Trip's Life (Recent episodes)
16 May 2019 - Thursday
I now have the power to make changes to documentation on the website!
But there's still reviewers between me and ultimate power, boo.
Hey, look, I'm caught up on this stupid blog! Also I have configured
my phone to bug the absolute crap out of me about going to bed. It's not
really adulting, but it's something.
We have finished the first season of
Elementary! Holmes
vs Moriarty, in brain-to-brain combat!
I keep reading books by Stephen Hunt because they're almost good, but
then they don't quite make it, and Empty Between The Stars
is no exception. I think it would be good if the enhanced intellects
were actually smarter than unaugmented humans. The ideological divide
was good, though.
Words:
FAIL.
Make a comment!
15 May 2019 - Wednesday
Sitting up to use the large monitor seems to make me less sleepy than
hunching over the laptop, which is good.
No gaming because everyone is busy or dead or something.
Elementary is
entering the end-of-season death spiral with the
antepenultimate episode. That's a cliffhanger, all right!
Alysha's Fall (MCA Hogarth) are the first book and prequel
in one of the author's earlier "Peltedverse" series. It turns out Alysha's
backstory is in fact every bit as horrible and traumatic as
Second implies, but she might have gained wisdom from it.
Hell Divers (Nicholas Sansbury Smith) is basically a
summer blockbuster movie in book form, right down to the plucky kid and
the unnecessarily glowing equipment. It would probably be an okay movie,
but that's about the level of worldbuilding it has.
The 13th
Age Book of
Demons starts off with a demonologist class that, like all 13th Age
classes, is an interesting idea implemented with too many fiddly bits that
don't make enough of a difference and then goes into bunch of hellholes in
varying levels of detail, all of which would make great adventures, and
ends with a description of a possible First Triumph (terrifying and
fascist) and suggestions for the Diabolist's lair (terrifying and surreal).
Great ideas dragged down by a system that (to be charitable) I just don't
get.
Words:
FAIL.
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14 May 2019 - Tuesday
Now I have a regular weekly one-on-one with my supervisor (I think
she's not technically my manager, just team lead), just like a real
employee. But I am still not very smart.
In the first volume of Witch Hat Atelier (Kamome Shirahama),
a young girl ends up being apprenticed to a magician because she found
out the dark secret and the "real" apprentices all hate her and there is
some intrigue going on with how she found out and the art is very
pretty.
The Child Prince (Honor Raconteur) is also about magic and
magicians and not D&D. It's what would have been standard fantasy before
D&D ate everything, with a cursed prince and a wizard living in a giant
earth elemental and dragons and everything. Definite bonus points for having
magic that is fairy kisses and crystallized sunlight, not reskinned
electricity.
All The Different Shades of Blue (WR Gingell) is a pretty
short piece in the "Between..." settings, which lets us see Pet from an
external perspective, and she's really kind of terrifying.
We aren't even done with the first of six seasons of
Elementary and it
looks like the Moriarty plot is about explode. What will they do for
five more seasons?
Words:
FAIL.
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13 May 2019 - Monday
I still have some coughing, but not as much, so hopefully I was less
offensive to my coworkers today. Also I tried doing a ticket, but I did
it wrong, so it's just as well the person who knows what he's doing is
the one who actually responded to the customer.
Apparently it's not only the viewers who think that something fishy is
going on in the Land of the
Lustrous, but the season ended before Phos could actually find anything
out, or even find out what momentous pronouncement Sensei had!
Make Me No Grave (Hayley Stone) has fantasy elements, but
it's mostly about redemption and moral ambiguity and gunfights, because
it's a Western.
The art style of Yuri Bear Storm (Ikunigomakinako, Akiko
Morishima) makes it look like standard high-school shoujo, but really it's
super gay and I don't mean in some subtextual or metaphorical way and
everyone remembers their childhood as fairytales and some people can see
the secret truth that everything is made of lesbian bears that want to date
and/or devour human girls and as of volume 2 the sex is definitely real and
the anthropophagy hasn't been ruled out!
