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.

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.

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.

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.

My thoughts on Torment: Tides of Numenera

This stuff is only tangentially related to my writing efforts, but I do play a lot of games in my downtime and am – by definition, I think – influenced by them in various ways, not unlike particularly formative books I've read over the years, so I wanted to take a moment to offer my thoughts on Torment: Tides of Numenera. I backed it on Kickstarter back in 2014 because it seemed (at the time) to be a proper spiritual successor to the renowned CRPG Planescape: Torment and all the narrative depth and nuance that implies, but with a mind to ironing out a lot of Planescape's clunkiness and mechanical failings as a game.

The following is more or less taken from my Steam review, but it bears inclusion here because of the wonderfully wonky roleplaying world of Numenera and how that relates to my ongoing efforts to better understand how engaging stories are constructed and told (or not) and translating those lessons into my own work.

I'd also like to take the remastered/rebuilt Planescape: Torment Enhanced Edition for a spin one of these days to make sure that nostalgia hasn't overly clouded my take on the original, but that's probably a longer-term aspiration for when I'm ready to spend a few weeks "playing the book" that is PST again.

Anyway, without further ado:

It almost hurts to give this one a down-vote, since this game was obviously a well-intended labor of love. Unfortunately, despite exceedingly high expectations – both personally and within the story-driven CRPG community overall – it really struggled *as a story* and was broken and un-fun *as a game* in many respects.

I sympathize here, since even a record-setting Kickstarter like Tides had is nowhere near enough to create the kind of game that inXile advertised both initially and in the ensuing months as they started stacking up the stretch goals, but Tides feels like a rudderless, half-done homage to Planescape: Torment that misunderstands what it was people actually *liked* about that game and why. Too much of the story in Tides seems informed by these considerations, leading to a haphazard, confusing, and emotionally unsatisfying narrative experience that plods and jerks from one major plot point to another, leaving the player confused and indifferent in turns.

Many of the game’s core systems feel poorly realized and bolted on, or too easily gamed so as to remove any measurable difficulty, all of which makes me think that this would have been better as an interactive story of some sort – perhaps some kind of isometric Telltale-type experience, or something similar that would have allowed inXile to focus on really fleshing out the story and characters while (hopefully) cutting down on the more problematic purple prose and its leaden effects on delivery. So on some level, this feels like a failing of design and scope, which was then exacerbated by funding shortfalls, project mismanagement, and setting the expectation bar too high to begin with. (There are some insightful post-mortem interviews with the development leads of Tides that really show how much the story's scope and form changed over time due to design and funding constraints, which largely explains why there was such a jarring divide between initial characterizations of the game and what we ultimately got.)

The Ninth World is a fascinating blend of dystopic science-fantasy, and I think the writing team deserves major props for their worldbuilding efforts and for forging ahead with a lot of interesting ideas. The problem is that most/all of those ideas never really seemed fully developed or thematically connected in any sufficiently coherent way, leaving us with some interesting one-off stories or mini-quests that provide a lot of flavor but not much else. Our traveling companions suffered a similar fate: they were interesting starting points as characters, but then largely devoid of any real development or substance that might make us feel strongly about them one way or the other as the game progressed. It’s like the difference between reading the Silmarillion and the Lord of the Rings, or between reading a history book and having lived through that particular time in human history: even the most eloquent and succinct descriptions can only do so much if you don’t have some kind of emotional anchor or investment in the story and its characters, and Tides seems to have forgotten this. It’s too preoccupied with creating a vivid backdrop and stuffing it full of oddities and novel distractions, which – while fine and even desirable in their own right – become a major problem when they come at the expense of crafting a core narrative experience that the player/reader will necessarily become invested in.

Although I enjoyed exploring the alien environments of the Ninth World and appreciated the change-up from more conventional SFF settings, the execution left me both disappointed and oddly indifferent. There was nothing wrong with using the original Planescape: Torment as a creative starting point for Tides, but I feel like inXile was too focused on aping the experience of the original in a new setting while checking off as many superficial nostalgia boxes as they could, all at the expense of telling a sufficiently fresh and engaging story that would resonate with your typical CRPG player.

And don’t get me wrong here, because there were absolutely things that I enjoyed during my playthrough. For example: the Fifth Eye Tavern and its band of psychic soldiers/mercenaries, the Adversary, various takes on AI and nanotechnology, the endless battle/conflict, and the *idea* of the Changing God and its violation of certain cosmic/metaphysical laws that attracted the destructively “corrective” attention of The Sorrow were all super interesting concepts. Ditto the Tides themselves. But it felt like that’s *all* they were: interesting in their own right, but ultimately disconnected from any larger, more unified story or thematic exploration.