I have a good friend back from my community college days that I used to hang out with. This guy just clicked with me on every level, I think I first really got acquainted with him at a house party where both of our garage bands played. He was both a nerd's nerd and a real rock n' roll party animal. We'd often have this way of combining dumb fun with headier and more intellectual interests. We smoked a lot of pot, drank like we meant it, and played cool nerdy games like MTG and DnD. One time he brought a collection of short stories he had written to pass around between rehearsing songs in a rented practice studio, wish I could find where I left those printouts.

A few years ago, he moved out to Flagstaff, Arizona, where he's been working as a music teacher for a few years. I actually first got the idea to write him as a spin-off from my own journaling. I've started keeping rather extensive handwritten journals since around the middle of the 2010s, and find myself very comfortable expressing my thoughts via pen on paper. I wished I could get the same long-form clarity of thought in interpersonal matters. Texting just feels somehow more impulsive. Out of all my friends, this guy struck me as the kind who would dig the idea, so I wrote him up a couple years back. After ten or so letters and a bunch of new things happening in both of our lives we've fallen off, but it was well worth it while it lasted.

The last console I had was the Nintendo Wii, I guess that kind of dates me lol. My lady friend's a little younger, still pretty into it all, and she's still playing PS4 and doesn't plan on upgrading to PS5 anytime soon. I'm out of the loop but she says it's a waste of money lol. So I don't know, but I've been told...

I was born in 1990. My first conscious memories involve playing Super Mario Brothers on my dad's NES. Throughout my early years I could divide my life into different periods around the progression of Nintendo consoles that came out. NES for the innocent early childhood era, and then the Super Nintendo. Life and video games both grew more complicated, perhaps I had to do little more, in life and in the games, but it wasn't a drag because things were also getting more interesting.

I didn't watch TV quite so much. My mom came from a very conservative background - my mom and dad both really - but her family had an overwhelming suspicion of popular culture and entertainment, which I have never observed to the same degree in my dad's family (They have their own problems with their relation to media and culture, easy marks for Fox News lol). My mom tried to limit TV to educational programming for the most part. Which wasn't all bad, I dig the hell out of PBS to this day, which I could discuss at length. A lot of the TV I remember as a kid was the stuff my dad would watch in the evenings, and I'd sometimes pretend to be asleep on the couch so I could watch it without my mom worrying about it being a bad influence. I saw Star Trek: The Next Generation when it was new. The intro is deeply burned into my memory - "Space: The Final Frontier..." and so on... I think it was one of my dad's favorite shows. I was always scared shitless by the Borg lol.

I have hazy memories of DOS, my dad as well as my grandpa on my mom's side were both IT guys. But I didn't really start getting into computers proper til the Windows 95 era. I definitely remember that dial-up modem sound lol. I wasn't around for the early web so much. I really started getting comfortable browsing the web on early 2000s fansites. The kinds with forums like this one. I was active on BZPower for Bionicle (Lego nerds here anyone?), Gamefaqs, a couple Sonic The Hedgehog fan communities which I can't remember the names of, and same for Teen Titans. That's pretty much the Web before Myspace as I experienced it.

Anyhow, this is far from the full story, but I think it's a good sampling of generational touchstones to kind of explain who I am and where I'm coming from. Nice to meet all of you fellow travelers through space and time

Since I was a kid there's been a particular three topping combo that I've been into, it's pepperoni,mushrooms, and black olives. I think it was usually best from Pizza Hut. First time I remember getting this combo was while being babysat by my grandma sometime in the early 90s, must have been 5 or six. I'm usually cheap AF these days and just get like basic Little Caesar's (side effects of having bills lol) but I'll still go for this if I have some extra money and wanna splurge. Hmm, I'm thinking it would be amazing to make a night of it again sometime, especially with some Super Nintendo and movies on VHS, for old times' sake

My roommate just got a new library card and brought back a good little haul. Right now I'm casually reading through "Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography" by Laurie Woolever. Fittingly enough I've mostly been flipping my way through it while working in the kitchen. The format - a biography of Anthony Bourdain via interviews with people who knew him - makes it a good read for multitasking, as most of the snippets are well less than a page in length. I'm unfamiliar with the author, but as per the notes on the jacket she's apparently been an assistant and coauthor for him for many years. Still a little bummed out since his passing.

Besides that, I've been reading Frank Herbert's Dune. I suppose there's probably been a good bit of interest since the movie last year. Stopped at book II: Muad'dib, need to puick that back up soon

Hmm. So today, I've drank two or three cups of black coffee, and a black cherry Venom, which is a cheap brand of energy drinks in the US, so yeah. Definitely been caffeine fiending today!

Pfft, glad to see the harder beverages acknowledged! I'm working on a "Bruja's Brew", a new seasonal IPA by Shiner! (Yep, Texas on deck)

I try to steer clear of harder drinks these days, occasional guilty pleasure after spending my 20s in way too deep. Had a single hard seltzer to celebrate after a bit of light auto repairs, had to patch a tire. Was actually not that difficult!

Endurance

I work a retail job on the NW side of Houston, Texas, and casually speak Spanish with about a third of my customers. I didn't grow up speaking it, but studied it for a few years in college. And it's very much a part of the local culture in my neighborhood, which I would guesstimate is around 1/3 Hispanic of various backgrounds. Some of the restaurants and food trucks I like have the menu in Spanish only, and those ones are usually the best. I'm not really conversationally fluent, but speak it well enough to do business, even with customers who speak only Spanish. Knowing numbers up to a hundred and what to call basically everything in my store has taken me a long way.

NullCertifier here, hope I'll be getting to know a lot of y'all here in the near future. Like my twin brother, born in the early 90s, shoutout to Janus. Of the two of us I'm admittedly the less tech savvy, don't have a personal site here yet. Kind of here just checking it all out, seems interesting enough. Have a good day!