PixlBit

Good morning Pixlpeeps! It is Monday and I haven’t been around last week. I was going to write up a Quick Hits but on Friday I had a dentist surprise dentist appointment. I was on a wait list and someone canceled so I got their spot. I have one more appointment like that, and a regular appointment later this week. Hopefully both happen this week. I really like my dentist and his staff but it feels like I’m becoming a regular and that’s a little odd especially there. Anyways more on that later, let’s get started with today’s combo Quick Hits/What I’m Playing blog.

 

What I’m Playing

NCAA Football 14 - Playstation 3

Since college football has started it should be fun watching the games and playing this oldie but goodie. Currently in year 3 of the UMass Dynasty and the Minutemen are 7-0 and ranked 4^th in the country. I had this grand plan of moving all the teams out of the American Conference, and placing UMass, Buffalo, Syracuse, UConn, Boston College, Temple, and another eastern university to have a geography based conference but I’m still debating on if I should.

 

NBA 2K18 - Steam

I played a couple of games with my created team the Saint Louis Captains and I was hit with a decision to trade one of my star players for two 1^st Round Picks. I decided against it even if I am leaning towards letting him leave in the off-season. I have basically the future starting lineup on the bench right now but I kind of feel loyal to the current three guys I am going to let go. Kinda funny considering it’s just a game.  

 

Ridge Racer Unbounded - Steam

 

I finally fired up my Steam client after a couple of weeks and I decided to tackle a game I haven’t played in a while and I’m enjoying it again. If you haven’t played this game it’s a clone of the Burnout games only much slower and you have to jump to various sections of the map to to unlock sections as you increase your point score, and unlock faster cars. Again you would think this game would feel like a fast racer but it feels slow, and at times sluggish. I’m going to finish it because I paid for it.

 

Shaq-Fu: A Legion Reborn - Switch

 

I started this game up last week and well it is what you would expect it to be, an okay side-scrolling fighter with jokes, and a nice product placement of IcyHot as your health.

 

If you ever wanted to play Streets of Rage but with Shaq, an okay story and controls this is the game for you! I mean it’s fun, but it’s nowhere near worth it’s asking price, thank goodness I didn’t pay that much. At the price point I paid for it, I think it is a solid game. At retail, wait for a sale. More on this later.

 

Quick Hits!

Hawaii

So I have family on the islands so it was scary watching the hurricane move towards the islands. My uncle sent me a picture of the local Safeway where the shelves were empty. He went in thinking he could buy a cabbage but after seeing that, the lines stretching to the back of the store he left. My aunt said she waited 3 hours just to get into Costco to buy water, and they were ready for the storm. My little sister said her and her mom got all their supplies and they were ready. My pops…well my pops was outside checking on his plants like it was no big deal while his girlfriend posted pictures on Facebook. I thought this was hilarious. One side of the island was bracing for the worst, while the other side was going about it like it was no big deal. Anyways the hurricane got downgraded to a tropical storm and then pretty much got taken out by the trade winds. The island got rain, and thank goodness nothing bad happened. I do feel for the big island and Maui who took some good shots.   

 

Chris Visits The Dentist

So Friday was my return trip to the dentist. I’ll spare you the details, but thanks to modern numbing agents I couldn’t feel a thing, and I didn’t need my music player that was recommended that I bring. A little background on my current dentist: earlier in the month I had a problem so in a pinch I went to one of those franchised dentist offices and well I left feeling like it was more used car lot than doctor’s office. I mean when a dentist walks in, shows you your x-rays, and then proceeds to do some stuff in your mouth, tell you what you need, and then leaves without answering any questions, followed by the finance lady telling you the costs, and then the next day getting a text for an appointment I didn’t make followed by a call by the location manager offering you a 50% discount, there is a problem. Sorry for the run on but it was just insane what these people are doing.

 

Anyways I decided to give my mom’s dentist a try and they are night and day with these folks. Very friendly, the dentist sat with me talked about what he thinks needs to be worked on, answered all my questions and made sure I understood what was going on. The dentist was like this, the dental hygienist was like this, and the front desk person was friendly and when I walked into my second visit she knew my name and said I didn’t need to sign-in. My second visit. Crazy. Anyways while typing this up, I got a text from them wanting to confirm my appointment and if I had any questions to give them a call. I’m not going to call out franchise dentists but sometimes the local spots are the better especially for feeling like you matter.

 

Other Randoms

- College Football is back and I’m happy. My Aztecs play Stanford this week. Go Aztecs!

- I’m a little over 50% in my Stupid History book. From reading a little before bed, to reading on my phone when I am in the dentist waiting room, I’m catching up on funny little stories and some glaring misspellings. My spelling is bad, but damn the editor let some obvious words make it to print. I want to finish this book soon so I can get back to my other book about 90s pop music.

 

Pickups!

Games

Oh there’s stuff here this week! There was a Switch sale this past week and I picked up some games

 

Shaq-Fu for $10

 

And these games for a buck each. Pirates seems like the ship part of the Sid Meier’s Pirates game which was fun, Grid Mania is a puzzle game, and Brawl sounds like a Bomberman clone. Not a bad group of games for $3.

 

More Switch love comes from Walmart

 

I lost my original power adaptor so I bought the Walmart brand version which means the original one I lost will now magically appear. If it does I have this swanky $12 version.

 

Music

I didn’t make a trip to the local mom and pop this week because I was a drooling mess after my dentist appointment…yet I went to Target. Anyways I added two singles to my iTunes library from the iTunes store

 

I figure I would save myself the shame of always listening to these two tracks on Spotify, so now I own them.

 

Toys

So while I was at Target being a drooling mess, I went looking around and apparently I haven’t been there in forever because they’re remodeling and the electronic section is starting to look like Best Buy’s electronic section. As for the toys it’s still the same and I found this

 

It’s a really nice set, and it’s not for me. I bought it for my uncle who is into VW’s and he bought one of those VW trucks for his brother. I call it the Bus Truck. Anyways I will send this along with a this weird Hot Wheels bus set I found a while back to my uncle. I kind of want to buy a set so I can open it.

 

Other Stuff

So I ordered some socks from Dick’s Sporting Goods Flash Sale a week ago and then forgot. Well they’ve been sitting in the mailbox for a couple of days, and I finally got them when I stopped being a drooling mess.

 

It was a 4 for $20 deal on socks and I missed out on the Nike Chicago Bulls socks. Instead I just bought two pairs of the Jordan All Star Game Socks

Like I told my friend, I just added 10 inches to my vertical when I wear these socks. The magic of Nike.

 

Final pickup was because my dentist office strongly encourage that I dump the manual toothbrush in favor of this one from Costco

 

It has two modes, teeth clean and gum care, it tells you when to move to a different section of your mouth, shuts off when you’re brushing too hard, and automatically stops when finished. No word yet if it will read my email to me, order a pizza or have Alexa connectivity but that can probably be added with a firmware upgrade.  

 

Alright Pixlpeeps I am off. I need to go so have a good week, and I’ll catch up with everything going on here later on.

 

That’s all for now, more later!

-Chris