Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, 

I haven't written a general what's up blog in a while, so here we go. I'll describe in detail what life has been like on the job, more personal lifestyle details and fun, and the harrowing social current events of our time. 

First, work is getting a lot better. We're getting better pay with the better contract [there was a fight between the union and the company over wages], we seem to have the personnel to run the shifts, and generally, the employees seem to be happier and to be doing better, bit of a caveat there, but for the most part retail grocery is calm this spring season. Not to mention sales are up even though prices have skyrocketed due to inflation. There's actually a noticeable difference in the amount of groceries we're ringing up daily as there's a lot less visibly and physically. People just don't have as much cash right now. Also, only one recorded covid case this month. The guy was horribly sick. He came in one day to tell the bosses he was taking some time off, and his face looked like death. Scary. The threat of covid within the job is still lurking at the corner. 

Second, more personally, I've just been having a blast, living life to the fullest, and loving every minute of it. This goes more to the heart, the capacity of happiness that lies within yourself is more important than actually being happy all the time or often. Remember, it's not happiness that's the main focus, it's your capacity for happiness, meaning, what can you do daily that can ensure that you can increase and/or regulate your capacity for happiness daily? 

For everyone this question is mostly existential. For me I do it by reading books and playing the guitar. For others it might be art, or wrestling, cooking, or football, or cars. You have to really learn to love your life and what you do on a daily basis. The problem is that, especially right now, at this current juncture and state of worldly affairs, its seems that spring can really hang you up the most. Meaning, almost everything out there in the real world [not on a computer or phone screen, not this], has the potential to really bring you down and bum you out. The only real answer to this lies within the last paragraph-the capacity for happiness. 

Lastly, right now things in America are horrible. The recent school shooting has left all of us virtually bruised, beaten, and battered both mentally and physically. We don't need to see the pictures or the livestream to feel the harrowing effects of school children being gunned down by a crazed eighteen year old, the impact of the deaths has hit the virtual reality systems just as much as it has hurt us in the real world. Which brings up the question, when will American politicians stand up to the gun lobby, the NRA? Can we really consider ourselves the good guys of the world, the best country to live in, the most sophisticated, the most everything, if we can't even protect our schoolchildren from being gunned down during class? There's a glaring dilemma here that goes beyond myself, you, the NRA, and the politicians themselves. This goes to the heart of what makes a society of human beings civilized, sophisticated, and safe from harm. Meaning if we can't get this done, maybe we don't deserve to be in charge of what happens to Ukraine or anywhere else in the world. Take care of your home and hearth before going out to police the world. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd5VVELfWC8&ab_channel=whoisthisguythen

And for those pointy-headed intellectuals, catch up to what I've been reading on my Goodreads account, https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/56122996-orlando-furioso

In addition, for those interested on reading about what it was like to work retail grocery at the beginning of the pandemic, look no further, check out my covid plague journal here, http://ofigueroamusic.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html, a compilation of posts about covid, dealing with covid within retail grocery, and within America itself as a young person. 

Grimoire: Manastorm is a fun spellcasting Unreal Tournament

So I was looking around on the free to play game section on Steam and I found this game called Grimoire: Manastorm. This is an fps (first person shooter) game made by Omniconnection where you play as wizards and cast spells to kill your enemies. Pretty great idea already. Replace guns with a bunch of spellcasters and you have a super fun experience. The game is in early access on Steam.

From my initial experience and only having played the game for maybe twenty minutes I can say this is one of the most fun free to plays I've tried out on Steam. I haven't had this much fun on a free to play on Steam since Nosgoth was out.

The game's free version only comes with the fire and earth spellcasters. The fire mage is freakin' amazing. They give you one of the coolest mages ever for free which is pretty awesome. When you burn people as a fire mage it is so satisfying watching their hp drop. It makes me feel like the pyro from Team Fortress. I love it.

The other class you get free is the earth mage. His regular attack speed is super fast but weaker than the fire mage but he can heal himself I noticed. You can cast a spell that creates a tree and when you stand near it your hp recovers at a moderate speed. He's definitely a support mage. This game has supports like in Team Fortress or Overwatch.

The game features abilities like a moba (like Heroes of the Storm) and all the different mages' abilities can be countered so its possible to survive any situation theoretically and given the proper skill and effort. One thing to note is that you can teleport too. This makes the game crazy fast a la Unreal Tournament and Quake, great games to be inspired by. It brings the Skyrim (the first person view of the mage with the fireball or manacrystals in their hands look exactly like Skyrim) style mage into the twitch shooter environment. Its the best idea I've seen in a game in a super long time. The fact that this game puts together ideas and is inspired by so many other games is probably what makes it so fun. Add to that the unique idea of shooting spells instead of guns. How clever and unique.

The one thing that could be better is the graphics. However, you don't need high end graphics in a twitch shooter. As long as the environments are creative enough and fun to play on everything's cool. I'm going to keep playing this game. I'm interested in seeing how big the community becomes for it and how long the player base will keep on it. I think the game has a lot of potential especially if they create more interesting spellcasters.