Summer Doldrums

 We're past the 500-day mark on Russia's invasion of Ukraine now.  Wagner troops briefly rebelled but didn't push through to Moscow, so that civil war didn't happen, yet at least.  Now, we're giving the Ukrainians cluster bombs, which I have to admire their resolve to use long-term-unpleasant weapons like that on their own territory.  Outside of that, no major news on that front.

Here at home, we're entering my least favorite part of the year, the last two weeks of July and the first two weeks of August.  Here in Spokane, we've had a couple of unpleasantly hot days already, but no extended heat waves, and also no significant wildfire smoke impacts to date.  I expect both of those will change in the next few weeks, but I'll take what I can get until then.

On the EV front, I had cause to visit Seattle, so I got my first taste of the state of public fast-charging in the region.  The verdict:  eh, it's OK but not great.  There was at least one charger option I steered away from due to reports of vandalism on the PlugShare app, but otherwise my only issue was that chargers were sometimes too popular - waiting for an hour for your car to charge is one thing, waiting almost as long again for a charger to free up is something else (especially in unpleasant weather).

Finally, on the games front, yes, Steam had their Summer Sale recently.  Yes, I grabbed a couple of games from my wishlist at appropriate cheap-bastard rates.  No, none of them are so amazing that I need to go into great detail about them yet.  Although... on the off chance you haven't played The Stanley Parable yet, you could do worse than to pick up the "Ultra Deluxe" edition to have even more content to discover.

PSA: pix may disappear

 Google's gotten to be pretty well known for dropping/abandoning their more niche services in recent years, so I wasn't too surprised to find an email in my inbox telling me that something of theirs was going away.  What that something is, this time around, is a thing called "Album Archives", which, I gather, is a part of the Google Photos service (whatever it was called back in the day, the old name escapes me) that got sliced off of the main service at some point.  In my case, when I looked at what's currently stored there, it looks like its some mostly-older photos that I put in there specifically to display on this blog, without having to track down/shell out for someplace to host those photos online for me.

I could, of course, retrieve those photos, re-host them somewhere else, and hunt down and re-link them to their appropriate posts.  Frankly, that sounds like a lot of work for not much gain.  Besides, the current links on one of those ancient posts implies that the photo might have gotten hosted on Blogger proper automatically at some point in the past.  So... if you look closely, some of the photos on this blog might disappear in about a month.  Or, they might not.  I guess we'll see.

Now, pardon me while I keep waiting for Starfield to drop in September.

A bit of the lookback, a bit of the now

 As per tradition, the Russia-Ukraine fight goes on, with much of the action currently around one town that neither side is willing to give up on.  Russia's "Wagner group" private army was recently complaining about not getting the ammo they need, though, so that's a promising sign.

Here at home, the weather's nicened up a bit, so I've got plenty of work in and out of the house to take care of... so of course, I decided to take the time to look back over some of my old posts (basically, 5, 10, and 15 years ago).  Some take-aways include posts that haven't aged well (for example, it was easy to mock antimicrobial pens in pre-COVID days), movies I'd forgotten I'd seen, and the fact that, originally, my plan was to post once a week or shut down the blog.  Facebook took a bite out of that, I'm sure (and have I mentioned I recently dropped Facebook when they re-activated the Orange One's account?), and there just isn't that much interesting in my life going on to make a weekly post worthwhile... so, since this blog costs me nothing, we'll just keep going with the "monthly or so" schedule I've arrived at for now.

On the electric car front, I should have my charger hooked up in my garage next week... buried electrical and run length will make for a pricey install (more than $5000 after GM's credit), but it's just too convenient to pass up.  That, and it'll pay for itself over the years... for those of you wondering what the fuel cost saving are like, based on the past month of use vs. the month of gas purchases for my old Yaris, I've calculated it out to be less than one quarter of what I would have spent otherwise.  That's if I was charging at home all the time, of course.  Up to now, I've mostly charged at the level 2 charger at work, which costs me nothing.  Contrariwise, if I were charging solely at fast-chargers, the per-kWh rate on those equals or exceeds what the cost of gas would be, from what I've seen.  So, basically, EVs are great if you have someplace to charge them while they're parked, not so great (economically) if you have to rely on fast-chargers to meet your needs.

