I use a budget app for tracking income and spending on a transaction basis and then keep the rest of my finances in spreadsheets.

Wow, 1st class, I didn’t realize out of context comics paid so well! :)

I’m really impressed with how quickly you’ve made such a huge life change, that takes some serious courage for you and your family. I would love to follow along behind you, but have no path for it, so I’ll have to stick things out and hope for the best (or not worst) here.

Oh, that sounds like a sweet deal. I should have been aspired to be a corporation instead of a normal person.

Stock “news” is stupid, the Switch 2 announcement has been expected for a year. The only news is that the company confirmed it will launch this year, which was already expected. Real news is when we start hearing what games will be available at launch (or soon after).

I don’t really understand how Walgreens is still in business. I only go there when I need something that the grocery store pharmacy section doesn’t carry and I’m not willing to wait 1-2 days to have it shipped from Amazon. Every time I go, its a ghost town with more employees than customers.

Skyrim, Fallout: New Vegas, and Mass Effect Legendary are my favorites that I come back to repeatedly. Of course, they were all probably perfectly playable on your old PC.

Hitman World of Assassination was good and not playable on your old PC. I have not replayed it yet, but it is definitely repayable with the option to approach every level in different ways.

I’ve gotten bored with the Assassins Creed games, but the newer ones are very pretty and they’re open world with lots of story and tons of things to do.

You mentioned Far Cry 3, there’s also 4, 5, 6 New Dawn, and Primal. I haven’t played 5, 6, or New Dawn, but 4 plays the same as 3 (just a different story) and I actually like Primal quite a bit.

The Just Cause series is really over the top mayhem, but I enjoyed them. Lots of open world destruction for a…just cause (or maybe just because).

The Saints Row games are ridiculous, childish fun. Very similar to GTA, but makes GTA look classy by comparison. I think Saints Row 4 and Gat Out of Hell are the best ones. The first 2 are quite dated at this point. There is a recent remaster of 3, I liked the original, but haven’t played the remaster yet. There’s a newer one that’s just called “Saints Row”, I’ve only played a little of it so far and its pretty bland.

That’s probably it. I get that many people enjoy overcoming difficult bosses by mastering the tactics, but I find it boring and repetitive. At this point in my life I enjoy games with an engaging story, cozy games, or open games where I can create my own story in my mind as I play it (like The Sims or Mount & Blade…such very similar games :D).

You’re going to have so many scratched rugs and doors…and dropped cans of paint around your house soon! Well, my cats haven’t dropped any cans of paint yet, but based on my experience so far in Stray, it seem inevitable. Enjoy the new additions to your household!

I just finished replaying Life is Strange (the original). Now I’m starting Stray for a first play-through.

I always thought I despised soulslike games because they don’t let you adjust the difficulty level. I tried this game because they recognized that was bullshit and gave you the ability to easily overpower difficult bosses. Now I know I despise soulslike games for some different reason that I have figured out yet. I did not like this game.

Thanks, I’ll check it out!

I actually liked Opposing Force and Blue Shift better than HL1 back when they were still new. Recently I thought I would play through them all again, but I only made it a little way into the original before I quit. Going back to old mechanics is not generally enjoyable for me. Or maybe I should have just skipped HL1 and gone directly to the ones I liked better. To be fair, I skipped ahead to HL2 and am still struggling to enjoy the dated mechanics.

I’ve blocked as much news out of my life as I can manage with the exception of some financial news. That includes blocking all the news communities on Lemmy. Things still slip through, but I also push myself to just ignore the bits that I still see and move on with my life. I’m much happier as a result. In terms of being aware of big news, if its a big enough deal, the fine folks here at Lemmy will create memes to let me know.

I don’t think the loading screens are the failure, the fast travel system is. Depending on where you are and where you’re going, you have different fast travel options. Sometimes you can pick your end destination directly (sort of). Other times you have to pick your planet (loading screen), land (loading screen), either run to your destination or pick a fast travel location on the local map (loading screen), enter a building (loading screen), take an elevator (loading screen) and now you’ve arrived. This is about the worst case I can think of with 5 loading screens.

Even in a best case scenario, like having the option to directly travel back to the lodge, you still have travel to the outside of the lodge (loading screen) and enter the lodge (loading screen). So, in most cases you’ll have between 2 and 5 loading screens unless you’re just traveling between outdoor locations on the same planet.

Which I guess takes us a step further and suggests that the pointless spaceflight feature of the game (or the pointless smuggling) is the real culprit. If you didn’t need to scan ships for contraband, they could have built a more robust map system that allowed better point to point fast travel. You’d still run into issues of indoor/outdoor, or indoors with multiple areas, but it would have been much better.

I had Brelyna in my last (current?) run and have enjoyed her quite a bit.

Same. I’ve tried LEDs and they really don’t cut it for christmas lights, so I stick with incandescent, at least in the house. LEDs outside might be fine, but I rarely get around to putting up outside decorations.

The bicycle, otherwise all that fast food is going to catch up with you quick.

You can study to become a beer judge, even just for fun: https://dev.bjcp.org/education-training/exam-preparation/beer-judge-training-study-program/

One of the parts of that is to get a kit that helps you recognize “off” flavors: https://www.bjcp.org/education-training/education-resources/sensory-kits/

I think they’ll go full terminal mode on the next iteration. You’ll download a 100MB launcher and then just do cloud gaming from there.

If travel time and cost doesn’t matter, I would always pick Hawaii over Florida any time of year. If travel time matters, then I’d look at the Caribbean before Florida for anyone on the East coast. Florida would be my last choice if I needed to keep things cheaper.