I spent my morning taking the Moroccan empire to victory in Civilization V against the world thanks to an extensive network of highly lucrative trade routes before going to the bank with Aaron to sign the contract for a new working capital line of credit our banker recommended. The whole experience was a pleasant surprise.
My youngest sister made our day yesterday by stopping by the house to visit for a few hours. She had been at the NakaKon convention in Overland Park and saw an 8-bit pixel Metroid collectible she thought I’d love. She was right. Upon holding the specimen, I temporarily reverted to a six year old, 1980s-living, NES-dominating beast. Behold, and listen to the theme if you need some adequate inspiration.
Having reached the end of the road in the third installment of the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy, requiring 150+ hours of game play over a four year period to climb the highest levels of power in creation and culminate in a conclusion to the series, I’m struck how the entire thing is really a well-done repackaging of Plato’s Euthyphro dilemma. In case it’s been awhile since you delved into the classics, the philosopher’s famous question posed in Greece more than 2,300 years ago can be summed up as (made singular since a majority of world religions are now monotheistic): Is something “good” because God says it is good, making it dependent upon His will or does God say something is “good” because it is inherently “right”, making goodness independent of His will?
Almost four years ago, I beat Final Fantasy XIII and blogged about it that evening. I never got around to playing the next game in the series, so over the past two weeks, I managed (mostly by fitting it in late at night) to put somewhere around 50 hours into Final Fantasy XIII-2. Now, I’m working on the final game in the trilogy.
With the holidays concluded, too many Thanksgiving, Christmas, and reunion dinners to count, endless nights with family and friends, and the bulk of the busy season behind us in the businesses, we spent today in our pajamas as the snow fell outside, cooking a pot roast and working on some projects we wanted to finish. (Technically, we still have one Christmas celebration left, which was postponed until later this week.)
For the past hour, my mind has been on the power of some businesses to capture annuity streams that pay dividends for years, even decades or generations, with very little additional work. When you can get one of these in your portfolio, they pump out wealth as long as you update them every once in a while. They are the closest thing to geese laying golden eggs that exist outside of fairy tales.
Yesterday, I mentioned that we should make some sort of stew or pot roast so the house was filled with the warm, inviting scent of roasting meat and vegetables for most of the day. I didn’t think anything of it, and figured it would happen later in the week, but upon waking this morning, I heard grocery bags being unloaded and discovered the process had already begun to try a new pot roast recipe that included carrots, celery, potatoes, parsnips, beef broth, chicken broth, a finish of red wine, herbs, and a few other ingredients. As I’ve sat here going through some work I need to finish, the fragrance keeps getting stronger; it feels like a home should.
After writing about mental models earlier today, it made me realize how this approach to life becomes second nature to examine your own thoughts and feelings as they happen so you are self-aware of the subconscious triggers that are pulling your thought processes in one direction or another. In that respect, even a video game can be useful as a tool.
Playing the Sims 3 reveals both my biggest strength and one of my biggest weaknesses: My obsessive focus. I was only going to play for a few minutes today, but then got side tracked because my family bought the town art museum.
For you fellow veterans of Skyrim, I stumbled across a solution for your sweet roll storage problems while in Leawood, Kansas today. Never did I think the culinary industry would hear our cries! But they have. It’s the small things in life that make it so beautiful.
