Author: Lunnainn

So, I actually picked up WoW this time around. I mean, I’ve been playing a bit before, but I decided that while I wait for New World to come out, I’m actually going to get my MMO itch a scratch, and what’s better than playing “the best at its prime”?

Many years ago now, summer of 2009, I decided to try out WoW. My then father-in-law and my sister-in-laws were playing a bunch and had recommended it, several other people I knew were into it.. but me being a complete newbie into MMO’s had no idea what to expect. The fact that the population were divided into realms (servers) were new to me and something I didnt expect, so when I decided to start playing I just picked up a RPPvE-server, because I thought that was a tag for my character, not a tag on the servers. Mind you, I thought that everyone in an area played together, so everyone in the EU were on one gigantic server, etc., so these tags I thought were for the way you intended to play, in a way signalling to others that you were not PvP’ing much. The whole idea of populations sectioned off into separate islands, sort of, werent intuitive for me. It is now, ofcourse, but back then.. it was the first time I came into contact with the principle. Anyway, I wanted to roleplay a bit and be somewhat immersed and play with people who had “good” names, and not just “Tank1” or “DroopDog” or something stupid, I wanted to check out the lore, do some questing, fight alongside others in dungeons, so PvE sounded like my sort of tea. So RPPvE server with as high population I could find without having to wait around for hours to log in seemed like a good idea. Thus, The Sha’tar was the realm I started with.

I remember picking up the Nightelf faction, got a hunter there (he’s still around today) and just doing every quest I could find, reading every book, note and scroll I could. In the end I felt like I knew Nightelf lore like the back of my hand, and I loved it! I spent weeks playing this, it didnt matter to me that there’s entire expansions out for the game that I never touched – by this time, there wasnt just WoW “vanilla”, but also The Burning Crusade that had added The Outland, as well as Wrath of the Lich King that had Northrend added. I loved the slow-playing of discovering each new area, doing every quest, realising new mechanics for the Hunter-class I had chosen. I remember taming different pets (the first one being a black sabretooth I named Memnoch which is still around today), I remember constantly going back with a full inventory of stuff to sell – mostly garbage, because I didnt know about the existence of addons that told you the worth of stuff, or any addons for that matter. My daughter was born at this time, but she and her mother had moved cross-borders for a job, leaving me home alone with nothing to do. This was months on end, meaning I was basically living all alone with more time to kill than I knew what to do with, so losing myself in WoW was probably the best way I could spend my time. I mean, there’s probably better ways, but it was the best way to make time flow, so that I didnt have to feel so alone. But I loved it, every second of every day. I dont remember much of the days as such, I know I installed the game around June, and in between cross-border phone calls, sleeping, eating and going to the bathroom, everything is a blur until they came back home. It was only WoW at that time, my entire life was WoW.

It probably sounds dangerous, and in some ways it most definitely was. Had this continued unsupervised for long enough, I probably would’ve gotten sick. I barely ate – just enough to keep hungerpangs away, I barely slept – just decided to go to sleep whenever my eyes werent able to read anymore and as soon as I woke up I started playing again. I had moved the computer into the bedroom, opted to lift one of the two matresses out of the frame and put my computer-dedicated table there, so that I could sit and play in my own bed and just lie down when I was going to sleep, I had moved my coffeemaker and teapot inside the frame onto another small table, and I had a one litre of bottle I had water in, that I refilled every time I went to the bathroom. I dont know how often I ate every day as I didnt have a set dining schedule. Several times I noticed I was screamingly hungry and decided to make food and it was in the middle of the night, others it was broad daylight. There were no days, it was as if time didnt really flow. It was dangerous unsupervised for sure, and thinking back on it I realise how bad it was. There were no days, there was only the west coast of Kalimdor. There was only WoW, and how I loved it.

Even so, I progressed slowly, I took my time exploring as much as I could – the fact that there was two entire expansions were something I knew, but I wasnt done getting to know the game – besides, I didnt own Wrath of the Lich King yet even if it was out, I only owned the Battle Chest, which meant the basegame and the first expansion. I had all the time in the world to go check out both Outland as well as Northrend. Once I was done with Kalimdor I was going to check out Eastern Kingdoms and when I did I found Stranglethorn Vale. It was at this point I finally got the urge to gain levels, because I couldnt fight the pirates there, and talking with people in the chat I realised that there were companions in the game. Pets, not fighting pets such as the hunters pets, or warlock minions – actual pets that were only there to “keep you company”. And I decided to kill enough pirates to get some of those pets, but that meant leveling up enough. I forgot how long I was playing around there, but I farmed those pirates into oblivion until I got my macaw and a few more that I tossed up on the auction house for a dozen of thousands of gold each or so, then I was ready to move on. I did get them all sold, by the way. I guess that was the start of how I decided to be a collector as well. I poured more gold and time into getting those mounts and pets, companions, than in clearing levels and getting gear.

