TMoney

Yes. I hate high fantasy as well. It is not my genre of choice. Did not stop me from loving every minute of the 100-ish hours it took me to finish the game. If you could deal with fantasy in the Witcher 3 it's not any worse than that. Certainly it is far far more benign than FF14, which makes me queasy to even look at 😉.

2077 and Starfield... I want to be more excited but Baldur's Gate 3 was the best single player gaming experience I've ever hard. For them it will be like having to follow James Brown as an opening act. I hope they live up to the promise but I don't see either coming close to the quality of Baldur's Gate. I hope I am wrong about that.

I’m terribly sad about the news coming out of Hawaii with these fires. My family has been visiting Maui nearly every year since I’ve been born and I just can’t believe that in a single windy day and night the beautiful Town of Lahaina was completely burnt to the ground. RIP to those who were lost to the fire and my sympathies to those who made it out but lost their homes and businesses.

Baldur's Gate 3 I was sick with a summer cold last week and had some time to sink in to this. I have never played Dungeons and Dragons before, but I spent the last few weeks studying up on it in order to be ready for this game. It is not often that less than halfway through something I can already tell it is going to be genre-defining. This is one of the ten best video games I have ever played and I am less than 1/3 of the way through it. Take the rock-solid systems of Dungeons and Dragons polished by years and years of iteration by great game designers as a foundation. Add a truly gigantic world with insane depth and attention to detail. Have every dialog in the game be fully motion captured and voice acted. Oh yeah, and have a PC client that looks truly stunning in HDR with everything cranked and runs smooth as silk. This feels like an all-timer. BG3 is something special and I don't give out this kind of praise lightly.

Wool - Hugh Howey. Fun book. They adapted the first half of this one in to the TV show "Silo". I do enjoy the story archetypes where they drop you in a world with lots of strange stuff where things start happening and you have to keep reading to figure out what the heck is going on.

Happy birthday, Todd!

Happy birthday, HW!

Ooof. Not a great year for Alpine. I don't blame them for changing horses as this is a results-driven sport and the executive team was not producing. A cleaning of house was not unexpected. Also thank you, F1, for putting another crappy Saturday sprint on so I can skip watching it. I just don't know who enjoys these. Compared to a high stakes Saturday Quali there just isn't close to the same intensity.

Happy birthday!

Well this is a new one. I was right about to get on the Golden Gate Bridge on my way to see Paramore (bought the tickets last year) and they cancelled the show... 30 minutes before the doors were supposed to open! Only reason I wasn’t already down there and parked is because I had planned on skipping the openers. Chase Center sits 20,000. I imagine I’m not alone in feeling pretty pissed off. Oh well, shit happens. Hell no I’m not going to the make up date. They can refund me. https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/music/paramore-postpones-chase-center-show-two-hours-before-concert

It is hard to understand what fault lies with the drivers, what with the car, and what with the strategy, but things haven't been going great lately. https://www.espn.com/f1/story/_/id/37994260/daniel-ricciardo-back-f1-alphatauri-nyck-de-vries-out Brent must have had a biscuit today because that clown Ricciardo is back.

Complete disaster for my Alpine boys this weekend. Not only did both cars DNF (Ocon’s car broke, Pierre and Stroll collided), our rivals, McLaren, seem to be back in business. Otmar better get things turned around quick or the guillotines will start coming out!

Threw this back on. Damn this album rocks. We miss you, Grimes! Time for some new music!

Happy birthday, Jose!

Happy birthday, Viking Lord!

Seems like some lap one drama between the Bulls, but otherwise I think this sprint day sucks. Get rid of it. It is just a shittier version of quali and the big race. They are always going to save tires for the big race and try not to take chances. Is it more fun than FP2 and FP3, sure, but I don't like it.

Happy birthday to HC's biggest fencing enthusiast!

Lovely NYT article on the "Dark Side of the Rainbow:" https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/06/21/magazine/dark-side-of-the-rainbow-pink-floyd-wizard-of-oz.html Gonna watch it myself tonight. Thanks, YouTube!

Romain goes stupidly fast in the electric Ford van to set the second fastest time yesterday at Pikes. The straight line speed of this thing is absurd.

$200 for an all day festival pass with a ton of bands? Seems fair to me. I don't know?

Hail to the chief for he is the chief and he needs hailing!

Happy birthday, Kerry!

Looks amazing! Something like that makes a hell of a lot more sense to me after finally getting out on track. My dream track/autocross car would be a used Cayman, but the cost-to-run and amount of aftermarket parts available for the Miatas is hard to argue with. The Spec Miata racer guys are also crazy. I've watched them out on track and their passes are so aggressive! Maybe some day if I move somewhere where I can have a garage.

Amazing author. I am a fan. Blood Meridian is my college roommate's favorite book. RIP.

Yes. Thinking the same thing. The other Macan at the track towed a Miata race car. He may be on to something.