dailyrandomwriter

[dailyrandomwriter]

Day 755

I have discovered I probably do not have the attention span to play an old fashion point and click adventure game, or I’m just not really interested in the last one I played. Currently I have a long list of demo games that I haven’t played, and since I’ve started my vacation early (due to getting sick from my last vaccine shot), I figured I could start tackling that.

The first game I decided to try was 3 Minutes to Midnight, a point and click adventure game that borrows heavily from point and click adventure games released between the 1980s and 2010s. This means the game has gorgeous cartoon graphics and animation, and quite the sense of humour, which is pretty common in this sort of game.

Despite not being good at point and click adventure games, I like the act of exploration and discovery that comes with this type of game play. The reason why I downloaded the demo was because I thought I liked this style of point and click. I’ve played The Night of the Rabbit, another game that was designed as a callback to old point and click adventure games. I didn’t finish it, because I kept having to look up solutions (a downside to this type of game).

But, despite the quirky characters, funny dialogue, beautiful graphics and fascinating storyline, I couldn’t bring myself to care enough to slog through the voiced dialogue. Everything in this game is voiced, which should have been even better, but I just didn’t care. So I stopped playing the demo.

However, if you have a better attention span than I do, and this sort of game is really your jam, I do recommend at least trying the demo to see if this would be something you’d like, because it is a very well put together game.

[dailyrandomwriter]

Day 754

Specialized stationery, outside of the normal office supplies, is a really weird niche market. Like normal office supplies, the pens, the papers, binders and so forth, they’re always the same thing and they do not change. Pens very rarely change, and it makes sense. Stationery is expendable, once you use it, it’s done. There’s not a need to do anything further.

Specialized stationery, like high end notebooks, washi tape, stickers, and pens (among other things), doesn’t work like that. Things are put onto market in limited batches and rarely do they ever see a rerun. For example, the Christmas tape I’m currently using for set up this year, is tape that has been in my collection for two years.

No one can buy this tape set, because it is no longer in print. While the Washi Tape shop seems to make much bigger batches of their everyday tapes that they publish from year to year (and I suspect even larger batches of their florals), anything seasonal will never come back.

And this process also happens with notebooks (especially notebooks), stickers, notepads, speciality designed fountain pens, and inks just to name a few. I get it, the market in which these items get used is very niche and the companies are all fighting to get us to buy things. So what better way than to induce a fear of missing out?

It is funny (and kind of sad), that for most of my life, I had been pretty immune to FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) in video games, which is often where I saw it. Granted, my preferred way of playing video games and the type of genres I tended to play meant that it was rare for a game to try and inflict FOMO on me.

Stationery, it turns out, is a bit of a problem, even though logically, I know that I wouldn’t be able to get through everything within a year if I bought it all. Hell, I don’t buy everything and it would still take me more than a year.

I am actually going to try and not buy any tapes or notebooks next year, paying only for the subbox that I have come to enjoy. That does mean there are certain things on my wishlist next year that I will certainly be saving up for.

Mainly, I want to get a new glass pen, because as much as I love the metal dip pen, the uneven ink distribution of a glass pen is very pretty to me (I’m still angry that the last one got chipped). I also want to invest into a higher end fountain pen where I can switch out the nibs and replace the converter if I need to. I would very much like to use shimmer inks, but with a pen that has no replacement parts and only a fine nib tip, I can’t do that at the moment. There is a risk I will ruin my only fountain pen, or at the very least shorten its lifespan.

And that’s it actually. I may have to replace some of my pale coloured Tombows that I use for highlighting lines next year, but I don’t want anything else actually. My collection of tapes is very well curated to my preferences. I am waiting for a few more cat themed tapes to arrive. I have floral tapes that I like. In fact I managed to find tapes with blue hydrangea, purple wisteria and white lily of the valleys on them, which are my favourite plants visually. I have tapes with fantasy elements, tapes about books, and tapes about stationery (because I think that’s funny), and some other odds and ends that are very girly and very me.

As for my notebooks, I have a lot of notebooks. In fact I gave a small set of them away to a co-worker who also uses a fountain pen, but uses the office notebooks which are wretched to write in using a fountain pen. And I will still get notebooks from the subbox once a quarter, so I’ll be fine.

