I initially said that we were going to try and do Ludum Dare, but we decided to back out -- just as well since I was feeling a little stressed about getting everything ready in time along with doing all the other things I needed to take care of.

Even better, it let me stop by to dance with the Stanford kids at Jammix where I actually had one of the most pleasant nights out dancing in recent (or even non-recent) memory.  My life has/had been going really well lately so I think bringing that positive energy really helped me to open up and feel comfortable.  I've always tried to consciously push aside and quiet down the anxious voice inside of me that wanted me to push past my comfort zone and try to be more outgoing, instead reminding myself that when I felt truly comfortable, I would naturally lean into it (as I have in the past), and it was a nice feeling to see that blossom into fruition so clearly.  Almost sad, in a way, thinking back to all the times when I went to dance and just wasn't in a great place.  But there was meaning, and learning, in all of those times, too.  I don't regret it; all of it was part of the journey to where I am now, and beyond.

Anyhow, combined with my long weekend, those few days were unmistakably another one of those rare "5 out of 5" periods in my life.  I came down a little bit off of that high -- actually in no small part due to spending a lot of time debugging complicated infrastructure stuff while working on a Rhythm Quest side project.  It really feels like no matter what you dig into -- self-hosting web services, gamedev, healthcare, even taxes, ...there are just infinity gotchas along the way and nothing is ever intuitive.

That, is actually one of the strengths of a lot of good video game design -- that it is clear, readable, intuitive, and yet still interesting.  These games engage us in the same way that the best parts of our jobs engage us -- when we are engaging with a problem that we're interested in, with nothing else to get in the way.  It's unfortunate that sometimes (many times?) somewhere along the way the people who work on videogames forget about the merits of this readability, not just in terms of visuals (though quite often so), but in terms of everything else, too.  Don't get me wrong, I'm all for enjoying games that reward you for knowing arcane intricacies, but it troubles me when games make things more complicated just for the same of being more complicated.  Don't we already have enough of that in real life?

Fortunately, I was able to dig myself out of the rabbit holes I got myself into to and put down my work to take a break today and play some DDR and rando to chill a bit before I'm on the job again tomorrow.

Speaking of rando, I'm trying to make a slightly more concerted effort to wrap my head around keysanity now, but I still feel as though I suck a lot at it.  I played another seed today and things started well but I felt like I really didn't make the right decisions after that at all.  I guess it'll just take more reps and thinking about it, I guess.

Similarly, for cubing I think I'm doing...okay.  It's about time for me to relearn all of the OLLs, but at the same time, .....goddamn, I really suck at my cross, lol.

Keyboard-wise, I'm back on my Neo80 with some new switches, and a syringe to more easily tune up the stabilizers, but I'm becoming more and more interested in giving the Cycle7 another whirl, or even a few -- I can try out a few different configurations, maybe.  I ended up switching to the wireless mouse for now.  Took me a few days to get used to it, but I'm doing alright.  I miss the button layout and the overall feel a bit, for sure, but the first time I took it out of my backpack and flipped a switch and had it instantly working again sure felt niiiice.

My sleep got thrown out a bit by the latest long sessions of debugging, so I'm trying to wind down and see how I can do tonight, haha.  But yeah, overall things are really going quite alright.