Insufficient Funds!

Mere hours after writing about the Barnes and Noble membership probably wanting to resubscribe itself, it attempted to resubscribe itself, found insufficient funds, and quietly curled into a ball and died.

Yaaay.

Technically it wouldn't go onto the new period until the 12th, so I've still got a month to enjoy the sweet goodness of a Barnes and Noble membership. Man, this would be so much better had I nearby access to a Barnes and Noble. Or if I had any money, that either.

Being penniless is so much more enjoyable without that hanging over my head. Still not very enjoyable, of course, so I suppose I should have phrased that, it's no longer as unenjoyable. 

I should start heckin' makin' art, and start heckin' sellin' it.

Think I should post on my graphic design blog, about graphic design stuff. If I told you the specifics here, I wouldn't have to do it over there, so.

My Adobe subscription is still technically going on, and I won't have to shut it down till September. Maybe I'd edit and upload a video, if not for the laundry list of excuses not to, completely arbitrary and conjurable at a moment's whim. I never did figure out how other people seem to get much better audio quality than I do, using the same equipment. Maybe I'm just more attuned to background white noise etc when it's in my own works?

I have a Barnes and Nobel membership which renews every year; I've got no idea when it's going to do that but it's probably sometime soon, and I can't afford it renewing on me. It'd probably cost, like, $30, or some ridiculously large sum of money like that, like dang, ain't nobody got a rai stone that big. So I'm going to have to figure out how to, like, suspend that as well?

MAN I DON'T KNOW ABOUT ANYTHING.

(fighting urge to make I Write Sins Not Tragedies reference)

SO my sister got married today, and I was I guess UNofficially the photographer, but the idea had been for me to be the official one, any so I didn't get the memo about what to wear there or anything, and they found a tie for me eventually... But I went up with the bride and groom as well, yesterday, instead of with my family, today, which is why I wasn't around any computers to post a blog post yesterday evening.

But it looks like my mom's going to have to finally update her blog, so there's that instead.

WHAT A BEAUTIFUL WEDDING, WHAT A BEAUTiful WEDding says the
dangit.

Be Ye Therefore Perfect-- Eventually

I'm not as hot on Jeffrey R Holland as other people seem to be- like everyone else seems to be, oh yeah his talks are so great, and I don't think so, as much; and I've been unpacking the whys and wherefores of that a little bit, more recently- and I guess the reasons are a post unto themselves, most of them niggling, or otherwise just weird personal preferences. 

But his talk from the most recent semi-annual general conference, I'm listening to right now, and it's really good.

https://www.lds.org/languages/eng/content/general-conference/2017/10/be-ye-therefore-perfect-eventually

(moons of barsk)

The BARSK sequel, The Moons of Barsk, comes out Tuesday! It promises to be as weird and haunting and awe-inspiring as the first one, which I've been very meaning to reread anyway. I clicked around Lawrence Schoen's website, and there doesn't appear to be any exclusive swag available one should one preorder; his Twitter (@klingonguy) did have a sweepstakes thing where three people get a free hardcover copy each, but the deadline for that was today, World Elephant Day. The winners have winned, and the books are gettin' shipped. There is another sweepstakes, though, this time to win the audiobook; all one need do to enter is be a subscriber to his newsletter. Deadline is noon of next Sunday. Yep.

There's Nothing to Stop This from Being the Best Day Ever

I'm super excited for the Sabbath tomorrow. Last Sunday it was all, Sabbaths should mean something to me, so I'm going to live this week in preparation for the next one. And so I, well I tried at least. Didn't do as well as I'd hoped, but I'm back on track now.

Darn it, I really want to go see the Teen Titans Go! movie for some reason. I'm feeling really simpatico with Cartoon Network right now, is probably it. Cartoon Network is somehow awesome again. Yay.

I want to paint stuff again. There's a reason easels exist, I've discovered. I just looked it up, and the word easel actually comes from the Dutch word for donkey which makes sense, and doesn't have anything to do with the word "ease," which-- yep, I just looked it up, and its origins have nothing to do with the Dutch word for donkey. Easels make things easy, is what my point was.

So anyway- there's this long-term project I've been working on and I feel really good about it right now, like there have been days when it's all what is this, what are all these elements doing together, this is random and arbitrary, and really discouraging- but it's like there's a floodgate of inspiration that's opened up today, only two or three elements really, but they've just gelled the whole thing, and opened the whole thing up. 

Today started out, well not rough or anything, but it could have started out better let's say. But the U2 lyric, from their album which I own which I haven't even gotten the chance to listen to, really helped me, and, heck maybe it was the best day ever today.

It's way beautiful, isn't it, this moss-covered stone hurtling through an inexorably vast void.