Words:
FAIL.
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12 May 2019 - Sunday
Finally I managed to see Avengers: Endgame! I might
have seen it sooner if I had anyone to go with, but Marith never saw Infinity War and no one
else watches movies.
It was pretty good! I'm not sure I support how everyone ended up, I
think some people should have done better and some worse, but overall it
was good. Also, [SPOILER], wow.
I texted my mom for Mother's Day, and ended up talking awkwardly to
her on the phone for like an hour. I am so bad at phones.
Watched more
Elementary.
Finally, they have a housekeeper named Hudson! Also clever criminals,
and Joan is getting better at detection because Holmes is being less of
a butt.
O Maidens In Your Savage Season (Mari Okada, Nao Emoto)
is about high-school girls who end up reading novels with sex scenes for
their literature club and get in a tizzy about sex and then more of a
tizzy because sex is actually a thing that other people do and then
angst because of so much tizzy &c. But no yuri in the first volume, what
is even wrong with these people?
Words:
FAIL.
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11 May 2019 - Saturday
I still have the coughing, so I wimped out and rode the bus to
grocery shopping. This would have been more indulgent if I hadn't had to
run the last block to catch the bus that was rerouted due to some thing
happening in Willow Glen.
- Sailor Moon Super S 156: I think this is the first target we've seen that didn't have even a standard pink magic soul. Maybe that's why whatsertoes was able to blandish him?
- RWBY 1.11-15: Jaune's secret, and Blake's secret. Also, Penny.
- A Place Further Than The Universe 12-13: The emotional and triumphant end!
- Fruits Basket (2019) 5: I remember the "Tohru goes back to her horrible relatives" arc taking longer in the manga, but for her sake, I'm glad it only lasted one episode!
Pet develops even more alarming powers and her Behindkind are even
bigger gits in Between Floors (WR Gingell).
Words:
FAIL, but Ayse may have persuaded me to watch less TV with Marith and
banish her to her bioexclusion zone so I can write and/or go to bed at a
sensible hour. Maybe.
Make a comment!
10 May 2019 - Friday
Today I had less mucus, but more coughing. I watched a lot of
training videos, so presumably now I am not less ept than a customer.
We watched some more Land of the Lustrous, and
yikes! Phos was kind of annoying before, but I don't think this new
improved Phos is better!
Words:
FAIL.
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9 May 2019 - Thursday
Today I evolved into a being composed of 100% hand-crafted artisanal
mucus. I feel bad for the person at an adjacent desk.
There was a technical meeting, but my brain is too small.
Sherlock Holmes is
not just the worst roommate, but the worst mentor.
Smokin' Parade (Jinsei Kataoka, Kazuma Kondou) is very meh.
I mean, it has cyborgs fighting monsters, and naked women bathing in
tubs full of eyeballs and blood, but it doesn't speak to me.
On The Shoulders of Titans (Andrew Rowe)
is the sequel to
Sufficiently Advanced Magic. It does address some of the
plot threads already in existence, but mostly by adding more mysteries.
This is not a bad approach.
Words:
FAIL.
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8 May 2019 - Wednesday
I got some extra brain from special training session, but people are
so busy I don't have much chance to feed on their neurons.
Brooks doesn't work where I thought he did, so I can't easily carpool
with him, but
it turns out the extended dance remix of my regular commute gets me to
gaming at the same time as him.
This week, we annoyed the lamia until she noticed us breaking in and
used the Gong of No Saving Throw to disable us while she scarpered. Then
we broke in very slowly and cautiously, accomplishing little. At least I
got to turn into a giant spider, but no one really cared next to Mike's
character doing as much damage in one round as the entire party has in
hit points. Because D&D.
Sufficiently Advanced Magic (Andrew Rowe) is in the very
specific subgenre where the author creates an involved and numerically
quantifiable magic system and the main character learns it. Part of this
involves giant structures full of impossible architecture, contrived
puzzles, and monsters with no means of support, but on the other hand,
ace and genderfluid representation.