My final purchases of this year includes, rounding out my ink collection so I can have my pen colour match whatever theme I’m doing for that month. I want to find a pink, orange and yellow that I will not hate, and another blue (as I keep making blue themes). 

Otherwise that is all I need, and hopefully next year I will not be tempted so much.

[dailyrandomwriter]

Day 753

Randomly, one day, because the thought came to me (as it sometimes does with my brain matter), I checked my supply cupboard to see how much of my in-use medical supplies I have left. I have a system where there are backup medical supplies kept in a closet. When I order supplies, I then take those down and put them into the cupboard and drawers to be used, and then when the new supplies come in, put them up in the closet.

This ensures that if there is ever a backorder I have at least a month grace for the new supplies to come in. When this happens it often means I just have to order new supplies again sooner than I would expect to ensure a proper backup supply.

I do this for all of my supplies, except for lubrication because it’s a very common item. Most places will have at least one box floating around somewhere, and since pharmacy policy is to call me when they’re on backorder to let me know, I generally have some time to come up with a plan.

Unless the order got messed up, which was why I now was facing the reality that I’m probably two weeks away from ordering new supplies, despite the fact I have a full order of lubrication. Why? Because that is the only supply I do not order backups of, due to the fact they’re easy to get a hold of.

If you knew they were on backorder.

Which I did not, and no one told me, because they also ordered the wrong size of lubrication. 

It has been an experience for the past two weeks,, as mentioned in my post about not attending my game meetup, my portable, individually, sanitary lubrication packets were on backorder, and I didn’t know until I opened up the box that contained my new order of supplies.

In which I will fully admit to being a dumbass and not opening it right away. I trusted that what I ordered was in, and didn’t double check when it arrived. So imagine my surprise. Instead of six boxes of 100 individual packets, I had one box of six large tubes. Using a tube isn't horrible (in fact it lasts longer than the box of packets) but you do have to be careful of contamination. 

Something that is difficult to do out in public. I’ve complained about this before, most accessible washrooms are designed for mobility needs only, not for medical needs. This means you’re balancing supplies off of toilet paper dispensers, those metal trash things installed to the walls, on top of toilets or (if you’re in an individual bathroom) doing the stretch to the sink to grab the medical supply wrapper. There would be a non-zero chance I would drop a tube on the floor and lose that whole tube. 

So going out was a problem.

Complicating matters was that for reasons no one understood, I was charged for the right supplies, but the wrong ones were ordered and given to me. This made refunding difficult because they couldn’t refund me for the tubes, because they didn’t charge me for the tubes. In fact, I got a free tube because that was the only thing I could use while they re-ordered those supplies, with the understanding that I had already paid for them…

Because they couldn’t refund me so easily.

Apparently, no one got the memo… twice.

Not accounting for the fact that for a bit, no one knew where the fuck they went to.

I got a call two weeks later, on a Friday, asking if I had received my medical lube, the answer was no. So the poor guy promised to call me back once he figured out where it was, as it had arrived. Late afternoon rolled around, he called, said it had arrived and since I had to go out anyways, I said I would pick them up. Normally I get them, and the 10 other boxes of medical supplies delivered but it was just lube. Also, there was a stop right outside the pharmacy on my usual route and I have a rolly cart.

Not a problem.

I showed up, with my rolly cart, ready to drag the shipping box full of boxes of lube back home, and at first everything was fine. Until, I noticed, because the box was open, there was a receipt in the box. If I had been two decades younger, I would have not mentioned it out of fear of being wrong, but as it was, medical supplies are expensive and so I asked him.

Did you charge me for that?

The answer was yes, in which I had to explain that I never got that refund, these supplies were already paid for. So he had to give me the refund that I didn’t get before. 

Fine, it was fine. I went home, put the supplies away right away and refilled my travel bags so I can go to my game meetup on Sunday. Everything was fine, the weekend was great, I had fun at my outing. 

No problem.

Monday rolls around, and I get a call, it is from the pharmacy. From someone completely different saying that my supplies have arrived. 

What?

I told her that I already picked up my supplies on Saturday, did they order double? She pauses, and goes to check, tells me there were no notes saying I had received my supplies. She will also give me a refund.

Because the pharmacy has my credit card number they charged me for supplies I already picked up.

Supplies, I should not be paying for anyways because I didn’t get a refund the first time.