On the games/Steam Deck front, Steam did just have a Spring Sale, which triggered my inflation-adjusted cheap-bastard guidelines for getting a few games off of my wishlist (for the record, that's 50%+ off for a resulting price under $20, any% off for a resulting price under $10).  One of those that's made it onto the Steam Deck is a game called Slipways (Compatibility: Playable), which is a sort of space-empire puzzle game (that I have declared to be sufficiently different from Tiny Civilization that they don't share the same "niche").  It basically gives you the 4X game experience, without the eXtermination bit, resulting in a game that takes just a few hours to complete (mainly because you have an in-game time limit for how many turns you can take).  I had to crank up the interface scaling to make it work well on my TV, and I don't know how well I'll be able to see it in handheld mode, but I have high hopes for now.

And that's about it for this time, I think.  See you in a month or so, hypothetical reader!

New car time!

 So, for the obligatories... yes, Russia is still fucking around in Ukraine, and continuing to find out, more than 400 days later.  Getting no traction there, they've gone and arrested a U.S. journalist on spying charges... obviously, I can't say they're wrong, but their past history makes them highly suspect.  Also, this falls under the category of "somebody being somewhere dangerous and knowing the likely consequences", so here's hoping the Russian regime doesn't get the leverage they so obviously desire, this time around.

Right, that out of the way, the big change here is that the Bolt EV came in!  I've spent a fair bit of time familiarizing myself with all the extra features it has, compared to by decidedly bare-bones Yaris of yesteryear, and I've got to say, I could get used to this (which, since most of this stuff is standard on pretty much any new vehicle nowadays, I guess I can let happen).  Setting aside all the ooh and aah of, well, any time you get a new car, here's the bits that I've picked up on that aren't all that:

• Single-pedal drive mode - honestly, this is likely to be more of a "needing to get familiar with it" sort of thing, but, with as strong as the regenerative braking can be on this car, the jerkiness of it all gives me strong "remember when you were learning to drive stick shift?" vibes.
• Storage - one thing I always loved about my Yaris was the copious storage scattered throughout the interior, especially up front, where there were multiple "glove box" enclosures in the dash, cup-holders for driver and passenger near the windows, plus another in the center along with some open-air storage options both in the center and in each of the doors.  In the Bolt, it's one glove box, a pair of cup-holders in the center island, a "storage bucket" under an arm rest, and some smaller open-air storage in the doors.  The downside of all the new tech and controls is the loss of places to put things.
• Steering wheel - another "gotta get used to it" item, the steering wheel feels... small.  How much of that is the actual size, and how much of that is controls embedded in and around the wheel, that I'm not sure.
• Internal rear-view mirror - this piece and its surrounds, I get why they are the way they are, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.  There's two main issues I have so far, first being that the mirror is small, for all its field of view covers the back window fully.  The second issue is that it mounts into a sensor suite for all the techno-wizardry the car supports, which takes up windshield space directly behind the mirror - so, if you have something that needs to hang from the mirror, like a parking pass, good luck getting that to be visible.

However, setting aside those petty grumbles, make no mistake, I'm actually liking the Bolt quite a lot.  Once I've adjusted to the new normal of charging up instead of gassing up, I should be quite happy with it for years to come (assuming, as always, nothing changes drastically due to, say, an over-the-air update of the car's systems or something like that).

Beyond the new-car thing, I did find one more thing to add to my Steam Deck that might be of interest - Tiny Civilization (Compatibility: Unrated). I like Civilization-style games, but they tend to be massive time-sinks, so I'm always on the lookout for Civ-like things that don't take much time.  Tiny Civilization is probably as good an embodiment of that concept as I can imagine, using match-3 mechanics to cover much of what makes a Civ game.  I could say it's been pared down too far, in some respects, but, for the style of game, the choices made in what to keep and what to simplify or eliminate just make sense.  For $2, I'd recommend it to almost anyone to try out.

Small changes, of no great import

 So yeah, Ukraine, the war, Putin's still a bastard, not much new there.

