What Made you Smile/What Ticked you off Today?

[BoneSnapDeez]

Nice! Time to get a Retron 5!

Momotarō Densetsu and FEDA both have translation patches. Also, you can patch a ROM with another ROM (Japanese to North American, for instance) so you'll be able to play Ogre Battle in English on the Retron 5.

Far East of Eden Zero is pretty fascinating. It's beefed up with a SPC7110 chip and has a real-time clock. Superb graphics. I believe there's a translation patch in the works.

[Exhuminator]

Smile: With some family I hiked 7 miles yesterday and 4 miles today. It was good to be outside hiking through the woods, saw some interesting nature-y stuff.

Ticked: I may have been sideswiped by some poison ivy on my left shin.

Pleasantly surprised: Stratego Conquest is highly decent four player with some streamlined house rules.

[Sarge]

Well, Mississippi State lost the title game, but they still had a heck of a season. As someone else put it, we'll forget who won the game tonight, but we'll always remember that UConn got knocked off.

[MrPopo]

Pleasantly surprised: Stratego Conquest is highly decent four player with some streamlined house rules.

I clicked the link wondering how four player Statego would work, and saw a board game that was in no way Stratego (even though it might be fun).

[Exhuminator]

I clicked the link wondering how four player Statego would work, and saw a board game that was in no way Stratego (even though it might be fun).

Stratego Conquest is very similar to Stratego in many ways. You still have to capture your opponents' flags, and pieces still beat other pieces based on numerical value, you have scouts and spies and bombs and such. It's like 70% Stratego, 30% something else.

That said, there is a legit 4 player Stratego version out there:


https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2978/stratego-4

I'm gonna buy it someday.

[Forlorn Drifter]

Something I've realized as of late... I haven't done much drawing in a couple years. Freshman year I did a bit, but I haven't touched much since. I'd love to get back into it, but time is a factor... plus, my need for reference images but wish to draw fantasy cuts into my work. And I'm rusty... I've also never decided on a style. There's definitely some comic artists who have a style I like, which might be the way to follow, but I've never decided.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

Forlorn, the only way to get un-rusty is to start again! Draw something daily. Even if it's just a doodle. It's the strategy I employ into my writing. I went nearly 8 months without writing a single thing for the sake of it. I think you'll find rediscovering an old hobby or one you've fallen out of for a while enjoyable and rejuvinating.

Now for my self-indulgent ramble.

I'm going to be real here. It's likely something very few if anybody has interest in but I'd like to have it out there. By writing it, and having it read even if it falls on deaf ears, makes it real. Maybe it will help me reach understanding. This is not something I'm necessarily comfortable talking about with the 'irl' people because I know they'll give me the same opinions and the same outlook they always do. I do miss the community here quite a bit and I understand it's broken apart in some ways but a lot of what I loved about this place still remains. Namely the ability to come here and unload about things other than video games despite being a video game centric forum. It's both anonymous and not. Everybody here is a real human but distant enough to give a very different perspective, and this is enhanced by the relatively diverse nature of our user base. Or at least was, I know a few of our more 'eccentric' members have disappeared but that's okay. This place was instrumental in my formation as an adult human being. As odd as that sounds that's something of a regular thing in the 21st century. We define ourselves by our experiences and our feelings and this place has a strong place in my heart and soul and being. It was here during the hardest part of my youth and it remains here as I become older. This place is a time capsule of not only the older internet culture but myself and many other people here. A library of experience.

And that's something that makes me smile.

So let the rambling begin.

I've done a lot of personal growth over the last few years. I mean that I specifically had that in mind as a goal and I've achieved what I set out to do. I went from bussing tables to managing three different food venues and a bar at the age of 23. I'm finally graduating college here in a few weeks with a degree in Cyber Security of all things. I'm a year out from my English degree which I've dreamed of having for many years. All of which I've paid my own way through. This is all something to be very proud of. And thanks to the help of a family that really pulled through for me when I needed a place to sleep when I lost sight of what mattered. In a short year and a half I went from homeless; showing up at my parents door at 1AM on a frigid Rocky Mountain night to something I could have only dreamed about in my teenage years. From a socio-economic standpoint I've pulled ahead when many said I couldn't and that it was too late. I found a deep seated feeling inside that I, Ryan, had something to prove.

