CentOS, better than "not my circus, not my monkeys"

 Unemployment isn't all fun and games, even in these plague-ridden times, and it's all too easy to look on the past with the proverbial rose-colored glasses.  But every so often, something crops up that lets you say "well, at least I'm not in the middle of that shitstorm."  Better still, sometimes that shitstorm steers far enough clear that you don't have to worry about deciding whether concern or schadenfreude about your previous co-workers should hold the day.  Today is such a day for me, with the news hitting about Red Hat making their move on CentOS Linux, particularly CentOS 8.

For those not in the know, Red Hat produces versions of Linux, and has for decades, including versions intended for long-term stability, which businesses generally prefer.  Naturally, Red Hat wants to make money for their trouble, and their chosen method has been a variety of licensing schemes.  My company used Red Hat for a number of years, on their least-expensive license scheme, but, as they asked for more money for fewer support options, we decided to look for other options.  Due to the licensing structure of the various bits of Linux, it's generally possible to take the bits of one version that you like, and re-use them in another version, so long as you're not taking anything the original version coded for themselves... and that's exactly what the people at CentOS did, starting in 2004, taking the enterprise version of Red Hat's product, stripping everything Red Hat branded or coded from it, and releasing the result as its own product, the trade-off being community-based support vs. not having to pay for a license.  I don't recall exactly when, but the trade-off made sense to my company at some point, and we switched our Linux-based servers to CentOS.

Naturally, this isn't the sort of thing the folks at Red Hat wanted to allow, but there wasn't much they could do about it.  That said, the CentOS folks had their own issues, since you don't have a lot of room for doing things like hiring people to work on your code when you're giving away the final product.  Between one thing and another, Red Hat finally offered to "partner" with the CentOS folks in 2014, in what looked like a win-win for all involved, for all there were CentOS users who worried that this was a prelude to a Microsoft-style "embrace, extend, extinguish" play.  However, as the years went on, this seemed like less and less of a concern, as everybody seemed to play nice with one another.

What changed to shift that balance, I couldn't say with certainty... it wouldn't terribly surprise me if it was somehow connected to IBM buying Red Hat last year, but that's pure speculation on my part.  However, CentOS is now shifting focus to become more of a "development branch" for Red Hat's enterprise products, which is fine as far as that goes.  However, they also decided to significantly hasten the end-of-life of their most current product, from 2029 to the end of 2021, which is a rude awakening for any IT department using CentOS Linux on any sort of scale.

For me, this is very definitely a "dodged a bullet" sort of thing.  If I were still with my 2019 employer, I would doubtless be scrabbling about, looking for long-term alternatives for the various systems I still had on CentOS, and working out what modifications I would have to make to those systems in support of that change.  If I were just unemployed from that company, I would feel the need to at least give them a heads-up, and likely a "the sooner you bring me back on, the better for all of us" sort of message.  However, that company ceased operations at the end of 2019, and the startup with the refugees from that company didn't get an opportunity to build anything significant before I was let go, so it's sort of like watching the tsunami wash over an island that all the residents have safely departed from, for me.  Still, there's plenty of other shops out there that this is going to be an issue for, so it's definitely noteworthy... if only in a "don't forget these organizations can't be counted on to keep a promise" way, if and when the day comes where I'm involved in deciding on systems and services my company will use again.

A nice little surprise: Carto

I've got no shortage of computer/video games to keep myself occupied with, but I also have an XBox Game Pass subscription.  So, when I see a new game pop up there that looks even mildly interesting, at the price of "you've already paid for it", I'll gladly download it and take a closer look.  This week, that led me to get Carto, an odd little adventure-puzzle game.  The story follows the trope of a disaster separating the main character from their family, but with a touch of the magician's apprentice thrown in, with the result of your character washing up on the shore of an island, far from home and family, but with a power to help you make your return trip.

The power you get, in this case, is a map of the local area, broken up into tiles you can shift and rotate, which actually alters the layout of the local area in the process.  You still have to match terrain types on the edges of tiles, much like a game of Carcassonne, but that's not much of a challenge, especially early on.  From that basic beginning, you set out to explore the world, gathering new tiles along the way by various means, while you meet the inhabitants of the various different regions in pursuit of your goals.

Carto is sort of like one of the old point-and-click adventure games, but replacing the obtuse puzzles and pixel-hunting with mostly tile puzzles of various sorts, and I rather liked that.  It's also not terribly long, as I was able to play most of the way through in one sitting over the course of an afternoon and early evening... but only most of the way through.  The last level (if the narrative hints aren't totally misleading at least) takes you to the "edge of the world", which is an arctic/antarctic setting that ramps up the difficulty in a couple of different ways.  First, they replace the simplicity of manipulating tiles with manipulating fixed 4-tile chunks and trying to fit those together in various valid combinations - annoying, but that much I was willing to take on.  Then, part way through, they added a "sliding on the ice" mechanic that requires alignment of "tracks" on the various ice field tiles, and that was the bit that tipped the scales from enjoyable to bothersome for me, so I stopped there.

So, yeah, fair odds I'll never officially finish this game, but it's not like I don't know what the ending is likely to be (it's not a deep story, by any means).  The rest of the game kept me entertained for a number of hours, enough so that I'd recommend it to almost anyone to check out, at the right price.

An innovation more games should embrace

 While there haven't been a lot of Harry Potter-esque "going to wizarding school" games, there have been a few, widely varying in quality.  So, when Ikenfell first crossed my path, with strategy RPG trappings, I was mildly interested, but the pseudo-8-bit visuals turned me off a bit (turns out, I'm old enough that old Nintendo graphics aren't part of my childhood, so I don't get the nostalgia kick from them that many do), so I decided to give it a pass.

Well, it showed up on XBox Game Pass yesterday, and, at the price of "you've already paid for it," I figured it wouldn't hurt to give it a go.  I've only played a little ways into it so far, but, at the moment, I would probably just call it "inoffensive".  There have only been a couple of surprises, one of which is a timed-input fighting system that reminds me of Paper Mario, but I'm not entirely sold on whether it's a good thing or not this early on.

However, that's not the innovation I mentioned in the title.  That role belongs to the cats in the game.  Being a magic school, it's got cats all over, apparently... and the first one I met, if you "use" it, lets you pet it (important in its own right, in the minds of some), restores your health, and acts as a save point.  Yes, it's an unimaginably small touch, but fraught with implications, the first being safety... after all, if the cat's not freaking out and letting you pet it, you can be pretty sure that nothing nasty is in the vicinity to cause you grief.  Second is personality, since I've seen many, many games with bulky, mystical save points whose whole purpose is to get across that they're a feature of the environment, not in any way portable - using a cat makes similar sense, as anybody who has tried to make a cat go somewhere it doesn't want to go can attest to.  Third... well, I have no proof that this is implemented in this game, early as I am in it, but using creatures with agency for save points brings up all sorts of opportunities for mischief, whether that's just cats moving to different locations on a whim, or deciding they don't want to be petted just then, or deciding as a group to go hide, or be captured, or be impersonated by something nasty, or, or, or...

