PixlBit

Hello everyone,

It’s been almost a year since I last blogged about my life in general so I thought this month of Octoberween 2019 I thought I’d share some brief snippets of what I’ve been up to. Hopefully this will help explain why I haven’t blogged as much as I have in the past. I’m not sure who all will actually read this given my lack of activity but tonight of all nights I felt like sharing something.

 Lost my job/gained another

This actually happened during my birthday month at the beginning of the year. Not sure if it was noticeable in the few blogs I wrote last year, but work was becoming more a chore. It got the point where I literally couldn’t do the job that this company hired me to do. I actually sent a letter to corporate quality informing them of said work conditions, along with a copy to the company HR just before I went on a week vacation. Upon my return I was called to the office and was told that they were accepting my “resignation letter”. Basically this squeaky wheel got the grease and once again helped to reinforce the fact that companies don’t really care for you as an employee despite them saying that the most important resource to any company is “You”. Went as far as to contact an attorney since my letter to corporate quality wasn’t a “resignation letter”. I even got some call backs from some attorney’s after the initial meetings. In the end though they all came to the same conclusion: They could take the case but it would be a long (and costly), drawn out fight of court rulings, appeals and no promises of a victory in the end. From it all I was told to just take the “L” and move on given that where I live, it the circumstance wasn’t safety related, employers have more power than employees. I’m starting to see why more and more employees want to unionize. Scary thought indeed. Got a new job though but it was a long drawn out affair, which leads to other aspects of my life.

Sold some of my rare games

Due to being out of work for so long, and the fact that I couldn’t get ANY unemployment assistance (what a joke of a system THAT is) I ended up selling what was left of my rare video game collection. Gone are my copies of Guardian Heroes, Resident Evil, and Panzer Dragoon Saga for my Sega Saturn. Though still have some choice rare games in my collection, they really are not worth nowhere near what those three games sold for on eBay. I tried to sell them on local swap apps and craigslist but mostly got flack for trying to sell them for the current market rate going for them. It seems like now was the best time to sell them anyway given how more and more are speaking out over the selling prices of these games on the open market. Never did I think I’d hear of the stories of outright animosity toward the gamers that would sell these games above their original selling prices. I thought it was just a small minority of gamers saying this but I ran into my fair share of buyers who were just upset I would dare make a profit off these games. I was told from some buyers I should sell them at the price I bought the games for to others saying I should “donate” my rare games to them because they were “preserving” them for future generations. In the end I did sell them, with much pain in my heart, but it helped me and my family survive half the year till I got my new job. As a result of my recent selling adventure I’ve made some decisions that determined the fate of my gaming hobby.

 Trying out “repros”

Ever since I saw that episode of Game Sack on YouTube about game reproductions I decided I dip my hand into trying out that aspect in gaming. I’m coming the point in life that I really don’t have that much money to spend on my gaming hobby, let alone on paying for super rare game titles. I might luck out and find a good game for a decent price at some flea market but I doubt I could bring myself to buy a copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga for $700+ dollars just so I can “have it” in my collection. So instead I got a reproduction copy of the game from an online vendor. Now I’m sure making this choice my cast an unfavorable light on me as a gamer but in all honestly I don’t really think I’d care. I need to make my money stretch when it comes to gaming and I can’t see myself paying full price for a lot of games out there at this time. It’s one of the reasons why I decided to stick with Xbox Game Pass for the time being so I can play newerish games. Speak of which…

 Slowly inching closer to digital gaming.

This one hurts me personally given I’m a fan of physical games media but I too have come to embrace the sin that is “Gaming on Demand”. During my stunt with unemployment I decided dust off my Bing Rewards account and start to earn points again. I originally joined Bing Rewards on a whim long ago but slowly lost interest as time passed and rewards points where harder to come by. It would appear though that things have changed and the option to redeem your Bing Rewards points for Xbox related items helped in getting me motivated in giving the program a try again. And since I was unemployed at the time, and putting in job applications every day on a PC, I figured I had time to waste. As a result of doing Bing Rewards I’ve gained myself some extra Xbox Live Gold months and banked up a good about of Xbox Game Pass months as well. I originally was planning on using the points for Xbox Gift Cards but I ended up getting a free month of Game Pass as a game quest reward and ended up banking my points for more months. It’s better than paying for it, and it does pay for itself in the long term, though Microsoft has gotten wind of this and have removed the option to get more Xbox Game Pass (they did bring it back but it only seems for the 3 month option). Instead they are pushing for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and I just might be silly enough to make the conversion for Xbox Live + Xbox Game Pass to Ultimate. Mind you I’m still going to continue to collect physical games when I can afford them but having this digital option at least gives me the ability to try out newer game releases earlier than I’ve been able to in the past.