By this time, I was also using the Battle Chest Guide-books that came with the game (this was during a time where you bought physical copies of games, actual CD’s/DVD’s, and with them came books that told you lots of stuff about the game, such as maps, points of interest, the basics of dungeon groups, etc). So I knew a bit more what to expect, where to go, where not to go if I wanted to avoid getting killed on sight..

I did that for a few weeks again, until I finally reached Outland. I decided to try to knock off as much “important” things in Outland, such as the profession skills, riding skills and so on, didnt want to spend too much time there, partly because the area was somewhat confusing and most people were found in Northrend which was the new expansion, but also because the area besides professions felt outdated. There wasnt much reason to slog through old content alone when noone was there to teach you or play with you, when they were all away doing the fun stuff. But mostly because I for some reason had seen the area Northrend was, finally. I hadnt looked it up on youtube before, but when I did… it was an ice area. Snow, ice, mountains, chilled streams of water. Now, that looked like my sort of place, so now I felt the urge to get up there, to play that content, to run those mountains, to fight those beasts. Unfortunately, I needed the profession skills, riding skills, the gold, and the levels to “be relevant” to Northrend. I made sure to reach those parts, then I bought Wrath of the Lich King – though I have no idea where from, but it’s a physical copy so perhaps from one of the retailers in town – and I had such a great time of my life. I was playing with people again – actually participating in raids, dungeons, I was part of the economy with my gathering professions, I made bank selling all those skins and herbs. I LOVED playing WoW. I lost count on how much time I eventually spent playing, but I do still own seven “pre-paid card”-packages and I know I lost some, and eventually I just started to buy the game-time digitally. I must’ve played as much as I could for years.

Cataclysm came out in 2010 and I was still playing at this time. I bought it and by this time I had bought a couple of other stuff, like themed mousepads, in-game pets, authenticators, and a very expensive subscription magazine that they cancelled after 5 magazines (I still have all of them, read, but otherwise great condition) and replaced with PCGamer magazine for a few years. They’re all unopened, still in their plastic wrapping, except for a few that had some promotional game codes for games I later played, Neverwinter I believe. Looking around some sites for codes, I saw mentions to promotional codes for pets, items, and such in some of the very magazines I owned, so I opened those up to use the codes, that’s all I had those magazines for. I was so dissapointed in that whole debacle I honestly didnt care about the PCGamer stuff, but I still kept it. I was dissapointed, but getting the Kwurky plushy along with the magazines were good enough I told myself. Paying as much as I did to get only 5 magazines of the stuff I wanted, and then years of worth of stuff I didnt want… that was a bummer to say the least. Atleast I got a Murloc plushy.

When I googled more about it, because I’ve forgotten a lot of details regarding this, the first issue apparently came out early 2010, despite being announced an entire year earlier, and it was often late and simply not enough material in the magazines to warrant the price according to many. I’m partially inclined to agree, especially since they only gave out 3 issues the first year and then discontinued it after issue 5. Though, I must admit, they were gorgeous and the presentation was on point, the page quality was superb and there was no advertisements. Such a shame it sank. I was especially bitter that I got a PCGamer subscription instead. Just for the fun of it, I actually looked it up on eBay and Amazon, and the magazines goes for basically nothing – even if they’re first prints – but the plushy goes for $70/€58/£50. Not selling, by the way, but that’s what I gave for the two-year subscription to the magazine that gave me the plushy, excluding the shipping. Basically, I paid for a plushy, and got five awesome magazines and a couple of years worth of paperweights for the same cost the shipping and handling were. While the plushy wasn’t what I was going for, I still call that sort of a win, now that I’m thinking about it.

