PixlBit

I almost didn't add Rob to this podcast posting for his Mets comment. Yankees, barf.

Is this why I haven't been invited back? 

Rob dates himself!

Rob is right, it's great to get to know everybody with "outside of gaming" discussions. Echoing what Julian said, these kinds of episodes help provide more context and knowledge of a person. Case in point, I now know why Julian likes wrestling. I never heard somebody say that wrestling was the closest thing to watching a comic book play out in real life, and it makes sense, so I understand where Jules is coming from now. I'm not into wrestling anymore, but my cousins and I were crazy about it as kids. We were obsessed with WCW and WWF. My favorite wrestlers back then were Sting and Shawn Michaels. I would freak out when Shawn Michael's intro music started up and it was even better when he'd use the sweet chin music to kick people in the face and win a match. Who ever thought a simple kick could become such a big deal? When I'd play wrestling video games I'd be Shawn and use that move on people all the time, and I thought the animation was the coolest thing ever.

When I was a kid my friends across the street and I would go to the park next to us and play baseball all the time. A big chunk of my youth was basically like the movie The Sandlot lol. I love playing baseball but I don't follow pro or minor baseball at all. Where I live we enjoy the game itself but we don't have a good team to follow. Here we have the Colorado Rockies here but they've always sucked a chode and a half. I've been to a few Rockies games and whenever people go they hardly pay attention to the game. Coors Field is one of the most beautiful places ever so when you go there people don't watch the game much, it's all about the field, and the view you get. The only sport I go crazy for is hockey and I'm a huge Colorado Avalanche fan. We grew up here watching the team win two Stanley Cups and that's like sacred to us. I watch hockey analysis everyday, follow several other teams besides Colorado, and I just plain like to follow hockey, watch it, play the video games, etc.

I do indeed follow you all on twitter...including Patrick lol. I've just been Sam Fisher about it and stayed in the shadows. A funny story about Patrick's twitter is that his avatar is a picture of a jester playing with a chicken right, well, it's always been like an illusion to my brain. Everytime I see it, for the first second my brain wrongly interpets the photo and it looks like a dog to me if you can believe it. At a glance it's like a brown and black bloodhound or something. It takes just a second, than I see it and remember it's the jester and his chicken. It's crazy and it happens everytime I see it.

It's probably hard to tell it's me because my handle is like different everywhere I go. On Pixlbit and 1UP I'm Michael117 (the 117 is a blatant reference to Halo lore) because it was available. On twitter that was taken so I'm Teras117 (teras is the name of a song I practice on guitar all the time). My real name is Michael Alvarado (rhymes with Colorado or Silverado) and I've never considered going by that lol. You can call me whatever you like. Travis Hawks here at the site called me Mr. 117 a few days ago. Whatever floats the boat and finds the lost remote, that's what I say!

In all seriousness I do like the crew a lot, including Patrick (have to single you out lol), and I still have yet to listen to a show I didn't like. Patrick is a big Zelda fan, as am I, and Zelda fans gotta stick together. I think Pat's Zelda knowledge and experience is far deeper than mine though, and I like hearing him talk about the series. In that one episode when everybody was talking about the Zelda timeline and Pat was going off about the symbology of it all and how he interpreted it, I was like, "Yep, Patties that real deal, he likes his Zelda, and I like him." Patrick is incredibly sharp. He's better read than 10 of me put together, and I get the feeling he's complex and skinned like an onion. You get to gingerly peel his stuff back, interesting layer by interesting layer, as you get to know him. If that came across as sexual, believe me, it was meant to. Just kidding lol. I like Patrick's episode ideas, his old man voice (by far the best in the group), his reviews, and the pictures of jester chicken duos he puts up on social media.

