As a quick aside, PROTH and I have nearly finished our annual viewing of the Lord of the Rings extended editions – a holiday tradition that has become a warm, 11ish hour-long blanket of nostalgic bliss over the years, and a never-ending source of all the feels (spoilers) – but we still have a lot of fun critiquing certain parts as we watch, and especially the large scale battles and sieges.
So I was understandably excited when I found out about A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, which is an absolute gem of a website that breaks down pop culture representations of premodern combat and societies to fascinating effect – including a six-part series deconstructing the Siege of Gondor and a larger worldbuilding page. Kudos to the site's operator and military historian extraordinaire, Bret Devereaux, for putting such a phenomenal, insightful, and entertaining resource together.
Orbital – or maybe this time terrestrial? – HQ, out.
December 28, 2019
December 27, 2019
Closing out 2019 with a few updates...
The last half-year has really flown by for me, although I don't have much to report on the RW project since my June update. I've kept at basic worldbuilding and plotting work in my spare time, but that's been more so "indulgent tinkering" than anything noteworthy since my imagination often strays there anyway. My current day job has kept me super busy with contract-writing and related support, and I've also been dealing with some health stuff that's been fucking with my sleep – AKA the only thing that I really can't skimp on – and creating a stress-fatigue feedback loop that worsens things further.
Getting a solid 8ish hours of sleep every night is pretty much non-negotiable for me if I want to avoid the "shambling, zombie-Nick" phase of the day, although I fondly remember my high school and early college-age epoch of pizza-crushing "game all night, sleep all day" marathons of fun (and to any fellow gamers who are too young to have ever experienced a proper LAN party, my condolences). Unfortunately, a serious TBI from more than 15 years ago (a story for another time) means that any sleep debt I accrue now in my mid-30s hits me far harder than it should and compromises my cognitive function for days afterward. This sluggish brain-drain is further compounded if I sleep poorly for more than a few nights in a row, which is a recuperative tailspin that's hard for me to pull out of.
Fortunately, a combination of more naps and avoiding the siren song of late-night gaming sessions is slowly turning the tide, but I find that getting back to a well-rested baseline is a weeks-to-months long process for me. I'm also tackling the peripheral health issues that have worsened things and which I have at least some control over, but again: they won't be fully sorted for a while yet.
At any rate, even though I had hoped to be further along with prep work on the RW project by year's end, I recognize that my writing still has to take a back seat to my health and staying on top of my regular 9-to-5 responsibilities. Being not-sick and adequately housed, clothed, and fed necessarily takes priority – although it's worth emphasizing that my having a reasonably well-paying job with solid benefits in the first place is a privileged position to be in, and it's something I try not to take that for granted when waxing philosophical here in my tiny corner of the blogosphere. The longer-term goal of indulging my inner recluse by writing full-time remains unchanged, though, even if it's more of an 8-10+ year plan based on current projections.
I've at least managed to stay on top of my recreational reading, which is both instrumental for winding down at the end of the day and for immersing myself in relevant genre fiction for the sake of professional development. On that note, one of these days I'll try and get back to doing commentary and review posts on media I've consumed, either recently or as a kind of nerdy retrospective, but at the moment I don't have the mental bandwidth to do it justice (although honorable mentions for The Power Mage trilogy and The Lightbringer pentalogy, both of which I finished since the summer and enjoyed quite a bit).
In other domestic news, PROTH and I have fully settled our new place and are really digging it. It feels like home already and is just the right size: big enough for us to relax and work in without feeling cramped, plenty of storage, and most of its usable, heavily-trafficked space is on the first floor (which my knees and our heating/cooling bill appreciate). We've also talked about a few choice renovations in the coming years that can help beat back the turbo-charged winters more effectively and really ratchet up the creature comforts, as money and time allow (if you guessed "hot tub" here, you'd be right). I even splurged on a super comfy recliner that should be here in the next month or so – we're pretty remote up here, and I didn't want the floor model without a discount – which will be an ideal long-term napping station.
I'll resist the urge to declare some kind of New Year's resolution or pledge in relation to any of the above. I'm either too self-serious or irreverent (or both, probably) to give those declarations any real weight, and my social circle is far too circumscribed for any valuable peer-pressure to come of it, either. So unless I stumble upon some otherworldly means of achieving my goals – you know, the standard ancient and forbidden magicks, Faustian bargains, or maybe even a fortuitous accident in an intrinsic field generator – my plan is to keep hammering away at the twin titans of getting my shit together and then building on as many of those gains as I can.
