Cav's Place

Last day of the year, only one post so far this week and really don’t want to start 2017 with a Sunday update, so I guess a report on my personal goals for 2016 may be something to write. Pointless, little and meaningless goals, just for personal use, but that’s pretty much the rule for what I can still manage to post in recent years, so it’s either this or worse.

The main blog-related goal was to just keep posting something twice per week, which I managed to do. In fact, including this one, there are a total of 109 posts this year, and since the first was the second one for that week, it means there were four additional posts over the course of the year, one of them in a week with three in March and the other three in a week with five, actually posted on five consecutive days, or in fact six if you add the one posted the Sunday before, in May.
While, again including this one, 66 of the 109, so just over 60% of this year’s posts, are personal, as far as totals go, that category and the Tests & Surveys one are now at 578 out of 1224, so still under half, which is the other long-term goal left. Sure, that’s only thanks to old book reviews copied here, but it counts. And speaking of which, still didn’t get around to copying all of those old reviews, actually.
And to finish with the blog, something specific for this year was a clear goal of adding two more posts in my “New Finds” series including five bands each, but also a tentative one for either three regular ones or two bigger ones, for a total of at least 15 bands mentioned in such posts this year. That means that, with two posts including a total of 12 bands, since the second one included seven, I met the clear goal, but failed the tentative one.

Still on-line, there were some goals for MobyGames submissions, and those were almost completely failed. The main one was to get at least 1000 points in a year again, since the last time that happened, barely, was in 2013, and I also wanted to do it while counting less than 250 points obtained from submitting electronic covers. A tentative goal above that was to have at least 2000 critic scores, formerly known as mobyranks, submitted and approved, so to get at least 1000 points only from those, as that used to be what I usually submitted and in each of 2011 and 2012 I had over 3000 of them. On the other hand, the first lower goal to fall back to was at least 1000 total points, so including even over 250 from electronic covers, while an even lower one was just to get no less than 2014’s 818 points, which was the least amount in a year after 2010. But all I have right now are 685 total points, including 411 from electronic covers and only 196.5 from the 393 critic scores, while in queue there are only four more critic scores, since I was recently added to the users whose critic score submissions are automatically approved unless they specifically uncheck the box for each they want seen by an approver, and 11 more electronic covers, so a total of 35 more points if all will also be approved, making for a maximum total of 720 points this year.
The one goal I didn’t fail is submitting all reviews published on Games Xtreme up to the end of 2015 for games that are in the MobyGames database, since based on a message I mentioned at the time that became a little goal after learning that The Adrenaline Vault will not be relaunched after it was hacked. Must say I’m very surprised I managed this, since only a week and a half ago I was only up to the end of 2011 and hadn’t added any more in quite a while, but then I got back to it, pushed, and was halfway through 2014 yesterday, with a goal of at least finishing that year today. However, before stopping to have time to also add a few more pointless lines in my story before going to bed, I was only six reviews short of finishing 2015 as well, and I submitted the five I could submit today, the other one not being in the MobyGames database.

Speaking of my story, still managed to at least add a little something every day, but it’s still completely pointless, or in fact even more so than before. Can’t remember the last time anything relevant happened or, more importantly, the last time I knew what I wanted to happen, the nearest future scene in my mind remaining the end of the sea voyage, which has been clear since well before I actually started writing any of this. Nothing to do with sticking to a word count either, not even sure I’m averaging 100 per day lately, and definitely didn’t stick to even that as a minimum anymore.
Did cut off what I have so far at the end of what I consider part two and copied that in a separate file as a potential actual first book, as it makes more sense and most of it flows to some extent, since I knew what should be happening and where to go next, but it’s been simply sitting there ever since, as I don’t dare to start making any attempt of going through it to make it into something which might, at a real stretch, be in any way worth reading by someone else.

