the mellow tigger's musings

I first mentioned Shirley Curry, the "Skyrim grandma", back in 2019. According to Wikipedia, she first retired in 1991 at the age of 55. For years recently, she made a name for herself by playing Skyrim online. Her YouTube channel has 1.29 million subscribers. Recognizing her significance to the gaming community, her appearance was officially digitized by Bethesda Games, so she can be included in the next Elder Scrolls game someday as a non-player character we can meet. Apparently she even has a cameo in Starfield.

Now, at age 88, she will stop playing Skyrim for the public's entertainment. I'm surprised she continued this long, considering that she had a stroke 2 years ago. I hope she lives long enough to see herself in the next video game, but that product is still several years away.

Here is her goodbye video. I haven't watched much of her play recently, but I used to follow along more frequently back in 2019. Go give the video a thumbs up to wish her well in her surgery and re-retirement. :)

Another very busy day at work. I'm sure it'll slow down soon. No MoodyMonday today, because I don't want the stress.

I've been so out of it in recent weeks that I didn't even realize that a new major version of Linux Mint was released about 1.5 months ago. I spent some time yesterday evening doing the upgrade. Easy peasy. Works fine.

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4732 ("How to upgrade to Linux Mint 22")

Bonus: The newly bought "Age Of Mythology: Retold" (a remake/update) finally works. I thought it was weird that it played fine on my SteamDeck but failed to work on my Linux Mint desktop computer. Both play fine now. Apparently it required a mesa update, which came with the new Linux Mint.

Trivia: I use the Mainline Kernel app to easily manage kernel updates faster than waiting for the usual trickle-down system updates. Works great. The new Linux Mint 22 comes with kernel 6.8.0, but I'm using 6.10.7 instead. I forget when exactly I started this detour, but I remember I did it to fix some other Steam game (which I forget now) that had issues at the time. It's a good and convenient utility. I recommend it.

While I'm asking for product recommendations, are any gamers here familiar with the Final Fantasy series? If so, what is the best title to play with a console's controller?

I want to pick up something good for the Steam Deck while the franchise is on sale for the lunar new year. I've never had a game console before, so I'm unfamiliar with playing on an Xbox controller. I can tell already, though, that games without explicit controller support (and even some that do) are a pain to navigate with a controller. I'm looking for something "easy" to navigate with a controller. Any suggestions for which title I should buy on sale?