Either way, I wish you all the same in 2020 and beyond.
Orbital HQ, out.
Getting a solid 8ish hours of sleep every night is pretty much non-negotiable for me if I want to avoid the "shambling, zombie-Nick" phase of the day, although I fondly remember my high school and early college-age epoch of pizza-crushing "game all night, sleep all day" marathons of fun (and to any fellow gamers who are too young to have ever experienced a proper LAN party, my condolences). Unfortunately, a serious TBI from more than 15 years ago (a story for another time) means that any sleep debt I accrue now in my mid-30s hits me far harder than it should and compromises my cognitive function for days afterward. This sluggish brain-drain is further compounded if I sleep poorly for more than a few nights in a row, which is a recuperative tailspin that's hard for me to pull out of.
Fortunately, a combination of more naps and avoiding the siren song of late-night gaming sessions is slowly turning the tide, but I find that getting back to a well-rested baseline is a weeks-to-months long process for me. I'm also tackling the peripheral health issues that have worsened things and which I have at least some control over, but again: they won't be fully sorted for a while yet.
At any rate, even though I had hoped to be further along with prep work on the RW project by year's end, I recognize that my writing still has to take a back seat to my health and staying on top of my regular 9-to-5 responsibilities. Being not-sick and adequately housed, clothed, and fed necessarily takes priority – although it's worth emphasizing that my having a reasonably well-paying job with solid benefits in the first place is a privileged position to be in, and it's something I try not to take that for granted when waxing philosophical here in my tiny corner of the blogosphere. The longer-term goal of indulging my inner recluse by writing full-time remains unchanged, though, even if it's more of an 8-10+ year plan based on current projections.
I've at least managed to stay on top of my recreational reading, which is both instrumental for winding down at the end of the day and for immersing myself in relevant genre fiction for the sake of professional development. On that note, one of these days I'll try and get back to doing commentary and review posts on media I've consumed, either recently or as a kind of nerdy retrospective, but at the moment I don't have the mental bandwidth to do it justice (although honorable mentions for The Power Mage trilogy and The Lightbringer pentalogy, both of which I finished since the summer and enjoyed quite a bit).
In other domestic news, PROTH and I have fully settled our new place and are really digging it. It feels like home already and is just the right size: big enough for us to relax and work in without feeling cramped, plenty of storage, and most of its usable, heavily-trafficked space is on the first floor (which my knees and our heating/cooling bill appreciate). We've also talked about a few choice renovations in the coming years that can help beat back the turbo-charged winters more effectively and really ratchet up the creature comforts, as money and time allow (if you guessed "hot tub" here, you'd be right). I even splurged on a super comfy recliner that should be here in the next month or so – we're pretty remote up here, and I didn't want the floor model without a discount – which will be an ideal long-term napping station.
I'll resist the urge to declare some kind of New Year's resolution or pledge in relation to any of the above. I'm either too self-serious or irreverent (or both, probably) to give those declarations any real weight, and my social circle is far too circumscribed for any valuable peer-pressure to come of it, either. So unless I stumble upon some otherworldly means of achieving my goals – you know, the standard ancient and forbidden magicks, Faustian bargains, or maybe even a fortuitous accident in an intrinsic field generator – my plan is to keep hammering away at the twin titans of getting my shit together and then building on as many of those gains as I can.
Either way, I wish you all the same in 2020 and beyond.
Orbital HQ, out.
June 30, 2019
A busy-but-quiet summer, settling in, plus big workstation upgrades...
We're mostly settled into the new-to-us house as of late June, which has really proven to be a wonderfully private, secluded refuge of comfort and all-around nerdery for both PROTH and me. We've got a handful of small projects and repairs to get taken care of this summer, but being real-deal homeowners feels pretty great so far. At the risk of being cliche, it already feels like a home to us, unlike the rental that was only ever a waystation of sorts – a place we lived while we sorted out jobs and longer-term plans, but were never really fully comfortable in.
I'm also getting a much better handle on the workings of my new department. We're knee-deep in one of our busiest times of the year, but I already feel as though I understand the extent and nature of this position far better at barely two-months in than I did after more than half a year in my previous role. A much narrower focus on contract management, account tracking/receipting, administrative support, and work on specialized IT-adjacent projects is much more so my jam. It's a challenging environment, but it also feels like there's room for growth, and I'm excited at the challenge of making this position my own and building out bigger-better-faster-stronger tracking systems and workflows in the coming months.
