Sat Dec 23 2023

Sleep 0415 to 0945 (5-1/2 hours)

• I finally caught Francisco and gave him the HOA holiday card.

Sun Dec 24 2023

Sleep 0230 to 0945 (7-1/4 hours)

• Drove to Mom and Dad’s. Anticucho and potatoes for lunch. Spare ribs in black bean sauce with rice for dinner.
• C3 and Steph were with Corina’s family and got to Mom and Dad’s near midnight.

Mon Dec 25 2023

Sleep 0445 to 1100 (6-1/4 hours)

• Jaime and his family visited for the day. Turkey and mashed potatoes for lunch. Prime Rib and rice for dinner.
• Marina and her family spent the night and left after lunch to visit her husband’s mom in Nevada.

Tue Dec 26 2023

Sleep 0200 to 0930, 30m nap. (8 hours)

• Rice porridge (with turkey) for lunch. BBQ pork and rice for dinner. C3, Steph and I left after dinner.

Wed Dec 27 2023

Sleep 0315 to 1115 (8 hours)

• Bought Mistborn Adventure Game. Six books for $18. Their license expires Dec 31st though they can sell remaining print stock throughout 2024.
• From the looks of it Crafty Games (who made their splash with SpyCraft RPG) is leaving the RPG business for board games.

Thu Dec 28 2023

Sleep 0215 to 1000 (7-3/4 hours)

• Bought DDO Fables of the Feywild (Ultimate) expansion, 60% off so $52. Previously spent about $13 in DDO points to buy just the quests so $65 is still 50% off.

Fri Dec 29 2023

Sleep 0300 to 1100 (8 hours)

• Was watching Barbie on the Xfinity app. After a break I came back and it started playing the commentary track with Greta Gerwig. I went back and watched the whole movie that way because I find commentaries interesting. But the Xfinity app doesn’t have a way to set language/audio track so how to do that for other movies or how to get it back to normal audio?
• Finished watching with commentary. Started the movie again and now it’s regular audio so it's good I stuck and listened to the commentary first.

Here's the earthquake coverage offer I received from my new home insurance provider.

Building Property Coverage Limit = $25k
Building Property Deductible = $3750
Personal Property Coverage Limit = $5k
Personal Property Deductible = $750
Loss of Use Coverage Limit = $1500 (no deductible)
Loss Assessment = $50k ($7500 deductible)

Estimated Annual Premium $813

I already got a new earthquake insurance policy. It's $3k per year but covers my replacement cost share ($450k+, minus $100k deductible). The minimal coverage above I might as well just pay it myself. I'd rather pay more to cover an amount that would financially be quite damaging.

This Evil Genius Games bundle is their Everyday Heroes RPG (based on d20 Modern updated for D&D 5E, though I guess fully compatible with D&D 5E) and a bunch of sourcebooks based on licensed movie properties so that part is kind of cool. Seems interesting enough for $18.

Everyday Heroes Core Rulebook (2022)

The Crow Cinematic Adventure (2022)
Escape from New York Cinematic Adventure (2022)
Highlander Cinematic Adventure (2023)
Kong: Skull Island Cinematic Adventure (2023)
Pacific Rim Cinematic Adventure (2023)
Rambo Cinematic Sourcebook (2023)
Total Recall Cinematic Adventure (2023)
Universal Soldier Cinematic Sourcebook (2023)

Sat Dec 16 2023

Sleep 0330 to 0930 (6 hours)

• Waited until noon for weekend custodian but when I checked garbage bins hadn’t been rotated.
• Oops, missed him again. Small black car. In and out less than 5 minutes so that’s all he’s doing. Caucasian looking at first glance, doesn’t fit the name Francisco. A bit conflicted about a $120 gift if that’s all he does. Maybe if he does it on Sunday too.

Sun Dec 17 2023

Sleep 0500 to 1200 (7 hours)

• Drobo reported 2nd drive failed. After rebuild is done will try removing/re-puggling it in and let it reformat and reuse it. Last Aug 2022 it was 5th drive that reported failure.

