Putting the Pieces Back Together

As someone that works on a website, user experience is something that I have to be concerned about.  Thankfully, I work with a designer that focuses a lot on it so I just have to follow what she says.  Makes my job a lot easier. Even though it's a part of my job, it was actually a video game that has me writing about it.  A lot of games have an easy mode for people that are either bad at games, or rather not get frustrated while playing them.  I tend to skew towards the later one, but I'm not the best at playing games either. The games that I am the worst at is fighting games.  I've always sucked at them, even when I was a kid playing Killer Instinct and Mortal Kombat at the arcade in the local mall.  The only one that I've been "good" at is the Dead Or Alive games, but that's because button mashing can get you far in those games. It's also why I don't play fighting games online.  I have better things to do then get destroyed by people that are ...

Growing up and even to this day, I never really read comic books.  I've owned some throughout my life, but never a lot.  I probably own more now just because of how many comic movies there are that I do get interested in reading more about them. However, I did grow up during a great time for comic book animated shows, the 90s.  X-Men, Batman, Spiderman, Superman, etc.  I watched them all.  X-Men was may favorite.  Still is to this day.  Batman probably ranked second. I just went through 3 comic movies in the past 24 hours.  Logan, Batman vs Superman, and Suicide Squad.  I had see the last two, but hadn't seen Logan.  Logan was phenomenal.  Being a huge Wolverine fan since I was a kid, seeing a violent adult Wolverine movie was what I have been waiting for.  A good way for them to send Hugh Jackman's Wolverine off. The other two are movies that aren't that great.  Batman vs Superman is ok, but way too long.  I've al...

One of the weirdest hard things in my life is this urge to develop websites.  I mean, it's my job and all, but that work is controlled.  I'm doing it to maintain and improve an existing site with set platforms and code bases.  It can be a little restricting. Its why I try to sometimes recommend things that are a little newer and not used by everybody and their grandmother.  I understand why it won't be used, and I tend to bring those things up as a bit of a joke knowing it won't happen, but what if?  But it makes sense, you go with what everyone is using because it has a lot of support, documentation, and most developers will be able to figure it out. Then there are the times when I stare at something as I'm trying to fix something and it reminds me of an almost OCD feeling of something being off.  I bring it up after letting it go a long time ago, and sometimes it pays off.  Maybe if everyone likes it I will finally be able to look at it and not hav...

Remember when you were a kid and you didn't want to go to bed?  How foolish we all were.  Sleep is great.  It's one of the most precious things in life.  And yet, it is also a giant waste of life if you really add up all the time that you spend sleeping. But that's really the only downside of sleep.  Sleep is a thing I do a lot of.  I don't take naps, I sleep.  I can't call them naps, because they last for hours.  When it comes to the work week, sleep is precious. And that's why I'm writing this.  It's 10 at night, and usually right now I'm in bed having watched an episode of Castle and maybe an episode or two of Always Sunny.  But not tonight.  Nope I am awake for at least another hour and a half. Why?  Work.  Not because I'm worried about it, but because I actually have to do it.  Ok, I'm also a little worried about it.  Late night deployments are rare.  But they are done because whatever the change is ...

I read an article of Friday that was titled " The Purpose of Life is to Be a Nobody ".  Feel free to read the article as it has some good points to it.  The basics are that we are in this grand universe and that thinking that you are special only puts too much pressure on you and actually holds you back from living life to its fullest.  Basically the less you care about things the more able you are to just live. This isn't a bad way to think.  One of the things that I've tried to do is to care less about what others actually think about me.  If they're going to be a part of my life then they will have to accept me for me just being me.  I've made friends that way, so it's not like it doesn't work. When I go out, and by that I just mean leaving the apartment, I do my best to not care what anyone that I meet thinks about me.  Chances are I'll never see them again.  No one is ever going to see me always at my best.  Heck, I don't even know wha...

Yes, life is strange, but that's not what this is about.  Nope, this is about a video game.  A video game that if life was really like it would probably be pretty cool, and really depressing. Life is Strange is about a character who finds out that she can rewind time and later travel through time using photos.  It's a "adventure" game in the like of The Walking Dead or any other Telltale games.  The main difference is that if you make a choice you don't like, you can rewind and pick something else. But the actual game part doesn't really matter.  No, it's the story that hits hard.  There are issues about bullying, suicide, drugs, abuse, and other teen angsts.  The game is dark and can be rather depressing.  And it's great. Most games won't touch a person throwing themselves off of a building.  This game does it and lets you try to convince her to not jump.  You can fail.  Those rewind abilities don't work during this scene. ...

I have a lot of games in my "backlog".  Not even taking into account my Steam library, which I think I was over 600 games of which I played very few of them, I still have so many console games to play.  If I was smart I'd just stop buying them and play what I have, but where's the fun in that. It doesn't help when sales come on that allow me to buy a bunch of games that I never got to play back on the 360 or at least never got to get as far as I wanted to.  That happened this week with Microsoft putting a bunch of backwards compatible games on sale.  Already bought a few, and am waiting to buy more. Some I've played a bit of, some I haven't played at all.  A lot of these are games that I'll probably only ever play for a bit.  But I have a reasons to going and playing these games now.  Streaming. I don't stream to make money like a lot of people that try to stream on the internet.  I just do it to try and play games that I would probably never e...

