Guys!! If you aren’t playing Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and The Fate Of Atlantis DLC, you are so missing out! It is so good! I am having a blast playing this particular story. Last night I finished episode one, now I’m in the Underworld, episode two and I believe the third and final episode of for this DLC is supposed to come out this month. So excited!
Today, like every day, I was browsing my Micro.blog timeline and came across with this post, Cast A Vote for Your Identity. by Mister Patrick Rhone and read this quote;
Every time you sit down and write in the morning, you cast a vote for your identity as a writer. Every time you choose a healthy meal over junk food, you cast a vote for your identity as a healthy person. These votes compound over time, put you on the flywheels of actually becoming those things.
— Jack Cheng
This quote struck a cord and I’ve been thinking about what it means to me all day. In this sense I have lost my identity, at some point along the line I stopped casting votes. Is no secret that for the past few months or so, I have been struggling. Struggling to stay positive about my professional life, about both my mental and physical health — mostly my physical health. Instead I have been developing, what I call, comfort habits. Habits that seam to make me “happy” but all they do is making me lazy and not contributing in any way with me trying to be the better version of me.
So, less comfort habits, more votes for my own identity!
IN OTHER NEWS:
Fire season has started here in Idaho! (Insert sarcastic woohoo here)
Puppies and porridges !!!
Remember when I said I needed a break from Assassin’s Creed Odyssey? Well, scratch that! It might be too early in the week to call it but I don’t think I’ll like anything this week as much as this.
I decided to dip my toes in The Fate of Atlantis DLC. It’s a three-part episodic story arc, I’m on arc (or episode if you will) one, Fields of Elysium. There’s so much to uncover and explore on this arc alone and again, another significantly huge map! I feel like I am playing a whole different game right now!
I am very positive I’ll be putting over a hundred hours on this game!
So good!
There are a couple of things i want to experiment with this week and see how it fits within my workflow.
First thing would be photo editing. I do all my editing using iOS , I use an app called Cascable to transfer RAW files from my camera to my iPad. Then I’d use either VSCO or Darkroom for my editing. Today though, I had decided to edit some pictures using the Photos.app built-in tools, and the result were pretty decent I gotta say.
Second, I am changing text editors again. For the past few months, since I got the 11” iPad Pro, I have been using Drafts exclusively but its hard to keep blog posts organized after they have been published, at least my long format ones. For this reason and a few others, I will be back at using Ulysses for my long format blog posts. iA Writer is another great option but I prefer Ulysses, visually makes more sense to me and it’s organization design, if you will.
Third, Task managers……. yup! I got nothing!
Thank you for coming to my TED talk!
Weeding day was a fun yesterday. It is not all the time that Annie (aka @litzabel) and I get to go out without the girls. It was kind of like a date night for us. We had a good time, we even danced, I can’t remember the last time we danced. Again was a lot of fun but of course with some awkward moments. I met the bride while we used to work together at my old job and bacame really good friends even after we both left the company. Most of the bride’s friends at the weeding were also my friends and ex coworkers of mine (and hers) that I haven’t seen since I got laid off two years ago. So it brought back a lot of feelings, specially when I saw my former manager and she asked me what I was doing. Part of me really wanted to say “I don’t want to talk about it", mainly because I have no pride in what I am doing right now. Perhaps is because I keep comparing what I do know to my previous job and is o feel like it’s not as good or fulfilling, I mean I was doing science and I loved it, still do. Also it lead to work related conversations between my ex corworkers that I didn’t feel like partaking in. Gladly my wife knows me well and she immediately changed the conversation. Besides that, it was a beautiful weeding and a great date night for us!
This morning I was thinking about this blog of mine, the idea I had when I first started “blogging” and what has become since. I was certainly inspired by people like Tim Nahumck, Seth Clifford, Matt Birchler over at Birch Tree and some John Gruber. But I can’t be a pro-writer, I am impulsive and just type down my mind with no theme in mind for my “site”. Blogging to me its like thinking-out-loud. It is about putting out there whatever is in my head at the moment without putting too much thought on it, other than what I feel like “saying”. It is very rare when I think about something for days, write it down and sit on it for a while before posting it.
IN OTHER NEWS:
Devil May Cry came out for the Nintendo Switch, guess I’m gonna have to buy it.
