I distinctly remember my last time in a Circuit City. I don’t recall the date, but I’m going to say it was circa 2006. I had purchased a Nintendo Wii at one of CC’s competitors but the competitor did not have any suitable Game Cube controllers. So I went over to Circuit City to see what they had since they were essentially in the same shopping complex. In a surprising turn of events, they actually did have Game Cube controllers in stock, they had the style/brand I was hoping for, and the price was actually reasonable.

They had dozens of employees out in the various sections of the store, at least one per department. There were a plethora of customers. However, they had literally 1 cash register open. The line was backed up into the aisles. I am pretty sure I waited 45 minutes just to check out with this one single item, and that’s only because the customer service manager came over after about 40 minutes and offered to check out anybody with only 1 or 2 items.

Might be a complete surprise to the former corporate overlords, but for some odd reason I decided never to go back after that.

And then Einstein clapped the Baby Jesus’s ass and all the harpies cried at the wave after wave of baby bald eagles flying over. Amen.

He’s a bitch. He’s a lover. He’s a child. He’s a zombie. He’s a sinner. He’s a saint.

For me it was the original Resident Evil on the Playstation.

It was the first time I saw live-action digitized full-motion video on a gaming system. I know there were a lot of FMV (Full Motion Video) games in that era on other systems, but I didn’t own those other systems and I didn’t know anybody who did. So, it was all new to me once I played a Playstation.

Resident Evil was also the first time a video game had ever given me a jump scare. Early in the game a zombie doberman bursts through a window unexpectedly and I was hooked! I loved introducing my friends to the game, specifically so I could see their reaction when the dog shows up. So much fun.

Honestly seeing and hearing Super Mario World on the Super Nintendo was kind of wow, too. The graphics boost compared to the 8-bit systems I was used to was incredible. And the sound quality compared to the other 16-bit systems I’d played (Genesis and TG-16) was a leap above. The experience probably pales in comparison to modern games, but back then there was wow factor to it.

To young me, Street Fighter 2 Turbo was pretty wow as well. It was “literally” the same as the arcade version to child me. I could not believe the home version was so close to the real thing, because prior generations of game systems like the NES couldn’t come close to that level of performance.

It doesn’t seem to be a super common, general thing where I live. However, there are some more prone to it than others, like places that have a bar and/or otherwise serve alcohol. Typically though it’s only the nights they do live music and that’s most often weekends and around specific holidays.

Mostly I just avoid pretty much any establishment if they’ve got live entertainment for the night and I’m there to eat as well as talk with others. I avoid any that are particularly egregious in terms of loud music. I have been with a group where we asked if the volume could be turned down on the speakers one night at a live event where we were one of only a few tables in the entire place and it was clear that nobody was particularly interested in damaging their hearing. The manager slowly slinked over to the performers about 5 - 10 minutes after the request, and they stopped playing shortly after.

The honeys back in those days must have been powerless to resist these guys.

Thou shalt thank or otherwise acknowledge thine responders whomst volunteer their time to provide helpful comments and posts.

Yes. They stole everything of value in my home, which sadly was not much, and they killed the family pets while doing it. No clue who did it, cops tend not to care much when this sort of thing happens to poor people, and they never tracked down who the culprits were. Definitely did affect me and yes I care.

Not sure if it’s already covered in another comment or if you are already aware, however … Depending on where in the world you live, there may be a semi-local official UPS drop off location at a store or business near you. I live outside of a very small rural town, yet there are UPS drop off options here. They even print, text, or email a receipt to confirm they’ve received it.

Still not as convenient as an at-home pick-up, but it’s something to consider if you didn’t already know.

It’s infuriating (mildly may be an understatement).

My neighbor ended up getting “a virus” on her laptop. It wasn’t actually a virus as best I could tell, but instead, it was a full screen pop-up browser window with no window controls.

The scam had a bunch of scary messaging and loud sound playing an alarm with someone stating that the computer was infected and that it was also infecting Microsoft’s servers. Further, the scam insisted that she call the number on the screen or she will face legal issues.

For an older non-technical person, it was frightening.

After this happened a second time, I did a little more digging to see if I could figure out what was going on. Virus scans showed no infection and I couldn’t find much online with specifics about what I was seeing.

Turns out, my neighbor was going to Google, searching for terms like “Amazon”, and then she was clicking the first ad / sponsored link in the results expecting to be taken to the Amazon website. Instead, the sponsored ad on Google search was linking to a blog on Microsoft’s Azure hosting services, which then triggered the full screen non-closable scam.

I even tested it out on one of my old laptops. Went to Google search, tried the exact search term she used, and sure enough, the same exact thing happened. I reported the ad, it is clearly malicious and a scam. It’s ridiculous that Google actually serves up malicious ads like this. And the ad was up there for days after I reported it. I sincerely hope nobody actually got scammed by it, but I definitely feel like Google should be responsible for any damages/losses.

I did go ahead and install ad blockers on all her browsers, removed google search from being the default search engine, and showed her how to avoid clicking on ads and sponsored links if/when any slip through the cracks. So, hopefully it won’t happen again.

I tried doing that for a brief stint while in college. It was awful. It didn’t make me hate what I love, but it definitely put a damper in it for quite awhile.

Within the past year or so, I’ve started seeing the option to tip show up on random e-commerce sites when I go to checkout. I’m hoping it’s a short lived fad and that it doesn’t start becoming a super common thing because for now it’s rare enough that I can abandon my cart and go shop elsewhere when it happens.

I would truthfully and happily go back in time and tell people not to waste with the fucked up bullshit technology of the past. I mean Angular 1, what the hell was that? Twitter integration? Fuck you 2010. Zend Framework? You should be hanged. HANGED.

HTML CSS XML JSON SQL CRAYONS

Okay, it’s starting to add up.

For those who have tipped, you can breathe a big sigh of relief. Per Baby Jesus®, to err is human to forgive is bovine. And either way cows aren’t exactly smart by vertebrate standards.

The 8 year old me would be overjoyed! This was one of my favorite NES games, and there were enough good NES games that the title of “one of my favorites” means it was actually cream of the crop.

The 45 year old me would probably not be as happy, since I’d rather go to bed at a reasonable hour and crappy quality fast food pizza sounds like it’s going to make me feel miserable if I have more than a slice or two anyway. Plus as awesome as SMB3 is and was, there are modern games I’d rather play at the moment if I were going to stay up all night.

The sky at night. I hope that there aren’t a lot of clouds and that the moon moves closer to the horizon so I can see some stars. It’s going to be super hot during the day, so I anticipate being inside for most of it this weekend. It will be nice to go out after sunset and enjoy some nature. Ideally I would like to sit out and enjoy the stars after dark and listen to the sound of crickets and frogs in the background.

I feel this in my soul. If I were independently wealthy or had a sizeable amount of passive income, I probably would give up the corporate life and just do something like farming.

But in reality, most of the farmers in my area either have to make do with very little or they end up having to work a full time job to supplement the farm income, build a retirement fund, and to have decent health insurance. Kind of takes the joy out of it if I know I’m either going to have to compromise further on healthcare & retirement, or if I’m going to have to continue working another job either way.

What kind of address do they give people that don’t pee, then?

Happened to me last week. Checked on a butter bell with Amazon’s and message pop up that I did something illegal. Called the number they provide and next thing I know I’m getting all kind of messages from FBI. Hung up an let my grankids deal with it. Turns out they can get your address from urine, not sure how but it does not matter. It’s a scam.