Patatoa

I have several mobile computers and my favorite to use is easily the oldest and oddest one. My Acer Aspire One ZG5has been with me since I graduated college, possibly longer. While it's fallen in and out of my daily driver over the years, I come back to it since it is a pleasure to use. This is in spite of *many* things working against it. But I highly recommend it if it fits your niche.

A coworker and I discussed options on an authentication scheme to use. We needed to make a decision. My knee-jerk response was to ask our boss what he wanted to do. That’s when everything came into focus. Our boss was the COO, his focus is not on the level of one decision for one app. Even then, he wouldn’t know the details of the options as we did. We were the adults. We were the best judges here. In my early thirties I realize that when I log into my bank app, that security wasn’t implemented by some grizzled expert. It was put in place by some thirty-something or younger person that also was following his boss’ incomplete vision.

Being critical of anything Final Fantasy VII is a spicy take, but I get little joy out of playing the 2020 Remake. This is something leagues of kids my age clamored for as far back as 2000 when the PlayStation 2 launched. Sony and Square consistently teased for decades. Now it’s here. I bought a PlayStation 4 just to play it. And I find I convince myself to keep playing through it. On the one hand, it’s stunning to see locations I didn’t realize were so memorable, through a new lens. Exciting to see what tweaks are made to the engrained story beats. And on the other, I feel taxed and anxious the entire time.

One Monday morning in August, a press release announced that Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion would collaborate on a song. This piqued my interest. Two of hip-hops brightest personalities on the same track, can’t lose. A couple of times later that week, I’d poke around to check if the track dropped. The following Friday, the song and video dropped. I dropped what I was doing. I’ll get to the song and accompanying video shortly, but as the video wrapped, I slowly realized I had been anticipating the song all week. And it was worth the wait.

Isn’t it wild to think that Valentine’s 2020 was the last holiday we got to celebrate in the "traditional" way? Easter was the first holiday eaten by COVID. Countless birthdays, including my own, spun — and it’s easy to imagine that we’ll all get at least one birthday COVID’d. A bunch of "flag" holidays, that I don’t think anyone was excited for anyway, swept under the rug. All of Summer is gone and now we’re looking down the barrel of the holiday season, pandemic style. Christmas will suck, New Year’s will suck. But Halloween — Halloween is going to be dope.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild single-handedly rejuvenated the medium of video games for me. The 2010’s was a dark time in video games. I wasn’t into what was mainstream at the time. Even my reliable franchises left me wanting. Microtransactions ruined NBA 2K. Pokemon struggled its glacial transition into 3D. Even Mario languished, stuck in his "New Super Mario" phase. The last two Zelda games, Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword were okay but perfunctory. The Wii U didn’t sell well and Nintendo allegedly was grim as the Switch launched. I picked it up as soon as I could mostly because I thought it might be the last console they released, a real concern at the time. Video games left me behind years ago by this point, but when I booted up Breath of the Wild, I was swept back into it.

For fans and non-fans alike, countless thoughts raced through our heads the night of March 11, 2020 — the night the NBA shut down its season. A new reality formed, and the shadow of much larger issues climbed. For the NBA fan, it the latest event in a joyless season that refused to disassociate from the real-world-muck we sought to take a break from. (The top two teams all season were the Lakers and the Kawhi's, *yeesh*.) For the Spur fan though, there was a silver-and-black lining. *"Will we get to keep the streak **and** the lottery pick?"*

Sandoukushi is weird and mature. Shiina puzzles together her last five years of music in a sequence thats worth your attention.

Tokyo Jihen resumes their legacy of creating professional-quality music that moves no needles. Do I need to elaborate any further?