Hi there.
First an update on things since I last posted:

My brother got me a VR headset about 3 years ago. It's a Vive Pro 2.
My favorite game so far has been Synth Riders, but once I realized the headset (and apparently most headsets) aren't designed with cleaning in mind, I stopped playing games that make me sweat. Eventually I kind of stopped playing VR games entirely. I have 149 VR games and have played 47 of them.
I probably spent the most time in VR doing the weekly Steam VR quests to look for items.
To date, I do not have a VR Chat account and have never played it. The most I did with trying multiplayer VR was that I joined a public lobby for Synth Riders and found that they were always playing custom songs I didn't have, and a couple times I tried visiting a random Steam VR public room and it ended up being 70% kids without parental supervision, which got annoying fast.
My computer got hit with a power surge in July this year. My surge protector was too old and didn't save me. My brother took my dead PC, put it on the back burner of his priorities for seeing if it could be repaired, and gave me a laptop to use with a new surge protector. Sadly, the laptop is not VR compatible. At best I was only playing a few hours a month, so I haven't felt the loss so hard.

My previous comment on presidential elections was that it's a matter of lesser evils. That hasn't changed.

I'm still looking forward to more episode of Doctor Who. I'm in a Discord community with someone who likes to share the new episodes, so that's where I get to see them. Otherwise they've been locked behind subscription services.

I'm still looking forward to more new Warframe updates. Up next is Warframe 1999. People are hyped for it, but I'm disappointed just looking at it. It's got that gritty action feel to it and is putting more human looking characters into the game, which makes me uncomfortable. I've already got gore turned off, and now they're adding more realistic looking weapons. It's just not what I want. They're also introducing the option to flirt with some characters, which doesn't interest me in the slightest. The music for the update is highlighting a song called "online" which is reminiscent of the boy band style of singing, which also doesn't interest me. That sample landscape they've provided is a series of dark dystopian old town alleyways and streets drenched in grime and pollution, which makes me feel oddly more claustrophobic than fighting in the usual space ships which are event more crampt.
In general it's an update I'm not eager to see. But regardless, I'm still looking forward to the game continuing to grow.

The affordability problems in Seattle haven't gotten better with the growing population density and new housing supply. Though in the time since my last post, I've become aware that "affordable" is defined by the city as 1/3 of 50% of the median area family income regardless of square footage or number of rooms.
The Seattle median family income was $120,600 in 2023, which means that to be "affordable" a no-room studio apartment can be as much as $20,100 annually ($1,675 per month). However, in order to qualify for that no-room studio apartment the landlord may require the prospective individual to earn a gross income (before taxes and expenses) of 2.5x - 3x the cost of rent, which is $4,187.50 - $5,025 ($50,250 - $60,300 annually).
The Seattle minimum wage for small employers in 2024 was $17.25 per hour and large employers was $19.97. For someone working 30 hours a week (a full 40 isn't easy to find these days. Lucky enough to get a reliable 30 from a single employer) would be making between $26,910 or $31,153.20. In 2025 the scheduled two-tiered system between big and small employers will go away, becoming $20.76 per hour for both ($32,385.60 for 30 hours a week, 52 weeks a year).
Personally I think it's a bad idea to do away with the two-tiered approach, because small businesses shouldn't be bound by the same expectations as large businesses, since a large business will always fight progress on the grounds that any regulation imposed on them will hurt small businesses. Honestly, there should be even more tiers, is the same spirit as tax brackets. I think those things, despite also believing that the current minimum wage for both employer tiers isn't a living wage.
One time I got in a debate with someone who said they were living just fine on $17 an hour. I asked them if they were living alone. They said no and asked why that mattered. I told them it mattered because when the government or a landlord looks at finances they consider household income rather than individual income. So if they were living with another person earning like they do, then they're actually getting by on $34 an hour, sharing the savings of only paying for one housing unit (at least $800 saved each month for each of them) and splitting some of the cost of living between them for things that are cheaper to buy with bulk discounts. They were not in a position to argue that their standard of living could fairly represent someone trying to survive on $17 an hour.
The current federal poverty level for an individual is $15,060 per year. A number of qualification requirements for assistance programs are based on some calculation of that number, often deducting income from benefits. On the off chance an individual works too many hours at minimum wage in a year, their assistance might get cut, putting their stability at risk. They make too much to qualify for help, but not enough to get by.

Inflation has been a big issue with affordability. During the early years of the pandemic prices went wild with little regulation to keep them in check. I myself was responsible for changing some of the price tags. I'd see things go up a dime to a dollar every couple months. They still are. Some of it is probably blind greed on the part of businesses seeing how much they can get out of people, but most of it is probably outside our country's control and is part of a bigger international set of problems. I mean, it's not like we're the only country experiencing higher food prices... higher prices on everything.

Regarding my own living situation, I'm still kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop. My mom doesn't live with me anymore. I've been trying to keep it all together. Scary sometimes.
One of my best friends recently became homeless. I tried to help them, but they had too much going on in their life and I couldn't afford the amount of support they said they needed. The situation was made all the more difficult because they live on the other side of the country.

