Grade could not end fast enough, and I was relieved when it did.

Summer came and went, and upon showing up to high school in 9th Grade, I assume the social derision would resume, but it didn’t. No one was making fun of me, and if anything my social standing took a massive leap forward. For the first two weeks of 9th Grade I kept telling myself that it was all a lie, that everyone was lulling me into a false sense of security and the rug would be pulled out from me any minute, but days and weeks passed and nothing happened. I don’t know why, but the taunting stopped. It was as if everyone had all grown up a little that summer and subconsciously agreed to leave me alone. On occasion I would get a mean-spirited comment or two—as much as anyone else got in high school—but the widespread mockery never came back. Everyone just moved on.

Monday, December 19, 2016

Other Things I’m Thankful For

To follow-up Friday’s writing piece and keeping the train of thankful positivity going forward for one more day, below are some of the other things in my life that I’m thankful for.
  • I’m thankful that I grew up in a household where my mother and father were married and lived together in the home.
  • I’m thankful I was born in and grew up in America.
  • I’m thankful that my parents didn’t consider parenthood as some sort of second-class calling that was less important than their careers.
  • I’m thankful for friends who have gotten through some rough patches in my life.
  • I’m thankful that I have had the privilege of traveling overseas.
  • I’m thankful that I’m debt-free and can live contently with few possessions.
  • I’m thankful for the majestic Colorado mountains.
  • I’m thankful for the privilege of owning a car.
  • I’m thankful for video games and the many adventures they have taken me on.
  • I’m thankful that I live in a day and age where I can do online writings such as this.
That’s just a few of the things I’m thankful for. If I took the time, I could list a hundred more, but for today I’ll stick with these.

Friday, December 16, 2016

Pockets Full of Soup

One of the podcasts I regularly listen to is Pockets Full of Soup. Hosted by Jared Petty, formerly of IGN, Pockets Full of Soup is a weekly interview/storytelling podcast wherein Jared talks to someone he knows and asks them to tell him about someone they are grateful for. It’s a small beacon of positivity amongst the swelling tide of malice that the Internet is known for, and if you’re feeling down on life, or if you’ve just spent too much time in the Youtube comments section, it offers a brief respite from the malaise of this world. Since I started listening to Pockets Full of Soup the thought has been crossing my mind of doing a writing piece wherein I pretend that I’m one of Jared’s guests on the podcast and answer his common questions. Originally I was going to have this ready to publish on Thanksgiving, which would have been appropriate for that day, but a number of things going on in my life at the time got in the way, and I had writing pieces related to my current employment that at the time demanded to be published. Consequently this writing piece got delayed until today.

Thursday, December 15, 2016

I’m Beginning to Understand

At my previous employer there was a woman who served as the company’s accounting manager. She was easily the best employee in the office—showing up first, leaving last, and doing incredibly hard and thankless work, all while also meeting the needs of everyone else in the company. Every single day she trudged through hell and back, and did it all without complaining. When I talked to her she would smile, crack a laugh or two, and act like she was okay, but I knew better. Today, at my current job, I’m beginning to understand what she was going through, though I won’t claim my petty sufferings are anywhere near what she endured. I’m beginning to understand how wretched her days were at the company, and how her smiling, laughing, and acting content both hid how much she was hurting and were also probably a defensive mechanism to prevent herself from breaking. If my current job is beating me down so badly, I can only begin to comprehend her daily tribulations.

A little under a year before I resigned from the company, that woman was fired. Despite being the best employee, one of the owners had held a personal animus against her for a long time, so when she finally made a mistake that owner took the opportunity to be rid of her. All her years of loyal, tireless contributions in the face of constant trials in the end counted for nothing. The company had chewed her up, and spat her out. As dejected as I was feeling towards the end of my time at that company, I can’t claim to know what it’s like to get stabbed in the back like that by one’s employer, since I left of my own volition and on good terms with my superiors. That’s something I hope I’ll never come to understand.

Wednesday, December 14, 2016

I Should Have Said Something

Many years ago, I was in a Blockbuster looking at their selection of movies. Off to the side I noticed a woman with a small throng of boys go up to the cash register. Those boys looked like they were young teenagers, maybe 13 to 14 years-old, and she was getting them a video game, specifically Call of Duty: World at War. I have played quite a few Call of Duty games in my time, and I know from experience that they are rated M for good reason. Full of bullets, explosions, and staggering body counts, they are not meant for the young and immature, and World at War is also one of the more graphic entries in the series. I am normally not one to step into other peoples’ affairs, but reflecting on this occasion I think I really ought to have said something to that woman. Maybe she would have brushed off my concern, or told me to mind my own business, and those kids certainly would not be happy that a random stranger was warning that woman that they shouldn’t be playing Call of Duty, but it would have been the right thing to do.

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

I am part of the problem

Something that’s been making the rounds in the world of video games is the news that a number of major releases this year haven’t been selling as many copies as expected. There are a panoply of reasons that could help explain why sales are down lately, but as I was listening to games journalists commentate on this topic it occurred to me that in fact I am partly responsible for this. For a long time I’ve operated under the principle that there are lots of games worth playing, but very few worth actually owning (my current PS4/Xbox One collection consists of only three games: Uncharted 4, Gears of War Ultimate Edition, and Destiny).  In my mind, ownership of a game is a commitment to play it several times over, and the vast majority of games I play I have no interest in ever replaying—not even some of the really good ones. Hence I make heavy usage of Gamefly, a game rental service which allows me to experience a wide range of games for less money than if I had bought all of them, and saves me the storage space I’d have to create for a large collection of game discs. By renting most games instead of buying them, I am not sending any money to their developers and publishers, and contributing the lower sales figures. All that said, I currently have no plans to change my gaming modus operandi, and I don’t really feel guilty about it either (if I was pirating games, that would be a different story). Perhaps this is another example of that proverb that says a single raindrop never feels responsible for the flood.

Monday, December 12, 2016

The Last Sentence

Writing a commentary/review on a video game isn’t easy, and for me one of the hardest parts to write for any of my Late to the Party posts has been the last sentence of each writing piece. On a number of occasions I’ve gotten all the way to the end of the last paragraph, having fought a brutal battle of mental attrition to get there, and found myself completely stumped as to what to say in the last sentence. It seems like it ought to be easy—one final sentence with an overall opinion on the game and maybe some sort of flowery prose for effect—but for whatever reason that final sentence often bedevils me. Sometimes I achieve a breakthrough and compose a final sentence that satisfies me, and sometimes I’ve had to just scrape together a really awkward or cliché final sentence and just let it be. And the worst part is, because of my mental inability to see past the flaws of my own work, that bad sentence at the end is all I’ll be able to see when I click the publish button.

Friday, December 9, 2016

Late to the Party - Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition

I love video games, but it's rare for me to play them right when they are first released. Normally it takes me a somewhere from a few months to a few years to get around to playing to a game. I've got a considerable backlog of games that I've been meaning to play and it hasn't been until earlier this year that I've been able to start chipping away at the list. With that in mind, I've created a series of posts called Late to the Party, wherein I discuss the games that came out in the preceding years that I'm finally getting around to experiencing. Today's entry in the series is Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition. This post was intended to have been published a week ago, however my job had me putting in ten to thirteen-hour days last week, so I simply wasn’t able to finish the game and write this commentary in time for that. But, on the plus side, I can say that I eventually got it done. I guess this is a case of better late than never.

