Comics Overload and a Splash of Retro

I finally got my main Atari 1040STE (“Jules”) set up with STiNG 1.26 (TCPIP stack) and CAB 2.8e (Crystal Atari Browser). Browsing the web on a computer that was created 10 years before the web was is a pretty rough experience. I expect the real endgame will be to realy get a decent two-way transfer system set up like FTP (SMB is not an option without considering MultiTOS or something like that). I’ve been slowly assembling a nice collection of popular and useful utilities, applications, and even a few games. The main focus, however, will be to use Jules to archive the large stack of in-box games I got last year.

I also ended up jailbreaking my Sony PS Vita 1000 handheld console and have been enjoying playing some games on it here and there.

Moving away from retro computers and on to retro comics (back issues), I’ve been on a bit of a tear with that too. I’ve been filling in some missing issues, but also tried my luck on buying three 30-issue random grab bags, of which I was quite surprised on what I got.


Comics added to collection:

Grab bag comics added to collection:

  • Alpha Flight, Vol. 1: 24, 32, 36, 37
  • Alpha Flight, Vol. 1 Annual: 2
  • Alpha Flight Special: 4
  • Cable, Vol. 1: 15, 84, 104, 105
  • Cable, Vol. 2: 12
  • Cable and X-Force: 1
  • D.P.7: 3, 5, 12
  • Darkhawk: 4
  • Deathlok, Vol. 2: 2, 4, 21
  • Doctor Strange: Sorcerer Supreme: 25
  • ElfQuest: 22
  • The Eternals, Vol. 2: 7
  • Exiles, Vol. 1: 40, 78
  • Fear Itself: The Deep: 4
  • G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero: 2
  • G.I. Joe: Special Missions, Vol. 1: 1
  • Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 1: 4, 5
  • Heroes Reborn, Vol. 1: 1/2
  • Heroes for Hire, Vol. 1: 1
  • The Infinity Crusade: 1
  • Infinity Wars: 1
  • The Irredeemable Ant-Man: 12
  • Ka-Zar, Vol. 4: 9
  • Mandrake the Magician: 1
  • Marvel Team-Up, Vol. 1: 99
  • M.O.D.O.K. Assassin: 2, 3
  • The Micronauts, Vol. 2: 7
  • The ‘Nam: 56, 58
  • The New Defenders: 150
  • The New Mutants, Vol. 1: 17, 20, 22
  • Nightmask: 1
  • Night Thrasher: Four Control: 1, 3, 4
  • Nova, Vol. 4: 12
  • The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Update ’89: 6
  • Poe Dameron: 28
  • Power Man and Iron Fist, Vol. 1: 71, 82, 107, 112
  • Powerless: 2, 6
  • PSI Force: 1
  • Sleepwalker: 14
  • Solo Avengers: 16
  • Spider-Man, Vol. 1: 57
  • Spider-Man: Enter the Spider-Verse: 1
  • Spitfire and the Troubleshooters: 1
  • Star Wars, Vol. 2: 47, 48, 49, 53, 54
  • Star Wars, Vol. 3: 15
  • Star Wars: Age of Resistance: Rose Tico: 1
  • Star Wars: War of the Bounty Hunters: 3
  • Strikeforce: Morituri: 1
  • Terror, Inc., Vol. 1: 1, 2, 3
  • Thunderbolts, Vol. 1: 166, 168, 172
  • Ultimate Power: 1, 8, 9
  • War is Hell, Vol. 2: 1
  • Winter Guard: 1
  • Wonder Man, Vol. 2: 4, 14
  • Wonder Man, Vol. 2 Annual: 1
  • X-Calibre: 3
  • X-Force: Killshot: 1

The Consistency Challenge

For some time now, I’ve been aware that I have a problem staying consistent. This affects several areas of my life and, although not causing me and my family any real degree of pain, it is making the days that go by feel less and less fulfilling.

What am I lacking? What do I feel I could be doing better? Where is my time not being optimized? All of these questions (plus others) plague me from time to time. In the context of consistency, I’ve realized that I’m “floating” through a lot of things in my life. Again, this isn’t necessarily a negative thing, but it’s also not helping me obtain some goals.

And, yeah, I know, this is a retrospective of the year gone by, compiled during the last few days before a new year is upon us. Cliche, but the holidays are one of my most nostalgic times and with that comes the memories of how I used to do things, complete tasks, appreciate what I had, and altogether be happy.