I probably at some point need to check my credit card to make sure I don’t owe more money than I actually do, but it was a reminder that my pharmacy since Covid has been a hot mess. I’m not angry about it, and was at the time more amused.

Though I do realize as I’m writing this, that that whole thing was very unacceptable, the amount of errors was actually pretty bad for a single order.

[dailyrandomwriter]

Day 752

I was brushing my teeth one night, as one does, and like many people I just did this mundane task without much thought, allowing for my mind to wander. Mind wandering during bathroom routines are weird because it’s often about what you have to, or maybe should do.

At some point while brushing the back of my top teeth, the thought hit me, I need to focus more on Leon.

Oh… I have to do another rewrite, don't I?

For those who haven’t been keeping up with Chimera Academy, especially on the website, Leon is a newly introduced character who holds some importance. However, the next chapter he is in, he’s not the focus of that chapter, which is a problem.

It’s kind of strange, as I’ve mentioned in the past, I didn’t do rewrites when I was younger. In fact, the idea of this extensive rewrite would have been overwhelming to me. While right now, it’s just an annoyance because I had missed the obvious.

In fact, even though November is supposed to be the month in which I work on the Chimera story, I have technically been doing massive rewrites instead. In the course of three weeks, I have added a chapter which changed the timeline, which has forced me to rewrite every chapter after it.

This also means that technically, this will be the third time I’ve had to rewrite this particular section of the story. A fact that younger me would have found completely depressing, instead of completely necessary. Granted, I am the one who has decided this is a thing that must be done, which makes this more palpable. 

Hopefully this will be the last time I rewrite that particular chapter.

[dailyrandomwriter]

Day 751

I was in 9th grade when Pokemon first aired on public television. The reason why I remember this is because I owe it to Pokemon for getting me out of bed in the morning for the first few months. The first few months only, because even Pokemon can’t do much against chronic illness.

But I remembered getting up in the morning, and pouring myself orange juice so I could take my daily antibiotics. I would sit myself in front of the TV and at a low volume (because mom was still asleep), watch Pokemon first thing in the morning.

I’m not sure why it aired so early in the morning on a school day, but for a while it had, and I loved watching it.

The reason why I’m mentioning this story is because I’ve begun to do the same thing with Santae lately. I normally wake up a bit before 7 a.m. but my alarm is set for 8 a.m. because I like sleep. Now, you’re not supposed to go back to sleep if you have to be up in an hour due to how long REM sleep lasts. The recommendation is you either sleep for 30 minutes (hard to do if you don’t fall asleep right away) or for 3 hours (which explains why you’re very awake if you happen to wake up after 3 hours of sleep). Otherwise you’re more likely to wake up more tired than you did before.

I don’t normally listen to this piece of advice (like I said, I like sleep).

But I had been using this piece of advice as an excuse to get up at 7 a.m. because I’m already up. I then use that extra hour to spend time on Santae when most people are not on to do my tool shopping because then I don’t have to fight with other players to get limited stock items.

It’s a weird thing to do, I’ll see how long this mindset lasts, but it’s useful. I am not rolling out of bed and rushing to my work desk in the morning anymore. I’ve also learned that, no, waking up at 7 a.m. in the morning is not an issue.

[dailyrandomwriter]

Day 750

When I was little, my father had a fountain pen. I should note that my dad was not a fountain pen person, as far as I know. It’s hard to believe now with all the stories of crappy companies treating their employees like expendable trash, but back then, companies actually treated their employees well.

And that included celebrating work anniversaries, especially if that employee had met working milestones (such as a 5 year anniversary). Knowing this, I highly suspect that the gold nib fountain pen had probably been given to my father by his company. But like I said, my dad wasn’t a fountain pen person, I never saw him use it and the pen was never inked as far as I know.

He kept it in a pen holder on a desk, in a study that I used for… well studying.

It should also be noted at this point, that I was probably, socially, developmentally a bit slow, and by slow, I mean I probably acted younger than my physical age. Nevermind, certain leaps of logic just didn’t click with me. All of this is important to note, because I broke my father’s fountain pen.

I knew it was a pen, as a child, but I thought it was a dead pen, because I didn’t know what a fountain pen was. Now… Why my father would have kept a ‘dead pen’ is something I never questioned, but I knew it was very pretty, and the tip was very pointy. I didn’t know what it was, only that it was shiny and very pointy.

