Category: IRL

Serious Time

Okay, so it’s not really this blog’s place to talk about Real Issues, it’s a place to talk about fun things. But I think that for posterity, I should take a few moments to discuss my thoughts on the COVID-19 pandemic. Best case scenario, it’ll be fun for Future Me to look back on how terribly misinformed I was. Worst case… I’m dead and it’ll be fun for you to look back on how terribly misinformed I was.

COVID-19, as I’ve learned, is a totally new virus that the world was understandably unprepared for. To a degree, I guess. While obviously it’s going to take time to study, understand, and come up with a vaccine, a few news articles/tweets I’ve read have suggested that the infrastructure to get out ahead of something like this just doesn’t exist. Or we reacted too late? I really don’t know. I’m not going to claim to be an expert. It just seems to me that maaaybe this is a good opportunity for governments the world over to be more ready for this kind of catastrohpe.

And I don’t think that catastrophe is hyperbole. While a huge percentage of people who contract the virus do recover, it’s still killed thousands, and those numbers are just going to keep going up. Schools are shutting down, offices are issuing work-from-home mandates, major sports leagues have suspended their seasons, the stock market is crumbling to pieces. The entire country of Italy is closed for business. I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s like the backstory to a dystopian movie or something. I’m actually a little frightened of how much worse it’s going to get, and what that’s going to mean for human society.

And that’s my main fear. I’ve made it no secret that I’m not terribly fond of the human race, but that doesn’t mean I want to see it suffer like this. And maybe it really won’t be all that bad. Maybe everything I know is just a product of the overreacting that the internet is no fond of. Entirely possible! After all, I’ve only been keeping up with the goings-on from news reports and Twitter. Only one of those is even semi-credible.

But the other thing I worry about is that someone I care about will be afflicted. Myself? Not so much. I’m young(ish), I’m in the best shape of my adult life, and I have no existing medical issues. I’m near the bottom of COVID-19’s hit list. I beat pneumonia as a weak little 9-year-old, I can beat a beefed-up version of it now. (Of course now that I say that, I’m as good as doomed.) But I have a lot of family members who are up in that 65+ range, many with existing health issues. And I genuinely worry for them. I’m hoping for the best, and am ready to help out in any way that I can, but I’m still deeply concerned about all of this.

Anyway, it sounds like this is really all just getting started. Like, it’s going to keep seriously affecting the world for months to come. I’ll admit that I didn’t take it very seriously at first, thinking it would pass fairly quickly and that it was just media blowing something out of proportion. But now “experts” (I put experts in scare quotes because I haven’t investigated the source of these claims) are projecting a death toll of over a million in the United States alone, so… yeah. Maybe it’s time to stop joking about people hoarding toilet paper, and start being one of the people hoarding toilet paper.

A dream, that I am living

Last fall, I was presented with an opportunity to live out a life-long dream of mine: to dress up in a mascot suit and do mascot things. For the sake of preserving said mascot’s secret identity, I won’t say exactly which organization I have been mascotting for, but I will hint that it would surprise literally nobody.

Since that time, I’ve continued to don the costume for numerous different events: sports matches, fundraisers, meet & greets, etc. It’s been a lot of fun, and I’ve learned from observing other mascots that I’ve got a lot of room for improvement. Even behind the mask, I’ve had a somewhat reserved personality. I wave and pose and sometimes even dance a bit, but I don’t think that’s really enough. There are antics to be had! Being animated and outgoing is the core purpose of mascot!

Another thing I’ve learned is that I’m woefully out of touch with today’s youth. This is no surprise, but still makes me a little sad. This mostly comes in the form of me not knowing any Fortnite dances, thus disappointing many teenagers who shout indecipherable requests at me. I like the little kids who run up to give me hugs and high-fives, though. One kid even told me that he sees me in commercials all the time, which made me happy, because I knew that at least one kid out there actually watches TV instead of just YouTube.

I’ve also been doing this pro-bono, giving up my precious, precious time for no material or financial gain. I was given a gift card once, but I certainly wasn’t expecting it and have never asked about being compensated. I like being able to consider this as volunteering. It’s not really a “for the good of the community” kind of volunteering, so I’m not sure if it would make a good bullet point on a resume, but it’s still something I can be proud of myself for doing.

I guess there isn’t too much else to say on the subject. Even everything I’ve typed up so far doesn’t really need to be said, but I figure it’s an interesting little footnote to my life. And, I’ve got this blog… so I might as well make use of it. If nothing else, it may help to bore any would-be cyber-stalkers away.

Ryan’s Big Weekend Adventure!

You know what I didn’t do over last weekend? Study enough.

“Well duh” you all say.

What I did do, however, was all sorts of other things. I want to write about them briefly.

Saturday I got a haircut. There’s a story there, but it’s probably fairly embarrassing for a party who is not me, which makes me feel like I ought not to tell it. So I won’t. Sorry for the tease.

After breakfast I did some coursework for a while. Good old responsible me. I took a break after a couple hours to go visit with my grandparents. They gave me several tins of baking and couple jars of soup. Nice! There’s another mildly embarrassing story here that I don’t think I’m entitled to tell to the internet at large. Aren’t you upset that I’ve gotten so considerate in my old age?

