Random thing you love right now that doesn't deserve its own thread

Definitely good to see you post St. Hillary! I hope you're enjoying the incredible landscapes up there. ...We'll see how you feel about the snow come May.

St.Hillary wrote:

It's been a hot minute since I've posted anything. What's up with you, friends? Life is back to feeling mostly normal, which is honestly the best I could hope for with how this year started.
It's been wonderful but also kind of surreal being back in Idaho. We moved away almost 10 years ago, so I had gotten used to being far away from everything and everyone I knew. Now we're only a few miles away from most of my family and a lot of friends, and I can actually see them without having to get on a plane. I even got to see one of my oldest friends get married on Sunday.
Also we're only a few miles from what was our very first apartment together. The place where I lived when I joined GWJ in 2008! So that's weird but kind of cool.
This isn't much of an update, more just a post to say hi, and to feel emotional about things.

Also, I currently love living in a place that actually gets chilly in September/October, like it's supposed to. I'm also looking forward to seeing snow again for the first time in years.

So glad to hear you're getting settled! And incredibly jealous of your return to actual seasons.

Robear wrote:

Definitely good to see you post St. Hillary! I hope you're enjoying the incredible landscapes up there. ...We'll see how you feel about the snow come May.

I've already been told by a few friends that I'll regret wanting snow with how the last few winters have been. But after 5 years in a place where the seasons are hot, less hot, and rain, I'm holding onto that enthusiasm.
It's already been kind of chilly here. I haven't had to turn the ac on in about a month, which would be almost unheard of in Austin.

I think I'd love Idaho. I'm a cold weather person. Enjoy!

Two years ago we stopped getting trash service for a couple of weeks, due to snow conditions. That was an outlier though, we hadn't had snow like that in twenty odd years.

Robear wrote:

I think I'd love Idaho. I'm a cold weather person. Enjoy!

As a once-frequent visitor (for work), I can say that Idaho is great. I’d tell that to people on the east coast and be met with weird looks, but would still sing Idaho’s praises. Super inconvenient when traveling there from anywhere but the mountain west or west coast, but the people were sociable and welcoming, and everyone was going out and doing something outdoors after work. And Boise (where I spent most of my time) had a pretty good food scene too!

Gamewright makes some great board games for preschoolers. We just got Cha Cha Chihuahua, and it was a big hit with my four year old. We already have Hissss; Go Away, Monster; and Feed the Kitty, and they've all been great. It's nice to play board games with my kid that are at her level but are also well-designed and fun.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Gamewright makes some great board games for preschoolers. We just got Cha Cha Chihuahua, and it was a big hit with my four year old. We already have Hissss; Go Away, Monster; and Feed the Kitty, and they've all been great. It's nice to play board games with my kid that are at her level but are also well-designed and fun.

I'll have to make a note of those names and look them up, that sounds great!

Peaceable Kingdom is also a great game publisher, even for kids younger than that. My three year olds love Count Your Chickens.

I've been looking for next steps games, so I'll check those out, Clocky.

Looks like I'll get to go to Pocatello for work in the next few months, so I can find out for myself.

Robear wrote:

Looks like I'll get to go to Pocatello for work in the next few months, so I can find out for myself. :-)

I've never been to Pocatello, just Boise and Twin Falls. Let us know how you like it!

Feegle wrote:

Peaceable Kingdom is also a great game publisher, even for kids younger than that. My three year olds love Count Your Chickens.

I've been looking for next steps games, so I'll check those out, Clocky.

Go Away, Monster is great for three-year-olds. If they can match shapes, they can play. Your goal is to decorate a room by collecting four items with unique shapes: a bed, a lamp, a picture, and a stuffed animal. You draw cardboard pieces out of a bag to try to match the shapes that you need, but the bag has both decorative items and monsters that are similarly shaped. If you draw a monster, you toss it out and pass the bag to the next player. It's really simple but still fun, and my daughter loved it when she was three.

Hissss is also playable at that age, but maybe a bit less so as a structured activity. You have a large pile of card with snake pieces of different colors on them: heads, tails, and lots of body pieces. Your goal is to take turns drawing cards and building the longest snakes you can by linking like-colors together, a bit like dominos. When you finish a snake, you take it off the board, and the player with the most or longest snakes at the end of the game wins. At three, my daughter had a lot more fun just drawing cards and building snakes cooperatively; she didn't really get into the scorekeeping part of it.