League Defeats

There's a mission that I NEED to complete in League, otherwise terrorists kill my wife and family (alright, I only want to complete it, and the reward is just like some in-game whatever,) and like all I need to do is win one game, just one game is that too much to ask?, and Kaellen brought his laptop so he and Alex and I could all storm the Rift together, and my laptop (what's its designation now, 2.1 I think?) crashed on me while we were all in a group together preparing to queue up, and it tried booting up for the entirety of the game next (which was won quite handily) and I turned it off and on again and it tried to repair itself for the entirety of the game after that (also a winning one) and I could finally get it up and running for the game after that, and-- well, I can rest knowing that at least my worst possible League of Legends defeat is behind me; even if 2.1 hadn't had crashed on me again leaving my team fighting 4v5, I'd been marching straight into the jaws of death every time I set out down that bottom lane. Not playing Leona again, probably ever. And I've got two skins for her too, though that's the only reason I was playing her...

But I've still a few days left to complete the mission. so.

Scratching

There's always "content" in your heart or mind that can be put out there, if you want to scratch yourself bleeding that deeply. (Posting every day again it looks like, and though a lot's happened today the temptation is just to stick with something vapid, in which case I may as well not post.) Open-ended question, why do I want to protect the dark parts of myself, even though I see them as something external and of need to purge?

Story

Teeth cleaned today. Dentist! X-ray as well, full set, all my teeth. Four cavities?, but one is under a filling, so they will just tamp that down to fill it in. Still, no insurance :(. Expensive prospect.

X ray lead bib. Heavy, comfortable. Nice pressure. Measured heart rate to be less than one beat per second. Very healthy. Idea: make own lead bib-type object and keep my heart rate that low?

Teeth were very clean. What brushing I do is working. Brush more!!

Pandemic Legacy Season 2: Complete!

Beat Season Two of Pandemic: Legacy this afternoon. Which makes this my, third, or fourth Legacy game, depending how you count it? I've played Pandemic Legacy Season One of course; SeaFall; a game of Risk Legacy though not as part of the campaign (just a Risk game played out on a board that had been through some stuff; that was interesting.) 

Funny, this time, how it doesn't offer up any ideas for playing on the board now that we're finished with it, speaking of playing on previously Legacy'd boards. The other Legacy games all had that option, even SeaFall, rudimentary as that mode may be. There appears to be a few secrets left that the board has to offer, though; some panels that we never got to open though we completed the whole thing. Maybe they have to do with searches we never completed, or maybe they're just blank or funny or Easter eggs or what; or maybe they're like SPOILER from Risk Legacy, and we have to figure it out for ourselves. (there were a few failure options we didn't fail often enough to trigger, so it may have something to do with those??)

Speaking of spoilers, though, I think it's time to rank how I feel about this game as compared to the other Legacy games I've played? What I mean by that is, the twist in this one, definitely my favorite, plot-wise at least; game mechanics-wise, it'd be really really tough to top SeaFall for its twists. The opening part of the game, the months of exploring the world and connecting everything, that was tops, better than just starting out with the whole world open like in Season One, and better I think than sailing off and discovering new islands in SeaFall.

The way the game balanced, the world getting bigger our resources getting more stretched thin, but with mechanical ways to counteract that, was very well done, and I could feel Matt Leacock's hand in the way everything fit together, the elegance of the similarities and differences between Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert in between this game and Season One, and the balance of always being just about to fail just like in those games. I think he and Rob Daviau are a crackerjack team, and please please please somehow give us like, it doesn't even have to be Forbidden Whatever Legacy or anything, but please work together again.

Out of all Legacy games I've played so far, I think this one is the one I'm most likely to replay, not only because the thrill of discovery is more plot- rather than mechanics-based, like I said, but also to see how differently things can turn out. SeaFall was a mind-bending experience, once, and Pandemic Legacy Season One was harrowing and exciting (and heck maybe I'd need to play that one again as well as a refresher,) but this one did, well not everything, but most things right, that Legacy games should do.

Work/Feel

I oversaw the Cub Scout Day Camp obstacle course area on Saturday, which was fun and frustrating and busy and, it felt like I was getting something done, at least. I'd forgotten how very little it feels like I accomplish in any given day here back at home. Is every day like this? 

It doesn't really take much for me to feel like I'm getting something done, just a little thing each day. I'm working and thinking constantly about projects that had their inception almost a decade ago and are now maybe a few weeks away from coming to something resembling fruition-- but that doesn't feel like actual work.

Flat Heroes of the Universe

We are Ben.

The Switch game Flat Heroes came out yesterday, and there's a campaign mode (which I beat the demo of before the game came out, the first world and ~half of the second) and there are pvp modes, are seven survival modes as well, which all require unlocking, and which have world leader scoreboards. Two of those survival modes are solo, but the rest you can cooperate on and keep each other alive.

