My rescue pooch is sadly approaching end of life, as best I can tell. So, I’ll be going through this process again some day in the not to distant future.

I’m not in New York, but I will say that when I was last looking to adopt, there were aspects of it that were definitely off putting and demoralizing. Some of the rescues had ridiculous requirements that made me wonder if they were actually trying to place their dogs in a home. One of the most egregious that I semi-recall: It was a breed-specific rescue (ex: Norwich terrier), but most of the dogs they were trying to adopt out were mixes. They required you to have owned that breed of dog before. You had to be in a long term relationship (i.e. no single people). You had to agree to let them make a home inspection every 6 months. They had to be added to the list of approved contacts at the pet’s vet. They could take the dog back at any time and for any reason. Etc.

I do the vast majority of my gaming from November through February (i.e. “winter”). Outside of that window, I rarely have time to play, and even when I have time, I usually have other things I’d rather do. I probably have another month or so of my gaming season left. Things just didn’t work out this year.

On the flip side, I managed to get about 45 minutes of down time this afternoon unexpectedly. So I fired up Doom (2016), which is the game I’ve focused on this season. I managed to make it to mission 12 out of 13, so I’m pretty close to the end as far as I can tell! It seems likely I’ll be able to finish it in a matter of days, so long as I can find the time!

I ain’t playin’ shit. I haven’t had any gaming time in over a week. I’m very, very sad. Perhaps tonight will be the night? Probably not, but one can hope.

Instead of Canada, we’re going to rename it Canamerica. Instead of Mexico, we’re going to name it Mexigoingtoamerica.

I have a small number of games in my collection that I know for a fact that I have not played them at all. To be fair, 2 of the games are demos, the other is free-to-play IIRC but that’s completely irrelevant.

My actual point is, none of the games in my Steam library that I for sure have never played show “PLAY TIME 0 minutes” nor “LAST PLAYED Never.”

Is this an old UI thing, is that a made up playtime summary, or is the UI different on different platforms?

The body builder with claws and a skull for a face is the character, Skeletor from He-Man for those of you not aware. Or maybe you recognize him from She-Ra? Was Skeletor in She-Ra? I don’t know I never watched that show.

Truth is, we cannot be certain Mark Zuckerberg fucked an ostrich. The only thing we can be certain of is that his mother very clearly fucked an ostrich and/or was herself an ostrich.

But like so many things, I feel like this feature has gotten worse over the years. Seemed to be fairly accurate for some time, but it honestly wouldn’t surprise me if they’ve made it shittier with “AI”. Now I get more false positives than anything, and the one time recently I did actually forget to attach a file, the message didn’t even show up … I guess because I said “I’ve included the latest copy” rather than “I’ve attached the latest copy”?

What do you mean by tempting? Like are you asking about brand new games that don’t qualify for “patient” or just games in general? I’m not what most would call a gamer (I’m just an old dude that plays games sometimes) so I don’t know that a “Civ 7” gives me much context as to what’s being asked.

No. To each their own, but I think that’d be a ridiculous stipulation to place on myself and it’s hard to imagine why anybody would want to do it outside of super niche reasons.

Still playing through 2016 Doom. In my defense, this hasn’t been a great year for carving out time for gaming. I realized a couple days ago that I hadn’t even played anything in over a week (Dec 30th was the last day I’d played a game). Sad times being an adult with responsibilities.

Anyway, I’m hoping I finish the game soon. I don’t know if it qualifies as “patient gaming”, but I bought the Castlevania Dominus collection in 2024, which is the PC/Steam collection of DS Metroidvania Castlevania games. I played these games on the DS back in the day, still have them and my old DS, but I’m looking forward to playing them again. I mostly game on the Steam Deck these days and I think these games are a good fit for that hardware. They’re all really fun games that I look back on fondly, so here’s hoping I can get started on at least one of them in the next few weeks or so before my gaming season comes to an end.

I started playing one of these on the Wii many, many years ago. I think it was the original. It was a lot of fun. I don’t think I beat it, nor was I heavily invested enough to remember names and strategies, but it was cool to play an RPG that I didn’t get to play when it originally came out.

You see the real secret to a happy life are the blue bins we pass along the way.

If that’s how you feel “Garfruleld” then I’m leaving you and I’m going to got live with my new beauchat, Handkerchief.

Sounds like Eternal might not be my thing, but who knows. One of the reasons I choose Doom over Eternal initially is because Doom lets me take my time and explore when I want to. Eternal seemed like it was go, go, go cortisol, cortisol, cortisol. And that was well above my limit.