Oh, back to on-line stuff, at some point I found myself mostly moderating in the Facebook editor, though I also added some information for some pages, and as I was seeing the numbers add up I came up quite recently with a goal of getting all badges, since I only had the one for suggesting 100 page edits left, and having 2000 edits and 1000 accepted ones by the end of the year. And all of those were met today, when I got myself over 2000 total edits, which once again are mostly made up of approving or rejecting others’ submissions, as it was only yesterday that I got that badge for 100 submissions of my own. The accepted edits got over 1000 I think a day or two before that, not sure exactly anymore, though the accuracy keeps dropping, now being at 81%, so 19% of those not still in queue have been rejected by others. I still stand by nearly all of them though, since I actually check unless something seems very obvious, but of course others may not, or some may be attempts to use the system to spread false information or, likely more often, simply for pranks.

Still on the computer, the usual goal of finishing five games may have actually been met this year, depending on how you count. At best, you can say I actually finished six, the easy ones being Flight of the Amazon Queen and Hordes of the Underdark, then counting the original Tropico 4 campaign as one game and the DLC pack, or at least the Modern Times campaign, as another, and also counting Akalabeth, which I only quickly rushed through by abusing the amulet, and Gone Home, which I have a hard time calling a game. In other words, at worst you can say I only finished three, but do think Gone Home should count as something, since I played and finished it as it’s meant to be played, so should be at least four.
And I already mentioned finally finishing Hordes of the Underdark, and that was another specific gaming goal for the year. Has been one for quite a few years now, in fact, but now it finally doesn’t have to be listed under failed ones anymore. King of Dragon Pass still has to be, however, since I didn’t even make another attempt there… And now it may be quite impossible to do so, since it seems it can’t deal with something Emsisoft does after a certain update. Not that I even tried it again lately, and there has been another update also pushed to the delayed branch since, but knowing that King of Dragon Pass tends to refuse to run simply because certain other programs are running, it’s not exactly unexpected. It is very annoying though, and makes me wonder whether I shouldn’t just admit I gave up on it, after my two attempts so far ended so embarrassingly.

And on the topic of finishing things, without counting that “alpha version” of one that’s not actually released yet, also managed to finish 12 books this year, to average one per month, even if the last seven were read in the last four months. Only The Slow Regard of Silent Things and Sword of Destiny were actually bought this year, and A Dance with Dragons in 2012. Then there was The Cavalier Club, which I won on Goodreads, and Bai Ganyo, read in Romanian, as something grabbed while sorting through these old books to give away. The rest, so seven out of 12, more than half, were ebooks picked up for free, Blessings of a Curse in 2013, A Circle of Iron last year, and Weniaria, Free-Wrench, Quantum Tangle, Dragon of Ash & Stars and The Joined Realm this year.

As for running, I definitely managed to stick to averaging one run per week, and in fact at the moment I have a buffer of four runs to help get me through the winter. And I also managed to switch to seven kilometers as the normal distance, not getting back to less since I switched to this distance. Not that this was a goal until I actually made that switch, but it became one right away once I did.
But the most important achievement here, and in fact the only one actually worth mentioning out of all of this, is completing my first half marathon, which wasn’t necessarily a specific goal at the start of the year but quickly became one in March. That also includes two failures though, since the main goal was to finish it with an official time under two hours and the secondary one was to finish with less than two hours as real time, but the official time was 2:08:27 and the real time 2:02:38. Did manage to cover what should be the distance of a half marathon in less than two hours through the park while training for the actual race, but that doesn’t exactly count.

Despite the size, this post was rushed, so I may be forgetting something and, if so, I may or may not make edits. Still, between running and the only actual achievement here, namely completing an official half marathon, the books read, the games finished, the blog posts, adding to my story and submitting on MobyGames, I think I covered everything that actually was a goal. Oh, except the fact that I also stuck to my tiny daily exercise routine as well, but I haven’t given up on or failed at that since I started, after Andra left, and it’s not enough to make much of a difference anyway.