Last (remote) workday of the year. Just cleaning out my inbox and doing some routine path management tasks after a week away from the office.

Tracked down my first mob spawner today on my second go around. The first skeleton spawner I went looking for was a bust, but the spider spawner was where it was supposed to be. Building an XP farm tomorrow.

Spurs pick up a big 0-1 win at Palace. We really needed those 3 points and really should have had at least one more goal.

Richy has a second goal disallowed for VAR.

Archie Gray just scored his first goal by redirecting Richarlison's header in the box. 0-1 Spurs.

Not loving this Palace game so far, other than the fact that it's still 0-0 and we had a VAR disallowed Richarlison goal.

Enjoying Stranger Things S5E5-6 tonight after not being all that enthused to start them up again. They've been better for me than at least one critical review I read indicated. The reveals have all been pretty cool and I like all the new characters.

Ultimately found Miniature shader's water rendering too translucent by default, but it is tweakable. Complementary with the Potato profile has a decent average FPS on my iMac and I definitely prefer the default water.

Miniature shader really impressed me with how well it worked while keeping FPS around 60 on the MacBook Air. I want to give it a try on my iMac as well.

Started down a Minecraft shaders rabbit hole yesterday. Got Complementary working on my iMac, but the FPS drop is significant and Prism launcher managed Minecraft seems to get more confused by my dual display than regular Minecraft. Also experimented with an M1 MacBook Air and found Complementary to be reasonably playable with the Potato profile.

The budget AMD RX 580 GPU that I asked for for Christmas is a pretty dreamy upgrade for Minecraft over the previous one in the PC tower . Once I got some of the video settings sorted out it checked in at 200+ FPS. Very curious to see how it looks with some shaders installed now.

Surprise gift of the night was a 3D puzzle replica of Tottenham Hotspur Stadium from Mary!

Not sure what happened, but completely fell out of my microblogging routine since starting my vacation break.

Wrapping up the work week and heading into the holidays by deploying a bunch of macOS updates.

Not only is it unseasonably warm today, but it's also clear and sunny. Makes me want to get out of my office and go outside.

Enjoyed the baked potato bar we had for lunch at work. Fresh avocado and a little chili as well along with some cheese, butter, and sour cream plus a little salsa. I opted to skip the bacon.

Oddly quiet day at the office given it's a mandatory on campus day and the Christmas potluck is happening at noon. I think there's a big project that a bunch of Ops people are working on elsewhere but it's still really weird.

Sterling came into my office during the windstorm and hid under the spare chair. I've never seen him do that before.

Working from home this morning because of the intense winds that we're in the middle of. Local schools have delayed the start of the day until 10 am.

Getting caught up on some microcosm and week notes blog posts that I should have published a long time ago.

Running some macOS point release update installs and testing for macOS Sequoia 15.7.3 as you do.

Ish's videos have definitely made me interested in proximity chat mods for Minecraft. It's essential for role playing scenarios and internet multiplayer.

Wildly rainy this morning. The walk across campus from my car to my office was intense.

Watched a couple of Bald and Bankrupts recent travel videos from when he went to Ukraine this year. His visits to eastern European countries and other former members of the USSR are generally, entertaining and informative, but these ground-level Ukraine ones are important.

Finally got in a run with the girls after a really busy start to our December. Felt good, but I was a little over-dressed for the warm weather.

Traffic on my drive home Wednesday night was unusually heavy and left me stuck at one light for three cycles. I didn't think too much about it other than being annoyed, and eventually turned off and drove an alternate way. Turns out two gas stations a block north of where I finally left Hamilton were having an impromptu holiday season price war and kept dropping their prices to ridiculous lows (finally bottoming out at $.59/gal) before they quit at 6 pm.

Porro wins a penalty and Kudus converts and finally gets his stool celebration. 2-0 with 40 minutes to go.

Kudus with some shockingly heavy touches today, but he's still been amazing with the ball at his feet. Romero continues his set piece run by setting up an own goal to put Spurs up 1-0.

The Pebble Index 01 smart ring is pretty intriguing. Particularly, the design choice to make it recyclable rather than rechargeable. Very curious as to how long the battery will last if you use it to record thoughts ten times a day.

Researching the intricacies of managing Python packages and environments on macOS in a world with numerous options like homebrew, anaconda, uv, and pip.

After a miserable morning and early afternoon of heavy rainfall, it all cleared out in time for our annual visit to the Journey to Bethlehem live-action nativity. Ended up being much warmer than usual and a fun couple of hours out with the family.

Xavi finally comes good with a big game after I released him in the Club fantasy game. I'll take it, real-life Spurs results are all that matter. 2-0 now off his assist and first Premier League goal.

Way more vertical passing and through balls from Tottenham today ultimately lead to a Xavi assist and Richarlison finish for the 1-0 lead at 25'.

Nice 18th Birthday celebration for Nathan today. Wild that my oldest three are now all legal adults.

Kind of shocked at how limited the gpu selection is in the neighborhood of $100.

Discovered two fairly new interactive fiction authoring systems this morning: Bardic and Storyfall. Bardic is a pretty cool melding of a Twine style on a fully Python web backend. Storyfall is also Twine-style with the addition of a full marketplace.

Starting to drag this afternoon. I'll probably whip up some tea after a while.

You can't be serious. Romero on a brace after he puts a bicycle kick in the box past Ramsdale to equalize! 2-2 with approximately 3 to go in stoppage time.

Holy cow! Romero beats Dan Burn in the box to finish off the Kudus cross and equalize. Then he apes the earlier Bruno Guimaraes celebration!

I actually really like Newcastle's squad overall so I'm watching this game with a certain amount of detached admiration.

Spurs about to face recent nemesis Newcastle at St. James Park after their worst week of the season. What could go wrong?

Weird day. Pretty slow Monday and a lot of people at work taking it off.

My forecast says it's supposed to mostly snow around 6pm today, but it sounds like it's already starting.

Pretty awesome that all the semester schools like Gonzaga and WSU are done by December 12th this year. From an IT perspective I'm psyched to have a full week to do work before the Christmas holiday week.