I want to share a dumb little side note on specifically these posts. One, I often write them throughout the week, as I do things, so I don’t forget. Sometimes they probably feel a bit disjointed for that, but I try to keep a flow. Second, when I write in Joplin, everything gets a date. Either the date written, or the date it gets published on the blog. Like I may write a review without a date, but once its scheduled, I add a date. Its sort of a way to keep track of if I need to push something to the blog. For these, I put the Saturday date, but its in there twice, like this. 2026.09.05 – Weekly Wrap Up (2026.09.05) Because in Joplin, the dates go in the front, on the blog, they go at the back, but I want to cut and paste the title quickly later, because I am lazy like that. Anyway. I had, a second, overnight work trip, but less exciting than the last, because it involved actual overnight work. Not just, working early and late two and a half hours from home. The whole affair messed with my sleep way less than expected, probably because I was allowed a hotel. I went down Monday and did some work in the afternoon, then went to the hotel and… tried to sleep… then back to work at 2 am to do some night work, then back to the hotel, where I intended to sleep, except some backhoe decided 6:30 AM was a good time to start banging on a big metal slab outside the hotel where they were tearing down a gas station or something. Seriously, are there not noise ordinances in the city for this sort of thing? There wasn’t any real “free time” this trio, though I have realized that its super annoying that hotels are designed around overnight stays. What I need for these trips is like, a daytime hotel. I want to roll in at night, do my work, go get a hotel from like, 5A to 2P, then get up and go back to work and finish out my work.day and go home. But checkout was at like 11. At most I was getting maybe 4 more hours of sleep. Otherwise its been a fairly normal, but slightly surreal week. Toys While down in St Louis I did stop in at the Ross near the hotel. Unlike my local Toss, this one had Transformers stuff, so I picked up Studio Series TF One Arcee Elita-1. I keep trying to call her Arcee. Its… an interesting figure, some bits like to pop off too easily and the transformation is a bit finicky and weird. A bit later, I read through OAFE’s review of Beast Box’s Sacred Power Robo. I am pretty sure I had seen this figure before but kind of forgotten about it, but boy does this style and aesthetic hit a lot of my buttons right now. So I looked it up on Amazon and it happened to be half off, at $20, for one of the “limited time deals.” So I picked it up as well. I want to do a proper full write up but its neat. The box is also needlessly huge. Like that pic there, you can see the 4 robots in the cut outs. The rest is basically empty space. Its literally 4x larger than the usual Beast Box … boxes… Movies and TV Still working through SWAT. And its reminding me why I kind of can’t handle the classic broadcast TV style shows anymore. There are 8 seasons, though one is short, that is still almost 200 episodes. Modern shows tend to be 10 episodes a season and maybe 3 seasons. Anyway, the show has certainly picked up some of the early season momentum again, which is nice, the first season there was a line like “We don’t do investigations, we just hit targets.” Then for a bit, probably somewhat due to COVID limiting what could be done, they got kind of real… investigatey on the cases. The show has gotten a back some to the “strike targets” aspect. I will say, one part of this that kind of bugs me, they basically make sort of, hunches or guesses, and are basically always right. “We need to find the kidnap victim, the caller had traffic noises in the background and the suspect owns a warehouse next to the freeway, boom, guns blazing!” That sort of thing. Where a more procedural cop show would often run into “Well that was a dead end, sure glad we didn’t send SWAT busting through all the doors.” Also Chris left the show, she is the first of the original cast to leave. It worked for her story, but its got a lot of weird TV stink around the story. There has been a whole drama story of “will Chris and Street ever get together.” Then they basically do, finally, and she leaves. BUT, its like, vaguely implied that her and Street can and will be together now that they are not limited by department rules. She leaves to basically run a sort of halfway house for abused migrant women, which works for her character. Its in LA. Hell if I remember the plot line right, its in the same neighborhood where Luca and Street live, they first found it through Luca’s gang member friend who lives in that neighborhood. But we… never see her again. We don’t even get comments from Street about “off camera activities” with Chris, or “Yeah, she says hi guys!”