Derik Badman's Journal

Release week at work means I'm up early, more stressed, and often working more intensely than usual trying to bug fixes done from whatever we have broken in our releases.

And my normal break from stressful work, video games came to a halt this weekend when I hit a basically game breaking bug in Star Wars: Fallen Order. The game doesn't have multiple saves, so I've gotten stuck in a scene that I can't finish, can't back out of, and can't even return to an earlier part of the game. I guess that just means I'll be getting more reading and movie watching done until a bug fix comes out that lets me continue playing.

Our rain garden installation was finished yesterday. As part of a grant our local borough environmental council has subsidized rain gardens to help with stormwater management. We live on a hill above a creek, so it seemed a good idea to participate. Our backyard is quite the overgrown mess, but now there's a nice circular bowl-like area which has a few shrubs and should eventually grow a bunch of other plants that will enjoy a wetter environment.

I'm in the midst of too many books and magazines at this point. The new John Crowley short story collection has been a bit mixed so far. Some of the stories haven't been very interesting, others have been quite good. I've also read a few stories from a Library of America collection called The Future is Female of sci-fi and fantasy stories by women. Like any anthology it's hard to account for the varying quality of the works. Oddly, the Ursula Le Guin story was not one of her best, neither is the James Tiptree Jr. story. I'm not convinced I'll keep reading it.