So, yeah, I'm not sold on the game as a whole just yet.  On the other hand, this one touch has piqued my interest enough to say I'll come back for another look.  Maybe there's more surprises waiting just a bit further into the game.  In the meantime, all you other developers, more useful pettable cats, please.

Another game by the wayside

 It was still early June when I started in on Divinity: Original Sin.  I finally gave up on it a day or two ago, mainly to make room for trying out the latest iteration of No Man's Sky (among other things, there's giant jumping planetary worms now).  However, I hadn't even left the first area of the game in all that time.  I got a couple of decent play sessions in, but I always struggled to get myself to get back in for the next session, so it's high time that struggle stopped.

Honestly, I'm hard-pressed to say why the game didn't click for me.  I liked the turn-based combat well enough, excepting for the extreme variation involved when doing something like tossing grenades around.  Could be the bit I mentioned when starting about the game being geared towards a couch co-op experience.  Another likely component would be the whole starting setup, where you're supposed to be concerning yourself with the murder of a politician while undead hordes press the city from the land and orc raiders press from the sea... it just has a bit of "aren't there more pressing things I should be handling right now" attached to it.

That said, since I'm leaving this game behind, I did go ahead and scrounge up a video of the main story beats.  It's a bit more twisty than the initial setup would leave you to believe, which is a good thing, but I'm just as glad to have gotten the summary instead of slogging through the game myself.  I'm not saying you wouldn't enjoy giving the game a go yourself, for the right price at least... but I've gotten what I can from it, and I'm ready to move on.

Funny, how the brain works.

 It's like that old Mel Brooks quote, the one about how "Tragedy is when I cut my finger.  Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die."  Little setbacks can seem magnified way out of proportion when you're on the receiving end.

What brings up this line of thought?  Well, I don't think I ever posted about this topic in this place, but the fact is that I was laid off from my job at the beginning of this whole COVID-19 pandemic.  Originally, it was supposed to just be a layoff until June, which then became July, which then became "maybe you should look elsewhere for work."  Still, I was better off than many in my position, having set aside a fair-sized rainy day fund for emergencies.  That, coupled with the various relief packages offered by state and federal governments, says I'm not at any risk for significant financial impacts (like, say, dipping into retirement savings) until after next year, barring anything further unexpected in the meantime.  In fact, thanks to the "long goodbye" from my prior company, I have actually viewed this whole situation as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity... no need to rush into a new job (because why expose yourself to the dread disease any more than you have to), and no ties binding me to my previous employer, I could be very selective in where I applied to work.  Of course, the unstated assumption here is that my work history is so outstanding that, given the opportunity, any employer would be thrilled to have me come on board to work for them.

Well, the proof to that pudding just came through last night.  I applied for a position with my state's small business development center back in July, had a Zoom interview in August, and got informed that the position had been filled last night.  Intellectually, it made sense... given the time spans involved, there were likely a great many applicants, any of which could have had a better background or interviewed better or whatever, so not getting chosen is a likely outcome.  Emotionally, though, it stung; here I offered them the knowledge and skills acquired over decades, and was rejected outright.  So, I started out the night on a down note, then had another little down-stroke when the weekly game I regularly participate in was canceled because the guy running it had too much work to do... and likely sustained that down-stroke with the glass of sake I had poured for myself for that game.  Even though I occupied myself with other things, the sense of "I've never failed like this on a job search" grew and grew.

That is, until I finally recalled an episode from a job search nearly two decades back.  In that case, I had applied for a job with a local school district, then was called in for an interview... only to find out at the interview site that it was going to be a group interview (as in, multiple applicants in the same interview).  The interview started with a question about something I knew well, but referenced by a name I never used or remembered, and I was given first crack at answering... and failing that, wasn't called on for the rest of the interview.  Without question, that was a worse "fail" than just not getting selected on this one job application... and with that remembrance, while I still didn't feel great about failing, I felt (and continue to feel) better than I had been.

The funny thing is, there was a literal span of hours where, had I been asked, I likely would have said that I had never been rejected on a job application before.  It's almost like some part of my brain decided, long ago, that "we'll just pretend that never happened", up until it decided to dredge up that tidbit as a useful scaling mechanism to help break a depressive cycle.  I can't help but wonder, if someone had mentioned that previous failing before then, whether I would have recalled it happening or not.  Oh well, mysteries of the brain and all that.

Random bits I noticed from around town

 I had some things to take care of out and about today, and I couldn't help but notice a number of things while doing so.  Since it's now several months into the epidemic, I thought it might be nice to record them - no knowing what might be considered "the new normal" eventually, and I might come back here looking for the comforts of "a simpler time", and there's no better antidote to that than reminders of the times you lived through, as you saw them.

So, in the order I saw things... first, traffic has returned to the same levels as it was pre-pandemic, implying that people by and large have come to terms with the new uncertainty in their lives.  Whether their degree of comfort is in any way reflected in the realities of the situation is another matter entirely, but at least infection numbers seem to be headed down for the time being, which is a good sign.

I had cause to visit two different post offices, the first one being closed for lunch when I hit it.  That first one is small enough to only have one customer service desk, so all I recall seeing there is the now more-or-less-standard plexiglass plate between the customer and the employee.  The second one, however, was set up for three service positions down the length of a long counter... so the individual stations were also separated from each other on the employee side, but, rather than use plexiglass, it looked like a similar material to what transparent plastic trash bags are made from.  I can only imagine that's a ventilation nightmare, but whatever gets the job done, I suppose.

Lunch was a sandwich, chips, and some apple juice from a deli inside a green grocer - and not some "been there forever" joint, but one that opened within the past few years and has, somehow, made a go of it.  It will be interesting to see how it fares long-term.

Lunch obtained, I took it to a neighborhood park in the vicinity.  There was a small group of people there, in the vicinity of the play equipment, but they left soon after I arrived with my lunch.  It was a bit disturbing to see multiple RVs parked around the perimeter, but neither was it entirely unexpected... I can only imagine the direction things might take if/when foreclosure/eviction protections are relaxed, supposing things don't change significantly for the better with the economy.

