socrates63

#SeaUsRise One more to go! Let's do it, Robbie Ray!

While working for Amazon, I traveled to Toronto several times. The office was located in a building next to the Sky Dome (I think it's called Rogers something now). Every time I looked down on the Sky Dome from the office, my insides would just tear me up.

Both the Seattle Mariners and the Toronto Blue Jays entered the league in 1977, but the histories written by the two franchises could not be more different. One franchise enjoys a lauded history and the other franchise's history is characterized by futility and mediocrity. While one francise was winning not one but two World Series titles, the other franchise was celebrating the finishing of a season with .500 or better wins record for the first time and later reaching the playoffs for the first time. In the same number of years, the two teams took opposite trajectories. Each visit to the Toronto office was a stinging reminder of the futility of the team and franchise that I rooted for.

But winning this wildcard matchup will do much to heal and comfort the pain that I've carried for so long. It would be so poetic for Robbie Ray, who pitched for the Blue Jays last year and won the Cy Young, to close out this series tomorrow.

Gold Leader standing by. 

I’ve been waiting practically all my life to say this 🤣 Tonight, I’m chaperoning our high school senior graduation night party (9:15pm to 5:15am) as it is tradition for the junior class parents to chaperone the party. And I’m chaperoning the gold charter bus. 

A tale from the suburbs

My wife and I were driving to church yesterday for early morning prayer. We saw a group of crows on road which is not an uncommon scene. As we approached them, all flew away as expected except for one. I'm not sure if it was eating something on the road, but at the last minute after all its buddies had already fled, it raised its head and saw us.

Maybe I've watched too many Looney Tunes, but I swear it's expression was like, "What's going on? Where did everybody go? Oh!" BAM! I heard a loud thunk as we passed over the spot where the crow was. I looked back and saw the crow looking plastered on the road with one wing up twitching. Another crow came back and was like "Are you ok, bruh?"

When we returned to the scene three hours later, there was nothing on the road. The crow must have survived somehow and flew away. It was hit very hard if the sound of the impact was any indicator, so it was shocking to see that it must have survived.

My wife was a bit shaken as she was the driver, and it was the first time that she had run into an animal. Suffice to say, she also survived and is doing well.

I've heard that crows are very intelligent birds. But of course, there's always an exception to any rule. 

A quick rant... I get that not everyone studied philosophy in college, but for goodness sakes, can we at least add Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure to high school curriculum? Today was one of those days that made me regret the email handle I chose for myself coming out of college that I continue to use today -- socrates63.

I went to the University District in Seattle this morning to drop off my Kindle e-reader to trade in for a gift card and 20% coupon for a future Kindle purchase from Amazon. I was asked for my email address, and I said saw-kra-teez-63. It was apparent he was lost, so I spelled it out for him... three times... and he still couldn't get it right. Was he nervous because of my imposing Adonis physique? Finally, another guy jumped in to help. I knew I should have gone with "sixpak," my high school nickname 🤦‍♂️ At least no one said out loud SO-CRATES. I would have died if someone did.

But while I was in the area, I walked over to Pink Gorilla and Al's Music, and pick up some goodies. I've always wanted to see The Black Hole, so I ordered a DVD copy when I got home. I don't collect Jaguar games, but when I find reasonably priced CIB copies, I don't mind adding them. I now have three 🙂 (Tempest is the other one I have).

Ah~~ the days of youth playing out in the ☀️ Have fun, stay safe, y'all

What do you call this? Can't be farmer's tan. Football tan? These legs belong to my younger son who plays high school football--tan lines from football workouts this summer 😆 🏈 Looks like a zebra or some other striped animal 🤣 He has a dark complexion to begin with, but this is new territory.

And so it begins... the collection purge. Before I take the games to Pink Gorilla, I offered up my PS1, PS2, PS4, and Dreamcast games to a gamer couple in the local gaming group. This is what I've pulled out for them. I ended selling a couple of games (like Metal Gear Solid and Parasite Eve II) that I was intending to keep, but I am happy that they are going to people I know who will love them as much as I did.

