Remember how I mentioned I bought a house this year. Well, I forgot that I had promised to watch my parents’ home and dogs while they were on vacation. So, I’ve spent the past week over 13 hours away from home in a town with a population under 1,000 while my parents enjoy a cruise through the Mediterranean, and it’s honestly felt nice to have some peace and quiet: a little time to disconnect from everything. I, of course, miss my parter, friends, and desktop, but it’s been some time since I’ve had a chance to soak in the outdoors.

In the meantime, it’s really given me the opportunity to catch up a number of things that I’ve been putting off for a while. With me, I brought my work computer since I’m not fortunate enough to get a vacation, a Samsung Tab S8 for reading and streaming, a Surface Go tablet for more Linux-y things like coding and running temp servers, and my PlayStation Vita for gaming. With those tools, I’ve set up a pretty decent workflow and I’ve actually caught up on a number of things that have been on my bucket list for ages that I just haven’t had time or were just too low on my priority list.

So I figured this would be best time to actually speak a little bit about myself and what I’ve been doing to pass the time rather than reflecting on things that been crossing feed. I doubt I’ll do this fairly often; for better or for worse I feel I have a pretty sedentary life.

Gaming

The Vita has been so much better than I remember. Even though I had a Gameboy and DS over a PSP, I picked the system up when it was released in 2012 and was absolutely blown away with almost everything about it. The screen is a crystal-clear OLED display that still stands out today almost 15 years later, plus having two analog sticks made 3D games play so much better than they had on other handhelds at the time. The Vita wasn’t perfect of course. The speakers are fine: they sound good, but the placement makes them pretty easy to cover with your hands. The proprietary memory card on it sucks though. I’ve got a 4GB card that cost towards $50 when the system first came out with higher storage cards still going for fairly high prices today. As the popularity of the system waned in the following years, so too did my access to more games for the system or time to play it at that matter.

Then, while exploring Maker World for new things to print on my 3D printer, I found something I never knew I needed, a docking station for my Vita.

With the docking station and PS4 controller support, I have absolutely fallen in love with the system again, and I don’t see myself putting this down for some time because the games catalog is fairly respectable with several Vita, PSP, and PS1 games that I’ve had my list for eons. As of late, I replayed the Sly Trilogy, Metal Gear Solid 3 (in preparation for the remake coming out), as well as finally playing through Final Fantasy VII for the first time. The whole time, this system has been doing wonders and really makes me consider investing in a portable computer like a Steam Deck in the future, if and when I run out of things to do on the Vita.

Surface Go

My prior laptop is fairly old, a 2016 computer I picked up before going into college. The battery life even back that was crap, but it’s specs were pretty nice for the time with a GTX 1080 graphics card. Mind you, gaming on laptops is always sub par compared to desktop, but for a college student with way, way too much time on my hands, it delivered.

The Surface Go tablet was one I picked up on Facebook Marketplace for $60, and while it’s totally under-speced compared to my prior laptop, the portability, battery life, and faster startup have more than made up for things. I’ve currently got Arch running on this (btw) and it’s really been filling in for where my other tablet struggles to deliver, particularly in coding and web design.

Several sites or programs I use for building web pages just don’t really work with my tablet despite it being more powerful. Not to mention, my tablet can’t do one of the most important things I’ve learned to appreciate with coding: remapping Caps Lock to the ESC key. My friends call me special for needing it, but Vim bindings have become just such a necessity to me that I struggle going without them.

Besides the point, with this computer I finished up one of my customer’s sites, heritagehomewater.com, as well as I’ve been working on a CLI tool to manage all of my game wishlists. I keep a txt file with a list of games I’m interested in and then use cheapshark API to query that list through game stores like Steam, GOG, Humble Bundle, etc.

Tab S8

This is the more convenient tablet. I picked this up well before I got the Surface because my laptop was chonky (and sucked for battery life). The S8 worked as a great alternative for just general operations. I even have apps like Termux so that I can still write how I like to. But now that I have a more dedicated portable computer, my S8 has mostly been relegated to amusement and serves as my streaming agent for shows and movies as well as my e-reader.

With it, I’ve finally caught up on Solo Leveling and finished Richard Dawkin’s The Selfish Gene. While that doesn’t sound like much, let me tell ya, I don’t watch TV much at all. I’ve probably finished maybe eight shows in my life: half of them single season animes. I’m a lot better on books, but boy do I get in phases when reading. I’ll go from reading a couple chapters a day to not touching the book for months on end. I’ve considered turning to audiobooks to fill in that gap since I do enjoy podcasts, but I haven’t committed to anything yet.

Tangents aside, both the show and the book were phenomenal, Solo Leveling in particular astounded me with its animation even though the main character does get a little too OP for my taste. I’m expecting next season to really rectify that though. The Selfish Gene stood out mostly as a means for better articulating how I see evolution, but I care more so about the philosophy of the idea over the science. Still, it really serves as great read and lens into why competition is such a natural thing.

My Favorite Companions

This week hasn’t been all about technology though. Part of what has been the absolute best has been spending it around the beauty of natural and with two of the best dogs I’ve even met. They both carry an absolute love and joy which just feels so refreshing these days. I know when I head back home, I’ll be happy to see everyone again, especially my boyfriend, but I know I always miss a little alone time.