My life had some significant changes in August which caused me to miss my monthly update. You will also notice the updates to the site are slower as well. However, there are some positive changes coming in September that should see some new posts made this month.
Category: General Updates
July Update
July is the year’s version of a Wednesday. It’s a reminder that our year is half over. In a normal year, it’s a call to action to focus on your new year’s resolution and your goals and objectives. In 2020 however, it’s a reminder that there are still six months of this nightmare scenario to go before we can push the reset button and try for a better 2021.
2020 Steam Sale – Recommendations
The Steam Summer Sales event is up. As mentioned previously, I plan to go through my bucket list and make some recommendations. This list below represents the top games in my list and my thoughts on purchasing them. As with any sale, I will be focusing on the value of the game at the price they are listed and not simply the merits of the game or the discount prices alone.
June Update
I know it’s a little late for a June status report. I have a number of small updates to give and it’s easier to just put them all together on one post. On my agenda for today is the resurgence of COVID-19, a site upgrade, the planned re-opening of the baseball season, and the Steam Summer Sale.
Site Maintenance Pending
Over the course of this week, and possibly into next week, I will be performing a series of site changes that are likely to bring Worlds of Nations offline for extended periods of time. If you need access to any of the files or scripts during the outage, place a comment on this post or contact me directly and I will give you alternate methods of access it while the upgrades are taking place.
The Pandemic Work-Life Balance
I would be remis if I didn’t take some time to actually talk about the ongoing pandemic. For today’s update, I want to take a moment and let you all know why my updates have been spotty for the past three months and how much longer I expect this to continue.
I had a suspicion back in April that my productivity had dropped and my stress levels had skyrocketed following the statewide closure in March. It felt like I was doing a lot more work with less actual output, and at the same time my personal life was struggling. By May it felt the opposite, with better productivity and improved work-life balance. However, I had no data or proof this was the case. Thankfully, I was tracking some timecard data during this time. Here is what I found.
May Update – A Return to Normalcy
May sees a return to normalcy but a significant increase in my real-life workload. The focus of this late May update will be on the impact the pandemic has on things for the past few months. I will specifically be focusing on the state of the website, the status of the EDCE tournament, and some personal impacts the situation has had on me and my plans going forward.
Stepping Back Into the Light
It’s been a few weeks since I’ve connected to the outside world. The initial panic and urgency as the world shut down has subsided. In its place is an acceptance of what a steady state looks like for the foreseeable future. With it will return a resemblance of normalcy to my own life as it becomes clear what the next few months will looks like for me.
March Update
Not 20 days ago I had a completely different update in mind for March. I was going to post on Friday the 13th, the first back to back updates on unique days in one year. I had plans to do some new modding while also exploring some creative ideas I had. This week, the world seems to have been turned upside down. The WHO pandemic announcement followed by the CDC acknowledgment were the first pieces to a domino effect that seems unstoppable.
Unfortunately, I don’t know where this leaves me other than I have been recalled into lock down. This is the first time in recent memory where this hasn’t been voluntary. It also means the updates going forward will be uncertain.
Performing a Quick Website Update
I made a quick website update today due to some expiring domains and certifications. I took the time to perform some cleanup on old domains I no longer use, including the old NOE domain. I have been monitoring traffic and it was not used in over 9 months so I assume at this point everyone has migrated to this site. I’ll be monitoring the traffic for the next few weeks to make sure the active domains are still working. If I notice any issues I will make some additional changes.