Fourteenth Anniversary Day

As anniversaries pass, and senility robs us of our wedding memories, we'll always have the photographic evidence to fall back on.

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Memory Day: Snapshots

This picture was taken 9 years ago today, on October 4, 2014.

We were on the Shenandoah River next to Harper's Ferry following a day of vigorous hiking and eating a giant pork chop at Dish, a Charles Town farm-to-table restaurant that existed before every restaurant tried to do the same thing (sadly, it is now out of business). After taking this picture, we walked into Harpers Ferry for ice cream at scoops.

I took over 30,000 steps on this day, according to my defunct FitBit account. I lost my brand new FitBit within 10 minutes of taking this picture, just 19 days after having received it for my birthday. I interpreted this as a sign that my path in life should not involve any sort of fitness or physical improvement.

Review Day: Diablo IV (PC)

My first impressions of this game held pretty true throughout my playtime. The game kept me entertained for about two months before I lost interest and moved on.

The Good

The graphics, music, and sound (even beyond the obligatory high-quality cutscenes that Blizzard is known for) are excellent, creating a brooding, ominous atmosphere for slaughtering demons. The gameplay loop is solid and addictive, with spells that are satisfying to cast and a reasonable number of options for builds. The story is 200% better than the middle-school play that was Diablo III's story, even though it eventually devolves into plot holes.

The Bad

Like Starcraft II and Overwatch, the user interface suffers from "built by committee" syndrome, where every part of the screen is flawless, but designed in a vacuum by teams that never talk to each other. Critical information is buried in mouse-over tooltips and some spells, aspects, and icons are impenetrably obscure unless you stop and examine each one in-depth. It's hard to keep your entire character build in mind because the skill tree spans multiple scrolling panes and the late-game Paragon Board is great in concept but a visual mess.

The open world is vast but sterile -- you'll enjoy it while you're in it but rarely remember the names of different places or have a reason to care about specific locations. There's WAY too much walking involved, and you don't get a horse until about 65% through the main story. Having other players in the world is irrelevant -- no one plays together and all it does is introduce lag. Even without lag, the pathing of your character and horse get pretty rubber-bandy all the time, especially around corners.

The Ugly

Itemization after level 70 is just plain awful. There are too many useless item affixes diluting the pool of items, so most of the treasure drops are trash gear (that you still have to spend an extra minute evaluating just in case!). After level 50, upgrading items is less about equipping something 10% better and more about waffling over something 4% better in one area and 1% worse in another area.

I got to Level 100 on my Sorcerer, have a lot of fun playing the character, and want to keep playing it, but there are no rewards worth grinding for even though my gear still isn't the absolute best. A slot machine game like this needs the right rewards to make the endgame entertaining and long-lasting, and that critical piece just isn't there yet.

Bottom Line

Diablo IV starts out as a solid B game buts lacks the longevity needed for me to play it as long as I played Diablo II or Diablo III with its expansion pack. As you gain levels, it drops down to a B-. Still, the foundation is solid, and I'd definitely check back on this in a year or so when the development team has had time to improve its flaws.

List Day: Currently...

• Currently listening to... Cameras & Coastlines & Covers by Smallpools.


• Currently reading... Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch.


• Currently playing... Starfield.


• Currently considering buying... nothing.


• Currently creating... social media posts for the release of the last book in the Wars of Light and Shadow series.


• Currently planning... the logistics of kid care while Rebecca goes to Atlanta next week.


• Currently watching... Black Bird on AppleTV+.


• Currently anticipating... cool weather and massive El Nino winter.


• Currently exercising... about two hours per week.


• Currently weighing... 142 pounds.

This update was sponsored in part by LiveJournal.

Memory Day: Snapshots

This picture was taken 14 years ago today, on October 11, 2009.

This is a view of the sunrise off the eastern shore of Kauai, as seen from our cozy second-story Kapaa Sands condo. It was day 7 of 14 on our Hawaii honeymoon and I was 4 days free of the strep throat that someone had given me at our wedding.

We stayed close to the condo this day, visiting tide pools and stray cats. We visited a sea geyser, Spouting Horn, which was underwhelming at low tide, and had a delicious dinner at the Beach House restaurant on the North Shore.

Chad Darnell's 12 of 12

12 pictures of your day on the 12th of every month

5:32 AM: Showered and ready for work.

5:59 AM: Bagel for breakfast.

6:40 AM: Working on new training slides for work.

6:56 AM: Getting ready to go to the bus stop.

9:04 AM: Still working.

9:16 AM: All the oranges for breakfast.

11:11 AM: Trying some "epic noodle sorcery" for lunch. (It was great, but maybe not "epic").

4:20 PM: At the Sterling Community Center playground.

5:34 PM: Dinner with the kids while Rebecca's at work.

7:12 PM: The night time ritual is completed.

7:53 PM: Level 56 in Starfield.

9:07 PM: Winding down on the couch with the third season of Reservation Dogs.