Thursday, December 8, 2016

Political Capital

Back on Election Day, my friend Ben over at Free Refills did a writing piece wherein he discussed his memories from the 2008 election when Barack Obama became president. One of the things he brought up was how Obama, who came into office with Democratic majorities in Congress, chose to put all of his political capital into getting Obamacare passed, rather than economic reforms to address the underlying causes of the Great Recession, and the political consequences that may have arisen from this choice. This got me thinking about what issue(s) Donald Trump will put his political capital into once he becomes president, seeing as how he will be in a similar situation to what Obama had in 2008. Will Trump suffer the same fate of investing everything in a single controversial piece of legislation, or will he spread his investments and try to achieve a broader swath of political accomplishments? Trump has Republican majorities in Congress, so theoretically he should be able to get a lot of legislation passed, but then again maybe the Republican Party won’t be unified enough to fulfill Trump’s goals. Also interesting to see will be how much of his campaign rhetoric becomes actual policy agendas, and which of his campaign promises/claims quietly disappear once he’s in office. Trump only has two years to get things done before another election threatens the Republicans’ hold on Congress, so whatever he plans on doing, he’ll need to be quick about it.

Wednesday, December 7, 2016

First Paycheck

My first paycheck from my current job was deposited into my bank account. I’ve been staring at those dollars that I received in exchange for my services, and thinking about how much I’ve been paying for them in terms of my physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. My life is draining away before my eyes, both in terms of time lost and the toll it is taking on me personally. Maybe if I was earning significantly more money with this job I could at least console myself knowing that I’d only have to be a slave for awhile before I’d have enough saved up to be liberated from this existence, but that’s not the case. I continue staring at those dollars. It’s not worth it—not at this pay grade and not with how much is being taken from me.

Tuesday, December 6, 2016

Final Fantasy XV Ride Together Trailer

Final Fantasy XV was released recently, and along with it came a new trailer for the game. The trailer, titled Ride Together, begins as you would expect for a high fantasy adventure game, with a series of dramatic sequences accompanied by a fittingly dramatic score, but then at about the 0:52 mark the trailer makes a hard left turn. Suddenly the trailer’s tone and tempo dramatically change and the soundtrack switches to the song Fast Lane, by Bad Meets Evil, featuring Eminem. This curveball was unexpected, to say the least. I don’t normally associate gangsta rap with Final Fantasy. At first I was flabbergasted by what I was witnessing. Then my inner critic was questioning who in the Final Fantasy marketing department thought this was a good idea for the trailer. But as the trailer continued I found myself starting to like it more and more, and by the end I loved it. The musical selection was unorthodox, and on paper sounds like a poor choice, but in practice somehow it works. It’s not the best trailer of the year, but Ride Together certainly is one of the most memorable, simply for pulling the rug out from under the viewer. Below is the trailer if you haven’t seen it yourself.


Monday, December 5, 2016

PSX 2016

I wasn’t able to watch last Saturday’s keynote presentation at PSX when it happened, but I did check out recaps of it later in the day when I had time. There were a ton of things revealed and showcased at this year’s keynote, more than I have time or interest to discuss in detail, but below are some quick thoughts on the items that stood out to me.

* Uncharted 4 is getting standalone DLC titled The Lost Legacy. It will star Chloe (from Uncharted 2 and 3) and Nadine (from Uncharted 4). Uncharted is one of my favorite series in all of gaming, so I’m looking forward to playing this whenever it comes out.
* Gameplay footage from the remastered Crash Bandicoot games was shown. I personally don’t care about Crash Bandicoot, but I know it’s a big deal to a lot of people who grew up playing the Crash Bandicoot games, so I’m glad that people are getting an old favorite brought back to life.
* A sequel to Knack is in development. Knack was the very first PlayStation 4 game I played (it was at a kiosk in Best Buy) and even though it’s supposed to be a mediocre game I’ve been thinking that one of these days I should play it to see for myself. Maybe I’ll include it in the second season of Late to the Party.
* Horizon: Zero Dawn got another trailer. I’m already sold on this game, and it just needs to come out already. Other than maybe a launch trailer, I think this game has sufficient hype behind it to not need any more media for it.
* The Wipeout racing games are being remastered for the PlayStation 4. I played Wipeout HD on the PlayStation 3, and despite being laughably terrible at it, I liked the game’s aesthetic and soundtrack. I may or may not look into this one when it gets released.
* Three PlayStation 2 games—Parappa the Rapper, Loco Roco, and Patapon—are coming out on PlayStation 4. All three of these are games that I missed on PlayStation 2, so it might be worthwhile for me to experience one or more of them to improve my gaming heritage and perspective.
* A new trailer for Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom was shown. I’ve heard from a number of people about how good the first Ni No Kuni was, but it’s never been something that grabbed my attention. Perhaps next year I’ll finally give it a try, and if Ni No Kuni 2 also gets a lot of praise then maybe I’ll play it too.
* PlayStation VR got its own section during the keynote. I don’t think I’m going to be buying a PlayStation VR any time soon, if at all. That’s not because I’m not interested, but because I don’t think I’ll have time to stack even more gaming experiences on top of the few ones I’m able to play right now. Also, I’m not one to be a first-adopter of new technology, so I may just wait for the second generation of PlayStation VR to be released, which I imagine will be during the PlayStation 5 console generation.
* Interestingly, the PlayStation 4 Pro doesn’t appear to have been discussed at all during the keynote, which I suppose makes sense since the people who attend PSX or watched online are generally the type who already know all about it. Sony may have made the calculation that talking about the Pro would have been a waste of time that could be spent showcasing other things.
* The keynote ended with a trailer for The Last of Us, Part 2, and as expected it was a masterpiece of a trailer. While I would have been completely fine if there was never a sequel to The Last of Us, I don’t doubt that developer Naughty Dog can create another legendary game. It was stated just before the trailer played that the game is in early development, so I’m guessing this game won’t be coming out until 2018 at the earliest (2019 sounds much more reasonable, as Naughty Dog doesn’t rush their games).
* Overall, PSX 2016 looked like a very strong showcase for the PlayStation brand. Even if a lot of things in the keynote presentation didn’t appeal to me, personally, it had content for just about every type of gamer, and good content at that. Though relatively young compared to the other big gaming conferences like E3, TGS, and Gamecom, PSX has proven it can stand with the big boys and deliver just as strong of a show as anything else.

Friday, December 2, 2016

The Next Adventure

I’ve been looking for mental anchors to hold me in place in the midst of the storm that has engulfed my existence since returning to the workforce. Lately the dominant anchor has been the thought of where my next extended overseas journey could take me, assuming I’m able to go. I could easily do a third trip to Europe, seeing as how there’s always new things to find and there are lots of places over there I’d like to return to, but I think it’s now time that turn around and move in the other direction. Instead of flying east to reach the West, I will fly west to reach the East. Japan and South Korea have long been places I’ve been curious to visit, so it’s as good a time as any to commit myself to reaching them. I even have two contacts that I could meet up with while I’m out there: an old roommate of mine is on Okinawa and one of my cousins lives in the Tokyo area. Like my journeys across Europe, I would need to do an extensive amount of research and planning before going. Rick Steves unfortunately won’t be able to help me on this one, so new sources of travel advice will need to be procured. The moonshot goal at this point would be to make the journey some time around September of next year. It probably wouldn’t be as long of a journey as either of the trips to Europe, but I’d like to try to get two to four weeks out of it. Anything less than two weeks would be hard to justify, given the amount of money I’m gong to have to spend just on the airfare to get there. Good thing I’m skilled at living frugally and saving up money.