For reasons I don’t know, though knowing the age I was at, probably the answer was boredom, I used that pen to tear paper. Can’t tell you why now I thought that was entertaining, but I did. Needless to say, I ruined that pen and my dad was pissed off at me. I don’t remember the scolding I got from it, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t understand what I did, only that I wrecked it.

As an adult looking back on it, I feel bad about it, but that’s because I know what that pen was, and as someone who now uses fountain pens, I can understand why dad was upset. I also feel bad for my dad, because I definitely know child me didn’t understand enough to really feel bad about it. Not in the way it would have mattered.

I had thought, since it’s almost Christmas season, to maybe get him a fountain pen, but I don’t think he is a fountain pen user. He just kept it for sentimental reasons. Like I said, I don’t remember that pen ever having been inked as a child. 

Though now I wonder if I should ask him, if he ever was a fountain pen person.

[dailyrandomwriter]

Day 749

Playing on Santae reminded me that I have a weird interest in numbers, that is, I’m decently good at judging numbers in my head. An ability that has come back to bite me in the butt because I will certainly juggle the numbers of my different reward programs to justify buying notebooks.

In Santae, because there are folks who are charging incredibly high prices for certain items that can be easily brought in, in-game NPC shops in hopes of getting a player doing quests desperate enough to buy it from them if it’s not in stock in the NPC shop. 

And while I do not oppose making a profit, I do oppose the fact that sometimes the prices are so high that the player buying it would never make that back doing the quest the item was probably meant for. Especially when those prices can range from anywhere from 10 to 20 times the original price sold in an NPC shop.

There’s profit and then there’s just greed making other players' lives difficult.

Because the game has a price check whenever you buy, I often use it when I’m camping out at shops to buy things. I’m looking for two different things. One, is figuring out how much of an item I already own, but also doing a quick calculation in figuring out how much higher the user shop is selling compared to the original NPC shops.

Often I wait until the item is over 3 times the original price for low costing items and over 2 times the original price for high costing items. So it’s a constant game of doing math in my head as I check over the prices. If I find something that meets that rule of mine, I buy a lot of that item to then bump down to twice the original price instead (or 50% more if it’s a particularly expensive item already).

Twice, because most people use those items for questing, and if it’s just twice the amount of the original price, those people will get to make a tidy profit from their quest.

It’s a silly thing to do in a game like this, but I think everyone wins this way. People who have to buy from my shop get to make a profit from their questing, the market price re-adjusted for a small while and I still get a profit from selling this way.

Also I just like messing with numbers.

[dailyrandomwriter]

Day 748

It’s easy to forget between work, housekeeping and everything else that you only need to take an hour or so out of your day to do your hobbies at times. This is something I’ve been reminded of since my parents left on their trip.

Because I have to go over to their place to water their orchids.

Orchid watering is less watering and more soaking plants for a certain amount of time. My dad had told me before leaving that he thought the orchids weren’t doing as well, so asked that I soak them for 30 minutes instead of 15 minutes.

I had been soaking them for 20 minutes the last time they were on a trip, because apparently they change their watering routines and tell me shit.

Now soaking for 30 minutes isn’t an issue, but they have more orchids than buckets to soak those orchids with, the whole process takes an hour to do. Normally I would just read during that whole hour, but with everything I have to do, I decided to drag my journaling stuff and do journal set up at my parents’ dining room table.

And… It works very well actually.

I don’t get very far (in large part because my decorating layouts are complicated and take a long time to do), but the fact I managed to get both the title page and the calendar page done in two watering sessions is very impressive. It also is a reminder that I can start doing set up as early as I need to.

It’s also a reminder that I should take time out at least once a week or so to just do journaling stuff. Or anything really.

At least it makes watering the orchids go faster, though my mother is going to probably wonder what the fuck is in her trash can.

[dailyrandomwriter]

Day 747

By the time I post this, the drink contest will have been over and done.

For those who aren’t aware, Santae, as part of their community building, holds contests where you bring a certain category of items to real life. The newsletter actually ended up in my junk folder, and for a moment I thought I had missed it, but apparently the deadline was extended.

Which was great, because the idea of making a drink based off of an item in the game sounded like fun, and that was something I could do. You know… if I wasn’t such a nutjob and decided to pick one of the hardest items in the game. 