Mon Dec 18 2023

Sleep 0230 to 0930 (7 hours)

• Noticed GOG game pages now have Time to Beat numbers from HowLongToBeat (crowdsourced times). Never heard of the site but it’s neat.
• Mr Cooper had some sort of data breach though they’re still investigating extent. Two years of free credit monitoring but what else can be done? I’d rather they try to harden their systems rather than paying money to affected people (if there should be a class action lawsuit).

Tue Dec 19 2023

Sleep 0245 to 1115 (8-1/2 hours)

• Midnight I went to the nearest In-n-Out for a hamburger but lots of cars at the drive thru so I assume fairly busy inside too.

Wed Dec 20 2023

Sleep 0300 to 1100 (8 hours)

• Drobo finished rebuild. Inserted the “bad” drive again. Drobo seems ok with it now. Doesn’t say it is rebalancing so I guess it’ll do it in the background without warning about it.

Thu Dec 21 2023

Sleep 0500 to 1100 (6 hours)

• Looking at the Apps Purchased screen on App Store app it’s kind of annoying I can’t sort this at all. Seems to be in purchased date order which is better than no order.

Fri Dec 22 2023

Sleep 0230 to 1215 (9-3/4 hours)

• This month I’ve been heavy with the Twitch donations. Next month will try for zero.

Pricing out what I'd buy if I wanted to stream.

Requirements

$2800 budget before tax - I want to keep it under $3k which is maybe doable if there is a bit of a discount
32GB unified memory or more - big games require a good amount of memory
support two external displays - a main for showing on stream and a secondary for streamer support tools

MBP 14-inch

M3 Pro chip (12-core CPU, 18-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine)
36GB unified Memory
1TB SSD storage

Total $2800

Overall my preferred configuration. MBP so I can use it on the road an also can use it as a third screen for minor stuff.

Mac Studio

M2 Max chip (12-core CPU, 38-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine)
64GB unified memory
1TB SSD storage

Total $2800

For the price it's surprisingly quite powerful and expandable and has lots of memory.

Mac mini

M2 Pro chip (12-core CPU, 19-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine)
32GB unified memory
2TB SSD storage
Gigabit Ethernet

Total $2600

A bit cheaper and more SSD storage but definitely inferior to the Mac Studio. Trying to max out a Mac mini is not as cost effective as getting the base-line Mac Studio.

Other Macs

MacBook Air maxes out at 24GB memory and 1 external display.
iMac maxes out at 24GB memory with 1 external display.

I previously said I wasn't interested in the Blades in the Dark 2 Bundle but I guess if I consider them as Forged in the Dark games then it doesn't seem so bad especially as I already have one FitD game (Girl by Moonlight).

Blades Collection ($15)

Blades in the Dark ($20) - Apocalypse Engine-based game of Medieval-ish fantasy heists.

Blades in the Deck - print-and-play card decks from third party Evil Hat

• Characters ($10) - create scoundrels
• Crews ($10) - create criminal conspiracies
• Deals ($10) - deals, or missions
• Factions & Locations ($10) - allies/rivals and places

Heists in the Dark ($12) - third party product with 52 print-and-play card deck for mid-level contracts (missions)

Forged Collection (+$16)

Court of Blades ($25) - Renaissance intrigue, includes Companion Zine ($5) and Community Zine (45)
Mountain Home ($25) - Run a Dwarven settlement
A Torch in the Dark ($15) - Single player fantasy dungeon-delving
Kosmosaurs ($15) - Dinosaur rangers, in space!

Sat Dec 09 2023

Sleep 0315 to 0800, 1500 to 1830 (9-1/4 hours)

• Trying to get a gift to weekend custodian but he only comes by to rotate the garbage bins. Kept checking the garbage room and I think he was there somewhen from 10:45 to 11:15 AM. I also noticed a black car parked outside my balcony about the same time and it wasn’t parked there long. I mean it only takes two or three minutes to rotate in our two garbage rooms. Will try again tomorrow.

Sun Dec 10 2023

Sleep 0330 to 0930 (6 hours)

• Waited around for weekend custodian. Figure he’d park right outside so I didn’t need to keep going downstairs to check. Didn’t spot him from 1000 to 1200 an when I checked garbage room bins hadn’t been rotated (though admittedly the bin was about 1/3 full so maybe he thought it didn’t need rotating). Could also be it’s on a Saturday service (Thu morning garbage pickup, rotate Sat morning, Mon morning garbage pickup). Although that doesn’t quite make sense since we have 4 garbage bins in each room and generally fill up one per day.

