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Saturday, October 31, 2015

happy halloween 2015

Happy Halloween! It's been a long time since my last post, and a lot has happened. Let's start off with a bombshell, we're moving about 3000 miles from where we currently call home.

My wife has been discharged from the Navy, and we're officially moving back to good old Massachusetts; we leave Friday. Now living with kids and cats is difficult to say the least, but moving this far had been that much more of a logistical nightmare. Fortunately for us, my parents have welcomed us with open arms. Or 2 kids and 2 cats are currently living with my parents, to spare then the drive. I really don't think the kids would have lasted the entire drive across the country strapped to car seats, not to mention the cats.

We have a grand journey planned out. We're going to drive up to Yosemite, San Francisco, Yellowstone, and MT Rushmore, to name a few. I understand it's a little ambitious for winter, but we'll see how the roads are.

My wife spend the last week getting our kids and cats settled in New England, and is flying home tonight. It's been a long week without them already, and it's going to be an even longer couple weeks of driving before I get to hold them again. I really miss them, but daily video chats have helped a bit.

I've had a great job out here, and I'm going to miss that a lot. I'm trying to transfer to a location back east, but it's not looking promising right now. I've also met some great people, both in work and outside. I'll definitely miss the people. It's a shame really that I may never see them again. At the moment we have no plans to come back to San Diego to visit, so that's a weird feeling. I'd like to do an LA or maybe San Francisco again some day though.

I'm really looking forward to my kids growing up around family. I have a very big and very close family that I miss dearly. I'm so happy that my kids will get to grow up with the love and support that I did.

So I'll say it now, San Diego, you've been great! I'll miss the times I've had here, and I'll miss some of the people too.

I'm a Boston boy through and through, and I can't seem to be happy living anywhere else.

Friday, June 19, 2015

playstation 4 vs xbox one

The age old struggle, Sony vs Microsoft, Playstation vs Xbox. It's been debated for what seems like forever in the gaming community. The last thing I want to do it spur a hate filled debate, because that's how these things can end up going, so I will be using this space to talk through my thoughts on the subject of the Playstation 4 vs Xbox One, and which one I will be buying.

I feel a little background is in order. I am a gamer, I have been for nearly my entire life. My parents bought me an NES in 1989 when I was 5 years old. The moment I booted up my new NES Action Set with my copy of Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt I was hooked. I spent countless hours in front of my TV playing the likes of the impossible Astyanax, nearly impossible Contra, Paper Boy, Zelda 1 and 2, and many others that I still have in a box in my closet. I never owned a Super Nintendo, but my neighbor did. His parents used to drive us to rent SNES games every weekend. I got to play all the classics, but for some reason Clayfighter and F-Zero are stuck in my head. 

Over time my parents bought me a Game Boy and a Game Gear, but some of my fondest gaming memories come from the N64 generation. I was a Nintendo kid simply because that's all I had access to on a regular basis, not including my grandparents Atari 2600 I got to play during family parties and the like. My best friend in elementary school bought an N64 soon after launch, and we played it to death! I went over his house almost every weekend for about 8 years and we played NES and N64 practically non-stop from Friday to Sunday night. His parents would frequently drive us to rent games, but when I got a license in high school I took that responsibility.

A couple years after my best friend bought his N64, my parents bought me one for Christmas. I eventually bought a PSone and a couple years after that I bought a PS2 which I would usually bring with me to his house to give us a break from the world of Nintendo. In college I would frequently play with my friends Xbox, and after college I lived with 2 guys where we had 2 xbox's, 2 game cubes, and 2 PS2s. We actually spent about 2 months doing nothing but gaming before we realized we needed to find jobs, but that's a story for another time.

My wife bought me my first Xbox 360 for Christmas in 2006, back when we were still dating, and we got a Wii in early 2007. I say 'first' 360 because I had the red ring of death in 2008 so they traded mine for a referb. In 2009 I bought a PS3 for the exclusive titles. Then, when Saint's Row 4 and GTA V were released, my Xbox couldn't play either one without crashing. I figured out my old system just didn't have the muscle to play new games anymore and bought a new one. 

So now you know my long history with consoles, I'll tell you where I am now. I have about 70 games for my Xbox 360, 15 for PS3, and about 8 for Wii. I also haven't turned my Wii on in a few years, Wii Fit would be yelling at me about that if it wasn't in a box in the garage. Strangely enough most of my favorite games of all time are PS3 exclusives. I hate the PS3 controller so much though that I buy almost everything for the 360, and therein lies my problem.

I'm in the market for a new console. Funny story, my wife told me she would have bought me a PS4 or Xbox One for my birthday last week, but she didn't know which one I wanted. I'd love to have gotten one for my birthday, but nothing out right now is a must have in my book, so I don't even know what I would have done with it. But, that changed when they announced Fallout 4. Fallout 3 was one of my favorite games of all time. I spent over 300 hours traveling the wasteland during 3 separate playthroughs. Once I saw the trailer for, and more importantly the E3 demo of, Fallout 4, I knew I had to have it. Now the big debate rages in my head. Playstation 4 vs Xbox One.

I'm not necessarily tied to either one as a company. I have bought most of my games on the 360 because I hate the PS3 controller so much, and a few specifically for gaming with my 360 owning best friends. So when it comes to what I should buy next, I'm at a crossroad.
I've heard the PS4 controller is much better than it's predecessor, and possibly better than the Xbox One controller, but I want to hold each one to gauge for myself. I don't care about the cameras. I own a kinect, and after the honeymoon faze I almost never used it. The interface isn't that big of a deal because I'll just get used to whichever one I own.

