Sunday, December 29, 2024
DIY Wah, or DIWAH?
Wednesday, December 25, 2024
My Christmas Gift to Myself: Healing
For the past twelve years of my life I've dealt with pretty serious anxiety off and on. This year was one of the worst relapses, and I'm still having a hard time shaking it. In previous years, when I had a relapses, I relied heavily on the most amazing support systems I've ever had, but sadly she decided in 2019 that was all she could take. I understand, sometimes I don't want to be with me either. She always promised me, up to the day she left, we were going to be together. It was never a matter of if, it was a promise of someday. Either way I have to stop staring at that closed door hoping it will ever open again. What hurt me the most was, to semi-quote Take That, in the twist of separation she excelled at being free. It was as if her escape was planned very well in advance. That's her choice, and I fully support it as I'm sure she's happier without me.
Now I look at my life and realize I can't let everything around me fall into disrepair anymore. I need to take my health, my happiness, and my life more seriously and find what I deserve and where I deserve to be. It's going to be a long, hard road, but I've got some really great people on my side already. I also have you, the readers. If you've come here for a new pedal building update, or small electronics fix tutorial, I'm sorry. That's why this blog is called Sam's (or my idiot younger self chose Samz) Asylum. It's my little place on the virtual world; a hodgepodge of all things I'm feeling, working on and what I want to share with whomever will read it. For those of you who have stuck around through all my personal entries that aren't fun to read, thank you. I promise you 2025 has some more pedal builds, and hopefully here soon I'll be able to give an update on a build from 2023.
No longer can I wait, unhappy and longing for the past to return. No longer can I sit back and let life pass me by. It's time to take charge of what I can control, and hope what I can't control shows me a bit of grace and mercy. I'm super excited about a few major events in 2025, and we'll just have to hope for the best with everything else. Hopefully things will be better than the past five years have been. Hey, I love building pedals, but I was never doing well emotionally. Now let's put a positive mental attitude and my pedal building skills together and see where that gets us. I'll keep those of you who wish to know updated. For the rest of you, the pedal build stuff will start back up in Spring, so only a few months to go. I'll see you then and wish me luck. I'll need it!
Wednesday, December 4, 2024
Virginia's Run (In With the Trailer Park Boys)
Sheriff Jim Lahey! |
Freedom 35? |
Friday, November 29, 2024
A Quick Thank You
Sunday, November 24, 2024
Sam's Movie Review: Dawn, Her Dad & the Tractor
Friday, November 15, 2024
I'm Bored: Let's Review Taco Bell Sauces
There for a while I was addicted to a hot sauce called Valentina, thanks to my ex fiancée. To fill the void when she left I started trying dollar store hot sauces. Louisiana Hot Sauce was my favorite, with Texas Pete being adequate. I then started to wonder where Taco Bell's sauces would rank. I used to love their Fire Roasted salsa packets so much that I would order Taco Bell for no other reason than to have an excuse to hoard the salsa packets, or just drink them straight. So where does their current line up of sauces rank?
Mild
I've never been a fan of Taco Bell's mild sauce. It's always tasted and looked like dish water to me. There is a slightly sweet smell that doesn't really excite me one way or another. I'll use it, if forced to, but I usually try to avoid it.
Hot
Hot has the same flavor and texture as mild, but with a little kick to it. The overall experience is pretty much the same as a mild packet, just a tiny bit of heat and some chunks. If you read the ingredients it's just mild with some jalapenos thrown in to add bite.
Fire
Fire is thicker, has some chunks and brings the heat. A nice flavor, a nice texture and a good amount of heat. It has a very olfactory pleasing smoky scent that gets my salivation glands working overtime.
Diablo
Diablo sauce has a smoky scent to it that immediately excites my taste buds. It's slightly thinner than fire, but still thicker than mild or hot, with a nice smooth texture. As soon as it hits my tongue I detect a sweet, smoky flavor that quickly evolves into heat engulfing my palate. The heat lingers for a while, much longer than with fire.
Breakfast Salsa
Breakfast Salsa was introduced to me when I chose Taco Bell's breakfast burritos on the road to thrift stores, slathered in their breakfast salsa. These packets are slightly taller and contain the nectar of the Gods! It's a bit sweet, thinner than both fire and diablo, but still thicker than hot and mild, and is filled with chunks, as good salsa should be. The heat is somewhere between hot and fire, leaning more toward the hot sauce. The jalapeno chunks add something, but not too much.