Playing on Ben's account, four of us, the name BEN climbed to the tops of the scoreboards. Like, the tops tops.

I'm not sure if this is the case still, but we have/had each of the world records, all at the same time. Each number one spot, on each survival mode, goes to BEN. 

Since it had only been out for a few hours, we were among the first to unlock some of the survival modes- that doesn't make it as easy as it sounds, though; we faced some stiff competition, and unlocking the modes requires a lot of SP, gained from playing well. The final (most SP-expensive) mode, a solo mode called arrows, we were the first to unlock, and thus automatically made it to the top of the world leaderboard (don't know what it looks like or how far Ben got solo.)

So I'm writing this right now in case, y'know, anybody sees our awesomeness, and wonders, y'know, who the heck this Ben character is.

Wreckin Ball

K so I've been gone for a couple of months, and everything in Overwatch is totally different now. Well, not everything, but with the Symmetra rework and EDIT: the Sombra rework and the new character and all, the meat meta is totally different. It's focused more on area control now, which meat is way neat, and the way I think the meat was always meant to be? I heard somewhere that someone thought the meta was getting stale, and I can't recall the circumstances, but I think it's way good now.

Hours of Night Driving

I've got my permit so I can drive, and yeah I guess everyone was asleep so I was for the most part not monitored, we survived so that's good.

Driving is hecka like life. Speed, checking down the road, all that. And I picked up on it quickly enough??

How the Alternative Means Work

The desktop's black. The only file on it is the recycle bin, which appears empty. (If you actually attempt clicking on it you get an error message.) The windows key and buttons on the task bar don't work.

I'm not sure when the computer problems started or anything, but I know they'd been waiting for me to come back and see what I could do to fix it, or find a way around it. But, not sure how long they'd been waiting, like I said. Turning it off and on again didn't work.

Here's the workaround I discovered: ctrl+alt+del takes you to the security options screen. I opened up task manager, then from task manager go to file → run new task. There's a checkbox there that allows you to create the task with administrative privileges; you have to have that clicked or else it won't work. You can type the directory, if you know the exact filepath... or you can just click browse, and search for your program that way. 

I opened up Steam, and League. They opened, but wouldn't work, because the network was down... Here's where Alex came in: he turned it off and on again. Or rather, unplugged and replugged the network cable to the computer, a phone line that runs from our modem into the computer through a USB adapter (which we got for a completely unrelated purpose, though it didn't work for that, and that problem resolved itself.)

Alex could log into his League account and play (and win) a game. The last he played before today was January of 2016, which was before I even started playing.

I haven't played any League in months yet still, but I have logged into my Overwatch (we got Battlenet to start by opening up the Hearthstone installer in the task manager.) I feel like Rip Van Winkle, so much has changed since I last played it's surreal.

719320

None of the blogs on Mom's blog's blog sidebar have updated in DAYS, so I figured I'd break the trend. Driving me nuts. 719320, that's the security code I had to enter in since Google didn't recognize this computer when I signed in. Dad's Chromebook. Working on tomorrow's issues of the newsletter Dad and I write/edit up here at Camp Fleischmann.

So I've been up here over a month, and will be back home in a week. I'm not as stircrazy to finally get to play video games again, as I had been a few weeks ago. But it would be nice.

Plans for when I'm home? Well, most of them revolved around computer stuff, specifically access to this account that I'm on now, dumping all the ideas I've had up here into their appropriate Google Docs and editing them around so that everything fits more-or-less cohesively. Some of the ideas fit more smoothly than others, I would think, but we'll see.

Alex has Scythe by now, play that. He should have Isle of Dogs by now as well, since it's out?

Also! Meaning to watch/rewatch the following shows if I can squeeze them in: LOST, Babylon 5, a small handful of anime I think.

As far as actual productive things go, like, having any money at all, there's plans for that. Acquiring the money, that's a different story, but I do plan on having it somehow. I've got a driver's permit now (also an ATV permit); maybe it would have something to do with that?

But I don't really know.

There's an article on TOR.com about mental illness/neurodiversity as reflected in the Stormlight Archive. It's pretty long, and's got spoilers, obviously, but it's pretty interesting too, if you're interested by that sort of thing.

https://www.tor.com/2018/06/05/ideal-heroes-mental-illness-in-brandon-sandersons-stormlight-archive/ 

There's a line in there about how incredible it is for this woman to have a whole year ahead planned out, and yeah, I don't even have two weeks planned out, after this. I have a handful of things I need done. I need to suspend my Patreon payments again, as I'm one half a payment away from being bone dry. The last four or five jobs I agreed to, thinking I'd earn money off of them, have yielded no money (maybe some portfolio/resume stuffing? (dang I really should get a LinkedIn like they told me to at school, shouldn't I, though I'm probably going to neglect it just as well as I neglect all of my other social media accounts.)) 

