MiketheMechanicIf I took a guess, I would imagine most(?) people probably think I am younger than my age. hell, not all that long ago someone said that when they asked how old am I and I said something like "38 yesterday" (because I think it was a day after my 38th b-day in Oct) and they seemed a little surprised. but you just can't be too sure if they are being honest or just go with the default of "you look younger than your age" just to play it safe so they don't offend someone etc.
either way, I don't think it would be a stretch if someone thought I was roughly early 30's though but those days of looking early 20's are definitely over. but I would assume almost no one who's 38 would look early 20's as I figure late 20's at best. but if i had to say put things into a 20's or 30's or 40's or 50's and so on type of bracket i would guess people would probably think i am 30's, maybe a little into the high 20's at best.
Good point.
because it does sorta seem that way as while I can feel I am getting older on some level etc, it just does not seem like I am closer to 50 than 20 (it seems the other way around) even though I am closer to 50 than 20 and have been for a little while now.
but since time flies... before I know it I will be 50 and it's a bit less than 12 years til 50 for me now and I imagine those years will go by fast as even this current decade seems to be passing pretty quickly as we only go a little over 2 years left til the year 2020. hell, when i say "the year 2020" that sounds like the fairly distant future even though it's barely over 2 years from now as I type this.
I have heard about those Pong days a little but those where definitely before my time as the oldest console i remember using was 'Atari 2600 Jr' which according to Wikipedia was released 1986 so we probably had one roughly a year or two later (sometime before 1990 i think).
Yeah, I could see that and what I speculate on plays inline with what your guessing about the video games and your general age bracket thing.
I can remember arcades but you could basically say i mainly caught those at the end of that era which you might as well say started to fizzle out in the higher side of the late 1990's as by then consoles started to get more powerful etc which made arcades lose their appeal/advantage. but i would imagine arcades were at their peak in the 1980's through most of the 1990's (although i would not really claim much in the 1980's simply because i was a little kid in the 1980's(in late 1989 i would have been 10 years old) as i think, at least for the most part, someone would have to be a fair amount older then me at the least to be able to claim the old days of the 1980's arcades basically). but about the only real arcade stuff for me, like dumped a good amount of $$$ into, was Mortal Kombat 2/Mortal Kombat 3/Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (i.e. 1994-1996) as those are easily my most played games in the arcades back in their glory days (but like i was saying these days where getting near the end of the old days of the arcades). now you can fire those up on the MAME arcade emulator on the PC using X-Arcade joystick etc. i would have killed for that MAME emulator with MK2/MK3/UMK3 back in the mid-to-late 1990's etc
but with that said... I do remember having some local arcade thing in my area which i want to say was roughly late 1980's but I don't think it hung around long and I don't think i was in there that much. maybe a couple of times or so from memory as while i am sure i liked them back then, the costs kinda put the brakes on that, as it's not like you can just sit there all day playing when it's like $0.25 or $0.50 per play (i know it was $0.50 in the mid-1990's when i played Mortal Kombat 2/3/Ultimate).
Yep that pretty much plays inline with my thoughts.
i remember Mario 64 quite well... like one memory i got is back in those days (1996-ish) Blockbuster video used to have those display models with Mario 64 on them and the analog stick got completely worn out from people using it or like i say, abusing it, as i have no idea how that got THAT worn out especially when it was not in there for all that long. because i had a N64 back in 1996/1997 and kept it til roughly 2001 when i sold it to someone i worked with and my analog stick on that original controller was still largely fine as it had a little wear on it but nothing major.
but just in terms of Mario... it's easily my favorite Mario game, especially in the 3D era. in fact, if you like Mario you might be interested in this...
forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-super-mario-64-hd-texture-pack-v1-5-2017-09-17 ; basically it's a mod for the PC so you can basically play Mario 64 (on N64) on the Dolphin emulator for the PC but with modern HD graphics, and in proper aspect ratio to, but still retain that old days look.
as far as Zelda... i am aware it's pretty big with some people. i never played it much myself but i think my cousin played one on the N64 back in the day.
but speaking of N64... that was pretty much the last great Nintendo console if you ask me. after that they seemed to start targeting a different type of gamer as by then Sony started to dominate and not long after Microsoft got into the mix and it's pretty much been this way since with more of the serious gamers even though i would imagine Nintendo still sells well enough. but since i mainly play shooters i heavily favor the PC as my gaming system of choice because of mouse+keyboard as i am much better at tracking stuff on screen with a mouse than a consoles analog stick as using a consoles analog stick it's just a chore to aim quick enough. like it's enough of a difference for me to the point i can't enjoy shooters on consoles but can enjoy them on a PC. in fact, the last shooter on a console i played and liked a lot was GoldenEye on N64 which is a pretty big name game back in the day. i still like to praise that but i doubt i would like it all that much now. but speaking of GoldenEye if you got a decent computer and liked GoldenEye this might be of some interest to you...
www.geshl2.com/ (i.e. GoldenEye on the PC basically and it's free).