Review Day: Starfield (PC)

Starfield is an overwhelming breadth of janky, poorly-explained gameplay systems trapped behind a cumbersome, inconsistent user interface. It is also very FUN, offering the same shallow type of entertainment that Bethesda's previous games (Skyrim, Fallout) excelled at.

For reference, I'm someone with about 350 hours spent playing Skyrim, 350 hours playing Fallout 4, and 550 hours playing Fallout 76. I like the way Bethesda mixes exploration, combat, and a bit of story together in their games, and the way you can just ignore the main story while getting lost making your own fun in a sandbox environment. Eventually, though, there's a point where there's nothing left to do -- I occasionally reinstall these old games but never get more than a couple hours into a new playthrough before drifting away.

Starfield is essentially "Fallout in Space" -- humanity has spread across the galaxies and the main storyline involves a collection of alien artifacts being unearthed on different planets. As with other Bethesda games, the supporting storylines are more interesting than the main one. There are a few neat ideas (like a questline that has you bouncing back and forth between two realities), but ultimately most of the quests end up being walking simulators where you spend a lot of time traveling somewhere and listening to someone telling you to travel somewhere else.

When you tire of questing, you can just fly into space, pick a planet at random, and start exploring. This is a very chill way to enjoy the game at first, but eventually you'll realize that most of the planets are completely devoid of anything interesting, other than about twenty cloned "points of interest". I enjoyed exploring and reading the lore about an abandoned cryo facility, the first time. When an exact copy reappeared on a different procedurally-generated planet, I was underwhelmed. You can also build outposts on planets to harvest resources, but this idea is quarter-baked and not nearly as interesting as Fallout settlements were.

The ability to create your own spaceship is a lot of fun -- I invested hours in customizing and upgrading my ship, and it's satisfying to see and walk through the ship you design in the game. (About half of those hours were spent fighting against the shipbuilding controls, which refused to attach ship parts in the right spot, or would delete random mystery parts). Dogfighting in spaceships is initially fun until you discover the weapons that make every battle trivial.

The skill trees aren't particularly interesting. Over half of the skills are absolutely useless, but you might not realize this until you've tried them (and there are no respecs available). Very few skills are truly game-changing -- most just help you win a little bit faster than you already would have. However, this game is less about winning than making your own fun.

A key flaw that this game has is its lack of true exploration. In Skyrim and Fallout, you'd set off in a random direction across the world and discover all sorts of things along the way. In Starfield, all of the locales feel like tiny, isolated apartments that you can only get to through a series of menus representing space travel. (Half of your game time will probably be spent in a menu). The parts where you actually get boots on the ground and start exploring are lacking because there's never anything unique to discover on a planet that you couldn't have found somewhere else in another galaxy. I would have preferred a small handful of heavily-customized planets over Starfield's thousands of vapidly empty planets.

So, Starfield isn't GREAT and I probably won't be picking up to play again and again 5 years from now. However, I had a lot of fun in my initial two playthroughs (two characters up to level 60) and don't regret the purchase. This is a game that will give you plenty of entertainment in spite of its flaws, especially if you like the Bethesda formula.

Final Grade: B-

Memory Day: Snapshots

This picture was taken 9 years ago today, on October 18, 2014.

It was our first night in Seattle. The host of our B&B (11th Avenue B&B in Capitol Hill) welcomed us by giving us a map with all of the neighbourhoods that "got wild at night" circled. We ended up having dinner at Elysian Brewery amongst the hippies and hipsters and Rebecca got an entree that was at least 108% cous-cous.

After dinner and beer flights, we started walking back to our B&B when, just as prophesized, it got wild at night! These bottles of beer ran up to Rebecca danced around her for several minutes, then disappeared down the street.

Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

Severance, Season One:
This show about office workers who "sever" their minds so they never have to remember their day jobs is excellent. It's like Black Mirror meets The Office, with a little bit of Silo thrown in. The show exudes a really weird vibe, like the early days of LOST or Twin Peaks without being just frustratingly weird, and the buildup in tension over the last 3 episodes is well-executed TV. I totally accept that there are very few answers revealed at the moment, and the upcoming second season could completely implode, but I'm here for it. On AppleTV+.

Final Grade: A+

Ted Lasso, Season Three:
The final season of Ted Lasso has occasional great episodes interspersed between awful ones. The writing has some really weird beats, and several of the emotional high points don't feel earned. The finale is overlong and self-indulgent. On AppleTV+.

Final Grade: B-

This Fool, Season One:
This comedy about cousins at a gang rehabilitation clinic is hard to describe but very funny. Something about the setting and characters makes it feel very fresh even though it doesn't necessarily try much that is new. On Hulu.

Final Grade: A

Cameras & Coastlines & Covers by Smallpools:
I wanted to know what Smallpools had been up to since the 2015 album I really enjoyed so I waded through the cesspool that is Amazon's search engine to find my answer: Not much. I listened to this album from start to finish (only about 30 minutes) several times and still nothing stuck with me -- all safe, with edges polished smooth, and no verve.

Final Grade: C-

Easy Photos Day

Ian heads to Frying Pan Farm with Grandma during Rebecca's 3-day holiday in Atlanta.

