Month: December 2024

When Sony announced the PlayStation 5, I had every intention of buying one. I have a PlayStation 4 Pro and that console provided me with countless hours of entertainment. I really enjoyed the PlayStation exclusives of that era, especially the remasters of older games that I had never played before. So, it made sense the PS5 would be on my upgrade list.

Well, 2020 rolled around and supplies were so low that it was either impossible to get one or it was available for what was obviously a price-gouging price. I was still enjoying my PS4 Pro and had my PC as well for gaming, so I didn’t feel the need to get a PS5 right away. The next thing I know, a few years have now passed and I still wasn’t compelled to get one. Now I’m thinking a PS5 Pro can’t be too far away, so it kinda makes sense to wait for that, just like I did for the PS4 Pro.

Sony finally announces the PS5 Pro but there’s a catch, it’s super expensive. In Canada, it’s basically $1,000 before taxes. On principle, I can’t justify paying that much for a console, especially one that doesn’t even has a disc drive for that price. Luckily, another option appeared. Sony has begun to release games that were previously PlayStation console exclusives on PC. Not only that, these games also have full DualSense PS5 controller support on the PC. This means that if you buy a PS5 controller, it will work on the PC for those games.

As of this writing, you can now play games like Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, Horizon Forbidden West, and God of War Ragnarok on the PC. All of these games were first released in the PlayStation ecosystem, with no expectation they’d be playable elsewhere. Since these games are now available on PC, I don’t really feel like I need to buy a PS5 anymore. I bought a PS5 controller in November and I’m playing Horizon Forbidden West right now and it’s amazing. In the new year, Spider-Man 2 is coming to PC as well, so I’m looking forward to that too.

We’ll see what happens with the PlayStation 6. Hopefully Sony reels me back in with that one.

Yesterday was my last work day for the year 2024. I stopped work early and headed out to get a massage. Did you know the massage place I go to is just a five-minute walk from my home? I continue to live in an area with extreme convenience and I fear that has made me lazy as I expect everything to be in walking distance.

Anyways, after being kneaded into a loose ball of flabby muscles, I grabbed some takeout for dinner, and headed back home. I ate my butter chicken, watched YouTube, and fell asleep on the couch. Because it’s the holidays now, I even drank a coffee at 9:30pm because there are no rules for the rest of the year.

I don’t have a lot of plans for the holidays. I’m going to spend some time with my immediate family, play lots of video games, try to get some rest, eat reasonably, and workout. I do have a stretch goal of doing a deep clean of my apartment. This is a stretch goal because using valuable holiday time to do chores seems like a waste and I know my motivation will wane when the alternative is to not do chores. Nevertheless, I have floors, kitchens, and bathrooms to clean, though probably not plural of some of those things.

I thought I’d get a jump on my cleaning duties by doing some today but I slept in until 11am this morning. I think that’s a sign I’m actually quite tired and need to rest so I took it easy today. Maybe I start the cleaning tomorrow.

Tonight, I’m gonna watch some hockey, nap, play a new game, and probably workout. It’ll be fun.

Many years ago, during the very early days of the Internet, I made an e-mail address where I’d use that address for all my commercial and retail dealing. Things like when you have to make an account for home insurance, pizza delivery, hotel bookings, flights, content entries, e-commerce, essentially anything not to do with personal correspondence.

As you might imagine, as the online world grew, this e-mail address got used a lot. Through no fault of my own, the systems that this e-mail address were used on got hacked. I think MGM Resorts leaked my info in at least two in separate hacks. LifeLabs also made sure hackers knew this e-mail address.

Through a bit of luck and maybe some online smarts, hackers, to my knowledge, have not been able to get into the e-mail account. They sure have tried though. Once my info was leaked, I noticed the activity logs of my e-mail account began to spike and have never gone down. Every day for years now, the logs show people are trying to sign into that account and failing. On average, someone tries to sign into that account once per hour. I can also see where the sign attempts come from and they try from all over the world. So on an average day, 24 or so attempts are made to get into the account, every single day of the year.

Of course, I’m not stupid, I have alternative methods of account verification turned on. So even if they do brute force the password, they have a second wall to get around. In recent days though, I have been thinking about making that e-mail account passwordless, meaning it cannot be accessed via a regular password. Instead, you can use an authenticator app, a biometric key, or other ways to prove who you are. In all those cases, only the person who really owns that account can verify who they are because a hacker, for example, doesn’t have my fingerprints.

This is probably the smart thing to do because it seems like people will never stop trying to access this account. Every single night, while I sleep, 7 or 8 attempts are made to get in. If they do, they’ll be able to order as many Pizza Hut deep dish pizzas as they want.

It’s probably pretty obvious why someone would enjoy going on vacation but I did find another not so obvious reason while I was gone. I was just so happy to not have to wash any dishes in Hawaii.

There are so crazy folks out there who grab takeout or have delivery for most of their meals but I can’t live like that for many reasons. As such, I cook most of my meals at home. This leads to a lot dirty dishes, pots, pans, and cutlery. Yes, I have a dishwasher but since I live alone, it’s a bit wasteful to run the dishwasher that’s barely half full. Yes, I also could just wait until I have enough dirty dishes until I can fill my dishwasher but I’d have to wait at least two days, three more likely before I could do that. Having dirty dishes sit that long bothers me. So I wash my dishes every day.

Anyways, having a week where I didn’t have to pull on some latex gloves and scrub dishes and pans was heavenly.