Simulators

 When my father got the Tandy 1000, he picked up Lode Runner to go with the system as it was something we'd been watching the demo for at the local Radio Shack (but couldn't play because they had a damaged disk..)

It wasn't too much later that my father picked up F-15 Strike Eagle. That particular title, as primitive as it was, got both my father and I hooked on simulators. We'd both end up playing a large chunk of Microprose's simulations through the 80s and early 90s, and some of the others out there such as Gato, Silent Mission, and Falcon.

Of course, in 1990 I ended up getting myself addicted to the Wing Commander series. That would much much later get me into Freelancer and eventually Elite Dangerous.

More arcadey but still quite fun were the Ace Combat titles. I was introduced to that one with Ace Combat 4 on the PS2 and stayed with the series since.

Oddly, I think the simulator my father and I put the most time into was Sid Meier's Pirates!, which was a Carribean age of piracy simulator. We had to have put thousands of hours into that over the years, including even crashing the game multiple times by overflowing the memory space for storing the goods, ships, etc that you possess.

I would have gone into the Air Force, but the ear damage I had from shortly after my birth would have disqualified me. The road not taken, huh?

Progress..

Everything was put on hold for the holidays, but I'm back to work on several projects. The Castlevania guide is getting closer to done-- I'd argue it's about 50% done. There's still a lot to talk about in terms of tricks for CV3, 4, Bloodlines, and Rondo.

Yesterday I worked out a bad segment in my home network that had been causing issues for several years. I had a bad switch in a hard-to-reach location that was somehow crippling traffic going through it; nothing could get any higher than about 350 Mbit/sec. I think I might still have one bad cable going to one device in another location, so I'll need to check that out.

December 2025 had been kind of a chaotic mess in terms of doctors. I had a MRI of my head in regards to my memory issues, blood tests, an EEG test of my brain, and a skin cancer scare that turned out to be benign. January 2026 still has a bit more going on with this stuff, so I'll be running around from doctor to doctor quite a bit more still.

I have a couple of projects I'd like to start work on this year, but they're on a bit of a hold for financial and accessibility reasons. Not all the parts I need are in stock, and prices may end up getting worse for a lot of it this year too. We'll see how things look in a month or two more.

The memory loss is, unfortunately, getting worse and worse. Despite the MRI coming out clean and the EEG showing relatively good brain health, there's something there that's not visible to doctors but extremely visible to everyone regularly around me. I'm working on one last option that may be able ot help slow it down.

Truthfully, I'm looking at 2026 as the year I need to get any projects I want to do done. I don't think I'll be in any condition to touch any of this stuff next year. I also need to balance that with trying not to overdo it with my spine nerves having grown back and the loss of mobility, etc. that comes with that.

Nothing to do but play it by ear, I guess.