Name: Big Mother
Style: American Imperial IPA
Brewer: Mother Earth Brew Co. - California
ABV: 10.5
IBU: -
Rating: 5/5
Notes: This is pretty smooth and semi-floral for a triple IPA.

Watchmen:

#Watchmen begins in Tulsa, 1921 and explores the legacy of systemic racism in America. We’re proud to announce @HBO will make all nine episodes available for free this weekend on t.co/dvMR4HmhI… and On Demand, and will air a marathon of the series tomorrow at 1PM ET.

On my road to getting back into staying active and exercising more regularly, there are hard days like today. Yesterday was leg day and I haven’t worked out as I did in a long while. It was a decent kettlebell leg sesh. The usual workout goes like this:

5x

• 7 KB Thrusters per side
• 60 seconds rest

10 min EMOM (Every Minute On the Minute)

• 8 walking lunges
• 8 double-handed swings

I modified the second part of the sesh. I quickly realized that I currently don’t have the “stamina” of doing this on EMOM. I noticed I was been too slow and only had about 12 seconds of rest in between rounds. So instead I would complete the 8 lounges and the 8 double-handed swings and rest 30-45 seconds in between rounds, sometime seven 60 seconds for good quality rounds.

Today, well, I am sore, very very sore! Also, I feel exhausted, usually, leg days do kick my butt and I need a good night rest which I didn’t have last night. My fault though, I stayed up too late playing Halo. I had finished Halo 4 and quickly moved on to Halo 5. SO today I am having a hard time focusing a little bit due to the lack of rest.

Well, after some thinking and self-convincing, I am going back on using an iPad. A while ago I gave my iPad away, I gave my 11" iPad Pro to my wife and she’s been happy with it. Recently I have been wanting to write something but for whatever reason, I don’t want to use my phone. Whenever that happens, I use my 13" late 2017 MacBook Pro. But there’s something about macOS that feels a little foreign to me. I like the MacBook Pro as a device but I am very unfamiliar with macOS, always have been. iOS is more familiar to me.

In this house we have, well, three iPads, the 11" iPad Pro, an iPad Mini, old enough that it doesn’t even run iOS 10 I think and a 10.5" iPad Pro. The 10.5 has served as Marley’s entertainment iPad for a while now, today, I’ve reclaimed it (ish).

I wiped the 10.5" clean, restoring it and downloaded all my apps. These apps being Drafts, iA Writer, Micro.blog obviously and Comixology. I basically intend to use the device for writing and reading and maybe some media like YouTube — maybe even games. I’ve made a folder called “Marley”, here I put all the games she likes to play and such and showed her where this was for her to access. The rest of it it’s been setup for my needs. Part of me wants the 11" but I think that the 10.5 will serve me just find for what I need. This is not me coming back to the iPad for everything I do but for those times I don’t feel like using neither my phone or MacBook.

That being said, this entire post has been composed using my iPhone 11, since Marley is in her room playing with the iPad. 😅

BAKI, The Great Raitai Tournament Saga

Granted special entry into the Great Raitai Tournament, a poisoned Baki now faces fighters in China, where the next true Sea Emperor will be chosen.

This Anime/TV show it’s ridiculous. Exaggerated body anatomy and over the top fighting, unreal and almost impossible scenarios. But gosh do I love this show! I have a weak spot for the ridiculous and over the top stuff. Especially in the times like these where I need something to take me out of the “real world” and this show, fits the bill.

On Friday, I was watching Chris Lawley’s YouTube video, Tips for Using Drafts: The One Notes App to Rule Them All. I have been using Drafts since 2013. I have seen this app evolve into something almost unrecognizable to me 😅 but very powerful. I have been clearly , under using this app, and yet, I can’t imagine myself without it. This app has lived in my dock for as far as I can remember. That being said, after watching this video I was like “holly crap, I didn’t know I could do that!” kind of thing. Especially as far organizing your notes and workspaces. I knew some but I have never dived into it too much. Again, I use this app in a very simple but effective way for my needs.

