Weaknote W07.5
2025-02-21 20:02
I'm in a bit of a blogging slump at the moment. I have a weeknotes drafted, but feel it's a bit forced, and I'm almost into a new week... I have a couple of ideas to write about but as soon as I settle down to write, it all kinda fizzles.
I want to write though, so I just will, and we'll see where it goes...
The last two weekends were spent with mates. The first was a mate visiting from Aus. We caught up over beers, easy hikes, and site seeing. Last weekend was spent with another mate entirely on foot fastpacking in the mountains.
I worked full weeks in between (minus Waitangi Day public holiday, which I also spent entirely on foot in the mountains.) Now as I write this I am realising why I'm in a blogging slump - energy levels. My free days has been spent running or playing host.
Now I get why I've all of a sudden wanted to try gaming again. Because I don't have energy for up/down/left/right thinking right now. A simple game to engrose me. Like a book. As far as I remember I have never actually finished a game. I think I finished Wolfenstein 3D, or maybe Prince of Persia, back in the day, but I can't truthfully say that I remember doing it.
With my recent nerdy terminal and linux antics I've been intrigued by Rougelike games. I've installed both Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup (thanks Eric and Jake for the inspo) and Nethack (thanks to GNU Episode 603) console versions (you see ASCII characters rather than graphics, so a bit of getting-used-to). I'm very early on, first levels, just figuring out how to pick things up, attack, open doors etc. I think when I get a bit more familiar with the keys I will enjoy it more. I can see how the worlds would drag you in. Anyway my goal is to finish a game. I don't know how finishable these games are, but I feel like I'll enjoy the journey.
I'm doing a no-frills mountain running race next Saturday. It's free, and run by a group that gives me Fat Ass and Fell Running vibes. They sound like my kind of crew. It'll probably less than 20 of us running hard up Ben Lomond and back. 1400m in 15km kind of thing. It'll hurt, but I like these things. So this week coming I'll be doing some last minute event-specific training. Hill reps or intervals on hills mainly, with a bit of strength work (lunges, squats etc). I'll try and watch what I eat, be light, sleep better. Looking forward to my first hard push for a while.
If you're really interested in my running, this is my Strava feed. You can probably stalk me and figure out where I live from there. Whatever. Please don't.
I just ticked over 3 months at work - probationary period over. Had a performance review with the boss and we're both happy. I've had good feedback from team mates and I'm exceeding expectations. Let's be honest, I knew I'd be good at this job, it always seemed like the perfect fit. I can do technical and physical work, talk the tradie language, and totally aware of my limitations before I stuff anything up. I have a tonne of things to learn still, and the boss knew that from the start. He put a bit of a gamble on me, but I've come through, learning quickly to get up to speed. I'll finish my online course soon, and do the exam, to become a certified Cabling and Infrastructure Technician..
I watched Alien (1979), Aliens (1986) and Alien 3 (1992) - Controvesial, but I don't know if I actually enjoy them very much. I can't actually rememember any of them, which probably means when I first saw them they weren't very memorable for me back then either, and yet now when I was totally craving a bit of sci-fi, I just feel a bit meh. I get this with most alien-type movies where I just barrack for the aliens themselves because there always seems to be a massive bias towards them. In Aliens, when mother alien stands down her other aliens from attacking when Ripley is standing over her eggs, I thought there was a moment of harmony, yet Ripley just says fuck that, or something, and flamethrowers the crap out of the eggs. Who are the bad guys here? That kind of tension of what I value usually makes me like movies more, but I need something else in there to keep me engaged. The characters were all a bit bland.
I've been listening to... some songs from the late 90's that came up on the radio which I realised I had heard nothing else of the artists other than those songs, so I seeked out their full albums... and... I likey. I'm finding I'm appreciating the songs much more when I'm playing the album, rather than through the radio where it's just background noise. It was good to hear other songs too from the artists I hadn't heard before. I'm pumping these on the work van too (my car doesn't have bluetooth!!).
I also found a "podcast" of progressive techno/house mixes which have kept me company in some of my bigger drives recently. Great because I could just download in my podcast player and listen in offline mode out in whoop whoop:
I'm looking forward to my own weekend this weekend. I just want to chill-the-fuck-out. Not travelling for running will be good, no visitors either. Oh shit, garden needs attending... I'll get into that too.
Ok I'll leave it there. I ended up pulling over some weeknote notes. It is what it is. This is what's front of mind now.
Bye.