5 January 2024 - kudos:

Two minutes into her first experience with a main-series Pokémon game, kiddo realized she could name her rival “Chicken,” so I’d say we’re off too a good start.

4 December 2023 - kudos:

I know that video game adaptations of other properties are always dodgy, but how did they make Wreck-It Ralph’s so dang bad?

🍿 movieblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 for The Super Mario Bros. Movie

1 July 2023 - kudos:

I’d been meaning to watch this, and kiddo was happy to walk me through it (she’d seen it in theaters). The animation is beautiful and there are lots of fun in-jokes and shout-outs. At the end of the day, though, the plot was thin and the characters flat (though they could have done much worse by Peach). It’s probably the best one could do with the source material, but that doesn’t mean it’s great

20 May 2023 - kudos:

I work hard not to be a sitcom dad, but it just occurred to me that after spouse left for airport, we’ve basically done nothing but order pizza and play video games, so…

19 November 2022 - kudos:

I bought a French novel at a used bookstore last week, but I’ve felt burned out on reading lately, so it’s gone to the pile of books I keep meaning to read but keep skipping in favor of Minecraft or something else.

beating Super Mario Galaxy 2 with kiddo

29 October 2022 - kudos:

About a month ago, I blogged about the approach we take to playing video games around here, which is to check out old games from a local library and play them on the Nintendo Wii we liberated from my parents’ basement a couple of years ago. Earlier this week, that approach bore some fruit: After repeated cycles of keeping the game out as long as we could, returning it for a couple of weeks, and then checking it back out, kiddo and I beat Super Mario Galaxy 2—a game several years older than she is for a console that’s been around for nearly as long as her parents have known each other.

old video games, libraries, and xkcd

24 September 2022 - kudos:

There’s a great xkcd strip (see below) about someone who always plays video games on a five-year lag because you get to enjoy all the good games with less of a hassle: I love this strip for a few different reasons. First of all, I’ve never been a hardcore videogamer, so if I do ever play a big title, it usually is about five years after the fact. Second, I think there’s something about it that gets funnier (or else makes me feel older) over time: It’s funny to think of someone only discovering Portal in early 2013, but now that “five years late” is almost “ten years ago,” there’s something kind of absurd about the strip.

18 July 2022 - kudos:

I have been making efforts to introduce kiddo to both Mario Kart and ABBA, so I am very proud that she now makes the Koopa Troopa / Super Trouper joke on her own.

🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Ubisoft Teaches Customers They Don’t Own All That DLC They ‘Bought’ | Techdirt'

14 July 2022 - kudos:

Ugh. We “buy” too many things this way. link to ‘Ubisoft Teaches Customers They Don’t Own All That DLC They ‘Bought’ | Techdirt’

bike rides, TTRPGs, and other 2022 Father's Day weekend fun

19 June 2022 - kudos:

The title of this post is a bit misleading. My wife and I aren’t really big on “Parent’s Day” celebrations: Years of Latter-day Saint “all women are mothers” (read: motherhood is the most important part of womanhood) Sunday services grated on us during our years of infertility, and even now that we are parents (and aren’t practicing Latter-day Saints—though my current denomination certainly isn’t immune from a cringeworthy celebration of parents either), it’s just not a thing we do.