Gaming

by on August 17, 2023 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I have been a video gamer most of my life. Starting with Intellivision, going on to Nintendo, SNES, N64, Game Cube, various Gameboy models, a brief foray into the disappointing-to-me Playstation and Playstation 2, the Sega Dreamcast, the modern Nintendo Switch, and I have been a Day One buyer of the various XBox consoles. The original, the 360, and the One are all prized parts of my gaming collection. I have yet to get the latest version because I have yet to see one in a store to be able to buy it.

Unfortunately, my gaming has been hammered a bit over the last years. Two years of helping my mom fight cancer. And then a year after she died I’ve been clearing and donating and tossing things. The last time I sat down and just played was probably some time in 2021, and it had been a year or so before then. I remember a couple days of enjoying Halo Infinite and another couple days of Final Fantasy XV. And that’s pretty much it.

So today I pulled my Xbox One off the old shelf and plugged it into what may be its new permanent home. Maybe. I may move it, but I’m happy for now. And of course it spent an hour updating, and finding all kinds of apps that it couldn’t update at all. That will take some time to track down. Then I dropped Halo Infinite in and IT spent an hour updating and trying to get it back up to booting up. Oh for the days when we could plug a console in, pop a game in, and just PLAY.

There is nothing like hearing the Halo theme coming out of your speakers. It isn’t exactly the Halo theme Bungie put together back in the day, but it was close enough. The Marines were wise cracky enough, and the Warthog moved good. The grunts were easy, the snipers a bit of a challenge, the elites made me think, and the big buggers with hammers were fun to bring down in a hail of crossfiring machine guns and rocket launchers. I shot them, I ran over them, and my Marines were right there helping me with loud mouths and louder trigger fingers. I was the Master Chief again, a Big Damn Hero protecting humanity from the alien menace, and it felt oh so good.

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Family

by on August 16, 2023 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The Hansens and Christensens and all the other sens spread out over the Lake Country of Northern Minnesota. We fished lakes teaming with fish, cleared timber from forests that reached as far as the eye could see, planted crops, and turned the great forests into one of the primary food producing centers of the world. Winters came so cold that the snow turned blue, and in summer the Indian warbands made the rivers flow red with blood. They did not appreciate the interlopers in their lands, but the Scandinavians were no strangers to aggressive negotiations like that. Viking blood still flowed strong in our veins, and the Indians learned to fear the fishers and farmers who could fight.

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Family

by on August 15, 2023 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

My family came to the New World back in the 1800s. We settled in Northern Minnesota because it was close enough to the old country to feel like home. More lakes than you could shake a long boat at in the short green summers. And covered in ice and snow during the long cold winters. Other settlers thought it was too cold to live. My family thought it was just the right amount of comfort. We fell in love with the thick forests and postage stamp farms cleared out of the footprints of ancient giants like Paul Bunyan and his big blue ox. We stayed in those lands and made them our own. Our languages and voices filled the forests and ten thousand lakes, and our sounds became the life of a whole new world. We made Northern Minnesota our own.

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Family

by on August 14, 2023 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

My family took a lot of legacies from the British Isles. We also left a lot of legacies there. Sometimes we were peaceful. Sometimes not so much. Sometimes we took their daughters to be our wives. Sometimes we sent our daughters to be their wives. We were a permanent part of society in those islands long before the Saxons invaded and took over the land. We were just… retaking our own when the Normans crossed the channel and took over. Though if you ask those of us who stayed in the North, we’d say that the Normans were more French than North Men by that time. But the families that last never really forget where they came from. Even when they cross an ocean to help colonize a New World. We still remember where we came from. The land of ice and snow.

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Family

by on August 13, 2023 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

My family spread out a fair bit back in the old days. We started in Sweden, but spread out all over. Sometimes through fair trade. Sometimes less fair trade. We settled lands that were not inhabited. Other times we settled lands that WERE inhabited but not fully utilized. One of the more interesting ironies of history is that at one time we settled in a land on the edge of the sea on the main European continent. We were there long enough they named the land after us North Men. It is now called Normandy. A lot of raiders and invaders have come to and from that coast over the centuries. You might say my family has been involved in more than one of them.

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