I encountered something so egregious yesterday, I was left with my mouth ajar.
My daughter has moved in with a friend and her partner.
The partner asked if I could take a look at his PC and tell him what I thought of it.
He told me he bought it new from Kogan "about a year ago", and paid $1000 for a full PC/Monitor/Keyboard set.
The CPU?
An i5--2500.
That's not a typo.
He bought a PC within the last 18 months from Kogan with a 14 year old CPU in it, and an AMD RX570 graphics card.
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Our daughter moved out today. 21yo. Has moved in with some friends, she felt like it was time. It's all on good terms.
I hope her "cleaning up after herself" skills improve drastically :)
But I feel like I've taken a pummelling.
It's just this hole in our family. It's normal. It's healthy. It's important.
...and yet.
😢
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A huge thanks to @futzle for coming in with the save in an incredible way. $child is happy, I can can finally relax on this front.
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Spec list attached. They're also very specific about what not to use.
No:
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Edit: Thank you to everyone who shared this.
Someone has responded to me with an excellent offer that solves this problem.
——
Before I go giving money to strangers on Facebook, I have a problem.
I found out on the evening of December 19th that we have to have a laptop for our 12yo when he starts school at the end of January. School office was closed on December 20th.
Fortunately, they've gone from insisting on shitty Windows laptops, to a "BYOD" model, where they prefer Macs (!) since our last child attended.
It looks like I can pick up something basic & new with Windows 11 ("no S or X versions!"), for around $600-$700, or a used Macbook Air M1 for around $600 on Fb marketplace.
(I can't afford to buy the damn thing, but that's neither here nor there right now).
I would prefer he have a Macbook (because he's less likely to use it for gaming, and I'm less likely to lose sleep over maintaining it), but as I said at the top, before I go giving money to strangers, would anyone I know in #Melbourne have an M1 (or higher) that's in good nick, that they'd be willing to part with?
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...and just like that, it was over.
Lying awake for hours last night, too tired to sleep (irony, thy name is "post-viral fatigue"), I remembered why I stopped doing the reviews in the first place.
For reasons I can only assume are part of my now-ingrained workaholic tendencies, I habitually take things I enjoy, and find ways to turn them into work.
I can dash off a dozen shitposts without thinking about it, but a review?
That's writing. Putting the reviews on the website adds a whole layer of extra work to the writing.
Yesterday turned into a whole lot of things before I even got to "play a new game", and I found I was already overwhelmed by the anticipation of spending up to an hour writing the review (writing is re-writing!), and then publishing it.
For what? I'm not getting paid for it. I'm not trying to get a job as a games reviewer.
Hell, after thinking about all of this, and coming to the conclusion that I'd just write a single paragraph summary for The Expanse, I ended up writing a whole-ass review anyway.
Maybe 2025 is the year I stop putting expectations on myself, and just try to learn to live more, work less.
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Jan 2, 2025 - Day 2 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 2
Game: The Expanse - A Telltale Series
Platform: Steam PC
Released: Nov 21, 2023
Library Date: Dec 10, 2024
Unplayed: 23d
Playtime: 60m
Telltale doing what Telltale does best. The expanse is a prequel of sorts to The Expanse TV series, giving Camina Drummer a playable backstory.
Voiced by most of the original cast (including the irreplaceable Shohreh Aghdashloo), this is definitely a game for fans of the TV series.
However, something I found particularly frustrating was the game's insistence of pushing you forward, even if side-quests were incomplete.
There's a single ongoing save file, so if you missed something, too bad.
If you're not a fan of The Expanse, it's a playable sci-fi movie, but given some of the visuals, it's definitely not a game for kids.
The Expanse: A Telltale Series is:
3: OK
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January 1, 2025 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 1
Game: Vampire Survivors
Platform: Epic
Released: Oct 20, 2022
Devs: Poncle
Library Date: Dec 19, 2024
Unplayed: 13d
Playtime: 1h44m
Vampire Survivors is a top-down pixel-art roguelite survival shoot-em-up.
