Natterings From Nepantla

After the user conference excursion day, there is the first day of the conference proper, when the users get to invade the office for an evening, then two more days of conference sessions. It went well, I learned a useful thing or two, I got to wear the blouses that sit at the back of the closet for the rest of the year.

Cat

Shy Cat is another of Phosphor's outdoor relatives. Over the years, she's become less and less shy. When I bring her some canned food, she's willing to be almost within arm's reach. Any attempt to actually reach out, though, results in the hand being swatted.

Fandom

Anime commentary was posted. Also I went to that sort-of convention I just posted about.

Gaming

In addition to the con, still playing Fallen London about every other day.

In Fire Emblem Awakening, I'd forgotten how quickly the chapter where Chrom chooses a bride comes up. Unfortunately, since the player character is the first of his potential matches to be in the story, one has to work hard to make sure he gets more attached to a different character, if one doesn't want to marry the player character off to him. Restarted and have been replaying with Chrom under the Mike Pence rule.

(Though Fire Emblem Fates also included the romantic pairing mechanic, it gives you full transparency about it and lets you take as long as you want to pair up the exact characters you want.)

Books and media

New approach for trying to get through The Wealth of Nations: after I finish a book of that, I let myself read one book from my unread pile. This week it was Jhereg, first of the Dragaera novels. Whatever I expected, fantasy noir about a guy and his fire lizard was not quite it. (The person responsible for the cover copy, though, recognized the appeal of fire lizards and played up that aspect bigtime.)

Jhereg gives the impression of walking in in the middle of a story; events are referred to that I presume are fleshed out in later books, and revelations are dropped casually which sound like they should be the payoffs to multiple volumes of setup. I know there's an argument about whether the books should be read in chronological or publication order. I went with publication order since that's the author's recommendation, but I'm rethinking that. I already have the next two in publication order, though, so I guess I'll just see how those go.

I'm still watching BEM on the side even though I'm not blogging it, except I'm not. Episode 4 has been delayed two weeks on account of content which apparently has too much resemblance to the KyoAni arson. It's not the first show this has happened to (not surprisingly, the first was Fire Force).

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