the girly who shall end all girls

1. pirate D added me to his Duolingo Plus family plan, so i've been practicing French. it was my minor in college - my reading comprehension remains pretty good, but I haven't held a conversation for more than ten years. i'm enjoying the gamification of language learning but because this is a refresh rather than completely new, part of me is always analyzing their translation choices and how they introduce concepts. (in my head, "il mange" is usually "he eats" not "he is eating". or i think of "ça va?" as "how's it going?" instead of "how are you doing?". but i'm learning to give the owl the answer it wants.) it's been fun re-accessing dormant knowledge - i start a new area and all this stuff comes up out of cold storage. it's pretty cool. looking forward to getting into a place where i'm learning something new.


2. i quit playing most video games around Gamergate. (yeah, i know, that's what they wanted. but i have so many other hobbies.) on a whim i decided to look into Jedi: Fallen Order when they announced the sequel, and it was all of $10 on xbox. i have definitely gotten more than $10 of joy from it - it's an adventure game with more exploration than boss fights, really reminds me of the joy i got from Tomb Raider back in the day, but with SO MANY MAPS AND HINTS. what the hell, it even tells you where there are doors that you can open and highlights unexplored areas. :old-man-yelling-at-cloud: i wish Cal did backflips, but his lightsaber is cooler than dual Uzis, and driving an spoiler was way too much fun. also, look at this little droid companion:


3. my mother-in-law has been complaining about not being able to play Civilization II anymore for something like 10 years. so i made a VM image of Windows XP SP3 with CivII installed, had C play a few rounds to confirm it works well, and have written up instructions for the east coast kids to set it up for her. fingers crossed. it's a 1995 game - it starts with a setup dialog about how you need 16MB of RAM to use all the 3D effects.

today i:

• attempted to attend a virtual conference during work today. it was not great and i was kind of pleased to be pulled away by some time-sensitive stuff coming up.

• solved two problems with automation, made some stressed people really happy.

• ate about half a Zeek's Hawaiian pizza and drank a White Claw while watching the rest of Beforeigners. it came to a stopping place but it's setting up so much. it's so damn good, seriously if you have the ability to see it, do.

• clicked through a link about an artist who died from covid-19. his name seemed familiar, i figured it was because he was in a band that was on a beloved mixtape. nah, it was because he co-wrote most of the songs from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. in Adam Schlesinger's honor, here is his Emmy-nominated "We Tapped that Ass".

  Watch on YouTube
  and the Emmy winner "Antidepressants Are So Not A Big Deal"
  Watch on YouTube

rest in peace sir, your work brought me a lot of joy.