Feed the Kitty is a picture-based dice game. It doesn't require counting until the end of the game; it's mostly about remembering what four different pictures mean and doing those actions when you roll those pictures. You start the game with a pile of mice and a mostly empty bowl of cat food. You roll dice to see if you: put a mouse in the bowl; take a mouse out of the bowl; pass a mouse to the next player; or do nothing. You want to be the last player with mice. There's not a lot of strategy involved, but I can't stress enough how beautifully balanced this game is. You drain mice from play at just the right rate for a fun, short game with some good swings in who might win and who might lose. I've had no games that wrapped up in a couple turns or that took forever to resolve, and most of them have been unpredictable and have come down to the last couple throws. My daughter enjoyed this one at three, although I think it's rated 4+.

Cha Cha Chihuahua is a bit more complex than the others. You have a dance floor covered in colored squares, and dog figures that take up two squares each. You draw from a deck of cards to determine if you add a dog to your board, add a dog to your board and another player's board, take a dog from another player, or put any of your dogs on a specific color into a dog kennel for a siesta. Your goal, naturally, is to have the most dogs at the end of the game. There's a bit more cognitive load here since each dog has two colors that they're standing on, and there's some strategy about who you take dogs from and also potentially when you pull dogs out of the kennel and add them to your dance floor. I don't think my daughter could have played it at three, but at 4.5 she's really excited about it. (There's also a get-up-and-move component to it where you act out dances on the cards, but it's optional if you'd rather have a calmer game or have something preventing you from dancing around. I also really like that the rules specify that you ask another player for a dog instead of taking it; it's a minor reinforcement of good sportsmanship.)

I'm checking out Peaceable Kingdom right now. Thanks!

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I'm checking out Peaceable Kingdom right now. Thanks!

They're mostly on the simpler end, but Hoot Owl Hoot, Seeds for the Birds, and Cauldron Quest (less simple) have all been enjoyed at our house.

Robear wrote:

Looks like I'll get to go to Pocatello for work in the next few months, so I can find out for myself. :-)

I'll just say eastern Idaho tends to be a bit more theocratic then the rest of the state. Lots of businesses closed on Sundays. Almost a part of Utah.

That makes sense, I guess. My co-workers suggested flying into Salt Lake and driving up. So it can't be that far. And I'm *really* looking forward to the scenery.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Go Away, Monster is great for three-year-olds. If they can match shapes, they can play. Your goal is to decorate a room by collecting four items with unique shapes: a bed, a lamp, a picture, and a stuffed animal. You draw cardboard pieces out of a bag to try to match the shapes that you need, but the bag has both decorative items and monsters that are similarly shaped. If you draw a monster, you toss it out and pass the bag to the next player. It's really simple but still fun, and my daughter loved it when she was three.

That sounds great! I can imagine my 2yo enjoying that one soon enough. I'm making notes of all these great suggestions. Sounds like some fun family activities.

I attended a tech conference this week (Node+JS Interactive). I went in expecting the usual techbro vibe, but I was pleasantly surprised at how inclusive it was.

They had pronoun stickers you could put on your badge, and different lanyard colours to indicate whether you were comfortable with other people approaching you. They had a pretty solid Code of Conduct that was plastered up all over the place.

The first opening keynote presenter was April Wensel of Compassionate Coding, who talked about the importance of compassion in software development , and challenging a lot of the more toxic aspects of tech culture.

The first closing keynote presenter was Corinne Warnshuis of Girl Develop It, which seems like a pretty great organization for teaching women and non-binary folks how to code.

The breakout sessions had a bunch of female presenters too. I dunno what the overall percentage was, but the majority of sessions I attended were hosted by women.

I mean a lot of this stuff should just be the norm, so I don't want to be too effusive in my praise here, but considering how toxic this line of work can be at times it was still a nice change.

Robear wrote:

That makes sense, I guess. My co-workers suggested flying into Salt Lake and driving up. So it can't be that far. And I'm *really* looking forward to the scenery.

If you do decide to fly and drive, hit me up and we’ll get lunch/dinner. I’m right along the route heading up that way.

I will see if I can fit that in. I'll have a non-gamer with me, at least one. But I'm sure that's fine. (Sometimes, timing is tight, but I'll try to get there early and leave time for it.)

I'm loving the little monster pet thing that lives in my new phone. I mainly feed it fish, and about once a day it'll eat a doughnut. It eats 'bits' too, but they don't seem to last long and I don't want it to go hungry. It doesn't like chicken, but the chickens look like they're still alive so I'm glad it's not eating them.

I'm hoping I might get to see what it looks like at some stage. I think it's shy though cause it just leaves back an empty plate when I'm not looking.

(No spoilers please.)

Totally lost here, Stevintendo.

Just smile and nod.

Are y'all iPhone owners?

I don't think little monster pet things like iPhones. Or older Samsungs.