However, I feel like I've lost sight of myself as a person in many ways. I've destroyed many of the social circles I finally had found a place in, for the benefit of my own perceived success. It is debatable how disgusting it is that I'm not sorry for it. I've fired friends. I've stopped talking to great people. I've arguably destroyed some of their lives at least in the short term. Cutting off people who had nothing else but the job I had the ability to let them have. In many aspects it's been the only way I've been able to distinguish myself as a young professional. The business I work in is a few things but if I had to describe it's main defining features it's cut-throat and old. Old as in I'm, on average, not even half the age of my 'equal' rank workers. Being young, it's hard to get people in general to listen to you and even harder, getting your resentful employees two to three times my age who have never strived to achieve to understand my position. The floor of the food industry isn't kind to management, even less so somebody who is admittedly less experienced. So my solution to this problem has maybe led me to become less of the person I really wanted to be. I've become that asshole manger nobody likes in order to maintain order but, my numbers are good. The numbers are great at the expense of interesting people who were still good people with their own loves and dreams and goals. I don't like that but, that's the game of capitalism right? I'm angry like most 'millineals.' Unlike many, I've been able to turn that anger to drive. The world, in many ways, gave me shit. It also gave me the ability to achieve great things. Unfortunately those achievements might be as those presented in Bioshock. The product of madness. Great things at the expense of what makes me human.

So as proud as I am of my 'achievements', I spend a lot of time wondering about whether I've made the right choices. Whether I've done these things because I'm supposed to or because it's what I truly want remains a mystery to me.

Things I've previously loved have fallen by the wayside. My novel and my short fictions have sat relatively untouched waiting for passionate guidance I don't know I am capable of giving them anymore. My education, although nearly done, has taken a back seat becoming something I do because I feel obligated to finish it, not because I have the time to really understand what it means for me as a person. I've managed to turn myself in many ways, back into my teenage self, able to fake understanding and deliver what the system wants on the surface without actually deriving understanding from it. It's sad. It feels in many ways a regression of what I've worked so hard at for the last three years. Perhaps I'm overanalyzing it. I don't believe there's real evil in the world. We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their actions. Do my intentions justify my actions? Am I making the right decisions?

I don't know. So I took a week off and wrote 2000 words a day. Also read through the Divergent series. Great pop-fiction other than the final novel. I really dig the 'bravery is not the absence of fear but the ability to overcome it' theme. I also finally played through Halo Reach. That's a really fantastic video game. The last mission especially hit home.

Objective: Survive!

Rj out.

[SamuraiMegas]

I really agree with a lot of those sentiments you shared, RJ. This forum helped me grow out of many childish views and habits, and I cringe so much when I see my old self now. I still enjoy this forum, and while I do not get on much anymore, I'm sad to see many users have left (although I don't know the reasons for many departures.) For a while, I became friends with many users on here, many being older than me by at least 15+ years, and it kind of helped me see how to act more maturely. Hell, I still consider you a close friend RJ, even though we haven't talked much lately because both of our lives have been so crazy.

I grew up a lot, just in a few years. Seeing my parents fight, all the domestic violence issues I had to step in to intervene, call the cops on, etc. Has definitely changed many of my view points on life in negative ways. Hell, I have also started experimenting with drugs (as in weed as psychs, I dislike all other classes) just because I was depressed and wanted an escape. Thinking about how greatly my life has changed in the matter of a few years is a bit depressing, but in many ways it's a hopeful thing, because while things may not be great now, in a few years my circumstances will be changed, and with a good outlook it'll be for the best.

[Ack]

Welcome to your quarter life crisis, gentlemen.

[Exhuminator]

Welcome to your quarter life crisis, gentlemen.

Yeah the quarter-lifer is hard, but the midlife crisis is much easier to deal with.