I have always been a watch guy, since I was a kid, and like most people out there, I used to wear them on my left wrist. Yes, used too. Nowadays I wear my Apple Watch on my right wrist with the crown also facing right. I have tried other configurations with the watch like wearing it on the left with the crown also facing left but I didn’t like it as much, well, maybe I should revisit. Why the right, though? Well, probably I saw someone wearing it that way so I got curious and had to try. First thing I notice, I was activating Siri or the S.O.S. feature less frequently. My watch for whatever reason its always so down my wrist and close to my hand that, under certaing situations (mostly physical activities), my hand accidentally activates something it shouldn’t. By wearing the watch on the right with the crown also facing right I don’t have those accidents anymore.
Today I did the home-stay-dad thing, or daddy nurse. Marley (3yo) got sick yesterday so I stayed home today to take care of her and also taking her to the pediatrician, while Luna (7mo) was at grandma’s. That meant a lot ofboth playtime and some downtime for both of us and a lot of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey 🤫. Seriously thought, this home-stay-dad thing, I could do this everyday ! My girls are so much fun!
Visit to the doctor was sort of o-kay. Unlike her sister (so far) Marley has never been too fond of doctor visits, plus she had to get strep swapped, and she really hated that! Called came in, she’s positive for strep, early stages of, but still. Now the kiddo will be on antibiotics for the next ten days.
Funny story! We go to pick Marley’s prescription at our local Walgreens, I am getting to the drive trough.
Marley: What are we doing?
Me: We are picking up you medicine.
I stop at the window
Marley: I WANT A BEER PLEASE!
Me: 😕😳😳😅
Anyway!
Get home, Wife also makes it home a wee bit after, she goes to pick up the mail and guess what showed up ? 😃
Thank you Mister @Burk , I owe you a beer 🍺 (or coffee ☕️)
And of course its been put on to good use
😎
And thus we conclude, our day, with a sweet, sweet new-to-me, delicious beer.
Voodoo Ranger Juicifer | New Belgium Brewing
Brewed by: New Belgium Brewing Colorado, United States
Style: American IPA
Alcohol by volume (ABV): 7.70%
Rate: B+
Notes / Description: Brimming with citrus aromas from Galaxy and Citra hops, this moderately sweet and hazy IPA is devilishly juicy.
Some fun yesterday with family, BBQing and other shenanigans.
I can’t put this game down! It has been almost a month since I’ve got it, for the Xbox One S, and just can’t, I can’t stop playing this game. The interesting thing is, that I actually own and had played this game before on another platform, the PS4. For whatever reason I really wanted it on the Xbox (maybe because of the achievements, or the fact that i had recently bought the Xbox) and it has been a very different experience so far. I have gotten into this game more than when I first played it on the PS4. (It also it glitches a lot more on the Xbox but that’s not here nor there 🤫)
On this play-through I’m exploring more and doing more of the side quests and extra missions, I am barely halfway the main storyline and I’m already at level 52 I believe. The world in this game is not just beautiful but also massive , it’s a huge world-map! And there’s so much to do and get lost in, I’m having a blast!
It has been a while since I have had this feeling of “I can’t wait to play when I get home”!! (Still I have to wait until everyone goes to sleep but you get the idea).
Usually I look forward to all the podcastses to talk about all the good stuff after WWDC. This time around though I have no interest in what most of them have to say. They all are going to talk about the same things over and over for the next few weeks and so on. However, I think the real issue here is that I am a little burnt out on tech podcasts. Again, they all have the same topics and I probably need a break. Except for a few that have a more personal view on these things than just echoing the same news over and over.
IN OTHER NEWS:
We finally watched Captan Marvel last night — loved it! I’ll give it 🍫 🍫🍫 (3/3 chocolates, that’s my rating scale 😋)
Yesterday I spent a big portion of the day without my iPhone. Why? Because I am an idiot and I bricked it the night before, or so I thought. Well, things is I was also left without access to my music library or Apple Music, so I had the question! What am I gonna listen to on the way to work today? I hate public radio so that was not a option, then I remembered that Compact Discs (CDs) are (or were) a thing and that I might have one or two laying around in the car! And voilà, Menos el Oso by Minus the Bear saved the morning!
IN OTHER NEWS:
The iPhone is fine, it was just stuck on DFU mode and for whatever reason I would not turn back on for me! Took it to the Apple Store after work, Apple wizard did the same thing I tried to do, except that for him it worked (WTH man?). Both my pride an intelligence were unintentionally insulted, laughing out loud .