In unrelated nerd news, the core rebuilds for both my and PROTH's workstations are now complete. I tend to go for a tick-tock (or sometimes tick-tock-tock) pattern when it comes to upgrades, where the "tick" involves changing out what I consider to be mission-critical "core" gaming components – the CPU, motherboard, GPU, memory, and maybe the PSU if I'm starting to worry about its longevity – while the "tocks" are typically just a GPU upgrade every 1.5-2.5 years, and sometimes adding extra system memory or moving to a markedly faster kind of storage tech for the OS drive (like the jump from spinning mechanical HDDs to SATA-based SSDs, or the leap to their M2-based cousins). Core rebuilds tend to be far more expensive and time-consuming, since changing to a new CPU architecture generally requires an involved tear-down of the current rig and replacement of its highest-cost components, but the gains in IPC (and sometimes clockspeed and/or core count, too) can be pretty great when you're effectively going up at least 2-3 generations in processor tech at once. That's definitely the case here, and – unlike more modest, less cost-effective upgrades – I can really feel the difference in performance in all the right ways.
My now-demoted i7-2600K was a remarkably good performer for years, so it currently lives on in storage as a backup machine along with other similarly-retired (but still functional and compatible) components to serve as a hedge against catastrophic hardware failure with either of our new machines. There were worsening issues with PROTH's i5-3500K and its motherboard, so very little from that machine survived the culling aside from its PSU. Fortunately, serious hardware failure (short of direct lightning strikes or other environmental hazards) doesn't seem likely at this point, and the nature of my upgrade cycles makes it fairly easy to keep at least one computer's worth of prior-gen hardware in reserve at all times just in case.
As for the details, I opted for the second-gen Ryzen parts for this core upgrade. Namely, the Ryzen 5 2600X, MSI's X470 GAMING PLUS, and a 16 GB kit from the G.Skill Ripjaws V Series. While the additional gains in IPC, clockspeed, and power efficiency for the third-gen parts coming later this summer from AMD looked promising, I didn't want to risk being a first-gen(ish) adopter or have to wait until later July or August to take the plunge. Similarly, I didn't feel like gambling on there being adequate stock of the third-gen parts or whether or not they'd line up with their MSRPs, so that plus all the discounts and free bundled games (World War Z and The Division 2) made this a pretty easy choice. I had purchased a Black Edition EVGA 2070 RTX earlier this year, so that is part of the mix as well and also what I'll likely purchase for PROTH's machine (if need be) in the next few months.
The Ryzen 2XXX chips boost aggressively and run pretty hot, so I'm weighing supplemental cooling options right now. I'm not that excited about the closed-loop water cooling options currently available for AM4, but more case fans are definitely on the menu and possibly a higher-end HSF unit as well after further investigation. I can accept that these Ryzen chips just have higher operating temps, but I'd still like to rein them in a bit if it's practical and feasible to do so. Beyond that, setup was simple and the stock Wraith coolers from AMD seem solid and easier to manage than Intel's stock HSFs, which was a welcome development since I needed to (re)build two largely identical versions of the same PC in quick succession.
In short: the new machines are humming along nicely and more than pulling their own weight, which is just as well, since the Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge chips they replaced were really starting to show their age. Plus, the occasional hardware refresh for headquarters never hurts.
Speaking of which: Orbital HQ, out.
I'm also getting a much better handle on the workings of my new department. We're knee-deep in one of our busiest times of the year, but I already feel as though I understand the extent and nature of this position far better at barely two-months in than I did after more than half a year in my previous role. A much narrower focus on contract management, account tracking/receipting, administrative support, and work on specialized IT-adjacent projects is much more so my jam. It's a challenging environment, but it also feels like there's room for growth, and I'm excited at the challenge of making this position my own and building out bigger-better-faster-stronger tracking systems and workflows in the coming months.