To be sure, whether or not this journey actually happens is all up in the air at this point. It simply might not be practicable to do this or maybe an unexpected personal or world event will make travel impossible. Even if it never happens, however, the thought of it has been helping me get through the days of wage slavery. Every now and then I stop whatever soul-crushing tedium I’m working on and I think to myself a single word: Asia. And yes, I do it in the voice from that time on SNL’s Celebrity Jeopardy where John Travolta is asked to name the continent of Asia. It’s a silly thought, and sometimes it cracks a faint smile on my face, which I suppose is a good thing considering the circumstances.

#Asia2017

Thursday, December 1, 2016

Falling off the Pokémon bus

Despite never owning a Gameboy, I was able to play five of the early Pokémon games thanks to an emulator my older brother installed on the family computer. The specific games that I played were Red, Blue, Yellow, Gold, and Silver, and in retrospect these were probably pirated copies that my brother had acquired, but my childhood mind wasn’t concerned about piracy—it was just happy to play games that I otherwise would have no access to. I played through each game at least once, but after Gold and Silver I left the Pokémon games behind and never returned to them.

One of the reasons I intentionally stopped playing the Pokémon games was because, in my mind, the Pokémon universe had gotten out of control. In Red, Blue, and Yellow, there were a total of 151 Pokémon. That’s a fair number of Pokémon, but not too much, and at the time I had all their names and basic info memorized. In Gold and Silver another 100 Pokémon were added to the roster, and I was okay with this too. Gold and Silver took place in a different part of the Pokémon world, so it made sense that there would be some new Pokémon that didn’t exist in the region from Red and Blue. However, as the years proceeded and more Pokémon games came out, it became apparent that this continual expansion of the Pokémon universe was never going to end. Each new set of games brought another slew of new Pokémon, and though in each game the introduction of new Pokémon made sense from a narrative perspective, for me it was a torrential downpour that struck me as wildly excessive. Hence, I’ve never bothered to try playing any other Pokémon games, and I don’t think I ever will. It’s not because the games are bad—I loved the five that I played and all the subsequent games appear to have at least been decent, if not good or better—it’s because my feeble brain can’t handle so many Pokémon. Just give me a Charizard and a few others from those first five games, and I’m good.

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Climbing Mt. Gagazet

Being situated right at the foot of the mountains, the city of Boulder has quite a few hiking trails that lead out into the wilderness. I’m normally not one for hiking, but there is one hike that I take at least once per year up to a certain spot on the Flatirons (the distinctive local rock formations that are often used as Boulder’s emblem). This spot was shown to me by a friend about a decade ago, and I like to think of it as my personal place on the Flatirons since it’s rare for me to run into other people there. Of course, being who I am, I had to give that place a name, so I call it Mt. Gagazet, which is a Final Fantasy 10 reference. Mt. Gagazet looks out on Boulder and the surrounding lands. The only sounds up there are the distant hum of the city, birds chirping, and the occasional rock climbers scaling the cliff face. I also have a tradition that when I get up to my spot I play the song Learning to Breath by Switchfoot (no idea why I do this, but it seems fitting). For twenty to thirty minutes I’ll sit atop Mt. Gagazet, staring off into the distance and thinking about whatever’s on my mind, until I decide it’s time to leave and then I’ll start the trek back down. I don’t climb Mt. Gagazet often, but it’s a refreshing thing to do, and I never come back thinking that I’d wasted my time.

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Suggested Readings

UPDATE: This feature is now active. Check it out on the right side of the page.

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With spam bots having forever warped the statistics of this blog’s popular posts, I’m thinking I’ll just remove that gadget and replace it with another one that lists posts I’ve selected myself. If I can get it to look the way I want I’ll call it something like “Suggested Readings” or something like that. The posts selected for it will be ones that stand out in my mind and I think would be worthwhile for others to read. Keep an eye on the right side of this blog for this new feature (if I can make it work).

Monday, November 28, 2016

Attack of the French Spam Bots

This blog normally gets a few hits per day, mostly from the United States but there are always a few each week from other parts of the world. Being the obsessive person that I am, I check the analytics of this blog each time I log in to publish a new post, so whenever there’s a substantial change to those analytics I notice it. For the past several weeks there’s been an increase in traffic, which would normally be a good thing, as I’d like more people to visit this blog, however I believe this increase is due to my blog falling victim to spam bots originating in France. According to the tools available in Blogger, the vast majority of daily visits now originate in France and the traffic sources all go back to websites that redirect the user to sexual services advertisements. At first I was perplexed and almost amused, as I figured this surge in spam visitors would go away after awhile, but now I find it very annoying. It all started around the time that I published my writing piece on the Top Posts of this blog, and unfortunately it has greatly distorted the statistics of which posts have gotten the most views. Were this a big-name blog with a vast readership, this spam attack would hardly alter the statistics of any given post, but the fact of the matter is that this blog has a small readership, so it doesn’t take many spam hits to throw everything off. Of course, for you, the reader, this is a non-issues since you don’t see any of the analytics of this website, but for me it’s something to get worked up about, as I treat this blog like it’s my child and I don’t like anyone messing with my children—even if it’s not doing me any real harm.

Unfortunately there’s not much I can do about these spam bots, as Blogger doesn’t have any tools for blocking them. The only real countermeasure I have is to temporarily revert posts back to draft form for a number of days and adjust the URLs before republishing them, which is why you may have noticed that certain posts have been disappearing and reappearing lately. This however has had only minimal success, so it would seem that I’m out of luck on this matter. Hopefully my new website will have some actual defenses against this sort of thing.

Friday, November 25, 2016

Exhaustion

I am tired. My new job sucks the life out of me. I knew this was going to happen—I experienced it in my last job too—but it is so much worse this time. Sitting at that desk, staring at that screen, typing and clicking all day long while seeing the hours steadily taken away from me; it’s a profoundly demoralizing thing. All the best parts of me are being thrown away, and all of it is done for the sake of a paycheck. I go to bed every night exhausted, and not the satisfying exhaustion that comes from having spent yourself doing something worthwhile. No, this is the exhaustion that comes from having your soul ripped out of you and trampled underfoot as your life is stolen away, day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, second by second.

And it’s not just my soul that is suffering—my body has been feeling the effects as well. My eyes ache from staring at the computer screen for hours on end. My wrists again need braces to keep the carpal tunnel at bay. My exercise routine, the thing that for the last year kept me in good form and productive, now works against me. I go to the gym to burn off calories and keep my muscles in working order, but it’s not easy to train one’s body when you’re in low spirits, and I leave the gym much more physically drained than in the past. Were it an option I would just cut out my gym routine altogether, however it is a necessary part of my life, seeing as how I don’t get any exercise while sitting at a desk all day. Despite be committed to exercise and watching what I eat, my health is already starting to worsen and I’m putting on weight. This job won’t kill me, but it’s doing its best to make me feel closer to death. Thankfully my mind is still intact, but even it will eventually start showing signs of decay if things continue as they are. With so much intellectual stimulation having been axed from my life by necessity, I am simply not getting the mental workout I used to. Writing remains the last bastion of significant mental stimulation, and I will continue to write so long as I can, but I find it is getting harder and harder. Having to carry the corpses of my body and my spirit at the same time is a colossal undertaking for my mind, and sooner or later it too will find its strength depleted. When that day comes, I will truly be a man who has lost his spark.

