2022 was a pretty good year for me overall. I am very thankful for another year with Karen and Buster, and still missing Nikkyo. Outside of some annoying health issues, having to switch to meds that don’t work as well as my old ones, losing a dear old friend, and missing my family terribly, things were a definite improvement over the past 2 crazy years. The world got a little closer to being back to normal. I am still very cautious about being indoors in crowds around a lot of unmasked people, mostly due to fear of long COVID making existing issues worse, but doing more outdoor activities and small gatherings with trusted friends has been very nice.
Highlights of the year:
Visiting friends in Delaware for Xmas.
Being Jewish, Karen and I don’t usually celebrate Christmas beyond the traditional Chinese food and a movie. This year, our friends invited us to their house to spend the weekend, and we had a really great time. We played games, decorated gingerbread people, exchanged presents, ate awesome food, and visited horses. Added bonus was that our car didn’t break down like it did the last time we visited. Thanks Giardina family!
God of War Ragnarök
God of War 2018 is one of my favorite video games of all time, and God of War Ragnarök was just as good. Amazing story, music, and gameplay, plus some really great accessibility features. I am looking forward to playing again when New Game Plus mode is added in the spring. I played through the 2018 game at least 5 times, and will probably do the same with Ragnarök. They are the only 2 games I have ever 100%-ed and gotten platinum trophies for. I usually don’t care much about those things, but for these games, I didn’t want to miss anything.
M2 MacBook Air
Up until this year, I had been leasing equipment for business. In order to cut down on monthly expenses, I stopped leasing and bought a new computer and iPad to replace the ones that I returned.
My last leased computer was a 15″ MacBook Pro, and it was really awesome. I loved everything about it. When I returned it, I was temporarily using an 13″ M1 MacBook Air that now belongs to Karen. Even though it had half the RAM of the Pro (16GB instead of 32MB), it still did everything I needed with no problems other than RAM warnings. It was hard to get used to the smaller screen, but our very nice neighbor gave me an awesome large screen curved monitor when he had to move and couldn’t take it with him.
When we returned Karen’s computer, I gave her the M1 and got an M2 Air with 24GB of RAM, and have had not had any more problems with RAM warnings. It is a really amazing machine and handles whatever I throw at it very well.
Apple Arcade
The new hardware included a 3 month trial of Apple Arcade. I was going to cancel after 3 months, but after finding several games that I like and learning that I could share the subscription with Karen, I signed up for a year. It is really nice to play mobile games without ads or constant plugs for in-game purchases. Games can be played on macs, iPads, and iPhones, and progress syncs between them. Many of the games also work with game controllers.
Favorite games so far are Simon’s Cat: Story Time, Illustrated, a jigsaw puzzle game, Zen Pinball Party, and Grindstone, which I can’t play anymore because I am stuck at a bugged level.
Obsidian
Obsidian is by far my favorite software of the year. I wrote a whole post about it already, so won’t say much about it here other than that I am still loving it and have switched to Obsidian Sync, which seems to work better than iCloud sync. I mostly signed up for it as a way to support the developers and for the version history and end-to-end encryption.
Setapp
Setapp is an application subscription service for mac. I discovered that it includes a bunch of apps that I was already paying subscriptions or upgrade fees for. I signed up and cancelled my subscriptions to the stand-alone apps, and have also found some other great apps that are included in the subscription.
Apps that I was already using include BusyCal, Bartender, Path Finder, MindNode, Dash, and SQL Pro. Some new apps are BetterTouchTool, SnippetsLab, CleanShot X, and Hookmark.
Podcasts
Favorite podcasts of the year are Mac Power Users and We’re Alive Descendants.
2023 is off to a good start so far, and the highlight of this year will definitely be getting to see my family in March!