This made me think, I have never been huge about organizing my “notes”. I use this app for quick captures, blog posts and lists. But neither of those have never lived in a workspace or been properly tagged and organized. I do have a few tags but for very specific things. In fact I don’t think I have ever had any type of organization structure when it comes to my personal notes or files. Whatever I deem important it will go somewhere but I am not very methodical about this stuff. So yeah I probably have and endless list of notes in Drafts. I do go every once in a while a clean up a little. Most of my posts just get archived, I don’t care about them once they have been published. Other notes once they have served their purpose, the get archived or deleted — I could care less.

There is a method to my madness, or so I say.

I had gotten a Nintendo eShop gift card from zee wife and as an early Father's Day gift. As you should know, there is a Nintendo Summer Sale. So I did my what I must and got some on-sale vidjia games.

1. Onimusha: Warlords
2. Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection
3. Kingdom Two Crowns
4. Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch
5. Moonlighter

Pretty Happy with all my purchases, now it's time to maybe put Diablo 3 aside for a wee bit and invest some time on the others!

Last night was another fun Halo gaming night with friends. Like I said before, it’s been years since I had played online multiplayer with other people. And even though I don’t know some of them personally, they’re all good lads to play with and had a blast. Last night was a little closer to home, in a way, because we were playing Halo 3. Halo 3 was, well, my first Halo. The first of the series that I really got into, probably due the fact that the Xbox 360 was my first Xbox console I ever bought and I was working at GameStop at the time so I played the heck out of that game with my coworkers. Thus, I was a little more familiar with Halo 3’s multiplayer than any of the other games in the series.

One of the games we played last night was “King on the Hill” and I kicked ass (a hundred percent luck 😅). I sucked in every other game mode, and that’s okay too.

10 Minute EMOM

• 10 Snatches, 5 per side
• 20 Swings

I completed my reps for the first move and rested the remainder of the minute, then the next minute did the second move alternating back and forth.

I Believe this sesh was meant to be a workout finisher but I treated it as my main workout after a small sesh on the rower and did 20 minute total, 10 minutes for each move.

Today I went back at it, I went to my local gym. It’s a small gym so even before this whole pandemic thing hit us, it was never crowded. Today, I decided to check it out and see if that was still the case. There were a few people — elderly people mostly — and mostly by the machines and treadmills which I rarely ever use. I was alone in the big room where I do most my stuff (body weight and kettlebell exercises for example).

Clearly the gym’s management are taking precautions, marks on the floors, machines more spaced out, in fact, the entire layout of the gym has been rearranged. It took me a few minutes to find the rowers. And there’s hand sanitizers and disinfectant materials all over the place. I had always been extremely conscious about cleaning whatever equipment I use before and after using it, this time around, even more so — for obvious reasons.

Anyways, I went around noon, I will try an earlier time tomorrow to see if there’s far less people. Again there wasn’t that many today but the less people the better. Either way, I’ll stay away from the most popular and most used machines and try to make my workouts short but effective. Also I am not planning on going every day of the week, most likely two to three times a week the rest will be dedicated more to running or maybe even hiking.

That being said, it felt good getting back into the “grind” of things. Trying to continue where I had left off. Gotta loose some of that pandemic-weight.

Cabernet Sauvignon from Columbia Valley, Washington

Winemaker Notes:

A stunning Cabernet from Washington’s oldest and most revered vineyards. The Readers blend tips its hat to the exploratory readers of books and wine. Sourced from Conner Lee Vineyard’s old vines from ’87 and ’88 blocks, Dionysus Vineyards’ old block 18 and Elephant Mountain Vineyards’ high elevation superior Cabernet blocks, this powerful wine offers fragrant blackberries, mocha and mineral complexity, all built into this fantastic old vine Cabernet’s delicious style.

I am personally not a huge fan of Cabs, I prefer blends usually, but this one it’s actually pretty good.