Back to the topic – Cataclysm came out in December 2010, the entire world changed. Both literally and figuratively, as not only did the world of warcraft change basically every map it had, but that’s also when I moved out the first time with my kid. Being a single parent alone with a kid, I didnt have much time to play anymore, so it kinda got shelved. I didnt play at all the entirety of 2011, despite having bought Cataclysm on release. All in all, I got very little playtime out of this expansion, playing for about 2 weeks on launch, and nothing more between that and April 2012, which was when I got a three month subscription to play, which if I remember correctly, I hardly ever used. I know I did play some, just not enough to get three months worth out of it. Looking through my email history of the time, I was really busy with CNC-training and the unemployment office, and I believe I had the idea that WoW would be a great winding down-tool, which..it apparently didnt function as, since I hardly played.

September 2012 however, Mists of Pandaria released, and this time around I actually bought the Collectors Edition. I have no idea from where I bought it, I own the physical edition, but it doesn’t show up on my order history of either websites I would’ve bought it from, nor in my email. I have legitimately no idea from where I got it, but I played enough to join a guild eventually. I changed my main character from the Nightelf Ledorion, to Garnam the Pandaren Monk, and the guild I eventually joined was Immortalis. According to my purchase history on Blizzard though, I had a race change in January on one of my characters, and in April a paid character transfer. I dont remember what the race change was, because there’s no characters I have that I remember being something else at one point. In all honesty, it could even be a Dwarf I remade into a Pandaren, because Garnam sounds more like something I would name a Dwarf. In April, Immortalis made the move from The Sha’tar to Argent Dawn, and after a bit of thought I joined them. They were lovely people, they helped me get started in Pandaria. From what I remember, I bought Pandaria, shelved it after playing a few weeks, picked it back up in January and just kept playing for a while. I did drop the game before Warlords of Draenor though, that was November 2014. By this time I’ve moved back in with the mother of my children, and I guess I just didnt play as much because I had too little time to invest in an MMO, as well as having other games to play, that didn’t consume as much time. I was a stay-at-home dad by this point after all, with school to balance on top of it all. August 2016 had the Legion expansion released, and I contemplated on starting, but viewing the game on Twitch..the game just didn’t look fun at all anymore. Warlords introduced so many new mini-game mechanics that didnt interest me and everyone used both those and the new artifact mechanic, as well as were playing the new “overpowered” class Demon Hunter. I can’t really say that it was like that, but the game felt diluted and cluttered with pointless stuff and to compensate for that they introduced a bonkers class that were basically “spam buttons to get high damage and dont think, just spam”. Battle for Azeroth in August 2018 just reworked everything, and by that point I knew I wouldn’t be able to “get back into it” without some serious time investment just for understand what was going on – not to mention doing dungeons, raids, any sort of PvP.. Then in November 2020, with the expansion Shadowlands, they just reworked everything again, brought back max level from 120 and all it’s inflated numbers, down to 60 again, which was the original max level.

I looked around my account and found my Garnam, the monk I’ve been maining mostly during my last visit, and noticed they had introduced a transmog system – basically reskinning your gear. Apparently, auction house prices had changed alot over the years as well, so I managed to snag a couple of things off the auction house that I have had my eyes on for a while, the few things I actively worked towards when I was playing, and that was a couple of “mega bags”, profession specific large bags with 36 slots each, a couple of mounts that could carry other players, shops and a transmog station, as well as a very expensive mount. There’s loads of resources needed for that mount, and a specific profession was needed to craft it, but in turn you became the mount and could carry a teammate on your back. Behold, the Sandstone Drake, from the Vial of the Sands.

That’s me. I’m not sitting on the back of it, that thing is me.

That drake wasn’t the only thing I got, though, I got a couple of other mounts as well, one that looks like a hovercraft, another one that is a cold-looking version of Aladdin’s flying carpet, a couple of yaks, two mammoths and a lizard?

Anyway, as much as I’ve digressed, I’m going to try to get to the point. Since New World is releasing in a few months, and as much as I would love to play the closed Alpha, it doesn’t seem like I will be getting a key. So, my thoughts were that I was going to play a bit of WoW instead. Not the game like it is now – even though I did check in and got a few stuff and “became done” with all goals I had set for myself – but the classic versions. WoW have been plagued for years by pirate servers, basically people joining and playing old-school WoW on their own servers, which Blizzard hasn’t been too happy about, so eventually Blizzard caught up and got the idea that, yeah, maybe they should re-release the old-school WoW to let players play it. In August 2019, they actually released the original WoW, they picked a few patches that were “good” and decided to run the re-run of WoW off of those patches. I actually played a fair bit of this, according to my purchase history I paid (not necessarily played) for a 3 month subscription back in September 2019, just to experience some of the old school WoW. I didnt have an enjoyable time..but I did level a few characters up a bit.