Thursday, November 24, 2016

Guaranteed Income

Though I think it’s a hopelessly idealistic and impractical system to implement in America, I can’t deny that I’m very receptive to the idea of a guaranteed income. There are a number of variants of this scheme, but the basic idea is that the government replaces all welfare programs with a guaranteed income it pays to citizens. The income is low, so no one will get rich off of it alone, but it is high enough to cover a person’s basic expenses like food and shelter, thus freeing people up from needing jobs to stay alive. If a person wants a middle class lifestyle or better, they can get a job, start a business, or do whatever they like to earn additional income, and once they achieve a certain level of prosperity from their efforts the guaranteed income from the government should cease, seeing as how the person won’t need it at that point. Obviously the system would be ripe for abuse and with how incompetent and wasteful the American government is I wouldn’t trust it to run such a program, but if it could actually work it would be a dream come true for people like me who spend their days shackled by traditional jobs that steal away our lives in exchange for money. Yes, some people would just loaf around all day watching TV, Youtube, or Netflix, but some of us would finally be free to unleash our full potential on the world. Imagine the creativity, innovation, and positive contributions of a legion of people who are actually doing what they love doing, rather than what they must do by necessity. It wouldn’t be a utopian society—the inherent flaws of man will forever keep him from being totally free of his inner demons—but it would be a start.

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

“At least you’re not sitting around all day.”

Among the few frustrations of being unemployed is dealing with the stereotype that you’re not making good use of your time when you’re unemployed. I remember speaking to another guy not too long ago who is currently unemployed and looking for work, and when he heard that I had been hired by current employer he congratulated me and spoke of what a good thing traditional employment was, saying “At least you’re not sitting around all day.” I let it slide, but that line of thinking is one of the things in this world that really agitates me. As a person whose two greatest periods of personal growth and flourishing have come during my two times of extended unemployment, I take great offense to the notion that if you don’t have a job/career then you are somehow wasting your life. For me, jobs have always been the things that were the wastes of time, sapping my life force and keeping me from achieving my potential. Both times when I was unemployed for an extended period I experienced a personal renaissance, growing both intellectually and spiritually, and knocking out a ton of life goals. It was during these times that I learned many of my crafts and got to see the world for myself, rather than viewing it through a TV or computer screen. When I was unemployed there weren’t enough hours in the day, in the sense that I was doing so much and yet I always felt I was on the cusp of achieving even more. When I am employed there also aren’t enough hours in the day, but in the sense that I’m being robbed of so much my time that it’s difficult to get great things done. Going back to what that guy said, perhaps the most ironic thing about his statement is that now that I’ve got a job again I’m sitting around more than ever. I spend my day in a chair at a desk working on spreadsheets and being far more (personally) unproductive than I ever was when I was unemployed.

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Efficiency

With the necessary evil of traditional employment once again stripping away over a third of my day, I now must be extremely efficient in how I spend the rest of the time available to me. There are a lot of things that I enjoy but sadly must be cut to preserve the high priority items. Online and physical readings have been drastically curtailed. Personal projects are indefinitely postponed for the most part. Time with video games has taken a massive hit (thankfully I’m near the end of Late to the Party). In every aspect of my life I’m looking to cut corners or multitask. While I know that this process will yield the fruit of me cutting out some of the excessive and unproductive activities in my life, on the whole this process will be a net loss. I was already productive and time savvy before I got this job, and now I’m losing a lot of meat along with the fat.

Monday, November 21, 2016

First Snowfall

The first snowfall of the season arrived where I live a little later than usual this year, and when it did it took a note from Batman and leapt upon us from out of the shadows. One day it was up around seventy degrees and the next day it was only a bit above freezing and a snowstorm passed through town. It was as if the winter weather was an old friend who was running late and decided to make up for his tardiness by arriving in dramatic fashion. Crashing unexpectedly through the front door, he shouted “Hey, sorry I’m late everyone! I know we got some catching up to do, so I thought I’d immediately turn off the heat and start dumping some snow on ya!”

Friday, November 18, 2016

Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir

A bit over a week ago I dabbled in a game called Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir for about two or three hours on easy difficulty. I never finished it, and never intended to in the first place, as it’s a game I just wanted to briefly try but not really sink much time into since I had other things I was more interested in working on. Consequently, I’m not going to place this short discussion of Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir in my Late to the Party series of posts, but instead treat it as a standalone video game writing piece. I can’t give any serious or in-depth judgment—such a thing would extremely unfair—but I can quickly talk about the little piece of it I played.

Thursday, November 17, 2016

Election Aftermath, Pt 2

I stated last week that I would wait until at least this week before publishing my thoughts on the recent presidential election, if ever. Part of that was my recognition that any writing done in the immediate aftermath would likely be tainted by the heat of the moment, and part of it was my doubt about whether I should even write at all. With time and introspection, I’ve decided that there are, in fact, two things that I want to write about, so this week I’m publishing a pair of election-related posts for your reading consideration. Today’s writing piece is centered on Hillary Clinton. I already did a writing piece on Donald Trump earlier this year, so I believe I’m overdue to write something related to her. Specifically, I though I’d do a short writing piece about how improbable her loss should have been and what that says about her as a political candidate.

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Election Aftermath, Part 1

I stated last week that I would wait until at least this week before publishing my thoughts on the recent presidential election, if ever. Part of that was my recognition that any writing done in the immediate aftermath would likely be tainted by the heat of the moment, and part of it was my doubt about whether I should even write at all. With time and introspection, I’ve decided that there are, in fact, two things that I want to write about, so this week I’m publishing a pair of election-related posts for your reading consideration. Today’s writing piece is merely my experience from Wednesday, November 9, 2016.

Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Platinum #8

Last week I earned the Platinum Trophy on PSN for the game The Order: 1886. This brings my total count of Platinum Trophies to eight. For those that don’t know, trophies are an online game functionality that was introduced on PlayStation back around 2008 (on Xbox a similar system exists, called Achievements, which launched about a year prior to Trophies). Trophies are unlocked by completing particular tasks in games, with each game having its own unique list of them. These trophies are also broken down into the categories of Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum, and generally speaking Silvers are harder to earn than Bronzes, and Golds are harder to earn than Silvers. Platinum Trophies are earned by unlocking all other trophies for a game, and for some people are a badge of pride, symbolizing that they have thoroughly played a particular game. Personally, trophies aren’t that big a deal for me, hence why I only have eight Platinums, but if I really like a game and acquiring the Platinum doesn’t look too hard, I may give it a shot. If the Platinum is too hard or will take too long, however, I’m fine passing it by. My pride as a gamer isn’t dependent on how many trophies I earn, and if the trophies system disappeared tomorrow I wouldn’t throw a fit about it. Still, I can’t deny there’s a small bit of satisfaction in earning them, and there’s one or two other games that I’m thinking about trying to earn the Platinum for.

Just for the curious, below are the other seven games for which I have the Platinum Trophy:
Uncharted
Uncharted 2
Uncharted 3
Infamous
Infamous 2
Assassin’s Creed 2
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Monday, November 14, 2016

Bloodbath

Well, that escalated quickly. You might remember that one week ago I published a rather cryptic writing piece about engaging in battle with a new foe. As is often the case, I substantially embellished everything to make it sound like I was marching off to fight a dragon, which would have been worthy of song, but my sparring partners were mere men. This past Saturday I had a chat with a pair of Jehova’s Witnesses (JWs) that showed up at my door. I knew they were coming because they had left a note for my landlord on the door a week ago. JWs are very interesting cult and talking with them requires a fair amount of preparation on particular subjects, but since I knew they would be showing up on Saturday I had a little time to prepare.

