Hmm, this looks interesting. And you can’t beat the free price tag. I’ll check it out.

Are you retired or young?

I’m retired AND young… well, relatively speaking. I retired 3 years ago, at 38 years old. I’m 41 now.

I was in the US military for 20 years, earned a pension, plus 100% disability through the VA. With the passive income and benefits (free medical/dental for life), I can afford to be fully retired now. I’m not filthy rich by any stretch of the imagination, but I make enough to live a quiet, relaxed life and have my basic needs met. And that’s good enough for me. Plenty of time to indulge in my many hobbies. And I have ADHD, so I’m always finding new and interesting things to deep-dive into.

I actually started a movie review blog about 6 years before I retired. I ended up taking a hiatus from it shortly after retirement and just haven’t been motivated to get back into it lately, despite all the movies and TV shows I watch regularly.

I switched to reviewing video games sometime last year and have been mostly keeping up with that; although it’s been over 2 months since my last review. I should probably make a new post soon, or declare another hiatus. 😬

I’ve been playing it this morning. Virus scan came back clean, and the game has been interesting so far.

That’s cool, no reviews yet then. Not a problem!

I play a lot of games (over 4,000 games in my Steam library) and I’ve made a hobby of reviewing them here on Lemmy over the past year. I especially love horror games. I would love to give it a playtest and provide constructive feedback.

It’s up to you if you’d like me to also post a review of it here on Lemmy or wait until a finished product is available. You can see my post history to see the kind of reviews I write, or you can check out my blog where I’m archiving my reviews here. Easier to browse the history of posts on the sidebar at that website.

#4 looks like a shoehorn. Is that even concave enough to use as a spoon? Likely not. That’s out.

#3 is definitely not a spoon. No idea what it is, but it’s not gonna work well as a spoon. Not gonna deal with that one.

#2 is actually a spoon, but a small one. It’ll be frustrating to use forever. I’d prefer not to use it.

#1 is actually a decent sized spoon. Oddly shaped, but it’ll hold a decent amount of food or liquid. I guess I could live with that one.

But she’s the Hero™ fighting against the Bad Guys™. Branding is everything.

But yeah, viewed objectively from a third party perspective, a lot of heroes in games and movies are actually borderline villains. Inserting themselves into a situation they don’t need to be involved in, and then the end justify the means. They may murder tons of no-name henchmen, but a greater threat to society has been eliminated!

I actually find it interesting that a lot of superhero characters came from healthy, sane family environments and fight to protect the Status Quo™, while most villains come from hardship and trauma and attempt to change the Status Quo™ that allowed their injustice of a life to exist, so others don’t suffer the same fate.

But some happy-go-lucky hero always comes by and stops them because their plan changes the Status Quo™. And we can’t accept changes to our structured social environment!

I still clearly remember others’ embarrassing, cringey moments from my high school years, and I’m in my 40s now. I shudder thinking about who still remembers the embarrassing things I said/did way back in my childhood.

I served in the US military for 20 years, from 2002-2022. At least twice that I can recall, they didn’t pass a budget in time and we were told that we wouldn’t be paid until it was resolved, but to keep working like normal and we’d eventually get paid. Both times it was a very short time before it was resolved and we did eventually get paid again. I think the longest time was about two or three weeks.

For members who used USAA for a bank (a company exclusively for military members and their families), the bank automatically deposited our paychecks in our account on time, because they said they knew the US government was good for it. Anyone who used another bank just had to wait for the government to actually pay us.

If you know anything about military members (especially young service members), a decent amount of them live paycheck to paycheck, not because they have to, but because they’re irresponsible with their money. The military pays you well, while also providing food and housing allowances on top of your pay, so your necessities are covered and your base pay is basically pocket money to spend as you like. As such, a lot of service members go out and spend that money and end up with very little in their savings.

So when a government shutdown hits like this, suddenly that safety net of a monthly housing allowance is gone and service members need to pull their own spending money to pay for rent and utilities. Which can be hard to scrounge up last-minute for some.

I was always very fiscally responsible during my service, but most of the people I worked with would go out partying and drinking every week (some every night!) and would be struggling for cash by the next paycheck. Which came bi-monthly for us; we were paid on the 1st and 15th of every month. So there was always a lot of stress and anxiety when the government announced a shutdown.

