Mine is Free software. If I can avoid it, then I avoid nonfree software. This brings me a lot of problems but also a lot of joy.

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Game preservation. I got into it last fall when I learned about OpenGOAL for the Jak and Daxter games. I grew up with those games and were some of my favorites from that generation.
I then learned how easy it was to rip PS1 through 3 games and how simple it is to set up the emulators for each console. I have a sizable collection of games for those generations, so I started ripping.

I then remembered watching LTT’s video about how to jailbreak the Switch. I bought a used Switch from a friend pre-pandemic, but never played the games because I never cared for playing on the Switch itself. So I checked if mine was old enough to jailbreak (Nintendo patched the exploit out of the Switch about a year after it released) and, lo and behold, it was.
It wasn’t easy jailbreaking it. It took several hours over 3 days to do it; I would make some progress, then hit a roadblock I couldn’t figure out, so I’d stop and come back the next day. I’d get a little further, hit another roadblock, and repeat. Once I managed that, I ripped my (small) collection of Switch games and played them on Ryujinx. Now that I could finally play them on my laptop whenever I wanted, I actually had a desire to play them and managed to get through BotW in January.

Then I figured out how to jailbreak my Wii (which is pretty easy, I recommend everyone do it to theirs), so I could rip those games. It can also rip GC games, so I didn’t need to find and jailbreak one of those to do it.

When I learned of shadPS4 this summer and the progress it was making toward playing Bloodborne, I spent $400 on ebay to get a gold PS4 with firmware 9.0 so I could jailbreak it and start dumping PS4 games.

At that point I saw how much space all of the games I ripped took up on my laptop, so I bought a NAS from a friend who was upgrading theirs and set it up with two 8TB hard drives in RAID 1 and stored all my games on there. It’s currently about 60%+ full.

Over Halloween I went to a used game store and saw they were selling a Wii U for $160. I bought it and jailbroke that as well and started ripping those games.

I bought an OG Xbox to jailbreak, but I need to open it up to replace the clock capacitor first. Otherwise it could leak and my effort would be for nothing. I just haven’t got around to it yet.

I realized this was a passion of mine when I accidentally borked my PS4 and it would only boot into safe mode. I was 100% willing to completely wipe it and start the jailbreak from scratch so I could keep doing it.

All told, I’ve ripped about 400+ nearly 600 games (I finally counted) in the past 15 months, spent dozens of hours ripping them, and have zero intention of stopping. I only think about how I can keep expanding my collection. Right now my next consoles will be the 360, PSP, and Vita.

Edit: rephrasing and adding a little more info

For those who jump around too much like I do, remember:

I know more about the Doom engine than I do interpersonal relations. Did you know you can completely destroy collision physics via writing over memory addresses if you shoot a bullet weapon at a stack of corpses?

Edit to explain: Decino has a great video explaining it in detail. Link is above, tho I’m at work and can’t watch it to double check. Poorly explained from my memory:

When you fire a hitscan attack (press button, gun shoots a bullet that instantly hits with no travel time), the engine does a number of checks for collision, range, etc. If you have a stack of actors (decorations, monsters, ammo, etc) and you fire a hitscan attack in the direction of the stack, it makes a call to check collision for each individual actor in that stack. The actors don’t have to be all on top of each other, it just matters that the hitscan line crosses over those actors.

If you have a stack of 129 or more actors and fire a hitscan weapon, the game will essentially overwrite parts of the memory address. I don’t understand a lick of that stuff myself, admittedly, I’m no programmer. If you have something around ~140ish actors in the line of fire of a hitscan attack, the Blockmap system for checking collision effectively gets erased. Projectiles pass through everything, bullets and melee do no damage, players and monsters walk through walls, and you can’t interact with things like switches. You can fix it by saving and loading, though if you’re recording demos you can’t save.

Primary: Disc Golf ❤️

Secondary: As many useful docker containers as I can pack onto my home server

I’ve been pretty into four things lately:

1. Healthy cooking, from scratch as much as possible. I got into a rut trying to maximize protein intake, so now I’m trying to find different recipes that don’t compromise on macros but still offer variety in flavors and textures and won’t bother my IBS.
2. Nail polish and nail art. I have probably about 300 polishes at this point, which sounds like a lot to most people, but it’s a tiny collection compared to some I’ve seen! Last year I got really into nail stamping, which lets you create neat little designs, and you can get really creative with it.
3. Working out. I recently moved, and designed a power rack for my basement which is pretty fully featured. My goal was to be able to do all the exercises I could do at my previous fitness club (within reason - no way I’m buying a tank sled and a billion 45 lb plates!). I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, and so is my husband, which I’m glad about because he’s a tall dude and working around the low-ish basement ceiling was a challenge.
4. Indie makeup! Holy Moses I love makeup, and indie brands are killing it. My most recent favorite palette is the Cosmic Brushes Winter Wonderland palette (which came out last year, but is new in my collection). Just look at her!:

Gorgeous, right? No way I’m ever going back to boring neutrals.