8r4d It’s freaking cold out so we went and did an #ikea #shopping adventure to get some steps in.

gamerdad I could easily overwhelm myself here by just writing too much and then not reading enough.

It is the first dayof 2025 as I write this and I have set myself the bold goal of reading more. Scratch that. I have set myself the goal of finishing more books.

As it stands I have a lot of novels and non-fiction tomes with bookmarks protruding from them just sitting around. So, I am going to use this site to inventory the act of finishing as many of those as I can and then eventually starting some more.

Here’s the game plan: A post when I start (or jump back into) a book. A post when I finish a book. Simple. [read more...]

gamerdad The addictively vital nature of this silly game means that I spend almost as much time enthusiastically explaining to fellow gamers why they need to buy this game and play it. Like last night at my NYE party when may have finally I convinced Mr BR to fall off his wallet and get a copy.

Of course I celebrated by spending my first few walking hours of NYD-proper winning a round and unlocking a new deck. Kudos to me, huh?

I find that I lean pretty heavily into to the planet cards. I may need to try a different tactic to progress further as i’m finding this approach pretty single strategy and honestly reaching a bit of a plateau.

gamerdad This game spanned a pair of years. We paused mid way thru to ring in 2025.

Four of us sat down at an hour to midnight to puzzle through the jungle. Two of us had played before, but there were two newbies at the table so the set up and explaining took a little longer.

Not a bad way to start a new year, mind, especially since I played a great hand and handily won the round.

8r4d My normal Sunday #running adventures were precluded by everyone else’s absences, so instead I went off on a solo trek and did a little bit of trail in the #rivervalley and snow. I clocked out a six klick run with only about one of those klicks in the trails, but that single track was enough to get my heart racing and my winter vibes in check.

gamerdad As we dawdle into the final days of 2024 I have vowed as a kind of New Year’s resolution to read more books. That might not mean starting more books, mind, as much as finishing more books that I have already started. Either way, I started this one a couple weeks back and have been reading all about how a 1980s philosopher tries to explain modern computing architecture as he build up to what I presume is a thesis in the nature of the conscious mind and of by way how that relates to artificial intelligence and quantum mechanics.

Reading complex explanations of maths and algorithms and Turing Machines right before bed is a real challenge tho, I gotta say.

The nature of the conscious mind has been of particular interest to me because there is a narrative thread in my novel that ties directly back to this concept. In the story (spoiler alert) a forest is subject to alien mutation influences and begins to experience a kind of accelerated transmission of signals in its roots leading to a kind of primitive consciousness that communicates and interacts with the human characters. All that means is that I have been thinking a lot about what consciousness is, how to simplify it for a story, and what it says about the universe in which as i’m writing said story.

All of this is pretty heavy for bedtime.

pixelazy #winter night scenes of #shadow

8r4d Not quite a week but this 2000 piece #jigsaw is kicking our butts. We’ve got the easy parts done, at least…

8r4d The Kid and I made a trek up to #whyteavenue this afternoon because she had a #book itch that needed scratching and I was up for a walk.

The place was pretty quiet for the day after boxing day, and we didn’t spend very much money, terrible #shopping drones that were are, but it was a nice December day for some local colour.

8r4d #whyteavenue #art and #graffiti #walk

gamerdad We are mid-holidays as I write this and I have been trying to avoid spending the entire winter break sitting on the couch virtual farming.

That said, between the cold and my health I have logged enough hours in my faux farm to approach the loop of one full year in game. My BIL who also plays this silly game asked me about game bugs the other day, and specifically that he had heard that there was just so many damn bugs in this game. I had told him I’d encountered virtually none.

Oops. Rookie mistake.

Everyone knows that you don’t jinx yourself like that.

As it turns out the harvest season finally rolled around and everyone’s spinach crop was coming in, and a few contracts popped into my contract list. I can harvest spinach, I thought to myself.

I took one spinach contract, got it started, and then went back for a second.

The contracts were for two different fields, but oddly they both loaned me the exact same equipment setup and both had the exact same delivery location. Harvest spinach, load it in a truck, and drive it to location X.

The first contract was naturally the first to have a full load ready to go, so I filled my truck and merrily drove off to the mill.

I found the unload spot, hit the button to tip the truck, and away went the spinach from contract number one.

Contract number two is 23% delivered the message told me.

Um. Hold up.

That was spinach from contract number one.

I turned off the autosaves and tried ending the contract early to reset things, but that only resulted in a huge bill for all the spinach I apparently stole. So revert that.

Aaaaaand sleep on it… my next play session is going to be trying to see what happens when both crops are fully delivered, if either pay out, or if I’m going to be on the hook for a bunch of pilfered spinach.

I guess I have found a bug, after all. Jinx.

8r4d #christmas scenes