Moving Update #1 (Patreon)

TL;DR: There have been some issues. Next video is a normal length one in September, August credits will be combined with September. Things are going okay.

It's not too bad. I've learned this lesson before, but this time around I'm learning a completely new set of them. I'm a bit delirious right now, so I can't recall if I've mentioned it before, but the place I'm moving into is brand new. It finished construction about two weeks ago. That comes with a lot of perks like amenities being of newer design, the place already being wired for fiber internet, rent being cheaper to entice people in, and best of all no mystery stains on the walls and floor. It does come with its own set of problems and this would be the kind of thing I'd normally tweet out I'm "having delays", but because you're all the benefactors you get to see the nitty-gritty. This seems like more of a punishment than a privilege, so the TLDR is really everything unless you really want to be in the know of the exact problems that cropped up.

For starters, when I first entered the entire place had an overpowering smell of paint. Rather than leave all the doors open with the ceiling fans running, they instead elected to leave all the doors closed and have no air at all going into the building. It's been averaging between 90-100F (32-38C) the past month so you can likely imagine the smell. I ended up turning on the air, opening the doors, and leaving an air purifier running on high near the central vent for two days, and then came back for the second surprise.

When the air had been purged enough, I discovered that maintenance had radically changed my door. Their new project had been to replace all the traditional locks in the building with a new Jurassic Park-like locking system that would scan a key fob to unlock a deadbolt instead of something that could be more easily picked. Bizarrely, I struggled to open this for about ten minutes from the outside, and when it finally did open I was pretty relieved. I went through the building taking pictures of anything that looked off, filling out an inspection report, typical "new apartment" stuff. I've learned from living in a place in Idaho a few years back to photograph everything even slightly off because management might be nice now and believe you about stuff you didn't do, but you have no idea who might be running the show in a year. Anyways, when I went to leave, I found out why the door didn't open easily. The door didn't re-lock. The maintenance team had replaced the bolt system on the door, but not the strike and box in the frame. It was misaligned entirely and was impossible to fit in. I gave maintenance a call and they told me that the door goblins were busy in the building since, to no surprise, lots of other people were having issues with their doors. Since I had nothing of value moved in yet besides a large air purifier, I could wait for the next day.

Instead of replacing the box in the frame, they ended up grinding it wider. I spared the entire sound in the video, but it was something I'd hear throughout the building a lot that day. Awful. Later that day, the fiber internet was installed, I haven't used it on the desktop PC yet since I don't have that set up yet but it maxed out my phone speeds so I'm preparing for some serious witchcraft. On mobile alone, the upload speeds were about 150 times faster than my desktop at the old place. 

Now the worst "new place problem" is still something ongoing. Since the building is fresh, it's not yet on Google Maps, Apple Maps, or possibly any map. While the local post office is figuring it out, places that circumvent the local post office have not. This has caused some delays in shipping and giving phone directions to lots of moving/delivery people. With that, here's the current state of the office.

It's not a lot now, but you'll get to see that change dramatically over the next week or so. Setting up the acoustic treatment will be the most labor intensive process since I'll be doing it myself rather than overpay on installation, and even that shouldn't be too bad. I'll be able to record some fun audio "before and afters" so you guys can see how rough the reverb is in here before treatment. I'm waiting on virtually all of the furniture for this room, since everything I had before I sold or trashed. The desk I was using was simply gigantic in depth, but the width could barely fit a single monitor. I had no idea where I'd put it in the new place so it had to go. Luckily, I ended up going with the "Karlby Countertop" setup from IKEA a lot of people were recommending me, which looks both space efficient and cheap for what it is. Some assembly required and it's still a week or so out but I can work with that. I haven't ordered a new monitor yet since I figured I'd wait for the new GPUs to come out to see if any new monitors come out that might deflate the costs of some current ones, plus I don't want a monitor getting swiped since while most people aren't going to grab boxes of acoustic foam there are definitely some who will go for a monitor. 

As for the chair...

The chair had to die.

I realize this now.

It served well past the date I probably should've scrapped it, but one of my flaws is that I'm really tolerant of inconveniences. Hell, it's probably seeped into my taste in games when I think about some of the convoluted UIs and "learning cliffs" I've had to deal with. The chair squeaked, had no coherent padding left, and I could feel a metal bar but I could sit in it so I thought that was just fine. I realized that I'd be sitting in that chair a lot more with having so much more time to work on videos so I ended up getting a new chair online.

Whether or not the chair will arrive without issue is the new challenge. 

With all that said, with the delays along with the stuff I'm waiting on there's no way I'll have a video this month. Credits for August videos will be combined with early September (hopefully the last "combo-credits" for the next year or so) and I won't just throw a short video out. I'm strongly considering doing a video on a game I've wanted to do a video on for a while that recently got a DLC and some significant balancing updates that I think would be a fun project. It would also mean I'd get to do a video on a game I'm already familiar with compared to something fresh, so once I get going on the project it shouldn't be too long.

When I started Patreon up, I was fully aware there was going to be a "bad time" and this is it. Ideally I would've started it up after I made the move, but I couldn't choose a place to move to unless I knew putting more resources towards video making would be viable. I really appreciate those of you who are sticking with me during this time period, but if you feel that this period of "not directly working on video" is going on too long I totally understand if you want to drop it towards someone actively working on stuff right now. I just want this all to be done with.

Thank you so much! Hopefully I'll have a better office image next week.