On my next leg of driving, businesses, particularly restaurants, are what I was noticing.  Unlike past recessions and the like, I didn't really see much in the way of vacant strip malls or anything like that.  There were a couple of notable closures, including the Burger King in my area, and a buffet that looks to have decided that opening under likely present and near future conditions is so not happening that they've given up their lease and removed all of their signage.  On the other hand, the off-brand Mexican drive-through still looks to be making a go of it, and the Longhorn Barbecue in my area just opened back up, so it's a bit of a mixed bag there.

Finally, my last stop of the day was for groceries at the local supermarket.  Our state has been under a mask order from the Governor for months, but that hasn't stopped all sorts of unsavory behavior from fervent anti-maskers to date.  This supermarket's response at this point has been to station an employee at the door, tasking them with handing out disposable masks at the door and disinfecting shopping cart handles... and I saw two men need to take advantage of those disposable masks, one of whom decided the best way to do that was to come in close from behind the poor employee and ask him for a mask from just over their shoulder - I still haven't decided though whether that individual was just being unthinking or outright malicious, though.  I did get to see a new form of "mask evasion" while I was in the store, though... some lady was pushing her cart through the store with one hand while pulling her mask away from her face with the other hand.

So, yeah, long story short, people by and large are doing what they feel they need to do to get through this unpleasantness... but, people being people, whether that's helpful for everyone around them is a very open question.

Edit: And oh yeah, I forgot... last day of August, and there was already Halloween candy stocked at the store!

If there's anything I like better than shrinkage...

 It's not the most obvious hill to die on, and just maybe I'm super-sensitive from being cooped up at home for months on end and feeding on unemployment, but there are some things in life that I just won't stand for, if there is any alternative available.  One well-documented example of that on this blog would be my conversion from Sony to Microsoft for my gaming systems back when that whole "PS3 Linux" issue was perpetrated by Sony.  Less well documented is my opposition to the whole "product shrinkage" thing that various grocery producers have leaned into in current years... you know, where they come out with a redesign of their packaging to try and hide that they're trying to sell you less product for the same amount of money.  It's gotten to the point where, for a couple of examples, I will basically no longer buy a "half-gallon" sized container of ice cream, since they're all 1.75 quarts or less now (shout out to Trader Joe's as the lone exception in my area!), nor will I buy a multi-serving bag of chips that contains less than 10 ounces of product (which is basically all of them now, unless you go for the "Party Size" or equivalent).

The latest offender is Feline Greenies, the dental treats I feed my cats with every meal.  I suspected the game was afoot when I saw the new artwork on the front, and noticed the bag seemed a bit elongated compared to what I was used to... and I was right, based on looking things up at Amazon, where somebody still had the old 2.5oz/71g package available for sale, compared to the current 2.1oz/60g packaging.  That alone would be enough to make me reconsider whether I was going to go along with things, but then I realized that, at the same time, the price of the package increased from $3 or less to about $4.  Yes, it wasn't enough to shrink the package and hope nobody would notice, the price got jacked as well.

Now, looking at Amazon, it might be that the price increase was primarily the choice of PetSmart, the store I bought them at - they've certainly been raising prices otherwise, doubtless to try and make up for people either not spending as much on their pets under current conditions or ordering pet supplies online.  However, I'm not quite ready to ditch PetSmart, but I'm more than willing to look into alternatives to Feline Greenies, next time I hit the store.

Comcast/Xfinity return to their pricing shenanigans

For anybody theoretically following this blog, you might recall this post from the beginning of the year, where I ran up against the data cap Comcast imposed on customers in my region while testing Google's Stadia service.  In the meantime, of course, we've had this whole COVID-19 thing get unleashed... and, in the early days, Comcast did the socially-responsible thing with a nation full of people stuck at home, and suspended their data caps entirely.

So, now we're in July, fresh off of a few months with no data caps enforced, and no stories reaching the public of massive outages or slowdowns due to all of the increased traffic on those previously-capped Comcast internet connections.  Rather than take that as an indicator as to the caps not serving their stated purpose (which would, of course, lead one to think they should be eliminated entirely, possibly reducing Comcast's income in the process), Comcast has brought caps back into play effective July 1st.  However, even they must have had a think about how justifiable their previous system was, since they made a few changes.

First, they raised their cap from 1TB to a massive... 1.2TB.  I mean, sure, if you're going to bother capping, higher is better, but that increase is almost insignificant for most use cases I can come up with.  Heck, even in my case, that's just less than I would need to use Stadia a similar amount as in my previous tests, so I'd still be flirting with triggering that $10 per 50GB overage fee (which is still in place, although the highest you could go over is down to $100 from $200 per month).  Worse, if I'm reading the email they sent out to their customers yesterday correctly, they're also reducing their "free" overage months from 2 to 1 going forward.

Second, they're offering a "cheaper" alternative for getting "unlimited" data.  Branded as "xFi Complete", it's basically a $25 per month modem/router rental fee.  Of course, it also includes something they're calling "Advanced Security", but what "security features" they could be implementing that they can't handle through equipment on their end of the connection... well, all I can come up with is monitoring and managing traffic internal to my network, which they have no business inspecting, in my opinion.  It's also worth noting that using their equipment means it also has a "public" WiFi access network built in, and, while it's separate from your personal network, that's still effectively paying Comcast for the privilege of housing equipment to provide their services to strangers, which is wrong in and of itself.

One could argue that, all in all, this is still better than what the status quo was last year, and therefore I should be happy/grateful/whatever.  However, the fact is that they did fine without any of this silliness for months, and could simply have left their systems in what I would call a more proper state than try to prod people to give them more money and/or give up more of their privacy.  Oh well, these things have a way of evening out, given enough time... in my case, there's a residential fiber company trying to work their way into the market, so it might just be "grin and bear it" until they eventually reach my area, much like I did for Comcast's internet back in dial-up days.

More family surprises

Thanks to the COVID-19 silliness abounding, we decided to do a small, family-only graveside service, which happened yesterday, to be followed by a larger memorial service at a later date.  When my brother showed up, he had two children with him, as expected... except I only recognized one of them.  You see, I was expecting my niece and nephew to show up with him, and instead it was my nephew and some strange boy.  While I was trying to wrap my head around why my nephew would invite a friend along to a funeral, never mind why such a theoretical friend would agree to come along, somebody introduced them to the pastor as the nephew and niece in question... which initially made me think that the niece had made some changes in haircut, garb, and so on, in the name of simplicity while dealing with coronavirus isolation.  But the truth was verified during a post-funeral get-together of the adults, that they are now "trans", choosing a new name for themselves and all.

Now, this is the part where anybody that doesn't know me might expect some homophobic rant to show up, but that's (hopefully) not what I expect to happen.  In broad strokes, I don't have any issues with the vast majority of the whole LGBTQ+ "spectrum" (or whatever it's called these days), because most of it boils down to "you love who you love", and, as long as everyone involved is a consenting adult, that makes it None of My Business.