In case you dont know why, games like this often get patched, re-balanced and have stuff added or removed, changed or stability issues corrected or something like it, and each fix comes in update patches. These get labled, so for instance, a complete fresh release would be 1.0 or something like it, but after enough patches, they get to, say, 1.12.1 which is the launch-patch for the August 2019 re-release. After a new expansion, version 2.0 will come out, etc, bringing the latest retail patch up to 9.0.5.38556 (yes, that’s actually the patch number). Desciphering it, it basically means that it’s the 8th expansion (original+8 expansions=9), and it’s a bunch of small and larger fixes that has come out since Shadowlands’ release.

Anyway, this re-release of the original WoW is now up from patch 1.12.1, to 2.5.1.38892, and with it’s patch update June 1st, I decided to finally pick the game back up for real. Atleast until New World comes out. And if you have been paying attention to the last part I wrote, then you’d understand that the Classics is now up to..indeed, The Burning Crusade. The first expansion, set in Outland, the broken homeworld of the Orcs, Draenor. The expansion that I’ve heard been called The Best Expansion of WoW.

So yeah, the last few days I’ve been playing a bit of WoW. I’ve been having a blast in Outland, leveling up, crafting, exploring, fighting. I’m contemplating changing server though, because the one I’m playing on now is almost empty of players and the few there is is trying to grief other players. But either I’m levelling up a new character on a different server, or I’m paying $30/€25 for a transfer. And honestly, I’m not sure which one I’m going to do. I dont look forward spending all that time leveling up a different character, but then again, that’s so much money.

I’m being as careful as I can for this not to be turned into another summer of 2009, since I’m now a single parent of three kids that I actually have custody of, and not as last time, when I was a parent but living alone with no responsibilities other than to keep myself alive. But oh boy, the nostalgia kicks in, let me tell you.

As some of you may know by now, I’ve got three kids who lives with me full time. That means that every other weekend, the kids goes to visit their mom, and this weekend is that weekend.

I love my kids, they’re all wonderful, even if they’re rousey sometimes, but having a complete silence in the apartment where I can sit and relax and just do whatever I feel like…that’s golden.

However, what’s not golden is the fact that it takes about 2-3 hours before I start missing them.

It’s all good though, if I start missing them too much, I know I can go visit their mom for a little bit. She’s not opposed it, in fact, she has suggested it herself on several occasions, but while I do miss my kids, I also treasure the little precious time I do have to myself – and getting some alone time with their mom without me is something I think is good for all three kids. It’s easier to visit now as well, because their mom moved closer, so it’s just minutes from me deciding to go there, if I want to, til I’m inside her apartment.

Not sure what I’m going to do today though. I’ve already played some games, streamed it even, and I do have some cleaning planned. Doing the dishes and clean out the bathroom, but after that it’s.. not much else to do. I’m thinking about making some lunch and watch some anime though, “Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka?” has released another episode that I haven’t watched yet. I could go rewatch “No Game No Life”, too..

Hm.. I think I’ll wait with the dishes, go clean the bathroom quick and then go binge some anime.

Lots of stuff have happened since, but I’m still here. So far.

I still live with my kids alone, despite anonymous calls to the government agencies. I’m not 100% sure I know who did those calls, but I have my suspicions. Also, so far I’ve had my apartment lease on temporary trial, which I hope will change to a permanent this month. I havent seen the apartment go out on their website again so far, so there’s that.

As for everything else.. It goes swimmingly. I’m enrolled into some services to get help, which due to Covid is a bit delayed, but I manage. I’ve also bought some stuff for the apartment, like a rug, a couple of footstools that doubles as inventory storage, a couple of paintings, etc. It actually feels more like a home now.

The kids seems to be doing fine, honestly. The two youngest are still going to Kindergarten and have a lot of fun, and the youngest are even up and running permanently now. Not only does he walk now, which he barely did before the move, but he also runs! The oldest have started to hang out with friends now, and is even asking me to go out into the forrest for long walks. I think they’ve all became a lot happier. I do think I’ve overdone it with food though, because all three have started to gain a bit too much weight. Not to worried though, as it’s not harmful, but if I keep doing this much, they’re probably going to count as overweight soon enough. Then again – stuffed kids are happy kids!