Covid is still infecting people. We're only out of the quarantine times because of vaccinations. Something people misunderstand about vaccinations is that (according to the research documents from companies like Phizer) these vaccinations are only intended to prevent severe symptoms, rather than to stop a person from getting sick completely. People still need to be careful, but unless they have a compromised immune system (which is unavoidable in people under the age of 5 years or over the age of 65 years) they don't need to be afraid; the vaccinations have flattened the curve and there are now plenty of hospital beds for everyone with severe covid symptoms. People also need to remember that the primary purpose of wearing a face mask is to contain the infection, rather than to protect from it, and the effectiveness of masking in general is dependent on air ventilation wherever they happen to be; places with a ton of plexiglass walls and no fans or air vents to keep air flow moving aren't necessarily safer, but if they have got fans and vents they're safer with the plexiglass walls than without.

I did a calculation of births from 2003-2006 and deaths from 2017-2023. Not including things like immigration, between those 2 numbers I found that 5,114,505 more people died in the USA than were born, according to the CDC. People noticed covid came to the USA late 2019, so 2020 would be the year we saw the effects. The number of yearly deaths since then has gone up around 500,000 each year compared to times before. So far they peaked in 2021, and then as vaccinations rolled out they started coming down again. Who knows what the future holds.

... But I digress.

The light rail expanded all the way up to Lynwood and one opened up in Bellevue with a pending link through Mercer Island which hasn't happened yet. As suspected, it hasn't been much help to me so far, but I think it's really good.
The next extension being discussed is from Downtown to Ballard. Last I heard, the plan is to bore a tunnel under Salmon Bay and come out north of Market Street on 15th Avenue, bypassing the Ballard Bridge entirely. Alternatively, they're considering putting the station on 14th Avenue to save an estimated $140,000,000. We'll see how that goes.

The Downtown tunnel to replace the Alaskan Way viaduct was completed in 2017, and in 2019 it opened up with the viaduct closed entirely. The city then focused on opening the waterfront to the public. The viaduct has been completely removed and things have been added or planned to be added to make it a more attractive location to visit, such as park space, sitting areas and lots of staircases.

The union I'm in had a merger and is now UFCW3000. Contract coming up in 2025. We've had 3 contracts since my last post. Wages have gone up ($0.25 a year for 6 years, then $4 over the past 3 years to match pandemic wages we lived with for over 2 years), and there's a new contract appendix which a few departments get to be in instead, which means more money for them, but not for those left on the previous appendix. The select-a-schedule thing has been an abject failure. It was only available to daytime cashiers. Management stopped providing it years ago, but nobody cares. The union keeps saying it's a good idea even though the only people who know about it think it's a waste of union negotiation effort.
Gonna be the same thing it always is: Journeymen get a wage increase. New hires get some condition imposed on them that increases turnover. That's the impression the survey gave anyway. Another race to a contract signing so we can save up for Providence and Macy's to have their next strikes that we pay for. Maybe that's a bit insensitive, but it keeps happening like that. The best things to happen for us is when the union supports legislation at the state level. It's impossible to make any real headway at the negotiation table; changing laws is the only way to get things done these days, and I doubt we're going to get much of that across the country for... some are saying the next 40 years.

I believe that I'd rather have more equitable affordability across the board than personally have more money. I want more purchasing power, rather than more money.

As for what I'm looking forward to in 2025.

I guess I'm looking forward to volunteering at Sakuracon again. There's that extra building that got built near the convention center and it uses both of them. I still don't really do anything at the convention but volunteer. I used to visit the Go room to see John Boy. Apparently he died 2 years ago. He was like in his 90's, it was bound to happen sooner or later. He was a good man. Taught me how to play. I used to share games with him at the Couth Buzzard.

I guess I'm looking forward to giving more blood donations. I started doing them at Sakuracon and kept the habit going. I'm on my way to having donated 8 gallons (a couple platelet donations here and there). I take iron supplements now.

I've been watching a lot of Twitch.tv vtuber streamers. I'm looking forward to seeing them do well and keep life interesting.

I'm looking forward to playing more games. I've been doing jigsaw puzzles lately on Jiggi.fun and Jigsaw explorer.
I tried Last Oasis recently. The game is pretty much dead, which is great for me because I only want to do the PVE survival and progression tree stuff; I'm not interested in running into other players.
I played Arcade Paradise, which was an alright game. Get to do laundry on timers, clean up trash and play mini games.
I was playing Deep Rock Galactic with a streamer for a while, but they moved on to other games.
I completed achievements for the music and rhythm game AVICII Invector. That was pretty good.
I got a lot of Zen and Zaccaria Pinball tables to keep me busy.
Still liking the Cook Serve series. I started up Cook Serve Forever, but haven't played it in a couple months. The reviews for that one are upset that the button combinations aren't as complex as the other Cook Serve games, but it's a different kind of game and the simple button combinations are still a challenge for me.

There's a ton of point and click hidden object games I haven't played which maybe I'll pick up eventually. They're sitting in my Steam library like a pile of books being saved for some day.
It's nice that they don't take up space as physical media in my home, but it's also kind of depressing that if Steam ever shuts down I lose everything. A fact made all the more clear because recently Steam had a court case which made them change their TOS to say that people are buying a usage license for their Steam account, not buying an actual copy of the game. I would love it if some day people's digital purchases were connected to their identity and they could take them from one service provider to another.

I don't know. I'm not really looking forward to 2025. It's going to be more work. More passing time. More changes happening around me. It's not like the year is important. It's just going to be a continuation of the stuff I always do. I'm not waiting for any particular releases slated for 2025 like movies or games or anything. I don't have any vacations or travel plans. I don't have plans with friends. I'm not saving up for anything.
It's just... life goes on.

Anyone still paying attention to me? What're you up to? Any plans for 2025?