It is Saturday, again. Every weekend we have these grand plans of getting up early and setting out to see Crete and do exciting things. But by the time that it is the weekend we are worn out, looking forward to getting some rest and more interested in just relaxing around the house. And so goes this weekend as well.
I was up pretty early today, myself, and the girls were up too, before Dominica was. The girls and I used the morning to ourselves to play video games together all morning. We had a great time. They are addicted to Goat Simulator, Minecraft and a few other games. They have really gotten into video gaming big time. Our new Steam setup has been helping with that quite a lot. This morning I got Goat Simulator loaded onto the Amazon Fire TV in the living room, too. That way the girls are still able to get a Goat Simulator fix even when someone is in the media room using the big gaming system for more… interesting games.
I got Minecraft Windows 10 Edition, which appears to be the Pocket Edition but rewritten in JavaScript, set up on Dominica’s Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro for Luciana to use because the full Java based Minecraft just can’t run reliably there. Between Lenovo’s shoddy setup and the crappy Intel HD graphics system the machine is just not stable. I think that, after today, Dominica is finally at a point where she is going to consider just doing away with it. It does not meet our needs well at all and is something that we would never have bought on our own. If it had not been free it is the last thing we would be using and now that Dominica has used it for a year and a half I think that we can justify moving on and getting her something that works better for our family. I am hoping that our finances are good and that in the summer we can get another Asus ROG or something similar. It is very apparent that we need two systems more like that while we are travelling. So Minecraft Windows 10 Edition is limited in the way that makes the girls not use it very much, but at least it is stable and runs just fine on that laptop. It is not nearly as nice as using the Amazon Fire TV for Minecraft Pocket Edition, though. That works extremely well.
Today was pretty much a video game day, all day for the family. It’s a fight to be able to get time in front of the Asus Steam machine. Everyone wants to use it nearly all of the time. I don’t get to use it any more than anyone else. At least I nearly always manage to get in a little time on Hexcells Infinite every day. It has a “daily game” mode that I like to do knowing that lots of people around the world are playing that same puzzle on the same day. I really like the “infinite” feature that they added.
Opened a plastic bottle of local wine tonight. That’s right, one of the local wine comes in a twist off plastic topped plastic 1.5 litre bottle just like soda would back home. It is pretty hilarious because to an American that is unthinkable but it is actually a far better way to sell and consume wine. Just put the top back on and it is good for days and you can’t just drop it and have it shatter. I will likely buy this brand, which is well under three Euros, again as it is local and descent.
Tonight I started playing SquareCells, the sequel to the Hexcells trilogy. I am enjoying it. More of the same but with a couple of twists that make it feel decently fresh and quite enjoyable as a continuation. I hope that Matthew Brown, who made all of these games, goes for a similar trilogy with SquareCells that he did with Hexcells or, at the very least, does a sequel of SquareCells Infinite with a random game generator. That would be great and I would buy that for sure.