January 2020 points changes and a bit more I suppose...

So, the X-Wing points have dropped and overall I am fairly happy with the changes.  Ironically the list I flew against Tony just before the Stream actually dropped by 5 points in total (Boba/Emon) with the Firespray’s Title cards dropping as well as Emon himself.  Neat?  The essentially unlimited Bombs I can drop with that list will be something REALLY good against a number of lists, and Fett himself is still really solid.  The Nantex scourge is tempered a bit as the passing off the Tractor token now costs more, as do a number of what were overly efficient things in their Swarm builds.  My Republic builds are mostly OK with only Obi-Wan really going up in points, but the R-2 Astromechs all went up so things will be a bit tighter if I were flying the 7B with Regen…  I wasn’t, so…  The CLT builds are more interesting for me at least and that was where I went for the most part…

That DOES bring me to the one thing I am not thrilled about.  Hyperspace is now radically different than it was.  On the one hand, I am glad it changed…  But especially the smaller Factions are just gutted when they lose half of their effective components.  Good thing I suppose HS is a format that will be very limited in terms of actual events.  Though, saying that the first round of Store Championships are supposed to be HS, not sure if I am interested in playing that at this point honestly.  Eh, will see I suppose how things actually work out.  Just not really overly interested at this point in seeing if I can build something with scraps and make it work well enough…  Especially knowing damn well that it will NOT be the best build possible.

Not much fully known, but FFG just had a fairly massive round of layoffs so not entirely sure how this will affect OP and of course the games I actually DO play…  Hopefully things will continue as they have and X-Wing/Legion at least do seem to be fairly popular…  Of course, that doesn’t mean anything if the cash is not flowing well for the company, and of course being FAR on the outside I have no real clue what the real situation is up there.  In any case I do hope things work out for those laid off…  Have gone through a bit of that in the ancient times, and frankly that is one of the major reasons I wound up working here at the University…  Not like we’re going to be bought and have the new company bring in its own IT staff…  THAT happened to me when I worked at Illinois Power…  Mind, this was the mid to late 90’s, so IT work was REALLY easy to find and the folks I knew there all either retired or simply moved on to other companies.  I went to Chicago and worked up there for over a year before burning out hard on that.  I worked my “real” job and did independent side work, but enough that I was actually working 2 full time jobs.  Made a LOT of money, but…  As I said, I am hoping things work out for the folks being laid off up there.

Job search?  Eh, still half-heartedly applying here and there.  Had an excellent interview with a local company, but that was a few weeks ago and having heard nothing I am taking it as a “no” I suppose.  NOT annoyed, it was a great interview and frankly the first time that my VERY heavy tech background (the “I do the stuff”) was not seen as a negative or viewed with suspicion…  Management and “line” IT workers do not usually share much in terms of personalities or skill sets it seems…  And while I made the transition, I know not many have or could.  Though having said that, I am finding that my “I do things” skills are mostly atrophied at this point with my MCSE dating back to the NT 4.0 days and almost all of my Infrastructure work being 10+ years ago now.  So, yes I HAVE done these things but it would likely take me a bit of time to actually relearn how to do them again…  And in any case, more or less committed to staying here at UIUC until I can really “retire” at 55…  No hurry, no worries I suppose, and getting some really good practice in these interviews.