Well I think I’m a robot. Couldn’t do the things that it’s asking me to do. So I guess I’m a robot. Beeboo beeboo boop beeboo beeboo bee boop.

I’m still trying to finish 2016 Doom, but life has been literally Deck blocking me for the past few months, so it’s been slow going.

If i finish that game in the next few weeks, I’m going to go back and give Doom Eternal another second chance again once more. I’ve given it a try a number of times, just like I gave 2016 Doom a try numerous times with no luck. However, this year Doom suddenly clicked for me, and I’ve been playing it every chance I get (which is not much or often), so I’m thinking that may translate into finding a bit of love for Doom Eternal, even though I know they are very different games with different approaches to game play.

If that doesn’t work out, then I’ve got a few games that I’ve technically “started”, but I haven’t gotten very far in. So, if and when I decide to pick them up again, I’ll either restart them because I’m not far along enough for it to make much difference OR I’ll continue playing but it’s so early in the game that it’s basically the same as starting from the beginning.

One game I’ve just recently been dabbling with is a slightly older game called “Halls of Torment”. Similarish in game play to one of my other favorites “Vampire Survivors”, it seems like a lot of fun. I’ve also recently purchased the Resident Evil 4 remake and it’s a nice dose of nostalgia even though I much prefer the wiimote controls of the Wii version that I first played it on.

I’m going to be honest, Hades II hasn’t really clicked for me yet and I’ve given it lots of tries. The first game had me hooked almost instantly, so I was hoping to find that same connection with the sequel. So far, it’s not happened. Having said that, I saw that there’s a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game in a similar style as Hades, so I got that to play. So far I like the game, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles : Splintered Fate, but I’m not far enough along in it to have a strong opinion.

And my trusty, reliable back-up plan if nothing else works out? Castlevania Dominus Collection. The Castlevania “Metroidvanias” are my favorites. I’ve played all of these DS games on the original hardware, but it’s been so long since I played them, it will be like starting anew. Except in this case, there will be no question as to whether I will enjoy the game or not since I played them all before and loved them.

If I were going to use a dye on my skin for something like this, I would first test it out on a small patch of skin some place where nobody’s ever going to see it, like on my penis.

Well, some people say men are basically just dogs and I guess if some of us can lick our own assholes, that’s further proof.

I use VS Code and GitHub Co-pilot and develop in a variety of different languages and frameworks. I’ve got lots of experience with some, but I’m less knowledgeable on others.

So, having the AI assist with languages I am very familiar with is basically a way to save time and preserve my mental energy. For languages and frameworks I’m less experienced with, it speeds things up because I’m not having to constantly search how-tos and forums for guidance. And for languages/frameworks I have limited or no experience with, it can be a helpful learning tool that speeds up how long it takes to get ramped up.

With this set-up, if I start writing a line of code and then pause for a moment, co-pilot kicks in and tries to autocomplete that line, sometimes even suggests the entire block of code. It’s really good at recognizing simple patterns and common boilerplate stuff. It’s less good at figuring out more complex stuff, though.

However, I find that if I start out by writing a comment that explains what I’m trying to accomplish, and to some degree how to accomplish it before I start writing one of those more complex blocks/lines, the AI has a much higher success rate in returning helpful, functioning code. So, basically yes, I write the comment to describe code I haven’t written, and I’ll let the AI take over from there.

This works for code, raw database queries, configuration files, and even for writing tests. I’m not an expert at building out Docker configurations for local development or configuring auto-deployment on whatever random system is being used for a project, but I can often get those things up and running just by describing in comments what I need and what I’m trying to accomplish.

The VS Code co-pilot extension also has some context menu items that let you ask questions and/or ask for suggestions, which comes in handy for some things, but for me, typing out my intentions in comments and then letting the auto-complete kick in as I’m starting a line of code is faster, more efficient, and seems to work better.

Granted, co-pilot also likes to try to auto-complete comments, so that’s sometimes funny just to read what it “thinks” I’m trying to do. And most of the time, I do remove my comments that were specifically to guide co-pilot on what I wanted it to do if they’re super redundant. And, at the end of the day, not everything co-pilot suggests is production-worthy, functional, nor does what I actually described. In fact, a lot of it is not, so you should expect to go back and fine tune things at a minimum. It’s just that overall, it’s good enough that even with all the supervision and revisions I have to make, it’s still a net positive, for now.