The item is simply labelled Java, and it’s a layered drink of what looks like matcha at the bottom, milk in the middle and at the top chocolate (though, considering the name, most likely a coffee concentrate). However, I don’t like coffee, but I think chocolate and matcha work very well and I had both.

I just needed lactose free milk, because getting sick off of my own experiments (on top of fucking with my gulcose levels) is not fun. I figured if I got milk that was half and half, rather than skim, the higher fat content might help with the layering.

It did not, well with the hot chocolate it did, but it also was a mess. It was also supersweet (probably because all I had was flavoured matcha which was also sweet). After a bit of searching, I came across the answer to what I was looking for.

I forgot that milk tea drinks from the fancy tea shops tended to be layered, and the reason why is because their milk was either condensed milk or milk that had sugar added to it, because sugar will help thicken the liquid making it denser. However it didn’t answer my issue of how to make three layers, and more importantly, how do I have the matcha at the bottom?

Most milk tea drinks are designed to have the milk at the bottom and the tea at the top, again, because the milk has sugar in it.

Well… I really didn’t want to do that (I also wanted to save myself another sugar spike). So I thought, well, I like tea, tea is brewed with water and leaves, maybe that more than the hot chocolate would be less dense than the half and half milk. 

This didn’t solve my matcha problem though, that one required me to give in about the sugar and steal half a cup of sugar from my mother’s baking stash. To make matcha simple syrup with the rest of the matcha I had laying around my home. An act of cooking that was a lot easier than I thought it would be. Simple syrup turns out to be a simple 1:1 ratio of sugar and water, add your preferred flavour as needed (in this case matcha). Simmer for 5 minutes and you have matcha syrup. 

Which by the way, makes a decent container size for using only half a cup of water and half a cup of sugar.

To offset the sugar, I over steeped green tea leaves I had. Unfortunately, what I probably had to do was also make a tea concentrate so the colour would be dark enough that it wouldn’t get lost in the milk because it did kind of float on top, it was just still too light even after over-steeping. 

So I decided to go back through my inventory and find a drink that used matcha a lot more and came across the Ogreling Matcha drink. Not quite what I ended up with, I do again suspect that adding sugar to my milk would have solved a good amount of my issues, but it was already enough sugar.

That was the entry I submitted along with the ingredients, because nothing is more fun than a drink based off of a game that you can actually drink.

Fun fact, what I pretty much made was matcha milk tea, which was great. I still have some syrup left in the fridge and at some point in next week I'll need to buy more milk to finish it off because simple syrup only has a shelf life of a month.

[dailyrandomwriter]

Day 746

For all I have pushed to socialize myself more for my own mental health, it is nice to have time back to myself. And by time back, I mean the chance to split up my housekeeping tasks into two days instead of one.

And by having a chance, I mean… I currently have to limit my ability to go out into the community.

Unfortunately, for better or worse, some of my medical supplies are on backorder. The good news is there is a substitute, the bad news is the substitute makes it very difficult to do medical stuff out in public. It’s a big clunky, and most accessible washrooms are accessible with mobility needs in mind and not medical needs. I have enough of my usual supply to go out for a day only once.

Between the game meet up and working on site, working on site, unfortunately takes priority. Especially since I’m slated to sit at reception in the evening, and I couldn’t do that last week unexpectedly. This isn’t fair to my co-workers, especially since I suspect she may have not realized that I’m off on vacation again at the end of the month.

So, on site priority it is, and the game meet up had to be missed today.

But on the bright side it gave me time to mop my place, something I didn’t manage to do yesterday because I’m still kind of sick. Like my energy levels still aren’t 100 percent, which sucks, and occasionally my lungs decide to spasm causing a coughing fit. Even now I’m getting my breath back after a session of vacuuming and mopping.

At least it’s done, and now I can go work on other stuff, like journaling and writing more for Chimera Academy.

[dailyrandomwriter]

Day 745

When the public service announcements first came out on TV, warning folks about phishing scams and other ways unsavoury folks may try to use to get your banking information via email my parents, ever the responsible and loving, warned both my sister and me about the internet dangers.

I didn’t have the heart to tell my parents I had already learnt about phishing scams

When I was 15 years old on the virtual pet site, Neopets.

Cause you know… that’s a weird thing to let your parents know.