So, the new apartment, new life deal is going pretty good. The money is flowing in as it should, going out basically the same pace. Kids are back to kindergarten and they’re loving it, and I’m getting some much needed time for myself in the mornings. That’s all good, and even their mom is making use of her spare time, which I’m all for. Unfortunately, one of the things she decided upon carries a risk of this whole disease thing, so.. for the next ~2 weeks, I’m alone with the kids, no visits, no nothing. Going straight from visiting basically every day and hanging out with the kids, to nothing. I dont mind for myself and I’m happy for her, but the kids have already started to ask about her, crying because they missed her today, and such. And that is going on for another ~2 weeks because of safety measures due to incubation, etc. I’m worried the youngest will shy away next time they see, and I worry the three-year old will be screaming in the end.

Balls.

I’ve been getting more and more into Path of Exile again, I’ve currently have two characters going, one up to mapping with one of the strongest builds in the game at the moment, as per my understanding, Detonate Dead. I dont really have the gear for it at the moment, but I did manage to get the correct spectres for it! Or more accurately, someone invited me and let me copy their desecrate, so I didnt actually get them myself. The other builds is almost a more hilarious build, it’s basically me running around waving a wand around shooting streaks of level 1 spells, that causes loads of fireballs cover the entire screen in mere seconds, that turns into seek and destroy missiles. That’s still a leveling process though, and nowhere near as powerful. My next character I’m contemplating between a Righteous Fire build, where I’m basically running around with a giant burning aura and shooting a large flame at enemies, and the other being a ballista user. For anyone wondering and being a bit more knowledgeable, it’s the Scion class, using Bleed Explosive Arrow Ballista Totems. How hilarious wouldnt it be to just run around planting entire ballistas everywhere?

I’ve also found out the launch date for New World! Atleast the date they’re seemingly are aiming for as a launch date – everything can happen til then. May 25th seems to be the date, and I hope to be able to sneak in a few hours between the 25th and 28th, because 28th-30th is the weekend the kids are going to visit their mother. And I’m going to play so hard that weekend!

Oh, also – I know it seems as if I’m praising Amazon at this point, but I’ve also found out that Amazon is producing a TV-series that probably will start airing this year; a TV-series adaptation of The Wheels of Time. Yes, that one. By Robert Jordan. The massive dozen of thousand pages long book series. I’m already drooling. Whenever that is releasing, you know I’m going to be benched infront of that TV-show.

Nothing really new about Diablo 4, it’s still in pre-alpha, basically. It’s probably going to be years left before we see anything we can play. Meanwhile, I’ve been trying to get into the beta of Diablo Immortal, the mobile game, since it’s supposedly pretty good. So far no luck. Although, it’s probably a higher chance that I make the beta of Diablo Immortal, than it is for me to ever get my hands on a PlayStation 5. I mean, they’re about as rare as a unicorn. And I want to play Demon’s Souls.. preferably, like, already beaten the game. But that’s the problem, either paying double-to-tripple the amount to a scalper (No, thank you, not even if that’s the last place to actually find a PS5), or wait for Sony to make new ones and hope I get the chance to book one before scalpers buy out all of those again. Scalpers, bottom of the filth, all of them.

So, as I mentioned in the last post, my kids and I moved out to a new apartment. We’ve been living here now for about a month and a half and it’s actually pretty great so far.

We’ve established a couple of good routines, their mom comes visiting for a few hours a day and sleep, while almost rare and broken up for me, seems to have found its way to the kids routines as well.

For now, the boys have been home from kindergarten or over a month now, in the middle of December and a couple of weeks, they were sick. They probably had a regular cold – we didnt get tested since they weren’t all that sick, and tests aren’t administered here that much – and then Christmas hit and the municipality shut down all 15h/week-kids for kindergarten to limit the spread of the disease. They’re allowed back after the 22nd, which effectively means the 25th. And OH BOY will they be happy to get back to play with their friends!

Meanwhile, the oldest started school again last week. She’s been having a blast from what I can tell, but she keeps avoiding to give me a copy of her schedule. First she tried to push an old schedule of hers and pretend it’s the current one, and since she’s been trying to get a schedule from the teachers to give me, but so far it hasn’t gone too well. I pretend I’m more annoyed by this than I am, mostly for fun, but also to show her that, while it’s not the end of the world, she shouldn’t just brush this aside. I mean, it’s mostly so that I can keep track of her starting time and end time and the days she has P.E., and just having a regular routine where she goes to school the same time every day and I trust she comes home directly after school and be honest about which days are P.E.-days..it’s not exactly reliable, to be frank. Not that it’s super important, she goes to a school that is merely 10 minute walk from home, so if anything is up, I can easily just go there to clear it up – or she can be sent home to fetch her gymclothes by the P.E. teacher.