Friday, November 11, 2016

Late to the Party - Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture

I love video games, but it's rare for me to play them right when they are first released. Normally it takes me a somewhere from a few months to a few years to get around to playing to a game. I've got a considerable backlog of games that I've been meaning to play and it hasn't been until recently that I've been able to start chipping away at the list. With that in mind, I've created a series of posts called Late to the Party, wherein I discuss the games that came out in the preceding years that I'm finally getting around to experiencing. Today's entry in the series is Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, which was one of the free games available in November 2016 for PlayStation Plus subscribers. Downloadable games like Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture are normally not available for rental unless they get a disc release in the future, and unfortunately this means I pass over most of them, but thanks to PlayStation Plus I got a chance to play a game that I otherwise would never experience.

Thursday, November 10, 2016

Back to Work

Back to the slave shift. Back to the grind. Back to everything I want to escape. Back to unproductive days in front of the screens of others. Back to hours wasted on meaningless tedium. Back to being robbed of life’s most precious resource. Back to my soul slowly dying inside of me. Back to talents shriveling in atrophy. Back to appearing positive on the outside but feeling dead inside. Back to the worst part of my existence. Back to work.

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

We Are Pigeons

Like I said yesterday, I won’t be publishing anything about the elections results for at least a week, if at all. Instead, I’ve got a story for you.

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On the right side of this website you’ll see in image in the About Me box that I use as my profile photo on Blogger and a few other services. There’s an interesting tale as to how I started using the We Are Pigeons image, and I thought I’d share it today.

Tuesday, November 8, 2016

Election Day

Today the American Republic stands at a juncture point. Today we choose who will lead us for the next four years, with the two leading candidates having demonstrated themselves to be supremely unfit for this role. On one hand we have a corrupt politician who has proven herself above the law, and on the other hand we have a populist buffoon who can’t keep his mouth shut. Neither is trustworthy, but after today one of them will be our president-elect. May God have mercy on us.

Monday, November 7, 2016

A Date with Destiny

I hardly slept Saturday night. It was the realization that I have a date with destiny. Assuming my information is correct, this next Saturday I will be contending with a foe I have read and heard much about, but up to this point never actually engaged with myself. This may be the first of many encounters, or it may be both the first and the last. As I type these words a panoply of strategies and tactics are surging through my mind, each with their own merits and I am struggling to nail down a battle plan. I will seek the wisdom of others, and I have a few days to prepare, but no one can anticipate every possible scenario. This next Saturday, destiny will come to me, whether I am ready or not. I shall not falter. I must not.

Friday, November 4, 2016

Late to the Party - LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens

I love video games, but it's rare for me to play them right when they are first released. Normally it takes me a somewhere from a few months to a few years to get around to playing to a game. I've got a considerable backlog of games that I've been meaning to play and it hasn't been until recently that I've been able to start chipping away at the list. With that in mind, I've created a series of posts called Late to the Party, wherein I discuss the games that came out in the preceding years that I'm finally getting around to experiencing. Today's entry in the series is LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens, referred to hereafter as just The Force Awakens.


Thursday, November 3, 2016

Bethesda Reviews

A decent-sized ruckus erupted recently when Bethesda, the publisher of such notable games as Dishonored, Fallout, Doom, and Skyrim, published a blog post stating that they would not be sending out advanced copies of their next two games to the media. It’s a very short post that only takes a minute to read, and I’ve included a screenshot of it below for those who are curious about it.

Wednesday, November 2, 2016

20 Weeks

Last week I published my 400th writing piece to this blog. In doing so I passed yet another milestone, but it also got me thinking again about the future of El Progreso Del Peregrino. Back in June, approximately 100 writing pieces ago, I published a post about how I was starting to feel that it was time to move on from this blog and create a new website. That feeling has been building steadily since then, and lately I find myself dwelling on it more and more. Thinking about doing something will only take you so far, however. If idea is to become reality, it requires action. With that in mind, I’ve set a new goal. The goal is to have created a new website before the publishing of my 500th post to this blog. The new website doesn’t have to be live, or have all the content of El Progreso Del Peregrino transferred over yet, or have its layout finalized—it just has to exist. Of course, I’d love it if the new site was live and had all the old blog’s content and looked amazing, but I know it will be a slow process, so I’ve giving myself a reasonable amount of leeway with this goal. Assuming I keep to my pace of 5 posts published each week, it will take 20 weeks for me to reach my 500th writing piece. I thus have 20 weeks to take a dream and make it real. 20 weeks to begin a new era of writing, and change the world forever (ok, maybe not change the world forever, but humor me in this fantasy).

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Nintendo Switch

Two weeks ago it looked like the official announcement of Red Dead Redemption 2 was going to be the video game story of that week, but then on October 20th Nintendo stole the thunder with the reveal of their next console, the Nintendo Switch. I assume that as this point just about everyone has seen the reveal trailer for the Switch, but just in case anyone hasn’t, I’ve embedded it below. Disappointingly, the Switch trailer did not utilize the music of a certain Will Smith song by the same name.

Monday, October 31, 2016

Voting

This past Friday I filled out my ballot, and soon thereafter it was sent out. I won’t tell you who and what I voted for, but I will tell you how it went. Where I live in Colorado, the ballot is two oversized pieces of paper, with three sides of those two pages covered in things to vote on. In addition to the presidential choices, I had the privilege of voting on US Senate and House seats, various local government posts, the retention of individual judges, and a slew of state ballot initiatives and constitutional amendments. Much like tax returns, voting in America can appear rather daunting at first, but just requires a person to take it one piece at a time, and slowly grind through the form until it’s complete. With that in mind, I grabbed the official state ballot information booklet that came in the mail, opened up a web browser to research additional information, and then started the long process of filling in the ballot, section by section.

Friday, October 28, 2016

Late to the Party - Overwatch (Origins Edition)

Author’s Note: Today’s post is #400!

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I love video games, but it's rare for me to play them right when they are first released. Normally it takes me a somewhere from a few months to a few years to get around to playing to a game. I've got a considerable backlog of games that I've been meaning to play and it hasn't been until recently that I've been able to start chipping away at the list. With that in mind, I've created a series of posts called Late to the Party, wherein I discuss the games that came out in the preceding years that I'm finally getting around to experiencing. Today's entry in the series is Overwatch.


Thursday, October 27, 2016

More Thoughts on Game Reviews/Commentaries

Over the past several months I’ve written a fair number of commentaries on video games that I’ve been playing in my attempt to knock out a chunk of my gaming backlog. It’s been quite an experience doing so much writing on one of my personal passions, and one of the things I’ve gotten out of it is an appreciation of why major video game websites distribute game reviews across a group of writers, rather than having a single person write a lot of reviews in succession, like me. As much as I love video games, writing these longer pieces about them, one after another, can be quite draining, especially considering my desire to produce something that’s actually worth reading, as well as my habit of perpetually second-guessing and revising my work all the way up until the moment of publication. As I mentioned yesterday, I’m getting close to the end of my current gaming backlog, and when I reach that point I can’t deny that it’ll be nice to take a short break from writing commentaries. I’ll still be writing about video games during that period, but I won’t be doing any longer writing pieces with my detailed opinion on games I’m playing. Hopefully that time off from writing commentaries will get me reenergized and ready for the second wave of game commentaries that will no doubt come in 2017.

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Gaming Backlog

With my recent completion of Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, a bit over a week ago, I am finally nearing the end of the list of games in my gaming backlog that I really want to play. While there are still a few games left on the list, and more naturally will be added with the passage of time and the release of new games, it won’t be too long now before I reach the place where I have to think about when I’m going to close down my Gamefly account. I anticipate this to happen before the end of the year, and at that point the gaming backlog will start growing again. Closing the account will also mean the end of the first season of my Late to the Party series of posts, which lately have made regular appearances on this blog’s Friday editions. Whenever that happens I’m thinking I’ll do some sort of short retrospective writing piece about that first season. At some point in 2017, when I have the time and I feel the backlog has gotten big enough, I’ll reopen the account, starting the process all over again.