Destiny 2, I did go ahead and spring for the "full year" package.  Basically, my brother's Christmas present (a $100 gift card) paid for it, while I covered the tax.  I'm liking it for now, but I haven't really gotten into any of the repetitive activities as of yet.  Worst case, I'm set to drop in and out of the game at will for the next year, at least.

Steam Deck has had its first casualty of the new game-playing regime - Dragon's Dogma is out.  I gave it the best-to-date play sessions yet, and ran into two main issues.  First, the "pawns" (the rest of your adventuring party, mainly) are played up as having no will of their own... but damned if they're not keen to charge into combat with anything that comes within sight.  That would be bad enough, since that basically dictates your play style for you.  However, on top of that, there's the matter of the enemies in the game - if there's anything worse than palette-swapping your enemies out to make tougher versions, it's making tougher versions of enemies while keeping their visuals unchanged.  Once I've fought wolves/bandits/whatever, and I see another group of the same, it should be reasonable to expect more of the same to be, at least roughly, the same strength/toughness as before, but that's not the case, as demonstrated by the sharp difference between the starting-area wolves and the first wolves you encounter in the Dark Arisen expansion.  Those nuisances, plus the way enemies seem to respawn instantly when going back to already-cleared ares, soured me on the game, so I'm done with it.

That leaves an opening in the RPG niche, which I've decided to fill with Disgaea 2 PC (Compatibility: Playable).  I played Disgaea 3 on the PS3 back in the day (all the way to the "end", no less!), I've played Disgaea, Disgaea 4 and Disgaea 5 a bit, and more editions are coming out as the years pile up.  What can I say, I'm a sucker for the systems in these games, but there's one big issue that tends to hold me back, namely the way you can only save a game out when you're in a "safe area".  Given that part of the grindtastic gameplay involves diving into what's known as the "Item World" to improve your gear, a process that can take untold hours, that's a major problem for anybody with anything resembling a life.  However, this is one place where the Steam Deck really shines - you can put the Deck to sleep at any time, even in the middle of a game, and it will turn back on like nothing happened at all!  I see great possibilities for actually finishing D2PC, and maybe pursuing later editions, assuming I don't just burn out after a while.

Outside of that, there's possible progress on the electric car front.  Got a call from the dealership last month, saying they got word from the factory that they could get my chosen specs into production... if I was willing to drop the lighted charger port from the build.  Says I, by all means!  So, in theory, my car might be ready for me to buy late this month, or maybe sometime next month.  I'm hopeful, but, of course, until it actually happens, I'm not getting my hopes up too high.

A year of war in Ukraine, and more gaming distractions

 I looked back over my old posts, and, sure enough, it really has been a full year since Russia decided to do a surprise invasion on its neighbor Ukraine.  Back then, if somebody had said that this would still be gong on after a full year had passed, I would have been wondering what drugs they were taking.  I'm not proud of our role in doing nothing more than sending select weaponry over for the Ukrainians to use, but, I have to admit, for certain values of the word "works", what we're doing "works", in so far as it's keeping the Russians occupied, at the cost of Ukrainian lives.  Since it doesn't look like Putin is going to back down any time soon, here's hoping for some forced change of leadership taking place - I mean, there's certainly been enough falling-out-of-windows "accidents" over the past year that it seems like a threat they're considering, so I wouldn't mind at all if that threat came to pass.

Well, all that aside, life goes on here at home, and that of course means games.  On the XBox side, Destiny 2 is wrapping up for the season, and for the current expansion, with a new expansion scheduled to launch next week.  Much like last year, I'm thinking I'm not up for feeding that monetization machine any more, but, on the other hand, I do still have a fair bit of Christmas cash in my account, so... maybe?  If I hear something really good about the new expansion, maybe?

Also on the XBox side, Atomic Heart came out recently.  I was going to give it a go, since it's on Game Pass and all... but middling reviews and a collection of controversies, including questions about how Russian the developing studio is, who's funding it, and the message the game, made me decide that I really wasn't that keen to play it after all.