That "T" part, on the other hand, is a bit of a different matter.  I realize full well that being perceived as male or female has significant societal impacts, but that doesn't erase the biological underpinnings that social structure is overlaid upon.  Since I can practically hear the howls of indignation already, let me add that I don't care about any arguments to the tune of "it's not just XX/XY genetics" (since that's the preponderance, and anybody with unusual combinations is likely sterile, and should just be thankful that their cells are robust enough to survive), or any "if I can't bear a child, you think I'm not a woman" nonsense.  How you present matters, on a biological level, and to present otherwise is an attempt to deceive the senses of your fellow humans.

Mind you, that's not necessarily a bad thing, nor is it at all an unnatural thing.  Just as one example, here's a cuttlefish that can go "half and half" to both appeal to a female and not trigger a rivalry response from another nearby male.  But, since we're talking about humans and deception, the next place I have to go is motivation, and that's going to vary from one person to the next.  Some motivations I can understand and accept, some more readily than others... in the case of my niece, they had told my sister at some point in the past that they didn't like being a girl.  It's a bit of a step from that to "I'm going to be a boy instead", but it's not outside of the realm of reason, especially given the social advantages of being male in many situations.  It still strikes me as being something on the same spectrum as being Otherkin, but if they're willing to put in the work to pass for male, which they definitely are at the moment, more power to them.

That said, I have also seen a number of trans people who do a relatively poor job of presenting as the gender they want to be seen as, then get bitterly offended if you don't refer to them in the manner they expect and, frankly, demand.  To them, I can only say it's on you to pull off the deception... I don't care about the context, any time anybody comes to me and asks me "who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?" it's going to be my eyes, 100%.

So, having put all that down, where do I stand on trans people?  In the case of my niece, I know them, love them, and trust them, so, all else being equal, we should be fine.  Everybody else, well, I simply don't do unconditional trust, so, without knowing the why behind the choice, it's going to be more difficult.  We can still get to know one another, and the why of who we both are, but I know I at least won't promise more than that.

So, yeah, my mom died last night.

It's strange, how different this is from when my dad died 13 years ago.  Then, I was absolutely gutted.  Now, I'm still sad, and can still be brought to the verge of tears by pretty much anything that brings her to mind... but I'm basically OK with the whole thing, as far as I can tell.  Is it just changes in me over these many years?  Maybe it's because I couldn't watch her die, courtesy of COVID-19 restrictions at her nursing home?  Maybe it's because I was able to do a "window visit" with her at that same nursing home less than a week ago?  Maybe it's because her body slowly failed her, but left her mind pretty well intact up to the last straw stroke a few days back?  Maybe it's because, after the better part of three years, she doesn't have to endure the nursing home any longer, a hellish environment for anyone with an intact mind?  Heck, maybe it's just because I've had pets die on me in the meantime, helping to cement the "this is normal and expected" sentiment beyond just my rational side.

Well, whatever the reason, I'll take my current state, even if it means I have to work to silence the niggling guilt that I'm not grieving for her "as hard" as I was for my dad back then.  Adieu, maman.

Backlog progress

Apart from posting my disappointment about Star Wars IX, it's been a month since my last post.  That's how long it took me to play Diablo III start to finish in "campaign" mode, and I rather enjoyed it.  It might not have the flexibility of choice in setting up your powers that a game like Path of Exile has, but it does have a decent variety of opponents to slaughter, plus a storyline that can only be called epic.  It's also mostly-serious, but not entirely opposed to a little silliness... for example, the mage I was playing, earlier in the game, acquired a disco ball to use as a spell source, and much of the late game he was using a "pig sticker" for a weapon that actually squealed like a pig when you used it - annoying, but worth it for the stats.  In all, the only real weakness to the game was the selection of powers you could unlock, since the game's primarily-horde-tactics approach makes some choices inherently better than others... but, in the mage's case, that still meant I got to unleash my inner Palpatine with some chain lightning, so it's not all bad.

That's not the only game I played, though... I also picked up Clubhouse Games for my Switch, and got a few sessions in on that.  The games I've played are all pretty well done... but I'm hoping for a patch to help with network stability.  It's hard enough to come up with a 4-player game of Riichi Mahjong without weird slowdowns and players dropping out mid-game.

On the watchables side, I've gotten some use out of Disney+ outside of that one disappointing film, but I'll try to keep it brief.  Avengers: End Game was a fun romp, with plenty of action but not entirely so.  Onward is a lovely Pixar movie that I quite enjoyed, but then I'm also a huge D&D nerd.  A Wrinkle in Time suffers the fate of many book adaptations, compounded by the need to trim it to a "kid-friendly" viewing length.  Finally, I've dipped my toes into both The Mandalorian and The Clone Wars, liked them both enough to watchlist, but that's about it so far.

Next on the XBox One backlog looks to be Divinity: Original Sin.  As I recall, the main issue I had with that game was that it would have been better with a second human player, given the way it's designed... but short of re-buying it on Steam, then bullying someone into playing it with me using their "remote couch co-op" feature, whatever it's actually called, that's not going to happen, so, time to give it a proper go solo.

Star Wars IX was... disappointing.

I did subscribe to Disney+, and so, of course, I queued up the latest Star Wars flick.  I'd heard there was some disappointment in the fan base over it, but I pretty well assumed it was the standard "not what we expected/hoped for" thing.  What I didn't expect was a barely-coherent, poorly paced film like this one making it into public view with the Star Wars name attached to it.  I mean, there were times where I thought I was watching the modern equivalent of one of those '70s knock-off films.  Oh well, at least that finally puts the main series to rest, these 40-odd years later.

Another week of staying home down...

...and more progress made on the ol' entertainment backlog!  Just polished off what I was looking to accomplish in Borderlands 2, more or less, and I rather enjoyed it, for the most part.  Mind you, I did start from a previous save that was a fair ways into the main story... one of the advantages of shooters, it's not like you generally have to relearn a whole lot of controls or anything to do reasonably well in them.  If you haven't played any of this series of games, Borderlands 2 is a decent place to jump in.  Also, if you're a D&D player, and you ever had any doubt about how terrifying a Mimic can be, the "Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep" DLC is definitely worth a go... or, you know, look it up on YouTube.  Sadly, that's what I had to do to see the ending on that DLC, since I hit a bug where the game was demanding "all players must be present" to continue, even though I was playing single-player... and considering the game's been out since 2012, a game-stopping bug like that being present is simply sad.