As I've gotten older, parts of my life from those younger years have become more meaningful to me. That's been a big factor in me reconnecting with Atari computers and consoles during the past several years.

That's also been true of high school after I attended my 30th high school reunion (the first that I attended) four years ago. Since then, I've stayed in touch on Facebook with a few folks, including one of the organizers of the reunion who I helped yesterday. I don't even recall ever saying "hi" to her during high school as we weren't in the same classes nor the same crowd, but now with shared memories, we could strike up a friendship.

She was moving yesterday and reached out for help. I had also helped with moving some of her stuff to a storage unit a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday was the big move to her new apartment. With son number 2 out of commission with a sprained ankle, I got mentally ready to contribute more with these old muscles 😂. She definitely needed the help. Even with me and my eldest, it took us 6 hours.

The best part was meeting her kids. Despite them growing up under difficult circumstances, they turned out to be beautiful human beings. I told them that I'd invite them to the Korean BBQ party that I had already invited their mom to.

Beware, the Nine are still afoot! They upgraded their noisy black steeds to silent red ones. Stay off the road Frodo Baggins!

December has been a crazy month--so much going on both professionally and personally, and it's just been a blur. I've been doing the bare minimum when it comes to social media (which means mostly checking Facebook with very limited time in the I/O).

As far as the hobby is concerned, it's also been a busy month.

• Traded away a bottle of wine for an Odyssey 2 in the box with a bunch of games. This is the same person that I traded my heavy sixer with for the Lego 2600 set.
• Bought a Vectrex light pen.
• Bought couple of short controller extensions cords to use with the Vectrex.
• Bought A8PicoCart multicart for the Atari 8bit. I don't need it as I have other means to store and load games, but bought it on a whim.
• Bought games for the Atari 8bit, 5200, and 2600.
• Got an empty Atari 1040ST box for free from a member of the local gaming group.

I'm pretty sure I'm missing some other stuff, but as far as adding to the collection goes, it's been fruitful.

I hope 2024 will be slower going, and I can finally finish cleaning up and reorganizing my hobby spaces in the house. That's been put on hold the past two years because of my health issues (which should be a thing of the past now).

For 2024 and beyond, I am making a big shift. Instead of dabbling in most things, I intend to focus retro gaming heavily to all things Atari with a smattering of modern gaming on the Switch and Steam Deck. This year has taught me that my heart belongs to Atari and other platforms from the 80s and early 90s.

I will be selling off the PS1, 2, and 4 collection to a local gaming store in the next week or two, so that should help with reclaiming some shelf space. For now, I intend to keep my Xbox collection as well as the PS3 collection. While I will keep all my consoles and a few physical games, I will not be expanding my PlayStation and Xbox physical library.

It's been a very enjoyable six years exploring the popular retro gaming platforms, but as I contemplate life and the need the downsize in 5-7 years, I think the time is right to start that process. Hopefully, narrowing my focus will translate into more game time and lot less shopping.

Happy New Year!

Dog sitting -- week one is done and there's three more to go.

Son 2's girlfriend's family left for Taiwan a week ago to visit extended family. We agreed to dog sit Mochi for four weeks.

Having heard from my son, I knew Mochi was not well socialized with people and animals. He was distant from us and only opened up to my son. For such a dog, I expected him to be a bit traumatized having been left in an unknown place with mostly unknown people. When my son went to work, Mochi would lie on his bed in the bedroom and spend hours there. My wife and I were getting a little worried.

After one week, I think we may have turned the corner. He came up to me looking like he wanted something. We ended up playing chase around the house. Eventually he got tired and I got tired, and we sat on the floor. I approached him slowly and gave him some space and started petting him. I think I was stroking him for half an hour and Mochi shifted his body and leaned up against me. I continued to stroke him for a while longer and he fell asleep.

He still doesn't approach too close and maintains his distance, but I think he'll be ok. We were seriously worried for his mental health.

Geek in the kitchen! Creamy gochujang chicken pot pie? I love chicken pot pie and Marion's Kitchen recipes. When I watched the video, the pot pie filling looked good enough to eat on its own without the extra steps of making it into a pie. It's a simple recipe and with simple ingredients that I had all on hand. This'll be served on top of rice in about ten minutes.