. She is just… gone. Which is where the “TV stink” comes in. It really feels like the actress wanted to leave and move on. Just because it feels like her character’s story line was kind of abruptly cut short, vs they wanted her gone so they wound her story down. So the character just has to vanish, in a weird way. TV Stink. Music In “future new” but not “actually new”, Aurora put out pre orders for All My Demons Greeting Me as a Friend: The Moth Tapes Edition. Such a mouthful. I skipped it at first. AMDGMAAF (nope still too much) is one of my top albums for sure, but I have it, and the current shit state of the world means insane shipping. Except Amazon US has the Pre Order now, and its like, $25, with free Prime shipping, so… I guess I will have it on vinyl come November. It is basically a version to match the style of Gods We Can Trust and What Happened to the Heart, and the books. Its a reissue with a solid brown cover with little flourishey corner detailing and simple art in the center. Also, a handful of new additional tracks and mixes. Even owning the original, its worth it, for my part, for the extra tracks and symmetry with the liner notes books I have. That just leaves Step 1 and Step 2. I wonder a bit if she will do those as one album, I think they are technically considered “one album” even though its two releases. Top Artists TOMORA, AURORA, Tom Rowlands — 9 scrobbles Fizz — 6 scrobbles Sigrid — 3 scrobbles Majestic Moods — 1 scrobbles AC — 1 scrobbles Top Albums COME CLOSER by TOMORA, AURORA, Tom Rowlands — 9 scrobbles The Secret To Life by Fizz — 6 scrobbles Irish Fiddle by Majestic Moods — 1 scrobbles DC / Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap by AC — 1 scrobbles GT2: Music at the Speed of Sound by BOOM BOOM SATELLITES — 1 scrobbles Video Games I feel like this post is getting a it long, but I wanted to throw out that I am still stuck on Fortnite’s Droid Tycoon mode. I decided to push for the top Rebirth level again this round. Which isn’t hard, just grindey. I have essentially had all the droids I need since RB 28 or so, top level is 35. So its mostly been, get stronger droids as I can, then grind credits. Trillions of credits. I have been playing the main BR mode some as well. Its all video game themed this season, the pass has Sonic the Hedgehog, Totally Not Minecraft, Girl Solid Snake, and We Have Link At Home.” The actual map has a whole Sonic Green Hill Zone area. There are item drops like Sonic speed shoes and Mega Man’s arm canon. Its all pretty neat. In Memorium Why has this become a regular thing on these posts? People dying sucks. Long time Second Life resident Cristiano Midnight passed away last weekend, somewhat unexpectedly. It feels a bit like when Belghast passed a month or so ago. Cris was a big community builder in SL, he created and ran Snapzilla for a while and ran the SLU/VirtualVerse forums. He was a pretty popular and well liked dude. I also got the impression he wasn’t particularly old either. There have not been any details of how he passed, but a lot of folks in the SL community have come out and expressed their condolences. He is certainly missed by many for his work. His passing has been part of why this week has felt a bit surreal which I mentioned before, because I interacted with him pretty regularly and considered him somewhat of a friend. But also like, I didn’t really know him know him. I have several online friends whom I know pretty well, and a lot more whom I know and interact with but don’t super know well. It just has been weird, it doesn’t seem real. Random Weekly Link Share (BTW, it seems like the feed pull tops out at the last 20) Chess.com launched a poker site, and it’s planning even more classic games AI Giant Sued By Music Publishers For Copyright Theft Tom Cruise and Anne Hathaway line up Days of Thunder 2 for Summer 2028 California Bill AB-1856 passes – exempting open source from age verification Republicans are using anti-trans issues in a desperate attempt to motivate their base Poland has started recognizing same-sex marriages. But there’s a catch… Tamagotchi evolves into a ring for its 30th anniversary, preorders now open The Supreme Court is trembling over the next election A real-world Pokémon Poké Ball hotel is opening in Japan at a still-secret location [Video] How Gold Plastic Syndrome is Killing Toys and Game Consoles AURORA is opening the archives for 10 years of ‘All My Demons Greeting Me As A Friend’ Cristiano Midnight Has Sadly Passed Away Elon Musk Accused Of Meddling In 2024 Election 30+ common Spanish phrases for your trip to Mexico Coyote vs. Acme (2026) How to Avoid Getting Arc Flashed Lego PlayStation recreates Sony’s original console, makes unusual choice for games to salute New Pokémon anniversary song is 22 minutes long, features all 1,025 Pokémon species [Video] New Sega Dreamcast Games in GameStop? — Ten Indies Being Reissued by VGNYsoft This “Supersized” El Niño Is Only Just Beginning to Wreak Its Havoc