In unrelated nerd news, the core rebuilds for both my and PROTH's workstations are now complete. I tend to go for a tick-tock (or sometimes tick-tock-tock) pattern when it comes to upgrades, where the "tick" involves changing out what I consider to be mission-critical "core" gaming components – the CPU, motherboard, GPU, memory, and maybe the PSU if I'm starting to worry about its longevity – while the "tocks" are typically just a GPU upgrade every 1.5-2.5 years, and sometimes adding extra system memory or moving to a markedly faster kind of storage tech for the OS drive (like the jump from spinning mechanical HDDs to SATA-based SSDs, or the leap to their M2-based cousins). Core rebuilds tend to be far more expensive and time-consuming, since changing to a new CPU architecture generally requires an involved tear-down of the current rig and replacement of its highest-cost components, but the gains in IPC (and sometimes clockspeed and/or core count, too) can be pretty great when you're effectively going up at least 2-3 generations in processor tech at once. That's definitely the case here, and – unlike more modest, less cost-effective upgrades – I can really feel the difference in performance in all the right ways.
My now-demoted i7-2600K was a remarkably good performer for years, so it currently lives on in storage as a backup machine along with other similarly-retired (but still functional and compatible) components to serve as a hedge against catastrophic hardware failure with either of our new machines. There were worsening issues with PROTH's i5-3500K and its motherboard, so very little from that machine survived the culling aside from its PSU. Fortunately, serious hardware failure (short of direct lightning strikes or other environmental hazards) doesn't seem likely at this point, and the nature of my upgrade cycles makes it fairly easy to keep at least one computer's worth of prior-gen hardware in reserve at all times just in case.
As for the details, I opted for the second-gen Ryzen parts for this core upgrade. Namely, the Ryzen 5 2600X, MSI's X470 GAMING PLUS, and a 16 GB kit from the G.Skill Ripjaws V Series. While the additional gains in IPC, clockspeed, and power efficiency for the third-gen parts coming later this summer from AMD looked promising, I didn't want to risk being a first-gen(ish) adopter or have to wait until later July or August to take the plunge. Similarly, I didn't feel like gambling on there being adequate stock of the third-gen parts or whether or not they'd line up with their MSRPs, so that plus all the discounts and free bundled games (World War Z and The Division 2) made this a pretty easy choice. I had purchased a Black Edition EVGA 2070 RTX earlier this year, so that is part of the mix as well and also what I'll likely purchase for PROTH's machine (if need be) in the next few months.
The Ryzen 2XXX chips boost aggressively and run pretty hot, so I'm weighing supplemental cooling options right now. I'm not that excited about the closed-loop water cooling options currently available for AM4, but more case fans are definitely on the menu and possibly a higher-end HSF unit as well after further investigation. I can accept that these Ryzen chips just have higher operating temps, but I'd still like to rein them in a bit if it's practical and feasible to do so. Beyond that, setup was simple and the stock Wraith coolers from AMD seem solid and easier to manage than Intel's stock HSFs, which was a welcome development since I needed to (re)build two largely identical versions of the same PC in quick succession.
In short: the new machines are humming along nicely and more than pulling their own weight, which is just as well, since the Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge chips they replaced were really starting to show their age. Plus, the occasional hardware refresh for headquarters never hurts.
Speaking of which: Orbital HQ, out.
May 8, 2019
Big News: A new job *and* a new house!
Whew. March and April were pretty rough on the job front. What I once saw as a short-lived, high-impact prelude to more sustainable workloads – a few months of serious overwork to get caught up and maybe even a little ahead, before tapering to more survivable levels and largely known quantities – didn't play out that way at all. I likely brought this on myself, at least in part, due to borderline perfectionist tendencies in how I work in certain areas, but I unquestionably bit off more than I could chew, professionally speaking. So I transferred to another department in May.
It wasn't anywhere near as spontaneous as that. In truth, I'd been having misgivings since late March/early April when it started to look like the operational reprieve would never come, but I was too busy to give it much sustained thought. I also didn't really have any credible "off-ramp" available at the time even if I decided to leave, so I figured it was something I'd reevaluate over the summer when things slowed down a bit. But then I heard about an open position at my classification level that seemed like a much better fit. It was in a more technical department with a much narrower scope, but still with the kind of larger mission that I could feel personally invested in. I'm excited about what's to come, although I also think it's important to check my privilege a bit here: plenty of folks aren't able to switch jobs so easily, or this quickly, so I'm feeling fortunate in that respect as well.
In similarly good but less complicated news, we found a house! It's got a very "cabin in the woods" look and similarly rustic feel, albeit safely within city limits and with enough modern amenities to satisfy homebodies like PROTH and I. Most of its usable space is on the first floor, which my knees appreciate greatly, and what's there is really open. The kitchen itself is also absolutely massive compared to our rental, and it opens into a big combination family/dining room that we're already planning to turn into a giant office/media/gaming space as time and funds allow. We're stoked about the official move-in day later this month and finally being real-deal, Big Kid™ homeowners.
