End of the Year 2021 Lookback

If you know, you know, these are SNES games.

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.

Fortnite Arena Wins

Last night I had two Fortnite solo Arena wins in a row. These videos will be up on youtube later, albeit, edited for time.

I won both games with my SMG.

I also won a duos game.

& last night I went to Panera

I had a salad and tea.

Today a mom came in with her son’s gaming computer. It wasn’t working but I fixed it. The CPU was seated improperly & actually a pin was bent. After fixing the pin, I installed the CPU & it worked perfectly. Apparently the power supply had failed & they had the power supply replaced & then it didn’t start so I believe perhaps whomever installed the power supply caused the problem with the CPU.

I fixed it in about an hour but I also fixed a gaming laptop & an all-in-one during that time. The gaming laptop had some fried USB ports.

The gaming laptop that I fixed earlier, they were referred to me by Geek Squad. Geek Squad couldn’t fix it & told them that maybe we could. After my last federal job, it’s been nice to take a break doing something I enjoy. I’ve been asked to apply with the US Treasury. I may like that better than the Department of Commerce. Still, I can’t complain, the Department of Commerce kept paying me even when I was relaxing out in Vegas. As always, more to come.

I had a Arena Duos win with the other Alex tonight after work. We also placed 2nd and 3rd in our other Arena games.