So, yeah, that's it for Borderlands 2.  I might have stuck it out a bit longer without that bug, but probably not.  I could move on to the "pre-sequel" game they released later on, but I never really did care for the low-gravity, low-atmosphere mechanics involved in that game, so next looks to be giving Diablo III another go... it will at least be interesting to see how it feels after having played Path of Exile.

Games aside, I also finally got around to watching The World's End.  I caught it in a 3-pack Blu-Ray disc set along with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, both of which I quite enjoyed.  As I recall, when The World's End came out, initial reaction was that it was okay, but nowhere near as good as the other two films.  I'm going to guess that a lot of those people either didn't care for the ending, or got the main twist in the story spoiled for them before they hit the theater.  I went in blind, found the first part of the film to be as cringe-worthy as intended, and was caught entirely off-guard by the twist that shapes the rest of the film, so I rather enjoyed it... not the best ending, but try not to let perfect be the enemy of good, or something like that.

Next on the watchables list?  Well, I did get gifted a copy of Parasite that I could watch, and I'm sure I will at some point... but, frankly, I'm still rather in a "light entertainment" sort of mood, so, fair odds, I'll be subscribing to Disney+ before long.  At the very least, I've got the last Star Wars film, the last Avengers film, and one or two oddities that should be caught up on, and what better time than now?

Games catch-up

Well, I've certainly been giving Board Game Arena a workout, and I don't see that changing any time soon... but man cannot live by online board games alone!  So, what other amusements have I found recently?

I just finished my month's-worth of XBox Games Pass, for starters.  Gave several games a go, each of which fell in the category of "looks/sounds like fun, but not nearly enough so to make me buy them at/near launch."  Each of them fell comfortably in that "yeah, this is fine, but not something I'm willing to pay more to keep playing" zone, and nothing upcoming for that service jumped out at me as needing played, so that does for that.  Bit of a shame, really... Journey to the Savage Planet is one I expected to like more than I did, and then there's Nier: Automata.  Mechanically (har!) it's an OK game, but asking anybody to play through a game three times to get the whole story is a pretty big ask, especially in this Internet age... yes, I found videos online rather than keep playing through that game.  The only game in this batch that made me say "maybe later" was when I played some Phantasy Star Online 2... and the "maybe later" there was "maybe when it's on PC, so I don't have to pay for an XBox Gold membership to play."

So, that out of the way, next is diving into my XBox One backlog.  I've skipped all the Assassin's Creed games for now, being neither in the mood for "shadowy organizations facing off through the ages" nor the "genetic memory" shtick they keep using to tie those games to the modern day.  As such, I've gotten back in to Borderlands 2 for a bit of shootery fun... finished the main storyline with my main character, and I'm starting into the "Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep" DLC.  D&D with guns, what's not to like?

Outside of all that, I did get sucked into one other oddity.  Bargain Basement Bathysphere is a free print-and-play solo game, with a bit of a legacy twist (which is a little odd, considering "you died before making it back to the surface" is a likely end to any one game).  The introductory levels ate through my afternoon yesterday.  Still, ol' Snuffbox (that's what I named my bathysphere, at the prompting of the game) is ready to make another descent into the deeps, and I now have an "aquaseum" to hold the fish and squid samples I collect from here on out... I'm looking forward to what else I discover here (without reading ahead, naturally)!

Wait long enough, and others may create what you want for you.

Took a bit of looking for me to find it, but, way back in 2008, I posted a brief blurb about how I was thinking of building a little web-based online game structure, to play certain sorts of board games with your friends.  As is all too common in my case, I didn't have a terribly grand vision, and, after some thinking about the challenges involved, decided it was too much work for the reward involved, and let it go.  Over the years since, a number of online tabletop gaming options have come to the fore, but there's always been some nit I could pick about any of them, be that the selection of games, or the icky pirate aftertaste of various game knock-off sites, or maybe the fiddlyness of dealing with simulated board game components with a keyboard-and-mouse combination (looking at you, Table Top Simulator and Tabletopia).  My vision of a simple interface handling a number of commercial-style games didn't look to be in the cards (so to speak), so I forgot it and moved on to other things.

That changed a couple of days ago when, in a fit of covid-19-lockdown-inspired boredom, I went browsing through Mixer streaming channels on my XBox One, and stumbled across a stream of a few people playing a game called Kingdomino together online.  Watching the stream, it was clear that it was something on an app or website that wasn't explicitly named (just displaying an odd cloud-like logo in its title bar), but it was definitely using the commercial artwork from the game... yet the interface also looked to be very straightforward, so somebody put some work into the game.  Curious, since the streamers never mentioned the app or site when they were playing, I did a little Google-ing, and shortly came up with a website called Board Game Arena.

Board Game Arena is an amazing thing, for all it's a bit overloaded with all the other covid-quarantined people around at the moment.  On a technical level, somebody obviously came up with the same sort of idea I had so very long ago, but ran with it rather than letting it go.  Interactions go back to their server, get stored, and results redistributed to all players (and spectators, one thing I didn't even consider back in the day), which allows for reasonably real-time play (enforced by timers, another thing I never considered) and turns-per-day play as well.

Working our way out from the minutiae of game-state management, they dared dream and build on a far grander scale than I ever considered, allowing for who-knows-how-many thousands or millions of players, with poor behavior reined in by a reputation system, and with per-game rankings of the various players based on how they perform.  They already have 175 games on their site, including some I would call "heavy hitters" from the commercial world... and all the commercial games that are present are there with the express permission of the publishers, so they're generally built with the actual art assets of the original games, and usually have links to the PDF of the rulebooks, among other aids for people who need a brush-up or haven't learned the game yet... and the state-storing nature of the system lets them build tutorials for players to go through, if they wish.

Even the inevitable "premium account" system is fairly benign, compared to what I've seen elsewhere... basically, for all some of the games on the site are considered "premium", all that means is that a premium member has to start the game.  If you're fine playing with random people, that means you don't have to pony up for premium yourself unless you want to try to play something more obscure that hardly anybody else is looking to play.  If, on the other hand, you want to play "premium" games with just your friends, then one of you needs to have a premium account to start the game, and everybody else joins in afterwards.  Outside of that, premium just looks to give you some relatively-minor perks (like choosing the color of your pieces, for example)... and the cost is palatable at 4 euros per month, but even more so if you buy the annual subscription instead, at 50% of the regular cost.

So, yeah, I haven't found any urgent reason to upgrade to a paid subscription so far, since playing for free is quick and easy.  I'd suggest giving it a go if you're at all interested in board games... and of course, if you stick around, friend me up!  As always, I am 'delRhode' there as well.

