=== Mobile Game Review - Tiny Tower - Idle Management - 7/10 =20=

Tiny Tower was one of the first idle management games I ever played on my phone. It seems like most of the mobile games tend to be somewhat idle games which makes sense as I imagine most people would play a game only temporarily while waiting for something on the go or between activities.

Tiny Tower is a game about building a tower of residences for people to live in and constructing shops for them to work in which earn money by selling merchandise which you can then use to construct more rooms.

There is a nice little tutorial sort of thing to start the game which directs you to construct certain rooms and stock shops and really gives you the idea of how to play the game. Completing his instructions gives you Bux which are used to buy upgrades and to stock shops faster.

As your tower builds up you'll see more and more different shops and people as you construct residences and your choice of room types. People move into the tower in one of a few different ways: They can appear in the elevator and want to be dropped off on a floor with a residence, you can pay for a new person to move in using Bux, or a special VIP can appear in the elevator who would cause a residence to completely fill up when dropped off on a floor with one.

The idle part of the game comes from stocking the shops and turning the game off for some time. While you are away, the game keeps selling the merchandise and gives you the profits once the game is turned back on. There is another idle income mechanic which is that once per day you'll earn rent from your residences.

In most games, earning the second type of resource income can be rather difficult or slow, but in Tiny Tower, you're able to earn it pretty easily just by logging in each day which causes fireworks to go off dropping Bux. The more days you log in, the more fireworks you get which means you get more Bux all the time. 

The Bitizens of the tower are the lifeblood of your operation; without them, you wouldn't have any rent, or anybody to work the constructed shops. They have different skills which affects the amount of discount you get for ordering merchandise to the shop they're working in. They also have a dream job which doubles the amount of stock for the shop while they're working there.

As a fun little side-thing to help keep people entertained, there's a Bitbook which is absolutely making fun of Facebook by having the Bitizens post updates and statuses and things which can be entertaining to read, but have no effect on the game at all.

Finally, as with all idle games, this game has a way to reset the game; this allows you to restart for the fun of having a new tower from square one, but keeping some of your progress and giving some sort of bonus for doing so which in this case is to give a golden ticket allowing you to super-charge one of your floors.

Is this a game worth playing? It's definitely well thought-out and if you put in the time to play the game, you can get quite into it. There are some times when the game can get a little slow which is something which does tend to happen when getting further into some of these idle games, but I do think this game is very worth it to play. The gameplay is engaging while it is running and gives you a reason to come back for rewards with each session. There are many mechanics and things going on which keep you having different things to do whether that's stocking shops or moving characters to their requested floors via the elevator.

I'm giving this game 7/10 for idle games because it is better than average, but the gameplay can get somewhat stale after a while, especially if you don't have enough time to actually spend a little bit checking up on the tower once in a while. Other than that, I do recommend this game to play.

~ Kyle Welykholowa

=== When Is A Person Not A Person? ===

     Okay, so this strange thing has come up at work recently which has me wondering... when is a person not a person? The nice thing is that I can talk about this because I'm not revealing any personal information about anybody specific; however, this IS something which has come up a few times recently when dealing with both people who are currently living in our community and with people who are applying to live in our community.

     We can only allow 2 people per bedroom living in a suite. The only time this is different is when it is a 1 bedroom in which case there can be 2 adults and 1 child under 10. In every other case, it is two people per bedroom. This seems simple enough, right? Well... when people come in to ask if we have any places available for rent, we have to ask how many people will be living there. Most of the time this is a normal interaction where they tell us there's two or four people or however many. Sometimes people come in and ask if we have a 2 bedroom and we won't have one, so they'll ask about 1 bedrooms... then you ask how many people would be living there and they say "Two."

     I'm going to stop there for a moment and note that this would be a perfectly normal answer. Two people in a 2 bedroom apartment. But then they continue on to say "There would be two people living there, and we have two kids." Well alright then, let me ju--wait, what? HOW many PEOPLE? "Two."

     The sad thing is that I have actually had to argue and explain to people that children are PEOPLE too. They do count as people. Living human beings. PEOPLE. Like... what could possibly make a child not a person? In what way could you possibly argue that your child does not exist, or count as a living occupant under your roof? I just don't understand; this is a real mindset that some people come to us with and it will forever boggle my mind until someone comes up with an answer for me.

Until then, all of you PEOPLE should go out there and have a wonderful day! ^_^

~ Kyle Welykholowa

Yay Job Interview!

     Just had a job interview today; I think it went quite well! It's always hard to tell whether or not an interview goes well, so here's hoping that I did well enough to land the job. It would be a lovely full-time job that would pay my rent and more, putting me in a comfortable position to actually enjoy myself for a little while without worrying all the days.

     In the mean time, I'll keep applying to other opportunities just in case I didn't get the job from today, and I'll continue to focus on my ever growing Twitch stream as I have the time to do so. I've managed to get sponsorship for my stream, so I look forward to hopefully seeing an increase in viewers and I hardly even know what to say I'm SO EXCITED ABOUT IT!!!

     Some days are better than others. Life will always have ups and downs, but I know that a balance will be reached in time. As with everything else, it all takes patience. Have an awesome day everybody!