Name: Voodoo Ranger 1985 IPA
Style: New England IPA
Brewer: New Belgium Brewing Company - Colorado
ABV: 6.7
IBU: -
Rating: 5/5
Notes: Slightly sweet juicy mango that fades to moderate bitterness and lingers slightly. This is good!

A week or so ago I had taken Baby Luna to her pediatrician due to some redness in her eyes. We suspected allergies but none of the allergies medicines were doing any good. At the time the doctor didn’t find any signs of infection so he tonight it was probably an adverse reaction to something. So we needed to do our detective work to see what changed that could cause her such reaction. Today it had been about a week since the visit and the redness hasn’t improved.

Today Annie took Luna to the doctor again. Diagnosis, ears and throat infection. 😔

Probably due to teething — molars are coming!

Way before the pandemic, in a galaxy far far away, I used to go to the gym and or workout at my house rather consistently. And still, during the quarantine and working from home I tried to keep that up. At some point, it fizzled, maybe due to my back injury a while ago, lack of motivation and or imagination or who knows. This week I committed myself to get back into it, I have been running (ish) and picked up the kettlebell again. What I wasn’t prepared for was the reality check. I am so out of shape! I hadn’t realized this until I did my “normal” workout routine but not as intense of course and yet I am as sore as if I had never done this before. I had not felt this weak in a long time. However, I don’t feel discouraged or dispirited about this fact but it’s kind of a shock. Then again, this is just week one, it is only upward from here.

Not gonna lie, my need or desire for coffee has waned lately. What I have been doing recently every morning is to squeeze a lime in a few ounces of water. For whatever reason, it starts me up and puts me in a good mood. Lime water has its benefit, from what I’ve read. It helps boost a person’s metabolism, helping them burn more calories and store less fat. Lowers blood sugar, it has anti-inflammatory properties, helps prevent kidney stones, improves skin quality, and may aid digestion, among others.

This has become part of my morning routine. Before even eating breakfast. Then I can go about my day and again, not having the need or desire for coffee. That being said, I still have coffee now and then but not as much as I sued to.

I want to give my thanks to my friends Justin and Stephen from the Pixelated Podcast, and et al, for some much-needed fun playing video games last night. Stephen had the idea and contacted some of us via twitter and see if we were up for some Halo online gaming. To which most of us jumped right in! We played The Halo Master Cheif Collection on the Xbox One and it was a lot of fun. I hadn’t had this much fun playing online games in a while. The reason I had stopped playing online games is that there are a lot of people out there that are just assholes and they ruin everything 😝. Last night, there were no assholes, just a group of nerds playing the Halos. And by the looks of it, it is going to be a reoccurring thing, I think.

Oh and we also played the online-coop of Minecraft Dungeon since it’s “free” with GamePass.

Sharing and echoing , my wife’s thoughts.

I remember hearing the results of an elections not so long ago, even though the feel like it, sitting at my house crying and wondering what had become of this earth and the many that live in it. I recall thinking to my self “I’m so happy Marley is white, none of her Puertorrican heritage came through. This will help her get throw some dark days on this world and survive the next 4 years.” As I had that thought I cried and didn’t understand how/why I could be so happy for something so insignificant as her skin color. Was I being selfish? Was it my desire that she didn’t confront any type of injustice for being born with a skin color other than white? Why was I being grateful for that? Yes, I was being selfish and hoping my own blood wouldn’t suffer and that broke my heart. All these years have gone by and still our skin colour and nationality define us, way before we figure out who we truly are.

With the recent events going on, my heart is broken in so many ways. Why? Is the only question that comes to mind. Why is it ok to abuse power to instill fear in other humans? Why are black people feared? Why does skin color matter? Why am I questioning these things in 2020? Why do people agree that it’s not ok to protest against a violation of a human right? Why do people still believe being WHITE means power? Why can’t they see we are all humans?? WHY!?!?!

In days like these I fear for the future my daughters might grow up in. I hope/wish it’s a better one than the years I’ve lived. That they will pave the way to a better, brighter, equal future. I still fear what they might encounter. all I hope is that I arm them with enough knowledge to understanding to see who they are and what other are. HUMANS!

