The Mikey Man

  When you look at the Series S you either see an underpowered mistake made by Microsoft or you see a well-made move by Microsoft in making a next gen console for the low end. When I look at the Series S I see something much different. I see a purpose-built device that has been re-purposed due to market expectations and internal resources not being where they needed to be in order to be for the device to hit market as intended. To this day I think the Series S was built to be SOLELY a streaming device. Why do I think this way? Well, it is fairly simple. You only have to look at the specs of the device, which practically scream “I’m a streaming machine!” and some of the things that Microsoft themselves have said about the device to have similar thoughts. Let’s start with the specs, shall we? I am not going to rehash the spreadsheet because that has been done to exhaustion. I will just say that other than practically having CPU parity (it is clocked a bit slower) everything els...

          The Series X from Microsoft and Xbox is a fabulous piece of technology with some not so fabulous short comings. I will explain the short comings further later in the review, but first an initiation for those not familiar and a  refresher for those who are. The Series X is the more powerful of the two latest generation of video game consoles from Microsoft's Xbox division, it brings to the table a sizeable upgrade to the current consoles the Xbox one and Xbox one X. This upgrade is accomplished by moving to more powerful Zen 2 cores and a full RDNA2 architecture from the under powered jaguar cores and GCN architecture of the consoles they are replacing. This additional power along with the familiar architecture of the consoles (current and previous console generation are X86_64 architecture) allows for increased backwards compatibility, a strong suit of the Xbox ecosystem. This is also where one of the more glaring short comings is realized, w...

Microsoft blew minds this week with their Game Pass announcement, for some it was the greatest thing they could have done, I mean all you can play gaming and DAY 1 Microsoft Exclusives for only $10 a month YES PLEASE!! But, (I know there is always a but for me) for some, me included, take the announcement with come caution. Why? well while Game Pass is not a bad idea by itself the way Microsoft currently chooses to handle it may be. There is nothing wrong with Microsoft making their exclusives available on the service on day one but (there's that but again!), this should be a timed release and should expire after a limited time. This will help support the retailers by encouraging those who really love the game buy the retail version.  By applying the currently announced model to the Xbox you now essentially turn it into a service rather than a Hardware/Software ecosystem which could alienate retail channels if g...

     So Atari is looking to go beyond the "GameBand" (did anyone actually buy one of these things? ) and release a console. Does anyone even care?  Is anyone around that still finds joy in hearing their name?  Or better yet has Atari fixed the problems that have made them fail in the past? And ultimately is there room for another console (yes but probably not from them).      Since sometime after E3 there has been this buzz about the Atari Box, for some reason people are genuinely excited about the prospect of a new console from Atari. As a former Jaguar owner I am not, I am cautiously optimistic because I do kinda have a few good memories of the Atari systems I owned but I also still feel the burn when they went down in flames numerous times by their own hand. Before people get excited about the prospect of a 4th console coming to the market maybe they should consider asking the following: What do we actually know about the hardware?...

     Lately it seems we are becoming more and more divided as a country between all of the protesting and everyone seems mad at everyone else. Everyday it seems as though someone or something else is being blamed for the countries problems. At the same time we have groups of people who all feel they are entitled to special treatment or free things, other groups who feel that they aren't being represented properly in the country groups that feel they are entitled to things because their parents or grandparents had it or endured something, and finally a group that think the other groups need to go away. We are seemingly in a war of the haves and have not's, its really sad because we are supposed to be the United States of America but we are anything but united right now.      In my opinion the only way we are going to truly become a United States of America we must first agree to be Americans. What do I mean by th...

     Most Gamers would agree that the current generation of consoles are for the most point underwhelming to this point, me included. This does not mean that they wont get better as they continue to mature especially given the "mid cycle refreshes" both consoles would have received by this holiday season. With that in mind you have to wonder why would anyone be even thinking about the next generation of consoles outside of the big 3, oh and Michael Pachter but that is expected when you are the tech equivalent of an oil speculator.       You would have to be crazy and living in denial to think that the big 3 have not started planning out the next gen as soon as the original PS4 and XB1 dropped in 2013 but no one should even think we would see the new systems anytime before holiday 2020/21.  I only say this because developers haven't even begun to push the base systems and they now have the extra horsepower of the PS4pro and Xbox1X t...