At least I've got four years of college under my belt and zero monetary debt-- such a stunt these days that it's worth a (monetary?) prize unto itself. But I don't know. Don't know much at all.

There's this weird thing where it's like I'm only capable of thinking about myself, but only capable of acting for others.

Going Backward Through the Day, Some Things

So the Valiant had been undefeated this stage, but just got beaten 3-1 by the Dallas Fuel. They're still the Pacific division leaders, but Fuel now have a shot at the playoffs. 

Had an engagement photo session with Hannah and Kaellen this afternoon.  I enjoy it and am good at it and despite my lack of formal training it's not like I've had no training; the art degrees furthermore at BYU-I are emphases rather than distinct degrees themselves, so my emphasis in graphic design is just as much a BA in Arts as someone's with an emphasis in photography. So far I haven't been paid for any of my photography work, but I do have something of a portfolio of photographs. Job? Job.

Tennis at noon. I'm burned to a crisp.

It's a Thursday Post!

http://whateveriwant7.blogspot.com/2018/06/aint-been-posting-much.html

Forgot to mention this blogpost, guest post on my brother's blog. According to the schedule there I should be, what, posting on Instagram today?? Man I'm so bad at this; I'd forget to eat if not for getting hungry.

Last post here title mentioned three hiatuses, mine being the third. Andrew used the word hiatus to describe what had been happening on his blog; Alex's blog there's a lot of twenty one pilots Hiatus stuff. So thought it would be, like, worth calling it a third hiatus, my YouTube stuff.

Financial Breathing Room; Explaining the 3rd Hiatus

So I'm basically financially settled, enough to... hold on let me check, alright it doesn't look like it's gone through yet but...

Once the refund of the money from my college i-card back to my bank account goes through, I'm good, all my subscriptions can float through for the next couple months and I'll be able to pay for them. After tithing, which I've calculated the exact amount for, and which I'll finally be able to pay, thanks to grandparents' monetary donation upon my graduation. I'm not making any money, and there's only a remote possibility that my position at Camp Fleischmann this summer is going to be anything but volunteer, but I am nonetheless at least not in any sort of debt.

My debt to my sister, from putting me through that last semester, is paid, as of today. I have no debt from college loans or anything. Monthly, I do pay $59 to my Patreon causes; there's $4 or $5 in other monthly subscriptions as well. Those are covered for the next few months. No longer the $29 a month from Adobe, for now... 

I meant to cancel, upon graduation, but only bothered to learn how a few days ago; $60ish had already gone through by this time, paying for a subscription I wasn't using. I meant to get a refund of that money, if possible; even if I had been using Adobe services I would feel skeezy for paying like $40 a month less than I owed now that I'm out of college, so I'd consider it fair if I couldn't get the refund.

I didn't ask for that refund though. Chickened out I guess? There's a 90 day free thing they entice you with if you threaten to quit them, which I accepted but won't be able to use much. Not that I'm using my Adobe anyway, but especially not when I'll be at camp without computer. Still I'm not paying for it; still it's just a palliative.

Urgh. So I had the Adobe this whole time, access to Premiere Pro, the ability to edit a vlog of last month. I only got a few photographs, and no video coverage, of the furry convention, but that still would have made fairly decent vloggage. There's time this month to vlog before setting off to camp, and next month we arrive back with one day to spare to edit and put up a vlog... but no I don't really want to do that. I wonder if I would had I vlogged last month, but the idea that I would only have one day to slap something together was in the back of my mind when I hiatus'd the YouTube channel.

YouTube content for the sake of content is one of the saddest things in the world, so I wouldn't go that route, even with all these content ideas that teem from my brain. Not as easy as that either; I have the ability to write, host, and edit content, but it's one of those triangles where you have to pick two legs of the three, as you'd burn out otherwise. Which...

Weakly Post

So 2.1's been on, the whole time, just in sleep mode, while we were in Oregon, and it hadn't crashed at all, sitting there doing nothing. Now I'm doing something on it, but doing so gingerly. So.

Turn my back for a week and now the comments are swarming with spams. That's great. I'll fix it later.

Leaving for scout camp in about a week, and being gone for a few months, but there's got to be a better blogging solution than just, not posting, the way I've been doing. I could try writing it all up front and scheduling it for later, like that ever turned out well... Every weekend there's time for a trip into town, and town has wifi, so writing it all up front and scheduling it for later on a weekly basis is another possibility... but what computer would I use? The only reason I can use this one is because I'm keeping it exactly where it is, in its spot on the floor, and not moving it or even jostling it too roughly. So I don't know.