The worst part about that fact though is that, even in context, it doesn’t get any less strange. If anything, context makes the whole fact even stranger.

How much stranger?

For starters, Neopets launched in 1999; while online banking had existed before then, the general public wouldn’t start buying into online banking until after 2000, (thanks to the Y2K scare). Even after 2000, the uptick in both domestic and business use of online banking was not fast. At the age of 21, 6 years after Neopets launched, I still needed to get a cheque book, because paying large sums of money for things (like my insurance provider) didn't happen online. As a result, needing to teach children about phishing scams in that era, was way before its time.

But the folks at Neopets had to, because for whatever reason, the site had a scamming problem.

This is where it gets really, really weird, even for me. Logically, I suspect the reason why Neopets had scamming problems in the first place was due to the conflict between their player demographics. The site was (originally) designed to be absolutely free to play, and safe for children. Their original demographic was probably the ages between 9-12 years, with the children needing at least a 3rd to 4th grade level reading in order to keep up with what was going on around the site.

However, their primary demographic was probably closer to my age at the time, 14 to 16 years old. You can kind of tell this, if you’ve ever read the old Neopian Times newsletters, which were filled with site updates, but also stories, comics and art made by the members of the Neopets community. The quality of the work suggested that many players were of an older age range. Old enough to know how to use html coding (which was commonly used for websites) and old enough that the dishonest ones were going to try and scam the younger players out of their stuff.

Still, it always boggled my mind that anyone would go through the effort to scam players out of their accounts. It got so bad that Neopets at one point started implementing account confirmation techniques, like the site showing you your last active pet to re-confirm that you’re on the Neopets website and not a phishing site. A technique that banks would use for a small while by asking you to choose a picture they would then show you, to confirm that you’re on your bank’s website.

As a result, the folks at Neopets for a long while had to put out their own PSAs about how to spot a phishing scam and other types of scams. So there’s now a whole generation of Neopet players who are careful (I hope ) of phishing scams and the like, because they were taught to be from a virtual pet game, due to players scamming other players.

A fact that will never stop being funny to me.

[dailyrandomwriter]

Day 744

I said sometime ago that I would talk about the worries of excessive Internet screen time and the effect it had on virtual pet sites located in Europe, and here it is.

It’s funny kind of looking back on it, because this was a worry that came before Youtube was even really a thing, and smartphones weren't even a twinkle in Steve Job’s eye. However, virtual pet sites were very popular back then, many trying to follow in the footsteps of the giant that was Neopets. More importantly, something was going on with the parental groups in Europe involving screen time on the Internet.

Now, I didn’t know the details back then (and I still don’t) but I did get to see the results of that in websites that were based in Europe.

Specifically, there was a type of game mechanic in which the number of actions a player could take was limited to the creature the player was looking after. If the player was looking after more than one creature, then they had more actions they could take. Though these types of sites tended to put a cap on how many creatures you could look after at any given time. A very good website, that was well designed for this, could have a beginning player only play for five minutes a day, with a more advanced player playing for an hour tops.

This in theory, would limit the amount of screentime a player would then spend. In theory, because there was nothing stopping you from joining more than one pet site, having more than one account, or sometimes those sites had external activities outside of the game in which you’d spend time on.

As someone who had at one point three or four of these types of pet sites on the go, it was very possible to just go play other things.

Though these types of websites tend to be very forumlatic in nature. So, I didn’t find them very memorable. The one I found the most memorable was a website where you would raise a child from baby to about age 5 (I think). The goal of the website was to help your child meet all their milestones before going off to school. You got bonus rewards in items that would help raise your next child if you met all those milestones and then met them within a certain age range. You could also raise more than one child.

I had, by the near of my time on that website, gotten the baby-raising down to an art. I had staggered all my children so every day there was at least one child ready to go off to school and had enough resources to always do well. But I had enough resources, because at the time, I was also very much into Adobe Photoshop and making item art. 

One of the things the website allowed you to do, was make clothes that could be sold on user based shops using special currency that you could be rewarded for a job well done. The website provided the templates for all the clothes for each stage of life, so if you had a paint program, you could paint some clothes to sell to other players. This was important, because if you were very good, you’d get a lot of special currency in turn, currency that you could use to buy user made clothes from someone else. Not only did you get very nice clothing for your child, but user made clothing was the only clothing that did not degrade with use.