Words:
FAIL.
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7 May 2019 - Tuesday
I didn't fall asleep during the scrum meeting this time!
In Between Shifts (WR Gingell), Pet has to go undercover at
a supermarket, because more monsters. She still doesn't give any
supernaturals any respect whatsoever, because they don't deserve it.
The Singularity Trap (Dennis E Taylor) is about humans
surviving alien attention through game theory and general obnoxiousness.
It does have some modern stuff, but really it feels like a story from
some decades ago.
Another couple episodes of
Land of the Lustrous.
Hm, that's interesting!
Words:
FAIL.
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6 May 2019 - Monday
I went to work and did um something. Read docs, I guess. It was not
actually that exciting.
Watched more Elementary. Ah, the drama
of rent-controlled apartments in New York.
Between Jobs (WR Gingell) is the story of a nameless,
off-the-grid teenager in Tasmania who gets adopted as a housekeeper/pet
(not like that!) for a trio of monster-hunting monsters. She does not
give them the respect they feel they deserve because frankly, they're
all gits. Also something weird is clearly going on with her. Good
descriptions of the multiple levels of reality blending into each other.
Words:
FAIL.
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5 May 2019 - Sunday
Little did we know when we planned to meet for PAD&D5
today that it was going to be the grand finale of the campaign!
First we played the battle of the [SPOILER] who were stuck to the walls
last session, along with Hazelrae and Lance, to take back their clockwork
spaceship from the [SPOILER]. The drink dispenser was a complete writeoff,
but the chupaqueso dispenser and the ships's cat
lizard mascot survived intact. Plasma cannon for the
win!
Once the disposition of the spaceship was settled, we switched back
to the rest of the Heroines of Redlarch, who were in an infinite void
with infinite quantities of [SPOILER] pouring into the abyss beneath
them and infinite quantities of [SPOILER] somewhere infinitely far that
way, and a huge creature representing each of those there to eat the
Heroines (and everything else). There were also additional [SPOILER] who
needed to get back to the looming spaceship to bring it to full combat
effectiveness.
The Heroines collectively have the tactical sense of a rutabaga, but it
just so happens they decide to focus on one huge beast first and let the
spaceship (with Hazelrae and some [SPOILER] keep the other busy, and it
turns out to be the right thing to do. Hardly anyone gets swept over the
edge into the abyss, and Akrá gets rescued by Lance and conveyed to
the spaceship to man one of the secondary weapons (somehow we determined it
was the chupacabra machine, I accept no responsibility for this) so it's
all good.
Having now defeated all four [SPOILER], the Heroines of Red Larch are
deemed the winners, and the world is saved! No one expected that, but
there it is!
Next, Dave will run the Sentinels of the Multiverse
quickstart pack and we'll see if people like it. If so, we will punish
him by making him run more.
We watched some Elementary and some Land of the Lustrous. One
of these involved a giant snail.
Words:
FAIL.
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4 May 2019 - Saturday
The cleaners are only once a month at this point, which doesn't seem
to have made Marith explode, but I don't know that she'd tell me. Maybe
she spends all the time I'm at work huffing the filtered air from her
atmosphere cleanser.
I meant to go shopping on time, but was distracted by reading, so
everything was terrible.
- RWBY 1.10:
Ruby's first leadership crisis!
- A Place Further Than The Universe 10-11: Hurray, they made it to the base! And it hasn't been taken over by shoggoths! Their youtube comments might have been taken over by social climbers, though.
- Hibike! Euphonium 2 8:
Aww, Reina taking care of sick Kumiko!
- Fruits Basket (2019) 4: Kagura's violence no longer seems as funny, for some reason.
I'd read the beta of the 13th Age Book of Ages
(Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan) and the published version seems substantially
identical. It's still full of great ideas, I just don't want to use D&D to
play them!