Even Spring has finally come to the upper mid-west, however grudgingly, and we're happy to have it. All in all, I'd say things are looking up.
I've got more thoughts on the coming computer rebuilds which are very much underway, but for now I must bow to the demands of sleep and hopefully catch assorted typos or copyediting whiffs sometime this weekend. Orbital HQ, out.
It wasn't anywhere near as spontaneous as that. In truth, I'd been having misgivings since late March/early April when it started to look like the operational reprieve would never come, but I was too busy to give it much sustained thought. I also didn't really have any credible "off-ramp" available at the time even if I decided to leave, so I figured it was something I'd reevaluate over the summer when things slowed down a bit. But then I heard about an open position at my classification level that seemed like a much better fit. It was in a more technical department with a much narrower scope, but still with the kind of larger mission that I could feel personally invested in. I'm excited about what's to come, although I also think it's important to check my privilege a bit here: plenty of folks aren't able to switch jobs so easily, or this quickly, so I'm feeling fortunate in that respect as well.
In similarly good but less complicated news, we found a house! It's got a very "cabin in the woods" look and similarly rustic feel, albeit safely within city limits and with enough modern amenities to satisfy homebodies like PROTH and I. Most of its usable space is on the first floor, which my knees appreciate greatly, and what's there is really open. The kitchen itself is also absolutely massive compared to our rental, and it opens into a big combination family/dining room that we're already planning to turn into a giant office/media/gaming space as time and funds allow. We're stoked about the official move-in day later this month and finally being real-deal, Big Kid™ homeowners.
Even Spring has finally come to the upper mid-west, however grudgingly, and we're happy to have it. All in all, I'd say things are looking up.
I've got more thoughts on the coming computer rebuilds which are very much underway, but for now I must bow to the demands of sleep and hopefully catch assorted typos or copyediting whiffs sometime this weekend. Orbital HQ, out.
March 3, 2019
Beyond the Wall: House-hunting Edition
February was a really busy month for me at 9-to-5 work and at least semi-productive on the writing front, but I have good news to report: my significant other – henceforth known as ProfessorTheHun or PROTH, for short – has landed a permanent position at our local university. Huzzah! This means we'll be staying up here in the frigid expanse of the Upper Midwest for the foreseeable future, which, aside from the punishing 5-6 month winters, has been a nice place to live. A little bit of job security goes a long way, so we're in house-hunting mode now and hope to be settling down more officially in the coming months.
Other than that, I'm still chipping away at the RW story and unrelated side projects in parallel. It's fun to see the first signs of convergence between hobbyist passion project and tangible output, but I also don't want to delude myself here: I still have a ton of work ahead of me, and I need to be mindful of how – to borrow a phrase from game development – extended pre-production can only do so much, and a failure to recognize the point of diminishing returns can be the death of an otherwise solid project. Left unchecked, I suspect the self-sustaining Fun House of my imagination would lead to perpetual worldbuilding, and my hunger for (re)reading non-fiction works on the craft itself could just as easily lead to a never-ending state of "preparing to write" rather than actually Actually Getting Shit Done™ in any consistent sense. But I digress. Orbital HQ, out.
Other than that, I'm still chipping away at the RW story and unrelated side projects in parallel. It's fun to see the first signs of convergence between hobbyist passion project and tangible output, but I also don't want to delude myself here: I still have a ton of work ahead of me, and I need to be mindful of how – to borrow a phrase from game development – extended pre-production can only do so much, and a failure to recognize the point of diminishing returns can be the death of an otherwise solid project. Left unchecked, I suspect the self-sustaining Fun House of my imagination would lead to perpetual worldbuilding, and my hunger for (re)reading non-fiction works on the craft itself could just as easily lead to a never-ending state of "preparing to write" rather than actually Actually Getting Shit Done™ in any consistent sense. But I digress. Orbital HQ, out.
January 12, 2019
MIA in 2018, hopefully less so in 2019
Yikes. I only recently realized that it's been more than a year since I've posted here – 2018 quite literally passed me by – so I figured I'd give a short(ish) update.
I spent the first half of last year in various temp roles, and as of Q4 2018 I accepted a full-time administrative and program support position at a local college that is keeping me very busy. It's involved and, at times, gratifying work, and I believe that it is a position that I can really grow into and which will benefit from my combination of admin and technical expertise, but it has had the unfortunate side effect of reducing my time (and certainly my mental capacity) for writing.
