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.

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. 

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.

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.

me v social media

I have a love hate relationship with social media, which may be obvious by the title, or my previous rants about it. Now when I say love, I mean 'kinda like' on a good day. There's no warm fuzzy feelings with social media. Not anymore at least.

The first time I was thrust into this world I was astounded. Years before I had found out I wasn't alone, but that was just on forums and chat rooms. Remember chat rooms? Maybe I'm just getting old and my viewpoint is changing, but they aren't the same as they used to be. Neither are abdl forums for that matter, but I digress.

I fell in love with twitter and facebook when I first joined. I actually couldn't wait to join facebook. I was part of the group who, in high school, were dying to get on facebook but couldn't because it was college only. Then I finally got to college and joined 'thefacebook' and I was so excited! I created a group for the college film club I started and actually enjoyed conversing with people. Before I left college, however, it was opened to high school as well, and soon after I was out, it opened up to everyone. I remember it being better when It was college only, but I can't say if it was actually any better. 

I have gotten fed up with and deleted my facebook account 3 times over the years. I either found no real use for it, or thought of it as nothing but trouble. In fact, I still think of it as almost nothing but trouble. I never post anything to it that isn't a picture of video of my daughter, which I also have slight reservations about. But If I didn't have her, I would probably never use it, and possibly delete it again. Although, living 2600 miles from home, it does make it easier to keep in touch with family. That being said, one main reason for my distaste of facebook stems from my family.

My family is uber religious, and I am not. Unfortunately, my mother still wants me to be uber religious, and my large extended uber religious family isn't helping things. They hounded me for not baptizing my first daughter, and I'm expecting the same reaction with my second. My mother frequently posts religious things to my timeline, which I can only assume is a piss poor way to guilt me back into the faith. For example, she posted a picture of the saint I chose at my confirmation and told me to remember that I chose him... She wrote other things, but I stopped reading.

When it comes to twitter, I actually have 3 accounts. I have 2 vanilla accounts and 1 abdl account. I still don't really know if I like it. There's days when I get lost in my timeline for hours, and I just want to spend all day talking with people. Then there's days when I log in, see a bunch of diaper or furry related posts and just turn it off. The more I think about it, the more it hearkens back to the old binge and purge cycle that we all know too well.

Those times when I open twitter, see all that abdl friendly content, and close it immediately, I'm actually getting a little disgusted with myself. Yes I still feel like this; I think I'll always feel like this. It's crazy how I can go from craving diaper time to thinking it's disgusting in the same day. I've gotten a lot better over the years, and having a wife who indulges me is a major help. I love it when she tells me to pad up, or lays me down on the bed and does it for me. But I'm way off topic.

I'll have to stop this here, but I have so much more to say! I'll write a follow up article in the near future which will include some stuff I haven't talked to anyone about before. Until then! 

happy halloween

Just saying a quick Happy Halloween to all my followers!

I remember years and years ago, when I was writing my LONG story A Closet Life on Daily Diapers, I actually did a marathon writing week right before Halloween. I wrote and published a new chapter every day until Halloween. Man that was a lot of writing, but it was a lot of fun too!

I continued writing that story for awhile after, until it came to a decent conclusion. I say 'decent' because I ended it on a cliffhanger. I wanted to continue writing the story, but I hit major writers block and it just got away from me. I've considered continuing it here in the past, but I don't feel it would be appropriate. Although, now that I'm writing this, I have a good idea how to bring it back...

Anyway, I'm writing a long post about social media right now that you can expect to see early next week. So, until then, have a happy and safe Halloween!

la for the day

My best friend just flew home after spending about a week with us. This is the friend who I told all about my abdl side a few years ago, so it's always interesting spending time with him since we always end up talking and joking about diapers. I haven't been able to make it to a munch out here, so I'm not able to interact with any other abdls, or even with anyone else, besides my wife, who knows about this side of me. I do miss the Boston ABDL Munch people, but I just don't have time to do it anymore. It's refreshing to discuss it, or joke about it, openly with him when he comes to visit.

While he was here we decided to take a day trip to Los Angeles to play tourist. Unfortunately for us, we went on one of the warmest possible days. So we're driving around all day in 100+ degrees in my 7 year old car whose AC just couldn't overcome the outside temps. We arrived in LA with a few destinations in mind and were able to hit all but 1.

We started off at the Griffith Observatory. I read that this is the best place to see the Hollywood sign since they cut off access to it from all other ways. Unfortunately we weren't able to see the shows in the observatory because we had our 1 year old with us and they don't allow anyone under 5. The observatory was pretty cool though, and the view of the Hollywood sign and the city skyline were pretty awesome.

After leaving the observatory we headed over toward the La brea Tar Pits. Let me tell you, that was a LONG drive through the city, and not the nice parts of the city. The tar pits, which aren't actually pits, and not even full of tar, were really cool. The museum was in need of an update, but it was interesting to walk the grounds and stumble upon some little pools of bubbling asphalt. The best part was watching my daughter laugh and repeat "kitty" over and over again while a person in a large saber tooth tiger costume was walking around during a show. My daughter loves our 3 cats, and that was one of her first words.

We then stopped for lunch at a place on Sunset Boulevard called Bossa Nova. It's a very good Brazilian restaurant in a not very good area. In fact, aside from immediately around the La Brea Tar Pits and the drive up the mountain to the Griffith Observatory, LA was a rather nasty place. Even the final touristy place we went to, the Hollywood Walk of Fame, was very dirty, busy, and severely underwhelming. 

I still kind of want to see the Santa Monica Pier, Venice Beach and Disneyland, but that will have to wait for another time. We actually had Universal Studios annual passes last year, since we love Universal so much, so we've been there.

Final thoughts: Los Angeles was very underwhelming and did not live up to the hype. I haven't seen it all, but after this trip, I don't know if I even care to.