In Empowered and the Soldier of Love (Adam Warren, Karla
Diaz), Empowered has to save the city (again) because her teammates are
useless (even more than usual) from a magical girl with the powers of love
and a magic pangolin. This goes about as well as you might expect. Notable
for not having Adam Warren art because, according to the author notes, he
can't draw frilly stuff and would probably die if he tried, which seems
legit based on his existing art.
Words:
FAIL.
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3 May 2019 - Friday
After four days of wearing grown-up shirts, I ran out of ones that I
like, so I tried wearing a tshirt with my slacks. Apparently I use my
forearms for cooling but not my calves, because I felt about 73% less
stuffy. Also no one pointed and laughed (especially not the guy sitting
one row in front of me in the office, who wears cargo shorts and cusses
like a sailor but is the VP of Eng), so I think that's about as much of
a grownup as I can be for now.
I'm surprised it took this long for
Elementary to
introduce Col Sebastian Moran and Moriarty, but clearly they are in this
for the multi-season haul.
As advertised, Land of
the Lustrous is about living gems, but is nothing at all like Steven Universe! It is
very mysterious, in fact, but also nonbinary (although it's hard not to see
the gems as female a lot of the time). We'll have to see where it goes.
The latest book from Eva Darrows,
Belly Up, is not genre like The Awesome but I
liked it a lot anyway. It is about a teenaged girl who ends up pregnant,
but it is not horrible because she has an awesome family and best
friend. Surprisingly, it is not even as intense as Dead Little
Mean Girl.
Words:
FAIL.
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2 May 2019 - Thursday
The first event was a little later today, and also I knew what I was
doing, so I was able to sleep in more than yesterday, but not as much as
I would have liked. Also the train didn't work quite right, but I
couldn't do anything except wait for them to get their act together, so
overall the morning could definitely have been worse
This second (and thankfully final) day of the user summit was
presentations by customers about what they were doing with the product.
Some of the presentations were pretty bad (poor English, which as a
monolingual I can't actually condemn, but it might have been better to
have someone else deliver the presentation; terrible unreadable slides;
general scatteredness), but others were good, even if I did sometimes
think, "wow, the capitalism is really piling up in here". But someone has
been running the product for eight years without downtime,
which makes supporting it seem both more and less doable. Also,
the new nonvolatile memory from Intel looks really slick.
I undoubtedly should have stuck aorund to network, but my brain hurt
after two days of conference, and the food wasn't as appealing, so I
left right after the last scheduled thing.
Today's commute reading was
Last Bastion (Rachel Aaron, Travis Bach), the sequel to
Forever Fantasy Online. Unfortunately, this volume is also
all about the immediate battles (and Roxxy being a butthead), not about how
this predicament came to exist for them to even be in, and not even much
about suddenly being in new different bodies. The very last line
suggests that we might get some of that in the next book, but is
probably false cake.
Words:
FAIL.
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1 May 2019 - Wednesday
I didn't want to, but I got up at 4:30 to walk to the train station
to ride the train to San Francisco to ride a bus to the hotel where the
user summit is being held. It actually worked out just fine, which is
good, because I'm not sure I could have handled any deviations from the
plan.
The summit had many people, and it was very warm, and a lot of people
don't know how to give presentations, but except for when I was falling
asleep it was reasonably informative. The morning was mostly technical
stuff, which I need to know, so that was good. Also they gave us plenty
of food, with a buffet including dim sum for dinner.
On the commute home, I finished Spinning Silver (Naomi
Novik), which was very good. It is the best version of Rumplestiltskin but
it is also Beauty and the Beast and several more fairy tales combined into
one coherent narrative and all the women are brave and smart and all the
men are beautiful gits and it is great! Also Jewish.
Then when I finally got home, we watched the last two episodes of
Planet With, which
were a bit Gurren Laganish. I think the series was a little
long, there was too much fighting and not enough philosophy, but I do
not demand those six hours of my life back or anything, and it's always
good to see compassion and forgiveness espoused as virtues.
I have to get up again tomorrow.
Words:
FAIL.
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30 April 2019 - Tuesday
Hm, this commute gets even more annoying if the bus for the first leg
is late. Bah!
