Miscellaneous Monday: Chocolate AND Video Games!

[Bryan Guffey]

My first Miscellaneous Monday! Hooray! Well, today's gonna be a doozy, folks, because Sunday, July 7th(when I'm writing this in the US) is World Chocolate Day globally

via GIPHY

and Monday, July 8th (which is when this will post in Sydney, Australia, home of Atlassian, is National Video Game Day in the United States!

via GIPHY

So, in honor of all this awesomeness in one single day, we have the following meme series! 

NOW, with that out of the way, it's time for our QUESTIONS!

I've been playing video games sporadically since 1986, most likely, and eating chocolate just as long. So I want to know: what was the first video game you ever played? What is your favorite video game you've ever played? 

Going further, when was the first time you can remember having chocolate? What is your favorite chocolate? 

And finally, for those of you who really want to have fun: Which video game that you've played is most likely your life as a Jira/Confluence/etc. admin/user/etc.? 


My answers will be in the comments! Happy July 8th! 

(Thanks to @Andy Gladstone for giving me this second chance after I totally forgot my day the first time!!) 

[Bryan Guffey]

I think the first video game I ever played was Space Invaders  on the Atari 2600 when I was about 6 in 1988! My favorite video game I've every played is Earthbound on the Super Nintendo! 

The first time I ever had chocolate was on my 1st birthday when i had chocolate cake (there are so many pictures), and my favorite chocolate, which will upset many of you, is white chocolate!

The game that is most like my job as an Atlassian admin is SimCity 2000! Building complex systems and solving unforeseen problems is the whole thing I do every day! 

[Carlos Garcia Navarro]

Hi @Bryan Guffey ,

Thanks for the questions! The first video game I remember playing is Bubble Bobble. My favorite video game is Super Mario 3 (a classic!)

I don't remember the first time eating chocolate, but as far as I can say, I've been eating it since forever! My favorite is dark chocolate, and my favorite way of eating is as the 'grandma's cake', a Spanish recipe that uses chocolate, cookies and vanilla pudding (I'll let you google it ;-) )

[Amanda Barber]

My first video game system was an Atari, so I believe Space Invaders and Asteroids were two of the first games. A long-time favorite was Crash Bandicoot on our PlayStation. We have a Nintendo Switch now, so there's lots of Mario Kart in my life. 

Mario Kart feels the most relevant to my life as an admin - always have to watch out for those banana peels throwing you off course. 🍌🏎️

I'm sure I've been eating chocolate in some form for the last 39ish years. My mom was a huge fan of M&Ms and Hersheys Kisses, so I think those were always pretty available!

[Ajay _view26_]

As a kid, I remember playing Pac-Man as my first ever video game. It brings back so many nostalgic memories! When it comes to chocolates, I love trying various flavours, but my all-time favourite has to be Mon Chéri.

[Frank McGuire]

Why did you remind me of this? I'll have to search and download different modulators and play :D

[Vronik]

Chocolate day eeeeeeeeeeeee
I didn't know what happiness, I love chocolate, I love chocolate, I think it is one of the best food inventions in the world

I like it in all its formats, colors, textures, flavors, mixtures, etc. 💙💙💙

[ABR]

My favorite chocolate is the Lindt Orange Intense, the Amul Mystic Mocha Chocolate and the Cadbury's Milk Chocolate! The Lindt one is a favorite because it has the citrusy flavor of orange in a balanced combination with the sweet richness of chocolate, it's also what my husband uses to re-bond! The other two are nostalgia from childhood, they remind me of good times with dad!

I'm not much of a video game player but I love to watch other's play and be the perfect cheerleader for them!

[John Funk]

Well, I will really date myself, but it was probably Pong. And Space Invaders/Pacman and others around that era. Not that I was any good, but I preferred pinball machines to video games back in the day and never really have warmed up to them all that much. 

Chocolate is a different story - ha! I definitely prefer milk chocolate, but enjoy it in most anyway you want to eat it - cake, (molten lava!!) hot chocolate, chocolate milk, chocolate candy, chocolate shrimp - sorry, wrong movie! 

[Barbara Szczesniak]

I am in the video game boat with @John Funk — first game was probably Pong on an Atari, but I was always much more comfortable with pinball. I could never figure out all the buttons on the various controllers.

I have always loved chocolate. I can't resist it, even though it is really bad for me. I can't remember my first chocolate, but it was probably someone's birthday cake, since my mom was not big one providing us chocolate candy. Lately I've noticed that I prefer really good milk chocolate to dark chocolate. 