Right, that does for the XBox 360 stuff

I put in a bit of time with Red Dead Redemption, played a couple of story missions, went to try my hand at hunting down a bounty, shot and skinned a rabbit on the way there... and it struck me.  Mechanically, the game has a lot of similarity with something like Far Cry 3, just remove the radio towers and exploration aspects and add horses (which, to the game's credit, are handled differently than your usual "vehicles" in these sorts of games).  Of the two games, I'd rather do Far Cry 3, but I purposely skipped over that game earlier, so I'm not going to keep pushing forward with this one.

The setting is probably the biggest thing I have against the game... it's not that I mind scrub-lands and cacti so much, but, even from the intro video, the willful ignorance and arrogant class and racial elitism on display just grate on my nerves.  If I ever did come back to this game, it would likely be to play as a total rat-bastard, plundering and pillaging at will, but that's nowhere near my current mindset, even in "just a game".

There was one bright spot worth mentioning, though.  On a whim, I went to a movie house, and was presented with a delightful little cartoon produced by the local ladies' temperance movement, supposedly.  The subject was a patent medicine purveyor and his wares, which were almost 100% things like morphine, cocaine, and laudanum.  I don't know if there was any significant attempt to copy the animation styles of the period, but the contents definitely didn't fit.  Once you've seen a man blast a load of tapeworms out of his ass, followed shortly by him manically humping a tree, that's not an image you'll soon forget.

So, what's next?  Well, I was intending to start in on my XBox One backlog... but I just caught wind that NieR:Automata, a game I have wishlisted over at Steam, is coming to Game Pass, so I expect I'll be taking this opportunity to try that out, along with a raft of other games I have mild interest in.  If I find anything of particular interest, I'll post about it here, but otherwise it'll likely be a while.

Again I say: Next!

From what I gather, Lost Odyssey was considered to be a bit "old school" when it launched, and it really hasn't aged well since then.  Mechanically, it's pretty bog-standard JRPG, with smallish zones to run around in, where the camera is controlled by the game... while the mini-map doesn't track with the camera changes, making navigation more challenging than it needs to be.  Combat erupts seemingly at random, with no indication on the field that you're about to encounter anything first.  Combat itself is mostly standard turn-based fare as well, with the usual front-row back-row setup... but you have to set up commands for your whole party at the start of each round, and, due to the "ring system" they implemented for melee combat, you are effectively penalized if you're not waiting for your fighters' turns to come up with bated breath.  And then there's the whole "immortals" thing... it's a key part of the story line (I watched a recap video), but it has no real combat effect - that is to say, if you party wipe, it's still game over.  The story this is all in service to, well, it's fine in some of its details, but the overall arc is still "stop the big bad from taking over the world, you plucky upstarts you", so I'm glad to have watched the recap video rather than suffering through the whole game to see the story.

The one thing I'm a little sad to not experience further from this game (but honestly, not so much that I'm going to look for video or anything) is the "dreams" feature.  The main character is an immortal who's been kicking around the world for a thousand years, who currently suffers from memory loss. Encountering certain experiences unlocks a dream containing a memory from that thousand-year journey... but it's not presented as a video or anything like that.  Rather, it's told as a short story, in text, with various animated effects applied to the characters themselves in ways that evoke the atmosphere or environment of the story.  It's a pretty neat way to tell a short story... but I can also see why it doesn't show up in newer games as well, with so many reading-averse gamers out there.

Well, leaving Lost Odyssey behind, that makes the next game up Red Dead Redemption, a widely-loved game in a wild-west setting I generally have little use for, so it's a toss-up as to how this game will go.  That will also be the last of the XBox 360 games in my "give it a proper go" queue... but no worries, once I'm done with that, I've got a load of more-modern XBox One games to go through, followed by literal hundreds of Steam games to sift through as well.  Social distancing indeed!

Next!

So, I always liked the general idea of Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, but it's been years since I last played it... which is the only excuse I have for forgetting how much I disliked certain aspects of it.  Basically, it's "escort mission, the video game", which would be unfortunate enough on its own, but pair that with imprecise controls and a camera that can't decide whether you or the game is in control, and it becomes an exercise in frustration.  I might look up video on the game later, but I can't force myself to play it while I've got so many others to explore.

Next in the queue then is... Lost Odyssey, which looks to be a very strange JRPG, only part of the strangeness being due to the sub-par (by modern standards) localization in English from the original Japanese.  Wild costuming, a world in the throes of a "Magical Industrial Revolution", and multiple literal immortals in your party, once you finally get "on the road", all of these point towards a story that might hold my interest.  Hopefully so, since I already have some serious doubts about this game's particular twist on the standard JRPG combat system.

That's enough Dragon Age II for me.

Well, I lasted a fair bit longer on this game.  I likely would have finished it out, but there were just too many game-freezing bugs for me to endure through to the end.  Of course, that could be solely the fault of the game itself, or something to do with the XBox One backwards-compatibility stuff not being quite up to snuff... either way, it's a shame, since it's another "has its charms" sort of game.

In brief then, design choices that stuck with me, good and bad.  The more action-RPG bent of the game worked for my playstyle, but pretty much every fight of any consequence boiled down to "defeat waves of enemies", enemies that appeared on the field with little justification - in fact, in one case, I watched an ogre literally "fade in" in front of me, which does immersion no favors.  I liked that they stuck with the idea of having a dog, while demoting it from follower to summon... but hated that the summon would disappear (and trigger a cooldown) every time you changed maps.  Speaking of maps, they got reused liberally - not just the art assets, mind you, but the actual maps, something that "doors that don't register and can't be opened" kind of helps to point out.  Finally, the story and setting... well, I liked the idea of playing in the same city and surroundings over the course of multiple years, with the whole "yeah, the fight for the fate of the world happened elsewhere while you were busy here" vibe, but advancing the timeline by three years, and finding gear for sale in the slums both better and higher-priced than anything you could buy in the posh districts earlier was another blow to immersion.

So, yeah, I don't regret the time I spent playing, but it could have been much better and more stable... can't help but wonder if it was a rush job of some sort, to cash in on the success of the first game.  Oh well, enough of that, on to the next... looks to be Enslaved: Odyssey to the West is next on the docket.  Something platformy as a palate cleanser might not be a bad thing at all.

Bailing on Dragon Age Origins, maybe Dragon Age II?

Well, I tried to like Dragon Age Origins, and got further into it than I ever have before... but, in the end, I just couldn't force myself to stick with it.  The "dark fantasy" setting is fine, and the standard "save the world from impending doom" story-line is fine, but the mechanics of the game just don't work for me.