I’ve been looking into the whole economic situation of mine and there’s just a bunch of papers I need to fill in every month for the government to get my money. There’s all these laws to look up, forms to fill, certificates to get a copy of and send, copies of rent bill to send, etc. For some reason I also have to send proof that my kids actually lives with me, which were a main reason some of my money were late with 4 weeks at one time. It’s a mess, but a mess I hope will clear up in time. Hopefully this will get pretty much automated soon. It just steals way too much energy to deal with every month, for something I shouldn’t even have to deal with since it should be automated. It’s money I’m guaranteed as long as I fullfill the requirements, which I do, so… But, it’s covering all the bills I have – rent, electrical, insurance, internet, the luxuries such as my cellphone plan, netflix, Disney+, etc – as well as food and my monthly payments for debts, even upgrading stuff at home, such as buying more clothes to the kids, toys, etc. I hope that in the end I’ll be able to put aside some for savings as well.

Enough of that, though. Meanwhile I want to tell you guys of the apartment itself! It’s a bit on the smaller side, for what I – we – need as a family of four. There’s two bedrooms, one larger and one smaller, that probably were supposed to be a sort of guestroom. My young boys share the large bedroom between them, and it’s actually pretty decently sized for two boys that age. They have a chest of drawers, a book case and boxes and drawers for their toys, as well as a small table to play on and their two, identical beds. They really dont seem to mind sharing a room, not for sleeping nor for playing. They’re almost inseparable. As for the older kid, she got to chose her room herself. I told her two possible layouts of how we could arrange the rooms and one being she got the large bedroom and we remade the livingroom into a bedroom for the boys, and as for a livingroom/where I sleep, we used the little guestroom or we let her have the small bedroom and the boys the large bedroom. She chose the small bedroom for herself, because that room had the balcony. Yep, she sacrificed room area in favour for a balcony. She has room enough for a bed, a chest of drawers, a bookcase and her desk, with still enough floorspace to clutter with clothes, but not much else. However, when spring and summer comes along, I bet that balcony is going to get so much use it more than enough compensates for the smaller room.

As for me, I’m yet again stuck at sleeping on the livingroom. Not that I mind, the size of my sleeping area isn’t that important to me, I could just as well sleep in a cupboard as well as in a gym-hall for all I care. But as it stands now, my bed is basically being used as a couch during daytime, which isn’t exactly my favourite thing though. But I manage.

At the moment, I’m in rehab – I guess you could call it a medical rehab, not an addiction problem rehab – and I hope this disease thing get over soon. Every step of this rehab is closed though, so for now I have to keep waiting something out. It’s basically the story of my life. Hopefully this thing gets over with and I can go to something similar to work training, and it’s supposed to be something easy to do for 8h each day. I’ve been a stay-at-home dad for way too long to get thrown into a fullblown work schedule for 8-9h every day, so we’re going to ease it in a bit. At first, I might just go for ~3h, one day a week, but I hope that it’ll increase to something easier for a full workday every day of the week. Partially because that will prove that I’m capable of keeping up a full work week, but also because if I’m occupied with work training for a full work week, my boys kindergarten times will go up from 3h a day, 15h a week, to full days at kindergarten, including the actual time I spend at work, but also the time I have to spend on travel between my work training and kindergarten to drop them off/pick them up.

They really need the time spent with other kids.

So, all in all, things really are looking up from here. I actually feel great.

So, it’s really been a while. Lots have happened since last, one of the main thing being me and the kids moved out to a new apartment. I’m not going to touch on it too much, but let’s leave it by mentioning that years of crumbs finally filled up a bucket that tipped over.

