Gas prices, batman!

Holy hell have gasoline prices shot up seemingly overnight. I filled up the M2 the weekend prior at $5.25 a gallon premium (thanks, California), and this past Friday it’s already changed to $5.75. At 10 gallons on a typical fill up, that’s a ~$5.00 increase for me. Not too terrible in the grand scheme of things, because I don’t commute. I get gas at most about every two weeks. But for those who do: this sudden increase has got to hurt.

As evident of the long lines at Costco - known for the cheapest petrol in town - of drivers queuing for gas. Delaying the rest of us from getting to our parkings spots and on with our shopping. Even if you’re entirely supportive of the Ukrainian fight against the Russian regime, you can equally hate the second-order effects at the same time.

Hey, it doesn’t cost gas money to drive virtually on Gran Turismo 7! The latest version of the famed racing game - celebrating its 25th anniversary - came out last week. And I won’t be getting it, at least for a while (super sad face). It’s just physically impossible for me to position my steering wheel controller setup in front of the TV (there’s a whole bed in the way). I don’t want to use the regular controller to play. Hopefully when PlayStation VR 2 comes out, GT7 will be a supported title.

At least reviews for the game are looking good. Seemingly a return to form of GT4, arguably the best title in the series, and the last Gran Turismo I played through seriously. It’s a true celebration of the automobile, at a time when electrification threatens the existence of our beloved internal-combustion engines. Disappointingly, my BMW M2 Competition is not featured in the game. Neither is my previous car, the 991-generation Porsche 911 GT3.

I guess I’ll just have to buy a Toyota GR86 to be able to play a virtual copy of my actual real-life car.

View fullsize

The most wonderful time of day.

Baseball is truly back

Baseball has been back for about two weeks now, and the games are something nice to keep on in the background while I go about other tasks. I can’t say I follow the San Francisco Giants like I used to, but I will always root for them to do well. The days of spending three hours a day watching baseball is truly over, and that’s been the case even before the pandemic.

It feels as if there weren’t any baseball last year at all, though obviously the league did manage to hold a 60 game season late in the year, and the Los Angeles Dodgers are the World Series champion of 2020. An asterisk on them not because the team isn’t deserving, but to mark the year of the pandemic, where everything turned weird. Watching baseball on TV with no crowds in attendance is thoroughly unexciting, which is why I did very little of it last season.

With America doing a fantastic job of vaccinating its population, fans are once again allowed back into the stadiums. The ebb and flow of the crowd’s emotions throughout the game has been sorely missed. The cheers when the team scores, or the groans when the umpire misses a crucial call. These elements are essential to baseball, even though they don’t directly affect the outcome of a game one bit.

And it is the return of the fans in the stands that I am now happy to keep baseball on in the background. So that I can hear when something happens, good or bad, because the crowd noise will alert me to it. It’s also nice to watch an inning or two when I’m taking a break from whatever I am doing. Best of all, it’s good to see kids in attendance being given caught foul balls. That’s the magic of baseball that you don’t get from other sports: a souvenir and a memory to last a lifetime.

View fullsize

The battle between gray and green.

World Cup fever

It's World Cup season once again and it's always a special time because I get to enjoy watching the games with my father. Every four years we'd spend the month of June in front of the television taking in all the matches - or at least endeavor to. The 2018 edition is held in mother Russia and the time-difference makes things difficult: the games are held during the day our timezone so we can only properly watch on the weekends.

On campus the games are shown at the Student Union which is great because none of us need to work during the Summer, right? (Wrong). 

Attending a World Cup game is on the bucket list so I am happy about the announcement the the 2026 games will be cohosted by Canada, Mexico, and the United States. it's Great news for America because Team U.S.A won't have to worry about not qualifying because host countries receive automatic berths - a genius move by our soccer federation. Anyways, I look forward to going to a live match with my father in eight year's time.

Might even kill two birds with one stone and go to a game in Canada because I've yet to travel to our northern neighbor. 

FiveThirtyEight has a quiz that will tell you which team you should root for in the World Cup. I got team Deutschland so I shall root for them since USA is not in the tournament. Sadly Germany's first match against Mexico didn't go so well (spectacular game, though) but it's still early days for the defending champions. 

The next three weeks should be quite exciting. 

The many shades of purple. 

Getting back to gaming

I think I shall get back into a bit of gaming.

Gaming used be a huge thing for me; I’ve owned every iteration of the Playstation, and to the detriment of my parents’ wallet, built multiple gaming PCs. Gaming for me was a combination of obviously pure fun (that hand-eye coordination training!) and more importantly, escapism. Games were the greatest escape from reality possible for the kid. My family was decidedly lower-middle class so the housing situation wasn’t great; The Sims series allowed me to dream and build the abode I lusted after and model the life, however virtual, I selfishly craved. 

Another example: I love cars, and the wait for aging to a certain maturity with the privileges of attaining a driver license was absolutely agonizing. Games like Gran Turismo gave me to opportunity to “drive” way before I ever could in real life. I remember fondly purchasing a Logitech Driving Force Pro steering wheel, constructing a stand for it out of Home Depot lumber, and pushing my task chair in front to from a driving simulation cockpit. I cannot tell you the sheer amount of virtual laps I did on the Nurburgring in GT4. 

As I’ve “adult-ed” my way through my 20s I’ve lost touch with gaming because ironically now that I’ve got the means financially, I prefer more tangible entertainment and activities. Perhaps I didn’t need the escapism any longer? Whatever the case, I endeavor to rediscover the joy of gaming, probably not to the point of engrossment with indiscriminate amount of hours as I did in the pass, but just enough to satiate the fun meter every now and then. 

Hello, copy of Final Fantasy 15, it’s finally time to tear off your plastic cover.