I am a bit addicted to consumerism. Almost as much as I am to sugar.
I was called into an office building to do some work, it went fast, but I took a photo on my way out.
I don’t normally do anything for Halloween, but I remember I bought this mask for a party in Chicago back in 2019, so I wore it briefly to take this photo.
Excuse my hair, I had a NES hat on the entire day.
Here’s kind of a secret game room in Minneapolis. It’s open to the public, but only some people know about it.
Speaking of NES games, these were sold overseas. I picked this up years ago, along with so many other games. I kind of lost track of all the games I’ve owned over the years, but, in the last few years I’ve cut down on them dramatically.
I recently picked up some more Famicom games, replacing a copy of SMB3 I sold awhile back & picking up Super Mario USA aka Super Mario 2 (in the U.S.) for the first time on Famicom. Of course I’ve owned the game since I was a kid & beat it when I was 7 years old. I bought this bundle from a Japanese vendor & it included SMB1, SMB2 USA, & SMB3. I’ll clean up SMB3 a bit & put it in my Famicom collection.
Check out this cheddar burger! Honestly, Culver’s hadn’t given me a good burger in awhile, so this one came out of nowhere.
I still have this hacky my friend gave me in the 90s. I used to keep everything but I lost a lot when my family raided my storage unit while I was in Hawaii.
Now look what a water company built. If you don’t know, Vivendi owns UMG which distributes Def Jam. Vivendi evolved from a water company founded by Napoleon III of France.& now look at what tobacco money built – of course the Wilfs who are fraudsters according to the State of New Jersey, will reap all the rewards
Random blog thoughts, yes, we developed an online game titled Star Trek: Strange New Worlds in the 90s. I sent an idea for a TV show many years ago based on that game. I also submitted ideas such as Lower Decks & Captain Worf. However, they’ve made it clear that they want nothing to do with me. Rod Roddenberry said to me one day, why can’t you just be a fan? I’ve stopped speaking to him after that. Aron Eisenberg & I remained friends until he passed away. I remember when Aron showed me his script for the final episode of DS9. Everyone signed it. He was well-liked.
Look at the price on this TV! 65″ for $398! Anyways, I don’t even own a TV nor do I watch TV, but that seemed pretty good to me.
I bought some socks & these VW T1 toys. Typically I keep toys like that in the box & sell them later when the price goes up. It just depends. I had a lot of success with these particular toys. For example, I bought a Toyota truck from Back to the Future & sold it later for hundreds of dollars. Typically I buy stuff with some kind of following, such as Coca-Cola.
Ash recently made it into Fortnite!
I was going to write more in this post, but my host is having issues today. I’ll be back with more at a later date.
Asus would not warranty their product & neither would Geek Squad. The customer had an extended warranty with Geek Squad but they refused to cover the repair despite this person being their customer for years & despite the fact they had the machine for weeks & sent it around to different states. Finally, someone who worked at the local Best Buy recommended me. I get the machine & of course I fix it immediately.
While gaming & running my business & doing all the other things I do, since no one does anything for me but me, I also defeated the bots. That’s right, the Russian & Indian & Nigerian & etc bots which were spamming my servers have now been neutralized. As far as my email server goes, I’ve been dealing with those bots nearly 20 years & I doubt that’ll get sorted anytime soon, because that would take a lot of my time to really resolve, but I’ve done pretty well with that too.
They’ve been targeting me for over 20 years, they’ve attacked my websites, they’ve attacked my mail servers, they’ve done so much warfare on what I’ve created, I often in the past simply took down what was public to deter them. I still have copies of everything, but anyway, it’s great that this is resolved & now to work on something new. I have all these entities always trying to steal from me & some of them are so large that the population have this mass belief that these entities are the true creators & as we’ve often seen, they’re not. I will continue to protect my intellectual property.
Speaking of Intellectual Property, anyone notice a certain Youtuber trying to leech on a clearly defined IP? I don’t like Mr. Beast, but Gene Wilder was awesome. When we moved to Milwaukee just before 2nd grade, I saw Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory for the first time.