It’s a good home. The small boys share a bedroom and it seems to suit them pretty well. The oldest got the short straw and the smallest room, only able to fit a bed, the desk, a shelf and a chest-of-drawers, leaving a bit of spare floorspace. Fortunately, the balcony is connected to that room, so the decision to have the room was my kids own. As for myself, I’m sleeping in the corner of the new livingroom. I cleared out the kitchen from any furnitures, only stacking shelves in the kitchen for candy, food, pots and such. I dont want the kitchen to be any kind of room to hang out in, so to compensate for it, we now have a dining table in the living room – which in turn have a french balcony. There’s so many cool features in this apartment, it almost weighs up for the bad parts, like a loose doorhandle to the bathroom, the toiletseat being of the smaller version – and too close to the wall – and such things.

Their mom and I are still on relatively good terms. She still hangs out with the kids, she comes around every day, and we agreed upon her having the kids over every other weekend. Next “weekend” she’s going to have them isnt a weekend per se, as it should have been between 25th and 27th, but rather between the 24th and 26th. We agreed upon shifting the days one day earlier, because of Christmas. I typically dont celebrate it, but she does.

Kids just woke up from afternoon nap, so I’ll be back later.

It’s been a while since I typed here. Seems to be a habit of mine..

It’s soon mid-october. Which means it’s almost a month left before PS5 comes out, and with it, Demon’s Souls remake. Also, it’s not long after that, that Cyberpunk 2077 comes out! I believe that it’s the same day, for Europe, that is.

And I have no idea when New World November beta comes out, but the name says “November” so I’m holding on to that hope!

I’ve been off from here for a bit (almost two weeks, now that I look it up), mostly because I’ve spent most of my free time playing the New World Preview. And let me tell you, I’ve had a BLAST! I’m not going to delve too much into it in this blog – I highly suggest you look at my YouTube where I uploaded most of what I streamed. If you catch me live on Twitch I might not notice you though, but if you want to you’re welcome there as well!

There was one stream I added some text in the beginning, explaining that I had played a bit off-stream. It wasnt anything much, I walked a bit, traded, crafted and got my big bags I had been trying to get my hands on. You didnt miss much, however, right after that part of the stream where I added text on stream, my stream crashed without me knowing, so I lost 1h50min of actual gameplay. That sucked a bit. So beside those things, everything I played is there on YouTube.

I got the new phone since last time, the Note 20. It took a bit of work, but eventually I also got the Buds-voucher working and I got those yesterday. I’m still getting used to having earbuds, wireless at that, so it chafes a bit. I’m still trying out the padding though, it came in 3 sizes and there’s two pieces of padding for each bud. One sort of a “wing” that sits in the outer ear to kind of hold it in place, and I believe the smallest one fits me best. As for the padding in ear, so far I’ve gone with the medium size.

It also has “Ambient sound” which is as awesome as it is creepy. First of all – I hear my own voice as from a recording. You know how your own voice doesnt sound the same to you as a recording of your voice does? Yeah, the recording voice is what I can hear when I talk. Second of all, it’s got a weird mix of boosting lower sounds – bass sounds clearer – and a boost in discants which just sounds louder. It was disorienting at first, but I’m growing used to it. Honestly, in the end it makes some things just easier to hear. Granted, it seems like it’s filtering out other stuff I’m used to hear, which in turn just make it partly harder to hear because I’m unused to it.

On the whole, I’m liking the “setup”. I really loved the Note 2 when it came out way back, and I would’ve still used it if it wasnt for the banking ID app I really needed stopped supporting the version of Android I had on the Note 2. I had to make due with a cheap(-ish) phone since, a ~$200 phone that was good enough for what I was using it for. But the Note-series is probably where my “cellphone love” lies. Either way – Samsung is probably the best I’ve had. Even the Lady upgraded her plan to include the “new” Samsung S20, and she seems to love it as well. The only gripe I have is the lack of cases. There’s these official cases that doesnt include a front flap, and the two that do have a front apparently dont “lock in place”. Then there’s this whole bunch of unofficial cases that is bulky as all hell. At the moment I’m using a magnetic backcover that sticks to a super thick wallet for ~$30. I’m assuming that when this phone gets a bit older there’ll be more cases, and as soon as I find a case with back and front and magnetic shut, I’m grabbing that. I dont need the fancy stuff Samsung had on their two more exclusive ones with front cover, the LED stuff and see-through panel. All I need out of it is something to properly safeguard the phone, especially the glass front. I DONT want that to be cracked.