Spoiler:

There's this mysterious feature on my new A8 that I'm guessing is some kind of a game. Imagine an icon next to your 'Toggle WiFi on/off' icon that looks like an empty plate. Then when you tap to activate it you're given the choice of four foods. If you pick the right food the plate will come back empty. I'm playing along and really hoping it's like a tamagotchi or something like that. I don't want to google it because spoilers. :)

Robear wrote:

I will see if I can fit that in. I'll have a non-gamer with me, at least one. But I'm sure that's fine. (Sometimes, timing is tight, but I'll try to get there early and leave time for it.)

No worries either way. Offer stands if it works out for you.

Stevintendo wrote:

Are y'all iPhone owners?

I don't think little monster pet things like iPhones. Or older Samsungs.

Spoiler:

There's this mysterious feature on my new A8 that I'm guessing is some kind of a game. Imagine an icon next to your 'Toggle WiFi on/off' icon that looks like an empty plate. Then when you tap to activate it you're given the choice of four foods. If you pick the right food the plate will come back empty. I'm playing along and really hoping it's like a tamagotchi or something like that. I don't want to google it because spoilers. :)

Congrats! You are in the opening act of a Doctor Who episode before you find out that the weird new app on your phone is being used by aliens to feed people to monsters.

Finding that although the only toilet cistern in the house is not working, not only is my memory of having bought plumbing and drainage cover correct, but that I can actually find said paperwork and book an emergency plumber (on a Sunday !!) with no excess to pay.

Result !!

ClockworkHouse wrote:
Stevintendo wrote:

Are y'all iPhone owners?

I don't think little monster pet things like iPhones. Or older Samsungs.

Spoiler:

There's this mysterious feature on my new A8 that I'm guessing is some kind of a game. Imagine an icon next to your 'Toggle WiFi on/off' icon that looks like an empty plate. Then when you tap to activate it you're given the choice of four foods. If you pick the right food the plate will come back empty. I'm playing along and really hoping it's like a tamagotchi or something like that. I don't want to google it because spoilers. :)

Congrats! You are in the opening act of a Doctor Who episode before you find out that the weird new app on your phone is being used by aliens to feed people to monsters.

There's an unknown and presumably artificial entity living in my phone, and I'm going out of my way to blindly do everything that I think it wants me to do. I don't see why you're suggesting that this might be a bad idea.

Especially when no-one else seems to have this "feature" on their phone.

I've been spending a bit of time with one of my old co-workers. We used to chat every now and then on Facebook, but it's turned into regular hangouts at my place to jam guitar or just play PS4/Switch. He's started to get interested in comics since playing Spider-Man (PS4), so I've been lending him stacks of single issues and collected volumes.

I'm a fairly solitary guy, so it's kinda nice to have someone visit or just send me interesting things on Facebook. I often forget that he's a whole 10 years younger than I (he only just turned 18!), but I guess that speaks of his character. I think it's the first time in my life I've referred to things in my childhood, then realised the other person wasn't born yet. E.g., playing Pokemon Red for the first time and collecting the trading cards.

Back in my day...

Stevintendo wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:
Stevintendo wrote:

Are y'all iPhone owners?

I don't think little monster pet things like iPhones. Or older Samsungs.

Spoiler:

There's this mysterious feature on my new A8 that I'm guessing is some kind of a game. Imagine an icon next to your 'Toggle WiFi on/off' icon that looks like an empty plate. Then when you tap to activate it you're given the choice of four foods. If you pick the right food the plate will come back empty. I'm playing along and really hoping it's like a tamagotchi or something like that. I don't want to google it because spoilers. :)

Congrats! You are in the opening act of a Doctor Who episode before you find out that the weird new app on your phone is being used by aliens to feed people to monsters.

There's an unknown and presumably artificial entity living in my phone, and I'm going out of my way to blindly do everything that I think it wants me to do. I don't see why you're suggesting that this might be a bad idea.

Especially when no-one else seems to have this "feature" on their phone.

Just an FYI, Stevintendo is not crazy. This had me curious so I did some digging, and by some I mean a lot because it took me like 15 minutes of googling to find it. I'm not going to say anything specific because I don't want to ruin it for Stevintendo, but it's an easter egg in Android 5 (at least that's the version they were discussing when I read about it, unsure if it's in later versions.

Asterith wrote:

Stevintendo is not crazy.

I don't know if I'd go that far.

Asterith wrote:

I'm not going to say anything specific because I don't want to ruin it for Stevintendo.

Thank you, I appreciate that!

My new pet is still eating lots of fish, but doesn't seem to be too interested in doughnuts anymore... Still no sign of it revealing itself.