I’ve parted ways with Gino. Also, my business is doing alright, he was just one of many clients. Additionally, I found a neat sealed game at the Goodwill. I have also been buying older computers & servicing them, as well as sealed DVDs for whatever reason. If it is relatively inexpensive & I like it & I feel I can do something with it, then I might buy it. I also enjoy auctions.
I am going to send this game in to get graded, it is a sealed game for the Mac titled Mario teaches typing.
I would have sent it in for grading already, but I’ve been busy. I did speak to Wata & while they liked the game & said they haven’t seen this too often, they do not grade any PC or Mac games. However, there is VGA the Video Game Authority & I’ll send it out to them when I get time.
I just couldn’t resist buying this, just too sweet. Of course, I am an amazing typist.
I ran into a counterfeit battery. I ordered a replacement for a customer & go figure, first one though, so I simply returned it & got a different one.
I also sold one of my Lenovo PCs today to a kid for $75. Oddly enough, that was still a profit for me, albeit, only about $15. I normally sell these machines for more but he made the offer & was friendly so I said sure. I’ll get some of the others I have listed soon. I am going to offer some 3rd, 4th, and 5th generation Intel i5 machines with at least 8GB of DDR3, a 250GB SSD, & a Nvidia 750ti for under $300 with a copy of Windows 10 & I’m sure that’ll get some interest. Profit for me on something like that is also very small, but I like helping gamers out & you can’t really charge too much more or people won’t buy or it’ll just sell a lot slower where potentially you need to lower the price anyway. Total investment on these machines varies, but I can still sell them for under $300.
Thanks for stopping by, I’ll try to remember more of what I am doing & post about it. I know I left some months behind & there were a couple of inconsequential posts lost when I took the site down to battle the bots, but now that’s resolved & moving forward you’ll hear more from me.
By the way, I am playing EverQuest again, gearing up for a push with my SK & Rogue, & also there’s a new season of Fortnite! As you may know, I quit making Fortnite videos, but I did not forget about some of my EverQuest project videos. I have done a few & they’re usually only up temporarily but if I make a more permanent video I’ll let you know.
Installed an SSD on this guy’s PC since he was having issues & asked specifically for an SSD upgrade to his All-In-One Dell.
So, this was a pre-built that he received & it arrived damaged, the person who built it bent the CPU pins. I fixed the pins & got the machine working great.
This laptop had some issues with heat and the battery. It’s now resolved.
I was brought this machine & he needed a new SSD & his graphics card needed a new fan so I did all that & he’s happy with the upgrade.
So this machine wasn’t running correctly & it needed a bios update & software clean-up & yeah new drivers & now it runs perfectly.
These are just some of the many machines I worked on since the last update.
I’ve been fixing a lot of laptops actually. Some Macs, some Dell, some Acer, some HP, it’s just one after another & I am glad to help these people because I know how important it is for them, no matter their reason for having the machine.
I replaced the battery in this Mac & it also now dual boots Catalina & Windows 10.
I was playing a little bit of Nintendo last month & still this month. NES was my first console & I really enjoy playing it. The system I am using is an AVS, which is about as good as it gets for NES gameplay. It will play Famicom games & PAL games, just like the original consoles. It isn’t a clone, internally it has duplicate chips. While it has enough power to actually exceed the performance of the NES, it does not, to keep the gameplay identical to the original NES. It also has HDMI out, which, without this, you’d have to mod your NES for that. I do have some other original NES consoles & an AV Famicom.
Lately I just haven’t been myself. I had some red wine on Thanksgiving & I may have some tonight, I’m just dealing with a lot of other people’s problems. I have no troubles myself.
I’ve never received the respect I deserve in Fortnite & that’s part of why I am retiring from the game. If anything, I was disrespected & discredited by groups of lesser people.
In the future, I will still play Fortnite, but future videos will not be from Fortnite. I’ll update you on my new plans.
