I was raised on syndicated TV, as I suspect were many my age; I never watched the original Star Trek at the stately original pace of one episode per week, but rather every day for years, thus seeing them over and over again.  And so it was with most TV I watched.

This, apparently, prepared me perfectly for this modern age of marathoning TV shows via Netflix or DVD or whatever.  To the extent that I find I do not like shows as well when I watch them weekly, or rather, I like them better when I jam through them again at some later date.  If it weren't for that last bit of me that doesn't like the Internet telling me everything that happened in an episode before I see it, I think I might at this point stop bothering to watch TV when it's new.  Thus contributing to the end of TV, I recognize, although it's not like I've ever been in a Neilsen family.

Anyway, I digress.  Point is, this has given me the peculiar habit of marathoning my way back through a TV series I've already seen as a comfort food, the moreso in the winter when seasonal depression is a constant companion.  Some years ago -- when the show was not only still airing but was about midway through its run -- I marathoned my way through Scrubs one winter to catch up.  The next year I marathoned my way back through all of it up to that point.  And so on, so that December 2013 I once again began with the first Scrubs episode and ended with the last episode of the spinoff.

This has been the year that it's almost too easy to do this kind of thing, though.  After the Doctor Who 50th anniversary a year ago, I started watching the old series with its first episode (obviously watching reconstructions along the way) and am currently in its 22nd season.  My wife and I are slamming through Supernatural after doing the same with Lost Girl before it.  The family's marathoning Arrow (to catch up) after having finished Alias after having finished Hercules and Xena after having finished ... well, I forget what, but I can tell you every Star Trek series except Enterprise was in there, too.

Not sure if I'm going to do Scrubs again this year, though; there's so many options now.  Maybe it's time to marathon New Girl...

It is obvious, even intuitive, that no todo list site (or any other kind) will be perfect.  This appears to have no restraining influence over my impulse to keep searching for the perfect one.

I used Hiveminder back in the day but it was just too often an impedement to simple use, and now I understand they're shutting down, so moot point.  I then went back and forth between Toodledo (also pretty user aggressive, plus it has some assumptions that cause me to stumble) and doit.im (written by crazy people; nice UI but the first time you have to hand-delete a bunch of items one by one it wears thin, as you realize deleting a task is a pain.)

So now I'm on the hunt again.  I want something with a slick web interface that I will use most of the time, plus nice Android widgets with lots of control over what I get.  Ha ha.  Anyway.

RemembertheMilk: An old classic.  I revisited it, but I was immediately reminded of one of my top needs: start dates, or some other way to defer an item until the future.  I don't want to see next month's bills; I couldn't pay them now if I wanted to, and I don't want to.

Wunderlist: No context or other tags.  Wtf?

Google Tasks: I wish, but barely higher tech than paper.

Todoist: Utterly crippled without premium.  I have no objection to premium; I have in turn paid all three sites I mentioned above in the past (and present, for Toodledo) and rtmilk also, I believe.  But not without establishing that it's useful for me.  Todoist requires premium to even have contexts on tasks. Feh.

Zendone: Looks super impressive, to the point of being overwhelming. Once again, though, no start dates as far as I can tell. There seems to be a weird disconnect between different sites: is a due date when you should be working on something, or when you should be done?  I say it's the latter, which is why I use start dates to cover the former.  I don't want to even think about my cable bill until the 1st, but then it's due on the 5th and not later than that.  And so on.

Must resist bad programmer impulses at a time like this.  My todo list, wherever it is, won't get done at all if I wind up trying to write a todo list site.

I am a complete data dork.  I love extracting data from documents and finding new ways to look at it.  Consequently, after I made a list of all my GOG games with genres listed so that my kids (and spouse) could see what all is available for them to ask me to install, I of course was compelled to turn it around and analyze my own habits.

I mostly was guided on genre by what GOG says, but where I disagreed, I of course took my own opinion, and I simplified somewhat (I don't think first-person or third-person are genres, for one thing; if you disagree, that's fine, but this is my list.)  For the purposes of the breakdown below, I removed "fantasy" and "sf" as not being as interesting as the gameplay types.

Anyway, here's what I discovered:

Total games: 122 (note that some are actually multiple games in a pack; not much I can do about that.)

38.5% adventure
17.2% rpg
13.1% action adventure (as opposed to point and click)
6.5% space combat
6.5% simulation (e.g. Zeus, Pharaoh, that sort of thing)
4.1% puzzle adventure
4.1% shooter
3.3% strategy (ick)
1.6% puzzle (but not puzzle adventure)
and 3.3% other (stealth, racing, combat, action but not action adventure)

Yes, that adds up to 98.2%. Rounding error, I guess.  Shrug.

Anyway, that looks at a glance to be generally how I roll, indeed.  (I'm not doing this with Steam to make sure.)  Of course MMOs are excluded, but they'd fall under rpg, so.  My favorite franchises (Gabriel Knight and Wing Commander) fall under the first and fourth categories, and the fourth is only that small because (a) there are not enough good space combat games in the history of gaming and (b) that goes triple for GOG's library.

This is the kind of thing I think about.  So, yeah.

So, let me tell you something about long term chronic pain. I haven't been cleared to speak for anyone else, although I bet I get some agreement, so anyway this my own POV, okay?

You feel reduced or even devoid of value. A lot. You know you aren't able to do everything you once could, and you know people can't see the cause but they surely can see that effect. And so you -- like everyone else -- hopefully do all you can, and find ways in which you can contribute, but you don't fail to notice how it doesn't fit what other people do and you wonder about expectations. And by wonder, I mean you beat yourself up and then get defensive.

I do what I can. I do it when I can and to the extent I can. I think I'm pretty damn helpful. If you don't, that's your thing, not mine. Or that's what I'm going to be telling myself. And if you're held back by a physical condition that's joined the opposition, please know that doing your best, whatever it may be, is pretty damn good, too.

I think I'm going to take some advantage of the low-key nature of OPW and talk a little more freely about myself than I might otherwise.

I'm a depression sufferer.  Hi.  I'm also treated by fibromyalgia, which my neurologist tells me is maybe not a separate issue.  I am not offended by this idea.  I'm also diabetic, which probably is a separate issue, but who knows?  Anyway, I take tramadol three times a day to keep both the pain and the dark clouds at bay... mostly, in both cases.  So there's that.

I only bring this up because this week has exceeded the capacity of my usual regimens to keep me from going nutty.  Robin Williams, and frankly a lot of nonsense about depression thereafter, check.  Ferguson, MO (and New York! And L.A.! And whoever's next!), check.  Massive stress because classes start Monday -- I'm not a student, I'm the sole UNIX admin for a computer science department at a state university, so this is crunch time, basically -- check.

And so here I am using up my daily post (my first one, at that) complaining that I feel lousy.  Well, so it goes.  This is pretty much where my head is this morning, and hopefully that will pass (which is not to say I intend to shrug off the goings-on in Ferguson and so forth, just quit needlessly curling up in the fetal position, I guess) and tomorrow I'll be able to think of something else to write about.  Or not!  It's not like we're required to post daily.

And now, obligatory meta-talk: I sent out some feelers to people I think might be interested in OPW, so maybe I'll do a little inviting in the near future.