Yeah, one thing i recall is back in the mid-1990's to download i think it was the DooM demo my uncle brought over his 14.4 modem to download as the modem in the first PC we had i think was 2400baud which is dead slow (hell, i think i have this 2400baud modem still but it's just collecting dust). the PC i had in 1996 (i.e. 133Mhz Pentium CPU) came with i think it was a 28.8. there was i think 3x.x something (don't recall exact numbers off the top of my head) and then topped out on the 56k modems of which i had a external US Robotics one which i still have in the box. then high speed kicked in and that's that.
basically when high speed internet came to the area in 2000 the guy who installed it told me i was one of the first to get it installed. but i remember watching TV which i can't recall the exact name of the TV channel but it was a computer channel and i noticed some advertisement scrolling across the bottom of the screen saying high speed internet etc is available in your area and i was all over that like white on rice
; i don't recall the exact download speed back when i first got it but i want to say it was roughly 300KB/s at that time which if that's true that was at least 50 times faster than 'quality' dial-up. that was Comcast which i had in 2000-2005, skip a year or so in here(back to dial-up), and i have been pretty much with AT&T DSL since roughly late 2006(maybe November). but when i first got that AT&T DSL it was only 40KB/s (which while real slow for "high speed" standards it's hard to complain compared to dial-up) for a while and eventually it climbed up in speed.
p.s. as you know 56k is basically the peak of dial-up modems which is like 6KB/s at best, but probably more like 5KB/s. for measure, my current internet line is 400-420KB/s which is easily on the slower side of high speed lines. so while that 400-420KB/s is not that fast as a added bonus it's got no data cap since we combined DirecTV with the DSL line as before that it had a 150GB cap (250GB at best) and some months i go over 250GB. normally 250GB a month is the normal cap with Comcast or AT&T the last I knew. or put it this way... i would rather have the 400-420KB with no data cap than having say something like 2MB/s (i.e. 2000KB/s) with a 150-250GB a month cap.
side note: i have only had a total of 5-6 desktop computers since my first one in 1995. i say 5-6 because it's pretty much 6 but case wise only 5. basically swapped out motherboard/CPU/RAM but everything else was the same. like it's enough for me to consider another computer even though it was in the same case as my 5th PC which i built in March 2006(first one i built as prior to that they were always pre-built). so my main PC's case is going on 12 years old in March 2018 even though the motherboard/CPU/RAM in it was swapped May 2012. because prior to swapping out that mobo/cpu/ram thing i was considering upgrading my RAM from 2GB to 4GB on my computer but then realized it was simply not worth it considering the cost and that i could basically get a new PC (i.e. mobo/cpu/ram swap) for not much more. i think it was not much over $200 for that mobo/cpu/ram swap. but anyways, ill stop babbling.
Actually when it comes to Call of Duty, while I did play some of the early games of that series it's pretty much the same ol crap so i stopped play them many years ago now but the commercials keep on overpraising them as usual.
as for what games are some of my favorites outside of Mafia... I got quite a bit of nostalgia with Mortal Kombat 2/Mortal Kombat 3/Ultimately Mortal Kombat 3 which I played with my cousin in the arcades back in 1994-1996 (maybe a little beyond this) quite a bit when we could.
for a racing game... Forza series is definitely my favorite as i prefer those sim racers over arcade ones for the most part.
but just in very recent memory... i upgraded my video card in July 2017 (Geforce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB) from a Radeon 5670 512MB, which I had since 2010, and it was a big boost. hell, that card in got in 2010 was so i could play Mafia II. but if your familiar with computer hardware then as you can see I was not playing much (like in terms of video games) up until recently because just on the video RAM alone just about nothing modern works with 512MB of video memory as it seems like with modern cards 2GB is the low end where as 4GB is about the minimum i would recommend (the card i got has 2GB and 4GB models of the same graphics chip, but i definitely went with the 4GB as by the time 4GB of video memory becomes a issue my graphics card will be outdated by then anyways where as if i went with 2GB there is a decent chance that would start handicapping(or bottlenecking as many say) the card before it was outdated).