But I did get to work, and managed to follow simple instructions,
which people professed to be amazed by. They didn't even fire me!
Avalon is still alive, but her work is even crazier. One might think a
boss who teaches classes in giving feedback could do a performance
review sanely, but apparently one would be sorely mistaken.
I meant to go to bed early, but didn't do a very good job.
Words:
FAIL.
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29 April 2019 - Monday
It takes about an hour and a half to get to work, which is certainly
not the worst commute ever, or even in living memory, but does seem like
it after my 20-minute commute at my last job. Bah.
I shook many hands, and got assigned a lot of reading, and also
learned that I need to be at the customer summit in San Francisco on
Wednesday and Thursday.
The summit starts at 8:00.
Words:
FAIL.
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28 April 2019 - Sunday
Ken invited me to play Gloomhaven,
but I have to get up and go to work tomorrow, so I sadly declined. I did
not accomplish anything else today, either.
We finished the demiseason of
She-Ra, and it
continued to be good. Also, doomed.
Words:
FAIL.
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27 April 2019 - Saturday
Today I went to "Spring Fling" at Jus and Nonny's school. (Marith
did not go because there was sun and allergens and also she is made of
stress.) There was also running, although not as much as last year on
Jus and Nonny's part. Jus's friend ran at least 17 miles, though, which
is just crazy for a 3rd-grader!
Then I went shopping and tried to meet up with Marith to go to anime,
but she betrayed me by already being there to talk to Dave about her
computer and also show him a bunch of
RWBY! But I made it
anyway, so there!
Words:
FAIL.
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26 April 2019 - Friday
Yay, the new season of She-Ra is out! We only
managed to watch the first four episodes because my brain is so small, but
it was good! Poor Scorpia! Poor Adora! Shadowweaver backstory! Hordak
backstory and goals!
Words:
360, but my words do not count as success.
Marith's do, though.
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25 April 2019 - Thursday
We watched some more Elementary, but wanted
something to contrast it with, so we watched
Planet With from the
computer. Finally, the [SPOILER] Faction makes their big move!
Words:
FAIL.
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24 April 2019 - Wednesday
Ken's germs are less alarming this week, so we had everyone available
for Kelsey's D&D5
adventure! This session, our heroes(?) managed to obtain camels and other
essential supplies and travel into the desert, where they ended up at what
they're pretty sure is the Screaming Place. No, overly friendly monster, we
would not like to come in and enjoy your hospitality!
A Memory Called Empire (Arkady Martine) is about brains,
culture, diplomacy, identity, poetry, treason, and all sorts of other good
things! It is definitely in the same sub-genre as Ancillary
Justice, and the cover promises sequels!
Words:
FAIL.
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23 April 2019 - Tuesday
Ugh, Planet With is
in the new format that doesn't work on the ancient Crunchyroll app on my
ancient Apple TV. Maybe I should upgrade to something that's not abandoned
by the manufacturer.
So we watched like three episodes of
Elementary, and
Holmes is still the worst roommate ever. Also some people died.
Words:
FAIL.
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22 April 2019 - Monday
Since I have a signed offer letter, I called the other company that
wanted to interview me and offered condolences that they wouldn't be
able to hire me this time.
After some delay due to not being very smart, I read volumes four and
five of
Made in Abyss (Akihito Tsukushi). Well, that was dark and
terrifying!
Words:
FAIL.
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21 April 2019 - Sunday
Finally the germ count is low enough for Jeremy to run
PAD&D5,
but Deirdre has broken a crown and must seek emergency dental care on
Easter Sunday, which sounds like the exact opposite of fun.
:( But if we have N-1, we must game!
Since none of us were at the last session, Jeremy summarized how,
with the help of [SPOILER], we successfully assaulted [SPOILER] and
destroyed it with [SPOILER], but then everything collapsed and the
tentacles came. (But Hazelrae was abducted by multidimensional rings of
light just before everything went to hell, again.)