~ Kyle

I Don't Know What To Do With Myself

     I hardly know what to do. There's so much I want to talk about, but there's nobody I want to talk about it with. I'm worried that I'm not going to be able to pay rent in the future. I'm worried that by the time I'm able to get another job, I'll be too far in debt to do anything about it. There's so much more that I want to talk about, but I'm not ready to talk about it because I just don't know.

     So here I am giving my hands something to do. They need something to do. Something good to do. Maybe some people don't find this productive, but I think it helps. I don't really have much of importance to say if anything right now. I hardly feel like this is worth posting, but I'm going to anyways.

     One one hand I'm really happy about some things that are happening right now. On the other hand, I'm really sad about other things that are happening. I'm sure it'll all sort itself out in time. I just don't know how exactly I'm supposed to be feeling right now. I want to be doing my own thing, but I have to get myself a job, and I'm trying to be a good friend all at the same time. Ugh............................. Make the stress go away. Perhaps a massage... or a puppy... anything. I'm thinking the puppy.

     If I manage to get myself a good job and don't have any reason not to in the near future... I'm going to get myself a puppy. Then I won't need to worry about anything else. I'll just be able to feel better about everything by having snuggles all the time every night. Snuggles are awesome. I need more snuggles. I need less stress and more snuggles... and I guess I need patience in my life. It's so hard to be patient, but somehow there has to be some somewhere. Everything will get better when everyone and everything is patient. I just hope life doesn't wait too long to get back to awesomeness.

~ Kyle 

Work Update

     I haven't posted anything for a while. I'm sorry for that. I've been so busy with work lately having 30+ hours per week. It's been really nice living on my own, working, and paying my own rent. I finally feel capable of living on my own. I'm finally independent. It's quite nice.

     Unfortunately... work decided it would be a good idea to merge the service desks into one location. On one hand, it's a nicer spot, and it's much easier having everybody in one spot where we can support each other and handle any issues and customers better. On the other hand... our hours have been cut.

     Now don't get me wrong. I understand that they're probably trying to save money by cutting hours and having everything be more efficient... I just don't really get why they would hire more people right before cutting hours. Especially the lady who drives an hour to work every day. It just seems a little bit odd to me.

     So it'll be back to job-searching for me. I'm not necessarily looking to quit my job at Sears. I mean... they gave me my first job here in Moose Jaw, and I really like working for them and the people I work with. But I suppose I should probably search for either another part-time job, or a replacement full-time job if possible. Here's hoping everything goes well. I see brightness in the future.

~ Kyle

I haven't posted for a while.

     I'm sorry I haven't posted anything for a while. I've been so busy looking for work and working on something special coming up. I don't want to give away what it is, yet... I hope to have it done in the next couple days. I have to record it and edit it and whatnot... and then it'll be out there for the world to see. I have to admit, I'm a little nervous about this thing I'm working on. It's definitely something I've never done before and it would putting myself out there even more than this blog is.

     So here's hoping it goes well. Wish me luck and all that. I want to write more, but I'm actually so excited and nervous about this that I have no idea what else to say. Hopefully I'll get it done in the next couple days, then I'll have a post about it.

     I guess I could tell everybody the good news. I got my first interview in Moose Jaw today... and managed to get a job. Yay! Oh how happy I am about that. I'll still need to get another job to actually save money, but at least I won't have to worry about paying my rent for a while now.

     That's my update for today. Look forward to seeing some more blog posts and some YouTube videos posted in the near future! ^_^

~ Kyle

Apartment Life

     Is there any escape from the noise of living in an apartment? It seems not. Now, I don't exactly have a ton of experience in apartments seeing as this is only the second one I've lived in... but it seems common so far to have a lot of noise to listen to from the other tenants. The family on the same floor as myself seems to have children that I can hear sometimes when they're having a bath or whatever. I don't mind them, I don't hear them often, and when I do I understand that they're children and they're not like... yelling really loudly in an attempt to annoy everybody around them. They're just being kids.

     The girl upstairs on the other hand. I can't tell if she's living with someone else or not, but I QUITE often hear hear bawling or yelling about something. I can actually currently hear her telling someone to "F" off. This, I find to be a little bit annoying. Most of the time I couldn't care less because I have music or whatever to listen to rather than having to hear her. You would think that myself being the interoverted nerd I am wouldn't mind too much and that I would put on my headphones and tune her out... but even I have my limits. My goodness.

     It's honestly less that I find her annoying and more that... it makes me feel bad for the actions of myself and Carley in the past. I'm usually not very quick to anger, but if someone knows how to, they could probably annoy me pretty easily. I'm definitely working on keeping my anger down, I think I've handled things a lot better recently; I could always use a little bit of help though. I don't know about other people, but I find it quite bothersome to have someone get so quick to anger when I'm only trying to be accepting and understanding. What I admire most in a person is them being understanding and forgiving even when it's so hard for them to do. That's something I strive to do.

     So I guess I have to wonder what could possibly be going on up there that I hear this sort of thing going on every couple days or so. Even though I wonder about it... and wonder why she keeps subjecting herself to whatever is going on up there over and over again... I have to look at myself and remember that I have done the same thing. I hope my future is less argumentative and more understanding than is has been in the past. The future will tell me what happens.

~ Kyle