Storytime

In my senior year of Walters State in 2009, I slowly started to take a liking to gardening. I never cared for being outside and still feel that way a little; but putting something to grow and letting it flourish had a sense of accomplishment along to it.

I equated it to the same level as raising fish; it was a hobby, and something that I liked. What set me on that path even more was the stories of rare and odd trees that people would grow, or rare seeds from a special flower. The one that I got hyped on was the heirloom category, genuinely interested in letting 100-year-old strains of peppers or tomatoes to bloom freely out, the rare fruit being yours.

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Over the ages, people have followed toy trends, always wanting certain ones, or brands, or the hottest thing that was out that season. I remember in 2001, the biggest thing was scooters. Call of Duty 4 was the biggest thing when I was at Walters State. I don’t remember a lot of the other store rushes, though.

One was a big thing back when I was about 9 was collecting Hess trucks. My family had never gotten any period, but a cousin or two would get one every year. Each were released every year as sort of a collector’s edition, having a different frame and even a date stamp. May of them were play-quality, having features such as lights and rubber tires.

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I highly debated ever telling this story, even five years after it took place. The people that were involved had long gone their ways, and one of them ended us knowing each other on an extremely sour note.

However, if you take all of that away, it was one of my “adventurous” college moments. It also is one of the most dangerous driving conditions I’ve ever driven through. With all of the snow that’s happened in the last week or so, and having my own taste of winter weather this Sunday, I decided it’s time and okay to share this.

Okay, deep breath. Here goes.

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When the boom of Minecraft’s popularity happened, I was barely exposed to what had happened to keep track of it. I was either out of the loop or not around the gaming scene to remember much. But when it became popular, I realized that it wasn’t just some silly cube game, it was actually something quite remarkable.

Circa 2010, first semester of ETSU. I was in Color Theory class with a few other people. There was this one kid in particular called Coty. He was a bit of a nerd and we talked now and then. I remember that when we weren’t painting, he had his laptop out and would play games.

One week he kept going on about “Minecraft”. He had asked me to borrow $20 to buy it, which I agreed to lend him. He never followed through for me to buy it for him that evening, but when we had Color Theory the next time, he had it out on his laptop, running around and hitting cows. I thought it was rude until he explained that you needed to eat, so you had to kill animals.

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I came away with a lot of things from my ETSU experience. Some of these were negative and things I battle to this day, and a few were good things that has immensely helped me or changed my outlook on life. This is one of the latter.

As shut-in as it sounded, I never was aware or had the concept of a computer running more than one monitor. All the time in Walters State’s PC labs or my own computers, I’ve always seen one PC tower to one monitor. It didn’t help that there was only one display port on the back, either.When I had gotten my “last” Millenium project back in 2007, I was introduced to more than one display port on a computer; the DVI port. Still I only had one monitor to use with this. It wasn’t like I was curious to plug in two monitors like I would’ve done five years from that date.

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Foremost, I do apologize if any images seem haphazard or out of place. It was hard to find creative common images that depicted office life in the era that I’m talking about, or show images about devices or setups that I describe. Any images of hardware are of those I took myself of devices I used to own. With that, let’s get started!

As someone who’s been working in an office for two years now, I can see how people can get annoyed with it. However with working in Food City and what was available for jobs when you were 16-18, working in an office was a dream.

Now I did have some sort of experience working with my parents. But it wasn’t really office work. Truth be told, I was still an observer. And even then, they were still busy trying to keep you off a computer rather than letting you grow with what you were good at. (One reason I’ve entered the gaming scene so late).

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Gaming was quite a different experience for me compared to some people. Not having really touched a console except for an occasional bout of SNES at a cousin’s house, any gaming (if any) was done on PC.

It was only about 2004 that I was allowed my first personal computer. Before that, my “gaming” machine was an old IBM 300PL desktop, running 512MB of RAM and had a 550mhZ Pentium III processor. Sat in the “label room” at my family business at the time, an empty spot where a commercial label printer was set up (hence the name). Said computer ran the machine.

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Since my beginning of driving a 1990-91 Nissan Maxima, I’ve rotated through a total of four vehicles. Some I’ve driven on and off, all I’ve owned for only about two or three years. Except one.

The Orion. The car that went through hell and came back.

Orion was nothing special at first, a 1991 Toyota Camry. 4-cylinder 2.0L block, automatic transmission. I was gifted the car in 2004, but didn’t start officially driving it until 2005. I was issued it after an accident I had gotten into with my parents’ Mazda 929, who didn’t trust me with their “high-end” vehicle anymore.

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I see a lot of people that I see around me, trying to grab old videogame systems for cheap then turn a huge profit on them, or people who swooning how good 8-bit graphics are and downputting most 3D games. I never did and don’t get the hype about those old games; and it isn’t a generation gap, it I wasn’t brought up playing these games.

My parents greatly frowned upon most if not all forms of gaming. Computer games heavily as they owned computers (I didn’t own my first system till I was 16 or 17). Video game systems so much more. All my cousins had SNES or NES systems. Gameboys, even.

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