The first, and biggest thing I need to get better at is my health. I’m very overweight, have a sedentary lifestyle, and don’t workout. Other than the normal aches and pains that accompany being almost 50 years old, I luckily have no major problems, so I feel lucky that, if I get my health under control, I may be able to ward off some bad things as I get older.

So, what am I going to do about this? I know I need to lose weight, monitor my caloric intake, and start moving. How am I going to do that exactly? I’m not entirely sure yet, but a plan is forming.

My time management skills have been for shit in recent years. Reading between the lines, I’ve been lazy about things. I think motivation is the problem, and my motivation comes from two things: being organized enough to know what needs to be done plus riding on the high of just having completed something recently. I’m starting to come up with a way to enumerate, detail, and execute my to-do list. I know I don’t have a lot of visitors on this site, but I may post a lot of these goals / tasks up here for accountability’s sake. The key will be the momentum, though. The more I get done, the more I’ll want to do.

Being creative and producing a cool thing has always been in my blood. And, like everyone, I have things in my head that need to be brought to fruition. That is about to start as well, as soon as I’m able to get my time management back under control.

All of the above things have led to inconsistent productivity, and ultimately, I feel like I’m not living up to my full potential. I’m starting on this today, and will do my best to post my progress up here (and to post less serious stuff too).

Comics added to collection:

Prepping for the 4th

I’ve been spending the weekend getting some minor projects around the house completed along with buying the groceries for our little July 4th party. There will only be eight of us for the day, but it should be a lot of fun. Along with food, we’ll likely play some board games, possibly watch a movie and play some video games. I’d guess there’ll be a lot of sitting around and talking too.

More DeLorean parts came in as well. I received Issues 156, 157, and 158 (which is the final issue). And there was also a surprise in the box: a movie poster for the documentary OUTATIME: Saving the DeLorean Time Machine.

Items Added to the Library

  • Movies:
  • Comics:
    • Adventures of Superman: Jon Kent Vol. 1 #4
    • The Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 6 #27 (Legacy Vol. 1 #921)
    • The Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 6 #28 (Legacy Vol. 1 #922)
    • The Avengers Vol. 9 (Legacy Vol. 1 #768)
    • Doctor Strange Vol. 6 #4 (Legacy Vol. 1 #430)
    • Dungeons & Dragons: Saturday Morning Adventures Vol. 1 #4
    • Fantastic Four Vol. 7 #8 (Legacy: Vol. 1 #701)
    • Scarlet Witch Vol. 1 Annual 1
    • Silver Surfer: Ghost Light Vol. 1 #5
    • Star Wars Vol. 3 #35
    • Superman Vol. 5 #5
    • Superman: Lost Vol. 1 #4
    • Thor Vol. 6 #35 (Legacy Vol. 1 #761)
    • Warlock: Rebirth Vol. 1 #3

Rebuilding

A good friend of mine, Dale Lewis, has been going through a tough spell medically, so me and some friends are trying to raise some money to get him a mobility scooter through GoFundMe. Please take a moment to read Dale’s story and donate if you can. If you can’t donate, please help us spread the word. Thank you!

Over the past several months, I’ve gotten back into buying and reading comic books. One of the roadblocks that I had before was time. And that was two-fold as it takes time every week to get in the car, drive over to the local comic book store and pick up your subscriptions, then haul it all back home. As much as I want to support local businesses, I found that Midtown Comics in New York was able to ship out subscriptions monthly. So, I started getting my books through them and have had a great experience so far.

The other facet was having to find the time to read the books. I’m slowly getting better at this and hope to get caught up soon on all the books I’ve been buying over the past six months. I did get a chance to visit the local stores a bit in early May for the Free Comic Book Day event. While I did get several free books, I also took advantage of some sales that got me good discounts of trade paperbacks, back issues, and even a full set of 1990 Marvel Universe Series I cards, complete with holograms. Here’s a list of all of the cards in the set, and here’s a list of all of my comics.

Those of you who’ve been reading these blog entries over the past couple of years know that I’ve been building a model of the DeLorean from Back to the Future. The subscription service would allow you to build out the car with a new, weekly parts kit (that were actually delivered monthly, so you’d get four kits at a time). In total, there were 159 weekly parts kits (a.k.a. Issues) that, once complete, would not only give you the famous time machine model, but also a bunch of other great little extras.

Well, back in the summer of 2022, EagleMoss, the manufacturer and distributor of the kits, files for Administration in the UK, which is akin to filing for Bankruptcy in the US. The last kit/Issue I received was 154, leaving me five kits behind. Luckily, Fanhome (De Agostini Publishing) seems to have purchased EagleMoss since last year and recently they emailed me telling me I could complete my model. Today, kit/Issue 155 showed up. Can’t wait to finish everything off.