The former Heroines of Red Larch, now hanging out in a water-filled place of bad
angles as the chief lieutenants of the
Divine Masters (aka [SPOILER]) have to compete with each other for
status and power. When the struggle inevitably turns violent
(coughMaracough), the Heroines reduced to 0 HP wake
back up in their right minds, courtesy of the Crystal Dragon. Then they
have to deal with their erstwhile minions, but that's not very
difficult. There's a reason those guys were only minions.
But, near the end of the battle before Lamthanc has been cured, a
hideous demon grabs her holy axe and runs off with it! The Heroines
chase it into another place full of bad angles and also tentacle
monsters and foul water. As usual, Rimardo complains about being useless
and then pretty much wins the encounter single-handedly, so Lam does get
her axe back, although it has demon cooties all over it. Also, the
[SPOILER] who helped them last session are stuck to the walls of the
place with tentacles (boo!) and still bear the marks of being servents
of the [SPOILER]. And if that wasn't enough, this is clearly all taking
place back [SPOILER]! The Heroines are in quite a pickle, and time to
save the world is running out!
Even though I hate cars being used for only my benefit, I let Ayse
and Ken talk Marith into coming and fetching me from gaming, because
there wasn't any other way I was going to make it to Easter dinner.
(She drove Dave too, but he doesn't eat, drink, or make merry,
so he was just a bonus.) So I did make it, and Earl and Cat were there,
and Ken made me delicious salmon to eat instead of ham, and then we
watched an episode of
Love Death + Robots that
I think was by John Scalzi and everyone went home because some people
who are not me have to go to work tomorrow.
Words:
FAIL.
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20 April 2019 - Saturday
The kids made eggs bright pastel colors, because it
is that time of year.
This is the fourth day in a row I've been at Monkeycats'.
- Sailor Moon Super S 154: Venus, Jupiter, do not fight
over the cute guy! It only plays into the enemy's hands!
- RWBY 1.1-2: Since we ran out of things to watch while
Ayse and Ken are busy, we're showing Dave RWBY. He doesn't
hate it yet!
- Fruits Basket (2019) 1-2: Hurray for the new Furuba! I
have not read the manga as many dozens of times as some people, but it
seems like this anime is sticking pretty close.
Words:
FAIL.
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19 April 2019 - Friday
The actual offer letter arrived today, and none of the questions I
had would actually make a difference to whether I signed it, so I did.
Now I provisionally work for
Aerospike unless someone calls them
up and tells them horrible things about me before I start on Monday
week.
This is both less stressful, in that now I know I'm not doomed, but
also more stressful because I have a definite thing that I have to do
and it involves new people augh!
Ayse and Jus are out doing Girl Scout camping, leaving Ken bereft
(after Nonny goes to bed), so we had more
Gloomhaven.
Unfortunately, after about an hour I rushed forward too aggressively and
things went so badly that we decided to restart the scenario. We
technically finished before midnight, but then I had to get home, so
blargh. Also the new 4th level card didn't get to be amazing, because
the enemies were strung our in a line instead of clumped up.
Ken completed the life goal he drew for the Cragheart, which was to
murder X number of vermlings, so we got our first character retirement!
I finally finished reading the existing nine volumes of Ms.
Marvel (G Willow Wilson, Ian Herring, Adrian Alphona, Takeshi
Miyazawa, et al), and it was about as good as people said! I mean, it's a
comic, so many parts are kind of silly, but Kamala is awesome and her
friends and family are awesome and it is about modern problems like old
people ruined the world and gentrification and AIs learn about humanity
from the Internet and creeping fascism. It is sad that the things Kamala
does in other comics aren't also collected, but I blame capitalism.
Anyway, now I want to play Masks: A New
Generation!
Words:
FAIL.
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18 April 2019 - Thursday
Marith's computer broke, so I dashed over to my old workplace to take
them up on their offer to sell me my old laptop for $100 before it
expired. Then we took the broken computer over for Dave to look at,
which occupied some time but produced no immediate results.
Words:
FAIL.
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