Hey internet friend, welcome back to another weekly update post. If you want to just see the dog picture, click here. As I like to mention every week, Black Lives Matter! Looks like another medium-length post, so without much more further adieu, let's dive in.
I want to start by sharing about my weekend. Mostly I was hanging out with the kid and playing video games. Maybe half the time was playing Kirby, because someone doesn't like the new Fortnite update. I'm not a huge fan of the update either, but I also need to grind for more levels because I'd like to unlock Darth Vader, and I think I need to get to around level 90 to do it. I'm not going to buy levels because that feels crummy and there are better things to spend my money on than v-bucks. Like buy the next battle pass using the v-bucks from this pass!
One thing I am pleased to share is that I made progress on the electronic album I am making at home. Two of the tracks are recorded and I just have two more to finish. Then I have to engineer the effort and release it. This is going to be another one on Bandcamp, although I'm considering putting an electronic track or two on the next record as well. Believe it or not, I'm actually looking forward to doing the engineering, because it's something I had to do a whole bunch before. When I was working on my secret project I made over a hundred songs and engineered a good chunk of them. It's fun to hear how something starts sounding one way and by the end sounds totally different. Although I suspect that the average listener can't hear the difference (that's a discussion/rant for another day).
Other than that, I gave the dogs a bath this weekend. Bruiser got really angry and didn't even let me wash the soap off him before he started trying to bite me through the muzzle. His polar opposite, Bark Twain, jumped into the bath tub himself and treated it like a warm water hug. Then let me dry him off with a towel. Bruiser came out to the living room to growl at me while I towled off THE OTHER DOG. Next time I think only Bark is going to get a bath and Bruiser will skip it. Or maybe the issue was just that Bruiser didn't want to go first? To be frank, I have absolutely no idea. Guess you'll have to check back in two weeks and find out for yourself what happened!
While I didn't find time to work on the book review of Coders at work, I did find time to do some different writing. It was fun to do something semi-anonymously and wildly different than anything I have written for some time. Mixing it up helps keep writing interesting, and given how important it is (to me), I enjoy finding things that make it interesting again. Not that writing blog posts isn't new, wild, and exciting - it is - because if it wasn't, I wouldn't do it. Much as I enjoy routines, that's not enough reason to spend time once a week every week writing these updates.
Wow, how about that for a digression? Other than that, I was going back and forth with myself about sharing this, but I have been playing a bunch of chess lately. My favorite way to play is five minute per side games with no time bonus. That way it's only ten minutes (at most) out of my day, and it's a chance to flex my mind. Well, I've also been studying puzzles and thinking about the game, and I managed to bring my score over 500 briefly. Now this is chess.com so it's not an official ranking or anything, but considering how much lower I had dropped, this felt like a great accomplishment.
Currently I am in the mid 400s, so I wasn't able to maintain that level. I think the pressure got to me a little bit. However, I am confident that I am playing better chess and I invested in a cheap chess clock to play over the board with my wife. Regardless, It is fun to be playing again and glad to see I am making a little progress.
One last thing, I managed to post a few times on TikTok last week, which was good because I hadn't posted in quite some time. It's hard for me to find the energy to post there, because it feels like a bigger commitment. I suspect it's the showing my face and speaking voice that is more taxing. Plus in order to be accessible, it's important for me to make sure there are captions, and they are correct. Then you gotta pick a cool song to go as background, and adjust the volume so it blends with the voice. Compared to uploading a picture of the dogs and typing for a while, perhaps that's another part of why it feels so taxing?
?Well, that's all I have to report this week, internet friend. Thanks for sticking with me until the end. I hope you have a very nice day and a great week. Cheers!