Back in 2003 when Planetside was released, they used to call me “old school.” It’s 2022 & people now speak to me as if I know nothing. I understand, there is a lot of presumption. Know that I was among the first 3% in the world on the Internet.
The Black Tower lives on! haha & actually Robert Jordan finally got that deal he wanted.. albeit.. long after his death.. I’ve gotten pretty decent at making these towers & people like that I can make them a sky base quickly too.
I tried this. I wasn’t impressed. I’m actually cutting back substantially on junk food. I gave up Pizza as well for my New Year’s resolution.
I installed bootcamp on one of my Macbooks & now it runs Catalina & Windows 10. I’m actually happy with this & may keep this laptop awhile.
I’m still fixing people’s computers daily. Actually, there was a laptop today that was a bit of a problem but I got it working right. It was a cheaply made Acer & it needed new thermal compound & I changed the ram bank & cleaned it & did some other things to get it working right. I advised him to use it until it fails & get a new laptop & to backup his data because it wasn’t going to last that long, but it would work for a time. Difficult to predict when it’ll outright fail, but it is definitely past its half life. This machine pictured needed some cleaning & other things but I got it back up and running good for him.
Awhile back this Mac would not take an install, it was being stubborn, but I put it in to Internet Recovery & that did the trick. Sometimes it’s more work than it’s worth getting an OS to install so it’s better to just use Apple’s platform.
I know that people are after what I have. It’s just the way life is. I’ve seen it from all corners, even from those who have sworn against it.
Back to Thanksgiving, I had meant to post about it sooner, I went to multiple events but this was my night out alone to relax & reflect.
The salad was definitely as advertised & worth the wait. I really enjoy spinach & it came along with my wine, which I saved throughout the meal.
Everyone else had a full table, except for myself, and a young woman across the room. It seemed the both of us had the same idea & I saw her eating a near identical meal to mine & sipping on a red wine as well. She walked past me on her way out, despite the other door being closer.
This was dessert & it tasted just about as good as it looks. Unless you somehow find this unappealing, but I enjoyed it.
I opted for the steak & while it tasted good, there was too much sauce, & they didn’t cook it the way I wanted, & it took far too long to show, which was before dessert, but I figured I’d save this for last. I didn’t complain & I tipped extra. I basically felt, the quality was there, they just didn’t really prepare it as well as I would have liked, but that’s life. The steak itself was high quality, not at all chewy, & it was tasty, but as I said, too much sauce, I had to work around that.
Another look at these SNES games. Basically, I took the cases for reproduction cartridges. None of these are particularly expensive cartridges. In fact, people have been doing this for decades & if anything it’s raising the value of some of these games since people essentially take them out of circulation.
The morning of Thanksgiving I was running errands, so I stopped at Wahlburgers & to my surprise they were open. They told me they were only open for about an hour & asked me what I wanted so I got an egg sandwich. The egg was cooked exactly as I like it, & the yoke broke with the first bite, which again, is exactly how I like it.
It reminded me a bit of the egg sandwiches my Grandfather used to make for me when I was a kid.
Speaking of breakfast, the other day I went to Chick-fil-A in Burnsville & check it out! These were the best I’ve ever seen & tasted & I am signature status.
Have you ever tried these? Chobani is a decent company & this is definitely tasty. Just don’t shake it as the bottle says, I followed the directions and kind of rolled it around a bit until all the settling mixed back in with the rest & then I drank it.
People might say, but that’s just Super Mario Brothers! Well sir, this isn’t just any copy of Super Mario Brothers! This is a five screw copy from the original release! Just like the copy that sold for $2 million dollars.
This IS my ORIGINAL copy of The Legend of Zelda. I have owned this copy of this game for nearly 35 years. I’ve bought & sold so many games over the years, but this one, is always right there. I may in the future share some photos of when I was a kid holding this cartridge.
Here is my original zapper. It works.
