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Not quite as simple grandfather’s method of Christmas shopping for family, but I think my dogs will be very happy with this plan:

My grandfather’s way was to basically buy three bottles, tie three bows, and call it success. That’s actually a great idea in a way when you consider him, my grandmother, and my mother has different tastes, it’s something everyone can share, and will probably be consumed before next year, lol.

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Yay, it looks like iPad OS 13.3 fixed the holy-crap-the-packets-are-gone level of lagosity when combining Bluetooth mouse and keyboard. Me thinks this will get some use.

And I’ve yet to cry bugs, bugs, bugs everywhere and not a fix in sight as hard as < 13.2.2~13.2.3. As far as I can tell the only knew issue is the mouse wheel scrolling is broken, and that’s hardly a problem compared to can’t effin’ type ‘it.

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Well, it has taken a good sweet time but I finally got around to something I’ve been meaning to do for a while now.

Earlier this year, I replaced Centauri’s system drive. Going from the first small SSD I ever bought, to a shiny 1 TB able to replace its hard drive. Since then, I’ve largely migrated all data over from the hard drive.

My plans for the now redundant storage capacity has been to fix the actual thorn in my storage side. Since repurposing my best portable drive to deal with my laptop’s backups, my xbox has had to make due with an old and extremely slow 300G laptop drive for its external drive. One that sucks so much that it actually makes Deathstar One’s internal 500G look sexy, and the original Xbox Ones are not equipped with sexy drives.

Hauling Centauri out was mostly leg work rather than effort. The only real pain in the arse is that the gigabit cable doesn’t have enough extra length for me to “Pull” the tower out, rather I need to connect/disconnect the cable before moving the tower more than an inch or so from final resting place next to the wall. Yeah, bollocks to that.

Of course plugging the drive into one of my spare enclosures is as easy peasy as pulling out the screw driver set; it helps that I kept one spare within quick reach and my second spare in deep storage, last time I redid /dev/closet.

Now the real irksome ribbon was the Xbox. It decided to disavow all knowledge of how to format the sucker. Because Microsoft in all their glory, eventually decided there should be a ~200M magic partition ahead of the NTFS volume. And Xbox, no likely. Enter Linux powered laptop, GNU parted, and cursing at HDMI cables finally falling out the back of Deathstar One (>_<).

In theory, by morning most of the data should now be transferred over to it. Allowing me to decommission the 300G laptop drive to virtually anything but video game storage, and it’ll be nice not running 97+++++ percent full all the frickin’ time.

Even my lazy ass can get around to juggling parts around if you piss me off enough.

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With MechWarrior 5 finally launching, I find myself torn.

On one hand: a decent MechWarrior game basically guarantees that I’ll pry open my wallet and fork over the cash. And there’s few enough games in the past twenty years that fit that definition for me.

But on the other hand: my policy towards Epic exclusives tend to be No Steam Version Equals No Purchase. Of course, someone had to go and test this resolve by launching the kinda game I’ve been waiting eons for….. bastards.

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The Lie That Helped Build Nintendo

I’d really like to imagine that the banker must have shit himself when Bergsten bro he’s the topic of the 10,000 units. But I reckon things turned out pretty well for everyone in the end, lol.

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Things that are probably kind of sad, in their own way.

Ended up watching Red vs Blue, which I rather skipped when it was young.

Thinking back to the days when graphics looked like that Blood Gulch.

Legendary was fun, but no chance in hell I’m doing that with an Xbox controller.

Remembering that I still have my Halo: CE disc.

Thinking that buying the Master Chief Collection again on PC, would be a good way to play Halo 3 and 4 with a mouse.

Thinking that for $40, I’d rather buy my iPad a keyboard case or add to my anime collection.

If I actually got to play games more often, I’d probably just Game Pass.

Did I mention, I originally bought Halo Combat Evolved because I thought the Assault Rifle looked cool? Yeah, I was probably a nitwit when I was that young.

Post Script: Huh? The storage requirement for MCC on Steam is marked 20 GB? I could swear that my Xbox dedicates several times that much to it.

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While my back isn’t overly happy with a day spent camped in front of Deathstar One, I at least enjoyed binge playing Halo: Reach.

For the most part, the story is a sad one given the fate of Noble Team but the result makes a rather great Halo game. Spartans might not be killed in action, officially, but there are no survivors of Noble team by the end.

Noble Six is a rather interesting one. He exhibits many of the same qualities as the Master Chief, but perhaps lacks his luck. His fate isn’t the saddest though, that probably goes to Daisy-023. Aside from that, Noble team is full of far more developed characters than other fireteams in Halo games. Kat, may very well be the most intriguing Spartan I’ve seen.

The Spartan II on the team reminded me of Dr. Halsey’s rather unique relationship to the older Spartans. I’ve always found it curious that Halsey is portrayed as a more motherly figure, despite being far from compassionate. Cold and pragmatic might be a better description of the doctor. Actually, I’d like to think that she has a special place in hell, for what she did to them—what was done to those children was pretty damned wrong, and definitely overkill from the pre-Covenant war problems.

On the flip side: her children did go on to significant success during the Human-Covenant war. Jorge-052 being far from the least of them. As far as I know, only a dozen or two of that generation survived the Human-Covenant war, in contrast to ONI’s later efforts to mass produce Spartan III and IV warriors, which are pretty plentiful by Halo’s second trilogy.

Noble team’s effort certainly makes for a surprising amount of success, compared to the S.O.L. it leads into with The Pillar of Autumn’s flight from Covenant forces. I suppose when you have a fire team full of Spartans instead of a bunch of hopelessly screwed, you’re likely to see thousands of Covenant go down long before the Spartans breath their last breath.

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I have to admit, when I had bought Texas toast for making Ruben sandwiches , it was just as a work around to avoid going to two stores. But I think it may become my standard bread, lol.

It’s proven ideal for making a sandwich full enough to be worth eating, without becoming as hard on the economics and storage  space as going to hoggy rolls and the like. You can stuff a pair of slices in the toaster and load up a sandwich like my momma used to make, and the bread is something like $1.35 a loaf.

Another win is that one slice of Texas toast is enough for breakfast. Usually I would make two slices of toast is on the menu. Combined with trying to use up some old eggs, and sausages to share, let’s just say that Willow and company only care about their share, lol.

Pretty much the only reason I buy the breakfast sausage when they’re on sale, is I know three plump partridges starving doggies who would like some.