Also, Playstation 5 news – seems like the PS5 is going to be released in mid-November! Still no price though, but rumors has it that since there’ll be two versions, one with a disc-reader and one fully digital without disc-reader, there’s going to be two prices to look out for. The digital one most likely cheaper, and – again, rumors – will probably go for around $400, while the more expensive one with a disc-reader will go for around $500. I’m aiming for the digital version. I mean, a disc-reader would be nice to have if you need it, I really dont need it. I’ve had a disc-reader in my PS4, and I’ve used it for one game. A game that had its disc misplaced so in the end I ended up buying the digital version of the game anyway (although we did find the disc in the end, but that’s a different matter – I gave that to the eldest, since she loves the game as well). Also, if I want to watch movies, I could just as easily do that digitally, or if I want to use discs, I can just NOT do that on the PS5, since the Lady has one of the latest Xboxes and we could use that to play movies on discs. Which reminds me.. I think it’s time to rewatch Stargate Atlantis soon.

I had this wonderful idea to build – or more accurate, assemble – a home cinema in the livingroom. I fixed an old computer to be the media center and all, all I needed was to connect everything together. However, seeing as I’ve got a three year old that I’m quite frankly not going to trust anywhere near loose cables, the projector itself cant be perched on the large cupboard, since the powercables I have isn’t long enough. I cant hide them the way I need for them to be safe from him. Which means I have no place to put it.

So, for now, I packaged everything down into a box, projector, speakers, bass box, wireless keyboard and mouse and all the powercables and the long HDMI cable… Right next to the Ubuntu media PC I just fixed for this very purpose. It stings a bit, not going to lie, because I had planned for us all to watch movies and such come winter. But unless I can find a way to draw all those cables in a way that safeguards them from my very hyperactive and curious 3 year old, and one of those platforms specifically designed to make sure a projector stays in place, that’s not going to happen. Bracket, I believe they’re called?

Atleast I know everything WORKS, flawlessly, because I’ve tested it out, and since it’s all packed down in one box, it’s a complete set – everything needed to make a home cinema (provided you have the wall space to project upon) is in there. There’s no ethernet cable packed though, but it’s not really MEANT to connect to the internet, but it CAN.

To stream netflix on that thing is technically possible, I just haven’t downloaded the data necessary, but it still has that DVD player, as well as those two 2TB harddrives filled with music, anime and such. Sucks too, because I dont want to get rid of those things either – I’ve spent YEARS hunting parts for precisely something like this in my budget range, and quite frankly, the amount of money needed to get me to part with all this.. The parts simply isn’t worth that much sold separately. Honestly, it’s borderline NOT worth the money for the convenience of getting a media center home cinema with DVD player, speakers, 4TB+ storage and internet connectivity and versatility of an actual Ubuntu PC.

As a package “all you need to get started” that convenience with the quality of the parts there is, probably isn’t worth half of what I would want to part with them. And the convenience of “all in the package” is the majority of that sum. That’s how much WORK compared to bought quality I put into this, and all those hours of work put into finding cheap parts good enough to make this happen, and the work to fix the PC itself doesn’t show. I mean, I know it’s there – noone else.

That said, would someone walk up to me with $1700 and ask me to hand it over, it’d sting, seeing as how close I was to finally have my Home Cinema Media Center, but I’d sell it. Hell, the parts are almost guaranteed not worth half that, but I’d sell it for no less because of the work I put into finding a complete set.

I am.

According to the tracking of the package with the cellphone in it – which shipped yesterday early morning – the package should be delivered today.

Correction – according to the phrasing, the package shall be delivered today, to me. But so far, I havent gotten any info about it, neither through one of those postal slips, text or through the app. So, since I was going to go to the store today anyway for batteries and some things for dinner, I thought I’d try my luck with the postal delivery in the same building. And they’ve got their postal shipment for today, and it’s not there. I mean, I believe them, it’s not like I think they’ve stolen it before they registered it came in or anything, but it means that the national postal service hasnt delivered. Yet again.

And it’s annoying, because I had planned to sort through the cellphone and set it up this weekend and then fix my current one so that the eldest could take over it before school on monday. That’s not happening now.

Atleast I have one of the tasks I was planning for this weekend going. I got an extention cord in the store a couple of days ago, I found a powercable for the media PC and now I got batteries for the wireless mouse and keyboard. All I need to do now, is to actually put it all together and set up the “home cinema”. I’ve got everything at home that I need now, I just need to do the work to put it all together.

That’s like, 2 hours of work? I had really hoped that the new cellphone came today. In it, there’s that voucher I want to use to get the Buds+. The sooner I use it, the sooner I get the buds.