[Shawn Doyle - ReleaseTEAM]

My first video game was pong.  I had some no-name console that only had pong, probably from JCPenney.

Why would anyone be upset with white chocolate? Not sure what my first chocolate was, but guessing it was some easter related thing wrapped in tinfoil.

[Laurie Sciutti]

🎮🍫

[Sherilyn Tasker]

My rich neighbours had pong but we just called it TV Tennis so I guess that's the first game I played. Quake was my favourite though. We used to play it during breaks at work until we took down the network and the IT dept banned us from playing it :( I don't remember a time when I didn't eat chocolate. Cadburys dominated the chocolate scene in NZ until they ruined it with palm oil and now Whittaker's is the chocolate of choice here. 

[Rebekka Heilmann _viadee_]

I believe the first video game I played was Crazy Chicken on my Dad's first Laptop, soon followed by Mario Kart on the Gameboy. My favorite games are anything from the Lego series. I remember playing Lego Star Wars with my brother sharing one keyboard.

Not sure when I first had chocolate, but there are some early pictures of me eating Nutella for sure ;) My favorite chocolate is Lindor (the red ones) straight from the fridge.

A good analogy might be Rollercoaster Tycoon - some of us Admins build it pretty, others functional and if we act on user requests without questioning them, we'll end up building coasters that get either stuck in the middle or it crashes... or both :D

[Barbara Szczesniak]

Everyone's comments reminded me of a conversation I had with my nephew when he was about 7 and his gameboy was basically glued to his hands.

Me: When I was your age, we didn't have gameboys.

Him: (gasp) What did you do?

Me: We used our imaginations.

Him: Oh, and you pretended you had gameboys?

[Amanda Barber]

Love it! 😂 

[Daria Kulikova]

The first computer game I played was the Lion King. I loved this cartoon so much that this game seemed to me something incredible at the age of 6 :)

I don't remember when was the first time I tried chocolate, but the most memorable moment connected with chocolate was when I decided to buy chocolate of 99%. I used to like dark chocolate but after I tried that dark chocolate I understood that my favourite one is milk chocolate :) 

[Hans Polder]

I saw the title and had to check it out. Because I LOVE chocolate and video games ❤️. I got to keep it under control though, as I think they were the main contributor to me being roughly 90 pounds/45 kilos heavier than what I am today. 

If you leave chocolate (especially milk-) anywhere near me, I make it go up in smoke! When it comes to video games, I don't know the specific first one, but I spent a lot of hours playing Commander Keen on Windows 3.11. 

I think games like Satisfactory pretty neatly sum up how I live as Jira/Confluence Admin. Constantly restructuring, rebuilding if necessary, cleaning up and get that 'proud parent' feeling when it all seems to flow. I already spend over 160 hours playing it and it's still in Early Access. Can't wait for the full v1-go live later this year, and spending some more building, structuring, improving and making something awesome together!

[Andy Gladstone]

First Video Game: Probably Space Invaders and Missile Command on the Atari 2600 we had at home in the early 1980's. But the 80's were the golden age of video games, and we used to beg our father to take us to the arcade in the local mall. So PacMan, Pole Position and Donkey Kong were staples of my youth. 

Favorite Video Game: SimCity 2000 on MS-DOS. It was also the first time I learned how to hack code. Replacing the 00 with 7F in the hexadecimal code gave you $2B to start the game. It also inspired my love for engineering and architecture, neither of which I pursued.

Chocolate: My likely first, and certainly most recent taste of chocolate is chocolate chip cookies. If I were single I'd probably have them 3 meals a day and snacks in between! 

[Susan Waldrip]

Wow @Bryan Guffey, talk about having to knock away the cobwebs! I guess like many folks who answered this, my first video game was Pong on an Atari (although the Atari wasn't ours, I wonder where I was?). My favorite video game was Tetris until I played it so much that I started seeing shapes flying at me in the dark and I had to stop, bummer. But Tetris does remind me of being a JSM admin in that I start off really "on it" with completing tasks that come at me but then more tasks start coming in and more frequently and I eventually get buried! 🤣 Of course, if I'm eating dark chocolate or M&Ms, I don't get rattled as much. Ah, comfort food...

[Gael York]

Hello, I am a new here. Can anyone create such fun topics about what interests them or what they are busy with? Very cool! I adore old-school video games, not a big fan of chocolate :D