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Memorable Places, Part 11 (Finale)

A year ago I was in Europe and lately I’ve been thinking over some of the places that were the most memorable from that trip. If you read my travelogue posts from back then you already know the details of each place I visited, but I thought I’d do a series of short writing pieces over the next three or so weeks where I give my thoughts on particular cities or regions as a whole. I’m not going to talk about every location; just the ones that have been on my mind. The order that I write about them will be in the approximate chronological order of when I visited and each writing piece will feature two locations with a photo from the trip to accompany each of them. As a bonus, at the end of each writing piece I’ll note where I was, one year ago that day.

Today is the final entry in the series. Like the 2015 Europe trip, this journey must too come to an end.


Monday, October 24, 2016

Read more >>

You might have noticed that Friday’s writing post looked slightly different on this blog’s main page. The opening paragraph and first image were visible, but below that there was a Read more >> button and to read the rest of the post you had to click on that button. This is a new feature to this blog, and one I’ve wanted to add for some time, but Blogger, being the unwieldy beast that it is, doesn’t make it easy. There’s a setting in Blogger that is supposed to automatically do this for all posts, but despite being turned on for about a week, Blogger has done nothing. So, to make this happen I have to manually insert page breaks, which isn’t a big deal to do on an individual post, but there’s no way I’m going back and inserting page breaks for everything I’ve published up to this point. Going forward, nearly all future posts will have page breaks so that you don’t have to scroll down a lot to reach something from earlier in the week, and the number of posts displayed on the main page will be increased to ten, thus giving the reader two weeks worth of content before having to load more. The only posts that might not get page breaks are shorter ones like this, and the decision will be made on a case-by-case basis. As always, feedback on this new feature is welcome.

Friday, October 21, 2016

Late to the Party - Mirror’s Edge Catalyst

I love video games, but it's rare for me to play them right when they are first released. Normally it takes me a somewhere from a few months to a few years to get around to playing to a game. I've got a considerable backlog of games that I've been meaning to play and it hasn't been until recently that I've been able to start chipping away at the list. With that in mind, I've created a series of posts called Late to the Party, wherein I discuss the games that came out in the preceding years that I'm finally getting around to experiencing. Today's entry in the series is Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, referred to hereafter as just Catalyst.

Thursday, October 20, 2016

Elihu Syndrome

I sometimes suffer from what I call Elihu Syndrome. The name isn’t accurate to the story of the person it is named after, but it’s the name that first came into my head when thinking about it and I’ve never come up with another name to replace it. Elihu is the name of a man in the Old Testament Book of Job. Although Biblical knowledge has fallen precipitously in America, a decent number of people have at least heard of Job and might even be vaguely familiar with part of the story. Elihu shows up in the part most people don’t know about. When you ask people to recount the story of Job, those that can often give a rough retelling of the first two chapters, wherein God permits Satan to bring trials upon Job’s life and Job proceeds to lose his property, his health, and all of his children. After that comes the part of Job that most people can’t tell you anything about, which is actually the vast majority of the book. Chapters 3 through 37 (out of 42) are a long discussion between Job and some friends of his who came to him after they heard of everything that befell him. They go back and forth about topics such as justice and the nature of God, but Job’s friends turn out to not be particularly helpful, or even friendly. With Job’s friends is a man named Elihu, who during the conversation has been patiently letting his elders speak, and in Chapter 32, when he sees that Job’s friends have run out things to say, jumps in and starts laying into Job with platitudes galore, though he, along with everyone else, is silenced when God speaks out of the whirlwind in Chapter 38. That was a lot of background info just for the sake of a personality quirk of mine. Anyways, what I call Elihu Syndrome happens when I’m in a group of people (usually who are older than me) and I feel like it’s never my place to talk. Like Elihu, I’m waiting for the wiser and more insightful people to finish, but unlike Elihu, I never say anything. I just sit there, mouth shut, allowing others to speak their mind, convinced that I have nothing worthwhile to say, even when that’s not true. I’m not totally sure where my Elihu Syndrome came from, and I’m hopeful that I’ll one day break out of it, but for now it’s something I have to contend with.

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Memorable Places, Part 10

A year ago I was in Europe and lately I’ve been thinking over some of the places that were the most memorable from that trip. If you read my travelogue posts from back then you already know the details of each place I visited, but I thought I’d do a series of short writing pieces over the next three or so weeks where I give my thoughts on particular cities or regions as a whole. I’m not going to talk about every location; just the ones that have been on my mind. The order that I write about them will be in the approximate chronological order of when I visited and each writing piece will feature two locations with a photo from the trip to accompany each of them. As a bonus, at the end of each writing piece I’ll note where I was, one year ago that day.

Granada
My time in Granada was something of a second chance for the city. In 2012 I was there, but only for a very short period, so I didn’t see much beyond the Alhambra and a few other sights. In 2015 I came back and had the time to experience more of the city. Granada has become my favorite city in Andalusia, with a nice balance of history and modernity. Everything you could want in a modern city is there for you, and right within it are enough sightseeing attractions to keep you busy all day long. The crown jewel of Granada is, of course, the Alhambra, which is a monument to the last flourish of Moorish culture in Spain before 1492, when the Spanish retook the city. I visited the Alhambra both last year and in 2012, and I personally think it’s better than the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. You could spend half your day up there, and when you come down there’s a vibrant city waiting for you. Whereas Seville has an older, dignified feel to it, Granada’s vibe felt younger and trendier, at least in the central part of the city where I spent most of my time.

Cordoba
Oh, poor Cordoba, you can’t catch a break. Cordoba feels like the least of the trio of larger cities in Andalusia, even though it’s actually bigger than Granada, and gets passed over by a lot of people. I myself only spent two nights there, and when I left I didn’t feel like I had missed out on much. The alcazar of Cordoba isn’t much compared to the one in Seville, or the Alhambra in Granada, and there’s much less to see and do in Cordoba than its sister cities. What Cordoba can claim to its credit is the Mesquita, a former Visigothic church that was turned into a mosque by the Moors, and then turned back into a church when the Spanish reconquered the city. Inside is a forest of columns and arches, which seem to stretch out to infinity. Near the Mesquita you can cross the old bridge and climb a small tower for a good view of the old city. I spent a little while up on that tower, staring back at the Mesquita, the alcazar, and the rest of Cordoba. Long ago it was the foremost city in all of Europe, but today it is a quieter town, and I suspect Cordoba is just fine with that.

On this day, one year ago, I flew from Istanbul to Madrid. Before leaving I acquired the legendary Umbrella of Constantine, and upon arrival in Madrid my first meal was a delicious serving of chocolate con churros. That night I also finally got to see Picasso’s famous Guernica, which I had missed the last time I was in Madrid.