I went back home to do some more book learning, which lasted about an hour. All in all, I made it through about a quarter of the homework questions assigned in a cumulative three hours. That’s not great. I hate school and cannot wait for it to be done forever.

Over the course of the weekend, I “snuck in” just enough video games time to finish playing the Squaresoft PS1 classic, Threads of Fate. You’ve probably never heard of this game, because Squaresoft put out like a billion RPGs on the PS1, so a few of them had to fall through the cracks.

Threads of Fate is an alright game. It’s a dual-protagonist game, and the plot isn’t the most creative, but it’s fun. One character has you working towards world domination, while the other is searching for a way to revive his friend. The characters are mostly archetypes, but they have big personalities and a really good script, so I ended up liking most of them quite a lot. Also the soundtrack is darn good, and the graphics are top-tier for a 3D game on the original Playstation.

However! The gameplay is… questionable. The controls, physics, and hit detection are all just a little bit off. This makes any precision-platforming sections much harder (and frustrating) than they ought to be. Combat is mostly a non-issue, but several bosses are stupidly hard until you figure out the right rhythm to beating them. Overall, it’s not a game that needs a remaster so much as a tune-up.

I also frittered away a whole three hours on Pokémon GO on Sunday, as it was January’s Community Day. Got a whole stable full of shiny Piplups, and that’s really about all. While I was out, I also got to try all of the fancy new “dream donuts” that Tim Horton’s is currently selling. I’ll type up a full thing about them (probably), but the TLDR is that they were not so good that I was able to justify having eaten three donuts in a single sitting. Oink oink.

After all that, I ended Sunday evening the same way I always do: playing an hour of Rocksmith, then watching TV while I do my laundry. This week was devoted catching up on some AGDQ runs, while at the same time trying to fill out a little bit of my Pokédex in Pokémon Shield. I’m at 387 of 400. Almost there!

And that was my weekend. If you think I sound like an incredibly boring individual… you’re right! And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Brain Drain

I’m back in school again… in the middle of January. Thankfully it’s not an especially long walk between work and campus, because man is it way too cold to be outside. (Truth be told, I usually have to wait longer for the bus than that walk takes.)

What’s really killing me, though, is that it’s only been one week and my brain is already fried from the extra usage. Like, by Tuesday night I was already completely exhausted, and it hasn’t let up. Maybe the weekend will help, but I’m not overly hopeful (since I have to do a bunch of coursework.)

So yeah. Blah. This is a dumb post with no point. I’m now LiveJournalling.

Tablet life, v1.00001

I won a new tablet at a social a couple weekends ago, a Samsung Galaxy Tab E Lite. What a mouthful. I really haven’t used it for much yet besides learning that mobile games are still garbage even on a bigger screen.

I’m currently toying with the concept of using it for blogging (I wrote this and the previous post on it), though I’m legitimately surprised at just how bad I am at typing on the thing. I’ve needed to go back and correct at least every second word, often more than once. Maybe it’s because I’ve had a lot lf tkme to get usdd to it, but I dkn’t type nearly as pooorly on my tkny pjkne.

I purposely didn’t correct that last sentence, in hopes of really driving home my point.

I was likewise shocked to learn how terrible this tablet’s camera is. That was what finally got me to do the research and learn that this is a tablet originally released in 2014, so it’s barely newer than my piece of garbage Kobo Arc 7. It came at the right price, but man… I was hoping for a slightly more pronounced upgrade.

Ah, I shouldn’t complain. The thing works, and that alone puts it miles ahead of the Kobo. But I still don’t think I can reasonably use this for blogging.

Woes of the Impulse Buyer

As part of being a responsible adult, I set myself a 2018 budget for video games. I know they’re my largest non-essential expense (if you don’t consider internet essential), and that I am more than willing to say “I shouldn’t buy this, but f**k it” when a new game catches my eye.

Having already factored in the purchases of Pokémon Let’s Go and Super Smash Bros Ultimate in the coming months… I’ve hit my allowed spending limit. Dang! I mean, I actually have $9 left to spend, but close enough. There are several indie games on Switch that are calling out to me, and they’re all significantly more than nine bucks.

Anyway, the point is that I’m not going to buy them. Unless they go on sale for under $9. Or someone randomly gives me money as a gift (which I don’t count toward the budget). But aside from those very specific situations, I will stand strong! I must! And now that it’s down in writing for the world to see, I’m basically forced to hold myself to it.

“So,” you ask, “what was the total budget for the year anyway?”

I’m not telling. I’d rather leave it up to your imagination. But if you go over the monthend wrap-ups and count up all the games I played that were released in 2018, you could probably come up with a pretty close figure!

Migraine Watch: Sept 5 2018

“It’s happening again… I can feel it happening. As I try to scribble out tome small thoughts, I can feel the transient aphasia onset. I’m trying to fight it, but it’s very, very difficult even to get through a sentence. I’m not looking forward to trying to figuring out what this paragraph once my brain is gain to working something or other.”