    I am a gamer, I like games period. I don't care what platform its on if I like it I will play it, I mean how else would you describe a person who actually bought a NEO GEO AES 3 times in his life! (ok maybe crazy came to mind but that is not what I was going for) I have been that way since my mom bought us (her) our Atari VCS (2600) way back in 1980. She I mean we have had just about every console out there and loved all of them for some what they were. Now I did have a soft spot for certain consoles but that had more to do with milestones in my life rather than a fanatical allegiance to a brand name. For example I love the SNES, why not because a specific game but because it was the first console I bought with my own hard earned cash. My TurboGrafx-16 First game system bought for me! Atari Jaguar..............ah TEMPEST 2000! I even remember my first PC gaming experience with a Microsoft online dogfighting game on an overclocked Celeron Gatew...

Well its been a long time since Ive used this thing and since the last post a lot has happened. I obviously got older, had some personal tragedy in my life, graduated from college twice!!, and am now about to end my time in my current career after 20yrs. Ive got a lot on my mind but I wont bore you with all of it, just the fun stuff! Like my soon to be climb up Mt. Fuji! (wish me luck)

I am back on this thing to try to help my Mother in law get a new car as her old one needs to be taken out back and shot! To do this I am trying to use Dodges Dart Registry to raise the funds. Hopefully this works because it seems to be a good way of raising money for someone who deserves it. If anyone is interested here is the link http://bit.ly/V9njoh

I was at a point in my life where I was about to give up on my current job, although I am extremely proud of what I do I just felt that after 10 years I was not going to get to the next level of my career and get forced out due to stagnation in promotion. I started to go to school to get my degree which is something I am going to complete anyway, I started to look for jobs in the civilian sector and started to make contacts to keep from deploying to Iraq for a year just then WHAMMMO I get selected to Staff Sergeant!!! I really don't know what to feel right now, I am still in shock I don't know if I should feel good about myself or pissed off for having to wait so long for a promotion that should have came a year ago. I kind of feel like the Marine Corps has the same sense of humor that I do and likes to just keep me on my toes. So I guess I am going to give my beloved gun club another 4 years and see if they can make either a Warrant Officer or a Gunny out of me before I h...

Well I am finally back to a point where I can start working out again, and Ive been dying to get my old butt back in the shape I was in just before I dislocated my elbow this July. With that being said Ive decided to make this transformation public. From Monday August 18 untill November 18 I will post the results of my working out using a Bowflex revolution and a treadmil with some USMC pt thrown in for good measure. My starting photo will be posted Monday before the workout. Wish me luck.

I meant for this to be my first post but oh well. I decided to go back to school at the ripe old age of 33. People normally think you are never too old to learn and I tend to agree. Other people ask WHY ? why are you going to school again you are so...OLD!! well I have many reasons one of which is that my Marine Corps career while still enjoyable wont last forever in fact if I dont get promoted again soon I will be forced out of my beloved gun club and I need to brush up on my skills so I can be use full out in the civilian workforce. Another reason is that I want to finish something I started back in 96 and that is the pursuit of my college degree. People who know me know I am always talking about going back to school and getting my degree and my certs ( MCSE , CCNA ect ) I would like to think Ive influenced at least 1 of them to go out and do it their selves . Thats my story and I am sticking to it.

I finally decided to make my first post. It is a bit late according to the title but there is a reason for that which I will get to in a second. First I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend, mine was ok until I went and fell off the roof dislocating my elbow. How this happened is a bit of holiday stupidity mixed with good intentions. I was up and down the roof all weekend with out a problem trying to fix the wife's local channel DTV dish for her local channels since DTV doesn't offer them on the GIGANTIC HD dish in my area yet. I trouble shot the problem for a while and I found out that it was faulty cabling. As a former installer I knew it was an inexperienced person who set up the dish and was pretty pissed off. I decided that I would have to buy some new connectors and started to come down off the roof when my 2 yr old decided to make his escape from the house with my wife close on his heels unfortunately they were under me on my way down and I almost fell...