So much has changed since my last post. It seems like the year has gone by quickly, but reading that last homestead post from May seems like a year ago. Regardless, let’s get up to speed. My GTA fam and I are not pursuing a RedM community. We are very heavily fooling around with a new FiveM server. I’m still hoping to do some scripting for casino games in the FiveM community to help marry my intersts. Interestingly, Rockstar has just announced a date for the GTA VI trailer, for next week Tuesday. Even more intersting, Rockstar bought Fivem since I last wrote. I think they realized how much money they lost out on with all these private servers. I think they also realized, there’s a huge market for private server support for big streamers to play on. Right now, everyone is beholden to the server owners of each server and their staff team. One bad apple who has a couple drinks (like me) and bans folks who say “who asked?” in the city’s discord genchat, and things can go south quickly. I think they’ll keep FiveM (SixM?) for GTA VI, but then build in a native, private, fully Rockstar DEVELOPED and supported private roleplay server so they can make some serious cash. The big lift is in the development and the community moderation, which is no joke! I wouldn’t be surprised if Rockstar hired a bunch of existing server owners/admins/mods from the existing private server community.

Plowing ahead, I started a focused and concerted blackjack journey. I got my 9-5 job to fly me to Vegas for a conference, and got my first 3 backoffs! That’s where the casino tells you that you are not allowed to play blackjack anymore. The third place asked for my ID and told me to “get the hell out of here” until I have one. Of course, they don’t want my ID for my age, they want my name and identifying information so they can put me in a nationwide database so other casinos can see me coming. I’ve put in over 100 hours on the blackjack tables since then, and there have been serious ups, and serious downs. Overall I’m still ahead/up, but it’s been a learning experience to lose $1-2k at a time and be ok with it. I teamed up with another advantage player and it’s been a very positive experience for me. I taught them how to solve the Rubik’s cube and it’s been fun to see them grow from one of my previous hobbies as well.

In June, I asked a GTA friend who is a custom computer keyboard hobbyist to design and build me something cool. That was back in June, and although I’m normally a patient man, I will admit that I never dreamed it would stretch into December before I would see this thing. I still haven’t seen it yet, but yesterday I was assured in DMs that she has everything she needs, and is actually in the final assembly and customization part of the process. I look forward to sharing a photo of it with the website!

Finally, the title of this post. One of my friends from college is moving from the Chicagoland area to Colorado, and was going to drive the whole way on his own in a giant U-haul with huge trailer attached to the back. When I mentinoed this to my beautiful wife, she suggested I fly out and keep him company for the trip. What an amazing wife. How truly lucky I am. So I’m sitting in an airport pub, munching on some chicken tendies and sippin prosecco. Day to day, life can get to you, but reflecting on these past 6 months, I have to say I’m happy with the incremental progress I’ve made.

That’s all for now. My love to you and yours.