I think the main problem is that the game wants to be more than one thing, which ends up compromising the whole.  It lets you build a character to your tastes, using a new-to-this-series character system with loads of detail, complete with different opening scenarios based on the choices you make... then saddles you with multiple, changing companion characters, and expect you to learn how they work as well, so you can take them over if need be (like, for example, your main character gets knocked out) and tweak their AI so they act competently when you're not controlling them.  It wants to be a real-time tactical game, but it also wants to be cinematic... so, sometimes, you'll get a cut-scene or similar, then dropped as a party into an untenable situation.  All that, and some of the problems that plague other games in this genre (for example, you can have multiple companions, but only three plus yourself in the active party, but you can swap out companions readily, without any in-game justification for why your party size is restricted), add up to a game I just don't want to play, for all I enjoyed some of the situations you're put into.

With that in mind, I had some serious reservations about starting up Dragon Age II, the next game in my XBox 360 backlog... but it appears that Bioware, makers of both games, learned some things from the first game.  The second game features a simplified version of the character system from the first game, with better communication as to why you might want to invest in the various stats and skills, and has pivoted to an "action" RPG, mainly meaning so far that spamming the base attack button is now required when you're not using a skill... but the skills also tend to be more flashy, helping change the feel of the game a bit.  That, plus a much less traditional story that's only loosely tied to the events of the first game (in fact, you're basically indentured for the duration of the events of the first game) gives me enough interest to give it a go.

Strangely, the changes between the two Dragon Age games also make me want to take a look at the Mass Effect series again at some point, which was also produce by Bioware.  I played a little of the original Mass Effect, and was similarly turned off by the mechanics involved.  I later played Mass Effect Andromeda, and, while it wasn't exactly earth-shattering, it was a passable sci-fi RPG.  Maybe enough of the mechanical differences made their way into earlier games to make #2 and #3 worth a go?  Eh, I'll keep an eye for them on sale, maybe.

That's Blue Dragon down

A bit over 50 hours of playtime later, I've finally finished Blue Dragon.  The short verdict:  while it has its charms, I couldn't really recommend it to anyone on its merits.

To go into more detail, this game has a number of things working against it.  First, it appears that the game was designed to be released roughly in tandem with an accompanying anime (if the dates I saw on Wikipedia are right, at least).  As such, the story of the game itself is at the level of b-grade shounen anime.  In broad strokes, the story follows some kids from a village that attempt to interfere with an annual calamity that hits their village, resulting in them unintentionally getting transported elsewhere, meeting the hissably-bad lead villain, then escaping while gaining magic powers.  From there the story is three broad arcs:  making their way back to their families while collecting more companions and power; tracking down the main villain, only to find out the power they've acquired serves to empower the villain once it's stripped from them; and regaining their power on their own terms, then finding and facing the villain once again to finally defeat him.  Bog-standard stuff, really.

Second, the game itself has some technical challenges.  I believe this mostly revolves around the way they had to originally release the game, as a 3-disc set for a game system that included configurations without a hard drive.  As such, even in the current XBox One backwards-compatibility version, you still get prompts to change discs, for example.  You will also get weird freezes where even the background music stops if you try to use an unusual move for the first time in a while.  All in all, I only had the game actually lock up on me once, so it's not like it's unplayable, but it's definitely unnerving when it happens.

Third, there's some design choices and general lack of polish that weigh the game down.  The game can't seem to make up its mind as to whether it or you should be controlling the camera, and, when it lets you control it, sometimes it will throw the view out of focus if you try to put the camera somewhere it doesn't expect or care for.  Gameplay balance for challenge is almost non-existent, to the point where, just following the main quest line, there is little to no challenge at all in fights once you regain your powers in the third act.  Also, I won't be sad to never have to hear this particular song during a battle again.

Of course, like I said, the game does have its charms as well.  Having a viable (in game world terms at least) reason for a bunch of kids to be up to the task of beating up monsters is always a plus.  The designs of the monsters are reasonably varied as well (although there are the inevitable palette/skin swaps), including, strangely enough, animate piles of poo wielding spears and the like (Japan, go figure).  The class system is both straightforward enough for each class, and the effective multi-classing you can unlock through the Generalist class is something I'd like to see more games give a go.  On top of all that, there are occasional mini-games and the like, but they're used sparingly, and only where the "regular" game system wouldn't work well to carry the story.

So, on to the next game then... looking at my list, the next game would normally be Dark Souls, but I made the mistake of watching a speed-run on that game online once, and there's no way I could convince myself to spend the hours necessary to play the game "right" after that.  So, after that, looks like Dragon Age: Origins is the game to play.  I know that game's near and dear to the hearts of more than a few people, so I have high hopes.

Impeachment - well, that's it for this round, at least

As expected, President Trump survived his impeachment experience, due to the apparent collusion of his party members in the Senate.  Despite a few of them making mouth-noises about how they didn't need to hear any additional testimony or gather any further evidence because they had ample proof that he did what he was accused of, they still voted to acquit him in near-lockstep along party lines.  The one exception, on one of the counts against Trump, was Mitt Romney, making him one of the few individuals at the national level of the Republican party who appears to have any semblance of a moral commitment to country above party, or even to holding their own oaths sacred.

I don't recall if I've ever publicly stated this before, but this is ample illustration of the state of decay the Republican party has fallen to, at least at the national level.  If you want to call yourself a Republican at this point, don't make any bones about it being for moral reasons, since they've demonstrated just how much morality weighs in their calculus for taking and keeping power.  Simply put, if I see somebody claiming to be a Republican on any ballot from here on out, I'm considering that a disqualifying condition... not to say that I'll always vote Democrat, because they have their own issues and, occasionally, somebody comes along who belongs to neither party yet is actually sane, but voting Republican while I have another choice is right out.

That's Bioshock Infinite down, on to Blue Dragon

Courtesy of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, I got through most of Bioshock Infinite, and polished off what I'm willing to play of it last night.  I made it to the "final fight" in the game, which, to me, was marred by a pair of game design sins... I mean, I understand, given the story, why they did what they did, but fundamentally shifting the structure of a game in the closing minutes of the final act just doesn't sit well with me.  For any of you worried about spoilers for a nearly 8-year-old game, kindly skip the next paragraph.

