PixlBit

No more promises!

Last time I blogged I intended on “opening the floodgates” of all the backlog content I had written during my last AFK event. Sadly that wasn’t the cause given my current life circumstances. So where have I been for yet again this summer? (And no I wasn’t off recovering from this!) Here’s the long and short of it:

Bad weather:

It would seem that Mother Nature forgot that rain showers were supposed to happen in April. Instead my area got some unusual rainy weather to the point it actually developed two localized tornados in the North Easterly area of Nebraska. It was so bad it actually took out half the town of Pilger Nebraska! Though this weather was nowhere near me, it still shook up the region to see one of the outlying rural towns lay to waste. I wasn’t able to volunteer for cleanup but my family donated to the cleanup efforts. The farmers loved the rain but we did have some localized flooding, along with my house gutters. I had to clean “the dungeon” because of it.”

“Whoring” my writing skills out yet again.

Remember a couple of summers back when I was unemployed and was reducing myself to “whoring” my writing skills out to write college papers for some of the summer school kids. Well it turns out that for some odd reason word has spread in the area that I am the go to guy in getting an “A grade” paper. That wasn’t really my intention when I first did this back in the day. But it would seem that there are a lot of summer college kids that don’t want to do their papers. At first I was reluctant figuring they should be tortured get the experience of writing term/research/essay/APA papers. But in the end I couldn’t resist given how most of these students had to write these papers for majors that had little to no bearing, relevance or reasoning to their respective professions. I mean why would a kid studying HVAC need to write about the pros of Obamacare!

Plus the money was good. Never have I seen my PayPal account become so fat! But this had its downside.

Got tired of writing real quick:

I swore I’d only write a few of these papers if only to get a little side money for any future summer purchases. I even went as far as picking and choosing which papers to write for each certain class of a certain individual. But at the end of the day when I got the job done, I was just tired of writing and my netbook itself. I would literally throw my netbook aside if only to wash my hands of the whole affair. I was so disgusted with what these students had to write for their professors (most of them of course believing that there was no such thing as a “perfect paper”) that I just didn’t have it in me to blog much about anything after I finished the job. I didn’t even have it in me to post any of the prewritten blogs I created back during my last AFK moment. I couldn’t even do a video link blog about the horrors of Final Fantasy X! Instead I found myself wanting to kill something. Which of course lead to…

Games galore:

Never in all my life as a gamer have ever enjoyed so much gaming goodness. Aside from what I bought back during my birthdays, the free games offer on XBLA, to some of the recent sales offered on XBLA/PSN, I have never had the chance to own so many games! And thanks to the money revenue from my paper writing, I’ve been able to buy more games that I can play. I don’t know how I’m going to write my latest MyBuys blog. I think I might have to make it a 2 or 3 parter. I’ve even used some of it to pay for other items like new rechargeable batteries for my Xbox 360/Wiimotes and the complete Original Sailor Moon series on DVD for teh wife! So from digital to physical titles I have my gaming plate full. But I’ve found myself sinking my teeth into one particular title on PS3…

Come fly the unfriendly skies with Ace Combat Infinity.

Back during my birthdays I tried out the Ace Combat Infinity beta offered on PSN. Normally I don’t go for betas for fear that it would break my system. But given my love for air combat, along with my recent interest in F2P titles offered on consoles, I decided to give it a go. Fast forward to now and I’m having a blast with this F2P title. Honestly I’m surprised I haven’t heard much about this game in review circles. I read one review but it seemed to be more of an opinionated piece than an actual review of the game itself. This game has not only reawakened my interest in combat flying games but also into F2P titles offered on consoles. It makes me wonder why no news outlets have devoted any time to review these titles or offer news and updates of upcoming events within these F2P games. EVE: Dust 517, Defiance, World of Tanks, AirMech Arena and the rest seem to have events happening. Why is no one talking about them?

Pac off with Chris Iozzi.

During the summer I tried to resurrect an ol’ tradition I once had with Zumafire back in the day. It was basically a XBLA challenge on who could get a higher level in a certain level of a Pac Man title off XBLA. What’s great about these Pac Off challenges is that you can pursue them at your own leisure. Well Chris here on Pixlbit finally threw the challenge down to beat his top score in DX Champion II in 5 minute mode. I will admit he is a most worthy opponent with him even giving me a hint on how to beat his top score. I’m not quite there yet, but I’m close!

Vacation

I found myself in New England again so I had to take the time to be out there and try to have some fun. For the most part I did, if you can forgo the usual negatives that the area has to offer. The only downside to the trip for me was having to say goodbye in wearing my “Rick Grimes” hat. For those that don’t know what I refer to I speak of my cowboy hat and plain tin star that resides on it. It’s been somewhat of talisman for me in my life. I’ve worn that hat for most of my young life from my high school days to present. I actually didn’t take it with me when I first moved out east fearing I’d stand out amongst the rest of the east coasters out there. But my family mailed it out to me if only to remind me on where I came from. Thru hard times it was a constant symbol of who I was, which was why I’m sad to say I have to retire it. Not because it’s falling apart but because of an “incident” that happened while I was on vacation. I won’t go into details but let’s just say the police don’t take too kindly when you refuse to take off your hat to them, lawfully or otherwise. I have a replacement but it’s going to take some getting used to.

And that’s the long and short of my AFK this time around. There are other events inbetween but honestly they are not worth mentioning *cough* Gamergate *cough*

Right now I’m debating what to do now given how my favorite holiday is coming up, along with the fate of what’s to become of other blogs and blog series I’ve been working on. Time grows short and I feel the urge to sin again. I won’t make promises if I’m going to be back in full swing or part time. All I do know is that the urge to blog is back. I just wonder if it’ll be interesting enough to warrant the posting of them. Here it goes till Octoberween!

Ta-ta

“N”