Weeknotes 2018 Nov 30

My weeknotes are starting to turn into twoweeknotes. Thanksgiving was last week though so I'll blame the holiday.

Work

Outside of time off around the holiday, the majority of my time the past few weeks as been spent on two things: GraphQL pagination and MacBook Pro reboot issues.

I'll be writing up a post in the near future related to GraphQL pagination, so I'll leave the details to that for later discussion.

MacBook Pro Issues

I've used a series of Apple MacBook Pros over the past twelve years or so as my primary computer. I've never had much of an issue with any of them until this most recent one.

Since getting it back in September of this year, it's frozen/rebooted frequently. Sometimes when I'm using it, sometimes when it's just sitting by itself. Some days I'll get by without an error, but most days I could get three to five reboots.

Frustrating.

Last week, after doing the typical things Apple Support would suggest (resetting SMC and NVRAM and re-installing MacOS) I contacted Apple Support. Luckily it rebooted during my session with them while they were remote viewing my machine. This led to a local Apple Store Genius appointment which resulted in maybe trying a fresh install, or sending it into Apple for further testing.

I opted first to try a fresh install. The MBP rebooted twice when I was just trying to set it up. So I aborted that. My company's support team contacted Apple Engineering with log data and they suspect it's a hardware problem. So lucky me, I will end up getting a replacement soon.

Thanksgiving

My wife and I drove down to my brother's house a bit over two hours away. My mom was already there visiting. It was nice to see family. Lots of food.

Movies

Saw a few really good movies over the past few weeks.

Errementari: The Blacksmith and the Devil is on Netflix. A dark fairy tale that reminded me of my favorite Guillermo Del Toro and Álex de la Iglesia films. In fact, it is a fairy tale.

A blacksmith makes a deal with the devil to survive the war to return to his wife. As with most storied deals with the devil, he makes it home to find his wife pregnant with someone else's baby. Feeling cheated, he refuses to give up his soul as payment and captures the demon tasked with collecting it. And that's pretty much where the story begins.

Creed II is the sequel to Rocky IV I never knew I wanted to see. Really good throughout and better than I'd expect. Hopefully they stop before the series jumps the shark.

Games

Black Friday deals can be tough to ignore sometimes. I picked up four new board games over the past week as I couldn't not take advantage of some great deals.

• Imperial Assault is the Star Wars game that has many expansions and I'm concerned I may have a serious problem in that I'll want to buy all of them.
• Scythe is a game that I've been curious about for it's theme.
• Founders of Gloomhaven is a completely different game from Gloomhaven, but I enjoy Gloomhaven and interested in seeing what this alternate game in that universe is like.
• Arkham Horror Third Edition is the one I have on my table now.

I'm a big fan of H.P. Lovecraft's mythos. My favorite board game is Eldritch Horror also from Fantasy Flight. And I love the new Arkham Horror: The Card Game as well.

Location is the primary distinguishing trait between the various Arkham games.

• Mansions of Madness - rooms in and around a house.
• Arkham Horror - neighborhoods within the streets of a city.
• Eldritch Horror - cities around the globe.
• Arkham Horror: The Card Game - various types of locations depending on the story. Could be rooms in house or a maze in a forest.
• Elder Sign - a dice game. Fun, but I prefer the iOS game over the actual physical one.

I had a copy of Arkham Horror Second Edition, but got rid of it because after playing it a few times, I just loathed getting it out. The games were long and tedious and could get quite repetitive. Like a 3+ hour game of whack-a-mole.

Eldritch Horror is that, too, but what elevates it is story. There's a feeling of playing through a story with it which keeps my interest and makes me feel like there's a beginning, middle and end.

Arkham Horror: The Card Game is almost all about the story. And it's really interesting what that game does with nothing but cards. Out of them all, it's the most dynamic system in the bunch.

They've applied what they've been successful with story in the other games to Arkham Horror Third Edition. They've also made the game modular. Instead of a board that's always the same, now you have various neighborhood tiles you can connect together in various configurations.

Thus far, I'm enjoying my game and feel a bit of tension since I just got to the point where I feel I could win only to have an anomaly appear. That's bad. Dealing with that would slow me down, but ignoring it could be my downfall. And the clock is ticking.

Peleton

Oh, and I got a Peleton exercise bike. I'd been looking into getting one over the past year. I just figured when it was warm enough I'd be out on my actual bike most of the time, so I just used the time to save up for it and take advantage of Black Friday deals when they came around.

I got my bike. I got my deal (free accessories).

So far it's been fun. I've only taken a few classes, but it's exactly what I was anticipating and I feel I'll want to keep using it.