I don’t have the right words to describe my feelings about everything that it’s happening on this country right now.

It hurts…

Something tells me to get off social media. Something else tells me that is like turning a blind eye to the reality. Negativity and anger are so easily spread like wildfire. It’s hard to ignore and makes it hard to enjoy the few good things in life because I can’t stop thinking about everything that’s happening.

Name: Black Betty
Style: American Black Ale
Brewer: Sockeye Grill & Brewery - Idaho
ABV: 6.2
IBU: -
Rating: 4/5
Notes:

I can’t remember the last time I wrote about my blogging workflow and the tools I use for it. It is always changing except the fact that everything gets published somehow.

What’s my workflow like now?

Well, it really doesn’t matter. Sometimes I compose on a web browser (in Grammarly), sometimes I use my phone and sometimes I use my MacBook Pro. Sometimes I use iA Writer, sometimes I use Drafts 🤷🏻‍♂️.

Where does everything lives after it’s published?

I don’t know 🤷🏻‍♂️ Sometimes it gets deleted or archived or saved somewhere. Although, I do have an IFTTT action thing that everything that’s published on my website, goes into Day One as an entry, I had set that up so long ago that I often forget it’s there. 😅

Do I care?

Not really.

I can’t help to feel a little disgusted at humanity right now. These are very concerning or flat out scary times. Maybe I need a break? But also want to keep informed. But, who do I trust? Definitely not social media. News outlets? Can they actually be trusted? Whichever the case may be, I don’t like what I am seeing and or feeling. I feel angry, sad, and powerless.

And what’s worse! I ran out of vodka.

As I was listening to Connected today, I started thinking about what Federico brought up about Apple Arcade. I also very rarely play games from it. And the ones that interest me, are available on the Nintendo Switch and I much rather play there. So I though, maybe I should cancel it but then I thought. How Marley is going to play Dumb Squash a.k.a. Sneaky Sasquatch. 😅

Never have I ever, heard of Bear Blog until yesterday, and as you all may know I am a sucker for blogging platforms. I want to use them all, play with them all but obviously, can’t have them all. This one seems to be free and it’s very minimalist, looks nice.

I haven't jailbroken my phone since iOS 8.1. For many reasons, the hassle, security concerns and phone stability and/or performance. I do like the few perks jailbreak brings like hiding icon labels for example, and theming. I hear a new jailbreak came out recently (yesterday?). I am a little tempted, mostly out of curiosity and to play with it, maybe even put a theme or something.

Is it worth it though?

Mortal Kombat 11 for The Nintendo Switch

I am a huge fan of this franchise, have played many iterations of it, I love everything about it and I also really suck at them. I really do, Mortal Kombat has always been one those fighting games that I just don’t get the mechanics of it or the fighting style and yet, I love them. I love the overall story and the entire lore on this universe.

I haven’t played a MK game in many years and 11 looked cool. Enough to make me want to play it, even when I know I’d suck. This game goes on sale often on the Nintendo eShop, I happened to have some credit so I bought it.

Though I have been playing other games like Street of Rage 4 which it’s probably my favourite release of the year (so far) and Huntdown, which it also has been a lot of fun. I should probably write some of my impressions on it.

Anyway,a few days ago I started playing it and I gotta say, it’s been lots of fun so far. I really wasn’t expecting such an elaborate story with this game. Again I haven’t played an MK game in years so as far as I was concerned I was just gonna get a small story and just fighting. Little did I know that it actually has a very elaborate fluent story with conversations, cool cutscenes and all.

As far as the fighting, well obviously I am playing on the easiest settings available and yet I still suck. I mean, I don’t die often but you won’t see me doing all kinds of cool moves or combos or any of the sorts. I do just enough to survive, beat the other character so I can advance in the story. Of course I can figure out some character better than others like Scorpion or Sub-zero and maybe Liu Kang but that’s it.

Again, I am having fun and once I beat the story I doubt I’ll replay it but who knows. 😁