I found myself thinking about this as I was getting out my car this morning to walk into work. How expensive my backpack is? Not just the backpack itself but with everything that I carry in it, tech wise. Here’s a list of the most expensive things in my backpack right now, as far as tech goes.
SYNAPSE 19 - $200.00
11-inch iPad Pro Wi‑Fi 64GB - Space Gray - $799.00
Apple Pencil (2nd Generation) - 129.00
Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 75mm F1.8 Lens $899.00 (however, I did not paid this much for it myself)
Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 25mm F1.8 Lens - $399.00
Nintendo Switch - $298.94
This makes my backpack worth $3,676.94 🤭😱
That’s bonkers to me.
This week I’m deleting my Twitter account…ish! I have been on twitter since June 2009, according to the app. And I cannot say I’ve had or have a bad experience with it. I mean, I do understand people’s concerns about the platform and its community and bleh, bleh bleh! I just think I have way too many other things in my immediate reality to worry about, than worrying what’s going on/with Twitter. Maybe that makes part of the problem, who knows?
Anyhow! I’m deleting my (underscore)gabytron account, probably by the end of the week but I have opened a new one at pixelgabz. The reason I’m doing this is simply because my old account has become, a little noisy and rather than do a massive unfollowing spree and whatnot, it’s easier to just start over. It’s not like I’ll be loosing thousands of followers or something like that. Having a fresh start will allow me to tailor my timeline I little bit better and focus on the the “content” that I want to see, hopefully it works! If you’re still a Twitter user feel free to give a follow if you want, if not, that’s cool tool el-oh-el.
I while ago I wrote about moving my custom domain and blog to Blot. I had made the move and it was good. My workflow to be able to post to both my blot site and still my hosted micro.blog one was the same, nothing changed whatsoever thanks to the magic of Drafts. However, I have moved back my custom domain to Micro.blog simply because, it’s what I like best at the end of the day. Nothing wrong with Blot at all, it’s just a matter of preference I guess. Also because I have been thinking about starting my own Microcast, having evertryhing posted and hosted on Micro.blot makes more sense, in my head that is. But as things always go, this might change later today! Laugh out loud
I might have a different idea for my Blot account, though. I’m thinking about using it to host my photos there, since Blot has some beautiful templates for that purpose. And I think by doing this I can finally get rid of my Instagram account, which I have been thinking about doing so for a while now.
Okay, about a month or so ago, I created a blot.im account. Been tinkering with it and setting things up (with the help of David of course). Today I went ahead and set up my main domain to my Blot site. Doesn’t change anything as far as my micro.blog support and usage. Just see it a new look for my blog.
Today, my wife and I are celebrating eleven years of marriage (I’m pretty sure it’s eleven). What the hell we were thinking? (el-oh-el) Seriously though, I am grateful for this ride, for all the good and the not so good times, because no marriage is perfect but we try our best! And after eleven years together and two beautiful girls, I think I’m just gonna keep her! 😉
To eleven more! Cheers 🥂
Revision Brewing Company Nevada, United States revisionbrewing.com
Style: New England IPA
Alcohol by volume (ABV): 8.50%
Rating: A+
Notes / Description: We think about beer, a lot. Synapses firing, thoughts bubbling, ideas percolating in an ever-evolving quest to make somethin' super tasty. This beer was brewed with Citra, Simcoe, and a bit of milk sugar. We hope you enjoy our latest liquid thought.
I have a “thought” that I want to put into words, actually, I have already somewhat started. It was supposed to be a short thing but more thoughts kept coming out as I was writing it. However, as I’m typing this and earlier on started my super secret “post”, I’m rocking my youngest to sleep. I would like to dedicate more time and focus to my super secret post so I’ll probably gonna let it sit until I’m done with the baby. Here’s the problem though, by time I’m done all I’ll want to do is playing video games (Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, to be specific) and skip the writing because, raisins!
🤦🏻♂️
I have made a list of some of my favourite Nintendo Switch titles that I have played so far. I have played others but these are my top ones.
I weighed myself today! I am so both disgusted and very disappointed at myself! Sometime at the end of last year, I had made a commitment to myself to take back my healthy active life and go back to best version of myself (or at least what I think is the best version of myself). I had a good start! I even started sharing my activity with other people, even competing against them and whatnot. I had a particular friend that although we weren’t competing, she would check on me throughout the day sometimes and send me messages like, “why haven’t you closed those rings yet?”, what are you gonna do to close those rings?". That kept me motivated to stay active and workout.