but anyways, after the video card upgrade... I mainly got it so I could play Mafia III and Hitman but I did end up finishing Grand Theft Auto 5 first because I wanted to save the best for last pretty much. but speaking of the Hitman series... I been playing those since the early days with the first game and played them all except the 5th game (i.e. Hitman Absolution) I partially played but never finished it. but the newest one Hitman (2016) (basically the 6th game of the series) I briefly tested roughly a few months ago just to get a quick feel of it but i am going to finish Mafia III first, as i am a good portion through that already, before getting more into Hitman. but outside of Mafia III/Hitman there is basically nothing else that i want to play pretty much.
Even though I have no experience here, that seems about right. lol
but come to think of it... maybe it's just me, but it seems like big name movie stars are a dying breed as just about all of the big names are roughly 50 something years old or older with Leo Dicaprio being one of the few exceptions.
Yeah, I agree around here (IMDb2 forums) are generally better than the official IMDb forums when they where around but you can still see a bit of troll/spam stuff here and there. but this place has higher ups that monitor things so if someone gets out of line they can get it taken care of much easier where as on IMDb you where pretty much screwed.
but yeah, I guess people roughly in your age bracket are around but like you said are probably in different areas of the boards etc. but in general, at least based on the official IMDb boards when they were around... when it came to the high traffic areas they where largely overrun by the kids/trolls. but outside of the high traffic areas you could find some quality discussion on random movies here and there.
hell, i can clearly remember with Breaking Bad forums on IMDb for example... back when Season 3 was airing the Breaking Bad section of the boards generally had decent conversations but once Season 4 started it was overrun by the kids/trolls as you could see a lot of goof off topics etc. the show became too popular by Season 4 basically.
Exactly.
but since I got zero control over it, I just dumped my lists on IMDb and moved on. nice quick way out and still got to do what I wanted but just with a different site. thankfully i can still do that stuff on that letterboxd site.
Yeah, I guess if it stays within certain topics/ranges I can be pretty good. but in some areas I would not be surprised if I was below average.
but I guess we all have our ups and downs with things in life in general as some areas we might be pretty good(maybe even above average) and other areas we need some work to sugar coat it a bit
speaking of that reconciled stuff... not all that long ago I thought he was coming around but i should have known better as not long after it appeared he was making progress, in came the usual, he was on the attack/flinging insults etc etc like usual. he's just not worth it as the way he speaks to people, especially if he disagrees with you, is just not something that's decent or worth it as i gave him more than enough chances and like i say he's THE only person on my ignore list on IMDb2.
as for his knowledge on movies... that's basically not a problem there and i would not be surprised if he writes better comments on movies than i do as like i said i am not hard to top in that dept because i never been good on that stuff all that much with putting my thoughts into words. it's just the way he speaks to people that's the problem basically. because i think i got a decent rep around here for quite some time now of not starting crap with others (like people can speak to me in a respectable manner even when they disagree(and i do the same for them), but not him) but yet he keeps on talking crap even when i do not towards him.
o well, it's just the way he is. I just ignored em and moved on as i don't mind if someone talks a little crap once in a while, as no ones perfect, but with him it's pretty much a constant wall of it if he disagrees with you pretty much and it's just not worth it after a certain point. hence, the ignore function used on him.
but being you had some clashes with him and worked it out etc... you must have pulled off a miracle on that one, damn near.
Hell, to be honest I am like that.
but i just never been a social person (i imagine i got at least some form of social anxiety) as some people are great at just starting random conversations with people etc in person where as i am definitely not as i can't just babble on about random junk as i pretty much have more of a narrow range of stuff that i can talk about half way decently. so when it comes to general communication, especially with people i don't know well, i tend to keep things pretty brief and move on. o well, we all got our crosses in life
I had to look that word up but that's a pretty good description of him as he seems quick to anger, which then he goes on the attack, if he disagrees with you.
good luck reading the novel
; not many people have the patience or time for my occasional novels as some people if you type more than a sentence or so they act like it's a chore to read it and they give up.