squwetchy dabbling in a simple #monochromatic #watercolour this morning inspired by the cold temperatures outside!

gamerdad I think I’m nearing level 30 on this playthru and the frequency with which challenging beast fight encounters has happened recently makes me think that either I’ve hit some critical waypoint in the game or just that I’m traveling further afield lately. I want to think that the game is throwing punches note that I’m ready, but also it just seems that wandering the distant corners of the wilderness is simply more dangerous than poking around the starter dungeons.

8r4d #shopping at a new #jigsaw store is a dangerous thing at this time of year

8r4d #running this morning was probably the most #winter run of the season for me so far. I’ve been ditching lately because of a nasty cold and all that recent snow. But 9k in the frosty air reminded me why I love this season.

pixelazy #winter #silhouette

squwetchy I cannot quite put my finger on it, but something about that job I just quit was blocking me artistically. Hell, I didn’t even notice it happening until the other day, while out walking the dog, the kid mentioned that I hadn’t been painting much lately, and I realized—no, actually I have painted nothing at all, not one thing, since I started working part time. It’s as if the two things occupied the same processing register in my brain and could not exist simultaneously.

Having quit the job and finished work yesterday, and having noticed the pattern, I decided to spend an hour in the basement with my paints this afternoon. The result is a bit derivative of my work from last winter, but since it is the first thing I have painted in four months I will give myself a break on that.

8r4d It’s a helluva long story. I probably cannot do it justice here but here goes anyhow—about four months ago, mid-sabbatical, I put my name in and applied to work part time at a new local grocery store that was opening up in the neighbourhood.

They hired me basically on the spot and I started about a week later literally helping build out the store from scratch. I was the first non-manager in the building on day one, hard hat and hi-viz vest at the ready in a still-under-construction site. I spent a solid month over the summer building shelving, unpacking arriving palettes of food, and organizing a new concept retail experience. Manual labour as it gets most days.

It was all pretty awesome tho. It was. It really was, and gave me not just perspective and fresh air and movement and great company but too the flexibility to write three or four days a week. All this for a paycheque while simultaneously getting out of the house, working some real hands-dirty work, and hanging out with countless interesting people who together were just trying to build an interesting thing out in these suburbs of ours.

Ah. But the awesome didn’t last. Couldn’t, I suppose. Things went south, of course. Our opening was rushed and rough. Folks grew flustered. There were some corporate dramatics. People started falling and just a couple weeks after opening we were unceremoniously given a new store manager who—tho we offered him a fair chance to show us what he could bring to the party—seemed to be operating with a very different goal and philosophy than, to be blunt, what I had originally signed up for.

See. For me personally, the allure was the vibe. The heart of the place. The spirit of good food and lively culture and raw passion all wanted to be blurred together into a cool place to shop, eat, play, and learn. I bought into the idea that we were creating an experience, one of those places people drive across the city to hang out on a Saturday. Full of Instagram-able displays. Packed with knowledgeable staff. And a place that would become an enviable place for me to spend a few days per week. Oh you work there, people would ask. That must be fun. For a while I even believed this was the first step in a new and lively career in retail food where I could slowly climb and become a part of a community and use my experience in comms and business and tech to add to something cool, tho by starting at the bottom and really learning the biz.

The change in philosophy manifested slowly at first, just small things each new week it seemed, popping up as minor changes to the operations, nudges towards decisions that had been avoided originally because it would go counter to that aforementioned vibe. Then it got aggressively strange. No style. No grace. No vibe at all. Just get the stock to the floor and worry about organizing it at some vague later time. The plan was raw urgency over substance, and as we used to say: counting paper clips—y’know like getting riled up over the trivial stuff. It felt wrong and narrow and nitpicking.

Of course I did my job as best I could—but I also started making an exit plan on the side. I did my job but my enjoyment seemed to sap to new lows with each shift. My coworkers were amazing and optimistic and delightful to spend my day with, but the soul of the store had left when corporate fired the original manager.

People still shopped there—well, fewer people but still customers, but suddenly there were more complaints, customer confusion, and you could tell we were letting people down when they walked through the door. This was supposed to be something special. Instead it was becoming a mini-Walmart poorly disguised as something better than it actually was, trying to have that vibe but slipping further away each day that passed.

Things snowballed. Fast, too. Like in days and then hours and then every time I spoke to someone there were people and processes collapsing, and so I gave my notice earlier this week. And then just hours after I clocked out for the last time news flew across my phone chat that a bunch of others had done the same, like—clocked out for the last time but not of their own will. Less than two weeks before Christmas they had laid off a significant portion of the staff. Had I not quit on my own, who knows?

Yeah. Ugh. These were people I had worked with for four months and started to think of as friends. Good people legit working hard honest days. Thanks no thanks. Bah humbug.

It’s a helluva long story and I can’t properly explain it all here, of course not, but I think it’s worth knowing that it happened and also knowing that it is over—over for me at least, and I am done with early shifts and grocery drama and on to other things as, reflecting on what I learned and how this little adventure has shaped my perception of people and leadership and work, all as I sit here on a Friday evening contemplating this crazy little grocery adventure I went on for four long crazy months. #grocerygames

8r4d Oh what a week, so we capped off the switch to the next next next chapter with a fancy dinner downtown. Somehow I even scored a free #beer and dessert just about murdered us with calories, but hey, you only go crazy occasionally, right? #grocerygames

gamerdad There is a frustration I have with RPG games that comes in the form of the difficulty curve. Oh, sure. You may be one of those people who likes tough games, but here in my late-40s I’ve realized that I play games for the zen story and flow vibe and not the epic monumental challenge.

