Category: Admin

Words and Such

I haven’t really been in the writing mood too much as of late. I know, not a great business model for a blogger, but also… I do this for fun, not for glory.

In an effort to post something, here’s a point-form list of things that I maybe would have written more about in another timeline and that may be of moderate interest. I may still write about some of them at length, but probably not.

  • I’ve been playing the new Ys game in short bursts since it released a couple weeks ago. As you may know, I’m a big, big fan of the Ys series, and Ys X: Nordics is not disappointing so far. The first few chapters were a bit slow, but it’s taking off now, and I really like the two-member party system. It’s very unique, if a bit limited in options.
  • Work has been kind of insanely busy lately. Which is a good thing, because it helps to keep me on task. Also, it’s becoming more and more apparent to me how well-respected (and maybe even well-liked) I am within the organization. As someone who’s had low self-esteem for basically his whole life, it’s really quite nice to feel confident and dependable.
  • I bought a stupidly expensive alarm clock from Nintendo recently, and I don’t regret a penny of it. I never expected such a weird thing could bring me such joy. Will likely do more words about this at some point.
  • Went to see Venom: The Last Dance recently. I’m still not sure exactly how I feel about it or why (I haven’t given it all that much consideration), but I may have been kinda bored for most of the runtime? Definitely the least enjoyable of the trilogy, in my opinion, even though the climax and epilogue were satisfying.
  • After years of sleeping on the couch with the TV on just about every night, I’ve been sleeping in my bed like a normal-ass person over the last week. I’m not really sleeping much better (still waking up at least once a night), but I am feeling a little more well-rested, and my back is definitely thanking me.
  • A couple of co-workers have been singing the praises of the roguelike poker game, Balatro, so I decided to give it a whirl on their recommendations. I’m trying my best, but I don’t know if it’s right for me. Even the tutorial felt overwhelming. And here I was thinking that I was getting over my fear of roguelikes.
  • I was going to put a link to a relevant post in the paragraph above, but it turns out that I never published it. I guess that’s something I probably should do, seems silly to have written out a full 2000-plus-word post that’s just sitting in limbo. Actually, there are at least two of those…
  • Taking a more proactive role in managing both my eating and exercise regimens throughout the year has done wonders for my health, both physical and mental. It’s been a long road, but I’ve far surpassed my weight loss goal and I’ve been feeling fantastic. It would be nice to have someone, you know, notice, but oh well! External validation is for chumps, anyway.
  • I went on a short vacation with my family at the end of September. I don’t think I wrote a single word about it, but it was awesome. Nothing terribly exciting, but it was great to simply get away and be somewhere different for a while. And also to have that QT with the people who are closest to me, of course. That’s always good.

Jumping Ship (for fun and profit)

For reasons, I’ve begun to re-upload some of my video content over on Rumble. Apparently it’s all monetizable from the get-go there, so while I don’t really expect to make any money from this venture, it would be great if you’d go over there and just like… set one of my videos on repeat for a while? Please?

Here’s the first episode of Ryan’s Pop-Tarts Review. ‘Member the first episode?

Return of the Video

I don’t know if you follow my YouTube channel at all -and if you don’t, that’s fine- but I took a couple months off from posting anything in April and May. Mostly because I was starting to lose the passion for “creating” video “content.” Putting all those hours into editing just wasn’t feeling worth it for the pithy amount of views I get. But I’m back now! For how long? Nobody can truly say, but I do have videos lined up to at least midway through August, so there will be new stuff going up over there for at least that long.

Here’s a quick rundown of what’s been going on at TE-Video throughout June:

Continue reading Return of the Video

I’m Still Here

Hey, so… blogging. It’s a thing I used to do. I know that nobody cares that I haven’t really been writing anything lately, but I have excuses, and they must be made!

First off, January and the first half of February were nuts at work. Things have calmed down now, but for the first 45 days or so of 2024, I was run pretty ragged. Most days left me mentally exhausted, and that really killed my drive to do much in my spare time besides watch other people play video games on YouTube.

