They got $160 for the last copy, I guess they’re testing the market to see how high they can go…

Overconfident humans who don’t listen to anybody else scare the hell out of me.

#19: System Collapse, reread, audiobook (K.R. Free). I hadn’t retained as much detail from this book as the early books, with only one read. The quick turnaround in this reread sequence helped a lot. Mr. Free’s performance was once again excellent, especially with new entry AdaCol2.

Reading this made me recall the oddball folks I met during a summer job at a campground; one who would semi-regularly exclaim “SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS” for… reasons?, the 60something Sega CD fan riding around in his El Camino; and the boss who probably shouldn’t have let the 19 y/o drive a forklift.

#18: Welcome to the Circus of Baseball. @espnmcgee.bsky.social’s memoir of day-to-day minor league baseball happenings is hilarious and heartwarming. I’m in a “minor league city”, but a AAA one; the mascots, logos, and vibe of lower leagues has always been more of a distant amusement for me.

Indianapolis stop closing / constructing all the southbound pipelines at the same time: challenge level impossible

Yeah, my theory only seems to cover point A: a few inner circle people. Point B, I don’t even know. If they could read a room (lower level elections, protests, call volume, etc) you’d think they’d be acting differently by now.

The only rationale I can come up with is market manipulation / in-the-moment profiteering. Beyond the insider trading-style effect on traditional markets, That One Offshore Betting Site seems eminently able to be manipulated for profit. I only seem to hear of it when 45/47 does something unlikely.

20) Kirby’s Dream Land. Nintendo put up some icon rewards for playing KDL1, so why not? Good way to spend about half an hour. What an iconic soundtrack.

19) Layton’s Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaire’s Conspiracy #rollcredits. Extraordinarily weak from both a puzzle and story standpoint, and the latter is saying something considering its root series. I don’t think it’s a mystery that the series has gone nowhere since.

I’ve stated to at least two of my friends that I was already impressed with @kevinrfree.bsky.social because he puts the same noticeable level of effort and dedication into children’s books as adult books. As King from King & Kayla might say, “He loves reading audiobooks. It’s his favorite thing!”

#17: Network Effect (reread), audiobook (K.R. Free). A master-class performance from Mr. Free, handling a mother-daughter pair, an artificial construct & clone, & a third similar construct amazingly. My first experience w/his ART, which made me realize his voices are *as Murderbot perceives them*.

#16: Fugitive Telemetry (reread), audiobook (K.R. Free). Kind of the reverse of Exit Strategy. I found it a little slow to get going, but once the story started blorping along, it was a fun ride. It was nice to see JollyBaby & the cargo bots again on Preservation. Next up, book 5.

Out on the open road, just carefree cruising toward a destination

#15: Exit Strategy (reread). Audiobook (K.R. Free). Plenty of good and memorable moments, but about an hour and a half straight of audio was fights and escape sequences, and I just got tired by the end of it. Looking forward to book 6’s shift in storytelling.

Friend of mine was in ATL this morning, flying back home. He reported 2h45m in the TSA pre-check line before he could get to his gate.

#14: Rogue Protocol (reread). Again, audiobook (back to Kevin R Free). KRF’s delivery of Murderbot’s interactions with Miki was fantastic. I’d forgotten a lot of the details and how abruptly some events happen. Very much made me want to jump straight to book 4 (and I did).

#13: Artificial Condition (reread). Prepping for book 8 later this year. I did the full dramatized production of this one, and it was a little jarring to have ART’s voice be obviously female-coded. I might listen to the Kevin R Free version later. I feel like I absorbed more of the story via audio.

pfffffffffft yeah this should be fun

get ready for some Pandamonium

#12: The Dragon Scroll. Reread after 10+ years. I appreciate the 11th-century investigation and environment. As with Wizard’s First Rule, there was *a lot* more sexual assault and bloody violence than I remembered! I think I’ll read Rashomon Gate to give the series another look, but might drop then.

Adam complains about the gaps in the conference room tables when I post work gaming pictures, I’d love to hear his thoughts on this one 😂

18) Mega Man V (Game Boy). Replay several times over. What a magnificent little game. Top-tier in the series if you ask me, definitely the best of the five GB titles. Very glad this is available on NSO so more people get to try it out. (I do have a cart, but this time I played on Switch.)

My wife picked this one up at Gen Con last year. It’s been a hit with my lunch group, we always play it 2-3 times when it hits the table.

#11: Baldur’s Gate II. I never played BG2, but I went deep into BG1 in a similar way at a similar time in my life. Another BFB that does great work weaving the game w/the author’s life experience. In an odd coincidence, I have 3 degrees of separation from the author. Loved all the Minsc quotes.

17) Saga of the Moon Priestess #rollcredits. Saga is kinda overselling it. It was a perfectly reasonable little Zelda clone that poked fun at itself for being a Zelda clone at least once. The ducks were amusing. Final boss was awfully Bozon-esque (derogatory).

#10: An Immense World. After my wife read the full book, my daughter and I did the Young Readers edition, which appeared to have a solid majority of the content. No jokes about Insane Clown Posse in the magnetism chapter, just down-to-earth child-friendly explanations of animal senses.

Bit behind on books. #9: Ramona’s World. Shockingly good for being written 15 years after what was likely supposed to be the end of the series. We enjoyed Ramona’s new friend Daisy, and her continued increase in controlling her behavior.

Also, I spent basically the entire game wishing I were listening to music half as good as XBC1’s soundtrack. So maybe if I need more Xenoblade I should replay 1 sometime. But I am glad this exited Wii U purgatory and I finally got to give it a go.

I very much enjoyed the early parts of the game. I’d have to poke at XBC1 again, but this was definitely more fun combat, more well-explained, than XBC2. It’s just a shame that the ground-based combat got fed into a wood chipper in the back third of the game.

To put it in perspective: I finished the main story in 47:30. A full six hours of that was grinding money at the end to get *one* person *one* high level robot. I wasn’t willing to do that two more times, and I was running out of stuff I could reasonably do. So I took other measures instead.