socrates63

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.

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! 🕹️🤘

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.

#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. 

While driving down to Portland to meet Rick last month, I made a slight detour to Vancouver, WA to drop off my Vectrex with another game in my local gaming group. He's going to spruce it up proper (no buzz mod) and give it the TLC it deserves. It's pretty clean looking for its age--not as much dust as I'd expected nor signs of leakage or corrosion. It's actually rather pretty 🌷🌷 looking for 40 year old electronics 😛 😄 I can only wish my innards look as good. 

You know how you don't appreciate something you have until it's gone? I didn't play much when I had it, but now that it's been out of the house for a couple of weeks, I miss my Vectrex ❤😄 Remember to give some love to those consoles that you haven't touched in a while.

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 😂).

Merry Christmas, everyone🎄 I hope you enjoy Christmas Day with your family and friends. 

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

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.

More games leaving my collection -- tonight, these are going to the same two ladies who bought a bunch of my PS1 and PS2 games. I had no intentions of selling Xbox 360 games, but I know these ladies will give them a good home, so I decided to let them go. I love Xbox 360 and PS3 games. From a graphics perspective, I think it's perfect and the games have aged very well for the most part. I still play Halo Reach.

I did pull one game that was on their list -- Blue Dragon. I had to keep it as a keepsake. I bought it from the company store when I worked at Microsoft. The do not sell sticker on the game box has my employee number on it.

I really need to stop dragging my feet and just take my stuff to Pink Gorilla.

Passing on some good prices on cartridges of 2600, 7800, and Genesis prototypes, reproductions and hacks at AtariAge by Shawn. I've bought Genesis reproductions from him before, and the cartridge labels and such were of great quality. I'd snatch up all the 2600 and 7800 cartridges if I didn't have them already. Great prices--much cheaper than GoodDealGames which is where I bought mine.

My 10 seconds of fame and in the limelight! 😎😆🤣

At the end of Metal Jesus Rocks' video that came out today, I got a shout out because I lent him two games that he needed to make the video.

Last Saturday, he posted his request in the local gamer Facebook group. I met him an hour later and gave him the games. We chatted a bit, and I asked him to sign his album that I brought with me. He was shocked and honored (his word) that I had it. I guess it didn't sell well? I forgot to get a photo with him, so will do that when we meet up again to get my games back.

I'm a big fan of MJR because it was his videos that got me started in retro gaming. One day, the YouTube gods put his video in my feed. I didn't even know that there was this thing called retro gaming back in 2015 (or was that 2016?). Always came off as a nice dude in the videos and in person.

The retro setup in my office is coming along--not quite as far as I had hoped to be but still made a lot of progress the past few days. I'm very happy that my Atari consoles are all hooked up for easy access. Only the Jaguar (inside a drawer), Dreamcast, and Core Grafx are not connected. I think I might be able to stack the Jag on top of the PS2.

I even set up the 1702 I picked up a few months ago from the same TV tech that I got my Sony TV from last month. The 800XL setup is in the same corner location where my consoles used to live. Now I need to set up the FujiNet and SD Max that I bought a while ago. I am so close to being able to start typing in code from Compute! and other magazines like I did as a kid.

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 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.

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

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.