Oh, and as an accidental segue, AGDQ happened a few weeks back. I didn’t catch a ton of it, but the Donkey Kong Country and Donkey Kong 64 runs were amazing. And we can’t forget the Super Mario 64 drum% run. That was mind-boggling.

Then there’s my own YouTube presence, which I’ve been grinding away at, spending huge chunks of my weekends recording and editing videos that nobody will ever watch. To what end? I don’t know, and I’ve been seriously pondering why I even continue to do it. Well, the let’s plays, at least. People seem to appreciate my fast food reviews for whatever reason.

Lastly, I have been hopelessly addicted to Steelrising for the last week. This is a video game you’ve likely never heard of -I know I hadn’t- which is free on PS+ as of this post. I added it to my library, not expecting to ever actually play it, but then I did. And then I couldn’t stop. Even when I’m not playing, I’m thinking about it. Pleasant thoughts, too, which is odd because it’s a soulslike and usually those go hand-in-hand with feelings more along the lines of… intense frustration. I would like to write a full thing about this game at some point, but given my total lack of writing lately, the outlook is not terribly optimistic.

Yeah, so that’s my short list of excuses. They’re not good, but that’s why I’m categorizing them as excuses, specifically. Please note that I have completed writing my 2023 Game of the Year feature, and it’s been done since mid-December. I just haven’t had the drive to put together fancy header images. That’s literally all that’s holding me back from publishing it. Kinda sad. Maybe I’ll get around to it by the time spring rolls around.

Twenty

Oh dang… The first post I ever made was dated December 2, 2022. So that means I’ve been at this for over twenty years now. Kinda bummed that I missed the anniversary!

If this website were anything more than an elaborate diary of the video games I play and the junk food I eat, I’d probably do something special to celebrate. Alas!

Grand Re-Re-Re-Opening

So, my WordPress theme, “Weaver II”, has been woefully outdated for some time now. I don’t much like the idea of installing a new theme and having to tweak everything to get it back to the way I like it, but such is life.

That said, I have (clearly) installed a new theme, and so things are going to look a little wonky around here for a bit. I’m not the most proactive guy around, so no guarantees that things will improve quickly. You’re just going to have to appreciate “Twenty Fifteen”‘s out-of-the-box look for a while.

Two Kay

With these words, I have published 2,000 WordPress posts.

Well, it would be more than 2,000 if you counted all the articles that I haven’t moved over from the Angelfire site yet. And I have 28 partially-written things still sitting in draft form, some of which are actually done and I don’t know why they were never published. But whatever!

I wish I had something more exciting prepared, or, anything prepared. But honestly I didn’t even realize this milestone was coming up. Here’s a link to a random article I wrote in 2004 that I have a strong sentimental attachment to, and I even think it’s actually kind of funny. At least, it made me laugh when I was re-reading it after a couple drinks the other night.

Anyways! Congratulations to me, I guess, for having voided so many of my inconsequential thoughts onto the internet.

Please note that December of this year will mark TE’s 20th anniversary. If I stop writing until 2023, that’s 100 posts per year (8.3333333333 per month). Sounds kind of appealing…

I’ll do something better for 3,000. (No promises.)

A follow-up

Remember a few days ago when I wrote a blog post about how one of my old webistes had gone kablooey and I lost (but not really) a bunch of “TE Classic” content?

Well, I haven’t been able to sleep tonight, so I went and added Part Two of my Disney World series to WordPress.

Now while I did read the whole thing over and fix a few spelling and grammatical errors, I didn’t make any significant content changes. That means that this is still a thing I wrote when I was seventeen, and as such, there may be a little cringe tucked in there.

I also uploaded the old article I wrote about The Hamburger Game. After re-reading this one… let’s just say that it might have been okay to leave it buried. Not my best work for a great many reasons.

Cannot find memory_lane.html

Hey so Angelfire killed off one of my old websites at some point. Not the main one, but the one that was hosting images and pages for a number of old articles, most notably my memoirs of that time my family went to Disney World. Wuh-oh!

Luckily, I have all that old stuff backed up locally, so none of it it lost forever. But it is a grim reminder that I still have a lot of “content” that needs to be brought over from Angelfire to my current site. I’d really like to get around to it, but I’m just never bored at work any more!