Don’t know where this came from, but I’m a little upset because the lasting migraine wasn’t that long ago. This latest one came literally out of nowhere, on a fairly quiet Thursday afternoon. Completely normal day at work, I come back from lunch break, and realize that I’ve been re-reading and trying to comprehend the same sentence for like two minutes. I grab my stash of ibuprofen, pop one, and let it happen.

It was a bad one, too, because the aura lasted pretty much the rest of the work day. That meant almost two solid hours of me being literally unable to accomplish anything due to the fact that I simply could not think. What a waste. And I needed to get as much done as possible, as I’ll be on vacation the next week. Yeesh.

But yeah, the usual “workday migraine” symptoms of forgetting how to read, write, and speak. Having issues seeing. A little bit of numbness in the face area. But I have no idea what could have triggered it. Things have been quite good lately, so maybe it is a dietary thing? I hadn’t really been eating enough the last couple days, so that may have been a factor, but it’s not something that’s been consistent with other migraines.

Anyway, basically just went home and straight to bed. By the time I woke up, any “actual migraine” had passed and I was on the home stretch of lingering headache. So really, aside from being useless at work for the afternoon, it was a pretty “good” migraine. Still not closer to uncovering the cause, though. Total bummer.

I hate healthy eating

You know what? I friggin’ hate yogurt.

But this is no surprise to me. I’ve never liked it ever since I was a kid, and I still don’t. Regardless, I’m eating the stuff nearly every day now, having replaced my daily sandwich with a cup of plain Greek yogurt and blueberries, but it’s not getting any better. It’s not growing on me and I am not acquiring a taste for it.

Eating healthy in general blows. Maybe it needs more than a month to take, since I’ve made a pretty massive shift in my eating habits all at once, but I’m already sick of it. Replacing candy and chips with nuts and legumes is presumably good for me, but I haven’t lost a pound and I don’t feel any better either physically or mentally. All I feel is the salad-shaped hole in my life that used to be filled with junk food.

I’m highly considering going back to processed junk and fast food. It’ll probably be way easier just to learn to accept being fat and out of shape.

Migraine Watch: August 2, 2018

Another migraine this evening. Not really sure from whence it came, but it did. I haven’t got a damn clue what triggered it, as life has been fairly good lately. If there’s been any one thing stressing me out, I hate to admit that I’ve been feeling intensely lonely as of late. Has it been weighing on my soul that heavily? My sleeping hasn’t been great, but it hasn’t been so bad that I feel it’s affecting me. I’ve heard that sharp changes in diet can trigger migraines, but I’ve been eating healthier than ever before over the last month, and I have a hard time believing that a positive change like that could cause my brain to feel like it’s self-destructing.

Anyway, it really did come out of the blue. I was sitting on the couch after dinner, playing some Picross, when I suddenly noticed that my vision was starting to blur more than usual. I popped on my glasses, but they did nothing to help. I tried to deny it for a bit, but it was obviously the aura of an oncoming migraine, so I quickly made my way to the bathroom and popped an ibuprofen. I then abandoned the Picross and decided to just shut off all the lights and hop into bed.

That’s when my left leg went all tingly. Over a short period of time, it made its way up my body, through my arm and finally into my jaw. I would say the tingling lasted maybe twenty minutes at most, and by then I could tell that my vision had corrected itself, even in the dark. Though at this point, I could feel the pain in my head begin, and being curled up in bed became an extra boon, because I suddenly caught a terrible case of the chills. Overall, a varied and somewhat long-lasting sequence of auras, but fairly normal and not nearly as scary as the times when I have completely lost my vision or ability to comprehend language.

I’m writing this about an hour after the aura onset, and all the extra symptoms have gone. Now it’s just a relatively mild throbbing in the right side of my head. Significantly less crippling than it could be, so I’m pretty glad I downed that pill. All things considered, this is probably about as well as a migraine can go. I really just wish there had been some clear link to any previous attacks, because I’d love to know what’s triggering these migraines so that I could cut it out of my life.

Remembering the Cottage: Part 2

Happy Canada Day! To celebrate, let’s go way back and take a look at something that was an integral part of Canada Day for me for many years. Yes, that’s right, it’s finally time for the long-awaited Remembering the Cottage: Part Two

I have been slowly writing this article since 2007, which is not the longest that I’ve ever procrastinated on writing something, but it is a concept so close to my heart, so important to the foundation of who I am, that I feel terrible for not having finished writing it at some point in the last eleven years. During that time, many details have certainly been forgotten and memories jumbled up, so this is definitely not going to be as historically accurate as it should be.

To help illustrate, in the time since I posted Part One: two generations of Nintendo consoles passed; Obama’s tenure as US President began and ended; smartphones replaced flip-phones and human-to-human contact; I purchased two homes; I met a girl who I dated, married and divorced; and I bumbled my way into a job that eventually led to what darn well better be my career at this point.

I don’t know how long this article is going to go on for, but if the previous part is anything to go by, it’ll be a whopper. You all know the story anyway, and if you don’t, maybe go check out Part One and then come back. So let’s just skip the formalities and head right in, yes?

Continue reading Remembering the Cottage: Part 2