Things are okay, but I guess in general I always tend to write that, so maybe that's more of a formality than an actual legitimate statement.  There's been some good and a little bit of not as good, but overall most things have been good.

Day-to-day Stuff, October Prep

As is the case with many people, I spend a perhaps unreasonable amount of time day-to-day wondering whether I've done enough and what else I should be doing [insert rant about self-worth being unhealthily tied to productivity].  Every once in a while, though, there comes a time when I stop worrying about that because I've so obviously done enough for the day/week.  Of course, my goal isn't really to reach that point consistently (that would mean I'm overworking myself by far), but sometimes that's just how it goes.  Yesterday after dealing with retirement savings stuff, taking out the trash, putting together some stuff for Chickies, finishing cleaning the bathroom/toilet (probably the most annoying household chore...), and probably some other stuff too, I definitely got to that point.

At this time last week I think I was probably fairly concerned about getting enough done to be ready for October (and really, what I mean by "October" is "Ludum Dare weekend" which starts on Oct 1), but I'm pretty comfortably ahead of pace on all that.  I've already written my first 4 Christmas/Inktober letters, plus one out of the two early October bday letters, I finished my Monthlies pixel art album cover, I finished all the Rhythm Quest stuff I needed to do, mailed out my Vote Forward letters, put out another chiptune megamix, polished up a song for a music commission, updated some minor website stuff, and I'm even making decent progress towards the Far Side of the Moon revamp.

The only things that really remain are Far Side of the Moon stuff, probably one more music commission song, and then doing pre-Ludum Dare coding stuff, building more and more into my game template and framework code.

Room (?) Stuff

I have a sort of new long-term goal to look toward someday, so that's somewhat exciting.  A little birdie mentioned to me the other day how it felt a bit sad that so many things in my room were going away, and I certainly share that sentiment.  But I now have a hope in the future that both they and myself will both be pleased at what my space will look like someday.

Rhythm Quest

I sent out an closed alpha test build for my indie game, Rhythm Quest, so people have been giving me some feedback on that -- ...which I have actively proceeded to avoid reading because I now know better than to plug myself directly into these sorts of feedback channels.  It feels good to have reached this sort-of-milestone and to know that my game is at least functioning (yay) and seems to be enjoyable in some form (yay).

On the other hand I feel a pretty large dip in my motivation to work on it at the moment because "man, I already put a bunch of work into 'finishing' this part".  Well, more importantly, there's a lot of other stuff that has been more pressing, so I've just decided to shelve Rhythm Quest for now, it seems like the right thing to do.  Might as well wait until the feedback finishes coming in anyways -- and until I'm done with Ludum Dare... -- and then I can hop back onto it.  I'm a little uneasy at stepping away from the project, but I'll just have to trust in the process for now.

Chickies

Chickies are doing very well, though 小黑 is being very grumpy/broody today and yesterday.  As with everything else in my life (always...) I have been continuing to steadily improve their little corner over time -- most recently, making some additional accommodations to help make things easier in case I need to leave the house for an extended period of time.

Space Alert

I haven't been playing a ton recently but I guess my next goal is going to be trying to tackle a double-actions campaign with mixed white/yellow threats.  There's actually a bunch of different campaign achievements for me to chase after, so I'll probably be running those for a while.  I tried one the other day and got owned -- I ended the first mission with like 4 damage on both red+blue due to not planning for one point of damage on white, and then died on the second mission thanks to somehow not realizing that a malfunction had happened in red instead of white.  Eh, better luck next time.

In other related-news, I finally managed to get my hands on a copy of "Escape: The Curse of the Temple", another realtime board game that I enjoyed a lot.  This one has a bit of a different vibe than Space Alert, and I don't foresee myself going deep on it, but I'm excited to play it again as it was quite a fun time from what I remember.

ALLTPR

I feel like I've been doing fairly well, and getting pretty confident with running these open 7/7 seeds.  Check out this nifty graph I made of my times going down as I improve:

Pharaoh

Finished another mission in Pharaoh the other day, which proved to be unexpectedly difficult for whatever reason (maybe I'm just rusty?).  Somehow I was having a ton of trouble earning enough trade income to sustain my city....perhaps I was trying to export and import too many things at once?  The ships can only load a certain amount of cargo, so it's important that you don't waste those "slots" on low-profit items.  On my third playthrough of the mission I tried sticking to only one or two main exports and that seemed to work a lot better.

Median XL

I have just been =itching= to get into Median XL (the best Diablo 2 mod) again, but I know that's a pretty bad idea to do right now.  I'm telling myself I'll hold out until after Ludum Dare and then pull the trigger on that.

 

MBTI Stuff

I found another channel of funny MBTI parodies and skits (https://www.youtube.com/c/dearkristin).  I always find these pretty amusing, though they can admittedly be a bit hit-or-miss.  Every once in a while, though, one of these videos hits all the right marks and is a total hoot.  I'm a fan of how this person in particular portrays the ENFPs.  So relatable (sigh....)