The longer-term plan remains the same, but for right now most of my part-time writing efforts are focused on two things: worldbuilding and outlining work for the RW project, and an unrelated experimental side project that I hope to have generating a modest income stream by Q2 of this year if I keep going at my current rate. I don't plan on talking about the specifics of unrelated side projects here, but they are things that both "keep me writing" and provide a lower-stakes environment to hone my craft while I continue developing the RW universe in parallel.
I've also (re)read some series and (of course) played plenty of games over the last year and change, so I plan to comment on those experiences periodically as well – partially as an enjoyable diversion as brainpower allows, but also because I'd like this site to be more than just abstract musings on my (eventual) writing and related projects. I feel very passionately about my hobbies, and this is as good a place as any to get down in weeds and talk shop about movies, games, books, culture, politics, IT, and anything else that stokes my interest or imagination.
Other than all that, I hope to know within the next couple months if my SO and I will be in this area longer-term. If so, we'll need to start looking for a permanent home here; if not, we'll have to figure out where the next big move will be to, and then triage from there.
Either way, once we both have stable long-term employment and residency, I'll probably share some of my plans for the next big rebuilds of our respective gaming machines. They've had a good run, but systems largely built from 2012/2013-era parts are starting to feel their age, even with the occasional GPU and SSD upgrade thrown in there to keep the wolves of lower-IPC and increasingly ancient DDR3 at bay. I'm eyeing the Ryzen 3 chips that AMD announced at CES this year, although I'd like to see that the new silicon is largely free of the teething issues that plagued Ryzen's first-gen parts and motherboards before taking the plunge. I've wanted to part ways with Intel processors for a while now, but later-gen Ryzen is the first time since my beloved Athlon 64 chips of old that AMD has really felt like a viable alternative again, so my tentative plan is to return to Team Red for the next cycle (minus my recent splurge on a discounted RTX 2070, of course).
So I guess this wasn't really short at all, but I wanted to get back on the blogging horse before January slipped away. Mission accomplished. Orbital HQ, out.
I spent the first half of last year in various temp roles, and as of Q4 2018 I accepted a full-time administrative and program support position at a local college that is keeping me very busy. It's involved and, at times, gratifying work, and I believe that it is a position that I can really grow into and which will benefit from my combination of admin and technical expertise, but it has had the unfortunate side effect of reducing my time (and certainly my mental capacity) for writing.
The longer-term plan remains the same, but for right now most of my part-time writing efforts are focused on two things: worldbuilding and outlining work for the RW project, and an unrelated experimental side project that I hope to have generating a modest income stream by Q2 of this year if I keep going at my current rate. I don't plan on talking about the specifics of unrelated side projects here, but they are things that both "keep me writing" and provide a lower-stakes environment to hone my craft while I continue developing the RW universe in parallel.
I've also (re)read some series and (of course) played plenty of games over the last year and change, so I plan to comment on those experiences periodically as well – partially as an enjoyable diversion as brainpower allows, but also because I'd like this site to be more than just abstract musings on my (eventual) writing and related projects. I feel very passionately about my hobbies, and this is as good a place as any to get down in weeds and talk shop about movies, games, books, culture, politics, IT, and anything else that stokes my interest or imagination.
Other than all that, I hope to know within the next couple months if my SO and I will be in this area longer-term. If so, we'll need to start looking for a permanent home here; if not, we'll have to figure out where the next big move will be to, and then triage from there.
Either way, once we both have stable long-term employment and residency, I'll probably share some of my plans for the next big rebuilds of our respective gaming machines. They've had a good run, but systems largely built from 2012/2013-era parts are starting to feel their age, even with the occasional GPU and SSD upgrade thrown in there to keep the wolves of lower-IPC and increasingly ancient DDR3 at bay. I'm eyeing the Ryzen 3 chips that AMD announced at CES this year, although I'd like to see that the new silicon is largely free of the teething issues that plagued Ryzen's first-gen parts and motherboards before taking the plunge. I've wanted to part ways with Intel processors for a while now, but later-gen Ryzen is the first time since my beloved Athlon 64 chips of old that AMD has really felt like a viable alternative again, so my tentative plan is to return to Team Red for the next cycle (minus my recent splurge on a discounted RTX 2070, of course).
So I guess this wasn't really short at all, but I wanted to get back on the blogging horse before January slipped away. Mission accomplished. Orbital HQ, out.
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