Normal clothes, after a child outgrew it, would be lost because it was worn out, but they didn’t do this with user made clothing. Probably because that currency could also be purchased. The side effect of that though, meant that the player didn’t have to spend money on clothes, because those clothes became constant hand-me-downs for every child they had. This meant that the player had more money to spend on things to help their children reach milestones, which gave them better rewards to buy things like unique clothing… rinse and repeat.

Honestly I got a bigger kick out of people buying my clothes to put on their babies than I did raising mine, and as a result spent way too much time on that website. Still nowhere near the amount I spent on Neopets as a child, or Gaia Online as a university student, but damn well near close.

[dailyrandomwriter]

Day 743

Like many folks, I have a habit of talking to myself.

I also grew up in the 90s, where the joke was, it was fine to talk to yourself as long as you didn’t answer back. A bit of an outdated jab at mental illness.

However, sometimes, you just need to talk to yourself (or inanimate objects). 

Especially if your memory is questionable (an ironic statement as people often had told me my memory is quite good). For myself, I’m often reminding myself of what day of the week it is, and not in a time-has-no-meaning sort of way. My tendency to tell myself it is Wednesday (or any day of the week) is a way of reminding myself there are certain things I have to do on this particular day.

Because you know… establishing routines can be a bit… difficult.

Or, sometimes I glance at my everyday journal while passing my desk and remind myself that yes, I did say I would do that thing. 

And by thing, I mean, apparently I told myself I would play Book of Hours today.

How many people have to remind themselves that they are going to play a game?

Not all of it is about memory though. Some of it is scolding yourself, like telling yourself you don’t need that snowflake notebook that is releasing in two days. Don’t do it, the shipping will murder you and you already have so many notebooks… Don’t. Fucking. DO. IT.

It was a very pretty notebook though…

I would have liked two of those.

Because I’m weird.

Speaking of weird, I also talk to plants, which is normal for most plant lovers, except I don’t actually love looking after plants. My parents are traveling and as usual, for some reason, they trust me to keep their plants alive. Perhaps asking their plants if they’re still alive is not the best way to look after my parents’ plants.

But they’re still alive, and will continue to be so, as long as I keep telling myself aloud what day it is so I don’t forget to water them.

[dailyrandomwriter]

Day 742

My first foray into cursive writing was… not pleasant for me as a child.

In an era where most of our documents are digital and using a physical cheque is saved for certain edge cases, it’s hard to imagine that cursive writing was an actual important skill, and some obscure thing elders bemoan schools for not teaching anymore. However, when I was growing up, having a computer of any sort was an incredible privilege. Also, it took five fucking minutes to view a picture on the Internet, there was no way someone was going to email a digital document at those speeds.

So at the time, at a ripe age of seven years old, it was still considered important to learn how to use cursive writing. Not only was cursive writing a faster way to write, but when done well it looks very professional. 

Unfortunately, my school was the kind of school that believed that students would simply pick up certain skills if provided the tools to do so. Granted, knowing now that I have some flavour of ADHD, I do wonder if maybe the teacher had told the whole class that there were individual chalkboards in a cupboard and that they should practice cursive writing with them and I just completely missed the memo.

Either way, I didn’t pick up cursive writing, something my mother found out and in true Asian mom fashion bought cursive writing workbooks for me. This meant that my mother taught me how to write in cursive, which meant there was a particular way all the letters had to be written. This was especially problematic for letters I found difficult. The capital G was, and continues to be, my nemesis. 

Compounding the problem was that the Internet as it exists now, wasn’t a thing. There were no resources for me to learn other styles of cursive writing, or to even learn that I don’t have to write exactly how my workbooks laid it out. 

By the time I got into middle school, my handwriting was still pretty atrocious, like I was someone still learning how to do cursive writing. By the time I got into university, I simply just printed everything when I had to write by hand. I did this to save myself and my professor the embarrassment of having to decipher my handwriting.

That’s right. My handwriting, unless I was writing very slowly and carefully, I couldn’t read my own cursive. However, to write carefully would cause me to hold my pen so tightly that my fingers would ache, so I just didn’t bother.