Exhausted parenting.

Maia comes home from her Cox Farms field trip with a new pumpkin.

Forest cleanup party of one, along Fillmore Rd, while Ian's at preschool.

Supine parenting.

Rebecca comes home!

Ian Year 2 Month 6 Battle Report

At two and a half, Ian is 35" tall and 27 pounds. (This is where Maia was at three and a half so Ian will end up being more normal-sized than bite-sized).

He goes to Kids Under Construction preschool three mornings per week and has acclimated to the experience after several mornings where it felt like pulling teeth for Rebecca to get him to go. He can recite the names of his classmates when he looks at their pictures, and likes the trucks at school most of all.

At home, he loves to build specific things with Duplo blocks. Most often, a bunny office, an airport, or a tower. He likes to make tall stacks of blocks on the backs of Duplo trucks to represent delivery trucks full of packages, and uses two small cat figurines to represent Amber and Abby as they deliver packages around the house.

He is less likely to request the reading of a steady stream of books these days but still enjoys nighttime reading of Elephant and Piggie or Berenstain Bears. He's also indifferent to television shows -- we sometimes end the day with a National Parks documentary or a Tiny World episode, and he'll get bored and start playing by himself about halfway through.

His sleep schedule is about the same -- a 1.5 hour nap around 2 PM and 11 hours overnight (with 1-2 hours of crib time as he processes the day through singing). He finally graduated out of the "sleep sack" and now sleeps with three blankets piled on top of himself.

Singing remains his main talent. He sings all sorts of songs, mostly on pitch, and also makes up songs by replacing nouns with other nouns. For the most part, his language is easy to understand, and he's at the phase where he'll repeat a question multiple times in case the answer is different the 112th time.

"Is that a blueberry down there?"

He gets along very well with Maia, following her lead for pretend games. However, sharing can get a little dicey at first. When happy, he'll follow her around repeating everything she says. Meanwhile, she tries to teach him lessons like the phases of the moon.

Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

Gadjistan Zizany by Gadjo:
We caught this little street band on our trip to Barcelona in 2008 and their first CD has been on during many dinners since then. This 2011 CD is more of the same, but a little too repetitive and less quirky.

Final Grade: C+

Black Bird:
This true crime show tries to channel Netflix's Mindhunter and every show ever made that takes place in a prison. A low-level criminal must go undercover in a maximum security prison and befriend a serial killer to gain critical evidence. The show is very by-the-numbers and doesn't show any real nuance until Episode 3. The setting lacks any real menace or danger and the whole thing sputters along until it quietly ends. Other than a creepy performance by Paul Walter Hauser, the show had little to keep me enthralled. On AppleTV+.

Final Grade: C

Jim Gaffigan: Dark Pale:
This special is random and all over the place, like a seventh grader trying to figure out his sense of humour. It lingers too long on unfunny diarrhea jokes, and concludes without any strong climactic punchline. There are a few good belly laughs, but otherwise this special is a miss. On Amazon Video.

Final Grade: C-

Righteous Gemstones, Season One:
I picked up this show after wanting more Walton Goggins in my life after the Justified reboot misfire. This show about a family of televangelists manages to be funny without sinking to the easy skewering of religion. John Goodman is great, as always, and Danny McBride is fine playing Danny McBride (as he does in every show).

Final Grade: B+

End-of-the-Month Highlights Day

New photos have been added to the Life, 2023 album.

• Events
  • 14th anniversary. Family dinner at Bungalow Lakehouse on T 10/3.
  
  
  • Anniversary date night at Local Provisions on F 10/6.
  
  
  • Rebecca went on a Bikes and Beers bike ride with her coworkers on S 10/7.
  
  
  • Low-key sick weekend at home, S 10/14 - 10/15.
  
  
  • Solo dad dinner at Miller's on M 10/16.
  
  
  • Rebecca went to Atlanta with Emily, W 10/18 - S 10/21. My mom came for an overnight visit on W 10/18. Went to the HOA annual meeting that evening.
  
  
  • Went to Frying Pan Farm with my mom and Ian on H 10/19. Maia had her class field trip to Cox Farms and got a pumpkin. Dinner with my parents (hamburgers) in the evening.
  
  
  • Maia lost a 3rd tooth on S 10/21.
  
  
  • Rebecca and the kids met up with the Winters in Reston, S 10/22.
  
  
  • Rebecca and Maia went to Fredericksburg to visit Catherine and Autumn on S 10/28. Brian and Ian stayed home and had dinner at Ford's Fish Shack.
  
  
  • Brian and Ian visited my parents on S 10/29.
  
  
  • Solo dad dinner at Miller's on M 10/30.
  
  
  • Planning to do a Trick or Treat circuit around the neighbourhood on T 10/31.


• Projects
  • Continued learning Spanish on DuoLingo (200 day streak).


• Consumerism
  • Played Starfield until there was nothing left to do.
  
  
  • No amazing new shows, movies, or music this month.

October's Final Grade: B, Fun month, but busy and with colds