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Cake day: March 25th, 2024

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  • Slightly OT, but I want to give a shout out to Witcher 3 as my favorite fantasy RPG.

    Early on in the game I kind of struggled with it. I found the UI and especially combat, to be ‘clunky’.

    After I mastered the combat UI enough to survive, I started to wander and explore. In this wandering I found some old cave filled with some decent (but not overpowered) gear. As far as I know, there was no quest that would have sent me to this cave. Also, if I hadn’t been pointed in the exact direction I was going, I never would have seen the cave entrance. These little details made the world feel ‘real’ and lived in.

    Later in the game, when I was much more experienced, I was following a faint path, in the snow, over a mountain and I see another cave entrance. I go inside the cave and I hear voices. I sneak closer and I hear a fart, Then I hear a voice complaining about the smell of a rotten onion. (it was 2 trolls cooking something). This was totally unexpected and I literally LOL’d. Once again, this little bit made the world feel more real.

    In summation, I don’t need games to be ‘bigger’. They just need to be ‘good’.





  • My father-in-law got a Master’s Degree in Computer Science 30 years ago. IIRC, it was heavy in C programming and involved typical CS fare like algorithms, pointers, sorting, data structures, etc. He was a high school math teacher at the time (he’s now retired). He took the classes mostly because he enjoyed learning.

    I did ok during the Dos/Windows 95 era, but as time went on, he seemed less and less able to solve his own computer problems. He can’t even Google a problem effectively (or even remember to try to Google his problem).

    Most recently, I had to hold his hand while he bought a new computer at Best Buy and then further hold his hand as he went through, step by step, the Windows 11 installation/first time start up process.

    <sigh>