I'm still playing #SmashDrums nearly every night, and I recently started going into the Multiplayer mode more often to see how I'm playing against others. In the lobby area before a song starts, it's always super quiet - but the other night I saw some people gesturing as if they were talking, and I realized my audio was off. I made a point of turning it on tonight since I saw some folks I've friended in the game and from the Discord channel, but no one could hear me. It took 2 or 3 tries to get into the settings and grant the game permission for my microphone since there's only 20ish seconds between songs. And I finally was able to comment on something they were talking about, and let me tell you they were shocked.

"OMG Jacki speaks!" 😆

And we chatted in between and during songs, and it was so nice to connect with people in a new way.

9/19:
I was at my aunt's (again) to fix her Amazon FireStick (again), which only needed to be unplugged and plugged back in to be reset (again), and she said, "Oh, I have something for you. I saw this and know how much you like your virtual drumming and thought you might like it."

I love it!

I wonder if she's doing a Doc Graham thing and buying things to keep for when I happen to come over. #SmashDrums #365Project #Project365

I started playing #SmashDrums on the demo version with only 3 songs by unsigned artists, but one of them was a fast rockin' song - "Takeover" by Thorr - that I really liked. Even the Easy setting made it feel like I was really drumming, which was something I always wanted to learn how to do.

It's been over a year since I bought the full version of the game, and I've played the Thorr song a lot because I still enjoy it. I've also been using it as a gauge for how my (VR) drumming skills have been improving since I started.

Tonight I hit #1 on the Leaderboard playing the Hard setting!

And the fun isn't over as I've only started attempting the song on the Extreme setting, and after that there's even a Hardcore setting. 😎

I was in the basement playing on the #OculusQuest2 and realized I hadn't spoken to my mom yet this weekend (we usually speak daily during the week). My phone was upstairs charging, and I was taking a break from #SmashDrums so I decided to try calling her through the #Oculus Messenger app.

Ingenious, or lazy?

Either way, it worked great and #technology can be pretty darn cool sometimes.

As a longtime #Twitter lurker with a locked account, I got used to mainly scrolling my feed and searching the trending topics and not posting much beyond my #365project Photo of the Day. There are enough people now on #Mastodon that I can see myself easily falling into the same habit, but I'm actively trying to prevent that.

Connecting with people here has been great. I did an #introduction post a while back, most of which I've now incorporated into my bio, but some of my other interests are:

#WhatWeDoInTheShadows
#OurFlagMeansDeath
#RickAndMorty
#BattleBots
#PopCulture and #academia
#travel
#HeavyMetal
#SmashDrums on the #Oculus

More hashtags to come in future posts when it all of a sudden hits me that I completely forgot something that I'm totally into right now.