Mon Dec 11 2023

Sleep 0200 to 1000 (8 hours)

• Since DriveThruRPG continues being weird about resetting my prefs back to new UI I changed my default to go to the account page where I can toggle legacy UI pref off and back on.
• My UHC login had been failing for a while and I finally figured it out. They moved to a third-party site for login and Safari was using the UHC site login info which had an old password. Problem being there was no error it just went to a blank page so it looked to me like a browser compatibility issue rather than login issue.

Tue Dec 12 2023

Sleep 0300 to 1100 (8 hours)

• OpenAI is updating their policies and I decided to delete my account, mostly because they seem kind of sketchy after replacing their Board of Directors, who are there to keep irresponsible CEOs in check.
• VMWare products will no longer be standalone licenses but instead subscriptions. Pretty much VMWare cloud products so Fusion is not affected but who knows in the future..

Wed Dec 13 2023

Sleep 0100 to 0700 (6 hours)

• Tried waiting for the postman but missed him. Turns out I can mostly see right down the curb to the intersection from the office nook so tomorrow I can set up my computer there for mostly continuous monitoring assuming he parks in front of our building rather than across the street.
• Adorama had a MBP 14” M3 Pro 36 GB RAM 512 GB SSD for $2000 which was very tempting since I’d like at least 32 GB RAM. But looking at my disk usage I think I’d need at least 1 TB SSD even if I end up offloading most of the static data out. So not quite enough to pull the trigger.

Thu Dec 14 2023

Sleep 0130 to 0930 (8 hours)

• Lunch at Haidilao Hot Pot (Cupertino) with Sophia, Dave W, Dave S.

Fri Dec 15 2023

Sleep 0115 to 0915 (8 hours)

• Missed the postman again. Turns out he drives a USPS white minivan with no visible logo on the back so in the distance it looks like any other white minivan (and I recall seeing it parked at the corner last time I was waiting for him and it’s parked there for a while so maybe he makes round at the next door condominium).
• Stalingrad: Verdun on the Volga 2 KS. This will be in an upcoming Against the Odds Annual. $50 is the standard no-discount price for an annual so I guess fair (+$7 USA shipping).

Shadowrun 3E bundle consists of:

Core Collection ($25)

FASA-7001/FPR-25000 Shadowrun 3E (1998) - 2004 Fanpro 4th printing
FASA-7003 Shadowrun Quick Start Rules (1999)
FASA-7126/FPR-25001 Man & Machine: Cyberware (1999)
FASA-7329 First Run (1998) - three adventures
FASA-7905/FPR-25010 Shadowrun Companion (1999)
FASA-7907/FPR-10658 Magic in the Shadows (1999)
FASA-7908/FPR-10659 Cannon Companion (2000)
FASA-7909/FPR-10747 Matrix (2000)
FPR-10664 State of the Art: 2063 (2002)
FPR-10673 Character Dossier (2003)
FPR-10743 Rigger 3 (Revised, 2001) - original is FASA-7910 (2001)
FPR-10762 State of the Art: 2064 (2004)

Setting Collection (+$19)

FASA-7125 Corporate Download (2009) - sourcebook of the top ten corporations
FASA-7216/FPR-10657 New Seattle (1999)
FASA-7330 Corporate Punishment (2000) - three adventures
FASA-7328/FPR-10745 Renraku Arcology: Shutdown (1998) - adventure
FASA-7331/FPR-10749 Brainscan (2000) - campaign of five linked adventures
FPR-10650 Year of the Comet (2001)
FPR-10655 Shadows of North America (2001)
FPR-10667 Sprawl Survival Guide (2003)
FPR-25003 Mr Johnson's Little Black Book (2004) - a dozen locations and contacts
FPR-25006 Loose Alliances (2005) - sourcebook of small independent organizations
FPR-25007 Shadows of Asia (2005) - sourcebook
FPR-25014 System Failure (2005)

FASA-7112 Paranormal Animals of Europe (1993) - for Shadowrun 2E
FASA-7113 Corporate Shadowfiles (1993) - for Shadowrun 1E/2E
FASA-7213 Aztlan: A Shadowrun Sourcebook (1995) - for Shadowrun 2E

I have most of SR 1E and 2E including the three above 2E items. I also have a good amount of SR 6E. So SR 3E would fill a hole and for $44 it's a good amount of stuff.