Happy Father’s Day 2023 to my fellow dads and men who are mentoring and bringing up the next generation.

Hello, I/O!

I wanted to provide a quick personal update. I suffered a big heart attack and had open heart surgery on Wednesday last week. I was discharged and returned home yesterday. I’ve missed the I/O community. I hope everyone is well. I am on the road to recovery and doing as well as can be. Life is good. God is good all the time.

The doctor said I should expect 70% recovery by two months time, so it’ll still be a while before I can actively join the fun here, I suspect. I’m hoping that I’ll be feeling well enough to pop in from time to time to check up on this wonderful community. I bought a Turbo Express a while back in anticipation of the scoring challenge but oh well 😭

Live life! Stay strong and safe! ❤️🕹

Hello, world! It's been a while -- too long, actually. It's been a busy and crazy spring. Hopefully I can chill during the summer. That I/O pizza party thang should help 🙂 

As for the busy and craziness, at work, I manage the digital management rollout on Pluto TV. It's a huge project that involves pretty much every team -- lots of fires, drama 😂. It should wind down a lot by end of July.

On the personal front, my father passed away on Apr 1. This is the first time that I shared this online. He was diagnosed in late 2020 with interstitial lung disease which we knew was terminal. He seemed to be doing ok, and we thought that he'd be with us for a few more years. But his time came, and he went quickly and peacefully, and for that, I am thankful.

Given all these things and my increased involvement with my church, my online presence and gaming time have suffered. But I am going to make a concerted effort to hang out here again to chill. The I/O has always been good to me, and it's a great tight community.

Game on! 🕹️🤘

Ho ho ho 🎅🎄  We got our first snow ❄️ of the season! It looks like a few inches piled up in just a few short hours. And on that appropriate note, a local gamer with the permission of the creator put together a Genesis cartridge of the homebrew Mega Xmas '89. My cartridge arrived today.

I think I have more homebrews and repros for my Genesis than official cartridges 😜 k-u-r-a-z-y

The rom is available for free download from the creator's site. It works in all regions.

https://nekojitagames.itch.io/megaxmas89 

Hope everyone's Friday was a good one today.

Today was my last official work day for HBO. After nearly two weeks of mentally and emotionally tossing and turning after being given the pink slip early last week, the end has come, and I am peaceful and content. I feel I will face the new week with a fresh mind and new perspective. God is good.

I got back yesterday from a 4 day trip to Los Angeles with a group of church friends. We stayed together in an Airbnb. It was a short trip but packed. We all rode together in a van, so we pretty much spent 24 hours together each day.

I don't think I've done something like this with non-family since my college days. One of the people on the trip lost her father a week ago. The funeral is this Friday, and I'm certain the trip helped her. If nothing else, it brought us all closer together (and I gained 5 pounds from all the food 😂).

I got laid off today, the first time in my career. When AT&T merged a bunch of companies (HBO, Turner, etc.) under the former Time Warner corp umbrella into a single entity WarnerMedia, we knew the new company would look to consolidate. It was a bit of a surprise given where I was situated organizationally, but a bunch of us were given pink slips. Because I got rolled up in a broad organizational move, it’s easy not to take this personally, so I’m glad for that. I had seen some friends struggle emotionally before. 

My wife recently got a new job, and she’s still within the new employee benefits enrollment window, so at least I don’t have to worry about getting a new job quickly for health insurance reasons. For the first time, I won’t be the primary coverage member 🙂 Lots of new firsts.

Before folks feel too sorry for me, I am in a good position. First, I am grateful for an extremely stable career experience so far. I’ve experienced my share of company re-org and changes and always landed into a great place. The fact that this is my first involuntary job change is quite the feat in a 23 year career. Second, I’m also grateful that we will be given a nice severance package to ease the transition into the next gig. Third, I’m in an industry that is very robust and still hiring. And lastly and most importantly, God is good, and He is the Shepherd of my life. In Him, I find peace and rest.