Embracing the big “E”

If anyone reading this who is a gamer and understand what the dreaded “Big E” is then you might understand where I am coming from. I decided to dabble in it when the Nintendo Wii Shop was closed down and I heard that the Wii had some amazingly uptapped potential. Now I can’t go into details but I’m finding myself learning more and more on how to make my current Wii system a bit more “open source” you might say….

PC Issues:

I’m not sure many of you may have noticed but I never got around to posting my number 1 Octoberween Game Pick of 2018 last year. The truth of the matter to that was my little Acer Aspire One Netbook decided to have a hard drive crash. It was so infuriating given I had just finished writing up the game choice only to lose it when the netbook crashed, and of course I didn’t have a backup. As a result I went on a PC craze where I tried to find/fix any and all laptops I could find on the cheap in the hopes of getting a PC that would fit my needs when it came to blogging online. Despite my best attempts I could never find the right PC set up. I did get my Acer Aspire One rebuilt but I can’t trust it again to keep stable. I found a few older laptops at flea markets but they were either too old or too slow to be of any use. And that’s not including the fact that none of them had a decent word processing program to use. I ended up keeping up to 2 laptops, 1 netbook and 1 tablet hybrid PC for various “down the rabbit hole” projects to where I ended up forgetting why I was trying to get a laptop to begin with. I did originally have 3 laptops but I gave one to a friend who needed a laptop given his macbook died on him. Near the end of the summer I was lucky enough to get my brother’s old (broken) laptop that he had no use for given that the hinges on it gave out, along with the touch screen and mousepad deciding not to work anymore. Easy fixes overall and Godsend given that this laptop had a SSHD, an Intel Core i7, 8 GB of RAM and a Nvidia GEFORCE graphics card. It didn’t hurt that it also came with a full suite of MS Office installed as well. This has basically become my main laptop of choice now for operations. I’ve even been able to install some of my games off Steam though I can’t say I’m much of a PC gamer let alone a streamer. And speaking of streaming.

 Dipped my toe into video game streaming.

During my unemployment various family members suggested I try this YouTube/Twitch thing where I could create my own channel and try to monetize my content. It also didn’t help that the moment any family member stepped into my GameRoom their first comment was “You should start a YouTube Channel….”. I had to keep telling them if I wanted to stream decently I’d have to invest in some decent webcams, capture cards, voice mics and keep a consistent (and entertaining) stream schedule. In the end I just dabbled with the insta-stream functions on my PS4 link to my Twitch account. It’s simplistic and gets the job done. I really didn’t stick with it when I got a new job but every now and then I might stream something. It’s not often but something I play with every once in a while.

Corrupting the younger generation.

My sister’s kids are starting to grow up to the point where they are taking more of an active interest in my gaming hobby. My 4 year old nephew had taken to mobile gaming and 2 year old nephew is learning to mimic the use of game controllers when I play. So there mom has asked me to show them the way in what gaming all entrails. This request I find odd given that their mom was a gamer back in the day and I figured she’d be able to teach them properly in what to sink their time into when it comes to gaming. In the end though it turns out they need more help than I realized. The 4 year old has the attention span of a gold fish and will play anything on his table that fits his fancy. He’ll also give on a game when it gets too difficult for him. I’ve had to sit him down several time to explain to him that just because you have a variety of games to choose from, be it on mobile or in my GameRoom, doesn’t mean one can just quit a game that is hard a move on to something else. I had to tell him about when I was his age I was lucky to have more than 3 games to play at any given time. I had to tell him how I didn’t have the luxury that he has now with the advent of mobile gaming or having an uncle with a GameRoom that has retro to modern offerings of console gaming. He still has a lot to learn and his mom is letting him have this opportunity to learn given she has me watch him more and more as of late.

This entry has gotten a bit long in the tooth for my liking so I think I’ll cut if off right her for my personal Update at this time. Not sure how many more of these types of blogs will come about this month but I do plan on posting my Top 5 Octoberween Game Titles of 2019 along with my last game choice from last year. I might do an Octoberween themed blog on a topic or two but we’ll have to see what comes about timewise given my don’t get a lot of free time to blog like I used to. Twitter, Gab, Parler and the like of social media have sadly sunk their hooks into me. That’s the best way to keep tabs on me given how easy it is to use. Pus it's the place where I've decided to share my Octoberween playlist. Check the out if you get the chance. Until next time.

Ta-ta

“N”