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Yearbook Signings

While adding labels to some of the older posts on this blog, I was reminded of that time at the end of my senior year of high school when everyone was signing each other’s yearbooks. Since I have my senior yearbook on my bookshelf, I was able to grab it and dive back into the memories of those days. I spent twenty or so minutes looking over what people wrote in my yearbook, with some writings making me smile, some having me burst out laughing, some weirding me out, some straining eyes as I tried to read the writing, and some leaving me trying to remember who exactly the author was. During that time rereading my former classmates’ writings, I also couldn’t help but notice that they fell into two broad categories—the generic ones, and the ones from people who had put more effort into writing something meaningful. The generic writings all said the same thing, though in different wording depending on the author, which was something along the lines of “it was nice knowing you, good luck with college, keep in touch.” I don’t blame anyone who wrote one of these, as I know my yearbook got passed around to a lot of people who didn’t know me that well, and I know it can be tough to think up something profound for each yearbook you sign. To be completely transparent, I did it myself to quite a few peoples’ yearbooks. But I also know that I wrote some meaningful stuff in other peoples’ yearbooks, and a number of my classmates did the same for me. Several of my classmates had known me from elementary school and wrote about our experiences growing up together. Others brought up how notorious I had become on campus for my paparazzi ways and unrivaled camera skills as the Photo Editor of the Yearbook. My dry sense of humor and commentary on the things we all did in various classes were common themes, along with the random quotes I would sometimes write on classroom whiteboards. The one thing that came up consistently, though, was people writing about how unique I was back then. I enjoy being complimented as much as anyone else, but those remarks left me wondering about whether or not I’ve still got that spark from high school. It’s been over a decade since graduation, and I know I’m not the same guy I was back then. Hopefully I’m a better person than I was in high school, but I do wonder if I’ve lost something in the relentless march of time. Perhaps, perhaps not. High school was a different world in a different era. As much as I enjoyed reading those old writings, I couldn’t stay in the past forever, so I closed the yearbook and put it back on my shelf. There it will remain, until one day I summon it forth again.

Monday, October 17, 2016

Memorable Places, Part 9

A year ago I was in Europe and lately I’ve been thinking over some of the places that were the most memorable from that trip. If you read my travelogue posts from back then you already know the details of each place I visited, but I thought I’d do a series of short writing pieces over the next three or so weeks where I give my thoughts on particular cities or regions as a whole. I’m not going to talk about every location; just the ones that have been on my mind. The order that I write about them will be in the approximate chronological order of when I visited and each writing piece will feature two locations with a photo from the trip to accompany each of them. As a bonus, at the end of each writing piece I’ll note where I was, one year ago that day.

Seville
Seville (or, Sevilla, as it is properly called) is the largest of what I think of as the big three Andalusian cities—Seville, Granada, and Cordoba. It’s probably the most iconic as well, drawing in visitors from around the world to take in that quintessential Andalusian feel. A decent analogy for Seville would be to say that it is sort of like a well-aged bottle of wine. It doesn’t have the pop and vibrancy of cities like Barcelona or Granada, but has an older and refined charm to it. Seville has a lot of things that attract tourists, such as the fourth largest church in the world and the Royal Alcazar, (palace) but my personal favorite spot in Seville is the Plaza de España (pictured right). I’m not that old and haven’t seen all that much of the world, but I’m fine declaring it to be one of the world’s most beautiful architectural masterpieces. Brick, stone, and tiles are laid out in splendid fashion, the likes of which I’ve hardly seen anywhere else. Seville has tried bringing in some modern art and architecture, such as the giant mushroom structure, the new bridge over the river, and the World’s Fair expo grounds, but I don’t think the city needs it. Seville is all about aged elegance.

Tarifa and Tangier
I have stood at the edge of the world. Ok, so Tarifa isn’t actually the edge of the world, but it feels like it. Down at the southern edge of mainland Europe you can see the Atlantic Ocean, Africa, and the Mediterranean Sea with a single turn of your head. The winds blow in strongly from the Atlantic, bringing in all the kite surfers looking to catch the air.  Across the strait is Tangier, which despite being only a forty-minute ferry ride from Tarifa, feels a world away from Europe. The narrow crowded streets in the old city are bustling with shops and salesmen. Nearby a series of high-rise apartments line the beach, with a new port under construction. Back in Tarifa I saw perhaps the most brilliant sunset of my life, with reds, oranges, and yellows reflected in the clouds and the small pools of water on the beach as the sun went down over the Atlantic. It was the edge of the world, and the sun was saying goodbye.

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On this day, one year ago, I was wandering all around Istanbul. In the morning I ventured into the Grand Bazaar, and in the deep core of it I found a Turkish tobacco pipe shop from which I bought a friend’s wedding gift. For lunch I grabbed a meal with two people from my hostel at a restaurant near the Süleymaniye Mosque, and in the afternoon I went out to the old city walls and also visited the Chora Church. From up on the walls I strained looked around in every direction but couldn’t seen an end to the city.

Friday, October 14, 2016

Top Posts

UPDATE: Due to a surge in spam bots pinging this blog, the statistics of which posts have received the most views have been dramatically distorted and will likely forever remain so. The Popular Posts gadget on this blog has thus been rendered completely unreliable.

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On the lower right side of this blog you’ll see that I have a gadget, called Popular Posts, dedicated to listing the top ten most popular writing pieces that I’ve published here. It’s an interesting list, with some posts landing a spot for reasons I know, and some for reasons I don’t. Today I thought I’d go down the list and give a quick thought on each of those posts and their popularity. I’ll be going in order of least popular to most popular, so if you’re looking at the list yourself it will appear that I’m discussing them from bottom to top. If you want read any of these posts, just click on their titles, or go to the Popular Posts gadget on the lower right and click on them.

10. Final Preparations
This post has the distinction of being the second writing piece to be published to this blog. It’s just one paragraph of text and a photo of all the things I was bringing with me to Europe in 2012, and I published it a few hours before I left for the airport. Back when I created this blog I told family and friends about it, and I think I mentioned it on Facebook too, so it’s no surprise that it got enough views to crack the top ten.

9. Netherlands Recap
The fifth writing piece published to this blog. Most of my travelogue posts from overseas are fairly long, but this is a short one that I quickly typed up before leaving Bruges, Belgium. At this point in the trip the early excitement was still going and people were still keeping up with what I was doing.

8. Arrival in Amsterdam
This is the fourth writing piece published to this blog, and it’s very similar to #8. I had arrived in Amsterdam after a short flight from London, and was most struck by the number of smokers (both tobacco and marijuana). Also, in rereading this post, I found a typo that I had never noticed or fixed, so now the post is now slightly better than it was before.

7. 100,000
It was just last month when this one went up, and I know the reason it’s in here is because I made a big deal out of it on Facebook. The post itself is nothing more than me announcing that I had published over 100,000 words to the blog for the year, and giving myself a pat on the back. Originally I had a different gif in mind for this post, but I couldn’t get it to work with Blogger, so I settled for the one you see today.

6. Venice: Dream’s End
I really have no idea why this travelogue post from the 2015 Europe trip got so many hits (the same goes for the post on Lyon). That said, I’m kind of glad it did, because Venice is my favorite city in Italy, and I like to think that this writing piece in some way communicated my fondness for it.

5. Remembering Big O
I am really pleased that Remembering Big O not only made the list, but also is sitting at #5, as it is one of my favorite writing pieces I’ve ever done on this blog. Even back when it was first published and was plagued by formatting errors (that were entirely Blogger’s fault), I knew I had created something special and distinct from most of the other work I did on this blog. Whether or not it’s actually any good is debatable, but for me it’s one of my prouder writing achievements.

4. Lyon: Confluence
Like the 2015 Venice post, I am clueless as to why this writing piece got its spot on the list. I don’t think it’s anything particularly special, and there are a number of other posts from the 2015 trip that I think are better, but somehow, someway, it is the #4 most popular post on this blog.

