The Coming Week and On Video Games (Mostly Random Internet Pictures) in Book Six: Trying to Hold On 2019

So this week is set to be busy. Next week is set to be busy. Good. I like it when I feel like I’m earning my paycheck.

This week would have, otherwise, been pretty blah. If we’re JUST looking at my stuff?
1 Sentencing Hearing on Tuesday
1 Pretrial Conference on Tuesday
7 Pretrial Conferences on Wednesday
But we’re not just looking at my stuff. We have a massively important Bench Trial this week that is expected to last Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Since that is going on, Boss needs to be there (press coverage) so I’m covering Boss’s cases where I can. Which means my Tuesday/Wednesday is also his Tuesday/Wednesday and I’ve picked up 7 additional hearings. But the poor bastard has a Jury Trial on Thursday and, court rules in this case for some strange reason, require that HE prosecute that case. So we’ll be switching on that day… He will do Jury Court Trial Duty, I’ll do “sit in court room to look impressive for Cameras” that day.

Then next week will be busy because it is a Juvenile Court Day and a Magistrate Trial Day. So already just between Monday and Thursday, we’re looking at around 30 hearings/trials for me. So… this is exactly what I was talking about with Government Work. Sometimes there are long stretches where it feels like “I’m getting paid too much”. Then there are those stretches where you think, “Nope. This is what that salary is paying for. I understand now.”



On Video Games:

I am a Completionist (but not insane about it). For those that may be unfamiliar with the term, a “Completionist” is someone who likes to finish every element of a game. Now, there are a number of ways to gauge this. Take a game like Fallout 4, for example. Some Completionists wouldn’t be satisfied until they had completed every mission, built every buildable, done every ending (on Story and all DLCs), collected every collectible, and discovered every Unique/Legendary piece of weaponry or armor. I’m not that kind of Completionist.

Another way to say “Completionist” is to get every single available Trophy or Achievement in the game. Playstation and XBox have lists of “Events, Actions” that award Gamer Score Points to a profile. An example of these lists can be found HERE for anyone unfamiliar. It is in this way that I am a Completionist. One could argue that a more correct term would be “Achievement Hunter” and indeed that may be more accurate; however, “Achievement” is what Microsoft calls their Gamer Score Point System and “Trophy” is what Sony calls their Gamer Score Point System. So, I’ve just defaulted back to stating “Completionist.”

Now, even here I have to state an exception. I do enjoy and want to 100% complete every Trophy/Achievement List to every game I own. However, I do not obsess over this task in games where the achievement list contains a number of On-Line Interaction Achievements. I prefer to play games with Story or Character or Creation Elements. Any On-Line play should be a fun competition or an enjoyable collaboration. When you add Achievement/Trophy elements that demand cutthroat competition or massive amounts of on-line play? Pass. I’ll play those games, I’ll enjoy the hell out of those games… but I won’t obsess about finishing those Achievement/Trophy Lists. Some Case In Point:
I love Mortal Kombat Games. Love love love ‘em. This, also, includes the Injustice Series. Because… Mortal Kombat Developers plus DC Comics Story/Characters?! YES PLEASE! However, those games tend to include achievements like ONLY A REAL MASTER which requires that the player “Beat an opponent online while they still have 90% health and you have 10% or less health remaining.” Now, unless you’ve worked out an agreement with your opponent especially to get that achievement… that isn’t likely to happen for someone like me. Even “Win 10 Ranked Matches” can be tough considering I’m not exactly A Pro Player.
Second Example: Overwatch. It is a fun enough game. I enjoy playing with friends. I really enjoy the Holiday Events where it is a team of players against a team of NPCs. But that game is 100% online. It doesn’t even have a story mode… the entire game is “Online Competitive Matches”. So there are achievements like Undying (Get a 20 player kill streak in Quick or Competitive Play) which just aren’t likely for me. So… I don’t obsess over those (though, I do tend to get a little butthurt about them).

The flip side of that is, to make up for all of these games I love playing that will never see a higher than 34% completion… is that I do go a little batty about Single Player Games with no On-Line Achievements. (On-Line does not exclude DLC trophies… if I like the game enough to want to play the DLC and/or purchase the DLC, that goes on the list of GET THE TROPHY). Recently, I have been finishing up Fallout 4 and All DLC. It took work… it took a time investment… and since the trophies do have a Trophy for each Faction’s ending… one does have to play through to three different endings (this can be done through save point re-boots so as not to be required to play the entire game three separate times). Over the weekend, I completed the last of the Trophies required for Fallout 4 and all DLC.... all but one. And this is where people can say, “Okay… you’re still a crazy person.” Because the achievement I am working on is called “Eyes on the Prize.” The description of it is to redeem 100,000 Nuka Tickets. To explain: this portion of the game takes place in a post-apocalyptic Amusement Park called Nuka World. Throughout the park, you can find Tickets for the Arcade Prizes. The Arcade is also still mostly functioning as well. This is a GRIND Achievement. One needs 100,000 tickets. WITHOUT playing the Arcade Games to earn those tickets… a player cannot even get 1/4 of the tickets required. PLAYING the games awards anywhere from 300 tickets to 1,000 tickets (or so). Now… let’s say you’re a master at these games. Let’s say that you were able to find 10,000 tickets in the world. You would still need to “play” these Arcade Games (which are traditional County Fair games like “shoot a basketball through a hoop” or “shooting range metal ducks”) no less than 90 TIMES. This… is not a “fun mission”. This is not “an enjoyable part of the game.” This is a tedious slog of repetitious action that would arguably take between 3 to 9 hours Real Time. Painful. So, Wife looks at me funny. She says, “You have all these other games you want to play. You’ve finished ‘the fun part’ of this game. Why keep playing just to do this boring, repetitious, tedious part?” Because there’s a Trophy. Because having “All the Trophies but One” in a single player game like this is.... kind of unacceptable to me. I currently have over 44,000 tickets. I need less than 56,000 more. At best that means an hour or two of additional tedious boring gameplay bits. And in that way? In that way, yes. I am a “Crazy Completionist” kind of person. Because I’m not skilled enough and I’m not able to put enough hours into becoming an Expert Online Gamer.... so I need to make up for that in my Single Player Gamer Score. A Gamer Score that has no meaning, no value, and awards nothing. lol. At least I know I’m strange.