The story is fun enough, involving both time travel and traversing different alternate histories, but the expected "climax" of facing down the prophet Comstock is rendered inert when you basically bash his brains in on a baptismal font (yeah, this game has a lot of interaction with Christian imagery, as is appropriate for the time period it inhabits).  The game could have continued from there basically straight into the post-final-fight story (which I watched courtesy of YouTube... it's quite nice, shows the appropriateness of the game's title, gives the original Bioshock a cameo moment, and reveals that the player and Comstock were the same person, just down different probability paths, making several apparent falsehoods on Comstock's part actually ring true, from a certain point of view).  However, that would have lacked "punch", so they decided to throw in an extended raid from the Vox Populi trying to take down the airship you're currently on, where they're targeting a generator of some sort that you have to defend.  Sounds standard enough... except that, throughout the game up to that point, they made a point of telling you that you don't have to worry about defending anything but yourself.  Heck, I didn't even see the "health bar" for the generator until nearly the end of my first attempt at the raid, as it sat in a corner of the screen that didn't see any similar use up to that point.  And of course, when you fail, there's no handy mid-fight checkpoint, it's back to the beginning.  They also introduced a new mechanic in the fight, tied to an already-overloaded button on the controller that handles weapon reloads, receiving healing items/ammo from your companion, and asking your companion to effect changes to the battlefield.  Two tries was plenty, and I dropped the controller and resorted to YouTube after that to see the ending.

So, all in all, I'm glad I took the time to mostly play through the game.  Now it's on to Blue Dragon, a peculiar little JRPG I picked up some years back.  As a rule, I'm not a fan of non-tactical turn-based combat, but this title has some peculiarities that interest me.  Will it hold my attention, or will I move on?  I like my odds, but time will tell.

2020 video gaming - maybe a year of catch-up

So, first off, sorry to any of you that were expecting useful data from me for Stadia streaming over the month of January.  Not long after my last post, I hit a point in Destiny 2 where anything resembling advancement there would have involved grinding through a limited set of activities, and I've had quite enough of that in this sort of game, thank you very much.  However, I'm also not feeling the need to yoke myself back up to grind away in Warframe either, and, looking at the schedule of upcoming games, I'm just not seeing anything there to demand my attention any time soon (likely due to the near-future release of the next generation of gaming systems).  It's looking a lot like I will actually have the time to play some of those games in my backlog that I've "really wanted to play", but never been able to stick with long-term.

Problem being, of course, that I have a lot of games.  I forget who said what exact words, but there's a saying something like "the more options you have, the less likely you are to use any of them."  So, the first step is just eliminating large swaths of games outright.  In my case, I decided that anything involving a system I would have to go to the trouble of setting up is right out.  That leaves me with Stadia, my XBox One, and my PC (well, technically, that also includes my Wii, but that's mainly because it doesn't take up an HDMI port on my TV... and I can't think of anything I've got there that's calling to me).  None of the "free" stuff on Stadia currently appeals to me, so that's out.  PC, I've got literal hundreds of games to sift through there, so save that for later.  XBox, I don't have near as many games for... and those games are split out into current-generation and backwards-compatible games, mostly originally for the XBox 360.  With a new generation coming, maybe it's high time to concentrate on those games, play the ones I care about to either completion or no longer caring, then leave them be thereafter.

With that in mind, I started through the collection alphabetically (simplest way to keep track of what I've played/not played, after all), and the first game I came across that I cared remotely about playing was Bioshock Infinite.  I bounced off of this game originally (and honestly, pretty much all of the BioShock games) for one main reason - the controls.  Each game in this series includes a selection of special powers, activation of which is tied to the left trigger on the controller... which, in proper modern shooters is your zoom/look-down-the-sights button, but here that's mapped to pushing in the right analog stick, of all things.  That sort of design choice is all over the controls, making some controls work as expected, others totally foreign, and that design (and the unintended flubs they caused) has made me bounce off this game more than once.  However, I've heard good things about all these games, which always brought me back for another go.

So, this time, I committed to enduring and adapting to the controls... and so far, I've been pleasantly surprised.  Maybe it's the years in between I've spent playing various shooters, but the pacing and number of enemies is much more manageable now, even with the wacky controls.  And now, I've gotten far enough in to get something resembling a reasonable storyline going, for all it includes multiple alternate histories.  I think I may be able to play it all the way through this time... and if not, I can at least say I gave it the old college try, and move on without regrets.

Found the nail for the Stadia coffin, its name is Comcast

Well before Google launched Stadia, the naysayers had a variety of reasons why it simply wouldn't work.  Latency and lag, data caps, business model, longevity, those and more were paraded out, often with an air of "let this thing crash quickly, so we can get back to our preferred PC/game system reporting."  I, on the other hand, took the side of "If anybody can do it, Google can", envisioned the possibilities their setup would enable, and decided it would be worth at least giving it a shot.

My first month with Stadia was basically all I could ask for, but not without some minor issues.  In fact, what started out as "might as well play some Destiny 2, since I've basically paid for it" basically turned into "yeah, I could play some Warframe, but I'd rather be playing Destiny 2 right now."  All was rosy, until I opened up my email on the day after Christmas.

Waiting in my inbox was an automatic notification that, at some point on Christmas, I had crossed the 90% threshold towards my monthly 1TB data cap.  Now, Comcast set that up back in 2015, ostensibly to rein in bitorrenters, but it also just so happens to limit the amount of streaming a household could do if they, say, were cutting cable TV out of their lives.  Further, while their online documentation of this cap goes on and on about "fairness", their pricing scheme is anything but.  Somehow, they can provide you 1TB (1024GB) of data per month for under $70, but, if you cross that arbitrary line, they will charge you $10 per 50GB thereafter, up to $200... do the math, and that's nearly three times more expensive than your data up to the cap, assuming you use it all each month.  Of course, you can avoid this issue by paying for the unlimited option... which just so happens to bring your Internet bill up to what you would have been paying for internet and cable to begin with.

Luckily, Comcast gives you the first two months of overages for free, so I decided to take advantage of that fact to run an experiment.  Upon receiving the 90% notification, I dropped my Stadia data rate to the "balanced" plan (1080p streaming).  The end result:  I only exceeded my data cap by 68GB, which, except for Comcast's forbearance, would have jacked my monthly bill by $20.  Doing some math, it appears that my "break-even" point for switching between 4K Stadia and 1080p Stadia is a bit over 70% of the data cap (or just over 19 days through a 31-day month)... so, for January, I'm going to try that and see where it gets me.

Unfortunately, even if that works, I just can't see myself switching back and forth, running the razor edge of having to give Comcast more money on any given month.  If I wanted 1080p streaming, I've got a PC with loads of games and a streaming-capable TV already.  Beyond that, I know that I'm an odd case in that I'm a bachelor who's a moderate gamer that does a fair bit of reading and some over-the-air TV viewing as well.  I could manage the data jump Stadia brings about, but a multi-member household, especially one with kids, would blow their cap in no time, even at the "balanced" data rate.  So, basically, the technology's great, but, short of Google somehow convincing Comcast (and other ISPs) to work against their perceived interests, I think you can pretty well write off Stadia at this point... I know I fully intend to cancel my subscription before my trial expires in February.