That said, I still enjoy games like Fallout and Skyrim for their vast worlds and complex mechanics.

So, back to that frustration. The frustration is the early game when your weakaf character is constantly getting his backside handed to him and I, as the gamer, needs to revisit dungeons or fights or quests that I’ve already attempted six times but have failed because I don’t have a strong enough bit of gear or high enough stats to deal with some random boss at the end of an hour of effort working through a challenge. I call this the early game reluctance of replaying a game: knowing I’m gonna need to grind through both the tutorial stages and the weakling phase until I get to the fun beefed up phase where I can just push through and only suffer character death occasionally. It usually lasts about ten to fifteen hours in these games, a time through which I punch with impatient grind trying to up my stats in any way possible (without amping up the difficulty too much) so that the balance is better for all that zen vibe flow yadda-yadda.

I’ve been replaying Skyrim for what seems like, I wanna say, the sixth or seventh time and last night it finally started to feel like I was creeping out of the early game phase. Better loot. More manageable fights. Fewer surprise death scenes. Scumming my way past this is never my proudest of achievements, but I’m just too old to want to trigger crunch an enemy to the redline of mutual death. I just want to sit on the couch and listen to a podcast while I effortlessly thump a few baddies. Is that too much to ask?

8r4d A chilly morning #running off the 201st edition of our local #parkrun also turned into a milestone for AD. The #rivervalley looks chillier than it actually was tho, as e had a bit of a weekend reprieve from the brutal #winter cold.

bradsalomons It’s been a weird week of snow and stuff and such and I haven’t done much #writing or had many #coffee sessions, but with Friday here and the month settling into some end of year finality, I made it out to get some words on the page. Of course, I’m sitting here posting this, so you can speculate on exactly just how well that is working out, but—

adventuredog #winter #sunset #walk

8r4d One of the few perks of living on a bus route is that we are first in the queue to having our streets cleaned after the #snow falls.

gamerdad I’m reluctantly optimistic that my first year on this farm will be productive. During the tutorial the game encouraged me to plant for crops of canola. I did. And now in later November with the threat of snow just one game cycle away, I’m not sure the canola will do much more than wilt in the field.

I hate to be nitpicking but this is just one of the little details in the game that could use some work from the developers.

About 32 hours into my save I’ve encountered a lot of great things, but a few other not so great features. The driving AI for example is laughably bad at navigating the town. If—big if—it accepts my request to drive from point A to a carefully selected point B often just roughly in the vicinity of where I need it to go—if—if—about half the time it will crash into a bridge railing, get hung up on a fence, or try to drive through an arch for which fitting would be an optimistic dream.

I get the little message—or don’t get any message—and drop what i’m doing to go supervise.

Ugh. Is like a management job or something.

8r4d Scenes from some ordinary day in November. Part 3.

8r4d Scenes from some ordinary day in November. Part 2.

8r4d Scenes from some ordinary day in November. Part 1.

adventuredog This again, huh? #snow

gamerdad Another sick day and yet another day on the couch exploring the land of Skyrim. This one may almost think from looking at my screenshots today that I was in full on tourist mode.

In fact, I worked thru a good chunk of the opening act, made it all the way to a second major city, and bought myself a home in the first one. Even so, there were a lot of pretty sights along the way.

The last time I played this game was on the Nintendo Switch, a lesser console but very portable. And even that was an update from my first play thrus on PC and PS3. I knew there had been upgrades applied for current generation consoles, but while a lot of the little things blend in I do think the spectacular landscape showcases the improvements from that effort.

I’ve written this here before but I’m not a graphics-first guy. I will play graphically inferior games without hesitation if the gameplay is good. So, while a lot of folks lose their minds over frame rates and resolutions and such, those things are more of my cherry on top.

Even so, everyone loves a cherry. And between slaying rogue wolves and picking potion ingredients and sneaking up on bandit camps, it’s nice to get a great view too.

gamerdad In an effort to balance out some of the farming simulator stimulation I have been bouncing between the world of Skyrim for what I am going to call my sixth official attempt to play this game. I have made real progress in the past, but have actually never beat the game.

Can it be beat? I mean, does it actually have an end or do you just eventually run out of things to do? I honestly don’t know.

The Special Edition with a bunch of packaged DLC was on a crazy good sale a while back and I couldn’t resist a new attempt. So. Here goes…

gamerdad Ah, so between some sick time on the couch and a few days of I’ve kinda gone a big overboard with this game.

In fact, at just a week since launch I’ve logged a full twenty four hours in game and have made some serious progress in building out my little farm. Should I be proud? Or a bit embarrassed?

The dynamics of the game tweaks that have added some new features to the game, along with a few years of experience playing previous versions, has me digging in and churning through a lot of contracts and expanding my operation. I’ve set some basic rules for my game play and I’ve been trying to avoid cheats or crazy manipulation on the simulation aspect which a lot of people who post online seem to lean into maybe just to make their videos but maybe also to wheel past the slow grind of the agricultural simulation which can be a bit tedious if you don’t multitask and diversify your efforts from the get go.

On the other hand, I’ve also been leaning into the quirkier aspects of the game, like the fact that you can literally kinda sorta go for a trail run through the woods… call me silly but It’s a vibe.

8r4d Uh oh #winter #running had officially begun. We hit the suburban trails for a ten-ish klick run on the first really chilly morning of the season

8r4d The creep factor was raised to about a nine point fine for this evenings #running adventure. Dark, chilly and #autumn but without the comforting glow of an early snow to make it seem less haunted.