Helldivers 2 is a fun game. That is when it works. It has a bad habit of crashing when you don’t want it to. Matchmaking is also a little borked as it is right now. The games Quickplay will often fail. Makes it hard to play an online only game like this.

Despite those issues the game looks great and I’ve been trying to get some nice screenshots of this game. The combat is intense. This is the Starship Troopers game I never knew I wanted to play.

My dad and I joined the YMCA. I was sick of walking in the cold. Three miles inside isn’t so bad.

It helps of course I’m listening to music/podcasts/audiobooks. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy radio play is what I’m currently listening to.

I’ve been messing around with adding Google Ads back to the site. I used to have them decades ago. I can’t seem to get them to work in Firefox. The ads appear in Google Chrome, of course.

I’ve even tried turning off Ublock and Firefox’s privacy settings. Still no ads. It just as well, I kind of hate the new design of Google Ads. I miss the old look.

It has been a long time since I’ve done one of these. It used to be a look back on the past year. This time it is a look back on the last six years. A little history first, I guess.

These posts all started when I got fired for the first time because of this website. That was twenty-four years ago. It’s hard to imagine just how much time has gone by since that first time. So I started doing these Year in Review posts on this date to look back on how the year went. I also probably did it just to be a smart ass and celebrate the fact I had been fired. Fired so many times because of this little website (I still hate the term blog).

I took this website offline back in 2016 while I was working once again in the hotel business. It lasted for a few years till the pandemic hit. I was lucky and the hotel didn’t fire me this time, they laid me off. Which meant I was able to receive that wonderful gravy train that was pandemic era unemployment. It really was wonderful for the short time I had it. Lots of people had a terrible time during the pandemic. I’ve got to say that my time during the pandemic getting that huge ass unemployment payment was the best time I’ve had in a long time.

But like they say all good things have to come to an end. When the unemployment ran out I really wished I had saved more of it. I wasted a lot of money. I built a new computer, I bought a Nintendo Switch, and just bunch of miscellaneous dumb things. I honestly enjoyed the pandemic. I’m pretty much a loner as it is. So the idea of being stuck at home wasn’t really that big of an issue for me. I also liked not having to socialize with people to be honest. I’m not a huge fan of people in general. So the whole thing was a wonderful holiday for me.

Which I guess brings us to the present. After getting laid off from the last hotel I worked at, I decided that I was done with that kind of thing. This website was the only creative thing I had done in decades, and out of the blue I decided I was going to get it back online one day. It only took a few days to get most of it working. A number of things are still broken due to how the web has changed since 2016. I’ve pretty much worked on it nonstop these last few weeks. I’m pretty happy it all works again, with only minor things still missing.

Hopefully the next year won’t turn out to be another six years.

In 2016, I took this Website/Blog/Whatever you want to call it offline. I took it offline to get another job at a pretty nice hotel. I lasted till around the time the pandemic started. Back then, I was 24 years old when I started this thing in 1998. Now I’m 50 years old now, and I figured it was time to get it back online. I did it mostly for its historic value to myself.

Maybe some other poor soul working for as incompetent managers as me will find this thing and get some joy out of it. Maybe some of those old incompetent managers will see it again and know I still think they are as incompetent as ever. I know a hotel owner who was probably happy that my site went offline back in 2016. If you googled that gentleman’s name before 2016 the top 10 links came back here to my website. I won’t utter the name here. But I sure do hope search engines get my back into their databases.

From now on I will mostly be writing (no god-damned video bullshit, read something you lazy fucks) about my new attempt at dieting and exercise. Back in 2016 I had lost 100 pounds in about a year’s time and I would like to do that again. Except this time I can’t really stop since when I stopped back in 2017 I gained all that I lost back. I kind of like the idea that I’m competing with my 2016 self to see if I can do it quicker. I’ll also do posts about video games. Even at 50 I still like video games.

So if you stumble onto my part of the net, welcome! Enjoy it if you can. I don’t care if you don’t like it.

Watching this guy ooze stupid is so fun.

Picture from my morning walk.