PixlBit

As I'm writing this, I'm nursing a couple of cuts to the face. I bought a new shaving razor to replace my dreadfully worn down Gillette Mach 3 model and got a little careless in an area near the mouth. I'm not going anywhere until the bleeding (which isn't much) is less noticeable. At least the blades are sharp. I do feel rather stupid as a 35 year old man who can't seem to shave himself without getting clumsy.

February is about to hit and it marks the last month of basketball season for the school where I work. There'll be plenty of games between now and then (not to mention the dreaded 5-day senior high district tournament that we're hosting in the last week) but after that, its all over. It's harder to tell what I hate which: the sport of basketball or the frequency and zeal at which games happen at this school. Shit, read a book or something...

I've struggled often with the SRPG genre. I bought and tried Starcraft but discovered that I don't have the general's mindset to coordinate and plan ahead to survive in the skirmishes of that game. Didn't mind supporting Blizzard, though. One of the first PS plus titles that I received for my PS Vita was the PSP version of Final Fantasty Tactics: The War of the Lions. It would start out well and then I'd get my ass kicked. Sure there was a lot of things that I failed to manage or understand (job assigning, leveling; group placement) but there are some battles early on where the odds aren't clearly in your favor.

Last night, I decided to boot up the game again and to my surprise, I kept going at it. At a slow crawl, of course, but I've been better about managing my units, upgrading their gear and abilities and leveling by random encounters in the first area of the game (this involves going back and forth between two town areas before it happens but it happens). So far, I'm dropped 7 hours into this beast so the hook is in.

Speaking of such, I bought Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together from the SquareEnix sale on PSN so that's on my Vita now. Don't know when I'll get to it but it's baby steps for me right now.

Due to work, there hasn't been a lot of gaming. I did finish Mad Max before I sent it back to Gamefly (well, I rage-quit during the final boss encounter so in a sense I did finish it) and now I just need time to start on Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. Oh wait, there's Witcher 3...

I'm also reading The Power of the Dog by Don Winslow. Its a fantastic fiction novel about an ongoing battle of wits between a Mexican drug cartel and a DEA agent. It's sequel, The Cartel, came out last year and I've read some of that but I wanted to start at the beginning. So far, it's engrossing material and well-researched in terms of how drug cartels work.