Avocado Verde Salsa
These cost money, so it's rare that I will ever use them. I did give them a try and I wasn't very impressed with it. I remember it was thin, but the flavor wasn't bad. It was about what you could expect of something called avocado salsa. Again, since they're charging 20 cents for these I don't get them.
Of all these sauces I prefer Fire, Diablo and Breakfast Salsa. If it's not going onto Taco Bell, directly into my mouth, or onto a Mexican inspired meal, it's usually going on tuna salad. You see, that ex fiancée that I mentioned earlier once made some really good tuna salad, and I've been chasing her recipe ever since. She ghosted me after ten years, so I can't just outright ask her what it was, but I try to replicate it the best I can. I shovel a little bit of my tuna and mayo concoction onto a cracker and then cover it in one of my favorite Taco Bell sauces. For purist results these reviews were written after drinking a packet of each flavor straight. I couldn't give accurate reviews with pesky food sullying the flavors.
Saturday, November 9, 2024
Reaching Beyond My Capability
Wednesday, November 6, 2024
O Cartridge, Where Art Thou?
Sometimes I'm more shocked by the games that I don't own rather than the ones that I do. I own a few games that are difficult to find, but only because I found them cheap during my thrifting adventures. What I don't own, however, is a North American version of Super Mario Kart. I bought a Super Famicom version a few years ago, and since the menus are super easy to navigate, even for a dolt like myself who can't read Japanese, the cartridge was perfectly serviceable for my needs. I don't own a copy of Super Mario 64 either; I don't even own the DS remake. I don't own a copy of A Link to the Past, Super Metroid or even Kirby's Adventure. All ubiquitous games, I've just never found them in the wild.
To say I've never found them would be inaccurate, but what I consider to be in the wild is in a thrift store, flea market or at the outlet store. All these games are readily available at almost any media resale store around me, but I always held out hope I would find them for cheaper in the wild, where prices used to be less regulated by greed. I remember thrift stores having stacks of common games that I had tons of, for exceedingly cheap prices too, but most of the time they had already been picked through and the good games were gone. What was left were things I would pick up for trades or to fill out my collection.
Perhaps I'm frugal to a fault, but I feel I don't need something unless I'm comfortable with the price. As time moves on prices are shooting up, and that's really exacerbating things. I'm not looking to have a complete collection, or to own all the rare games on any given console. I just want to own the staples of each console, that way I can enjoy them like most people my age did when they were kids. As if it's a Friday night and I just rented this game, or came back from Toys R Us with a new game for getting good grades and I was going to use it to numb my mind for the weekend.
Sure, I can emulate all of the games in question, and I certainly have throughout the years. I still retain there is something to be said about genuinely having the cartridge, or in the case of the Playstation the disc, and playing it on the original hardware. I found a PSOne console a few weeks back that I have no clue where it came from. It's not on my spreadsheet of consoles, but it was hidden inside a bag of my stuff. I decided to spend the day fully testing it, and let me tell you being 41 never felt so much like 16 this entire year. It was an absolute blast! So again, I could easily replicate the gameplay with an emulator, but for me personally nothing beats the original hardware, software and controller. I just need to find the staple games of the consoles I love and live that reality.
Thursday, October 31, 2024
My Adventures in Illusion of Gaia
"I want to burn you into my memory." |
Wednesday, October 30, 2024
Autumnal Shift
Autumn is upon us and pedal building season 2024 has come to a close. Against all odds, and desires, this year I built one more circuit than I did in 2023, which I swear I did not plan on doing. I still have kits I put together that will now have to wait to be built in 2025. Beyond these kits I've only found a few things that have inspired me, but I swear it won't be 46 (or more) circuits in 2025! I don't plan on quitting, I just feel the need to move on to other projects for 2025.
As the days turn colder, the nights grow longer, the urge to play RPGs grows stronger. With having beaten a 20+ year old save on Breath of Fire I'm started to wonder what I should tackle next. There is an entry coming up that explains what RPG I beat after Breath of Fire, so I won't spoil that here. I own an SNES multicart that has both Actraisers, Chrono Trigger, Earthbound, Terranigma, Link to the Past and a few other RPGs on it I'd love to get stuck into. Although I have saves for both Chrono Trigger and Earthbound from at least 2017, and a more recent one for Dragon Quest 5 on my Wii. Maybe I should take care of those first. Who knows, we'll see!