Issue No. 155 illustrates the parts needed to attach the 1885 time circuits to the hood of the DeLorean.
Issue No. 155 parts include straps, bands, and buckles to affix the 1885 time circuits to the hood of the DeLorean.

I’ve got a few minor projects to complete today, and afterward I’ll be working on getting my 3D printer up-and-running again.

Quick Cap Recap

Sunday we went and saw Captain America: Civil War at the AMC West Shore. I’m not going to spoil it for anyone and go into details, but I loved it and would like to see it again in the theater. It was a long movie, but flew by.

Yesterday was a big day – I resigned from my day job. I have something lined up. More to come.

I’m now going to spend time organizing all of the comics we bought on Saturday.

Full of Renders, Comics, and BBQ

I was able to get the final render for SCS047 off to Carl this morning. I found that supporting an alpha channel in the animation required QuickTime using the Animation codec with a depth Millions+ of colors.

Today was Free Comic Book Day. The whole family participated as we visited Emerald City Comics in Pinellas Park and The Comics Club in Brandon. We got a ton of stuff that I’m too tired to list here, but all-in-all, got some fantastic deals and bunch of fun reading material (and games!). We grabbed some food at a BBQ kiosk outside Emerald City and some Mexican at Vallarta’s in Brandon later in the day.

After all of that, since Melissa was back in town for the last day or two, we took her by the new house. Nothing’s changed since the photo’s I posted yesterday, but neither of the girls has been to that neighborhood since January, so it was fun to have them see the progress.

Gonna crawl into bed and try to find some fights on TV.

May Begins

I picked up the weekly comics this past weekend and was pleasantly surprised to find that World War III was in the stack. For the uninformed, WW3 is a DC book that chronicles the crazy shit Black Adam is doing to the planet while he’s on his insane killing spree thanks to the events in 52. It was a four-issue mini-series and I enjoyed it immensely. I think this is also the very last week of 52, and I’m going to be very happy to jump into Countdown after.

I also got the latest issue of Fantastic Four. All I can say is I’m so happy to see the Surfer back in action. I know Marvel is really bringing him to the forefront because of the FF movie this summer, and I’m as happy as a pig in shit. The fact that Michael Turner did the cover this month helps tremendously.

So, I’ve been playing the Wii on and off lately and this weekend I picked up a used copy of FarCry: Vengance. I’m playing it and am enjoying the unique control scheme. I’ll probably finish the game within a week or two and will write a review for it when I put it in the Digital Archive. Speaking of the DA, I haven’t started a Wii section yet, but that will be forthcoming. So, since FarCry was so cheap ($17 at EB Games), I also bought The Legend of Zelda, Twilight Princess and got the strategy guide for it as well. I haven’t opened the game yet, as I’ve promised myself I will not start playing a new Wii game until I’ve finished the prior one. Zelda will have to wait.

I’ve been doing a lot of digital testing on the new SCS project. I’m very happy with the results so far and I should have something to show for the work this week by Saturday.

I called my car insurance company today to ask where my insurance check was. On Friday the dealership said the car would be ready by Wednesday, so I was hoping I wouldn’t have to foot the entire $10,000 repair bill and then get reimbursed. I’ve never had to deal with this kind of stuff before, so what do I know? Anyway, the guy handling my claim said he was never informed of the fact that the car was NOT being totaled and that the dealership was fixing it. I said to him “consider this your notice”. He called the dealership and told them that I would pay my $1,000 deductible when I picked up the car and the insurance company would then send the remainder of the money directly to them. He did all this while I was on hold for about five minutes, so that was nice to get it taken care of so quickly, considering all the shit I’ve had to put up with on this car. So, I got off the phone with him and called the dealership to find out exactly when the car’s gonna be done and they’ve pushed it back to Friday, which actually works out better because I won’t have the money in the bank to pay them until Thursday anyway.

I will be working some crazy hours at the office over the next couple of days, so please forgive me if I don’t communicate much. I will be hitting the hay tonight to get up at 4:00am so I can be at work by 6:00am (one hour drive, remember?). I need to upgrade some phone equipment. Then, Thursday night I may be at the office all night, well into the wee hours of the morning assisting in a software upgrade on the same phone equipment.

I think I’m going to log off now and watch A Clockwork Orange, as I’ve never seen it all the way through and I’ve had it sitting here in my living room since January (damn, I love NetFlix).

Sick Thought of the Day: Festering ass-boils make the urine smell bitter and acidic, like rotten apple pie.