Dude Love

It's ridiculous. I'm not a fan of loot/gacha mechanics, but you'd have to go after stuff like sports cards, collectible trading cards...it's all the same.

Is has this energy going for it:

Yeesh, that is WTF.

No. We've heard "now's not the time" enough. Primary Jeffries.

A long-view scene of a concert in an indoor stadium with the lights down, the seats filled with people, with Lady Gaga wearing an extremely long, flowing veil bathed in rainbow lights.

Saw #ladygaga in Seattle with @whitneyontheweb.com. An absolutely fantastic show; she and her crew were impressive. She has such a great discography!

Aw! She's also Pepper? :)

...and it feels like my education journey is still absolutely massive; rightly so, most of what I've learned is basically on-the-job.

Just have to keep at it.

I feel so odd in my technical SQL abilities.

I'm not a beginner. I know far more than, what I would assume, the average person on the street knows about SQL.

But then when I have issues troubleshooting errors, or I find out about new concepts, or just concepts that haven't really solidified...

A picture of Pepper, a pit bull mix, with her tongue out, laying on a pile of blankets.

Today would've been Pepper's (estimated) 18th birthday. I miss her everyday.

An image of the end screen from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past on the SNES.

From 2023-05-27: Just beat Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past. Played it recently enough that I didn't have to look up anything. Not a true Triple Zero since I did use save states. Great game. :)

A picture of the end screen from The Legend of Zelda: The Adventure of Link for the NES.

From 2023-05-21: Completed The Legend of Zelda: The Adventure of Link. Glad to be done with it. I had to make liberal use of save states so it wouldn't take me forever. A Link to the Past should be a lot easier!

A picture of the end screen for The Legend of Zelda for the NES.

From 2023-05-20: Just finished the first Legend of Zelda. Went pretty well, only used an overworld map, and didn't die.

But not super into Zelda 2. I actually like the game, up until the Great Palace. That place is a slog; the layout is completely ridiculous.

From 2023-05-19: I haven't played any of the recent Zelda games, Wind Waker was the last one I played and I didn't even beat it. So decided to replay through the series and catch up.

Starting with the Legend of Zelda on the NES. :)

From 2023-05-15: It's heartbreaking seeing a copy of Pokémon Emerald in a retro store go for $190.

#regrets

...may as well get the main 12 to 99.

From 2023-05-01: Been a while since I made an actual game update...let's see. Beat God of War (2018) recently. Played a few games of Spelunky and Rimworld here and there. Getting very close to end-game on FF6 Pixel Remaster. I could probably steamroll Kefka (most of the cast is Lv 99), but...

...HD version of RE4, so I guess I'll stick with that.

Addition: Two years later and I still haven't played it.

From 2023-03-31: I feel like I'm one of 10 people that just isn't excited about RE4R. Which also feels weird cause RE4 is probably in my top 5 of all time. Not a fan of the content cut, or some of the changes to the weapons, or character connections.

But haven't played through the fan made...

A picture of me with someone in the sports mascot-style Pikachu outfit.

A picture of a PT Cruiser decorated in the theme of Lugia from the Pokémon games.

A picture of me with someone in a Daffy Duck costume.

...that. It was fantastic getting paid to go be a Pokémon nerd. lol

Wait, I forgot that I actually have a couple more pics! Me with Daffy Duck and a shot of the Lugia PT Crusier.

And one more of me and Pikachu.

One of the Pokémon event coordinators leading someone in a Pikachu sports mascot-type outfit.

...coordinators (they were all really nice). Gave out Celebi for Gold/Silver/Crystal, and also had daily trivia games where we gave out trinkets, though the last question on the last day was for a Gold/Silver Game Boy Color.

I really miss getting to do stuff like...

A picture of a newer Volkswagen Beatle decorated in a Pikachu theme.

A picture of several people playing the Pokémon Trading Card game in a festival tent.

Another picture of several people playing the Pokémon Trading Card game in a festival tent.

A picture of several people playing the Pokemon Trading Card game in a festival tent, with me in the middle.

From 2023-03-16: Sharing some pictures from the time that NOA sent me out to St. Louis as a Nintendo rep for the Pokémon Fun Fest. Definitely one of the highlights of my time at NOA! Basically just went out to act as a Pokémon expert; all the other people in the booth were outside event...

A bookcase with some Xbox One controllers, some Nintendo GameCube systems, some Nintendo Wii systems, and a Sega DreamCast.

A single bookshelf with 35 PlayStation 2 games in their cases.

Two bookshelves with video game OST music CDs, PlayStation games, Xbox 360, Wii, Switch, GameBoy, and GameBoy Advance games.

Two bookshelves with Nintendo DS and Nintendo 3DS games.

From 2023-03-06: Here are some pics from my new retro room. It's a small room, but I'm liking my collection. I need to get some replacement cases for a few of the games.

...on credit card payments. It said it would have to be a VBA script.

It did create the script, but there was an error with one of the variables. If I didn't know anything about programming, I wouldn't have been able to troubleshoot the issue.

That's not exactly true. You still need a base understanding, *some* education, or you won't really know what you need.

I'm not a programmer, but I know of some programming concepts. I wanted ChatGPT to write me an Excel formula for calculating the best way (least interest per month)...

Yeesh, you're not kidding. $125 for a sweatshirt?! I guess Mother merch is only for the upper class.

They made excellent sliders!

A wizard looking morose and walking away from a tower in a sky fortress. The text reads: ""I never see you at the club", ok, I never see you at the sky fortress".

Pulling this out next time anyone wants me to do anything remotely sociable.

The +20% culture box.

But it's too subtle. And I'm not sure a highlight that fades quite that much is good design.

Honestly? I vastly prefer the Switch GameCube controller over the Pro controller. The feel is just better.

My assumption is that those GCN controllers will work on the Switch 2, so will probably just keep using those (unless there is some sort of new feature for Switch 2 controllers).

Several PlayStation & a GameCube game.

Several Game Boy games.

...and wanted to unload these. Can you believe she got these for free? One of the biggest scores I've ever seen, it really took me back to my NOA garage sale days.

Also got a Game Boy micro and a DS Lite, as well as a box full of instruction manuals.