Kodiack

Fuck. My heart goes out to those impacted by the terrorist acts down in Christchurch.

New Zealand is Best Zealand. 10 Gbps trialing is in the pipeline as well. I certainly do not miss dealing with Charter. It's appalling how such companies can have such ridiculous conflicts of interests between providing TV and internet service simultaneously. We almost had a vehemently anti-consumer Vodafone and Sky TV merger here, but thankfully it was shot down!

Yes, actually. There's no traffic shaping or anything. Costs us about $65 USD per month for this connection.

I'll soon enough be getting my hands on a Dell PowerEdge R720 that will come equipped with 16 cores, 32 threads, and 64 GB RAM. I would very much like to move Ninfora to this hardware and host in-home off of my gigabit fibre connection. Further details to come within the next month or two. I plan to set up a "beta" site first and foremost to ensure that performance remains solid with the latency to New Zealand. Ideally the absurdly overspecced hardware and CDN configuration will be enough to mitigate the additional latency.

Maybe not technically a "purchase" per se, but I redeemed a little under half of my Fly Buys (points that I primarily get from credit card) and got some new wireless noise-canceling headphones on the recommendation of numerous friends. They blow my expectations straight out of the water!

I've been working as a software developer for the same company for over three years now. I landed an internship at the end of my second year towards a bachelor of computer science degree. They kept me on during my final year (bachelor's degrees in NZ are 3 years, not 4) and I've been working full-time there since graduating. For the most part, I'm incredibly satisfied with this job. I'm tackling new challenges almost every day, and the company's values align well with my own. In many ways I would call it a dream job because I'm happy here and don't really have any aspirations to go elsewhere. The work/life balance is superb and I'm paid well for my efforts. My salary has increased by more than 70% in these three years. My only complaint is that sometimes the job can be a bit slow - particularly around the holidays. I suppose that's to be expected when dealing primarily with delivering and maintaining projects for clients, though. I dunno, I'm just really satisfied with where I'm at in general. I feel like I'm pretty much coasting and enjoying life at this point.

I've never been one to set strict New Year's resolutions, but I have had life goals that lined up conveniently with the time. Last year my goal was to generally improve my diet. It wasn't terrible before, but there was room for improvement. That was a huge success, and this year I'm committing to cooking for myself more often and I've sworn off meat (i.e. I've gone vegetarian). For the past few months I've only been occasionally having chicken anyways; I stopped eating beef and pork a fair while ago. I will often choose vegan options where possible, but I'm not forcing that diet on myself, nor do I think I ever will. Somewhat vague, broad goals have worked well for me throughout my life. It's far easier to make gradual changes over a period of time than it is to suddenly quit something cold turkey or rapidly change habits overnight.

I'm definitely keeping an eye on The Outer Worlds as well. I'm hoping that it turns out to effectively be "Obsidian Unleashed". New Vegas is my favourite Fallout game, and Obsidian whipped that together with tight time restrictions using Bethesda's aged and defective Gamebryo engine. I want to see what they're capable of on their own with a healthy budget, realistic timeframe, and a proper modern engine.

Have fun! Stardew Valley scratched my Harvest Moon itch and then some. It's so good!!

Picked up some stuff today for Boxing Day (really I just needed an excuse to head outside). Got a couple of new bookshelves, a 20,000 mAh power bank, and a new USB-C cable. Between the new bookshelf and further tidied up cable management, I'm really happy with how my battlestation is set up now - I'm tempted to even call it "complete"!

Merry Christmas, @Reilly! I did see that you got a Switch recently, so I figured you'd need some of the "essentials" like an SD card and enough money to buy a game or two. I've been loving my Switch and its library keeps getting bigger and better. I hope you get as much enjoyment out of yours as I have mine!

I watched it with my flatmate a few months ago. I enjoyed it a lot!

I arrived home from Auckland last night and was greeted by a card from my "N4A Santa", so I knew it was going to be good! The card itself was adorned with some nice Santa-themed artwork, and inside I instantly saw three early-gen Pokémon cards that gave me a rush of nostalgia: Pikachu, Eevee, and Mew! The words inside the card were just as endearing. And then there was a game code for Pokémon: Let's Go Eevee! One of my friends got a copy of his own a while ago and showed it to me. I was almost immediately enamored with the game and knew that I wanted it, even if I was a bit skeptical after the original gameplay review! The opening sequences alone were almost too much adorableness to contain. So thank you, @Eliwood8, for the kind words and amazing gift! I'm excited to explore Kanto again with a new twist, and I'm looking forward to occasionally having a buddy tag along for some absurd 2v1 battles.

Ooh, I've really gotten Ninja Sex Party recently. I might have to try to make that!

Sitting on a plane about to fly to Auckland. Friend went up and said I should join, so I thought sure, why not. Definitely a last-minute, spur-of-the-moment decision, but I'm hoping it's a fun weekend!