One of the things that I always dread when going to a movie is how into it I will get.  Something like Fate of the Furious got me really back into the series so I ended up buying two diecast cars from the movie. Why?  I'm not quite sure.  I think a lot of it has to do with just trying to remind myself of the things I like.  Sure I can't watch the movie again, but I can't always just watch the movie, so it's probably nice to have an easier reminder. The most recent thing is after watching Guardians Vol 2.  Awesome movie.  Reminds me how much I don't only love those movies, but I do like the entire Marvel comics.  It caused me to buy the Disney Infinity 2.0 set from the first movie so I can play it.  It will probably also cause me to play the Telltale series. It always tends to happen for big things like this.  Reminders of things I like.  Reminders of things that make me happy.  Sometimes I tend to just get in the routine of just ...

I saw an article today talking about how it's been 20 years since the Fifth Element came out.  When it came out, apparently, the reviews were not so great.  I remember seeing it when my parents bought it on VHS.  I loved it. To this day I still love it.  It's easily one of my favorite movies.  But some people just don't get it and that's they're own opinion.  There are plenty of movies that I don't like or don't get.  Pretty much any movie that is up for the best movie awards at the Oscars are movies I won't watch cause I have zero interest in them. But I started listening to the How Did This Get Made podcast where they talk about a different movie each week that they may like or may not like and make fun of it as they go.  It's a fun podcast to listen to even if it isn't a movie that you've seen before. One of their early podcasts (I just started listening to it and started from the beginning) was for Sucker Punch.  They didn't really...

So i won't be writing something new everyday, but will be making "content".  Sorry to disappoint my thrall of readers!  I've been streaming more and there are different places that I will be streaming. On Wednesdays I will tend to be streaming on YouTube and playing story based games.  I'm currently playing through one of my favorite games, Life is Strange.  The nice thing about streaming to YouTube is that it archives it right to my channel.  You can catch the streams at gaming.youtube.com/user/myniceicelife/live or catch the archives at www.youtube.com/user/myniceicelife . I also will stream some time to Twitch when I'm on the Xbox One.  Those are random so if you really want to watch me play games poorly then you can follow me at twitch.tv/ myniceicelife . Don't fret though as I will still be writing stuff, just won't be everyday.  Stay tuned!

I'm not used to being "happy".  And I don't mean that happy feeling when you eat something you like or talk to someone you're friends with.  Ok those are probably bad examples of normal happy, but you know what I mean. I'm talking about just the happy feeling that makes your entire day go by like it was nothing.  Where you're not worried about anything.  Where you are just happy about everything. Now this is a fleeting feeling.  Something that even to have for a few days or two is an accomplishment.  Or at least to me it always has been.  If it's a normal thing for most people then there is probably something wrong with me.  But that's already well known. But after this weekend I had a moment where it showed up.  Caused by a simple camping trip with friends.  Something so simple, yet so powerful.  It will fade.  That I am sure.  But I'm ok with that. I now know it's possible and isn't that hard to find.  Something...

Ok, the title makes it sound like it was horrible.  It was not.  Actually it was one of the funnest things I've done in a long time.  But there were some things that I learned. The first thing is to pack some food.  My friends had plenty, but me being stubborn and realizing I screwed up by not bringing anything beyond some Jiffy Pop did not want to take what wasn't mind.  I will remember stuff next time, and also get a stick to cook over the fire. The second thing is that sleepy in a car is not that bad.  It was a little odd being at an angle, but that wasn't too bad.  Having the padding helped a lot and getting in and out worked pretty well.  Wish I was a little shorter so my legs wouldn't have been as bent, but it wasn't too bad. The bad part was that it got rather cold both nights.  The first night wasn't horrible.  In fact I stayed rather warm in the car and the sleeping bag.  Night two I wasn't so lucky.  It got colder ...

Nothing like a campfire when it's cold.

The easy "favorite" post train continues today with talk about movies.  Now I've talked about movies in the past, well at least one series, but I'm here to say that none of them are actually my favorite movie. Now don't get me wrong, if you want to talk about favorite movie franchises then the Fast and Furious franchise would actually rank number 1.  I put it over Star Wars and Rush Hour franchises.  How about that for two wildly different comparisons.  But while some of the movies in the franchise may make my top 10, those being The Fast and The Furious and Fast Five, they don't make number 1. That "honor" goes to Lost and Translation.  First off, I'm a huge Bill Murray fan.  Might be my favorite actor?  Probably.  And Scarlett Johansson is one of my favorite actresses; although this was the first movie I remember seeing her in.  So having these two actors in the movie make it an easy like, it's not really a movie most would expect to be a...

I could make a list or something like this, but there are a billion of those out there.  So instead I'm just going to ramble on and on about my favorite TV show.  I'll start by getting a few others out of the way real quickly. Parks & Rec, Breaking Bad and Castle are probably the most recent shows that rank high on my list.  I'm currently going through Castle at this time so that may change depending on later seasons.  I would also probably include Westworld in that list, but until HBO actually shows that there will be another season I'm hesitant to put it on here.  I'm counting only shows with more than one season, by the way. With those out of the way, on to my favorite show of all time: Futurama.  Futurama was a show that was always fantastic, but never had enough support from FOX.  It was the best thing on TV, even better than it's bigger brother The Simpsons.  It had the same fate as Family Guy, but unlike Family Guys long run after com...

Everyone has that thing that sets them off.  Maybe not exploding out at people, but something that just annoys them so much that they try to avoid it at all costs.  I knew what one of mine was, but have found another one. My triggers tend to deal with eating.  I do not like being around loud eaters.  I try not to be self conscious when I eat, because I don't want to be one of those loud eaters.  It's one of the reasons why I try to eat as fast as possible.  I want to get done so I can talk or get away from everyone that is a loud eater. When I was growing up and my grandma was home for the summer, she liked us to eat together.  I was always the first done because they are all lout eaters, except for my mom, but she was across the table from me.  It's nothing I hold against my family, it's just something that really annoys me. The other thing that has really started to annoy the hell out of me is listening to podcasts where the people are pourin...