One big factor that I've thought about is what consoles are my friends getting. Since I only play regularly with 2 people that helps the decision a bit. One friend won't be getting a new console for a long time due to money, so that's a write off. The other friend is moving to Germany this week for 2+ years. He's considering an Xbox One, but with the 9 hour time difference I don't think we're going to be gaming together anymore anyway. 

In the end, I want both consoles. Since I have kids now my money is best used on other things, meaning a second console purchase will probably be several years later, if at all. Looking back at the games of the previous generation, I would have been very happy with just a PS3. The only Xbox exclusives that I care about anymore are the Left 4 Dead series and maybe the Fable series. Even at that, I liked Fable 2 and 3, but I don't care about the other iterations. In comparison, there are many PS3 exclusives that I'm so thankful I got to experience.

With all things considered


Drum Roll!


I'm going with the Playstation 4.

Unless of course my friend calls me up saying he bought an Xbox One and he's working weird hours that'll let him game with me on a regular basis. I really don't see that happening though. Of course, after all of this contemplation, I don't plan on buying a PS4 until at least Christmas. I would seriously consider a Fallout themed PS4 though, if one is released around November 10th.

Monday, April 20, 2015

goodbye to a friend

I just said goodbye to my best friend. Thankfully he didn't pass away, but he is moving about 5,800 miles away from where I currently live. We met about 13 years ago. He, who I'll call S, was a friend of a friend in college. We met up at a mall near home and, me being me, I started playing with some toy trains at a kiosk outside of a Victoria's Secret. S quickly joined in, and I knew we had a connection.

It wasn't too long until we started hangout together, without our mutual friend, who I shall call J. J got very upset that we didn't include him in our hang out time, and would frequently hold pity parties with our other friends. Over the next couple years S and I both had individual falling outs with J, and neither of us talk to him anymore.

If you weren't sure, S is my best friend who I told all about my abdl side a couple years ago. He is one of only 3 vanilla people who I've told and there aren't many more people who I'd consider letting into my little world. We have a really good connection, and I'm sad to see him go. I hope we can keep up our communication and online gaming, but with a 9 hour difference it'll be difficult. 

Friday, March 27, 2015

directions

I'm just into the 4th year of my personal endeavor into blogging, and I still haven't done a post about why I'm doing this and what I want to get out of it, so here it goes.

I started this blog in November 2010 with a simple purpose, to explain what infantilism means to me by way of personal experiences and stories. Back then, figuring out why I am the way I am was very important. I would spend countless hours researching ABs and DLs and infantilism. I would watch every video I could find about the subject, from Jerry Springer to the Secret Lives of Women, which is an good program about a little girl and fellow blogger Baby Ella. I even used that video to help explain all of this to my now wife.

As time went on I found it less important to figure out why I am the way I am, as if I was a broken person. Trying to figure that out implies that there is a normal way to be, and I was not it. I think there's anything but normal people out there. Everyone has weird things they enjoy, mine just happen to be a little less mainstream than most people. 

So I started this yeas ago to basically find myself, now what? Well my personal goal for this blog has morphed over the years. I wanted to help people. I started talking with some of my readers who were having a hard time coping with this side of them. I was trying to make a name for myself. When my wife entered boot camp I stopped writing. I was able to put up a few posts here and there, mostly stuff I pre-wrote, but I lost my motivation. I was actually deep in some serious depression, to the point that participating in my blog, the thing that brought me a lot of happiness, was too much. I eventually got back to writing, but it has never been the same. 

Now that I have 2 kids and a busy job, it's a different story. My main reason for big breaks in my writing is a lack of time. Computer related things that I used to do at home, have to be squeezed into my last bits of free time at work, and blogging has taken a back seat. I miss it though. The amount of responses I've gotten back from people who read my previous post, and first post since November, has been amazing. You guys make me want to continue writing. I love being part of this community, and I wish I could do more. In fact, there's lots of things I wish I could do now, but being a good father is tops. So if I have a few more long breaks in writing, it's not that I'm leaving you all, it's just that I'm trying to be the best dad I can be, and that's more important to me than anything in the world.

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

a little american dream

I love my parents and extended family, I really do, but lay off the politics already. I'm not going to delve into their political views, or even mine, but why can't I ever see them without getting into a debate I don't want to be in.

So yeah, if you haven't guessed it yet, my family and I flew home to New England for vacation. 

It's funny how, since we currently live in San Diego, the first question most people ask is, how cold was it? 

Yes it was very cold.

They then proceed to tell me how people who live there are crazy. But, to be honest, I miss it back home. Sure the San Diego climate is fairly stable and mostly mild, but I miss weather patterns. I miss seasons, and rain, and the smell of cold. I may hate the cold, but there's something special about snow. Standing outside in the silence of a gentile snow fall is calming and beautiful. Every time we go back home for a visit, I wish I lived there. I'd even live half a days drive north in Maine, where some of my family lives. It may be cold, and an hour from the nearest small city, but it's beautiful.

I joke with people from San Diego that you guys don't have trees down here. The immediate reaction is, Of course we have trees! I usually pull up a satellite photo of the area I grew up in and show them how we cut holes in the forest to fit houses. That always garners a response of, wow that's a lot of trees. SoCal is beautiful in its own right, but I miss that small town New England, windy tree lines streets kind of beauty.

I sometimes wonder how my position would change if we weren't alone out here. Family is very important to me, so if I had family living out here, maybe I would feel different about the situation. But, in the end, I want my kids to grow up around family as I did. I want them to know their cousins, when my sister has kids, and their second cousins, who are about their age. I want to go to big family parties and be the adult hanging out watching the younger kids running around for hours.

I want the American dream, and I know how difficult that is.