Here’s a rare game. If you know you know! Cadash was released in the Arcade, on the Sega, & on the TurboGrafx-16. It was never released on the SNES. Additionally, the Sega could only play two classes, while the Arcade & TurboGrafx-16 could play them all, including the Ninja.
Ever since that woman ran a red light & totaled my other BMW, I have been driving my backup BMW. I had it in storage for a couple years & it only had about 98k on it, which is good for a 2000 BMW. However, now, I’ve been racking up miles on it. I still have another BMW in storage. In case you were wondering, for many years now, I’ve always bought my cars outright with cash.
Also, the other day, I picked up some more games for potential donor cartridges for reproductions for $3 each.
This is a zapper for Time Cop, Sega, etc.
Dude needed a new motherboard, so I installed it for him.
Panda Express. I took a photo because I thought this might be good, as Panda Express can be hit and miss, & yeah, it was great.
I bought a lot of these socks & guess what, -20 below doesn’t care about my feet.
This guy took his computer to Micro Center. They couldn’t fix it. I fixed it in less than 20 minutes. Often I get a panicked person who shows up talking about “Geek Squad referred me to you!” & I just nod & say, “they do that sometimes” but this was the first time I recall something coming in from Micro Center but I had been sending people there for parts when I didn’t have them.
Can you spot the problem? If you can’t, don’t worry, neither could Micro Center.
Sometimes people bring me a computer & say it doesn’t work, that they’ve tried everything, I take it into my hands, I look it over, I hook it up, & it works perfectly & they are confused. I tell them, don’t worry, it happens all the time. But then I explain, the problem is likely still there, & usually it is, so I then proceed to figure it out, & fix it for them. I’ve been doing this since I was a young teenager & professionally since 1997, so, I can’t just explain how & what, there are too many intangibles.
I received this as a Christmas present.
It was nice of them. I don’t know when I’ll find time to eat this, but, maybe.
Guess what,
Apple has earned my respect over the years.. they still make them like this.. sort of.. 2012.. perhaps the greatest year for Macs.. most would say 2015.. which is probably true.. of course in 2011, you could get a nice 17″
Family & “Friends” have wanted me to do all these things for them over the years & it reminds me of a time my Aunt Sheila asked me to take a look at her computer. It was an integrated piece of crap. It would have taken me hours and hours to fix & I knew she wouldn’t take my advice anyway, so I feigned ignorance & from my perspective it worked in my favor. It’s not that I’m selfish, it’s just, if you knew my family, it’s person after person since the 90’s who have basically wanted me to do free work for them as if I owe them. I don’t dislike her, I just recognize that she doesn’t understand.
I remember one time I was invited to this party & I thought wow, I’m being invited to this party, I was cool in my mind, but this was an even higher group on that whole totem, that spectrum, back in the High School days these were the top tier kids & I get there, pretty stoked I was invited, & next thing I know, I’m being led to a room where dude hosting the party says his computer is broken & it’d be cool if I fixed it for him. I left.
I could tell more stories like this, for hours, but I’ll leave those so you have an idea. When I moved out to Hawaii in 2005, I didn’t tell anyone about my computer skills but I still received a job offer & numerous people would approach me out of nowhere asking for computer help. Seriously.
I did the best I could with all that. I am human & perhaps there were times I took it a bit too personally, but I know they had their motives & sometimes that’s just enough for me to let them hear my perspective, which, isn’t always friendly. However, I try to be.
I fix these things sometimes I forget what I even did.
Here’s another,
It had some liquid cooling & it looks so much like some other machines I’ve fixed but it’s dated from last month so I know I haven’t posted it before. One of these needed a new power supply, it was vastly underpowered, but this could have been anything. To close this out, thanks for reading. I’ll update more in the future. I couldn’t really sleep tonight & I’m not even sure why, maybe the pinched nerve in my back. I’m going to call someone in the morning about her issues with a Nintendo Switch & then I’ll probably put in about 6 hours of work, fixing whatever shows up.
