Puzzling Behavior IX

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From hot air to out of Africa, now on to the next.

Mostly Genius

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I finished Evil Genius 2 today. The first one was fun, this one is much better but still pretty flawed. There's a lot of dead time and repetition in the mid-game that could really be cleaned up, but otherwise pretty good.

Guardian

 

It's hard work keeping this place safe.

Papers Please

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My souvenir kit from Vaccination Land.

Another Shot Clock

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A little bit closer to the time this time.

Another Shot

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 It's time for Vaccination Part 2. This time it's personal.

Wright On Mars

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This little fella is the Ingenuity. Recently delivered to Mars with its big brother the rover Perseverance. It was deployed from Perseverance a few days ago but had some technical glitches. Well NASA got those sorted and today, for the first time in history we flew on another planet.

It might seem small, for 40 seconds it flew ten feet up, hovered, then safely landed itself. But it's the first step in a new era of exploration.

How cool is that!

And as a side note, this isn't some artist rendering or Earth picture. This was taken by Perseverance on Mars. 

That's pretty cool too.

Regarden

 

 

 

Here is the butterfly garden 2.0. You might notice from the first version about half of the flowers didn't make it through the winter. So I replaced three of them that died, and then left that space between the flowers and the butterfly bush empty. This is because one lesson I learned was the butterfly bush gets way bigger than I thought and it basically strangled the two plants I put there last time.

Hopefully these new recruits become permanent!

Pink Pool

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beauty is fleeting.

Odd Ball

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mari and I have lived in this neighborhood for over twenty years now, and as long as we can remember this ball has been here. Days go by, seasons change, weather comes and goes. Yet always, there is the ball.

Sun Blossom

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the cherry blossoms bloom once more.

Experimental Growth

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Early results on my experiment to grow a Sandis descendant jade plant using artificial light seem to be working as we have new sprouts to enjoy!

Interloper Invasion

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are six squirrels in this picture. Can you find them all?

Sans SAN

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's the end of an era today, our two SANs were carted out, packed up and driven away. Planning and installing the SANs was my first major project at JIS. They were cutting edge at the time. Eleven years and two versions later (we started with a Celerra then upgraded to a VNX) they've been replaced by a couple of solid state servers that cost a quarter as much. Same old story with tech. I wonder what's next?

Bunny Brunch

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mari putting on a top notch spread.

Dead Sea

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spiritfarer is a little indy game about ferrying dead souls to the pearly gates. It got great reviews for its writing and heartfelt character interactions, and they were cute, but for whatever reason this game didn't hit for me. The mechanics just got repetitive too quickly I think.

WOTM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The April of vaccination.

Screen Time

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You had to sit for 15 minutes afterward to make sure there were no reactions, so after the injection room there was this kind of weird sitting area. That blue screen partially head-blocked was a giant clock so you could see when it was time to go.

No Foolin'

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I got the first half of my Coronavirus vaccination today through work. One step closer to normalcy.