Though… to be fair, I didn’t have much of an incentive to write in cursive. By the time I got into university the Internet as we knew it existed. Educational content and content that shared hobbies on Youtube hadn’t quite gotten there, but by my graduation it was in full swing. There wasn’t a reason for me to try and improve on a skillset I wasn’t going to be using.

Then, over a year ago, I got into journaling. I originally dove back into cursive for lettering reasons. Specifically, the use of a brush tip marker to make the titles on my journal pages. And since I did a small daily writing about my day in my journal, it was a good excuse to practice cursive. Through that, a bit of research and watching other people write, I learnt to write in a way that was more comfortable to me. I still haven’t found a good capital letter for my Qs and Gs, but they’re not capital letters I use often.

In a weird twist, I prefer to write in cursive these days, because I’m an impatient brat who can’t be bothered to take the time to write in print. I’ve also found as the months went on, the more comfortable I was with cursive, the smaller my handwriting got, which was hilarious. Even more hilarious is the kind of things I write with these days. Fineliners are still my preferred writing device, but I can write with fountain pens and when I have time, I can write with certain dip pens.

Things I never thought I would do as a child, because I hated this sort of shit.

Child me would be both amazed and horrified.

[dailyrandomwriter]

Day 741

Today was truly a rest day for me, as Saturday I attempted to do as many housekeeping chores as possible and Sunday I needed medicine to be a bit less miserable. It meant that today my brain was able to check out while all I did was eat, drink water and sleep.

At the moment I’m writing this, this has been the most coherent my brain has been all day, which is good because I want to talk about Santae again.

Why?

Because when you’re only able to rub two brain cells together for most of the day, a clickly click website game is the only thing you’re able to do.

But also because I realized, as much as I have loved trying out Santae in beta, I am also a bit sad because I suspect I won’t get to experience the joy first time players will have once the game is finalized.

I have always been fond of secrets in games, even if I’m not always the best at discovering them. As I’ve said before when talking about Book of Hours, I’m not the brightest player. However, the joy of discovery is fun to me, and the way Santae is being built means that for newer players coming in they will get to discover all those things.

As a beta player, I get to experience these new features via a storyline, but that means that the creators are telling me directly (via story) how to find the objects and where they should go to discover the new feature. So I do not get the mystery that newer players will experience.

And I suspect they will be getting a lot of mysteries. Probably one of the most unique things I think Santae is doing is offering players ways of obtaining different pets through different means. Allowing players to discover what creatures are out there in the world of Santae.

That kind of play style would have delighted me as a child.

[dailyrandomwriter]

Day 740

My brain’s ability to put things out of mind once they’re out of sight has been both a boon and bane, especially in the realm of illness. I’m 90% sure the only reason why I don’t have a greater trauma around hospitals and treatment is because once the event is done with, it feels like a distant dream.

A part of me is very well aware I found all those childhood hospital visits scary, painful and downright terrifying, but I honestly don’t really remember much except for some standout memories here and there.

On one sense, this is great, because it means I don’t have any outstanding negative feelings towards any medical treatment (for the most part). On the other hand… It's easy for me to forget how miserable I am when unwell, or how difficult it can be.

When I called in sick on Friday, I foolishly thought that I would get enough rest and everything would be fine. In fact I caught it early enough (and felt comfortable taking the time off early enough) that I thought I’d have a hard time getting myself to rest properly. I forgot where a sore throat was, the dry cough would closely follow. This made sleeping throughout the night difficult. Coupled with a lack of energy due to being sick, I find myself unable to do much.

It’s only a bit past 8 in the evening as I write this. Normally this much time left in my day would mean things like video games, journaling set ups or even writing with a dip pen, but at the point I just want to go to sleep.

How sad… I wanted to do things.

[dailyrandomwriter]

Day 739

I hate it when I’m sick, which is a mutual feeling among anyone who has ever been sick.

However, and it’s not life threatening or requires heavy medication (like a cold), what I hate about being sick is how it throws a wrench in my plans. Today is supposed to be housekeeping day, but it’s a housekeeping day with restrictions.

Somehow, at some point during the week I caught a cold (or maybe it’s the flu?). Tiring easily makes it hard to do a full out clean, and I have to keep reminding myself to do what I can. If I can’t do everything, it’s not a big deal.

But I have enjoyed the cleanliness of my place, so I’m still trying to do as much as possible so I can enjoy my place. 

As much as one can with a sore throat and a headache.