It’s not FOSS, but Plex does that. I host my music from a server I built at home (you can literally just use your desktop PC) and then I have access to it from anywhere. I like to stream it to the Plexamp app on my phone, which I connect to my car via Bluetooth, then I have my own homemade “radio” on the go. No ads, just my own music that I can shuffle through.

I paid for the Lifetime Plex Pass, which gave me full access to all their features and apps. It’s expensive, but it’s a one-time payment, vs. their monthly subscription which can add up over time.

I actually got annoyed at Plex for remembering exactly where I was in every song. I’d return to an album I hadn’t heard in a while and it would skip right to where I left off in each song instead of playing from the beginning of the song

Sometimes while trying to find a particular song, I’d skip around in a track, then move to the next until I found it. Then when I returned to that album later, every song would start somewhere in the middle. I eventually needed to turn that feature off. It still remembers exactly where I left off the last time I played music, but it doesn’t save my place in each individual song anymore. Just the last one I played.

On the app, it keeps a list of all the playlists I’ve recently played, so I can pick up on my latest playlist or scroll back in the history and start up one I played a while ago. This is great because I like to just shuffle my entire library as a playlist while I’m mowing my lawn, but my wife likes to hear specific genres or bands while we’re riding in the car together. So I can just keep alternating back and forth between playlists depending on the situation and it remembers where I left off in each one.

I’m 41 and I still make this mistake all the time.

No matter how old and broken my body gets, I’ll always be a teenager at heart.

That landscape image is called a grid, and you can change it when that game is the first one in your Recent Games list (the one game showing in grid view instead of the normal poster view). If you right-click the grid image in Recent Games, go to Manage, and then click Set Custom Artwork, you can change the grid image.

Any games you want to do this to, you’ll have to start them and then immediately quit them so they’re the first game in your Recent Games list. That’s the only time grid view shows up for any games now.

Before Steam started doing posters for games, your library was composed of nothing but grids. Nowadays, the only time you see a game’s grid is when it’s your most recently played game. So there’s not really a need to change it, unless it stays at the top of your Recent Games for a long time and it’s bugging you.

By the way, you can go to the SteamGridDB to find grids, posters, logos, background images, and icons for every game on Steam. It pulls metadata for every game, then people can upload their own custom artwork and logos. So you can find unique artwork to improve your library. Or add posters to older games that have been abandoned before Steam switched away from grid-only display.

I don’t like having games with blank images, so I update every missing poster, background, and logo that I can in my library.

I still don’t understand why anyone would ever pay for access to news articles. There are plenty of free and legitimate articles on the Internet, and public access TV still broadcasts news. You never need to pay anyone.

Honestly, putting a price on access to news just makes me not trust that organization. It feels like a scam, like paying for bottled water when water is one of the most abundant resources in the world.

Paid subscriptions are only a thing because people bought into it and normalized it instead of boycotting it. That’s why everything is a subscription nowadays and no one can just buy and own a product now. We have to spend our lives paying a regular fee for access to something we never own.

37 was the year I started planning my retirement. At 38, I officially retired. I started growing a beard and was surprised to find a white patch to one side on my chin.

Now at 41, my entire chin has turned white and I have salt-and-pepper hair throughout my beard and head hair.

37 truly is a magical age.

Interesting… This was right about the time that I started getting pop-up messages on my phone about pre-ordering the Pixel 10 Pro and getting $450 off. Coincidence? 🤔

I posted a review here earlier this year, but A Way Out was an excellent 2-player co-op game! I really enjoyed it. Story rich puzzles with some action interspersed. And it’s split-screen even if you’re playing online, so you can see what your partner is up to and coordinate with them. The ending was heart-wrenching too! Such an emotionally impacting story. Check out my review for a spoiler-free intro to that game.

Diablo 3

My wife, two friends, and I all played Diablo IV online together. We beat the main campaign together and had a lot of fun with it. We’re trying to beat the expansion campaign too, but my wife and one friend dropped out, so it’s just been me and a buddy powering through it.

That’s a game where you can just have fun dicking around in the world, even if there isn’t an objective. And it has plenty of endgame content to keep you entertained after you beat the campaign.

hunter2

I literally just saw this movie for the first time last night. Long overdue. It was an excellent film!

Before anyone asks, it’s from Highlander (1986)

“Wshngton” is basically unchanged. It still sounds the same either way you spell it.