Took me about seven months to try out the Apple Arcade games released in 2020 (some of them being removed from Apple Arcade as I was playing/reviewing). These are my favorites:

Creaks from Amanita Design - Gorgeous graphics and small puzzles in a rickety underground mansion.

The_Otherside from Barbacube and Quantum Giant - A 1-v-computer board game with up to four characters fighting monsters whilst they try to close an otherworld gate.

Little Orpheus from The Chinese Room - A story-based easy platformer with great narration and funny story.

Sat Dec 02 2023

Sleep 0300 to 0930 (6-1/2 hours)

• OCS Crimea arrived. It’s on the smaller end of an OCS game. 1 map, three counter sheets (one with markers and two with units).
• That’s the last of my four MMP preorders shipped so now have no preorders there.

Sun Dec 03 2023

Sleep 0315 to 1115 (8 hours)

• Nemo’s Stream-a-thon starts today and runs 3 days, with a 4th day if a points goal is reached. Points are gained by donations in cash or bits, subscriptions, and gifted subscriptions.

Mon Dec 04 2023

Sleep 0400 to 1130 (7-1/2 hours)

• iCloud Advanced Data Protection. Currently supports all my devices except my Mac mini which tops out at macOS 12.7 (need 13.1+). So for now not an option unless I take the Mac mini off of iCloud (which I guess is doable since it’s primary a headless server, but inconvenient).

Tue Dec 05 2023

Sleep 0530 to 1130 (6 hours)

• RapidWeaver Classic has this bug or feature in the Blog template. When you create a new entry it copies at least some of the formatting of whatever entry you have selected. When you first create the blog page and add an entry it has this default formatting. Then continue to add entries and they all look consistent. But then I accidentally paste in some text that has formatting and the formatting changes and if I don’t notice then subsequent entries have this new formatting. And I couldn’t figure out how to fix it because I tried create new entry then paste in text only (copy to BBEdit doc then copy that text and copy to RapidWeaver) but formatting was still there. Only recently did I discover that I just need to select an entry with goo formatting then click new entry.

Wed Dec 06 2023

Sleep 0330 to 0800 (4-1/2 hours)

• DDO Hardcore League s9 starts. Christopher and I played about three hours. Almost got myself killed. Not sure what happened since I was maneuvering my alt character up to catch up with the party.

Thu Dec 07 2023

Sleep 0200 to 1030, 1 hour nap (9-1/2 hours)

• The last couple of times I’ve put my Mac to sleep overnight when I wake it up both monitors just show the desktop. When I unplug/replug in a monitor then all the application windows show up but on the wrong monitor so I have to move all the windows back to the main monitor.

Fri Dec 08 2023

Sleep 0230 to 0800, 1 hour nap (6-1/2 hours)

• Woke up early so I could run into cleaning crew and give their shift leader a Christmas gift from the HOA, and also to let AT&T tech in.
• We upgrade a phone plan but turns out AT&T wants to put in a VoIP box (Voice over Internet Protocol) and that needs an Ethernet connection which we don’t have in the garage. The VoIP box has a cellular backup which is weak in the garage but it has antennas which will help a lot. I guess this is AT&T’s solution to keep business customers running while their phone cable lines are slowly left to die.
• Also we found the phone panel (on the outside wall of the back garbage room) and it’s the original from 1989 so looks very old and fragile.

Twitch sent out my yearly recap.