Rob is brilliant, hilarious, likewise better read than 10 of me put together, and he manages to bring the vulgarity, laughs, and passion while still being intensely respectful, open minded, fair, and ready to drop knowledge or give credit where it's due. He's always been great, but I knew he was awesome when I heard him explain why he loves Halo Reach so much and how much he would love to play through it co-op with Julian. Reach got to me emotionally and I'm a big fan of the series. I think it's awesome you met some girls at the geek speed dating. Any trips to the bone zone Rob? Did they check in at hotel Rob, stay at the meat suite, have a laycation (as opposed to vacation)? Sorry those are quotes from one of my favorite shows ever, Delocated on Adult Swim. I drop lines from that show all the time. I call it the bone zone, and I'm a child about it lol. I'm the only person I know who literally got geekier and weirder since I lost my virginity. Back in school all the kids would shoot the shit and theorize that everything changed when you got laid and suddenly you'd be super cool and suave. It was the opposite for me because when I was a virgin I tried to act like the coolest dude around in order to attract a mate, and once I finally started getting laid I became exponentially more nerdy and uncool Lol. When I was in high school my friends and I were punk rock skaters on the edge, getting high, running away from home, and saying "dood" all the time. Now I'm 23, total square, sober, law abiding, and I get off talking about geology, astronomy, or hearing John Carmack talk about aerospace engineering. At the moment in my browser I have a few tabs open like Pixlbit and Youtube, but I'm also on Armadillo Aerospace's website reading all about their second flight of their Stiga rocket.

Julian is one of the reasons I found out about this place and came here. When him and Jesse were hired here I came right over to follow them. Jules was the first friend I made when I showed up on 1UP, coincidentally it was the same time he was getting back into writing about games, and he's been the nicest guy in the world ever since. The first day we talked we just reminisced about Mass Effect 2 and our love for Garrus. Everybody here knows by now that I write too much and it's pretty obnoxious, but trust me it didn't always use to be that way. It was way worse! When I showed up and got in discussions with Jules, my walls of text were much longer, didn't even have paragraphs, and branched out into so many topics it was out of control. Julian helped me out, gave me advice, and over time I straightened out, started formatting things, and started learning to be more structured in my writing process. Now when I write I always pace myself, pay more attention to grammar, and not waste a bunch of space branching out into a dozen topics. When you go look at my blogs here on Pixlbit you will see a certain consistent style in regards to the font, font size, picture placement, captions, etc. Basically it's all Julian. I studied his style and analyzed everything he did, replicated it, and found a style or a look that really worked for me. Not only did I rip off his entire style, but Julian is the one that encouraged me to start writing blogs at all, and become a productive member. For a long time I would just lurk around silently hunting for conversations, dropping messy walls of text at will, my profile itself was empty, and I was a pure nuisance I'm sure of it. But he always stopped by to check out my stuff and he was always the nicest guy in the world regardless. I'm a huge fan to say the least. I still write a lot and talk too much, but the reason why isn't simply because I have plenty to say. One of the biggest reasons is because this is one of the only places where I feel comfortable doing so. I like the people here, and I let out all that gaming talk and nerdiness I wish I could live out on a day to day basis. A lot of kids these days have this geek pride, wear it like a badge, and a part of this popularization of it. My generation just barely missed that and grew up just before it happened, I literally started seeing it grow in my city as I was in my final year of highschool. The story is completely different for the people who are just a few years younger than me. My younger cousin Katie wear it with pride, has a Yoshi backpack, goes the whole nine yards and everybody thinks it's awesome. I grew up keeping it all to myself, nobody thought it was cool, or wanted to hear about it. Around here I don't have to worry about it, it's the greatest environment ever!

I should probably get some gaming in here before I go, since you guys talked games a little. The last couple days I've been playing the 2006 Sonic reboot, I even wrote a blog about it here on Pixlbit describing the pain I've endured doing it, and Esteban was letting me know it gets even worse. Other than Sonic, I've been dancing around playing a mix of Star Ocean The Last Hope, Fable 3, MW3, NHL 12, and War in the North.

Bro, I got geekier, too. Vagina opened a wave of nerdiness that I never knew existed, though I do keep that shit hidden until I'm with my like-minded nerds (Julian, Patrick and other friends included).

For the record, I love Delocated. "Farina was here? I missed Farina!?"

Fun Fact: Shawn Michael's song "I'm a Sexy Boy" is one of my favorite workout songs. In fact, you'd be amazed at how effective certain wrestler intro songs can be when you're an hour in to a two hour workout.

I have "Sexy Boy" on my P90X mix, along with D-Lo Brown's theme, too. "You lookin' at the real deal now! WHOOOOOOOOOOO!" Lol.

See also: P90X is kicking my ass and I'm loving it.

I'll kick your ass and you'll love that, too.

Listen, don't make promises you can't keep, amigo. You promise to turn me on, you better do it. ;)

Mr. 117, that was one of the nicest walls of texts that anyone has ever written about me. And us? Probably. Turns me on a little bit. Thanks for the loyalty and never stop the love!

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