PixlBit

I just looked at my last post, and it's from the beginning of February. Holy cow, where does the time go?

I started watching Occupied not so much for the series itself, but to practice my very rusty Norwegian. By the middle of the first episode, I was hooked. Occupied is set in a near future where the new prime minister, a member of the Green Party, has started building a Thorium reactor for green energy and has halted all fossil fuel production. This is a big deal, Norway is one of the top non-Arab oil producing countries in the world, if you didn't know that already. The EU, faced with the cutting off of their closest source of fossil fuels, decides to step in and force the Norwegians to turn the oil and gas production back on. They do this by allowing the Russians to persuade, by use of the threat of full-scale military occupation, the Norwegians. They take over all the oil platforms in the North Sea, and maintain a large presence in Oslo to make sure the oil keeps flowing. They claim they're there to “help” the Norwegians and supposedly, they'll all go home again once gas and oil production levels reach and are maintained at the earlier rates.

I've been playing this nonagram game called Pixelo on Kongregate for a long time. There are multiple levels, and, once you meet certain criteria, you can unlock a daily puzzle. I'd been playing almost daily for at least a year and half, had beaucoup XP, had unlocked almost all the badges and prizes, and was happily working my way through the recently released 2015 daily puzzles puzzle pack. And then I decided to clean out my cookies because Pixlbit hasn't been running all that great on my laptop and I though that might help. I went to play yesterday's daily puzzle last evening, and remembered why I hadn't cleaned out my cookies in forever - my saved game is saved as a freaking cookie! I lost all my save progress from at least a year and a half, including my high scores, my XP and my gold. And Pixlbit isn't loading any better for me after all that. I'm going to go pour myself a shot of single malt Scotch and whimper.

I love the Lego games. They're silly, fun, and reward you for breaking things and poking around in each and every possible nook and cranny. They're also full of bugs, the controls for driving and flying suck majorly (at least on the 360 and PS3), and sometimes what you're supposed to do next to advance in the level isn't very obvious. But I still love them. I bought Lego Batman 3 last year sometime (or was it the year before? I forget), and it sat languishing on Mt Backlog for a long time. Around Christmas, when my back went out on me and I had read seven books and overdosed on Netflix, I needed something that wasn't overly complicated to keep me occupied and that could be played in small chunks. Lego games are good for that sort of thing, so I dusted off Lego Batman 3 and started playing again from the beginning. It kept me amused for quite awhile, and now I'm done with it. I liked it, but not as much as the previous two Lego Batman titles.

This one's just a jumbled mess, but I didn't want to skip a day.

My grandmother passed away last week. My mom and I were with her when she died. We had in-home hospice set up, so she died at home, as she wanted. I'm not telling you this for sympathy, just so you all know why I've been absent for so long.

Happy Friday, Pixbit Nation! How is everyone on this fine Friday morning? I'm looking out at the first real snowfall and feeling woefully under-prepared for my race on the 24th.

2015 was kind of a slow year for gaming for me. I hope to change that in 2016. Anyway, for what it's worth, here's what I played:

Good morning, Pixlbit Nation! Today's blog post is happier than yesterday's. It's amazing what a good night's sleep and a project to concentrate on will do for your spirits.

This is kind of a heavy blog, and one that is difficult for me to write. I'm sorry I haven't been commenting on everyone's blogs, but it's been a tough couple of weeks. I found out from my mom a couple of weeks ago that my grandmother's health is rapidly deteriorating, to the point that hospice is being called in. Yes, my grandmother is 91 and old people die. But...she raised me. She's always been there for me, more like a mother than a grandmother. So you'll have to forgive me for not feeling the spirit of the holidays.