I share this news here because I like the I/O community and wanted to open up more on a personal level to foster better relationships. Also, I’ll have more time to spend on the monthly challenge, so you have been warned 🕹🕹🤣🤣

I just finished watching the first episode of The Sandman on Netflix, and my reaction is simply 😮 

I’ve heard of the greatness that is Neil Gaiman and his work The Sandman. However, the descriptions of it being some sort of horror was off putting as I’m not a fan of the horror genre.  As I looked at the thumbnail in Netflix though, it looked more like a dark fantasy in a dream setting more so than horror. Still even then, I’m not a big fan of dream settings, and I prefer something more tangibly grounded.

Nevertheless, something compelled me to give it a try tonight, and OMG this is amazing. The premise and the story are absolutely brilliant. The first episode moved at a rapid pace to set up the world and the characters. The characters and the scenes looked beautiful. It was simply a delight and I look forward to the remaining ten episodes.

I just had a very fun interaction and a brief travel down Memory Lane 🙂

Back in the 80s, I was friends with a guy name George. He had an older brother and two younger sisters. It turned out that the older of the two sisters lives in my neighborhood and ours kids attended the same school and our kids have become very close lately. She and her son just walked to my house to give me a box of pears as a thank you for taking her son (and my son) to the airport this Sunday for their high school graduation trip to California.

We had a short chat on the porch, and she randomly mentions this small black box with a TV screen and that I had lent it to her brother back in the 80s (I don't recall lending it to him), and she and her sister played the heck out of it. I knew immediately what she was talking about and brought out my Vectrex. Her eyes beamed. I had never known that she was into playing games. She was very shy and I had never heard her say anything when we were kids. She said she never forgot it, and it was a very positive part of her childhood. Her family did not have computers nor video games. I told her that I'd lend it to her again, so she can relive those days.

So random and unexpected but so cool! And it was our kids who brought us together for this chat.

I won the day on August 28? How did that happen? Guess I talk too much 🥳 In fact, I talked so much on September 4 that the board has clamped down on me, and I can't post any more today 😜🤐 Good news is I'm only 3 hours and 12 minutes away from September 5 when I'm free to talk away!

I'm in corporate training for the next three days, 5 1/2 hours each day for three days 🎉 

I have a love-hate relationship with training. I hate taking training courses because often times, the instructors are terrible. In addition to that, I think I suffer a little anxiety before the training starts. Having said that, I usually find company training to be a valuable learning experience and very inspiring.

I'm taking the SAFe Advanced Scrum Master course. My current company and org high values certification, so not only do I need to pay attention during the class, I have to pass a test at the end. Did I mention anxiety already? 😂

I'm still working on my retro setup. Today, I hooked up my 800XL to the 1702 and powered it up--such a beautiful blue screen 🙂 I also hooked up the Fujinet to it, and it's just amazing that this 40 year old hardware is now connected to the Internet. So much new to learn!

I also got my Genesis working. I tried using the RGB cable the other day and got a blank screen. Turns out I didn't properly seat the cable, so with the connection fixed, the Genesis put out a beautiful display--such clear and crispy colorful pixels.

I pulled out a random cartridge out of the drawer to test the Genesis. Wow! The music was amazing and I was tapping my toes and already hooked on the game before play even started. The game was Streets of Rage 2. This game may make me a Sega Genesis fan.

I've been pretty quiet in the I/O lately because I came down with COVID-19. My wife came down with symptoms over a week ago (got tested and confirmed) and a couple of days later, I started experiencing symptoms. A few days after me, my elder son became symptomatic and a couple of days later, the younger son became symptomatic.

It's a day to day thing -- some days are worse than others. Hopefully, things will be much better for me after this week. My wife was feeling very good today, so hopefully, she's on the mends. Lots of body aches and low grade fever.

Gaming wise, I haven't been able to play much if at all. However, I've watched a lot of Star Trek while resting.

I've been pretty quiet or only active in short sporadic bursts. Just wanted everyone to know that I'm still around. I've just been busy with work, family, and going to the gym regularly (lost a few pounds and some gained muscle). I haven't had the time nor energy to play video games for the past couple of months, but the mind is willing!

It's cool to see all the forum updates that Justin has been doing lately 👏 👍