Don't Forget to Breathe

Wanted to find time to talk about this last night, but got a little sidetracked and when I did write something it was pretty late, so, you know how it goes. Listened to episode 1086 of Uhh Yeah Dude, they're 20th anniversary episode, and couldn't help being a little emotional over it all. I know it's a little bit silly, but UYD has been such a constant in my life through a lot of ups and downs, moves, general life changes, all of it. Those guys started when I was 15, and in a lot of ways I've grown up listening to them. I still regularly dip back into the archives and relive some of those old bits. They haven't all aged well - 2006 was a very different time after all - and the guys themselves acknowledge that, but there's still so many wonderful old gags that still make me laugh just as hard as they did when I was a teenager. UYD for life.

Yesterday was also Valentine's Day, which I tried my best to ignore. One of the worst parts about being an immigrant in a country where you don't speak the language well is the reduced social opportunities. I miss dating, I miss getting to meet people, and I hope this is the last time I'm alone on the 14th for a while. I probably need to come up with a healthier way of coping with it in the future.

Been getting back into watching pro wrestling as well. Used to be a really hardcore super fan as a kid and through college, even through the first year or two after where I was faced with perpetual underemployment. But I fell off it pretty hard once I had stable work, and never really went back. It just demands so much of your free time, and the WWE's ties to shitty demagogues was also offputting in a huge sense. So I've been trying out AEW instead. Some folks there who I recognise, some I don't, but I'm immediately a big fan of both Thekla and Kyle Fletcher. We'll see how long I stick to watching it, but Dynamite and Grand Slam were both a lot of fun.

Never got around to talking about State of Play from Thursday, but I thought it was a pretty killer showcase. I'm a huge DOA fan, and I'm so excited that they're bringing the series back; I just hope they do the right thing and remove the stuff that is so offputting about the game while maintaining what makes it so much fun and so accessible. It's shaping up to be a great year for fighting games with Tokon and Invincible coming out too, and at some point, I wanna give 2XKO more of a shot. I liked what I played, but Nioh took up all my gaming time. I think Beast of Reincarnation and Saros both look awesome too, and the release calendar as a whole is so stacked. My backlog only gets bigger.

Picked up Final Fantasy Tactics after beating Nioh. Never played it back in the day and always wanted to, so that's on the docket for this evening. Hopefully helps distract me from the dread of going back to the office tomorrow.

Seatbelts.

Today was a lot better. The guys on my team who usually cause problems for various reasons all got their stuff done today, without hurling insults at one another (or yelling about each other to me). There are some things we cannot 100% know worked until tomorrow morning, but at least we didn't hear of any disasters, so that's progress! The last couple of months have been such a horrible cycle of releasing work, realizing after the fact that someone forget to check something properly, and then having to scramble to deal with the fallout, over and over and over again. So a quiet day is absolutely welcome.

Was kinda bummed out after work, though. It's still pretty cold, and I'd planned to make some chili. Second time in the last three weeks though that I opened a can of kidney beans to find they'd already gone nasty. Obviously whoever is supplying these things to my local supermarket isn't doing a great job. Still make some rice and what amounted to fake meat-and-chili sauce anyway. The fake meat's pretty good, but it doesn't satisfy the way the real thing did, and without the beans, the whole thing lacks that real *meal* feeling, you know? God this is so boring.

Also managed to stay away from screens after work yesterday! Went and had band practice instead. We've been having trouble with our old, third-hand mixer for a while now, and we just bought a new one, so I stayed behind after with one of the others to set it up and test everything out. Really excited to mess around with it more, the software has a ton of effects and cool shit built into it, and it's been so long since I got to do some real audio stuff that I'm already having a blast.

Knocked down another couple bosses in Nioh 3, too. I'm pretty sure I'm about to clear the first map. Still think it's great, and really hoping my gut instinct about it being too easy isn't how the wider community feels. 2026 is shaping up to be such a packed year for games, didn't think I'd have much of a shot at getting this done before Resident Evil comes out, but the week head star might be enough.