Dispatches from @ultrviolet@gts.endgameviable.com:

Monday 08/26* 19:59 # I had aspired to get the Elden Ring achievements for collecting all the legendary armaments, ashes, spells, etc. but after about 15 minutes I realized it’s a very tedious and unrewarding chore. Especially since the wiki does not do a particularly great job of explaining how to find these things. And also half the time I can’t get the achievement in my current playthrough anyway.

Thursday 08/29* 14:30 # My heat pump has stopped AGAIN.

+ 14:26 # My heat pump was fixed again by the way. This time it started up on its own after being off half the day. The current suspicion is that there’s an overheating control board. The guy showed me what sure looked like burn marks on said control board. However he couldn’t definitively conclude that was the problem because it was technically working when he arrived.

Friday 08/30* 14:27 # I’ve just learned that a 3-day weekend is coming up and suddenly I don’t have much enthusiasm for the remainder of my Friday work day. Funny how that works.

Saturday 08/31* 17:37 # I really like how game videos turn out when I edit out all the cruft and just focus on the good bits, but it’s such a time-consuming process to do it that there’s just no way I can create a whole series like that. Dragon’s Dogma 2 is a perfect game for such treatment, but alas I think it’s well beyond my reach. Maybe I can do an abridged series of just the highlights of the main quests and then another series of all the unedited video with all the side quests and stuff.

Sunday 09/01* 12:01 # I spent most of the morning recording an audio version of my end-of-August blog post, because I thought it would be fun, and also to try out another microphone I’m thinking of using for game videos.

+ 12:03 # My headset microphone has developed a bizarre habit of recording little annoying blippy noises whenever I touch or move the cord, which transfer directly to the mic on the boom arm somehow. I can’t hear it while recording, but I can’t un-hear it when listening to it back.

• 12:57 # I think I need to give up on the idea of a tightly edited Dragon’s Dogma 2 video series, unless I want to just quit my job and work on it full time. I recorded a bit over 1 hour and 30 minutes in a game session last night where I had only set out to do the Oxcart Courier quest. While I was in Melve I thought I would just quickly dash out and kill a Cyclops, go to Eini’s House, clear out the Mountain’s Secret cave, stop by Moonglow Garden, find a secret Riftstone, and only then did I return by Oxcart back to Vernworth. This game does NOT lend itself to any kind of linear questing.