Hellboy Comic Bundle for $18 has

Hellboy v1: See of Destruction (own)
Hellboy v2: Wake the Devil 2E (own)
Hellboy v3: The Chained Coffin and Others 2E (own)
Hellboy v4: The Right Hand of Doom 2E (own)
Hellboy v5: Conqueror Worm 2E (own)
Hellboy v6: Strange Places (own)
Hellboy v7: The Troll Witch and Others (own)
Hellboy v8: Darkness Calls (own)
Hellboy v9: The Wild Hunt (own)
Hellboy v10: The Crooked Man and Others (own)
Hellboy v11: The Bride of Hell and Others (own)
Hellboy v12: The Storm and the Fury (own)

Hellboy in Hell v1: The Descent
Hellboy in Hell v2: The Death Card

Hellboy and the BPRD: Her Fatal Hour
Hellboy and the BPRD: Long Night at Goloski Station
Hellboy and the BPRD: The Beast of Vargu
Hellboy and the BRPD: The Seven Wives Club

Hellboy Winter Special
Hellboy Winter Special 2017
Hellboy Winter Special 2018
Hellboy Winter Special 2019

Hellboy: 25 Years of Covers
Hellboy: All-Seeing Eye
Hellboy: An Assortment of Horrors
Hellboy: Into the Silent Sea
Hellboy: Krampusnacht
Hellboy: Weird Tales (own)

Hellboy: Odd Jobs (tpb story anthology, not graphic novel, own)
Hellboy: Emerald Hell (tpb novel, not graphic novel, own)
Hellboy: Oddest Jobs (tpb story anthology, not graphic novel, own)

Ghost/Hellboy Special
Hellboy vs Lobster Johnson: The Ring of Death
Itty Bitty Hellboy
Young Hellboy: The Hidden Land

Hellboy v1 to v12 is very good and in general good pulpy magic/occult/mythos action. Certainly seems quite worth it just for the stuff I don't have, though I also don't have anything in electronic format.

Sat Nov 25 2023
Sleep 0330 to 0930, 1 hour nap (7 hours)

• Anticucho (grilled beef heart), potatoes, gai lan for dinner. Drove home.

Sun Nov 26 2023

Sleep 0330 to 1100 (6-1/2 hours)

• Got a postcard promoting 4-months of Audible for $6 per month (promotion ends 12/31/23). But now I went to Audible site and for another 10 days you can get the same deal plus $20 credit.

Mon Nov 27 2023

Sleep 0245 to 1115 (8-1/2 hours)

• DDO Hardcore League s9 announced last week. Runs Dec 06 1100 to Feb 07 0600 and 2 months is normal. This is a redux of s3 with a +4 level lockout and +20% Reaper X. You also get an extra life at levels 8 and 16 so this the season to do Reaper difficulty, which my brother and I have avoided so far.

Tue Nov 28 2023

Sleep ??? (8 hours?)

• Starting the new Doctor Who Special: The Star Beast. Soon as it said “Meep” I realized this is based on the first story I read on Marvel’s Doctor Who (1984) comic books series. That story use Tom Baker’s Doctor and has one my favorite (and probably misremembered) quotes: “I’m Meep Meep of the Meeps!”

Wed Nov 29 2023

Sleep 0115 to 0530, 0930 to 1330. (8-1/4 hours)

• OCS Crimea charged yesterday and shipped today. It’s 25% though shipping brought it back to $96 for a $99 retail product. So if I had a local store where I could buy it I probably should do that instead. Gator Games has a good selection of war games though I don’t recall if they have MMP games.

Thu Nov 30 2023

Sleep 0130 to 0830 (7 hours)

• Looks like Remote Desktop access to my Mac mini stopped working, even after reboot. Turning on VNC server on Mac mini and that also didn’t work. In both cases client connects but fails getting screen from server.
• A couple of more reboots seems to have fixed the issue. MacOS restart rather than powering off/on.

Fri Dec 01 2023

Sleep 0400 to 1200 (8 hours)

• To fix my Mac mini issues I connected it to one of my monitors. Had a thought of maybe a two computer desktop setup (MBP with screen and 27” monitor, mini with 24” monitor). First off, Mac mini WiFi speed at my desk seems quite slow. Second not enough desk space for two keyboards and mice (macOS now has a feature to share kb/mouse between two Macs but my mini is too old). Third I still couldn’t get DDO running on the mini. Now that I have a monitor when it’s time to load the first 3D-rendered screen (the character selection screen) it freezes and after a few minutes the mini shuts off.