So, if that's XBox, how about that new Steam Deck?  Well, first, the "boring" parts... I did receive the docking station for the deck and gave that a go.  Games work well, mostly (I'll list an exception in a bit), and desktop apps seem to work well enough, although the audio on my Chrome app seems to have stopped working - that app, and only that app.  After poking around a bit, I've pretty much given up on using it as a desktop replacement, though... the default setup relies on Flatpak to add apps to the system, which, while a neat idea, seems to leave you at the mercy of if/when apps ever get updated in that format, and the regular Linux O/S is locked down.  Basically, it's more likely that, when I decide to replace my Windows 10 machine, I would get a box to install a Linux distro on, then add Steam on top, rather than muck about with the handheld/docking station combo.

Outside of that, I'm still mostly playing with the same games I listed before, but I did add a couple more games to fill a couple more niches:

• Dorfromantik (Compatibility: Verified) - a hex-tile-laying puzzle/building game, where you build a land/water mass with villages, forests, plains, rails, and water features, aiming for a high score by completing tasks that crop up and placing your tiles to maximize similarities across tiles.  I really like the game, but I've had problems with getting my Steam Controller to work with the game without it crashing out, so it's handheld-only for now.
• Rogue Legacy (Compatibility: Verified) - a quirky little Rogue-lite platformer, where the hook is that each "run" through the game is being performed by a descendant of the previous heroes, and may have a genetic condition of some sort that will (most likely) hinder their performance.  I actually had to dig in my library a bit to find this one... I think it may have had some issues when I tried streaming it from my gaming PC before, but it works fine on the Steam Deck.

I think that pretty much covers everything for now.  Until next time!

New year, new gear

 So, to get the Russia/Ukraine bit out of the way... yes, Putin's still being a bastard, the invasion tries to continue, not much new there.  Well, I suppose Putin unilaterally declaring (and unilaterally breaking) an Orthodox Christmas cease-fire counts as new, but it's neither particularly unexpected nor particularly effective, so there's that.

Right, well, that out of the way, happier news, in that I got a new toy.  No, not the electric car I put on order back in September, no motion on that as of yet.  Rather, I finally picked up a Steam Deck.  It's early days yet, but I mostly like what I've seen so far.  Once I've got a dock to go along with (currently en route), it might even supplant my old Windows 10 gaming PC as my "main" computer for most tasks.  Here's to maybe escaping the Microsoft tax at home, at least!

Of course, the main point of a Steam Deck is games.  While I've got a decent backlog of PC goodness to explore with the new hardware, I'm not going to go too deep into choices and possibilities here - trying to sort through hundreds of games at one go and determine what works, what doesn't, and why... well, I already did a fair amount of that when I first started playing with my Steam Link to the living room TV, and I'm not eager to repeat that experience.  Rather, I'm going to start with a small selection of games, best described as "whatever jumps out at me", with an eye towards playing individual games of a particular genre until I'm done with it (be that completion or distraction), then remove that game and try the next one.  Here's my initial results so far:

• 7 Grand Steps (Compatibility: Playable) - A turn-based, mainly mouse-driven affair, this game will likely be on my Deck basically forever, being tiny and unique.  The only issue I ran across (which I'm sure I'll hit again and again with some older games) is that the one time I needed to use the keyboard (entering my family name), it wouldn't recognize the virtual keyboard.  I was able to work around that by modifying controller inputs, thankfully.
• Pixel Puzzles Ultimate (Compatibility: Playable) - Maybe it's just my advancing years, but I find it relaxing, every so often, to just work on an old-fashioned jigsaw puzzle.  However, I still don't feel that enough to set aside a space in my house for that purpose, plus cats further complicate matters.  Luckily, this game (and others like it) exist to scratch that itch.  Unfortunately, the "pond" mechanism this game uses for pieces just doesn't work for me on a smaller screen.  I'll likely give it another go when I've got the Deck set up in a dock, but otherwise I'll just have to stick to streaming from a regular PC for this one.
• Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen (Compatibility: Verified) - Fair odds, this will cover the "RPG" niche on my Deck for a while at least.  I've tried streaming it before, but the Steam Controller I have hooked up to my TV lacks a dedicated right analog stick, which is pretty much essential.  That, and the smaller screen has me a bit more forgiving towards the dated graphics involved.

So that's it, a new hardware adventure embarked upon, a backlog to mine... I'm almost hoping that this year's new releases are as generally disappointing as last year's were, so I can truly enjoy going back over older games for a bit.  Not likely, but I guess I basically win, either way.