I was invited to join an online contracting job, so Ogii got me a card. It's very little work, maybe only a short consult every few days, so it doesn't pay much, but it's a little extra money. We'll see how it goes.
Taking down the Christmas tree.
And lights.
There's a Dairy Queen near my work up north. I love the little chocolate cupcakes, but they don't always have them. And, since it's a bit out of the way, it's disappointing if I drove over there and they don't have them.
Thankfully, this time they did have them.
Oh, so close.
Some deer by the side of the road.
Pretty sunset.
Another one.
We drove to Berkeley to watch Shen Yun. This is a cool building.
I remember shopping here.
Very tight fit in the parking garage.
Inside the concert hall.
Graceful statue.
Lot of free small posters.
Our seats were way in the back.
Us.
The presenters, who explained some things between acts.
Dancers and musicians. I thought Shen Yun was the name of the main dancer, but it's actually a generic name for the group, and there are multiple groups that travel around. There are a few rather crazy issues they bring up, but overall, it was a decent show.
Going through this little alley on the way back to the car.
A little vending zone.
They're out of donuts.
But they have hot breakfast sandwiches.
I used to love shopping here.
We stopped at the Dumpling House Mongolian Cuisine in Richmond for dinner.
Ogii getting some tea.
I love how even though they make walker ski gliders, you still almost always see people simply using tennis balls.
Ogii's new puzzle.
It has some fun piece shapes.
She's going fast.
All done.
It's a hummingbird.
Cooking steaks.
Colorful sunset.
Now Ogii's turn to cook.
Very rainy.
Looks like an accident here.
Eating Ogii's great spaghetti while watching football.
This is a freakishly large strawberry.
I wonder how many people watch these alternative leagues.
Very close game.
A lot of people liked or hated when they showed Taylor Swift.
But I preferred watching Jason Kelce take off his shirt and celebrate with a beer in his hand.
Some murals under a bridge.
Farther in.
On the other side.
A YouTube channel of people playing chess. This kid has a board to get signed by all of the famous people he plays. That's a cool idea.
I keep seeing this YouTube ad for a mobile game called Last War: Survival Game. Many of the ads say how it's not fake.
The ad shows this, but a lot of people say the game is actually something else.
So I tried it out.
And the people saying it's fake are kind of correct. While the part that's shown in the ads, where you move forward and shoot waves of enemies, is a part of the game, it's not a huge part. A lot of the game is building up your home base.
Creating new structures and leveling them up.
Although you do get new characters to use in the shooting part.
You basically move around your base, and each block goes into the shooting part.
Where the enemies get harder.
Although most of the game is in your base. There are tons of different materials to obtain, although there doesn't seem to be too much actual strategy in that; you just have to keep clicking everything a lot.
There's some sort of story, but it doesn't seem very relevant.
And, being a modern mobile game, there are microtransactions.
This one is for the best character in the game.
If you expand out from your base, there's actually a third game in the game.
Where you send troops around the map to attack different enemies.
Then, when you defeat them, you get more resources.
You can also interact with other players to speed up your or their buildings in the bases.
I think these are all other players, but I'm not sure if you can more directly interact with them.
Zoomed even farther out.
As you go along, you collect various pieces. If you get enough, you can get new items and heroes.
I spent some time out in the larger world, but then I came back to my base and tried to clear more blocks around it.
It's nice that it shows you how much damage each of characters does so you know which to use. However, at one point, I wasn't able to beat the next wave. Maybe I could spend more time out in the larger world collecting more resources first or just build up my base more? Although they probably want you to spend money in the game to beat it faster. So, overall, the part shown in the ad is a part of the game, but the building up your base and the larger world section seem to be where you actually spend more time. It feels like you could actually spend almost your entire time playing in the larger world and almost ignore this smaller shooting part and your base, but I didn't play the game enough to know for sure. It was rather fun until I hit this roadblock and would have to invest much more time or money to progress.