I'd seen a few people on social media mentioning Vampire Survivors approvingly, and as it was the first game of Epic's Daily Christmas Giveaways, I'd grabbed it.
Playnite's header artwork didn't give away that it was a pixel-art game, which wouldn't have stopped me from playing it, but might have put me off picking it as my first game of the year.
That would have been my loss, because Vampire Survivors' gameplay loop almost immediately overcame my resistance to pixel-art.
You start out with one character unlocked. It's an auto-shooter, so all you need to do is kill mobs, avoid other mobs, and collect crystals & gold dropped by the dead mobs to level up.
Levelling up, gives you a choice between 3-4 weapon or defence addition or upgrade options to choose from. Occasionally, a boss mob will show up; kill it and it will drop a chest, which has gold, and 1-3 upgrades, but apparently can have 5 upgrades, too.
The runs are relatively short, and you can use the gold collected to upgrade your character, or unlock other characters with different skills.
It has that "just one more run" juice in spades. So much for "play for 15 minutes and write my review". Almost two hours later, I only quit out because my child was asking for help with their PC.
When I got home this afternoon, I ended up sinking another half hour into it before my NYE exhaustion caught up with me, and I'm tempted to open it up again now.
Vampire Survivors is:
5: Excellent
[#]VampireSurvivors #TopDown #PixelArt #Roguelite #Survival #ShootEmUp #Gaming #OneNewGame
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"I'm not going to buy any games."
12 hours later I"ve already encountered two games I was tempted to buy.
So I'll keep a list of the games I find myself tempted to buy, and the date:
01/01/25
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Link to the original thread:
https://aus.social/@grissallia/109610666111713189
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Welp, decided to get back on my #OneNewGame bullshit for 2025.
I'll probably post them to my blog and then link them here there and everywhere.
I also set myself a new goal that I'll probably regret.
I'm not going to buy* any new games in 2025.
There are caveats.
So... here we go.
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Happy New Year.
Pro tip for new players, try and avoid getting COVID a second time.
It's no fun.
Take me down
To post-viral city
Where the fatigue is... ugh.
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I tested negative, but I reckon, based on my symptoms, that I won’t in 48 hours.
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I woke up feeling rubbish this morning, the first day of my Christmas leave.
My wife said she was feeling rubbish last night, but thought it was side effects from the Zyrtec she took for hayfever yesterday.
Her hayfever has been pretty bad for a couple of days.
We have friends coming over tomorrow, and one of them spent a large chunk of the last couple of years being treated (successfully) for lymphoma.
I went and bought a 5-pack of COVID/Flu A/B RATs, and tested negative.
My wife, however, has COVID for the first time.
Our friends are no longer coming over.
Christmas is (kind-of) cancelled.
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Here you go, have an utterly gorgeous Barenaked Ladies song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7ttA65VMeA
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I just retooted the edit, but here's the Director's Cut, so you can spend even longer in tears.
Happy 99th Birthday, sir.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4OlL0OpbW8
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Reading this article, and thinking "Well, yeah, we're struggling a bit, but we're surviving on one income, and we're not really going without basic essentials."
Then I get to this:
"Things like food, housing, medical attention when you need it, being able to get your teeth fixed."
Oh.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-26/one-in-five-renters-living-without-essential-items-study-finds/104649400?utm_campaign=abc_news_web&utm_content=link&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_source=abc_news_web
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...and I woke up with a head full of bees this morning.
le sigh.
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This rising tide of fascism doesn’t bode well for the future. My brain is just full-on-catastrophising right now, and while I stopped reading social media over an hour ago, my body is not playing ball.
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I can recall very specific things that I learned from different people on social media over the years.
From @mpesce, I learned about Dunbar's number.
From @geordie, the best way to shave.
From @daedalus, I learned about POSIWID.
That last one haunts me. On one hand, it's a really useful piece of knowledge.
On the other, it's a thing I kind of wish I could un-know, because almost every time I apply it, I wind up wishing I hadn't.
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text/gemini