Now that you’ve got passed a completely unnecessary and unexpected Essay on Video Games… some random bits?

Wednesday, January 30th… IF registered -58 degrees F. We even made statewide news for it.
Sunday, February 3rd (4 days later)… IF registered above 40 degrees F. Almost 100 degrees different.
The current predicted high for Friday, February 8… is 7 Degrees F. A (5 days later) drop of 33 degrees.
My body… is going to have… an interesting week.

Speaking of… Wife and I have counseling again this weekend. I imagine Wife will proudly declare that we had sex, so that’s a good sign. And I’ll agree. We’ve been married since 2011, and having sex for the first time in 6 months is a good sign/good step for us. But it doesn’t fix things, y’know? It’s like “Okay, this was a great first step. Let’s keep walking, yeah?” So… I’m trying to figure out how I’d word that on Saturday. How I’d like a healthy reciprocal sex life to be a “normal part” of our marriage instead of a “central issue constantly causing problems due to it honestly being a twice a year or less event”. How a part of that honestly needs to be that we’re intimate with each other because of love and/or attraction and/or marital comfort… as opposed to being about guilt or obligation. How I’d really like to develop a healthier way of discussing our sex life and exploring Wife’s needs, wants, and interests as genuinely I want sex to be fun and enjoyable for her and I want to have a sex life where we can explore things (even if those things are no more “adventurous” than sexy outfits or foreplay). I just… I don’t want to seem like the Husband that is “so overly focused on sex” as to ignore all the other problems. It is just… Wife doesn’t get it or at least didn’t. I’m hoping that how we had sex on Saturday and what we discussed afterwards might help her understand. Sex isn’t “Yay, I orgasmed with a girl!” It’s a genuine, deep, singular connection thing. That’s why that first time after so many months… it wasn’t “Oh yeah, Baby” kind of sex it was “Let me hold you, let me hold you close and hold you tight like I’m never going to let go” kind of sex. Because… people are different. She may view sex as an unimportant physical activity done because the guy you like wants to have sex. I view sex as an emotional expression done in a physical act because “words are words, but our actions demonstrate our priorities.” And I get it. I’m the Victorian Era, Model Christian, Messed Up guy and nobody believes that kind of thing but me. And if I had my life to do over again, I may have pushed back against that “programming” entirely. But we’ll never know because I didn’t. I grew up being told that sex isn’t just sex, and that became a part of who I am.




So… funny thing… unsettling thing… as busy as this week is going to be? Today seems to be “The calm before the storm.” I hate those. I know it is a widely debated point so… let’s debate the following

I don’t want to be in a battle. But waiting on the edge of one I can’t escape is even worse.

I hope that we can all agree… living after the war is over, a war you participated in, is the hardest of the three timelines. Just before, during, just after. Realizing what was lost, knowing your friends and loved ones died, knowing you’ve killed, trying to move on… that is truly difficult.

But argue the points of BEFORE versus DURING and I would echo the cliche. During the fight your training takes over. During the fight there is work to be done. During the fight, you give yourself over to the cause and remain active. The quiet before the plunge? There is nothing to do. There is nothing occupying your mind but “what is to come.” You give yourself over (many) to panic and questioning. The moments before battle… those are the ones that are difficult to stand.

In no way do I intend this statement to sound braggadocios. I can list my faults and wax negative should I wish to do so. However, in this instance I would like to say:

Curse my efficiency and strategizing.

As I said previously, I am covering my boss’s cases. In order to do that, I had to prepare his cases in such a way that I can perform my required duties tomorrow. I began working on that around 11:35 and was finished before 2:00. So for the last hour plus, I’ve just been looking up esoteric pop culture factoids, and reading Wiki Articles about Anime, and reviewing Quotes from different TV Shows. Ultimately, a fairly boring way to spend my time. Just have to wait for this day to end, then we’ll be thick in the shit. Fingers crossed for a busy, but not awful week. ESPECIALLY because that little boy in our A Felony Case deserves some justice.

I’ll just… leave this little thing here for y’all: https://www.newsandguts.com/video/donald-trumps-executive-time-mocked/?fbclid=IwAR2SEhjxmX-NzhbiGsebukv01b22olw2upOWnCqHX-Hxcz9hdyaIbhfe-pM

Last updated February 04, 2019