Took in a feral kitten this month, and after 3 weeks he’s no longer growling and hissing when I try to pet him. He’s been a time consuming “pet” project, but I think he’ll be worth it. My reading goal this year, 20 books. I’m not sure I’m going to make it. It seems I’ve fallen behind. I suppose it would be easier if I didn’t try to read three books at a time. My vinyl album collection is starting to grow. Listening to music has become a ceremony in my house.
Need For Speed: Shift 2 on PC: I take my PC sim racing seriously enough, not Fanatec and homemade rollcage seriously, but seriously enough that I’ll turn laps for hours just to shave a second and a half on a favorite track. I do take breaks though with some notable “sim-cade” racers, namely the Need for Speed series. Lately I’ve been enamored with Need for Speed: Shift 2. It’s clearly a newer iteration of the original NFS: Shift. You start with simple cars, race them, earn cash and buy nicer cars to win bigger races and win even more money. I didn’t have any problems with the original, this one, however, oh man! I’ve had to eschew using my wheel and paddle set, resorting to plugging in an Xbox Controller and setting the difficulty to Medium. I’ve been racing sims for 30 years! Medium difficulty indeed!
House of Cards – Season Five on Netflix: Frank Underwood is the US President we love to hate, though his underhanded shenanigans enlisted to keep him in power are so heinous and crafty one cannot help but to root for him. This season has him running for reelection. He hires a shady helper to infiltrate the NSA, upload crippleware that shuts down all cellular towers in DC, and after proclaiming the perpetrators to be Middle Eastern terrorists, orders the same shady helper to remove the nefarious program, the cell phone towers have come back up, and Frank Underwood being responsible for the fix becomes da man! How could you not vote for him? This series casts Capital Hill politics in a colorfully corrupted light. There’s no way this stuff could happen for real. Or is there?
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson: Still enjoying this fascinating historical read. I’ve discovered I certainly would not have wanted to serve on a WWI U-boat. Even their crews referred to them as iron coffins. And unlike our own US Navy, which is comprised of an all volunteer submarine crew force, the German U boat crews were assigned. To aid in diving, the crew was ordered to run to the nose of the submarine, their weight exacerbating the rate in which they dove. And to ascend, you guessed it: the crew would run toward the rear of the boat.
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers Their Greatest Hits on 180-gram vinyl: My first purchased album, and boy is it a beauty. This album is so good I find myself playing it all the way through, no skipped songs here. Picked this up at of all places, a local Walmart. I have to admit, ripping the plastic and opening the double gated album brought back fond memories of being a kid. And the smell. It was as thrilling to me as the scent of an old bookstore on a rainy Saturday afternoon. It’s a great sounding album. The bright acoustic intro on “Learning to Fly” had me smiling. After years of exposure to heated debates, vinyl VS CD I have to say, yes, there is a difference, and it’s a good difference. I wouldn’t say one is better than the other. But I would say hearing music on vinyl albums makes the trip down the abyss worth it.
The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy on Kindle: The story continues. Our novel’s protagonist Billy Parham, who has just returned from Mexico on a trip to free a she-wolf he has rescued, comes home to find a great criminal tragedy has befallen his family. So, now accompanied by his younger brother, Billy must return to Mexico to exact revenge and make some wrongs, right. Gritty, packed with hard cracked dirt, and blistering southwestern sun, this novel pulls no punches in being a bleak tale of the loss of innocence, the acquisition of wisdom and the questioning of one’s moral constitution.
Pink Floyd The Dark Side of the Moon on 180-gram vinyl: Hailed as the number one album new turntable aficionados flock to, I can see why after listening to this. Hearing the electronic sounds of the tabulators and the cash registers on the beginning of the song “Money” reverberate back and forth to each of my speakers was incredible. And to think I was “Pink Floyd’d” out after listening to them countless time on my CDs. “Time” sounds absolutely majestic. Hearing this album is like hearing them for the first time.
Painkiller: Black Edition on PC: I was coming along just fine, playing this on Nightmare difficulty, the penultimate level of difficulty. I was at the halfway point of the game, Level 3 (out of 5), 12 hours in and the unthinkable happened. The game started crashing. A lot. Each time I loaded a save I would be immediately tossed out to Steam. I hit the Steam forums and discovered it’s not an uncommon issue. It’s easy to lay blame with Steam and insist they post a disclaimer “play at your own risk” warning on the storefront of the game, but I guess I’m really just angry because that’s 12 hours I’ll never get back. Oh well, now I have an excuse to finish other games in my long Steam backlog.