Also I started to drink more water and less beer. Minding more what I was eating. I was taking care of myself. Then life changed, we had a new baby. So that changed the routine a little bit. My workout routine changed too and it was harder to stick with it.
Eventually I figured a way to get back into it and for a while, at the beginning of the year I started to do good. But in the past month or so, I am not sure what happened but it’s like I’ve lost all motivation to stay active, to workout, to drink more water and less beer. I am not sure if the things going on at work have something to do with it or not but I feel less and less motivated to stay focused on my commitment.
Last time I had a talk with my friend Gingee about my struggles in trying to stay healthy, she yell at me (it was a text but I could tell she was yelling at me).
Knock it off! You can do this.
Today was sort of a wake-up call. I am getting heavier and heavier. I am back at my bad habits and I’m doing very little to change that. I am at the heaviest I have ever been in my life. My ideal weight (or at least where I feel comfortable at) should be around 175 lb (79 kilos) to 180 lb (81.6 kilos) — I’m 220 lb (99.8 kilos) right now!
The things is, I know what I got to do but I can’t bring myself to do it. I keep making up excuses and very little action.
I need to knock it off and get to it!
🔗 Don’t Worry, Blog Happy – On my Om
blogging for me is nothing more than “thinking out loud.”
My feelings exactly. When I started blogging, in my mind I wanted to create a “pro-blog” kind of thing. Or at least that’s what my idea of having a blog was and I did struggle a lot with that idea. Then everything changed and I started treating my blog more of a digital diary, a place where I can express myself by “thinking out loud”. This probably also makes me a very impulsive writer of sorts. I think of something, and idea, something I need to say and I just write-it-away. In complete disregard for any rules or norms, if there are any.
Brewed by: Fremont Brewing Company Washington, United States
Style: New England IPA
Alcohol by volume (ABV): 5.50%
Rate: B+
Notes / Description: At the dawn of our time, near to a future sun, in the imagined universe of reality, dwells the Sky Kraken. A contradiction of the senses offering ripe melon, juicy citrus, pineapple and pepper flavors to the brave. An idea brought together by the cosmic attraction of opposites, Sky Kraken is a naturally unfiltered beer. Sky Kraken is also just a really cool name for this really cool beer that we wanted to brew using the hops we love. We hope you love it, too. Or, at least, love the Sky Kraken and become a believer. “I Believe.” – VWP
Down & Dirty: 2-Row Pale malt, White Wheat, Flaked Wheat, Malted Oats, and Rolled Oats with Citra®, Mosaic®, and Strata® hops. IBU: JTRA (just the right amount) Color: Hazy pale-straw Aroma: Guava, lemon, pineapple Flavor: Melon, citrus peel, grass
Today I found myself in a situation where my right AirPod the sound was way lower than the left one, by a lot. So my first thought was to restart my phone, that didn’t do it. Unpair and pair back my AirPods, that didn’t do either. Then I proceeded to ask the experts, the Twitters. My first replayed came from Jeff Perry, basically to clean the quieter one. Little did I know how this was going to go down. So I did my known-to-me cleaning process, getting rid of the visible wax excess here and there and voilà!! Well, that didn’t do it either. So I went to the other experts, The Googles. Well, I don’t want to talk about what I found and did that actually fixed my issue, but, here’s a link if you must know.
For over 10 years I have had the same Gamertag on both my Xbox Live and PSN accounts — Batbriel. The tag has some history for sure, way back from the Gears Of War days (the first GoW)but I grew tired or bored of it. I think it’s the only “online” handle that has lasted this long actually. Even my Twitter and Instagram handles have changed over the years, at least once. So I have changed it from Batbriel to Pixelat3dPanda, at least just on Xbox Live.
As I have grown older I have starting to have a thing for Pandas, I’m not sure why but I do. So for a while I knew that if I was going to change any of my online handles, it was going to be Panda related. Why pixelated? Well, I like pixels, pixels have always been related to gaming and I’m not sure how much this had to do with but I’m a fan of the Pixelated Podcast so, that’s how the pixelated part came into play. Also had to switch one of the letters “e” for a 3 because obviously the all letters version was taken.
Anyway, Pixelat3dPanda is the gamer tag on Xbox Live if you want to add me. For now I’m playing a lot of Overwatch so, cool cool!