Then on Saturday I spent practically the whole day at the 4H Brat Stand with my kids. We sold 288 brats, which was a huge percentage increase over the previous year. My sister-in-law is absolutely superb on the grill, and I was running meat and filling orders for her-- we were swamped but actually did an almost professional-level job I would say, it went very smoothly.
On Sunday I was Sacristan, which takes multiple hours of my morning.
Then yesterday I spent five hours total at the church helping with a funeral visitation plus Mass. I'm starting to dress up in a suit jacket and such for funerals. The priest was a visiting one, and his style was very unusual-- almost more like a Protestant minister, he had a ton of energy and gave a very engaging homily! Yet he was also reverent at the same time. I shared my observations with him after Mass, and he seemed to appreciate the compliment.
I have another funeral on Friday, but there is no visitation or after-Mass luncheon, so it should take less time. I now know all of the main people from both of the major funeral homes in town-- so I'm starting to build up those personal relationships, where they know me by name now and vice-versa.
Right now I'm hoping for a job offer this week from the company with whom I've now had three interviews. The third one went spectacularly, or that's how I perceived it anyhow, to the point where the HR Director starting talking benefits, pay ranges, and so forth with me. I'd honestly be shocked if they didn't make me an offer based on the direction the conversations went-- but I'm just staying positive either way, there are other fish in the sea if it doesn't work out.
If I do get that job offer, I will call the head deacon again and formally apply to the diaconate. If I don't get an offer, I might just apply anyway, I feel like I don't want to wait any longer, I want to do it so badly. Speaking of which, I heard through the grape vine that our Pastor is so excited to have me in the program that he's already planning out what he'll have me do! "Ooh, let's see... I'll have this deacon over here, then I'll have Mike over there doing this, then...". That was super affirming to hear!
I've also just become chair of the Pastoral Council. I'm a little nervous about that, but I'm planning to do short phone 1-1s over the coming few weeks with all of the members, to get to know them a little better. Everyone say a little prayer for me, that I'm able to fulfill all of these duties with Faith and confidence!
Game Development Backwards?
I thought this video was interesting-- it shows the decline in the quality of game development just in the past several years. Some people accuse videos like this one of cherry-picking, but the pattern is clear, and I've written about it many times before. In fact, I think the downward trend has been going on for decades.
When I was a kid and young teenager, people like John Carmack were making cool looking quasi-3D worlds such as "Wolfenstein 3D" which ran on a 12.5 MHz 286 with 512 kilobytes of RAM; they were making full open-world games like "Star Control II" with entire galaxies to explore, on similar hardware; they were simulating entire planetary food chains and evolutionary paths on 25 MHz 386 chips, such as in "SimEarth".
The Radeon 9070 XT in my PC can do almost fifty trillion floating point math operations per second-- yet you wind up with contemporary games shown in that video, with stagnant and static worlds. Of course, there are some indie games which do real-time physics including stuff like Brickadia-- but then you often run into aesthetic issues: pretentiousness, feeling unfinished, and so forth.
I would like the pick up "Donkey Kong Bananza" at some point and its voxel-destruction antics, after I made some more headway in the Switch 2 version of "Cyberpunk 2077", which I am very much enjoying.
Catholic Renaissance?
I've personally seen everything discussed in this article myself: young people are not just showing up in my own church in large numbers, but they are very traditional. Here is a quote from the article itself, I couldn't agree more with the observations in this paragraph, based on my own personal anecdotes:
"While it's not just the Catholic Church seeing this growth, Catholicism in particular seems to be garnering unexpected interest from the young. In an interview with Fox News, Gen Z influencer Isabel Brown explained that the time-honored traditions and unyielding teachings of the church appeal to young people who feel disillusioned with inauthentic forms of Christianity that sway with the times. Moreover, according to Brown, Catholicism's teaching that Jesus Himself can be directly encountered in the Holy Eucharist offers a real experience of the transcendent that's especially enticing in a culture given over more and more to the artificial and inauthentic. 'What this really boils down to is a level of relationship and intimacy with Jesus offered through the Holy Eucharist that is unfound anywhere else,' she said."
First Commodore 64 Games
I'm so excited for the Commodore 64 Ultimate that I couldn't wait any longer, and installed the "Vice" RetroArch core on my gaming PC-- running the games with a super nice CRT shader on my 50" OLED TV. Two of the games I've wanted to play my whole life but never have are the first two I got working: "M.U.L.E.", and "Castle Wolfenstein".
The former is one I remember seeing magazine scans of back when I was like six years old, and I wanted to try it so badly but didn't have a period computer to run it on at that age! It's like an economics board game come to life, I absolutely adore the aesthetic, the music, and the gameplay. Wonderful game, expect a full review at some point.
As for the latter, it's incredible to me how closely "Wolfenstein 3D" follows the format of its inspiration, now that I've worked my way backwards. Super fun game, although the gun aiming is a little fussy. I'll review this one in the near future too.
If these two games are any indication, I am going to love the C64 as a platform, to the point where it might break into my "favorite game platforms of all time" list in a pretty high ranking. Once the "Ultimate" comes in, hopefully in October, I'll get to experience these titles on authentic hardware, on a CRT TV, with an actual joystick-- that will be a treat!