I’m rendering some videos so I have a moment here. Soon after ragequitting Remnant: From The Ashes because of the Shroud boss, I went back and figured out how to defeat that bastard. My recipe for success was: Replace the medium/short-range coach gun I was given at the start with a long-range hunter’s rifle. Upgrade the hunter’s rifle to +2. Install the Hot Shot weapon mod in the hunter’s rifle, which does stacks of fire damage over time. Listen to YouTube videos while mindlessly repeating the boss fight over and over again for a total of about an hour and a half. I counted a total of 33 tries. UPDATE 8/27: Here is my victorious Shroud video. (420 words.)

Well that was quick. I got to the first boss fight (Shroud) and I’m ready to uninstall the game forever now. I chose “Hard” difficulty because I’m a Souls veteran. The combat has been taxing at times, but after some adjustments in tactics, easily overcome. Up until this one boss fight, when it became ludicrously impossible. Shroud has a million hit points. Shroud teleports away after every attack. Shroud lives in an arena that is choked with obstacles preventing you from moving around freely. Shroud causes a bleeding effect if you have the misfortune of being hit. Oh, and Shroud has an army of spawning adds that magically appear and harass you constantly. (553 words.)

Yesterday’s Promptapalooza topic du jour came from Just Geeking By, a blog that is new to me. Check it out. What are some of the things that get you excited in life? One exciting thing for me is discovering an interesting new make-believe world through the medium of games, movies, television, or books, which segues neatly into Remnant: From The Ashes, which is free on the Epic Store right now. Last year I didn’t think very much of this game, when it was announced and promoted as “the next great Souls-like game.” I did not see any resemblance to a Souls game in the footage I watched, so I felt no need to reward the blatantly false advertising. (329 words.)

Now there’s a title that’s sure to wreck some page layouts. Thanks to forgetting about blogging for a day, I’m a day behind now, so I’ll be combining two prompts into one post. This works out well, because I don’t want to respond to one of them anyway. The first prompt from two days ago started with SDWeasel over at Unidentified Signal Source: What is something you have lost along the way that you would love to have back? Can be serious or frivolous. (646 words.)

Yesterday’s Promptapalooza prompt started with Krikket, and exhorted: Tell us about your physical creative space, and how it influences your content creation. Except it wasn’t yesterday’s prompt, it was the day-before-yesterday’s prompt now, because I completely forgot to post this yesterday. My first reaction to this prompt was pretty similar to Krikket’s: “Oh God I don’t want any part of that.” I have major problems organizing my “physical space.” My creative (and living) space is almost entirely inside my head or on a screen of some kind. Consequently in situations where there’s nobody else in the house to see, as is currently the case, I make little or no effort to organize, clean, or otherwise decorate my physical environment, because it’s invisible to me. (366 words.)

I’ve been having a lot of back pain over the last several days, so sitting down to write in the mornings, when I feel the most like writing blog posts, has been a massive chore. I’m trying to push through it to get this post done on Sunday so I don’t fall another day behind. I don’t think of myself as a chronic pain sufferer but over the last several years it’s becoming clear that my freedom of will is increasingly limited by the day-to-day status of my back, and I haven’t quite adjusted to it yet. (767 words.)

Technically I’m starting this post on the night of the 5th, while a thunderstorm passes overhead and rain pours down again. This time, there’s a lot of lightning as well, so I’ve turned off most everything in the house. I haven’t had a working uninterruptible power supply in quite some years, and the only drawback I’ve experienced is that I don’t like leaving my most expensive electrical equipment plugged in while lightning strikes within a few miles. (446 words.)

Yesterday’s Promptapalooza prompt kicked off with Everwake, who wrote: The wheel of Promptapalooza has turned it's terrible gaze to me. The eyes of Belghast's Blaugustosphere empire rest upon my humble blog. Will I seize the provided prompt? Will I provide a response that leaves the masses weeping with joy in the streets? Or will I scribe a dithering dump, to the eternal ridicule of my blog peers? - Everwake Apologies for quoting so much, but it’s fantastic. Go read the post please. I added a second link to it so you don’t even have to scroll up to find it. (449 words.)

As I’m typing this morning, the remnants of the eye of tropical storm Isaias, which I neither know how to spell nor say, is passing about a hundred miles to the east. Yesterday and last night in particular, it dumped a massive amount of rain on my house, and this morning I woke up early to the sound of some of that rain dripping inside my house. I live in a house built in the 1950s, so it’s old and quirky. It needs new shingles, and there are a couple of spots on the roof that need repairs, but that’s an expensive proposition and I can’t afford it right now. I thought I had plugged all the leaks I was aware of, but apparently there’s a new one. Nothing is damaged beyond repair, but it’s annoying and a constant source of stress in my life. (399 words.)

Or: “I could actually use a bionic eye about now.” I didn’t intend to write about every Promptapalooza topic this month, but I don’t have any games to play at the moment, and I’m trying out a new blogging idea called “writing and publishing posts.” The prompt for August 2nd, which was actually the third prompt, [started with Mailvaltar][2], and asks What are some key sources of media (games/movies/etc) that have shaped your worldview? (487 words.)