3. Ricardo goes to London, AKA The Blitz, Part 2
This was the third writing piece published to this blog, and like numbers 10, 9, and 8, it’s on the list because I told people about this blog and for the first week or so people would come and read it (after that I think everyone caught on to the fact that my travelogue posts can be kind of boring). Probably the reason this post scores so high on the list is because it was my first report from my first trip overseas, which was a big deal at the time.

2. Late to the Party - Call of Duty: Ghosts
Though not my first game commentary, this writing piece is the very first in my Late to the Party series of video game writing pieces, and I don’t know why it’s the #2 post on this blog, seeing as how I never advertised it. This writing piece created the general format that I’ve followed with most of the other Late to the Party posts, and in my mind it’s one of the more generic entries in the series, but apparently someone took an interest in it.

1. Paris: Breaking the Record
Standing at the top of the pyramid is the first major travelogue post from the 2015 Europe trip. I think I mentioned this one on Facebook and to a few friends, so that’s probably why it got to the #1 slot. In it I attempted to detail my time in Paris, but at the end I conceded that I would need a whole second post to cover everything. Maybe one day this post will get dethroned as the most popular post on this blog, and I’d be curious to know what takes its place.

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Memorable Places, Part 8

A year ago I was in Europe and lately I’ve been thinking over some of the places that were the most memorable from that trip. If you read my travelogue posts from back then you already know the details of each place I visited, but I thought I’d do a series of short writing pieces over the next three or so weeks where I give my thoughts on particular cities or regions as a whole. I’m not going to talk about every location; just the ones that have been on my mind. The order that I write about them will be in the approximate chronological order of when I visited and each writing piece will feature two locations with a photo from the trip to accompany each of them. As a bonus, at the end of each writing piece I’ll note where I was, one year ago that day.

Madrid
A friend of mine once described Madrid as the “Denver of Spain,” by which he meant it was just another city with nothing particularly remarkable about it. While I wouldn’t completely agree with him, I can understand why he would say that, as Madrid probably was the least unique of the larger cities I visited in Spain. Even so, I would never have an objection to coming back to Madrid in the future, and whenever I do, I will always start it the same way—with chocolate con churros. This very Spanish dish of pastry and warm chocolate can be found all across Spain, but for whatever reason I really go overboard with it when I’m in Madrid. Granted, I don’t eat it in anywhere near the same quantities as I eat gelato when I’m in Florence, but I did six or so servings during my time in Madrid last year. As for the city itself, Madrid reminds me of the sun, in that you have the center at Puerta Del Sol and the rest of the city seems to radiate outwards from that point. Walk west and you hit the royal palace, walk east and you hit the Prado Museum and Retiro Park, walk north and you hit Gran Via, and walk south you hit El Rastro. You can walk everywhere, to the point where the only time I use the metro is if I have to get to Charmatin Station, the far northern train station, or to the airport. But wherever I walk, I always wind up back where I started, at Puerta Del Sol. A similar thing seems to happen when I’m traveling around the rest of the country. No matter where I go in Spain, I always find my way back to Madrid.

Salamanca
Some people say Salamanca is the best city in Spain. The locals seem convinced of it. I really can’t say myself, partly because I was only there for two nights, and partly because my first concern in Salamanca was not assessing the city’s travel-worthiness. No, I was there to find a bench. A bench a friend of mine sat on years ago while being enraptured by the magnificent light he experienced back then. I couldn’t find the exact bench he sat on, so I just settled on a random bench in town and declared my search over. Perhaps it’s fitting that I was checking out benches, as I found Salamanca to be a place of rest while I was there. I slept in, kept a slow pace, and tried to not exert myself too much. It was late October when I was in Salamanca, so there weren’t too many other tourists, and it was midweek, so there weren’t many visitors from other parts of Spain. I stopped by the university, the cathedral, a few museums, and some other places in town, but unlike most other cities I felt no rush to get anywhere. Things were quiet at my hostel too, which was mostly empty, and in my own room there was only one other person occupying one of the beds. Maybe this relaxed pace is what people love of Salamanca, or maybe that was just my particular experience. If Madrid is the Denver of Spain, then perhaps Salamanca is the bench of Spain.

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On this day, one year ago, I was in Sarajevo, making the most of my short time there. Among other things, I visited the street corner where Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, thus sparking World War I, and later that evening I ate some Bosnian food with two other people from my hostel.

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Memorable Places, Part 7

A year ago I was in Europe and lately I’ve been thinking over some of the places that were the most memorable from that trip. If you read my travelogue posts from back then you already know the details of each place I visited, but I thought I’d do a series of short writing pieces over the next three or so weeks where I give my thoughts on particular cities or regions as a whole. I’m not going to talk about every location; just the ones that have been on my mind. The order that I write about them will be in the approximate chronological order of when I visited and each writing piece will feature two locations with a photo from the trip to accompany each of them. As a bonus, at the end of each writing piece I’ll note where I was, one year ago that day.

Sarajevo
I skipped over Sarajevo on my 2012 trip across Europe, which in retrospect was a mistake, but last year I made up for it and journeyed to the city. Sarajevo is a city of culture, history, and scars. It’s one of the few where you can walk in one direction and move through multiple distinct historical periods, and you’ll know by the architecture. Throughout central Sarajevo you’ll also see memorials to the siege in the 1990s, the longest urban siege in modern history. Among the most prominent are the mass graves, which were dug into parks and other open spaces in a disorganized fashion. But the city has rebuilt, to the point where if there were no monuments and you were historically ignorant you might not guess anything had happened, and with the rebuilding has come modernity. You can still purchase locally made wares, but western firms have moved in and staked their claim. Even McDonald’s is now there, and yes, I did eat at the Sarajevo McDonald’s. It was the best McDonald’s I’ve ever had. If you want something more traditional, there are plenty of local Bosnian restaurants throughout the city, though if you’re vegan or vegetarian you might have trouble, as the Bosnian diet is very meat heavy. Also be aware that there are packs of stray dogs wandering about in certain areas near the old city. They’re not a threat, but it’s not the sort of thing someone like me is used to seeing.

Istanbul
The great metropolis. Istanbul is one of the largest cities on the planet, to the point where it covers almost the entire strait between Europe and Asia. One day I took a cruise up the Bosphorus that went north for an hour before turning around, and I never saw the end of the city. And yet, somehow, despite overflowing with millions upon millions of people, Istanbul keeps running every single day. Traffic jams are terrible, but people still get to where they are going. Each day I woke up to the Muslim call to prayer at sunrise, which is projected over loudspeakers across the city. I wouldn’t call it culture shock, but more than anywhere else on the trip, Istanbul made me aware of just how far from home I was. Whereas in many European cities the skyline is punctured by church towers, in Istanbul it is minarets and mosque domes that stand out. You can also buy just about anything if you know where to look, and things are generally cheaper than what you’d pay in the West. In the old city you can visit places like the Blue Mosque and the Topkapi Palace, but if you take a walk north and cross the Galata Bridge in the direction of Taksim Square, you hit modern, western Istanbul. There Starbucks has your coffee ready and not as many women are wearing the hijab. Hagia Sofia was a definite highlight of my time in Istanbul, even with all the scaffolding from the restoration work being done on the inside. I also was able to purchase a Turkish tobacco pipe as a wedding gift for a friend of mine, thus completing one of the main tasks from the entire 2015 trip.

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On this day, one year ago, I started my day in Mostar, Bosnia. I had a few hours before my bus to Sarajevo, and I spent it around the town’s famous bridge (I even got to see one a guy take the leap off of it and dive into the river below). Later that day I got on the bus to Sarajevo and arrived there in the late afternoon.