#i have a version of this from 2017. i wanted to redraw this for awhile. im sad about the colors

[ra-vio]

I missed them 🚂 👻

[son-of-a-duck]

September 3, 2017

This morning I woke up super early, said screw that, and rolled back over for another couple of hours. Then I got up, took a shower, and spent awhile looking up game things.  I started by finally downloading the VR Minecraft mod, and all the other mods I usually use in Minecraft. Surprisingly all of the mods installed correctly the first time. They have made the process much easier over the years, but I still don't get that lucky very often.  I only ran around a little bit in the game but it is pretty cool being able to move around inside the world, not staring at it through a monitor.

Then I moved onto researching apps and things for Elite Dangerous. I downloaded a few different things that should help keep track of where I've been and where I'm going, as well as keep track of different things in the game.  I also found another one that should allow me to put a window in 3D space in the game.  The idea behind this is that I could have Netflix or YouTube or Twitch running in the ship while I played.  It is an older program that they have now turned into a full program for sale on Steam, but the old version is still available (at least I think it is) so I downloaded it and I'm going to try it out.  If it works well I'll get the new and improved version.  Tomorrow maybe, if I have time before or after I do laundry I might try to mess around with things a little bit and see if I can figure them out without having to read in-depth instructions.

I got my new laptop fan in the mail. There is still a little bit of noise, so I'm a little worried about how long it will actually last, but it is much quieter than the one that was failing.  It looks identical to the original one so hopefully it hangs in there for awhile.

I also finally got a welcome letter from the HOA, along with a bill for $1,035.  I'm a little concerned that they would got this long without contacting me.  Maybe a thousand bucks is the magic number.  I'm also a little concerned that they still don't seem to know who lives here because it was address the the “current resident”.  It's good timing though because I was needing to find their contact information to find out about fixing my yard so it doesn't drain water toward my house.  I'm going to compose an email tomorrow.  Now I just need to decide if I should write nine individual checks for the monthly dues or if I should just write one for the total amount.  I'll probably end up going with one check but I've got so many and I rarely get to use them.  It might also be a little too passive aggressive to send them nine checks at once, as if I was waiting for them to contact me.

At 3:00PM I went over to my friends house and hung out with him and his family (including his grandma) and our other friend's mom.  I got to hold his sister's new baby, after he was handed to me against my protests.  I'm fairly certain I haven't held a baby since my brother, and he's 21 now, so that was awhile ago.  It went pretty well and I'm still two for two when it comes to not dropping babies.  It feels like way too much responsibility and way too much of a commitment.  I'm pretty sure I still want kids but it seems simultaneously scary and exhausting.  

I left when they were about to eat dinner, even though I was invited to stay, and came home to eat my own dinner and watch more New Girl. Then I tried figuring out why my VR setup is backwards.  When I'm facing my computer, the main VR area is behind me, when it should be in front of me.  I thought maybe it was a sensor issue, so I swapped those around, but it didn't help.  At one point I got it to work by doing the standing room setup first, which involves pointing the headset the right way, and then doing the full room setup.  But then I wanted to redraw the space for some reason and it screwed it up again.  In Elite Dangerous it works fine, and there is an option that lets me adjust my seated position, so I'm centered correctly over my character.  There doesn't appear to be an option anywhere to reset the direction of the camera in regular VR space.  Redoing the room setup is the only way I'm aware of, but that wasn't really working today.  It's kind of annoying but at the same time it's not bad having the computer behind you because it encourages the headset cord to be behind you.  So maybe I'll just learn to live with it.

Some time later my friend came over and I let him try out a bunch of different VR stuff.  He seemed to enjoy it.  We did that for about an hour and a half before he called it quits.  Then we went to Sonic for drinks before driving around for a little bit and eventually ending up at a bar.  He got a beer and we stood around watching people play cornhole and talked before calling it a night.  During our drive we talked about dating apps because he's the one that said I should try them out the last time he was in town.  I mentioned my game of trying to figure out which girl in the group picture was the girl with the profile.  I pulled out my phone to find an example and the second girl that came up was the perfect example.  She had six pictures and five of them featured the same two girls.  The sixth picture also had two girls but one of them was different, so you could go back and figure out which girl was in the other five pictures.  I couldn't have asked for a better example.

And it is now one o'clock so I'm going to record my audio journal and go to bed.  It would have been nice if I didn't work this weekend because I would have gotten an uninterrupted three-day weekend.